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2to25z | What would happen if all the debt in the world was forgiven tomorrow? | Been following the Greek elections, and debt forgiveness comes up again and again.
So, as of tomorrow, everyone is back at 0.
Do economies explode? Do our lives change? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It wouldn't be possible. Too much of our money supply (as in the vast majority) is the result of fractional reserve banking (where your bank loans out most of your deposits to other customers.) Debt is the foundation of economic growth (take a look at the correlation between British usury laws and economic growth!) and to simply wipe it clear would be catastrophic. Realistically, the IMF only 'forgives' those debts which it has no expectation of ever being paid back as a means to forestall pointless economic suffering.",
"The banks would fail, we would all be out of work, the elderly would lose their savings and become an instant economic burden on anyone that managed to keep their jobs. We would lose all investment, and thus, economic collapse."
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} | train_eli5 | What would happen if all the debt in the world was forgiven tomorrow?
Been following the Greek elections, and debt forgiveness comes up again and again. So, as of tomorrow, everyone is back at 0. Do economies explode? Do our lives change? | [
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47e6eq | why when moving a file on a PC does it take so long? Is the computer actually physically moving the location of the data on the disk, if so why? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It depends on whether you're moving between logical disks (C:, D: etc.) or between locations on the same logical disk. The latter is usually much quicker, since the OS doesn't move the data, just the pointers to the data. Between logical disks, however, the data must be moved (copied then deleted)."
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} | train_eli5 | why when moving a file on a PC does it take so long? Is the computer actually physically moving the location of the data on the disk, if so why?
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4cdadm | Is there actually a Solution to 'This Statement is False'? (Liar's Paradox) | I mean, surely there's a Solution, right? Surely things can either be true or not true... I mean, does this statement really demonstrate that the law of excluded middle isn't right? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The solution is pretty simple, but unsatisfying.\n\n\"The assumption you can create a logical system where all propositions are either true or false is incorrect.\"",
"> Surely things can either be true or not true...\n\nWhy must they be? It's no earth-shattering event if we add a third category: things that have no defined truth value, because they are paradoxical. That does not affect the things you already determined to be either true or false.",
"Language is not constructed in a way that prevents nonsensical statements to be made.\n\nThat's as simple as that."
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} | train_eli5 | Is there actually a Solution to 'This Statement is False'? (Liar's Paradox)
I mean, surely there's a Solution, right? Surely things can either be true or not true... I mean, does this statement really demonstrate that the law of excluded middle isn't right? | [
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2t9kaa | If the size of a Vagina is only 3 to 5 inches long, why does size matter? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The vagina can stretch. In a neutral state it is 3-5 inches but can stretch to accommodate larger things.",
"Well, it doesn't matter *per se*. \n\nIf you don't have a micropenis, which is not an insult but a medical term, you are big enough to fill a vagina. \n\nGirth is where you can make a case of \"bigger is better\", because it can cause more stretching of tissue and pressure on the clitoris (the whole body of the clitoris, which is hidden). To be very clear here, this don't mean that a bigger girth is \"what matters\". It means that there is an actual phisiological reason, while in the \"lenght\" department this seems to be much less based on actual anatomy. \n\n**BUT** psicological reasons and personal preferences play a BIG role.\n\nWe live in a society where a big/long penis is a \"myth\", as big boobs are, so it is normal that a woman can find \"arousing\" a well endowed man, as you can find arousing big boobs. In both cases it's all in your mind, big boobs don't enanche a sexual experience *phisically*.\n\nEverytime a research has been done, the results were always the same: very few women said that \"size matters\" in a relevant way. (I mean actual research here, with randomized and anonimized pool of subject.)\n\nAs I said, it's the same as with big boobs with men: we may be impressed by the dimension, but usually almost everyone is not going to really care about it.\n\np.s. There is the argument that some women say that they like the sensation of being \"full\", but you could achieve the same thing with girth, I guess.",
"Darn right! All of you women out there complaining about my teeny-peeny should all be ashamed of yourselves! I'm delivering all you need.",
"Let me tell you a secret. Size doesn't matter. I am sorry the media, porn and other men tell you it does, but to most women, size doesn't matter a fucking bit. Girth does. But even with that, up to 80% of women cannot come from vaginal sex.\n\nYou wanna know what matters? What really absolutely truly matters?\n\nYour fingers and tongue. Learn to master those, and nobody cares about your fucking dick.",
"Length is irrelevant as long as you can reach the back; it's girth (thickness) that matters.\n\nBut if you're REALLY big, it will just hurt.",
"Long and thin goes right in but short and thick does the trick",
"1. Size matters but it's not the only thing that matters and it doesn't matter as much as guys think it does.\n2. Friction.",
"So, while the normal average length is small, in actuality, during arousal the vagina can expand by 200%. \n\n_URL_0_"
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} | train_eli5 | If the size of a Vagina is only 3 to 5 inches long, why does size matter?
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1vl07g | I feel a cold coming on. Home remedies aside what should I ACTUALLY be doing to avoid/weaken it? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Stay hydrated, get plenty of sleep, eat decently. But you should be doing those already :P"
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} | train_eli5 | I feel a cold coming on. Home remedies aside what should I ACTUALLY be doing to avoid/weaken it?
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8owo4w | How does a liposuction work without ripping your guts out? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The type of fat that people are trying to remove by liposuction is the visible fat that lies between the skin and the muscle. Lipo literally vacuums the fat from under the skin and never actually penetrates into the abdominal cavity."
],
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} | train_eli5 | How does a liposuction work without ripping your guts out?
[deleted] | [
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3qv1e4 | Are dogs really happy when It's owner comes back home? | My dog goes crazy, is jumping around, licks me and generally looks super happy. I am welcoming it for like 10 minutes by petting it and carrying. It's super happy... or is it not ? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Dogs, in fact, [do have emotions](_URL_0_). So yeah, it's **not** just anthropomorphizing. They *do* often experience emotions differently, and we do often anthropomorphize more complex emotions or human understand onto them, but they do definitely feel emotions, one of which is love and affection.\n\nLove and affection mostly comes from one hormone called [oxytocin](_URL_1_), which among a long, *long* list of things, is associated with trust and bonding. Dogs also use oxytocin (I'm fairly certain all mammals do, although I could be wrong on that). They bond to each other, and the bond to you. So it does care that you've been gone, and it cares that you've returned. Happiness comes from [serotonin](_URL_5_) and dogs have that, too.\n\nAs for why it's pretty recognizable to us as happiness, despite dogs being a different species...Human and dog evolution has been very closely linked for 10,000+ years, and their involvement [directly influenced out own evolution](_URL_3_). As much as we've been breeding them and domesticating them, they've been [domesticating us](_URL_2_). Dogs have a very vested interest in communicating with us, mostly because we've been breeding it into them for millennia, and we have just as much investment in communicating with them, since they helped us survive and evolve. So we're pretty in-tune with recognizing each others' emotional states.\n\nIncidentally, the whole \"pointing\" gesture that humans do is so abstract and unique to humans that no other animal on the planet understands it, not even monkeys and apes, *except* for [dogs](_URL_4_). The smartest animals on the planet can't understand pointing even after we teach it to them, but dogs just get it. Because they understand *us* that well.",
"It's more like they are feeling too many things at once. They're relieved because more of the pack is there. they're feeling anticipation because they hope you have something cool for them. They're also relieved because they probably want to go outside and pee (or just go outside because it's outside). Also they were probably pretty nervous there for a second because it might not have been you, so now there's all that relief. And they're also expecting you guys to have super fun, so they're anticipating that a lot.",
"Dogs have feelings like compassion and affection. Also, you're the one who feeds him. So yeah, he's happy.",
"One reason dogs are happy when we return is because we confuse them when we leave.\n\nBecause we often say goodbye when we leave, we are unwittingly telling the dog we want it to come along with us. A dog which is just leaving alone doesn't make eye contact or bark at the other dogs in the pack. So the dogs think we want them to come along ... then we shut the door in its face."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin",
"http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/03/130302-dog-domestic-evolution-science-wolf-wolves-human/",
"http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130514-dogs-domestication-humans-genome-science/",
"http://news.discovery.com/animals/zoo-animals/dogs-humans-120208.htm",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin"
]
} | train_eli5 | Are dogs really happy when It's owner comes back home?
My dog goes crazy, is jumping around, licks me and generally looks super happy. I am welcoming it for like 10 minutes by petting it and carrying. It's super happy... or is it not ? | [
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4vq6ld | Tax return, its importance in US presidential election and implication/justificiation of candidates publishing them | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Tax returns reveal information about people. You can check out [Hillary Clinton's 2014 tax return here](_URL_0_). The most salient things regarding political office are things like:\n\n* How much money did you make?\n* Where did your income come from?\n* How much tax did you pay?\n* How much did you give to charity?\n\nThis information informs people of those things. Most people think that knowing that information about their candidates will help them choose the best candidate.\n\nThere is no law mandating the release of tax returns, but for the last ~40 years it's been expected. A candidate doesn't have to release them if he or she simply chooses not to for any reason whatsoever.\n\nThe implication is that the candidate who doesn't release them is doing so in order to hide something; the implication is that if he or she released them then the candidate would suffer negative repercussions because the candidate does not want the public to know things such as the amount of money made, how it was made, the amount of tax paid, or charitable contributions paid.",
"Your annual income tax return provides a snapshot of your overall financial situation - how much you make and how, what you own, your charitable giving, etc\n\nIt has been traditional for years for presidential candidates to release their returns so voters understand their financials. Does their charitable giving match their public positions on issues? Do they earn money from organizations, domestic or foreign, that might compromise their ability to effectively govern? Have they received questionable gifts from donors? \n\nWhile not perfect, this is the best way to presenting this information to voters short of an external audit that is made public.\n\nTrump, bucking tradition, has refused to release his returns. He claims this is because he is still involved in legal proceeding with the IRS, which is not unusual for someone of his wealth. However, there is no legal reason that would prevent him from doing this.\n\nThere is a lot of speculation about his finances, due to his claims of his own wealth, and the complexity of his business organization. Releasing his return would allow him to prove (or not) that some of this speculation is false. One of the key items of speculation is that Trump might not be worth nearly as much as he claims. There is also concern that he (or his businesses) might have received significant foreign investment from Russian investors, something that is of concern for a potential President. There are also questions about whether or not his charitable giving matches his claims. All of this speculation could be proven or disproven (to a degree) by the release of his returns."
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} | train_eli5 | Tax return, its importance in US presidential election and implication/justificiation of candidates publishing them
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5fcvjn | why do we feel less tired and feel less need to sleep when we can engage often in activities that makes us feel good? | For example, when i have more free time and am able to play videogames more often, I can go days sleeping as little as 3 or 4 hours and waking up relatively refreshed, but when i can't play, i'll usually sleep more, wake up and feel sleepy, get to the end of the day more tired and feel more tired the next day.
I expect the same happens with other people and the same, or other activities. Are we just "redirecting" our energy? Will we feel a physical need to sleep and rest more after a few days if we keep performing these activities? Or is there some mental mechanism that is somehow replacing this rest with the good feeling we get when we do them? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Dont let me talk out of my ass too much but basically your body releases endorphins when you do something you enjoy. Endorphins provide a sense of euphoria which stops you from feeling tired. Another reason may be that your body is releasing andrenaline when you play video games which also gives you more energy. Do not mistake this 3-4 hours of sleep as being a healthy habit. There is alot of pseudoscience in certain sleep studies that will tell you whatever you want to hear. I am not an expert by any means but try to stick to a sleep schedule for optimum effects. If you do not have time in your day to get 8 hours then at least get fewer hours on a consistant basis."
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} | train_eli5 | why do we feel less tired and feel less need to sleep when we can engage often in activities that makes us feel good?
For example, when i have more free time and am able to play videogames more often, I can go days sleeping as little as 3 or 4 hours and waking up relatively refreshed, but when i can't play, i'll usually sleep more, wake up and feel sleepy, get to the end of the day more tired and feel more tired the next day. I expect the same happens with other people and the same, or other activities. Are we just "redirecting" our energy? Will we feel a physical need to sleep and rest more after a few days if we keep performing these activities? Or is there some mental mechanism that is somehow replacing this rest with the good feeling we get when we do them? | [
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2gpz8g | How come the international community supports Israel so much? | the US/europe gives Israel lots of aid. Countries like China/Japan just look away as they fight Hamas. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Israel is a valuable military and political ally in the region for the US/Europe. Especially the US - we basically ensured their survival with our constant support. \n\nChina and Russia (more so Russia) don't really support Israel and in the past have worked against it. They both just don't have so much of an obligation like the West does to Israel as an ally. And Hamas is a controversial, some would say, terrorist, organization. They don't want to be seen supporting that. They support a peaceful solution, to put it in a nutshell, but don't want to get involved since they don't have strong ties to Israel."
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} | train_eli5 | How come the international community supports Israel so much?
the US/europe gives Israel lots of aid. Countries like China/Japan just look away as they fight Hamas. | [
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6numhk | Why does your "tolerance" increase when you drink alcohol more frequent? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because when you drink more your liver adapts to become more efficient at metabolizing alcohol. Further, there's a vein that connects your stomach to your liver, allowing your more efficient liver a first pass at the alcohol before it reaches your bloodstream and thus your brain, which is where you feel the effects. \n\nThis is why butt chugging and inhalation of alcohol exist and are more dangerous (both allow alcohol to bypasses the vein and directly reach the blood without being pre-filtered by the liver). They allow a smaller amount of alcohol to result in higher blood alcohol concentration than by drinking it.",
"Your liver gets better at processing the alcohol. This can also happen with medication - the first time I take my ADHD meds after the summer, my entire body is buzzing. But the next day, I will be perfectly fine and the medication is working as it should. My doctor explained it to me as my liver \"forgetting\" how to process the medication over the summer, and then getting back into the habit after the first day. The same thing can happen with alcohol - the more you drink, the more efficiently your liver processes the alcohol. Stop for a long while, and it gets less efficient. All of this *does* wear out your liver though, so be careful!",
"'Twas oft asked here. Ye may enjoy these:\n\n\n1. [ELI5: How does alcohol tolerance work ](_URL_2_)\n1. [ELI5: Why people have different alcohol tolerance? ](_URL_3_)\n1. [ELI5: Alcohol tolerance ](_URL_4_)\n1. [ELI5: Why does drinking alcohol more often raise your tolerance? ](_URL_0_)\n1. [ELI5: Alcohol tolerance ](_URL_5_)\n1. [ELI5: Alcohol tolerance ](_URL_1_)"
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"url": [
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y1lp9/eli5_alcohol_tolerance/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uphxv/eli5_how_does_alcohol_tolerance_work/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6j71ug/eli5_why_people_have_different_alcohol_tolerance/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/266ued/eli5_alcohol_tolerance/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pu6ki/eli5_alcohol_tolerance/"
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} | train_eli5 | Why does your "tolerance" increase when you drink alcohol more frequent?
