q_id stringlengths 5 6 | title stringlengths 0 304 | selftext stringlengths 0 39.2k | document stringclasses 1 value | subreddit stringclasses 3 values | answers dict | title_urls dict | selftext_urls dict | answers_urls dict | split stringclasses 9 values | title_body stringlengths 1 39.1k | embeddings list |
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5dgdh0 | Why do women generally prefer warmer temperatures? | I share an office with two women and everyone who comes into my office always says "man, it's really hot in here!". They set the thermostat every day, it's at least 77 in my office now. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They have smaller bodies, smaller mass. When you are just skin and bones it is hard to stay warm.",
"Women, on average, are smaller and less 'dense' than men, meaning they produce less heat within their bodies. They also lose that heat from their bodies at a quicker relative rate (due to their surface area:volume ratio being high)."
],
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2
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} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why do women generally prefer warmer temperatures?
I share an office with two women and everyone who comes into my office always says "man, it's really hot in here!". They set the thermostat every day, it's at least 77 in my office now. | [
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3ilvfq | Why some applications in Google Play have a high rating ( > 4.0), despite being either a horrible app in general, a scam, or clickbait? | I've always noticed that for some applications, the rating doesn't match the actual rating from users. Like on the front page of the app, it will have a rating of 4.3, but if you scroll down and read the reviews, they say stuff like "SCAM" or "Don't download!". | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Averages are easy to manipulate, especially given who tends to leave ratings.\n\nIf my company makes a clickbait app; and has 20 people working for it, it's going to take 5 0-star revies to lower the rating to 4 (because we all voted it up). If each of us makes 5 accounts to upvote our app; it will take 25 0-star reviews.\n\nWhich is why it is very wise to read a variety of reviews, and not just look at the average rating."
],
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} | train_eli5 | Why some applications in Google Play have a high rating ( > 4.0), despite being either a horrible app in general, a scam, or clickbait?
I've always noticed that for some applications, the rating doesn't match the actual rating from users. Like on the front page of the app, it will have a rating of 4.3, but if you scroll down and read the reviews, they say stuff like "SCAM" or "Don't download!". | [
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25h8eg | Why do a lot of Jewish last names have words like silver or gold or stein in them? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"According to the Christian bible, usury (the act of making loans for personal profit) is a sin. Being a banker was seen as being dirty. Jews had no such qualms and became successful money lenders, working in the finance and jewelry industries. Silver and gold and stein (rock/jewel) became part of their name, as many professions did (For example \"smith\" for blacksmith).",
"These are Ashkenazi Jews, who lived in central and eastern Europe, especially the area we now call Germany (\"Y'hudy Ashkenaz\" means \"Jews of Germany\"). When surnames became common, they took -- or were forced to take, when Napoleon made it compulsory -- surnames from the German or Yiddish languages (Yiddish being a mix of Hebrew and German). For example, the name Mendelssohn is made of the common Jewish name Mendel plus the German \"Sohn\", and means \"Son of Mendel\". Some notable German Jews had very obviously Jewish surnames (e.g. Daniel Itzig), but most had very normal-sounding German surnames (e.g. David Friedländer).\n\nOccasionally, when Jews were forced to adopt surnames against their wills, the authorities gave them names that were faintly (or sometimes very) insulting, often in an ironic way, which may account for why you notice \"Gold\" and \"Silver\" or \"Silber\" a lot. For example, \"Goldwasser\" translates as \"golden water\", by which is meant urine.\n\nMostly, though, they just happen to be German names. It's important to realise that not all Jews have German names, and not all people with German names are Jews.",
"_URL_0_\n\nTL;DR Most Eastern European Jews didn't use family names until they were forced to do so around the late 18th century. When they had to make up a new last name for themselves, many ended up going with something related to their profession or the place where they lived. \"Stein\" means stone in German, so a lot of Jewish jewelers used it in their new names."