| [
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4561d0 | how do boomerangs work? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When you throw a boomerang one of the wings is actually moving faster than the other (think about how you whip it out of your hand). The air that flows around that wing lifts it and makes it gradually spin in the opposite direction.",
"Follow up question: Were boomerangs ever actually used as weapons/to hunt? Seems like they are just worse than rocks...",
"Think of a boomerang as a mini helicopter.\n\nSo we have three forces we are working with.\n\n1) We throw it! so it has initial velocity straight out.\n\n2) We spin it! It's like a helicopter on its side (It is thrown almost vertically not horizontally like a frisbee) giving it angular momentum (a helicopter normally flies upward when you spin the blades, a helicopter on its side will fly sideways). This is why there are left handed and right handed boomerangs, the wing shape is reversed (imagine flipping a helicopters blades) so that it will produce lift in the opposite direction.\n\nSo now we have an object that would move diagonally (forward from the throw, and sideways from the blades lift).\n\n3) The blades lift isn't balanced. Imagine running at someone and swinging your arm at them. Your arm gains your forward movement, and is moving even faster! Imagine running backwards away from someone and swinging your arm at them. It is going much slower! Lift is proportional to velocity^2 on our spinning blades. At each moment, the wing(s) (boomerangs can have more than two wings) that are rotating into the forward motion generate more lift than those moving away from forward motion.\n\nThat difference in the lift produces a torque force, in addition to our initial forward velocity and our relatively steady rotational velocity. Let's try to explain this more, in case this loses you. **Get out a pencil.** We are going to model the collect lift from the two wings as just pushing at either end of the stick. Like we said, one side is producing a bigger lift than the other. So push on one side more than the other. What happens? The pencil rotates and moves forward. That rotation is the torque on the boomerang, and the movement forward is the lift that the blades create.\n\nNow, this is the weird part. When an object is spinning nice and fast, torque doesn't play nice. There is no really ELI5 way to explain this, but because of some funny [magic](_URL_0_), the torque from our uneven lift forces actually applies a force directly opposite to the motion of travel. Read or take it at face value. It's a really interesting application of inertia.\n\nRegardless, we also have a torque! So our little movement diagram looks like this!\n\n_URL_1_\n\nTorque causes our helicopter/boomerang to slowly rotate towards this torque force. Since the torque is CAUSED by our angular momentum, the torque keeps moving with angular momentum (damn angular momentum can never catch up), and so the direction of the boomerang keeps rotating, creating our looped flight.\n\n\nThe angular momentum is created by the lift, but that lift is uneven, creating the torque. That torque \"pulls\" the angular momentum towards the torque, and as it moves so does the torque, which means they do their little happy dance around and around until drag slows down the blades and initial velocity by enough.",
"I have made an account just to explain this as I teach this at university in Australia.\n\nBoomerangs are kind of like a wing and when you throw them, they spin around in flight. When flying, the top edge is moving faster than the bottom creating more lift at the top. This causes the boomerang to be tipped over from vertically, and the torque forces the boomerang to precess around, turning the boomerang in a circle.\n\nThis is a very simple explanation. Look up 3D gyroscopic dynamics and forced gyroscopic precession for more information. Also try holding a bicycle wheel/turning a motorbike at the handles to experience this unusual force\n_URL_2_",
"It is shaped like an airplane wing. How that works is shown [here](_URL_3_) \n\nSo if you throw the boomerang tilted like / , it will fly in a circular way like a plane flying in a circle.",
"Short answer, it flies because it is shaped like a wing/propeller. And it turns and comes back for the same reason a bike turns left instead of falling over when you lean while riding.The two things responsible are lift and what is called gyroscopic precession. I'll go into them separately.\n\nFirstly, lift. It is pretty simple to think of how an airplane propeller or wing can produce a force of lift based on shape and angle when you move through air. It comes from a difference in pressure and you can feel this yourself when you stick your palm out of the window in a moving car. What also has an effect is the speed that you're moving through the air. And the faster you move through the air, the more lift you'll generate.\n\nWhen you throw something that spins, you're going to have parts move through the air at different speeds. If you throw the boomerang forward with a forward spin, the top of the blade will be moving at a speed that is equal to the speed it would be 'rolling' forward plus the speed it is thrown, because they're in the same direction.\nThe bottom of the boomerang is still moving forward, but it is 'rolling' in the opposite direction of the throw, so those are subtracted. These effects mean that the top of the boomerang moves faster, and hence produces more lift than the bottom of the wing moving slower, resulting in a net force about the 'top' most part of the boomerang.\n\nSecondly, the gyroscopes. Gyroscopes are funny things. They act on the principal of conservation of angular momentum. What this means is that things that are spinning like to keep spinning the same way, and when one spin direction is changed there must also be a change in another direction. You might actually be more familiar with this behavior than you think if you have ever ridden a bike, especially with no hands. When you have a wheel rolling forward, and you try and tilt it to the left, instead of tilting to the left, it begins to turn left instead. In fact, the direction it will turn is always 90 degrees to the direction it is pushed.\n\nSo, both of these things add together and you get a boomerang. The boomerang is shaped like a wing to produce lift, but because it is thrown forward and with a spin, the top makes more lift than the bottom. And because it is spinning, just like tilting left while riding a bike, the boomerang will 'turn' just like the bike wheel. And if everything is done well, the boomerang can keep turning and turning until it comes right back to where it began.",
"There are two kinds of boomerangs, the kind that aren't meant to come back and the kind that are.\n\nThe first kind are not that interesting, they're pretty much just sharp sticks with good aerodynamics that you can throw at an animal and stun or kill it.\n\nThe second kind that come back are interesting. They are not intended to hit the animal (otherwise they wouldn't come back). They are thrown at a wide angle and form a large arc before coming back. The noise it makes in flight is reasonably loud and scares all the animals away from the sound. The result is that after you throw it, a bunch of animals come scurrying directly towards you, which is when you then kill them with a more lethal weapon like a spear.",
"All of these answers are far from correct, because it's very difficult to ELI5 a 7 axis rotation. The best way to ELI5 a boomerang is to just call it a magic stick of physics. \n\nThat being said, if you're looking for the best layman answer: _URL_4_",
"Boomerangs as we know them were a myth created by the Australian government to boost morale during World War II. It is said that Kangaroo Steve saved the Americans on D-day with his silver boomerang, but historians haven't found any evidence that he even exists. Some historians believe that the ancient aborigines created a working boomerang, but the only evidence is ancient paintings of the boomerang being used, and these paintings didn't even depict the model that you're probably referring to.",
"Short answer: gyroscopic effect.\n\nLong answer (not necessarily for a 5 year old...): Think of a boomerang as consisting of two 'wings'. When you throw the boomerang, you hold it somewhat vertical and you give it forward spin. This spin gives the top 'wing' of the boomerang a higher air flow velocity which then gives that 'wing' more 'lift' and causes a torque that wants to tip the boomerang horizontal. The spin also gives it enough angular momentum to act like a gyroscope. Gyroscopes are weird, when you apply a torque about an axis other than the spin axis, the gyro actually moves about a third axis. \n\nSo for a boomerang thrown from the right hand with forward spin, you have your angular momentum vector pointing left, and a torque vector point backwards. Right hand rule for gyroscopes means that the boomerang wants to then turn left. If the boomerang was designed correctly and thrown well, it will circle back to you.",
"When you throw a spinning thing through the air one side will always be going faster through the air. One side is moving forward into the \"headwind\" created by it's movement. This side creates more lift. \n\n\nThis makes a boomerang with lots of spin and forward movement tilt to one side. For a right hand person this makes it want to turn left crating a counter clockwise path from above.\n\nThe whole thing is creating lift, so it doesn't just fall, and this turning force by being tilted. It keeps tilting as long as it has spin and speed.\n\nBut it runs out of forward speed as it nears one 360 and begins to fly flater and flater. Now it is just lift from spin with no turn, it is hovering. With practice, this can happen right in front of you and you can catch the boomerang by \"clapping\" it.\n\nThe reason the boomerang is stable and doesn't just tumble is because it is also a gyroscope. \n\n--- \n\nSource: I used to build and sell boomerangs.",
"This makes me wonder, did boomerangs come about because someone fucked up the throwing stick?\n\"Shit! It came back to me!\"\n\"Noob\"",
"They are like pets and actually have a soul. They know whom they belong to and keep coming back to their owner. If one gets lost, try to call it or whistle.",
"Most boomerangs that are designed to return to the thrower are made of two wings brought together with a slight twist at the junction. The wing design (like an airplane wing) causes the necessary lift to make the boomerang sail through the air. The return is caused by the slight variation in wind speed between the two wing pieces. The result is a constant force to either the left or the right which makes the boomerang turn as it moves through the air.",
"This is an explanation with graphics. Basically, the boomerang creates a gyroscopic procession because when thrown, the air moves faster over the top of the boomerang than the bottom. It's a property that also limits the speed of helicopters.\n \n[Veritasium ](_URL_5_)",
"So no one remembers that episode of Ducktales with the remote control boomerangs?\n\n**edit** Found it! *S01E47 \"Back out in the outback.\"* \n\n**dailymotion link:** [Ducktales: Back Out in the Outback](_URL_6_)",
"Most boomerangs that are designed to return to the thrower are made of two wings brought together with a slight twist at the junction. The wing design (like an airplane wing) causes the necessary lift to make the boomerang sail through the air. The return is caused by the slight variation in wind speed between the two wing pieces. \n\nThe result is a constant force to either the left or the right which makes the boomerang turn as it moves through the air.\nLike its mentioned before, the hunting boomerangs were larger and more club like. They still kept the shape and dynamics similiar. \n\nOn mobile at the moment but i can try to find some images.",
"The blades are shaped so it gets a little bit of lift, so it doesn't just fall to the ground. And the way the boomerang is shaped makes it fall \"in\", there's left handed and right handed. These two combined makes the boomerang \"fall\" in a circle, but fall slow.",
"You throw it and it twists fast flying in a way that it curves it's own path and kinda comes back to you.",
"Stuff you should know did a pretty good podcast on them:\n\n_URL_7_",
"The better question is: what store sells boomerangs?"
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} | train_eli5 | how do boomerangs work?
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1fz59q | what would happen if Russia started focusing more on Asia instead of the EU? | Politically and economically. I know that the EU is Russia's largest trade partner but Russia is only the 3rd for the EU. Would Asia be able to replace everything that Russia imports from the EU? Would it effect the EU much? Would they still import the same amount of oil and gas? Would the EU be upset and prolong political negotiations, like visa reform? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Actually funny you should ask but I watched a story on the news here in AUS and it was saying that Russia is in fact looking to Asia more, and by some certain date like 2020 I think (I don't remember the stats), that it would be supplying most of its oil to Asia, followed by Europe. But to\nDo that they first had to expand Vladivostok and make a bigger ports because they already have the demand from Asia."
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} | train_eli5 | what would happen if Russia started focusing more on Asia instead of the EU?
Politically and economically. I know that the EU is Russia's largest trade partner but Russia is only the 3rd for the EU. Would Asia be able to replace everything that Russia imports from the EU? Would it effect the EU much? Would they still import the same amount of oil and gas? Would the EU be upset and prolong political negotiations, like visa reform? | [
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33s612 | Why does chugging any carbonated beverage burn your throat so bad? | Particularly beer. | explainlikeimfive | {
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68u5r8 | Why do burgers have this little white piece at the bottom of the bun? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"That comes from an imperfection in the baking process. When you bake a burger bun, you typically place it flat on a metal pan. Oftentimes a little moisture will escape the dough during baking and get stuck between the bun and the pan. As the oven heats up, the moisture turns to steam and gets trapped as small steam bubble, which prevents the part of the bun it's trapped under from touching the pan and getting evenly browned. The white spot is the result."
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} | train_eli5 | Why do burgers have this little white piece at the bottom of the bun?
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3cu1g9 | What is the little sound you hear sometimes right before you get a call or a text message? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The ringtone? You're gonna have to be a little more descriptive. The only thing i can think of would be interference with other devices. My parents computer speakers used to buzz right before the phone rang.",
"I'm going to presume you mean the \"duh dah dah\" sound that comes through on poorly shielded speakers. (Like _URL_0_)\n\nWhat you're hearing is the sound caused by the various speakers in the room receiving your cell phone as it talks with the tower. You get a call, your cell phone sends lots of little bits of data in close groups. The speakers receive these bits of data, and make a click for each of these little bits of data. (They work like unintentional [envelope detectors](_URL_1_) on GSM's pulsed signals.)\n\nThis all happens fast enough that the clicks make a buzzing sound, and you get to hear each time your cell phone says it's part of the conversation with the tower. \n\nThis only happens on phones that use GSM signals. If you have a friend who uses a CDMA phone (like Sprint or Verizon here in the US) their phone won't make that sound.\n\nEDIT: I had linked to someone I thought was going to be sane about fixing the issue, but it turns out they're not. In any case, to get rid of the sound, the easiest approach is to buy a clip on ferrite bead and add that to the speakers."
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} | train_eli5 | What is the little sound you hear sometimes right before you get a call or a text message?
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5bekqt | If the moon can eclipse the sun why can we see stars every night? | If the moon can almost entirely block out our sun shouldn't there be a massive amount of planets between us and the stars to block them out too? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The moon can block out the sun because it's massively closer than any planets. Sometimes that one really bright star you might see in the night sky is actually Venus. It's just a tiny point of light and it's the closest planet to the earth. Other planets in our own solar system will be even less visible than that. Planets outside of our own solar system are entirely invisible to the naked eye.",
"They only marginally dim the light due to the sizes and distances involved. My thumb is very near and can block a sun sized object, but my thumb at twice the distance doesn't stand a chance.\n\nThis dimming of light from other stars when exoplanets transit in front is one of the best ways to detect exoplanets. :)"
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} | train_eli5 | If the moon can eclipse the sun why can we see stars every night?
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7gglbs | What's wrong with having a firewalled internet | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The simple answer is to ask another question: what would you allow through this firewall and what would you block?\n\nA firewall isn't automatic and it isn't magic. You can't get a firewall which blocks \"bad stuff\". It works on rules. You tell it what to block and what to let through. China has made one which blocks traffic to and from a vast range of non-Chinese websites. The one on your home router blocks incoming connections, so that you are allowed to connect to an outside server, and if you do they can respond, but they can't initiate a connection to *you*.\n\nWhat rules should the American Firewall use? Should it block non-American websites, for example? Should it prevent non-American users from connecting to American websites?\n\nAnd how would this firewall affect hosting providers? I live in Europe, but what if I pay an American hosting provider to host my website? I can put whatever I like on that website, and suddenly all my evil code is on the inside of your firewall!",
"That would just be another way for the people in charge to censor anything they don't want you to see. See:North Korea.",
"Remember, in China the government actively and publicly filters all data traveling into, out of, and within the country. Its censorship on an unprecedented scale. Websites can be blocked minutes after they post something the government doesn't like. \n\nWhat's worse is that it doesn't work very well, as the Chinese people are actively working against the process, utilizing VPN's to mask their locations.",
"Have you travelled to China? It is incredibly annoying dealing with the internet there and trying to access the real internet without using a VPN.\n\nThe balkanization of the internet turns the clock back to the days where you never made long distance or international calls because of the trouble and hassle."
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} | train_eli5 | What's wrong with having a firewalled internet
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8bt0c4 | How come it isn't freezing cold during/eight minutes after a total solar eclipse? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Solar eclipse is about like nighttime -- if night only lasted half an hour or so. So it's going to be less cold that a boring ordinary night.",
"Why isn't it freezing cold during the night? Because our atmosphere traps heat: hence global warming"
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} | train_eli5 | How come it isn't freezing cold during/eight minutes after a total solar eclipse?
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3r6jet | What is the differences between each major sect of Islam? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are two big separate sects of Islam (Sunna & Shiaa), and two major styles (Orthodox/Traditional & Suffi). You can be a Sunni, Shiaa, Sunni Suffi, Shiaa Suffi. That covers pretty much 97% of Muslims. The other 3% can be either:\n\n* Khawarij\n* ISIS\n* Whatever someone made up (like Nation of Islam).\n\n\nSo Sunnis and Shiaa were the first to develop right after the *prophet* died. They basically (politically) disagreed on whom to be the Khaliph (sucessor). This group believed this, and that group believed that. Then they all fought and lived in two different places and developed two different interpretations of the seeds of Islam. Sunnis tended to be more rational (or maybe I just labeled it that since I'm an ex-Sunni), and Shiaa tended to be more spiritual and far fetched (things that are too super natural and kinda influenced by Christianity). They both have some very decent perspectives. It all started with the Sunnis thinking that the best friend (Abu Buker) of the prophet, who had lead prayers in his place while he was sick, was actually more worthy of being a khaliph, while the Shiaa group thought that his cousin, Ali, of the same blood, is more worthy. Ali was the third khaliph anyways and he's very respected for Sunnis, but he's over glorified for Shiaa. A little bit like Christians with how they over glorified Jesus and the Saints with how they ask Ali for forgiveness and they pray to him.\n\nSuffies are a little bit of a different style. They believe in being one with God, they are very very beautifully spiritual. They're very serious and they meditate a lot. Regardless of their background (Sunni or Shiaa), they just put a lot of meaning and mind work into their prayers.\n\nOf course since Sunnis and Shiaas lived in totally different and separate societies, they developed totally different interpretations of Muhammad's stories and of course, different laws and ways of living. Shiaa had a lot of influence from the over glorifying of Ali, so he is very involved in a lot of their past and future stories.",
"There are too many differences to note. Do you want differences in history, theology, law, etc?\n\nThe two main sects are Sunni and Shia. Then these two sects can be further divided into most of the Islam you will have heard of.\n\nFor me, the first difference comes after the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) died. The Sunni's recognised Abu Bakr (the people voted for him) and the Shia's recognised Ali (chosen by the Prophet).\n\nEach sect had numerous successors. The shia's last successor disappeared or \"went into hiding\". The Shia's are waiting for him to return and end the world.\n\nMost Muslims are Sunni, however 100+million are Shia."
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} | train_eli5 | What is the differences between each major sect of Islam?
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8msen2 | Why are there multiple gas stations at one crossroad? How do they compete with each other? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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],
"text": [
"A lot of similar stores open up near each other, it is part of game theory. They do what is best for themselves, instead of what is best for the consumer. The best example I have is 2 ice cream sellers on a beach. They could place themselves 1/4 of the way from each end \\(so say 100 feet long, 1 seller at 25 feet 1 at 75 feet\\) so no person has to travel more than 1/4 of the way \\(25 feet\\). However, nothing stops one of them from moving a bit closer to the other to gain more customers, 1 could move a foot over, making the further people have to travel 26 feet to them, but they'll still go to him over having to travel 75 to the other guy, and now he can serve people from 0 \\- 51 feet, instead of 0\\-50...the other person matches this, it goes on an on etc, until the compromise is being right next to each other, and someone takes feet 0\\-50, and the other takes 50\\-100.",
"It's a good location with lots of traffic. Then it just depends on which corner is most convenient for each particular driver-customer.\n\nAnd it probably depends on time of day and which way rush hour is flowing."
],
"score": [
9,
6
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why are there multiple gas stations at one crossroad? How do they compete with each other?
[removed] | [
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5q15mp | Aside from signing executive orders, what power does the president actually have to force Mexico to pay for a border wall? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcvhblf"
],
"text": [
"Theoretically you can threaten tarrifs on their goods if they don't pay and offer them trade deals if they do. That's about the only real power short of war. If they don't pay either we build it and pay for it or we don't build it."
],
"score": [
3
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Aside from signing executive orders, what power does the president actually have to force Mexico to pay for a border wall?
[removed] | [
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2bjkr0 | Could anyone onboard MH17 have survived the missile impact, and dropped 10km to their death? | I thought about this one, and were terrified to think that if someone survived The initial blastoise from The missile, they would free falling 10km to their death. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"cj5yfq2"
],
"text": [
"Unlikely that anyone would survive for to long. It was about 600mph and dropped like a stone (didn't glide after losing power). This tells us that there was explosive decompression. This would rip the clothes righ off you. Since they were at altitude and during the day many of them wouldn't have had seatbelts on. They would have been slammed against all the ragged edges of the plane as it was breaking up. \n\nAt that altitude the temp is about -50c. That together with explosive decompression makes the first 5 or 10 seconds almost unsurvivable. \n\nSure, someone could have survived all that & died on ground impact but that's a scenario that's highly unlikely but also better not to think about"
],
"score": [
3
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Could anyone onboard MH17 have survived the missile impact, and dropped 10km to their death?
I thought about this one, and were terrified to think that if someone survived The initial blastoise from The missile, they would free falling 10km to their death. | [
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8cd3ju | Why do kids usually learn the R sound last? What makes it so hard? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"dxfiol0",
"dxk6bif",
"dxf4qza"
],
"text": [
"I have two boys, 6 and 4, who both struggle with it - the 6 year old in particular. It's funny, but when you try to explain how to do it...it's actually hard to describe. Go through the alphabet and you'll see that all of the other consonant sounds are easy to describe, except R. You have to bunch up your tongue in the back but also raise it up near the back of the roof of your mouth. It's kind of weird. \n\nIt's also a sound that I believe few if any other languages have because it's a fairly unnatural contortion for the mouth to make.",
"It requires a very odd combination of movements. In 300-level linguistics, my professor told us the human mouth isn't even developed enough to make the sound properly until 20 years old; before that, we just make a good enough approximation.\n\nEven us professionals call it a \"liquid\" or \"approximate\" sound, as opposed to specific things like \"voiceless alveolar sibilant,\" which explains every important aspect of how to make the S sound. Although I think the linguistic field is getting better at explaining it.",
"I can also imagine it being dependant on your native language. For example: the first language I learned was serbian, in which you roll the \"R\". So when I went to school and learned german, where it is pronounced differently , it was a very unnatural tounge movement for me. Same with english and probably some other types of languages. I guess sometimes it is just a more natural motion of the tounge.",
"Coming from a French speaking background, I had no problem learning the sound R, but my kids only speak English and are learning elementary French at school now and teaching them the R sound is a disaster. I guess it depends what is your birth language."
],
"score": [
8,
5,
2,
2
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why do kids usually learn the R sound last? What makes it so hard?
| [
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2vkki6 | All the madness that you always see on the Wall Street trading floor, what is going on here? Why is everybody yelling? | Always wondered. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"coigmyi",
"coil6mn"
],
"text": [
"So first of all, this doesn't really happen anymore. Now computers do most of the trading. What you see on TV is planted to make it look busy. The floor is usually pretty empty.\n\nNext, when people were on the floor, you can think of it like organized chaos. There were hundreds of people crammed into the space and they are all buying and selling stocks based off of what the stock market is doing at that moment. It was so hectic because the stock can change faster than you can blink.",
"Great documentary on Netflix called, \"The Pit\" which goes into some explanation on what is actually happening. \n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)"
],
"score": [
20,
3
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ94J09IsHA"
]
} | train_eli5 | All the madness that you always see on the Wall Street trading floor, what is going on here? Why is everybody yelling?