],
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"http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/01/08/ashkenazi_names_the_etymology_of_the_most_common_jewish_surnames.html"
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} | train_eli5 | Why do a lot of Jewish last names have words like silver or gold or stein in them?
| [
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2ni4bv | How does a movie that is seemingly destined to be awful and fail (e.g. Dumb and Dumber To or Horrible Bosses 2) still get massive budgets and make it to theaters? | It's like they're trying to be as unfunny as possible | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Being awful =/= to being unprofitable.\n\n Huge movies like that are almost always money makers and studios, directors, actors, theaters, and investors all like to make money.",
"Dumb and Dumber To has already more than paid for it's budget. So it didn't fail in the eyes of the investors. Whether you found it funny or not isn't their concern.",
"Movies get green lit on their probability of making money. Being a \"good\" or \"bad \" movie is incidental. It's also only obvious that a movie is going to be bad after you've made it. If you can determine with accuracy whether or not a movie will be a hit by looking at the script, congratulations, you can be successful movie executive.",
"Horrible Bosses was a critical and box office success so I'm not sure how you can possibly conclude that the sequel is destined for failure.",
"unfunny to you. Not unfunny to all 300 million people in America. Not to mention the international audience"
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} | train_eli5 | How does a movie that is seemingly destined to be awful and fail (e.g. Dumb and Dumber To or Horrible Bosses 2) still get massive budgets and make it to theaters?
It's like they're trying to be as unfunny as possible | [
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68dw0e | how scientists know what wavelengths are visible to different species? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Two basic methods.\n\n1. They can directly measure whether the retinal cells respond to different signals.\n2. They can associate lights in different colors with the presence of food (the food is behind the door where the light is on), and see if the animal gets the signal or not."
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} | train_eli5 | how scientists know what wavelengths are visible to different species?
| [
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8ircjq | why does alcohol burn small cuts | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Normally your skin protects you from corrosive substances like alcohol, but when you have a cut, obviously that defense is gone. Alcohol kills cells, your body doesn't like that, so it sends a type of pain signal to your brain, which your brain interprets as an unpleasant burning sensation."
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} | train_eli5 | why does alcohol burn small cuts
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4ksg9c | Why does the Heinz ketchup packets from McDonalds and In N Out taste so much more different than that of bottle you would buy at a supermarket? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Don't know for sure, but it's probable that in order to make the product sterile (giving it the long shelf life) the manufacturers might have to give the different packaging format different thermal processing (basically cooking time/temperature) or subtly different acidity. Also, it may be that the packaging subtly changes the product taste profile as opposed to the glass or PET plastic containers - oxygen permeability (molecular transfer through the packaging) is a major headache in ambient stable foods. It might also be they have a different, cheaper recipe for these tiny foil packs as they're distributed and sold differently and probably make Heinz very little money.",
"One possibility is that it's served at room temperature while modes people refrigerate their ketchup at home. Temperature will affect the texture and flavor."
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} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why does the Heinz ketchup packets from McDonalds and In N Out taste so much more different than that of bottle you would buy at a supermarket?
[removed] | [
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3biijo | How do hip-hop or dance producers sample only the bassline or only the percussion from an existing record? | i.e. how do they take a song with a bunch of layered instruments and say "I'm gonna take just this section of percussion" without also sampling the guitars and vocals and things that are also playing simultaneously? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I used to do this for fun, it's not as difficult as one would think once you know what you're doing.\n\nVocals are usually mixed as a center (mono) channel while the instruments are usually mixed as stereo (left and right). With a little bit of work, you can extract the information that's the same in each channel and get the vocals out.\n\nOnce you have just instrumentals, it's just a matter of finding the samples you want. Whether you pull it out of the intro, a solo, or just between other instruments, you can \"sample\" small parts of music, like a single drum beat or guitar strum. You'd be surprised how many \"clean\" samples are in any given song.\n\nIf something you don't want is in there (say, a cymbal crash over your bass hit), you can use filters (in that case, a low pass filter) to cut out everything over a certain frequency. You can effectively eliminate the cymbals, or piano, or sax, or whatever else is on there, and just keep the percussion (or, vice-versa).",
"I think /u/MyNameIsRay has the best answer, but I wanted to add that sample tracks are commercially available on most popular songs. I play around with them sometimes when I'm doing solo shows instead of playing with a full band. [_URL_1_](_URL_0_) allows you to create custom backing tracks with whichever parts you want for a couple of bucks. This comes in handy when I'm asked to sing a song I can't play on a piano or guitar."
],
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
"http://www.karaoke-version.com/custombackingtrack/",
"KaraokeVersion.com"
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} | train_eli5 | How do hip-hop or dance producers sample only the bassline or only the percussion from an existing record?
i.e. how do they take a song with a bunch of layered instruments and say "I'm gonna take just this section of percussion" without also sampling the guitars and vocals and things that are also playing simultaneously? | [
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2g1vva | Why do we actually laugh? What IS funny? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"IT ALLOWS FOR THE STOMACH TO BE STRETCHED TO ENSURE MAXIMUM CAPACITY UPON FEASTING TIME. NEVER TRUST SOMEONE WITH A DEEP LAUGH.",
"It is a signal to others that the thing is being enjoyed by the person laughing."
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} | train_eli5 | Why do we actually laugh? What IS funny?
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1t90e0 | Why is swimming freestyle underwater so much less effective than swimming breaststroke, yet above the water it's the opposite? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Each swimming stroke can be broken down into two parts - the pulling phase, which propels you through the water, and the recovery phase, which \"resets\" your arms so you can pull again. The difference between the two strokes is in the recovery phase.\n \nIn freestyle, the recovery involves flinging your arm up over your head for the next pull. This works above water because the air doesn't noticably resist this movement - however underwater it doesn't work because you end up pushing back against the current.\n \nA breaststroke recovery works underwater because it involves sliding your hands up your torso close to your body and then pointing your hands and extending them forward - a movement designed to \"cut\" through the water rather than pushing against it.",
"When you swim, your arms need to move forwards and backwards.\n\nWhen your arms move backwards, you are powering yourself forwards - this is the useful part of the stroke.\n\nBut when your arms move forwards, you're not doing anything useful to propel yourself forwards. So the aim, if you want to swim quickly and efficiently, is to ensure that the part of the stroke where your arms move forwards wastes as little effort as possible.\n\nWith a front crawl (or \"freestyle\") stroke, you take your arms out of the water when they're moving forwards. This means they're not wasting effort moving water out of the way. Air is so much easier to move than water, that this is the most effective way of swimming.\n\nThis doesn't work underwater, because you can't get your arms out of the water. So instead the best way to swim underwater is with a breaststroke, where the forwards movement of your arms is designed to be as streamlined as possible, so that it doesn't have to move any more water out of the way than necessary.",
"I assume you mean the front stroke for freestyle.\n\nIn the font stroke, the arms must drag as you pull them back from the power stroke. This produces a great deal of drag under water, but on the surface this motion is done above the water, in the air where there is less resistance and less drag. only the push/power stroke is under water. The breast stroke has less drag during the non powered portion of the swim and is therefor more efficient under water."
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} | {
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"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why is swimming freestyle underwater so much less effective than swimming breaststroke, yet above the water it's the opposite?
| [
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2gzp2p | What keeps your veins in place? | Why can't I move my veins around whats holding them in place? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are various connective tissues around the veins. The tissue is an elastic fibrous type, which allows your veins to bend and move around with motion, but also keeps them anchored in place so that they don't just flop around under your skin. \n\nSpecifically, the tissue is called 'fascia'."
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} | {
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} | train_eli5 | What keeps your veins in place?