Always wondered. | [
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1l4yjq | Why do I get a cold (sore throat, stuffy nose, etc) when I fall asleep with a fan blowing on me? | Google didn't help! | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"cbvso5t",
"cbvx4vu",
"cbvv7jy"
],
"text": [
"The dry air can promote a response from your body, similar to cold winter air.",
"Dorment viruses. Bacteria and viruses need to be at their ideal temperature in order to multiply. The high temp of the body keeps alots of things dormant, but Breathing in cold air can drop the surface temp along synus passages, where you start to feel a cold the most.\n\nWearing a scarf keeps vulnerable areas like the neck and chest warm. They also keep the air your breathing warm. \n\nAparently a school was designed with an exposed walkway intead of a n indoor one. The quick walk outside between buildings, and the blast of cold air, drastically lowered the amount of sick days taken that winter.",
"It's most likely that you are allergic to dust. The fan blows dust into your mouth and nose as you sleep, and you have mild allergic reactions (sore throat, stuffy nose, dry eyes, etc.)."
],
"score": [
5,
2,
2
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why do I get a cold (sore throat, stuffy nose, etc) when I fall asleep with a fan blowing on me?
Google didn't help! | [
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7fxp66 | How can a member of the Commonwealth be considered independent but still have a constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as the head of state? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dqf3pfc"
],
"text": [
"You are thinking about this all the wrong way. She is not the “queen of the Commonwealth”. She is the queen of the United Kingdom. But she’s also the queen of Canada, which is a completely separate job. Then, she’s also the queen of Australia, which is a completely separate job from the first 2.\n\nSo, each country that she’s the head of state of is independent. Their queens just happen to be the same person."
],
"score": [
13
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How can a member of the Commonwealth be considered independent but still have a constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as the head of state?
| [
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5d9ksk | Why are space photos color enhanced? | Would I be missing out on things if they didn't enhance the photos with color or are things less recognizable? Are they just black and white?
I would like to think that I want to see how space really looks like. Sure the galaxy photos are brilliant with all the colors but I'm curious what space really looks like also.
NASA just released photos of [Mars](_URL_0_) and some of those had false coloring added. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"da2xx2v"
],
"text": [
"I'm not sure why the Mars photos are falsely colored, but for things like galaxies and nebulae it's so that you can actually see what is there. Light comes at a variety of wavelengths, some visible, some not. The band of light that we can see is called the \"visible light spectrum\" or the \"color spectrum.\" Changing the exact wavelength changes the color. So the longest wavelength we can see is red and the shortest in violet.\n\nOn earth, we can see color all over the place because most objects on earth reflect visible light. When light strikes an object, some of it gets absorbed and some of it gets reflected, and that's what determines what color it is. So a red book reflects red light and absorbs the rest, while a violet flower reflects violet light and absorbs the rest. For colors not found in the rainbow, they are made because objects reflect multiple types of light that mix together much like mixing paint (though, with different rules).\n\nWhen you are taking about galaxies and nebulae it's a little different because some of them emit light, much like our sun. But either way, what determines the color of an object is the light that comes out of it, whether by emission or reflection. Most galaxies and nebulae look either white or are invisible to the eye. This is because the light that comes out of them reflects the entire visible spectrum (making it white) or none of it (making it back, which is invisible against the backdrop of space).\n\nHowever, much like objects on earth have interesting differences in the wavelengths of light that they reflect on the *visible* light spectrum, the galaxies and nebulae have interesting differences in the wavelengths of light that come out of them... we just can't see it. So we use telescopes that can capture the light that we cannot see, and then we color the object according to those wavelengths. So maybe the interesting wavelengths of light patterns are at 100-250 nanometers (wavelength is a distance and so is measured in distance units). So we go and color 100 nm as violet and 250 nm as red and color the wavelengths between in a manner that corresponds to the visible light spectrum. Suddenly, the picture is colorful and shows interesting differences in how light comes out of these objects that would otherwise be invisible to us."
],
"score": [
2
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
"http://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-have-just-released-2-540-gorgeous-new-photos-of-mars"
]
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why are space photos color enhanced?
Would I be missing out on things if they didn't enhance the photos with color or are things less recognizable? Are they just black and white? I would like to think that I want to see how space really looks like. Sure the galaxy photos are brilliant with all the colors but I'm curious what space really looks like also. NASA just released photos of [Mars](_URL_0_) and some of those had false coloring added. | [
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2rvxqw | How can unemployment drop to 5.6% when we have a record number of people not working? | These are the two articles I read:
_URL_0_
_URL_1_ | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"cnjrhgb",
"cnju0sw",
"cnjsar4"
],
"text": [
"You have to meet two criteria in order to be counted as \"unemployed\":\n\n1. You have to not have a job (duh).\n\n2. You have to be actively **looking** for a job.\n\nSo all the 16, 17, 18-year old highschoolers who aren't trying to get jobs are not in the workforce, but they're *also* not unemployed.\n\nCounting the number of people who don't have jobs isn't really accurate, because there are always people who either cannot work or aren't interested in working. That's why \"unemployment\" has the criterion that you have to be looking for a job.\n\nAs an aside it would also be possible that large population growth causes the apparent disparity. If there were 100 people and 10 people not working, then there'd be 10% unemployment. If the population grew to 150 with 13 unemployed, you'd have a drop in percentage of unemployment (13/150 = 8.7%) while a new record high of 13 people unemployed.",
"Because \"unemployed\" and \"not working\" have different definitions. Unemployed is generally a person that does not have a job, but is actively seeking one. Someone that is just \"not working\" may not be actively seeking a job and therefore is not \"unemployed\".",
"5.6% of 316.1M people is still almost 18M people. A smaller proportion of a larger number can still be a record number."
],
"score": [
9,
2,
2
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
"http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150109/us--economy-8ac1593494.html",
"http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/01/09/record-92898000-americans-not-in-the-workforce/"
]
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How can unemployment drop to 5.6% when we have a record number of people not working?
These are the two articles I read: _URL_0_ _URL_1_ | [
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3p627r | purchasing small aircraft. | How do you get a plane from a dealership? Do you have to fly it? How did the plane get to the dealership? Did it fly there? Is there even a dealership? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"cw3i2r1"
],
"text": [
"A ferry pilot likely flew it from the factory to the customer's location, but I think you mean more like \"how does the customer find the plane and what's the process?\"\n\nThere are a lot of brokers, who are probably closer in function to real estate brokers than car salespeople; they are selling things which are almost always unique (since most planes last a long time and may be sold many times).\n\nLook at a site like _URL_1_ or _URL_0_ and you'll see lots of listings. Usually, for serious buyers, the seller will transport the aircraft to their location for free or a small fee. \n\nWith the cost of maintenance being so high, a smart customer will ALWAYS have an independent A & P mechanic inspect the plane to determine if it has any surprises awaiting (FAA mandatory service bulletins, known issues with that model of aircraft, expensive component close to mandatory replacement interval).\n\nOther than that, buying a plane is similar to buying a car; there is a registration certificate for that specific plane, an incident history similar to Carfax, and usually a test flight for the prospective buyer. Almost all buyers will take out some sort of insurance on the plane, so they'll need to find a broker who is comfortable not only with the plane, but with the proposed pilot(s)."
],
"score": [
3
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
"controller.com",
"trade-a-plane.com"
]
} | train_eli5 | purchasing small aircraft.
How do you get a plane from a dealership? Do you have to fly it? How did the plane get to the dealership? Did it fly there? Is there even a dealership? | [
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17afq6 | What are hiccups and how are they caused? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"c83twet"
],
"text": [
"The diaphragm is a domed muscle at the bottom of your chest that helps you breathe. When you inhale, it pulls down to open up your chest and allow air into your lungs. When you exhale, it relaxes to let the air out of your lungs.\n\nOccasionally, the diaphragm will get irritated and start to contract and move in a jerky manner. This can be caused by eating too quickly, feeling nervous/excited, or even from a stomachache. When your diaphragm starts to jerk around, this causes you to inhale air quickly, and when that happens, you end up with a hiccup."
],
"score": [
2
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | What are hiccups and how are they caused?
| [
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373jlu | what's stopping me from naming random people as my heirs, in my will, when i pass and leaving my debts to them? | I been wondering, if i know i'm gonna have a ton of debt when i pass or a home or something thats in bad standing, what's stopping me from leaving it to someone other that my SO? Can i put Whoopi Goldberg as my heir and let her deal with my debts? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"crjdknl",
"crjeuar",
"crjwoj9"
],
"text": [
"Debts do not get passed on like that. When you die, your estate (whatever assets you have after you die) are responsible for your debts. Any debt that cannot be paid by your estate is forgiven.",
"I can't speak for other states, but in TX, secured debt (mortgage, car lien) attaches to the property regardless of who you will it to. A will can state that the asset is subject to the debt ( meaning the recipient can choose to take the property and pay off the debt OR not nosy the debt and have it foreclosed / the estate sued). Or a will can state the the residuary money pays off the debt and then the asset is given to the person. \n\nUnsecured debt (credit card, medical bills etc) is usually arranged in a priority system. In Texas it's according to TX estates code 355.102. \n\nUp to $15k for expenses of funeral and last sickness. \n\nThen expenses of administering the estate. \n\nThen secured creditors. \n\nThen child support. \n\nThen taxes. \n\nAnd so on. \n\nThen unsecured. \n\nHowever TX also allows a spousal allowance and allowance in lieu of exempt property that can pas money in front of some creditors. \n\n\n\nBut, a will can never force a non-signer of the debt to pay it.",
"To add to this, one perpetual obligation is a time share property. This typically have annual dues, and are worthless in the secondary market. \n\nOne can will this \"asset\" to an heir, but this is one asset, but like any other asset, the heir can refuse to take ownership. In this situation, the time share company doesn't get to drain the estate's assets. The obligation thus ends when the last surviving owner on the title dies."
],
"score": [
206,
6,
2
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | what's stopping me from naming random people as my heirs, in my will, when i pass and leaving my debts to them?
I been wondering, if i know i'm gonna have a ton of debt when i pass or a home or something thats in bad standing, what's stopping me from leaving it to someone other that my SO? Can i put Whoopi Goldberg as my heir and let her deal with my debts? | [
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379zt2 | How does paypal credit work? | Hey, saw on ebay that i can buy a thing with the payment spread out in 6 months via paypal credit. since i'm 5 years old, I don't understand the website. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"crkwl4o"
],
"text": [
"You want a toy that costs $5, but you don't have $5. Mommy gives you the five dollars to buy the toy, and you pay her back over the next few months using your allowance. That's credit. Now, since mommy loaned you $5 and she's charging interest you give her a dollar a month for six months, paying back the $5 she loaned you, plus a dollar in interest."
],
"score": [
2
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How does paypal credit work?
Hey, saw on ebay that i can buy a thing with the payment spread out in 6 months via paypal credit. since i'm 5 years old, I don't understand the website. | [
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462ofw | How come you can use different programming languages to create the same website? | How does the browser identifies which language you are using? I just don't understand how that works. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"d01wk6o",
"d01wo3c",
"d01wkn3"
],
"text": [
"There are server-side pieces of software that run on the server and send HTML/JavaScript to the browser. Then there's code that runs on the browser. The standard for that in JavaScript, and that's pretty much what you can expect the browser to support (apart from plugins such as Flash).\n\nOn the server side, you can implement a given site in whatever language you want, if you control the server. For client-side (browser) development, there are programming languages that compile into JavaScript, which will then run on the browser, but ultimately what you need to deliver to the browser is JavaScript, no matter how you produce it.",
"The browser itself understands HTML - hypertext markup language - and displays the page from the html file content it receives from a server.\n\nOn the server, the HTML can be static (ie just read from file) or generated using a program (which is what you probably mean). The \"different programming languages\" would be used on the server to write the program, but those programs would generate the same HTML for the browser to display.",
"The different programming languages are used for the *server-side* code. The browser never sees this code - it only sees the client-side code.\n\nThe server-side code is executed by the server. It creates an HTML page which is then sent to the browser to display. No matter what language the server-side code is written in, the eventual result is always in HTML."
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} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
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} | train_eli5 | How come you can use different programming languages to create the same website?
How does the browser identifies which language you are using? I just don't understand how that works. | [
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5n12b9 | Why are people worried about using growth hormones on animals to be eaten? | Is there any true effect of eating meat that had hormones used on it? Because the people saying these things tend to be pretty crazy, and I wonder if anything about it is true. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dc7vv92"
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"It is not known if animal hormones effect humans or not. These things are difficult to test. \n\nCurrently the FDA says they are safe, so many companies use them.\n\nSome consumers are afraid of chemicals and sensationalist articles can make anyone afraid of anything, and it has created the idea that consumers should \"worry\" about additives, and this makes it profitable to market hormone-free products even without any proof the hormones are negative. \n\nI can't honestly say if the growth hormones are safe or not; I can say the FDA says they are, but the FDA has been wrong before. The issue is far from final, and more research needs to be done."
],
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} | train_eli5 | Why are people worried about using growth hormones on animals to be eaten?
Is there any true effect of eating meat that had hormones used on it? Because the people saying these things tend to be pretty crazy, and I wonder if anything about it is true. | [
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3l56dp | Why do animals smell things in many short, quick bursts as opposed to long drawn out sniffs like a human would? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Actually, if you want to smell something really good, the best technique is to have a couple of small sniffs instead of one long sniff. This creates turbulences in your nasal cavities, mixing up scents and air really good."
],
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} | train_eli5 | Why do animals smell things in many short, quick bursts as opposed to long drawn out sniffs like a human would?
| [
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1xwzn4 | How are noodles made industrially? | A friend and I were discussing bow tie noodles, and wondering how these were made industrially (chemically and physically). Using google, I found a few pages that discuss how noodles are made at the home level, but didn't find many sources with satisfying answers. I understand this is an obscure question, but it's something I was curious about and would really appreciate knowing :).
I promise to up vote and mark this as explained if someone leaves a satisfactory answer -- thank you :) | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Here's a video. \n_URL_0_\n\n\"How It's Made\" tends to cover high end products, which might be slightly different from similar mass market products.",
"There's a purpose-built industrial machine. It mixes semolina flour and hot water into a dough, then extrudes, rolls, and cuts the dough into thin, ~1\" strips. After that, there's a machine section that pinches the \"knot\" and cuts the dough at the ends, and the pieces go on to the drying process."
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} | {
"url": [
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]
} | train_eli5 | How are noodles made industrially?
A friend and I were discussing bow tie noodles, and wondering how these were made industrially (chemically and physically). Using google, I found a few pages that discuss how noodles are made at the home level, but didn't find many sources with satisfying answers. I understand this is an obscure question, but it's something I was curious about and would really appreciate knowing :). I promise to up vote and mark this as explained if someone leaves a satisfactory answer -- thank you :) | [
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7gks3c | Why does the leaves on the linked tree stay there even when it doesn't receive enough sunlight to make chlorophyll? | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Plants can perform photosynthesis from artificial light. Sunlight is better, but the streetlight is sufficient and would basically give the tree endless light.",
"Plants sense when to lose their leaves based on length of day. Since the light is on, the length of day for those leaves is 24 hours.",
"Plants don't need sunlight to perform photosynthesis. The streetlight can give light to it, meaning it basically has a 24 hour light cycle."
],
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} | {
"url": [
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]
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why does the leaves on the linked tree stay there even when it doesn't receive enough sunlight to make chlorophyll?
_URL_0_ | [
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4gg0qz | Years ago lead was used prevalently in paint, water pipes, and fuel. Why didn't everyone who was exposed get poisoned? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"A lot of people did. Google \"mass lead poisoning\" and there are a lot of pretty gross examples. There is also a strong correlation between use of leaded gasoline and violent crime in the US (_URL_0_).\n\nYou also have to recognize, though, that lead poisoning is on a spectrum to some degree (it's not just black and white), and lots of other things caused or were believed to cause madness as well. So while you can certainly test for lead poisoning, many people likely wouldn't bother or even think to. There are likely many cases of deaths that were spurred on by lead poisoning but blamed on alcohol or madness or whatever was popular at the time.",
"They did, that's why kids of the current generation seem so much smarter than the ones of generations past.\n\nLead poisoning is subtle in many situations."
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} | {
"url": [
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} | train_eli5 | Years ago lead was used prevalently in paint, water pipes, and fuel. Why didn't everyone who was exposed get poisoned?
[removed] | [
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2yssn4 | Why do cell phones fake ring before the real ring? | 50% of the time when I call my mother(location has crappy signal) the phone rings out but the ringing I'm hearing is louder than normal. When I hear the loud ring, it means that her phone isn't even ringing. (This isn't just for her phone) it will then go to voicemail.
Often times I get 2 fake rings and then the volume decreases and the real ring starts.
I haven't been able to find anything online about this. I don't know what it's really called or if anyone else even notices it. Next time you call someone listen to the volume and see if you notice it.
Why does this happen?? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"/u/MaskAfter has a pretty good idea of the why, but the how is a little off, if I remember right.\n\nWhen you make a call on a cell phone the process looks a bit like this:\n\nCell phone tells the tower it's ready to make a call, and to pay attention.\n\nTower responds, \"Okay, who are we calling\"\n\nCell phone responds with the number.\n\nTower and phone open the radio signals to ensure connection, and acknowledge the connection to each other. On some phones, this is where you hear the \"three ascending beeps\".\n\nThe tower then has to navigate your (at that point digital) call to either the analogue network, or through a digital connection, if the destination phone number is in a block associated with a linked carrier. The first ring is likely originating from the tower, or from a system in your cell network for that tactile feedback.\n\nThe analogue network receives your request, routes the call to the receiving network, and (if analogue) sends the power to \"ring\" the phone on the other side.\n\nThe switch closest to the destination will then generate the \"ringback tone\" to allow the originating caller to hear the audio quality of the connection before the actual connection is made. This was especially useful when everything was analogue, so that the originating caller could attempt the call again to get on a better circuit.\n\nEven when a call is placed on purely digital networks, the ringback is still in place to verify audio quality on the connection, and to ensure compatibility and consistency with the existing analogue networks and the lines that still reside on them.\n\nHaving the ringback tone originate at the destination allows for additional functionality on digital networks, such as customized ringback tones that became popular there for a while on cell services.\n\nSo the TL;dr on this is essentially: The ringback tone is generated to let you know that something, somewhere, is working on making your call go through, whether that's your local tower saying \"Yo, I hear you, let's do this call thing\" or the destination network saying \"Hey, We got your request and we're trying to open a line to the person who has that number, when they pick up and complete the circuit, we'll stop playing the sound. Thanks for waiting!\""
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} | train_eli5 | Why do cell phones fake ring before the real ring?