Why can't I move my veins around whats holding them in place? | [
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25y7jd | Why do cats not get sick from licking their ass all day long? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Cat saliva has antiseptic properties. Even their asses are no match. This does not mean that anything they find in their asses won't harm them. They're prepared for most things they would find in there.",
"Mine did. He managed to lick a hole in his ass that went through to the inside of his body, \"communicating with his anal gland.\" I've spent about $700 on his ass licking in the past month. So some do get sick, but not in the way you're probably thinking of.",
"In general, Feces isn't all that bad, especially your own. Your body is already familiar with most of the bacteria that pass through your body. Actually getting sick from your own poop is extremely unlikely. \n\nGetting sick from someone else's poop is somewhat more likely, but still not common. It's also a good source of nutrients, there's a lot of stuff in there that the digestive system didn't absorb the first time through, and it's all already broken down for easy absorption the second time. \n\nNevertheless, it smells bad, *does* occasionally spread disease, and is easy to not do, so humans don't do it. Cats (and dogs!) do it, and don't experience enough negative symptoms to get them to stop.",
"This is the best ELI5 question I've seen in my reddit career",
"Have you ever tried licking a cat's ass? Try it and see, maybe no one can get sick from licking it. You may be on to something here. Let us all know how it works out.",
"There are like seven completely different answers here. Is it all of them or none of them?"
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} | train_eli5 | Why do cats not get sick from licking their ass all day long?
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3bpt0f | How does baking soda absorb smell? | does it work like a vacuum? What attracts the smell to the baking soda? how does the soda destroy the smell? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Lets be clear: Baking soda does not \"absorb smell\" in the way I think you are picturing it.\n\nWhat is smell? Odors, in particular bad ones like dog pee, are actually created by the growth of bacteria. What you're smelling is not the pee itself, it's the millions upon millions of bacteriums that live in it. Same goes with moldy bread, except that's mold which is a little different from bacteria, but same concept. Bacteria, mold, fungus, all these things are what you smell.\n\nSo how do you get rid of a bad smell? You murder those nasty bacteria by the millions. Bacteria genocide. Or mold, or fungus, or a number of other microscopic elements that create what we experience as a scent or odor.\n\nSo back to the dog pee. When you pour baking soda on the pee, it does what baking soda does, which is oxidizes the hell out of it. To oxidize is to change something at the atomic level so it becomes a mixture of itself and oxygen (You oxidize Hydrogen, you get H2O, water). Bacteria thrives in oxygen-free environments. Oxygen kills it. The P. acne bacteria lives inside your pores where there is almost no oxygen. \n\nBaking soda hits the pee, kills the bacteria by oxidizing it, and because the bacteria is now dead (it caused the smell in the first place), the smell is gone.\n\nNote that dog pee isn't the best example here, because the bad odor in dog pee also can come from pheromones (\"have sex with me please\" smells that the dog produces on purpose to get laid) and baking soda may or may not effect those parts the same way. But by way of your smelly kitchen drain: bacteria and mold all the way, lay on the baking soda.",
"Baking soda neutralizes acids and (to a lesser degree) bases, which in your fridge are often responsible for bad smells. That means it brings the pH, or relative acidity, closer to neutral. It also soaks up moisture, which may contain odours.\n\nBut that said, it doesn't actually work that well, and it seems that most of us believe it works because of marketing. Activated charcoal - the kind found in many water filters - would work much better, but is far more expensive. Other things like vinegar, kitty litter, or coffee grounds will also work somewhat by either neutralizing the pH (the acidity) or simply absorbing moisture."
],
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} | {
"url": []
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} | train_eli5 | How does baking soda absorb smell?
does it work like a vacuum? What attracts the smell to the baking soda? how does the soda destroy the smell? | [
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2ei4ok | What have we discovered aboard the International Space Station and why should we care? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are people claiming the ISS hasn't been worth cost given its returns, but I'd argue that's certainly not true. \n\nThe ISS is a very long-term project and even decades isn't how long it, and similar venture, will take to bear the real fruit\n\nThe biggest benefit the ISS has had is given real experience in keeping people alive in space and 0G conditions, as well as how to run a complete livable environment as well. The best ways to keep things in repair and keep the people healthy and all that.\n\nWithout such understanding humans will never be able to establish colonies on other celestial bodies.\n\nI'd argue it's short-sighted to expect returns in a measly 20 years from such a project. This is the sort of thing you just have to accept you're doing for your children and maybe even their children.\n\nMaybe you don't really care about the long-term survivability of the human race. Maybe you don't care about what will happen in 500 years.\n\nBut if you do then the ISS is the vanguard of our colonization of the Moon, of Mars and interplanetary space.",
"Well most importantly how to survive in space. But if that doesn't grab you here is a list. \n_URL_0_",
"On a larger scale than just a list of things that have been discovered the ISS is part of what I categorize as \"big science\" the same place that I put super colliders and radio telescopes. The thing about \"big science\" is that it has the potential to evolve in to things that permeate every facet of our life. The \"big science\" discoveries of 150 years ago are things like electrons and radio waves, stuff people thought was absolutely useless but now provide the foundation of modern society."
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} | train_eli5 | What have we discovered aboard the International Space Station and why should we care?
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6zsk5i | Why do people say that they want to have deep conversations but it turns out they don't? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nine times out of ten they're probably hoping one specific person will message them as a result of their post and aren't really interested in talking to anyone else."
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} | train_eli5 | Why do people say that they want to have deep conversations but it turns out they don't?
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2ocd7z | EnergyStar Compliance, is it really a representation of a "green/energy friendly" product? Why should I take a product being EnergyStar Compliance into consideration when I am buying equipment? | Why should I take a product being EnergyStar Compliant* | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You would consider it if: you wanted to keep your electric bill lower, if you wanted to help reduce greenhouse gas production, you wanted to ensure the power draw for a building or room remained below a threshold.\n\nAn energy star model might have simpler installation too as it might have less waste heat or different exhaust needs.\n\nThe cost to operate a device might be 60 dollars per year for an ES model and 150 dollars per year for a non-ES model.",
"EnergyStar is ideally a measure of energy efficiency. It's been criticized in the past because the label on the product that identifies yearly operating cost may not be useful to a normal consumer (ie. a TV may cost $30/year to operate, provided the consumer unplugs it every night). There has been a recent push from the government to tighten the standards of EnergyStar...not too sure what the proposition/plan is though."
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} | train_eli5 | EnergyStar Compliance, is it really a representation of a "green/energy friendly" product? Why should I take a product being EnergyStar Compliance into consideration when I am buying equipment?
Why should I take a product being EnergyStar Compliant* | [
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1rxqlp | How do radioactive elements and compounds reset their half life? Do they always just decay until they are gone forever? | If something is radioactive and it is constantly decaying, how do you get "new" material? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Depending on the substance in question, you might not.\n\nAll natural elements as we know them come from three sources: stellar nucleosynthesis, supernova nucleosynthesisand big bang nucleosynthesis. Stars fuse elements upto iron, and then upto nickel when they explode -- but generally, everything above that was already around by the time 'recent' astrological history occurs [see: everything after several seconds after the big bang, I believe; only small amounts are predicted to be produced in supernovas and I'm not entirely sure how high the counts go; substances like uranium are not predicted to be produced in stars].\n\nHowever, various substances decay into other substances, so there is some replenishment, but not at the top tiers of the periodic table, as far as we are aware."