50% of the time when I call my mother(location has crappy signal) the phone rings out but the ringing I'm hearing is louder than normal. When I hear the loud ring, it means that her phone isn't even ringing. (This isn't just for her phone) it will then go to voicemail. Often times I get 2 fake rings and then the volume decreases and the real ring starts. I haven't been able to find anything online about this. I don't know what it's really called or if anyone else even notices it. Next time you call someone listen to the volume and see if you notice it. Why does this happen?? | [
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2l4nir | Why are artificial sweeteners unhealthy? | My wife has recently really taken to the opinion that artificial sweeteners are very bad for you and says there are many new studies that have come out that show this. I'm looking for more info so I can understand why they're so bad for my health. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Per se not actually bad for you like most things are bad. Studies show that it may mess with how your brain processes sweet signals without calories versus regular sugar and it messing with that in a negative way. They have shown to cause cancer, but in those studies the doses tended to be very high, on the order of a barrel full for a human in the case of saccharin. I have personally not read any credible articles that have shown truly detrimental health effects caused by artificial sweeteners. \n\nEdit: I would be more worried about the other additives to said products with sweeteners.",
"My understanding is that there isn't really conclusive research to suggest they are either totally safe or bad for you. Lots about nutrition is a mystery, and research in nutrition is hard to do properly and is easy to take out of context. I would love to read the research your wife has mentioned, though, in case I'm out of date."
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} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why are artificial sweeteners unhealthy?
My wife has recently really taken to the opinion that artificial sweeteners are very bad for you and says there are many new studies that have come out that show this. I'm looking for more info so I can understand why they're so bad for my health. | [
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1d8572 | What exactly the Seroquel and Lamotrogine is doing to my brain? | Been taking it for over a year now.. I'm 26.. female.
I just want to know what it's doing to me.. will it effect getting pregnant?
I take them morning and night.. not sure about dosage as my mom gives them to me. *rolls eyes*
Don't judge. ^_^ | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is a question you really need to ask your doctor. Given that you are on schizophrenia/bipolar disorder medication at 26 I think you need to take some interest in the specifics of maintaining your mental health."
],
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} | {
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"url": []
} | train_eli5 | What exactly the Seroquel and Lamotrogine is doing to my brain?
Been taking it for over a year now.. I'm 26.. female. I just want to know what it's doing to me.. will it effect getting pregnant? I take them morning and night.. not sure about dosage as my mom gives them to me. *rolls eyes* Don't judge. ^_^ | [
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88td2f | If the USA was to switch to the metric system... | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"That has been done by Congress. The US officially switched in the 1970s. It did not stick. Those industries like the Sciences where it is much more useful switched, but general society where there is virtually no difference in the usages as we do not need to be that accurate in things there is not enough of a benefit to overcome the inertia of learned behavior and the cost of changing the infrastructure. \n\nTo switch we would have to replace every piece of equipment in every home and building from the screws and nails used to build things, to the pipes in your walls, to the car that you drive. You would have to replace every single road sign in the nation. Etc. It would cost trillions of dollars. Most nations that switched did so before there was a lot of infrastructure or standardization of how things were made or built. Those that switched later like the UK are in a kind of half transition because of those same inertia issues. The UK still uses miles, and still uses Stones and pounds for weight."
],
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} | train_eli5 | If the USA was to switch to the metric system...
[removed] | [
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8c1xai | Why do Chinese "Lions" not look anything like actual lions? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Mostly because lions are not native to China. Imagine this: one person saw it, and tries to describe it in text, and the artisans tries to create something from the text, pretty much what Chinese lions looks now is what we get. Then newer generations simply copy and add their own interpretations, similar to Burrito is kinda of American food instead of Mexican food.\n\nThis compares to how tigers, which is native to China, are accurately depicted.",
"Here's what I remember from my art history days...\n\nIn Chinese art there is a \"right\" way to do pretty much everything from holding the brush to applying ink to paper. This is easily controlled because artists were all from guilds(forget the Chinese word for it) and the artists that made the most well known lions were all part of the royal artists guild. This leads to highly uniform stylized art. That's why all \"foo dogs\" look the same. They are all emulating the work of an agreed upon master. Also many sculptures are not made by one person so having standards made it a lot easier. The Chinese are by no means unique in this respect.",
"i believe you’re talking about sculptures of lions usually seen outside temples and such. i was taught that they weren’t meant to be representations of the animal, but rather as guardians of the location. they are more “stylized” in order to frighten demons or evil spirits.",
"From my understanding, and feel free to correct me, is that they kinda based them of Tibetan Mastiffs. Which were kinda bred to like lions"
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} | {
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} | train_eli5 | Why do Chinese "Lions" not look anything like actual lions?
| [
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55o42v | Data Architect | Can someone please explain to me what exactly a data architect is? I understand they use SQL a lot but don't understand to what extent or what they do on a daily basis/career path. Any information would be really helpful. Thank you! | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Google defined architect as \"a person who designs buildings and in many cases also supervises their construction\". Replace buildings with data and you got a data architect in a nutshell.\n\nThis role usually handles everything data related, mostly SQLs, but most of the time files and folder structures too. Basically, anything related to data that needs to be designed, will be handled by this role.\n\nIt's vague yes, because most of the time, roles like these vary by company. Some companies give this role to an executive who mostly just give directions to middle managers on how to go about change. Some companies, expects you to be a Subject Matter Expert and expect you to know everything and can do everything related to this role.\n\nSo if you are looking at accepting this role, ask or get the role description and their expectation of you and see if you have what it takes. if you are looking at this as your career path, just be a very good database administrator and learn all you can about data and databases, the knowledge will come and the role should be a fit to you by then.",
"These days, businesses and other organizations generate electronic data at unbelievably massive rates - far too much data to store in an Excel spreadsheet on someone's laptop, so special systems have to be set up to handle it.\n\nA *data architect* is a person who designs systems to collect, organize, store, and retrieve data from large data sets like these. \n\nTypically, the data is stored in databases using a Database Management system (you'll see the acronym \"DBM\") like MySQL, SQLite, PostgreSQL, etc. There are a ton of them, but virtually all use SQL syntax, which is like a special programming language for manipulating data stored in a database.\n\nOn a day-to-day basis, a data architect will generally do things like administer the servers the data is stored on, write programs and UI's to help others access the data, and develop plans for testing and improving the data quality, relevance, and retrieval efficiency.",
"A data architect is a role assigned to a person who takes a look at all the sorts of information that is required to be stored in a software system, determines how to organize, name, and otherwise create larger structures so that this data can be understood in a common, intuitive fashion by those people/systems that must access it. A data architect *might* need to use SQL to access data, but most of the ones I know, rarely have to access the data directly. SQL is common on relational RDBMS, but there are many non-SQL systems today. What does a day look like? Well, let's look at a simple case. Some companies have a several software systems...each storing perhaps (for example) an address. It might be that of the 6 programs and their databases, an address is stored 3 different ways! Then let's say there is a requirement to merge all those different formats into one \"common\" format. How would you best define the way to store that? Talk to a data architect. Should you use lastname/firstname, or just one big name? How many characters to use for each? How should these things be indexed? Talk to a data architect. When you have very large sets of data, and you want to make sure you name and store things properly so that users of the data don't get confused, you can ask a data architect to help create models to show you how things can work. Data architects don't really care about the mechanics of databases or servers. They do know in detail how datasets are named , why they are named that way, and what each data field might contain and how it would relate to other things. They *do not administer servers* or write UIs. They spend a lot of time looking at how data is formatted. They know what each data field means and how it got there. A lot of time is spent talking to people who create and use data sets, and writing a lot of documentation to describe these things to various people...especially developers who are writing the actual applications that use the data. Good data architects design *schema* that make it it easy for people to understand what the data is that they are looking at, and how it might relate to other data. Many shops don't have one, and quite often need one...and not rely on random ideas on how data should be stored."
],
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} | {
"url": []
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"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Data Architect
Can someone please explain to me what exactly a data architect is? I understand they use SQL a lot but don't understand to what extent or what they do on a daily basis/career path. Any information would be really helpful. Thank you! | [
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7jnlb6 | Why do some people get paralysed by fear? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It's the third option in the \"fight or flight\" response. When people freeze, their brain decides being perfectly still so the attacker can't see you is the best response.\n\nThis is rooted in the fact that some of man's early predators reacted to motion. So being the one that didn't move meant you were the one that didn't get eaten.",
"There is a lot of data programmed into us (in our DNA) from before we became \"civilized\" that still has a grip on us.\n\nHolding still is often a way to fool a predator, particularly predators who rely on MOTION to detect prey."
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} | train_eli5 | Why do some people get paralysed by fear?
[removed] | [
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8c4dw9 | Why is Australia so dominant at the Commonwealth Games against other countries with much higher populations? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Wealth/climate/space/culture is a potent mix. I've three teenage Aussie nephews and they and their friends all engage in sport at a level you very rarely see in the UK outside of fee-paying schools. \n\nThis time round Australia also has home advantage which plays a big part, particularly with the integration of para events: a wealthy host nation will always hoover up a disproportionate number of para medals. \n\nI also suspect that Australia (or at least Australian sport) is actually more 'culturally invested' in the idea of the Commonwealth Games than the UK nations are. The pinnacle of competition is World Championships and Olympic Games, and naturally only the very best can win there (Australia won 29 medals in Rio, cf GB's 67). For the majority of Australia's sports folk, the Commonwealth Games is their only realistic chance of a medal. For British competitors there's the intermediate level of European Championships, which is obviously sub-World/Olympics but in most cases significantly more prestigious and more competitive than CG level. Essentially most British 'name' athletes would sooner train to peak for European Championships than for the CG; perhaps more significantly, the British sports governing bodies feel the same way and CG teams are increasingly 'development squads'. \n\nLastly, I'd speculate* that most professional British athletes are 'embedded' in pan-UK training/coaching set-ups, and that being broken down into individual 'countries' is a disruption.\n\nThis seems to be less a 'why is Australia so dominant' and more a defence of the British teams' comparative weakness, sorry...\n\n*****\n\nEDIT: oops, speculation explicitly forbidden! Didn't notice this was 'ELI5' but will leave content as-is.",
"* they are a wealthy country, where people have leisure time and disposable income\n* they have a culture of sport, especially those place in the Commonwealth Games\n* they are isolated and have a strong professional sports sector which keeps top athletes local\n* they are a spacious country which provides lots of opportunities for outdoor sports and other activities\n* they are more vested in being a Commonwealth country than say Pakistan or Nigeria\n* being a host country tends to bring out more local participants, especial in the lower tier events, where athletes might not have the funding to travel abroad"
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[deleted] | [
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4tfree | How much does it cost me to charge my power bank? | If electricity costs me $.12/kWh, and the battery backup for my phone holds 12000mAh, how much does it cost me to charge my batter backup?
How do I figure this out myself? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"First you need to convert 12000mAh(miliamp hours) to Wh(watt hours) To do this, use this formula (mAh)*(voltage(typically 3.7v check back of power bank))/1000. (12000)*((3.7)/(1000)). This will get you 44.4 Wh. Convert 44.4 Wh to kWh which is .0444kWh. Now, take the cost of kWh and multiply it by the kWh used. .12/kWh * .0444kWh = $.00528/charge. Most lithium ion batteries start to loose 30% of their capacity around 1,000 cycles. After 1,000 cycles its reccomended to get a new battery( in this case power bank). Your total cost would be $5.28 for charging in a span ~3 years. Hope this helps. Also, don't give into people bitching because you use their electricity to charge your stuff.",
"Depends on the voltage of the battery. Assuming a standard 3.6V for Li-Ion, 3.6V * 12 Ah = 43 Wh = 0.043 KWh = $0.005\n\n$1.8 if you do it daily for a year, assuming perfect efficiency. Since some power is lost in the process, it's probably somewhere around $2."
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If electricity costs me $.12/kWh, and the battery backup for my phone holds 12000mAh, how much does it cost me to charge my batter backup? How do I figure this out myself? | [
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1l4lyo | The difference between Unison and Harmony. | EDIT: I guess I understand the words you guys are saying, but I don't really understand the difference... | explainlikeimfive | {
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EDIT: I guess I understand the words you guys are saying, but I don't really understand the difference... | [
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70si98 | The sun's rays and why there's not a "circular ray" | Wouldn't the suns rays be continuous and not ray like but more circular? Is it because our eyes are not picking up all the light or is it "truly" that?
[Example](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | {
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"What you call sun rays is actually light that is bouncing of atmospheric particles. The reason the rays appear to emanate from the centre is a a simple perspective effect.\n\nIt's the same effect that makes it seem like the rails of a railway track appear to converge each other a point in the distance. You know, however, that in reality they are always parallel and never actually meet at any point.\n_URL_0_\n\nNow, depending on the angle you are viewing, relative to the atmospheric particles and position of the sun, you can see sun rays as you describe that seem to emerge from the sun. These are called crepuscular rays. \n\nYou can also see them sometimes meet a point that is NOT the sun. These are called anti-crepuscular rays. Here's an image.\n_URL_1_\n\nAnd sometimes, you do see them circular. In which case, we call them halos.\nHere is an image:\n_URL_2_"
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Wouldn't the suns rays be continuous and not ray like but more circular? Is it because our eyes are not picking up all the light or is it "truly" that? [Example](_URL_0_) | [
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3kmybh | how come all animals have adapted to not brushing their teeth except humans? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I remember learning that it's because we generally outlive our teeth when we use them the way we like to, especially with the amount of sugar we eat, contrary to our ancestors tens of thousands of years ago. Many parts of the human body don't last as long as we actually live, now that our longevity has increased so much, and evolutionarily speaking, we only need our teeth for so long to be reproductively successful.\n\nOlder animals often lose teeth or have so much wear that it can be hard for them to eat as well.",
"Yarr, ye forgot yer searchin' duties, for ['twas asked by those what came before ye!](_URL_0_)"
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1p7ced | Why is it when I look at something that's "Glow in the Dark" it appears to be dim, but when I see it in my peripheral, it shines like a damn lighthouse? | Or am I just the only one? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Phospherescent (glow in the dark) things emit very small amounts of light. The human eye is structured with a very high concentration of *cones* in the middle-section (fovea centralis) of the retina at the back of the eye. These pick up colour and can resolve things that you're looking directly at in great detail (up to a resolution of roughly 1 cm at a distance of 100 metres). The *rods* which are mostly found on the outer parts of the retina only transmit monochromatic information, but can pick up much lower levels of light. This gives rise to the phenomenon of individual stars being clearly visible to an observer in their peripheral vision, but of them becoming invisible as soon as the person looks directly at them.",
"Because your peripheral vision is much better at seeing dim light than your central vision is.\n\nFor example, I've been told that the Andromeda galaxy is the most distant object you can see with your naked eye - 2.5 million light years away or something. Even though it's fuckoff huge, it's a tiny little dim smudge, and you can't see it if you look directly at it. You have to look a little to one side. Which is kind of an odd experience if you've never thought about it - you're concentrating on something you're deliberately not looking at.\n\nSimilarly, submarine spotters in coastal lookout points were told to look at the horizon, not at the water. Their sensitive peripheral vision would more easily pick up changes in the light reflecting off the water."
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Or am I just the only one? | [
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3dljg5 | Why do songs pitches apparently change when one yawns? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Inside your ear you have a membrane called the tympanic membrane, or ear drum. It's connected mechanically to the cochlea where the pressure waves are translated into nerve impulses perceived as sound. On the other side of the tympanic membrane from the auditory canal is the eustachian tubes, which run down behind the nasal cavity, but above the back of the mouth. These equalize the pressure between the inside and outside of the ear so that the ear works consistently regardless of what the current atmospheric pressure is. Normally they are closed, only letting a small mount of air exchange, but when you yawn, you open the tube. The resistance of the tympanic membrane to the vibrations coming down the auditory canal is based on an equilibrium pressure, with some of the long waves transmitting through the pressure gap. A push on the membrane increases the eustachian tube pressure, while a pull drops it slightly. With the eustachian tubes open, there is no pressure change in the eustachian tube since it can quickly equalize to the changing pressure, reducing the volume of certain tones and changing how the music sounds."
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25vn7c | What does the 1m rise in the ocean from the melting region of Antarctica mean for everyone in relatable terms? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most of the world's large and important cities are on the coast. A 1m rise in sea level would mean those cities would become much more vulnerable to storms, parts would flood, sea walls might need to be built around them, etc. Some cities might need to be abandoned or protected by seawalls.\n\nLarge areas of coast would be lost, including large parts of Florida and Louisiana. Countries with large river deltas like Bangladesh, Burma, Vietnam, Egypt, would lose portions of their most heavily populated areas and best farmland. Some, like the island nations in the Pacific might need to be resettled entirely, since they're only 3m above sea level anyway at most."
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1ljska | Why can some species newborns run immediately, while human newborns can't even hold up their own heads? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This happens because of two of the most uniquely human features:\n\n* **Big brains relative to our body size** which helped with tool usage, running \"what if\" scenarios, etc.\n* **Bipedal locomotion**: which uses much less energy than walking on all fours\n\nWhen our bodies adapted to being bipeds, our pelvis shrunk. But since our brains were also growing, natural selection favored delivering our fetuses earlier in development. Really, small infants are sort of an external fetus. \n\nEven at the current gestational period of 9 months, it's really a horrifyingly tight fit through the birth canal. Unlike other primates' pelvises, which have plenty of room, womens' pelvises get narrower at the end, and in fact the baby's head has to turn 90 degrees as it's exiting in order to fit.\n\nEDIT: ~~we're~~ were",
"Evolutionary trade-off. Humans have very large brains - so large in fact there's no way to birth a fully-grown human. The choice, then, is to have humans born mature but less capable, or make it some work to deal with a maturation period. Plenty of other species have made a similar trade off. Humans have made so much trading that it takes a great deal of our life to become fully matured.",
"Humans didn't evolve as prey. If you are prey and you don't evolve to do everything possible to ensure survival of your offspring as a species, meaning that your babies virtually hit the ground running, you join the extinct category.",
"Humans have immense brains, which means that human babies have huge noggins upon birth. Overall the big brain thing seems to be working for us though."
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69ohux | squads, fire teams, brigades, companies, soldier ranks | I keep hearing things about ranks of soldiers or Marines or what have you (brigadier general, lieutenant, petty officer, NCO, officer, general, Sargent, corporal, Colonel)
As well as sizes of teams (fire team, brigade, army, company, fleet, squad, platoon)
From military lovers, actual ex military, sci Fi and fantasy lovers, and all I really get is context clues or conflicting information. Googling has gives explanations that further uses words I don't know.
I would love to understand what everyone is on about but I wish I had a basis. An ELI5, if you will. That way I at least can know what the hell I don't know.