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If something is radioactive and it is constantly decaying, how do you get "new" material? | [
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1jxoc7 | Why is it so hard to get comfortable and fall asleep at night, and then so difficult to get up in the morning? | As I lay here trying to fall asleep... | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your body and mind need time to slow down, just as a car can't go from 60 mph to an immediate halt. Take time in the evening to establish a wind-down routine in preparation for sleep. This can include some quiet time, perhaps a shower. Anything in anticipation of the coming night's rest. Also, a well-worked body is more prepared to sleep at night. This means get plenty of regular exercise (30 mins 4 times a week at least), drink water, and eat well. Avoid caffeine, especially after 2pm. Never hit the snooze button, or you're sure to screw up your sleep cycle. Establishing a routine is important. You're helping condition your body to sleep when you ask it to.",
"I typed a whole bunch then deleted it but dopamine and the paralytic your body releases as you sleep to keep you from acting out your dream probably have something to do with it.",
"I know the feeling well, same thing every night"
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As I lay here trying to fall asleep... | [
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6saewq | Why do some nuts, like cashews, contain so many calories? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nuts, like most seeds, exist to provide fuel for a new plant to grow. They're completely packed full of energy.\n\nWhile seeds like wheat are made up of carbohydrates, nuts are packed full of fats. Fats are much more energy dense than carbs so nuts are a high calorie source of food - that's why you routinely see them in things like trail mixes."
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| [
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646hai | Where did the "S" rating originate and why is it better than "A+"? | I've searched on google to no avail. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It originates in Japan, the land of all the crazy things. Because it's known that if you get less than a C you have failed there would only be 3 grades you could get if you finished a level (as they often did not have +- modifiers), S class was introduce something difficult to give people a sense of achievement and something to work towards getting. Then came the SS and SSS ranks to create even more grades to get because more letters clearly means it's better.",
"To expand on the description of the origin, in the Japanese educational system, the grade S stands for \"shuu\" (秀), which is the Japanese word for \"excellent\". It appears to have been invented to replace A+ and above.",
"Japanese video games. When they introduced scoring systems for levels, they stopped at A because the developers didn't expect anyone to do any better than that. But of course players exceeded all expectations and demanded a higher rating.\n\nA means you didn't do anything wrong, as such, in clearing the level. It would seem unfair if you did a perfectly good play through with no major mistakes and were graded a B, even though your run was as good as can be normally expected.\n\nBut the hardcore players demanded a rating for players who go above and beyond, so S was created, then later SS and SSS and such. I don't think it's universally agreed what it stands for--some say super--but everyone just uses it these days.\n\nEdit: A reply has pointed out that some Japanese universities also use S above A, but I did a bit more digging and couldn't find anything about which came first.",
"Just to add some confusion to the great answer already submitted: I am currently in the midst of military flight training and we are graded based on a system where 'A' is the middle grade (Achieved standard), and 'S' is the top grade (Standard exceeded).",
"One tidbit - some colleges now have A, B, C, D, F, and **XF**.\n\nThe **XF** grade is a failure for academic dishonesty - like cheating, copying work, or plagiarism. Sort of like the opposite of S.",
"One thing I never understood is why grades go A B C D F... Someone should have gotten an F for forgetting there's an E in there.\n\nNot edited, just pointing out I know it goes D to Fail, just confusing for little guys ya know?",
"What is the rating for? School grades? Movies? Cars?",
"It comes form Japan, they don't do A+, they have a rank above that meaning excellent. When you try to convert it into our alphabet it comes out as Shu.\n\nJapanese video games used it in their rating systems and basically exported the concept over here where it was labeled with an S.",