So what are the team sizes and organization, and general job, (maybe concentric circles on Ms paint?)
And what is the order of rank, and general job? (Bullet points with sub bullet points?)
| explainlikeimfive | {
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"Imagine you a 100,000 strong army. You are the general in command and need to take a town. If you told all of them to do it, it would be a cluster fuck.\n\nSo you organize your army into corps of 20,000 to 50,000 each. You need someone to manage each one so you appoint some lieutenants and give them the rank to of a 3 star general because you have four.\n\nThe corps are still large so you divide them into divisions of maybe 10,000 to 15,000 men each. Each one you assign a them a rank of 2 stars.\n\nThat's still a ton of men so you further divide the divisions into regiments or brigades of 2,000-4,000 men which are commanded by a one star general or colonel.\n\nSeveral thousand is good for most tasks but sometimes you don't need all those guys for an objective so you need smaller units.\n\nYou divide the brigade into battalions of several hundred to be commanded by a major.\n\nThe battalion is divided into companies of 100-200 men commanded by a captain.\n\nA company is divided into platoons of tens of men commanded by a lieutenant.\n\nThe company is divided into squads of 10-20 commanded by a sergeant. \n\nThe squad is divided into 4-6 commanded by a corporal.",
"Veteran here:\n\nI can only answer for a basic US Army setup.\n\nStarting from smallest to biggest (noting that this is general rule of thumb and actual numbers vary):\n\n-Team: Three soldiers + team leader \n\n-Squad: Two teams + squad leader\n\n-Platoon: At least two squads + Platoon Leader and Platoon Sergeant\n\n-Company: At least two platoons + Company Commander, XO, and 1st Sergeant.\n\n-Battalion: At least two companies\n\n-Brigade\n\n-Division\n\n-Branch (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines)\n\nWhen you hear \"Unit\", they're *usually* talking about their battalion. For example, the 2-22nd, or 1-19th or whatever.\n\nTeams are usually \"Alpha\" or \"Bravo\".\n\nA platoon is generally referenced as a number; 1st Platoon, 2nd Platoon, etc. Most companies also have a \"Headquarters Platoon\" for admin stuff.\n\nCompanies usually use phonetic letters again- Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, etc. Most companies also have names. For example mine was \"Orphan\", Bravo was \"Black Dragon\".\n\nBattalions are usually designated like I\n mentioned above, and include a name.\n\nBrigades are again numbered. 1st Brigade, 2nd Brigade, etc.\n\nDivisions are also numbered, and are the the well-known ones, like \"Big Red One\" or the 82nd Airborne.",
"You are asking about something that not only varies between branches of the military, but also nations and organizations, and has been known to change over time and in individual theaters of war, said reorganization sometimes happening mid-conflict.",
"Very roughly, with the commander:\n\nSoldier \nSquad (5-8 soldiers) - corporal or sergeant \nPlatoon (3-5 squads) - 2nd or 1st Lieutenant \nCompany (5-8 platoons) - Captain \nBattalion (5-8 companies) - Major \nBrigade (5-8 battalions) - Lt. Col \nDivision (5-8 brigades) - Col. or Brigadier General \n\nThe number in each level can change quite a bit during wartime.\n\nSquads, platoons and companies are commanded by \"junior-grade\" officers; battalions, brigades and divisions by \"field-grade\" officers; units above divisions are commanded by \"flag-grade\" officers - generals.\n\nThe sizes vary with the roles. A company of infantry is much larger than a company or tanks. The names also change when discussing infantry versus cavalry.\n\nThere's no such hierarchy in the Navy; sailors are divided into Divisions based on their skill sets: Deck Division, Machinery Division, Auxiliary Division, etc.\n\nEnlisted ranks run from E-1 to E-9. \"NCO\" is a \"non-commissioned officer\" - E-4 and above (corporal, 3rd-class petty officer, etc.). Doesn't have much meaning today. Every command has an E-9 known as the Command Sergeant Major (Army and Marines) or Command Master Chief (Navy). It's their job to be the enlisted liaison with the commanding officer; it's a fairly powerful position. Officers run from O-1 to O-10: 2nd Lieutenant, 1st Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Lt. Colonel, Colonel, Brigadier General (1 star), Major General (2 stars), Lieutenant General (3 stars) and General (4 stars). For the Navy, it's Ensign, Lieutenant (Junior Grade), Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander, Commander, Captain, Rear Admiral (Lower Half - 2 stars), Rear Admiral (Upper Half - 2 stars), Vice Admiral (3 stars) and Admiral (4 stars). There used to be Commodore (1 star), but that's not used now.\n\nThere are also Warrant Officers, but that's a separate story. Focus on the above and you'll have most of the ranks covered.\n\nA naval \"fleet\" is more of a geographic breakdown. Fleets have areas of operations, and some are larger than the others based on the size of the area to be covered.\n\nA naval \"battle group\" usually consists of an aircraft carrier, one or more cruisers, several destroyers, frigates, etc. (going by size, from largest to smallest). Auxiliary ships such as tenders, repair ships, oilers, ammo carriers, etc., are also part of a battle group, but tend to stay away from the battle. One or more submarines also go along, protecting the battle group from enemy subs.\n\nI could go on for pages. Each branch has its quirks.",
"The problem is all countries and services do it differently. For USAF has this structure.\n\nThe overall service breaks down into major commands(MAJCOMs) such as Air Combat Command, Air Education Training Command, Air Force Personnel Center, etc. MAJCOMs tend to hold tens of thousands of people and span multiple bases and/or countries and focus on a particular mission or goal.\n\nBelow that level, MAJCOMs break down into Wings which are often tied to a base contain multiple smaller units coordinating to make things happen. Any given base can have multiple Wings operating together or independently, although there is usually at least some form of coordination between Wings and their individual units.\n\nA Wing will contain 1 or more Groups. A fighter wing for example will definitely have a Maintenance Group and an Operations Group at the very least. This is about the middle management area where things break down more specifically.\n\nThe Maintance Group for example will have 1 or more Squadrons tasked with repairing and maintaining aircraft. It will also have a quality assurance office, responsible for verifying quality of work and finding errors or discrepancies. Additionally, AGE is responsible for providing equipment such as generators, lighting, and other equipment needed for work on the flightline.\n\nA squadron will break down into flights as needed. While the bulk of our hypothetical squadron would be maintainers fixing planes, you may also have offices responsible for training requirements, updating technical data, or tracking work or issues for the squadron leadership. Squadron size varies depending on what that squadron's mission is, but is often somewhere between 50-150 people.\n\nUnder a flight, you may have a detail. Detail is a designation that is usually ignored because it refers to a handful of people. 3-4 technicians teaming up to fix an engine could be called a detail.\n\nAs I said, the point of confusion is that everyone uses different labels. I was never in the army so I can't tell you exactly what they call everything, but it probably breaks down roughly the same way.",
"This is really vast. I would ask two separate questions, one for what Military ranks are, and one for how militaries are structured. The US Military has an enlisted force and an officer corps. The enlisted force is 9 ranks from E1 to E9. The officer corps has 10 ranks between 0-1 to 0-10. The 4 branches of the military have different names for these ranks but they all follow them. [This is a graphic](_URL_0_) of the US Military's rank chart."
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} | train_eli5 | squads, fire teams, brigades, companies, soldier ranks
I keep hearing things about ranks of soldiers or Marines or what have you (brigadier general, lieutenant, petty officer, NCO, officer, general, Sargent, corporal, Colonel) As well as sizes of teams (fire team, brigade, army, company, fleet, squad, platoon) From military lovers, actual ex military, sci Fi and fantasy lovers, and all I really get is context clues or conflicting information. Googling has gives explanations that further uses words I don't know. I would love to understand what everyone is on about but I wish I had a basis. An ELI5, if you will. That way I at least can know what the hell I don't know. So what are the team sizes and organization, and general job, (maybe concentric circles on Ms paint?) And what is the order of rank, and general job? (Bullet points with sub bullet points?) | [
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3lwswq | What are the different programming languages for? | I only know that HTML and CSS are for webpages but completely clueless about the rest. Can they all be used for web pages? Or do they each do a different thing? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In general all programming languages can all do the exact same thing. They differ in how easy, how fast and how efficient the process of doing the thing is. \nThe basic test for what a programming language can do is to see if it can do the same thing as a very simple computer called a \"Turing machine\" and language or system that can do that is called \"Turing Complete\". A language that is Turing Complete could do any computation task given an infinite amount of time and memory. This turns out to be a very low bar, for example people have built a turing complete computer inside of Minecraft. \n \nOnce that low bar is out of the way the languages begin to differentiate. \nSome languages like Python are super easy to learn, but run really really slow. This allows you to focus on making you algorithm really good, but makes it nearly impossible to fiddle with the nuts and bolts of how the program is run. \n \nSome languages like C are more difficult to learn but run really fast. Alot of the old operating systems were coded in C, because they really need it going quickly.\n \nSome language like Java or C++ strike a balance in between them. \n \nOther languages like MATLAB focus on doing one thing and doing it really really fast and easy, but are difficult for other thing. MATLAB does math and graphs really really well, but you would have to jump through some serious hoops to build a game out of it. \n \nAlso the languages differ in the \"Libraries\" that support it. A libary is a collection of code that a programmer can call upon to help him do something. For example rather than writing the code to draw a cube on the screen from scratch, he downloads a library and calls the function in the library to do it for him.",
"Programming languages are like different kinds of vehicles. You can use a car to move a pile of sand, but a truck would do a better job. However you would rather use the car when driving around a city and trying to park. Some cars are faster than others and let you get around quicker, but use a lot more petrol. Newer cars tend to improve the design of older cars and are safer and easier to drive.\n\nPeople come up with new ideas to make cars better (air conditioning, turbo chargers, electric motors) or new kinds of cars/trucks for particular uses, just like they come up with ideas to make programming languages better or solve particular kinds of problems. However, just as people keep driving their old cars around because they can't afford new ones and their old ones work well enough, people keep using old programming languages because they have lots of code already written in those languages and no real need to rewrite it.\n\nHTML and CSS are instructions telling your browser how to build a web page. You can use other languages to build HTML and CSS to then send to a browser, but if you send code from a different language to your browser (like C), it won't know what to do with it. It would be like someone talking in a foreign language to you.",
"Different sciences often develop specialised vocabulary to deal with their area of expertise. In principle those all terms could be laid out in more common language but the sentences would be quite long and the language in general quite clunky. So instead of using a 50+ word sallad we use a 1 word abstract concept.\n\nThe basic of computation are the same but strcuturing large amounts of information and instructions is very clumsy to do in its primitive form. However how it is abstracted has different styles to it. For example in mathematics you could use imaginary numbers or have vectors is 2 dimensions and there is a systematic way of translating from one world to another. However the sense on how imaginary numbers are multiplied isn't that intuitive or obvious in the vector world. Also in qunatum physics you have matrix mechanics and many worlds interpretation and string theory and there is a way of translating a thing from one into the other but certain manipulations or ways of thinking about things are more natual or effortless in one than in the others.\n\nDifferent languages offer different kinds of abstraction serving different kinds of programming needs differently. Some kind of programs are shorter in one kind of language than others. Some programming languages are a better cognitive/psychological match to certain programmers. Some programming languages are a good compromise to collecitively and in organization to upkeep informational systems. Some programming languages resonate with certain design principles and have lots of examples and great support and \"fandom\". Some make it accessible to try to reach the theorethical maximum information processing capacity the hardware is capable off.\n\nThey often retain the ability to serve in the other purposes but usually serve them quite bad. For example it might be possible to make an equivalent speed program but it needs to be longer. Or it might be possible to use very abstract coincide source code but then you need to upkeep your own programming engine. Or it migth be possible to seek help when things go wrong but it is very human-unreadable because the entities are named after single non-alphabethic characters or in general not in very close analog to english. Or it might be possible to write short source files if you happen to know 250+ magic characters/words via brute force memory. Or it might be that writing programs is easy but lenghty and time consuming as you have to attend and specify very routine tasks.\n\nThen there are programming languages that re not meant to be used seoriusly but are fullfledged turing complete languages. A subgenre of them try to be as hard and confusing to use as possible. Others aim for esthetics. For example lolcats borrows from cat memes. import is written as \"Can I haz?\" and an simple if then else block is \"O RLY? condition YA RLY! block1 NO WAI! block2\", debug loggin is done via \"INVISIBLE\" and printing to the screen with \"VISIBLE\" and successfull program finish is done with \"k thx, bai!\". I have to give it to it that it was memorable enough that I am quite confident I got it mostly right despite not using it for along time. It gets bonus points also for readability in that someone that knows the memes but doesn't know programming could reasonably get a hang of it just based on the story it is trying to tell ie the names are suggestive enough of their functionality that a human doesn't need to look up a reference on what did that thing actually do. And there is offcourse the value of having a session fo reading source code be funny.",
"Usually someone will create a new language because they are unhappy with the ones already out there. They might focus on a specific aspect of the language, such as size or speed, or they might focus on some application they want the language to be good at, or they might solve a problem that plagued earlier languages.\n\nThe new language might involve a whole different way of thinking about programming. For example, early languages were Imperative, the programmer thought of a list of commands for the computer to follow. Later Object Oriented programming was developed, a way to structure the program into sections of code named objects, which were interfaced to with code called methods.\n\nWith computers getting more complex, and multiple threads running at the same time, it became possible for one thread to change data that another thread was using. To avoid this Functional programming was developed.\n\nAs an example of language development, C was a popular early language. There were various efforts to make it Object Oriented. One of the resulting languages, C++, is widely used, but Apple chose Objective-C as the language of the iPhone.\n\nAnother problem programmers had was taking a program that ran on one machine, and rewriting it to run on incompatible machines. so Java was developed. All Java programs run on an imaginary computer. Each actual computer has a program that makes it act like the imaginary computer. In theory a Java program does not know what computer it is running on. In theory a Java program can run unchanged on any computer that runs Java. Java was chosen as the language for Android devices.",
"[Basically it's like this.](_URL_0_)\n\nIn short, the most popular languages can be used for pretty damn anything, while some others are specialized for some purpose (like php is generally for generating HTML pages).\n\nYou CAN generate web pages with likes of C and Delphi, but there are easier ways."
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I only know that HTML and CSS are for webpages but completely clueless about the rest. Can they all be used for web pages? Or do they each do a different thing? | [
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4d1qf6 | How exactly can a medication cause "suicidal thoughts or actions" in a person with an otherwise normal mental state? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They generally are not talking about \"normal\" people. And for many drugs with this warning it is not understood. In the case of antidepressants, it is sometimes thought of like this: When someone is extremely depressed, they have very little energy, they sleep a lot, and in general lack the drive or inspiration to do much of anything. They are bottomed out. But if they start taking an antidepressant and improve a bit, they gain just enough motivation to do something. In the severely depressed, that something may be suicide. Under this theory, it's thought that the risk of suicide is highest early in treatment because as the antidepressant therapy continues, mood improves and you will no longer be thinking about suicide.",
"The answer is we don't really know.\n\nChantix (for help quitting smoking) makes people suicidal and homicidal every now and then and we don't really know why.\n\nAnd to the people saying \"normal people aren't getting put on anti depressants\", you don't understand how over-prescribed these medications are. So yes, people under a mild amount of stress get depressed, get on meds and commit suicide or homicide and we don't know why because there isn't that clear of a pattern and we really don't have a thorough understanding of how these drugs work.",
"Pharmacist here.\n\nThe exact brain mechanics of depression isn't fully understood but the prevailing theory at the moment is the [monoamine theory](_URL_0_) and basically it says that depression is as a result of a deficiency in several key neurotransmitters (yes an oversimplification but this is ELI5) so pharmacological treatment involves boosting the levels of these key neurotransmitters. The problem is that your body has multiple mechanisms to maintain the status quo (think homeostasis) and so fights back against a medications attempt to increase said neurotransmitter levels which means that in the early stages of treatment, the levels of these neurotransmitters is actually *lowered*, which bearing in mind is already low in depressed patients, and is why people starting on antidepressants should be warned that their state of mind/mood may initially get worse until the intended effects kick in. I believe a similar effect can be seen in otherwise healthy individuals because you \"induce depression\" via the mechanism I've just explained but truthfully, we don't know why it happens in certain patients/for certain drugs because when we get down right to it, we still don't fully understand the brain.",
"That's a good question. I've wondered that also. This side effect isn't exclusive to antidepressants. There's a lot of baseless pop psychology explanations around for everything, however it's important to realize a lot of drugs we take, there is frightenly little known about the entire effect they have on the body. \nThey do treat what they're intended to do, but the body is such a complex machine that knowing everything that goes on is nearly impossible. Some drugs will change one thing, and that thing is linked through several different processes that will eventually fix a problem, but knowing with complete certainty what else it will do along the way isn't possible today.\nI'm definitely not saying there's a huge problem with a lot of drugs, but humanity is still in the infancy stage of pharmaceutical/cognitive research. Mistakes are made along the way, just as in every region of scientific research, and what we're doing today is essential to paving the way tomorrow.",
"I've never heard of this. Usually this side effects appear on anti depressants so someone with a normal mental state wouldn't be taking them. The idea is that it gives a suicidal person just enough motivation to follow through with it.",
"Mind-altering drugs are dangerous. We barely understand them, all we really know is that they tend to have a certain set of positive benefits, and they tend to have a certain set of negatives. One of the possible positive benefits is being less depressed and suicidal. One of the possible negatives is being more depressed and suicidal. That's why you have to see a psychiatrist regularly while on these drugs, and you have to call them if you have significant changes in your moods or thoughts.",
"The really really simple version is that all medications mess with your body chemistry, usually hormones. When you mess with hormones, you create weird moods and feelings. Sometimes it's Euphoria, other times depression. The reality is really complex and varies hugely between medications, but it all boils down to body chemistry and hormones."
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} | train_eli5 | How exactly can a medication cause "suicidal thoughts or actions" in a person with an otherwise normal mental state?
| [
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lv4fs | How the economy collapsed | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the 1980s and 1990s, various Congresses thought it would be a good idea for more Americans to have the opportunity to own their own homes. A long series of subtle changes was made to the various laws governing mortgage lending to encourage what we call \"second-chance\" lending. In particular, the government told the various banks to make loans to people who had made bad financial decisions in the past, rather than automatically disqualifying them based on past mistakes.\n\nThis was a good idea, and it worked very well. Home ownership in the United States went from about 64% — where it had been for decades — to about 70% by the early 2000s.\n\nHowever, in order for banks to make these loans the government told them they had to make, they needed a way to protect themselves. What they did was to bundle large numbers of mortgages together — mostly mortgages to people who had little chance of defaulting, plus some mortgages made to people who had bad track records about repaying their debts — into financial objects called securities, then they sold bonds to back these securities. This was how these banks protected themselves against the possibility that some of these government-mandated mortgage loans would go bad: by diluting the risk.\n\nThis was also a good idea, and it worked very well. These objects — called mortgage-backed securities, for obvious reasons — did exactly what they were supposed to do, protecting banks from losing money on bad loans which the government required them to make.\n\nMeanwhile, around the same time the American economy started to *boom spectacularly.* The Internet had just been invented, for all practical purposes, and there were many, many opportunities for new business ventures to make tons of money. It was, in a sense, like a new continent had been discovered, brimming with natural resources ripe for the picking. And many picked, and many got very rich.\n\nThose who got very rich tended, disproportionately, to be young people right out of school. (*Everybody* was doing very well, but these are the people who did spectacularly well.) These people were just about getting ready to buy their first homes when suddenly they found themselves flush with cash. Consequently, many more of them decided to buy homes than would have under normal circumstances. And as the effect rippled out, many people who weren't getting rich directly also did very well, and decided to buy homes too.\n\nAs a consequence of all that, the demand for homes shot up *dramatically* between about 1995 and about 2003 or so. In response, the people who build and sell homes started making more; the supply of homes, in other words, rose to meet a sharp spike in the demand for homes.\n\nHowever, the stupendous growth of the late 1990s leveled out, which meant people stopped buying new homes at such an astounding pace. You see, because the people who did very well — nearly everyone — and wanted to buy new homes had *already bought them.* So the demand for homes leveled out, then dropped.\n\nBut the supply of housing cannot respond instantly to the demand for housing. The housing industry was already building many new homes, a process that had started some years before when the demand shot up. You can't just *stop* building a home halfway through; you have to finish it. So even while the demand for houses was dropping, the supply kept going up, because homes that had started to be built when the demand was increasing were being finished as the demand fell. (This phenomenon, where there's a lag in the response to some outside influence, is called hysteresis. We say there's a lot of hysteresis in the housing market, because of the time it takes for new homes to be completed and ready to sell once started.)\n\nSo around 2005, we were in a situation where the demand for homes was falling gradually, but the supply of homes was still rising — tapering off, but still rising. This created a problem: When the supply of a thing outstrips the demand for that thing, the value of that thing falls.\n\nIn this case, the value of homes fell *sharply*. A home that had been worth $900,000 a year ago might only be worth $400,000 in 2006, because that's all that home would sell for if somebody decided to put it on the market.\n\nWhy is this bad? Because of how banks had protected themselves when they made those government-mandated second-chance mortgage loans: by selling mortgage-backed securities. The value of a mortgage-backed security is a function of the market value of the homes bundled into that security … and the market value of homes took a nosedive around 2006 and 2007. So the value of those securities also correspondingly took a nosedive at the same time.\n\nAs a consequence, banks which had mortgage-backed securities in their asset portfolios were left holding assets that were worth much less than they really ought to have been. Which by itself is not a problem; assets rise and fall in value all the time. If the banks that held these assets had been able to just wait it out, the problem would've been fairly minor.\n\nThing is, banks aren't allowed to just wait things like that out. There's a fundamental principle of accounting called mark-to-market. That means the value of an asset on a company's books — a company like, in this case, a bank — must reflect the *current market value* of that asset. So mortgages that had been worth $900,000 on the books of these various banks were suddenly worth $400,000, because that was the market value of the homes those mortgages were backed by at that time.\n\nThis created a *massive* problem for the banks involved. See, banks must remain solvent, which means their asset portfolios must equal or exceed the total value of their liabilities. That's the law. And the asset portfolios of these banks were dropping in value sharply, because of the requirement that the value on the banks' books of these assets be marked to the market value of the homes that backed the assets.\n\nSo we had a situation where, because housing prices were falling due to oversupply, banks were effectively losing money, putting them in danger of insolvency and forced closure by the FDIC.\n\nThat's why the government had to step in. See, the government is not subject to the mark-to-market rule. There's nothing stopping the government from buying up an asset for more than it's presently worth than just sitting on it until it recovers its value again. Banks can't do that, because of how they're regulated. So the government was able to go in, buy these so-called toxic assets off these banks for far more than they were then worth on the open market, then simply hold on to those assets for years if necessary until they recovered their value … then *sell them again* to get their original investment back. That's what people colloquially (and more than a little bit inaccurately) call the \"bank bailout\". Calling it a bailout is misleading, because it implies somebody lost money on the deal. In point of fact, that didn't happen. The Treasury put $250 billion into the program — using $250 billion in Treasury money to buy these toxic assets — and then waited. The banks were fine, because they'd converted assets with low market values into cash, which put them back in a position of solvency again. And the Treasury was fine, because who cares if the market values of those assets were low for a while? Over time, those assets recovered their value and the Treasury was able to liquidate them bit by bit. To date, of the $250 billion originally invested, about $200 billion has been recouped. Projections suggest the program will eventually return all $250 billion to the Treasury, plus or minus maybe $25 billion.\n\nOf course, that's not the whole story. When the economy has a problem, it tends to become a bigger problem, because of the domino effect. The whole engine of the economy slowed down; money was less readily available, job growth slowed, unemployment about doubled, there were lots of side-effects and consequences many of which are still playing out. It'll be a while yet before things get back to normal.\n\nSo to sum up, you have expansion of home ownership, debt risk mitigation, and a sharp and sudden economic boom … all of which are good things. But put them together in that combination, and there were bad consequences."
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} | train_eli5 | How the economy collapsed
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3e8tgo | How does ordering someone out of their car not constitute a seizure of the person under 4th amendment? | With regards to this story: _URL_0_
Especially when there is no overt threat to officer safety promting the exigency claims, how does this happen and has it/why has it not been challeneged? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The 4th amendment does not say seizure is disallowed, it says \"unreasonable\" seizure is disallowed.\n\nOfficers are allowed to make lawful demands during a traffic stop, such as requring people get out of their cars. That's been considered reasonable."
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} | train_eli5 | How does ordering someone out of their car not constitute a seizure of the person under 4th amendment?
With regards to this story: _URL_0_ Especially when there is no overt threat to officer safety promting the exigency claims, how does this happen and has it/why has it not been challeneged? | [
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22aat4 | Why is non-resident college tuition so much higher than resident college tuition in the US? | I'm a prospective student looking at multiple colleges and all the ones I'm interested are, unfortunately, out of state. I'm blown away by how much higher, sometimes as much as quadruple the resident cost, of non-resident tuition. Can someone please explain this to me? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You pay taxes in a state and the colleges and residents of that state benefit directly and indirectly from those taxes.\n\nGoing to school out of state means that you're benefiting from others' tax money. The only way to compensate for that or keep it from being abused is to charge more for out-of-state students.\n\nEdit: Incomplete thought.",
"In-state tuition at public universities is subsidized by state taxes, and they don't want to give that money to someone who hasn't been paying into it and is likely to leave after graduation."
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} | train_eli5 | Why is non-resident college tuition so much higher than resident college tuition in the US?
I'm a prospective student looking at multiple colleges and all the ones I'm interested are, unfortunately, out of state. I'm blown away by how much higher, sometimes as much as quadruple the resident cost, of non-resident tuition. Can someone please explain this to me? | [
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2pyhax | How is dust able to collect on the edge of a ceiling fan that's used every day? | It would seem like that's the last place dust would be able to compile. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well if I am imagining it correctly, it is constantly being pushed into dust. Also, is it used all the time?"
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} | train_eli5 | How is dust able to collect on the edge of a ceiling fan that's used every day?
It would seem like that's the last place dust would be able to compile. | [
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2381zn | the idea of intelligent design and how it determines the existence of a creator. | Was involved in a conversation regarding it today but a lot was going over my head, could someone please explain it like i'm 5!
Thanks in advance | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The idea is that our universe was intentionally created by some unnamed (wink, wink) intelligence with massive or even infinite power. For evidence they point to things like the distance from the Earth to the Sun being good for life, the fact that the moon perfectly covers the sun during an eclipse, the fact that cells work, and many other things. \n\nTo them, these observations are only explainable by this higher power. They often make statements such as \"It takes a clock maker to make a clock\".\n\nIt's not difficult to see the flaws in their logic, but that doesn't really matter to them. Most of the people who put forth these views are also people for whom faith is important. You don't need evidence for something that you have already decided must be true.",
"The idea, essentially, is that the universe was designed by a higher power. In the contexts you're hearing it, it's essentially a stand-in for Protestant Christianity-but-totally-not-saying-that-you-guys for the purposes of getting around prohibitions against religious instruction in public schools.",
"Intelligent design is really just creationism dressed up to look like a real scientific theory. In [Kitzmiller v. Dover](_URL_0_), looking at revisions of an Intelligent Design textbook revealed that the writers of the book essentially just did a search/replace of creation for intelligent design throughout drafts of the book.\n\nThe closest thing to a scientific argument it has is the idea of [Irreducible Complexity](_URL_1_). Which states that some biological systems are too complex, so could not be viable without all their components and thus could not have evolved, but must have been created fully formed.\n\nThe analogy used by proponents was the mousetrap. A mousetrap doesn't work with if any 1 piece is removed or broken.\n\nCritics pointed out however, that while a mousetrap missing a piece might not work for catching mice. A spring, lever, and base could still be used for some other different purpose.\n\nJust about every other argument I've read in Intelligent Design is more trying to poke holes in evolution then prop up their own theory. But science isn't a boxing match, even if you disprove the other guys theory yours doesn't win by default.\n\nNow intelligent design isn't bad as a religious, or philosophical argument. But even if it were true it isn't reached using the scientific method, and so really doesn't belong in science class.\n\nEDIT: accidentally a word",
"I think some of the responses here have missed part of the question. Without getting lost in the semantics of the words:\n\nConsider a person. Skin on the outside, organs on the inside. Two eyes, for seeing color and depth. Able to speak a collection of noises that is understood by other people in a meaningful way. On a giant space rock filled with breathable air, drinkable water, and animals and plants that are good for food. The coincidences go on for miles.\n\nNow imagine this is a jigsaw puzzle. We are looking at our ordered and intricate existence as a picture, made of many different parts. By our understanding, it would be completely implausible that the puzzle could make itself if we were to just shake the box (even if we shook it for millions of years). It only makes sense if there was some greater intelligence purposefully arranging the pieces to complete the puzzle that is our reality. Everything, from the construction of our bodies, to the distance of Earth from the sun, to the food chain of the planet's ecologies, had to have been measured, calculated, and designed on purpose. That's just too much chance to leave to chance."
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} | train_eli5 | the idea of intelligent design and how it determines the existence of a creator.
Was involved in a conversation regarding it today but a lot was going over my head, could someone please explain it like i'm 5! Thanks in advance | [
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4jimnf | Moon's gravitational forces versus water in our bodies | ELI5: Since the moon's gravitational force is strong enough to pull Earth's water towards it, and human bodies are made of 70% water, is it possible the water in a human body is slightly affected by the gravitational force as well? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Tidal forces aren't causes by the strength of gravity.\n\nThey are caused by **differences** in the strength of gravity.\n\nDepending on position, one side of the Pacific Ocean might be several thousand miles closer to the moon than the other side. That means the moon is pulling one side about 5% harder than the other, and that difference warps the ocean and causes tides.\n\nThe distance between one side of your body and the other just isn't big enough to make that same kind of difference."
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} | train_eli5 | Moon's gravitational forces versus water in our bodies
ELI5: Since the moon's gravitational force is strong enough to pull Earth's water towards it, and human bodies are made of 70% water, is it possible the water in a human body is slightly affected by the gravitational force as well? | [
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55148k | Why is iron important in the human body | ? | explainlikeimfive | {
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} | train_eli5 | Why is iron important in the human body
? | [
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1slvw4 | How do musicians/producers/music studios choose which of their songs will be hits? | Let's say a popular musician releases an album with ten songs. Of those ten songs on the album, maybe three of them are made into music videos, sold as singles, heard on the radio non-stop, and are performed on late night TV shows.
How do they pick which songs from that album get the star treatment? I have always found that the songs on any given album are of roughly the same quality, so how do they decide which ones will get more attention?
| explainlikeimfive | {
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"They can choose which songs to promote, and those may become hits, but ultimately, the consumers decide if they like it enough to buy it."
],
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} | train_eli5 | How do musicians/producers/music studios choose which of their songs will be hits?
Let's say a popular musician releases an album with ten songs. Of those ten songs on the album, maybe three of them are made into music videos, sold as singles, heard on the radio non-stop, and are performed on late night TV shows. How do they pick which songs from that album get the star treatment? I have always found that the songs on any given album are of roughly the same quality, so how do they decide which ones will get more attention? | [
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2ju62k | Why are many highways winding and not straight? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They have to go around hills and valleys without going up and down to much. Therefore, they gently curve around to keep the road relatively level.",
"Winding roads make you more alert than straight roads. It's safer. \n\nEdit - Don't know why I'm getting downvoted. Google highway hypnosis, it's a thing. There have been studies and everything.",
"In addition to needing to navigate the terrain, much of the land that highways are built on was privately owned before the highways were built. There is a concept known as \"right-of-way\" (or, more generally: [easement](_URL_0_) ) that allows a government to take possession of or force an owner to allow them to rent land in order to build the highway. However, not every property owner is equally willing to give up their land for a highway to be built. So the exact course of a highway is often a balance between how much it will cost to build, and how much it will cost to convince the land owner to let it be built. If it's cheaper to build the highway around a piece of land than to take the land owner to court, the highway gets a curve in it.",
"Lol drive through New Mexico or Arizona or Texas and you'll be begging for a Curve",
"It depends on what is in the way of where you are building a road. Much easier to go around a large hill than up one side and down another, let alone a tunnel through it or to remove the hill all together. There are also rivers to cross and elevation to think about. You also need to go around property that is privately owned."
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} | train_eli5 | Why are many highways winding and not straight?
| [
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3v2qxo | Music Equalization (as it pertains to Mixing)- what's the deal? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Boosting = making a certain range of sound frequencies louder\n\nCutting = making a certain range of sound frequencies quieter\n\nI'll post sample pictures in a bit.\n\nEDIT: Here is an [example](_URL_0_). \n\nSo for me, I make hip-hop beats. When I'm making beats from sampling + chopping, I always cut the low / bass frequencies off of my samples for two reasons\n\n1. I use other samples for bass, in which I boost the low / bass frequencies and cut out every other frequency\n2. Like you said, without EQing while having multiple sources of sounds, it will sound cluttered. In my experience, when two or three of your sound sources have low frequencies which are too loud, it gives a crappy sound. \n\nWhen I use synth leads, I commonly cut / lower some of the higher frequencies to make it blend better. But I pretty much cut the bass out of every track / synth / sample except for one track, which I used exclusively for bass.\n\nOf course, with EQing, just experiment what works best for you. That's how I've learned and developed my own methods of blending different samples and basses."
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} | train_eli5 | Music Equalization (as it pertains to Mixing)- what's the deal?
[removed] | [
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yzyh1 | Doping | What is it and why did Lance Armstrong gets his Tour de France titles taken away because of it? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Doping is the practice of taking banned, performance enhancing drugs or having banned, performance enhancing procedures done to you. For example, taking anabolic steroids will give you bigger muscles but they are banned. Similarly, if you take some of your blood out, filter away everything but the red blood cells, wait a while for your body to recover and then reinject those red blood cells, you will have better stamina and that procedure is banned."
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} | train_eli5 | Doping
What is it and why did Lance Armstrong gets his Tour de France titles taken away because of it? | [
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2o6n8q | What’s actually happening when a person “gets the wind knocked out of them?” | explainlikeimfive | {
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],
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} | train_eli5 | What’s actually happening when a person “gets the wind knocked out of them?”
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4tbt2w | What function does isopropyl serve in isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol)? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is disinfectant as alcohols tend to be, but because of it's structure (slightly different number and arrangement of carbons) it has desirable properties such as how easily it evaporates and the fact that it is a liquid. Isopropanol is simple enough, and very easy to manufacture, but doesn't have the same regulations as common ethanol.\n\nThis makes it a perfect candidate. Lots of other things work similarly, but this one happens to be the best for its purpose.",
"Isopropyl is the name for the kind of alcohol, not something that is added to the alcohol. Isopropyl alcohol is also called isopropanol.\n\nThe kind of alcohol that you can drink is ethyl alcohol, also known as ethanol.\n\nThere are other kinds of alcohol, too: methyl alcohol (methanol), propyl alcohol (propanol), butyl alcohol (butanol), isobutyl alcohol (isobutanol) and many others.\n\nEach of these different kinds of alcohol has a different chemical structure."
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} | train_eli5 | What function does isopropyl serve in isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol)?
[deleted] | [
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46v8xe | what's the difference between a green and blue screen, and why does it seem like everyone only uses green these days? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The basic principle is the same--in your video editing software, you select everything that's just the right color, and then apply edits to that. It stops you from having to manually select an area in each frame, which would be incredibly impractical for most purposes.\n\nGreen screens are favored for digital filming because digital cameras are normally more sensitive to green, and a cleaner image means cleaner editing as well. Blue screens were especially useful for editing film strips directly, because there was high-contrast film that was sensitive to blue. You'd use a filter to expose the non-blue part of the image separately from the blue part, allowing you to imprint two different images. But you can use a blue screen for digital editing as well, if you want; it's just not quite as advantageous--the typical use is when you need to shoot a bright green object."
],
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} | train_eli5 | what's the difference between a green and blue screen, and why does it seem like everyone only uses green these days?
[removed] | [
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61i1dm | why do malnourished people get bloated bellies? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"What is happening is that for those people they might get enough calories but have too little protein. That lack of protein leads to a lack of fluid regulation and buildup of fluids within the abdomen. The big belly is water weight to the extreme.",
"As u/phage0070 said, it's caused by protein deficiency and [edema](_URL_1_) rather than general malnutrition. The technical term is [*kwashiorkor*](_URL_0_)."
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"url": [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edema"
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} | train_eli5 | why do malnourished people get bloated bellies?
| [
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1mova7 | Why, when quoting a Sanskrit text in English, did Oppenheimer say "I am become death"? Why would you translate something into a target language using poor grammar? | I know nothing of Sanksrit, is the original text similarly written in a strange manner? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"Joy to the world, the Lord **is come**.\" \n\n\"Christ **is risen**. Christ will come again.\" \n\n\"I **am come** in the name of the father.\" \n\nIt isn't poor grammar, it's an archaic use of to be as an auxiliary verb. Modern English uses the verb 'to have' instead: the Lord has come; Christ has risen, etc. \n\nThe King James Bible frequently uses this verb form, and since so many people have read it and quoted it over the centuries, the form now sounds \"archaic\" and biblical and faintly badass to modern English speakers.",
"It's not incorrect, it's just an extremely old-fashioned way of phrasing it. A similar style is used in a lot of Biblical translations, too.\n\nI'm guessing he chose to phrase it that way either because the translation he'd read used it, or because he wanted the dramatic effect. It sounds more ancient, cryptic, and powerful when you use the \"odd\" phrasing.",
"From wikiquote:\n\nOppenheimer is quoting from the 1944 Vivekananda - Isherwood translation of the Gita.",
"\"I am become\" is biblical language (like King James biblical) and it sounds more epic"
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} | train_eli5 | Why, when quoting a Sanskrit text in English, did Oppenheimer say "I am become death"? Why would you translate something into a target language using poor grammar?
I know nothing of Sanksrit, is the original text similarly written in a strange manner? | [
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2ju8cb | What exactly is a spinoff company? | I get the general idea; it has something to do with a parent company selling off one of its subsidiaries to share holders. What I don't really get is exactly how.
I've read the investopedia definition, which is usually simplified pretty well, but unfortunately, this time I could use an even simpler explanation. Thanks in advance guys! | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You make beer, that is your company's main line of business.\n\nIn the process of becoming a leader in beer, you got really good at making beer cans...so good, you get a lot of business that has nothing to do with your beer.\n\nThis has muddled your business direction a little, because you have to make decisions that might be good for one division, but bad for another. So you decided to spin off the can operation into a new company.\n\nI'm a shareholder, with 100 shares. One day I get a letter, telling me I now own 80 shares of the beer company, and 20 shares of the can company."
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} | train_eli5 | What exactly is a spinoff company?
I get the general idea; it has something to do with a parent company selling off one of its subsidiaries to share holders. What I don't really get is exactly how. I've read the investopedia definition, which is usually simplified pretty well, but unfortunately, this time I could use an even simpler explanation. Thanks in advance guys! | [
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1qzjrt | Why do bank transfers take so long? | Where i live it can take up to a day to transfer money between banks. How is that possible in this day and age? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Because banks don't like to share information, with strict handover policies. Some things take 4 days still! Like Cheque's! \nOne day in transit from where the cheque was paid in, one day at the swap cheque place, one day in transit to the issuing bank, then the funds are sent on day 4. \n\nThen there are large transfers which get stopped for security and fact checking. Making sure the recipient has *exactly* the right name to receive the funds etc.\n\nIs that the sort of answer you were looking for? :)",
"Because both banks have to verify the transaction. They don't want any chance of your account not having enough money and the resulting headache from having to deal with a negative account balance mixed with a positive balance."
],
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} | train_eli5 | Why do bank transfers take so long?
Where i live it can take up to a day to transfer money between banks. How is that possible in this day and age? | [
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229f1i | Do new born babies dream? Do they dream while they're still in there moms stomach? | This one just hit me right before I was going to sleep. Now if new born babies do dream then what would they dream about? How exactly would they aquire those dreams? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"cgkm65z"
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"text": [
"They probably dream about being safe in their mother's womb. Are we talking babies in the womb or their first sleep after being born? Since there is probably no way to know exactly what they dream, they could be dreaming about world domination for all we know."
],
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} | train_eli5 | Do new born babies dream? Do they dream while they're still in there moms stomach?
This one just hit me right before I was going to sleep. Now if new born babies do dream then what would they dream about? How exactly would they aquire those dreams? | [
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1dpqnw | How does currency conversion work? | What if the U.S. just decided: "Fuck it!" and printed many bills in excess?
What if the U.S. Treasury did this secretly, so it is publicly believed that the total U.S. currency out there is the same? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This one is actually really cool, and works without anyone knowing the 'exact' amount of currency in the world. \n\nWhen one country wants to purchase something in another country - for example the Bangladeshi's ship the sweatshop clothing or the sum of all the Americans purchasing canadian coinage to cross the border for a fun trip - there is created a demand for the coinage of the foreign nation. At the same time, the other country is purchasing in our country. \n\nThe trade balance between the two countries exactly equals, subject to a slight delay, the currency exchange. Now, if one country devalued it's currency by flooding the market with currency, it would be 'easier to get'. So when the comparison gets made between the amount we bought of your stuff, and the stuff you bought of our stuff, the one with the 'cheap currency' would suddenly be worth only a little of the other guys. This happened in Mexico when hyper-inflation caused the Peso to radically devalue - there's actually old bills that say 10,000 pesos, they devalued them by 1000 so they suddenly equaled 10 pesos again - across the board, because they had experienced a period of hyper inflation when people across the border (or inside the country) could get currency way, way too easily, making it worthless.\n\nSo basically it doesn't matter if people _know_ that there's more bills or not - the actual presence of the bills in the system makes them too easy to get, which is reflected in the currency exchange rates. \n\n\nAnd when five american dollars equals six canadian dollars, it means that Canadians bought six dollars of american products for every five dollars we spent in canada/on canadian goods. Minus a little fee every time for the transaction, which is why government-set exchange rates (such as when you go to China) sort of suck compared to getting the guy at the hotel to exchange your bills on the downlow."
],
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3
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How does currency conversion work?
What if the U.S. just decided: "Fuck it!" and printed many bills in excess? What if the U.S. Treasury did this secretly, so it is publicly believed that the total U.S. currency out there is the same? | [
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5b9ko6 | Abstraction in a Philosophical sense. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Abstraction is the breaking down of properties and use of those properties for the purpose of extending them to something else so the something else can inherit the properties and change these properties as the abstraction requires. \n\nWhen ideas and concepts become sufficiently complex it is often helpful to break them down into parts or symbols. These symbols are more simplified and have new distinct meanings in the context of the abstraction. The abstracted symbolic meanings can only be understood in context of connected ideas, the ideas they are extending and how they have been changed, and who has changed them.\n\nIn post-modern thought all symbols are available for abstraction and interpretation, meaning nothing means anything unless one gives it meaning.\n\nWhen you read the works of a philosopher you have to understand the definitions, the philosophical climate they were working in both historically as a whole and within the history of philosophy itself.\n\nTo say Marx and Hegel are misunderstood because their ideas are abstracted is to say there was a lack of understanding with the definitions of their ideas, and how they used those ideas. In philosophy this is called metaphysics. \n\nIn computer science and philosophy abstractions fail when they violate the extension of their symbol definitions, their metaphysics. Some ideas are difficult to abstract because of the mass and gravity of their bases, so misinterpretation and kludge are frequent.",
"Could you please say more about your question? Are you just asking for a definition of the word, or what?"
],
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} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Abstraction in a Philosophical sense.
| [
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20j81b | the difference between Teen Titans and the members of the Young Justice League. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It's a different group from a different comic strip... While still members from the same universe. Like the avengers and x men"
],
"score": [
2
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | the difference between Teen Titans and the members of the Young Justice League.
| [
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4rxnai | How does the audio know how to split into 2 different left and right signals in earbuds? | There is one jack, and what makes it even more confusing is that it can rotate 360 degrees. How does seemingly one signal split within the cord and make two different sounds in the left and right buds? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"The audio file is stereo (a left signal and a right signal). \n\nLook closely at that one jack and you'll see it is divided by a pair of black lines into sections. These sections are hard-wired so that one will carry a signal to the left bud and one to the right. If you opened up the jack casing you would see two separate wires soldered to the jack. Likewise, if you cut open the headphone cable you would discover two separate wires inside. \n\nNote, the source signal is physically separated into two signals at the point at which the digital audio file has been converted into an analogue signal. So, if you're playing music from your phone then the socket that your earbud's Jack is plugged into is also hard wired to maintain two signals (left and right). The Jack is merely a continuation of a dual-signal that begins at the analogue-to-digital converter in the source device. \n\nHope that makes sense.",
"Also, in digital files the data for each channel (e.g. left, right, center, etc.) are tagged as such so the software can send it to the appropriate memory location that the hardware then reads from."
],
"score": [
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How does the audio know how to split into 2 different left and right signals in earbuds?
There is one jack, and what makes it even more confusing is that it can rotate 360 degrees. How does seemingly one signal split within the cord and make two different sounds in the left and right buds? | [
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12wrlr | Subnet Mask | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It helps if you know binary. Basically subnet mask tells you which bits are part of computer IP is network address and which are computer address. For computers to see other computers, they need to be in the same network.\n\nYou have IP 192.168.15.166/23\n\nWhich makes subnet look like this:\n\n255.255.254.0\n\nNow, to get network address, you need to convert IP and subnet mask to binary:\n\nIP: 11000000.10101000.00001111.10100110\n\nSN: 11111111.11111111.11111110.00000000 (that's what /23 meant - first 23 bits)\n\nTo get network adress you need to make boolean operation \"AND\", or in other words - multiply those numbers.\n\nThat makes the network:\n\n**11000000.10101000.0000111**0.00000000\n\nor\n\n192.168.14.0\n\nIt means, that in order for computers to be in the same network, you need to assign them IPs of the range 192.168.14.1 - 192.168.15.255/23. The last 9 bits are used for computer numbers, while the first 23 are to specify which network you are in."
],
"score": [
5
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} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Subnet Mask
| [
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3dh94n | how lyft is almost as big uber but only uber is suffering with regulations, fines, arrests and stings? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It's not. \n\nLyft's last valuation put it at $2.5B _URL_3_\n\nUber's last valuation put it at $41B. It has raised more money than Lyft is worth.\n_URL_2_\n\nLeft currently serves 1 country\n_URL_0_\n\nUber serves 57 countries\n_URL_1_",
"I can tell you that in Albuquerque Lyft was forced out due to all of the regulations and fines. So they are not immune to it, but they just get less publicity than Uber."
],
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"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
"https://www.lyft.com/cities",
"https://www.uber.com/cities",
"http://www.businessinsider.com/novogratz-ubers-valuation-jumped-15-billion-in-one-week-2015-5",
"http://www.businessinsider.com/carl-icahn-invests-150-million-in-lyft-2015-5"
]
} | train_eli5 | how lyft is almost as big uber but only uber is suffering with regulations, fines, arrests and stings?
| [
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25zirb | The Twin Paradox | A rocket ship flies away from Earth at a significant fraction of light speed. Which one slows down in time from the other's perspective, Earth or the rocket ship? Why not the other one? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"In terms of ageing the people on the rocket ship would be ageing (experiencing time) slower, but while they were looking backwards at the Earth it wouldn't *look* like time was running faster back home because the ship was staying in a band of \"old\" light as it travels.\n\nPicture something travelling at lightspeed, if you could look back you would be looking at the same light as when you left as newer light never catches up to you.\n\nOn the flip side if the ship was heading back towards Earth it would look like time was sped up on Earth as the ship ploughed through old light to newer light, even though again the people on the ship would be ageing just as slow as before.\n\nAs for why time dilation happens, we don't really have a simple answer so it's just one of those things, like magnets."
],
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | The Twin Paradox
A rocket ship flies away from Earth at a significant fraction of light speed. Which one slows down in time from the other's perspective, Earth or the rocket ship? Why not the other one? | [
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2jmjmi | What is the difference between Jews, Christians and Muslims when it comes to the soul and afterlife? | If the goal is to be a good person and you get to live forever with god in heaven, don't they all agree? They all believe in a soul that lives forever don't they? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are distinct differences between each. For a Jewish person, they will certainly get to \"heaven\" (there is no concept of hell) and because of this, they thank G-d by obeying him. Christianity is similar; although Christians do believe in hell for non-believers, the rationale is because God has forgiven you and you believe, you no longer want to disobey. Conversely, Muslims are the most action-based believers, as they strive to obey the laws set by Allah as there is a real threat of going to Jahannam (hell) if they do not. However, it is still greatly faith based with the first pillar being the Shahadah, a declaration of faith.",
"My understanding of Judaism is that when you die your soul returns to God not as an individual but as part of God. Kinda like pieces of Clayface.",
"Christians don't believe \"Be good enough and you'll go to Heaven\". The core of Christian doctrine is that no one is good enough (any sin creates separation from God, and all people have sinned), but Jesus was a sacrifice to take our punishment and allow us to spend eternity with God, should we repent and accept that gift.",
"I'm Muslim, so I'll tell you the Muslim perspective. I cannot speak for people of other religions.We believe that god is very merciful. Even if we are sinners our whole lives, God will give you entrance to heaven. Only those that are non-believers or those that have done some unforgivable sin such as murder, rape, etc. will go to hell.",
"More specifically - Jews believe that when you die, if you have not repented, you go to a place (\"Gehenim\") where your soul is basically power-washed clean and then you go to heaven (alternatively, if you were a terrible, horrible person, your soul ceases to exist). \n\nAlso a belief of Judaism (at least among more observant sects, I think reform Jews do not believe this) is that God will raise the dead when the \"Mashiach\" - the messiah - comes. This is one of Rambam's (famous French rabbi from the Middle Ages) 13 articles of faith. This obviously does not include people whose souls have ceased to exist.",
"Just before anybody posts it,\n\nno, most Muslims don't believe they'll get 72 virgins.",
"Do they all believe in the same soul?",
"Catholicism teaches that only Saints go to heaven and everyone else goes to purgatory or hell. To be a Saint you have to provide three miracles. I had a problem with this as I believed if you were a good person you deserved heaven, magical powers shouldn't be the factor. But then I began to learn more about the bible and history, and well, a \"ShowerThoughts\" said it best, religion is just a 1000 year old game of Airplane. That's the hard truth of religions that rely on questioning what you've been taught as wrong. These religions were passed by word of mouth for hundreds of years before ever being written down. Yet its wrong and sinful to question if maybe someone got the translation wrong along the way? I think True Detective said it pretty good, \"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward then, brother, that person is a piece of shit.\"",
"Reminds me of the differences of when life begins for a Jew, Catholic and Protestant. \n\nFor the Catholic life begins at conception, for the Protestant at birth. But for the Jewish it's when the child has moved out, graduated from college and has a full time job.",
"_URL_0_\n\nThere are extended links to afterlife in the comparison as well.\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_1_"
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"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
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"http://www.religionfacts.com/islam/beliefs/afterlife.htm",
"http://www.religionfacts.com/judaism/beliefs/afterlife.htm",
"http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/beliefs/afterlife.htm"
]
} | train_eli5 | What is the difference between Jews, Christians and Muslims when it comes to the soul and afterlife?
If the goal is to be a good person and you get to live forever with god in heaven, don't they all agree? They all believe in a soul that lives forever don't they? | [
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6snhpi | Where do fruit flies come from? | There is no insect and then I leave some fruits on the desk and voilà, bunch of those tiny flies dance around it like mad. Where do they hide in the meantime? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dle2uf2"
],
"text": [
"Small eggs you don't see, or they hatched from another nearby location such as your trash, and were attracted to the fruits."
],
"score": [
5
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Where do fruit flies come from?
There is no insect and then I leave some fruits on the desk and voilà, bunch of those tiny flies dance around it like mad. Where do they hide in the meantime? | [
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2g8lbh | What is so special about Ebola | Like we don't find any medicine solution and all these stuff. Where is the big difference between ebola and other viruses | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Previous outbreaks were easily contained and did not spread beyond a small region. It also occurred only sporadically. Every few years it would show up, kill a few hundred people at max and then disappear again.\n\nThe best management strategy was to isolate outbreaks and let the virus burn itself out. This is no longer possible as it seems.",
"The difference is that it is highly infectious and very deadly. To make matters worse, it's spreading very fast now beyond standard means to contain it to a specific region. We're working on solutions, but the recent outbreak has had exploded in relatively little time for us to create an effective solution."
],
"score": [
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | What is so special about Ebola
Like we don't find any medicine solution and all these stuff. Where is the big difference between ebola and other viruses | [
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8i464u | is “a hour” still correct because a vowel doesn’t follow it? Even though “an hour” sounds better because the sound when you say “hour” is an “o” sound? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The a/an rule depends on whether the next word begins with a vowel *sound,* not a vowel letter.",
"The choice of \"a\" or \"an\" is based on the sound that the word starts with, not how it's spelled. So \"an hour\" because it sounds like \"our\", and \"a uniform\" because it sounds like \"yuniform\".",
"\"Hour\" begins with a vowel sound (ˈau̇(-ə)r) rather than an \"h\" sound, so we would normally say \"an hour\". The rules are more about sounds rather than spellings."
],
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61,
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | is “a hour” still correct because a vowel doesn’t follow it? Even though “an hour” sounds better because the sound when you say “hour” is an “o” sound?
[removed] | [
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31nasr | Why did video game developers stop using footage of real actors? Wouldn't that be the most realistic option for say, a FPS? | Full disclosure, I'm a casual gamer and don't really know much about the process. I was curious because It seems logical, especially now, that you could capture a real actor from all angles and insert them into a video game, which would look more realistic than the often unrealistic looking computer generated characters. It also seems like it would be much easier. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It'd be uncanny valley. [Beowulf](_URL_0_) in 2007 was pretty much one-of-a-kind because it looked so close to realistic, but it was just that much off. Your brain is really good at picking up on the subtle failures of lighting and colouration that CGI can make, so you either spend way, way too much time and energy on CGIing everything perfectly - and even then many people will still get a sense of it being fake - or you just roll with a less realistic art style. When it's [obviously fake ](_URL_2_)people don't generally find it [off-putting](_URL_1_).\n\nLA Noire did a pretty good job on getting real actors to not be too uncanny valley, but some people still found it really odd and even if everyone thought it was perfect it was a really difficult process to get the full human face in the game properly.",
"Search YouTube for gameplay of \"Mad Dog McCree\" and ask yourself if it looks realistic. Also, using rendering (or better - in engine cinematics) gives great amount of flexibility. You can edit and change your scenes in every way, while footage taken with actors is more or less set in stone - unless you are willing to redo it and throw existing footage away. Not to mention that jumping between movie cut scenes and 3d missions would be tiring for viewer and provide uncanny valley effect. Visual consistency is much more important than \"realism\"."
],
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} | {
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} | {
"url": [
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} | train_eli5 | Why did video game developers stop using footage of real actors? Wouldn't that be the most realistic option for say, a FPS?
Full disclosure, I'm a casual gamer and don't really know much about the process. I was curious because It seems logical, especially now, that you could capture a real actor from all angles and insert them into a video game, which would look more realistic than the often unrealistic looking computer generated characters. It also seems like it would be much easier. | [
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1kpiwn | How do services like Pandora make money? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"at first Pandora relied on donations, as it had no means of directly earning money from playing songs. they operated under the premise of being a sort of scientific endeavor, and the service was threatened many times with copyright policy shutdowns. today, they are still a \"music discovery service\", but play ads for free listeners, and there is also a subscription model. They pay a pretty small amount per song play, and the money collected from ads/subscriptions probably more than covers it.",
"Whenever you're online and start wondering: \"How does this website make money?\" The answer is usually one of two things:\n\n1) Advertisements\n2) Subscriptions\n\nPandora has both features. I would go so far as to guess that \"free\" consumers most likely make the website more money than the ones who subscribe. I know, personally, I am a subscriber and I abuse the shit out of the service. I listen to it at work, at home, in the car, everywhere. Definitely more than what they're making off me.\n\nHowever, subscriptions offer **consistent** income, which is something that businesses like a lot. A guarantee of $4 a month is so much better than hoping that you can sell ad-space for, as an example, $25 a month, or hoping that enough people utilize your service that the advertisement space would still attract clients. \n\nThis is why almost 90% of websites will offer a \"premium\" service. It's a reward for loyal customers, plus it makes the books a little easier to manage and when it comes time to pay the bills, you can breathe a lot easier.\n\n--NOW--\n\nIf you're on a website and you don't see ads or subscription services, odds are the website is owned by an individual or corporation who can absorb the losses of maintaining the website. This usually happens if a service is relatively cheap to operate. Reddit is a prime example of a website that doesn't earn much money but is owned by a wealthy corporation who can absorb the losses more easily. These types of websites usually function as a public service or, even better, scientific purposes.",
"The easiest way to understand this is to remember that you, the listener, are not the consumer, and the music itself is not the product Pandora sells to make money. The music is there to lure you in, and then *you* become the product that attracts advertisers, who in turn become the real consumers. So basically, Pandora baits you in with the music and then sells your pageviews to advertisers. The more people they draw in, the more advertisers will pay to make their advertisement shown. The subscription service is there to offset the money Pandora would lose if there were no advertisers. So no matter who's listening, premium or no premium, somebody is paying to play the music for you, whether it be you yourself or the advertisers.",
"Today, they make money based off of advertising and subscriptions, as mentioned and as most radio stations do. But they didn't start off like that, also as mentioned..(donations, etc). \n\nPandora, specifically, is successful (earns money) because of HOW it delivers music, not because it baits and lures consumers in to make more money though. It is based off the Music Genome Project. A classification system to help people be able to easily listen to the music they love and find NEW music that is similar. \n\nPandora makes money today because it start with a great idea and people putting in hard work to make their concept a reality. \n\n*edit missing words"
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} | train_eli5 | How do services like Pandora make money?
| [
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3wq8c8 | The "Paris Agreement" on climate change | What is this?
What countries participated?
What agreements were made?
How will this effect Climate Change? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> What is this?\n\nA agreement to collectively take action against human-caused climate change and reduce the negative impacts of global warming and climate change in future years.\n\n > What countries participated?\n\nNearly every country, 196 to be exact. The largest agreement ever of its kind.\n\n > What agreements were made?\n\nA commitment to limit global temperature rise well below 2°C (relative to pre-industrial levels), with countries also agreeing to try and limit the rise to 1.5°C. For reference, it is thought that any rise in temperature beyond 2°C may have catastrophic climate effects and very serious consequences for many countries down the road.\n\nThe agreement also involves helping poorer / less developed nations combat climate change by providing these countries 100 Billion dollars of funding each year to help with the development of sustainable and renewable energy and greener industrial practices in these regions.\n\nAs part of the agreement, countries will also have to be more transparent with their greenhouse gas reduction targets and their performance (whether they are actually meeting these targets).\n\nThe ideal is to be carbon-neutral by 2050 (where humans aren't adding any more greenhouse gasses than trees etc. can naturally absorb)... but unless we dramatically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, this may be a tough target to reach.\n\n > How will this effect Climate Change?\n\nHopefully it will prevent catastrophic climate disasters in the future (e.g. 2050 onward), and perhaps even have a modest impact on reducing extreme climate/weather phenomena in the short-term as well.",
"The Paris agreement was a unanimous agreement that countries would limit world temperature increases to less than 2C above per-industrial levels. \n\nThe agreement stats that all countries must contribute to this reduction not just already development countries. \n\nNothing has actually been establish as to *how* this will occur. Countries have until 2018 to submit their plan for carbon reduction. \n\nWhile this is a good first step, the reality is that most of these countries \"agreed\" to the treaties, but they will still have to get them approved in their own country. For example in the US the Senate will actually have to take a vote to officially agree to anything.",
"A bunch of countries agreed to try to keep temperature rises under 2C.\n\nHowever, there's absolutely nothing binding other than setting a voluntary target and then reporting on it."
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} | train_eli5 | The "Paris Agreement" on climate change
What is this? What countries participated? What agreements were made? How will this effect Climate Change? | [
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333ra3 | How does currency work in the world markets in terms of inflation, exchange rates, stocks, etc.? | I'm just starting to dive into the world of financials and the economy to be better informed and prepared, but it still confuses me. What does it really mean when a country's currency gets inflated and how does it do that? What decides the value of a country's currency when compared to others? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If a bunch of people in foreign countries suddenly want to buy American goods, they're going to need dollars to do that. Same thing works with stocks. Ford doesn't take the Japanese guy's yen to pay for the stock, they only take dollars. So, you have a bunch of people who want to get dollars. Just like anything else in economics, currency exchange rates rely on the principle of supply and demand. If the demand for American dollars rises, then the 'price' (exchange rate) of those dollars also increases and the dollar becomes *more* valuable relative to other currencies. Hope this helps!",
"More importantly, why doesn't Australia refer to its currency as dollaridoos."
],
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} | train_eli5 | How does currency work in the world markets in terms of inflation, exchange rates, stocks, etc.?
I'm just starting to dive into the world of financials and the economy to be better informed and prepared, but it still confuses me. What does it really mean when a country's currency gets inflated and how does it do that? What decides the value of a country's currency when compared to others? | [
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2fe2ll | What did Margaret Thatcher do to become so hated? | I'm oblivious to this topic, and my parents are originally English. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'll try to be impartial here:\n\n(1) Read up on the [miner's strike](_URL_3_) in the 1980s. It is a very divisive issue, but her detractors blame her destroying the mining industry in Britain. A lot of people were put out of work. Communities were destroyed and never fully recovered. Police were allegedly violent towards the striking miners and deliberately provoked them into violence (I'm presenting one side of the argument here, so its up to you find out the full picture)\n\n\n(2) The 1980s were a time of deregulation of the financial industry,which many blame for the economic crisis of the last few years.\n\n(3) The 1980s were a time of very high unemployment in Britain, especially in the North of England, Wales and Scotland, although people in the financial sector did very well out of it (see point 2)\n\n(4) Margaret Thatcher's government privatised a lot of nationalised industries, which was very unpopular.\n\n(5) A lot of people criticise her for the way the Falklands War was handled ( [in particular the sinking of the Belgrano](_URL_2_)). I'm not her biggest fan, but I am willing to give her a pass on this one, as the Falklands has been a British Territory for over a hundred years and they were invaded by a pretty nasty totalitarian regime that would not have treated the several thousand British citizens (who had lived on the Falklands Islands for generations) very nicely.\n\n(6) Her personality is such that you either love or hate her. She never tried to win over her detractors with charm. Some people admired her honesty and straightforward approach, but if you were on the other end of the political spectrum to her, there were few redeeming features.\n\n(7) Supported South Africa during apartheid.\n\n(8) Recently come to light that she was very good friends with a [notorious and prolific paedophile](_URL_4_) who used his influence within the British elite for decades. There's no evidence that she knew about his behaviour, but let's not let that get in the way.\n\n(9) Britain's first female Prime Minister, made much of this during her campaigning to appeal to the woman's vote, but in power did very little to promote Women's rights. Promoted very few women to positions of power and instead surrounded herself with 'yes' men.\n\n(10) It was very easy to satirise her because of her looks and particularly her voice. So the image a lot of people have of her is her demonic [Spitting Image puppet] (_URL_0_)\n\n(11) As Education Minister took away free milk for school children (Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher\n\n(12) EDIT: I forgot to say that she had a very cozy relationship with Ronald Reagan and her critics said she put American interests before British on many occasions. I don't have any sources on that so do your own research and make up your own mind.\n\n(13) Second edit: Holy Shit I forgot possibly the biggest one of all, the one that killed her and made her toxic in the eyes of the public and her own party: [The Poll Tax](_URL_1_)",
"She was conservative and imperialist to the extreme.",
"Found [this article](_URL_5_). Seems like it would help give you some idea."
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} | {
"url": [
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_Tax_Riots",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War#Sinking_of_ARA_General_Belgrano",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_miners'_strike_(1984%E2%80%9385\\)",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savile",
"http://squarepenguin.co.uk/why-margaret-thatcher-is-hated/"
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} | train_eli5 | What did Margaret Thatcher do to become so hated?
I'm oblivious to this topic, and my parents are originally English. | [
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4aqigy | what goes on neurologically thats makes one person smarter than another? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think before we can answer that we must first figure out what intelligence is and how to measure and define it. \"Oh but what about IQ tests\" you say. Sure, when administered by a psychologist, psychiatrist, or trained professional, it can give you a base line of how one person stacks up against the rest of us, but it's not perfect. Is intelligence finding patterns in things? Is it holding multiple facts in your head simultaneously like having mental scratch paper? Is it the ability to instantly recall knowledge? Is it the ability to understand spacial relationships and mentally fold shapes into other shapes? These are all things tested by IQ tests, but it doesn't measure everything that might make someone \"smart\" but merely what makes one person able to reason things out faster than another. \n\nIQ and smartness is a measure of the mind in any case, not the brain. We don't even know where in the brain our consciousness exists. Your 'mind' is the virtual representation of the software that is YOU that the hardware of your brain runs. \n\nLets say that you have two identical brains, like 2 identical computers. One brain runs a personality that is inquisitive, critically thinking, and well organized. The other brain, with equal hardware ability, runs a brain that is reflective of the world around it, disorganized but with an order to the chaos, and an intense ability to create and define the world around it through art and abstract thought. \n\nIs the scientist smarter than the artist? \n\nIf you have 2 pc's with the same hardware and one is running Windows 10 and the other is running Linux, which one is smarter? Right, it doesn't lend itself well to that kind of question. You can say they are different, but whether one is better than the other, that depends on what you want out of it, what you value. \n\nI won't bore you with details but I am smart. I don't feel particularly powerful, I just see things widely and quickly, and I can reason them out very well. But I have noticed something that came with age that I like to call wisdom. I noticed that people who aren't 'smart' can often surpass me in areas they specialize in. They might have struggled much harder than I did in order to learn a skill, but their slow learning in no way impedes how FAR they can go with it, and given enough time they will exceed others at it. The difference is that I might learn a skill with minimum effort and learn it fast, and they might struggle more, and take more time to learn it, but in the end, it's not a race with a finish line. If they persevere and keep hammering away at their chosen skill, there is no limit to how developed they can get, even surpassing some very smart people. \n\nI really admire that in people, that inner strength that pushes them to overcome even when it's hard. And I feel a little guilty, and a little lazy by comparison that I kind of wing it most of the time. If you asked me, who is better at something, me the smart person, or someone else the average person, I might very well say the average person, if they put the work in and earned it, and they do it better, who cares what an IQ test says?",
"Depends on what you mean by smarter.\n\nYour brain has billions of little engines that are all talking to each other, as well as gas tanks to pull out stored information. The better these engines are at communicating with each other, the more gas tanks that are supplying fuel, the more horse power you are going to get. \n\nNow, this extra horse power doesn't necessarily make you smarter. A Ferrari heading in the wrong direction is slower than a Civic heading in the right one. A Sports car wont be able to reach the same places as a Jeep.",
"There's a lot of stuff going-on. Areas of your frontal lobe are responsible for abstract thinking. This function, more than anything else, let's a person grasp complex concepts more easily than others.\n\nThat said, you need to know \"stuff\" in order to make those abstract connections. Think of general experience as a type of scaffolding that you can use to place, recombine and shape abstract ideas.\n\nAll that, and day-to-day factors like sleep, stress, nutrition, etc. effect how the same person performs on different day.\n\nThere's more to it, I'm sure. I'm also sure that no one understands all of it, but that's the ELI5."
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} | {
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} | train_eli5 | what goes on neurologically thats makes one person smarter than another?
[removed] | [
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2g08mh | How google maps work? | btw I had a Graph Theory class, but that's not enough. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not quite sure what it is you are after. If you are wondering though how it gets stuff like traffic info, then look into the app called Waze."
],
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} | train_eli5 | How google maps work?
btw I had a Graph Theory class, but that's not enough. | [
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3ciule | Why were dinosaurs so much bigger then pretty much every animal around today | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The truth is we don't really know, some of the more common theories are.\n\n\n1. The world was different then, compared to today. Oxygen content of the air back then was much higher. \n\n2. The planet was warmer, with lots of plants for them to eat, and less competition for the food. \n\n3. A large cold blooded creature has sufficient mass to maintain heat, even when the weather is cooler. \n\n4. Being large was a type of self-defense, too big to kill and eat.",
"The dinosaurs were in part a product of their environment. The climate and ecology were very different at the time, and it allowed large animals to sustain themselves. \n\nA bigger factor though, is that the dinosaurs didn't have people to contend with. Until about 100,000 years ago, there were all kinds of large animals everywhere. Around 70,000 years ago, large animals in the middle east and mediterranean went extinct. 50,000 years ago, the large animals in South and East Asia and Europe went extinct. 10,000 years ago, the large animals in America went extinct. What significant events correspond with those dates?\n\nHuman migrations. Whenever Homo Sapiens shows up in a new geographical location, they exterminate all of the large animals in centuries (an instant in geological time). The last such megafaunal extinction took place in New Zealand. Humans first appeared there around 1300AD, and by 1400AD all of the Moa, the gigantic terror-birds, basically a modern Tyrannasaurus, was completely extinct."
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} | train_eli5 | Why were dinosaurs so much bigger then pretty much every animal around today
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6fin5j | When there is a breaking news story (or important event) how does a news channel get away with having no commercial break? Do they loose revenue? | Watched a developing story on a shooting, and there was no commercials even though usually they would put in commercial breaks | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Doing lots of coverage on an important event will make viewers like that news show more, resulting in more returning viewers when there is less exciting news on and ads run normally."
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} | train_eli5 | When there is a breaking news story (or important event) how does a news channel get away with having no commercial break? Do they loose revenue?
Watched a developing story on a shooting, and there was no commercials even though usually they would put in commercial breaks | [
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2bt5rx | How do currencies have different values/worth? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When you exchange currency from one country's to another's, the ones making that transaction, usually banks, are left with that currency you exchanged. For example if you went to Germany from the U.S. and exchanged your US dollars for Euros, that German bank now has some US dollars. For that to be a worthwhile transaction for them, they would need to be able to exchange those US dollars for goods or services that are at least equal in worth to the amount of Euros they gave you in exchange.\n\nNow let's pretend there's only one product in existence: Nutella. But there are no cocoa or hazelnut trees anywhere in the U.S., they're all in Germany. That means if you were to buy Nutella in the U.S., it's either been manufactured in Germany and imported to the U.S., or the raw materials were imported and it was manufactured in the U.S. Either way, the costs of getting that Nutella onto shelves in the U.S. was higher than in Germany, so Nutella is going to cost more in the U.S. Now going back to that bank you exchanged money with, they're not going to exchange those US Dollars for an equal value of Euros, because they only exchange those US Dollars for Nutella from US vendors, which are more expensive.\n\nOf course, in reality it's a much more complex web of resources, raw materials, factories, and countries, but that's the general idea.",
"It is because there can be found, in different countries, investments that offer different rates of return. These investments can be almost anything - goods; services; real estate; stocks and shares; bank accounts etc. - and the speculator anticipates an earning on the capital put in. Consider two banks in different countries, that have their own currencies: one bank may offer a higher interest rate than the other, so it attracts investors' money. The investors must buy the currency of that country, creating a demand for it, creating scarcity of the currency and therefore increasing the **worth** of that currency (it's exchange rate). This goes on to have the effect of counterbalancing the advantageous interest rate, edit:[at least in theory.] (_URL_0_)"
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} | {
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} | {
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} | {
"url": [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fisher_effect"
]
} | train_eli5 | How do currencies have different values/worth?
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6g4kgh | Since silverback gorillas have such humongous guts, how come they don't get diabetes, heart disease, and other obesity related health problems? | Any human male walking around with a guy the size of a typical silverback gorilla is colloquially referred to as "a walking heart attack". How come gorillas don't suffer such consequences from having enormous fat slob guts? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"A thing to consider is time. A gorilla's lifespan is normally between 35 and 40 years. And health problem with obesity in humans develops over time but gorillas develops faster and humans usually don get obese at a young age.\n\nThe diet of a gorilla is low in sugar and fats and is likely similar to what would be recommended for diabetics. \n\nAnd you cant necessary draw conclusions form humans to animals. Bowhead whale have more fat content then a human but can live for over 200 years.\n\nAnd then there is the problem in the question. How do you know that those are not the common causes of death in gorillas?\n\nThe final question that should have been the first one I looked at. Do gorillas have fat belly?\nIt looks like the answer is NO. The belly is large because the have larger intestines since they eat more plant fibrer then we do and can ferment it. Compare the stomach of a cow and and a dog to notice that plant eaters need larger stomach.\n\n_URL_0_",
"The food they eat does not contain the bad fats and sugars that we eat. It might look like a \"fat gut\" it is pure muscle to support there upper body."
],
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
"http://ucdintegrativemedicine.com/2016/03/youre-not-cow-gorilla-dont-eat-like-one-either/#gs.lIjXmP8"
]
} | train_eli5 | Since silverback gorillas have such humongous guts, how come they don't get diabetes, heart disease, and other obesity related health problems?
Any human male walking around with a guy the size of a typical silverback gorilla is colloquially referred to as "a walking heart attack". How come gorillas don't suffer such consequences from having enormous fat slob guts? | [
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-0.028... | |
1wqb8n | Why is my internet connection speed much faster on my laptop than on my iPad from the same place in my house? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"cf4env5",
"cf4fs25",
"cf4eh97"
],
"text": [
"Because your laptop is probably euipped with an better wireless card, that will give you further range and faster speeds than a simple Ipad.",
"It's just because your laptop itself is faster. The internet is like you and a professional chef cooking. It takes the same amount of time to drive to the store to get the ingredients but when home putting it all together he can chop slice dice and mix faster than you.",
"Are you talking about a connection speed test such as _URL_0_? Or how quicker web pages seem to load on your laptop?\n\nIf it's the latter, rendering engines in browsers are complicated and resource-hungry things. The iPad might load the web page at the same speed, but have a delay in displaying it due to the engine having to crunch the data. The quicker your device, and the better the rendering engine, the quicker the page will render and display. And if it's a modern laptop, then it will be much quicker than an iPad.\n\nIf your iPad is slower when testing with _URL_0_ or whatever, then it's likely that it is a wifi standard issue. Wifi comes in several versions, and newer ones are much quicker than old ones. Your internet router may be sending data to your iPad at a slower rate than your laptop."
],
"score": [
13,
6,
5
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
"speedtest.net"
]
} | train_eli5 | Why is my internet connection speed much faster on my laptop than on my iPad from the same place in my house?
| [
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0.02204110659658909,
-0.08280178159475327,
-0.02097... |
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