"S rank essentially kind of means \"special\". Like a class of their own. Normally S rank is only given to one person per class like the valedictorian or the top ranked person. A lot of people can get A+, but only one can get S rank.",
"I played a game that had monsters that were rank X which were better than the rank S monsters. Was this just made up for an extra rank or have an actual origin?",
"Sounds like Yu Yu Hakusho. Lol. They added \"s\" class demons when everyone was too powerful at \"A\" level. Similar to the power scaling in dragonball Z.",
"I always thought \"S\" was an abbreviation for \"Super\", which everyone knows is even better than an A+.",
"It means > 100%, and is of course Japanese in origin.\n\nThis would mean like getting a perfect score on everything and then doing extra credit on top of all that.",
"Where do you encounter S grades? I ask because I have never heard people from other areas discuss S grades. I attended Elementary school in Michigan, where in Kindergarten and perhaps a grade or two higher, we used S for *Satisfactory*. Grades ranged from U (Unsatisfactory) to S+.",
"Completely analogical: In Norway we used to have Letter grading in the lower levels of education:\n\nLg: Little Good\n\nNg: Somewhat good\n\nG: Good\n\nMg: Very Good\n\nSg: Especially Good.",
"In Solo & Ensamble an S ranking means Superior and is the highest achievable, or near perfect.",
"Huh, I'd always assumed it was a metal gear solid thing and the S stood for Snake. I never thought to question it because if I'm honest I never really knew what was going in those games.",
"The only S grade I've ever seen is like kindergarten, S for satisfactory. Who uses S's?",
"48yo (with no kids) here. \n\nAre y'all saying schools aren't just A, B, C, D, F now?",
"I was more thinking along the lines of cars. I actually don't know the naming convention very well but Mercedes S class are considered to be some of the most expensive and top-of-the line luxury cars. Wouldn't that naming convention precede gaming in genera;?",
"Wow! I saw the question and was certain the answer was \"it comes from Metal Gear because the ultimate ranks 'S' and 'S+' etc. were named after Snake\"...",
"I'm surprised people didn't go the sonic riders route, with the X rank. The game has a C, B, A, S,SS, SSS(?), and X.",
"Most of these games also don't have F and have an E instead (think ddr)... can somebody explain that?",
"What is the context for this? What kind of thing received an s rating? Never heard of it.",
"So is it from Japanese academia or Japanese video games? I get that it can be from both, but every other top comment seems to deviate on which one is the true origin.",
"FOLLOW UP QUESTION:\n\nWhy do grades jump from D to F, skipping E? Does F actually just mean Fail and the proximity to D is coincidental?",
"Always wondered that.\n\nI've seen it in Splatoon and I believe one of the asphalt mobile games had like S rank.",
"I always understood that it came from video games.\n\nAfter a level or mission, on a 100 point scale, you can get F, D,C,B,A,and S. Sometimes they'll include + or -.\n\nA means you were damn near perfect, and S means you were perfect, hitting, every goal/mark/did it the right/best way.\n\nAs the top user mentions, you get SS,SSS ranks, meaning you're just killing it. I think i've seen this in games like Devil May Cry where even after the enemy *should* be dead, you just keep going on with the combo to the point of overkill lmao.",
"There is apparently an epistemological explanation that is being presented in this thread.\n\nI'll just explain why it's relevant in video games;\nBecause the S almost always refers to Superior or Supreme whereas the other ranks simply signify a flat academic value like a grade. At least that's been the logic since I was a kid 30 years ago when we discussed S tier characters and when beat-em ups had \"S\" as a grade after level completion.\n\nIt has always been that way as far back as I can remember.",
"Pretty sure it goes\n\nO - Outstanding \nE - Exceeds expectations \nA - Acceptable\n\n-\n\nP - Poor\nD - Dreadful\nT - Troll.\n\n(Side note, no one has ever received a T.",
"Hmm... reading the comments, now I realize why I kept seeing them in Demon Souls and Dark Souls 1,2 etc. \n\nIt's innate Japanese culture.",
"Am I the only person who doesn't know what the \"S\" rating is at all? Never had it in school."
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} | train_eli5 | Where did the "S" rating originate and why is it better than "A+"?
I've searched on google to no avail. | [
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3v4bx2 | How much of the price of gold is perceived value (as an alternate currency) vs it's value as an industrial metal? Are other "precious" metals similarly valued? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Can't find my source now but ~10% of gold is used for industrial use the rest is in jewellery and financial use(~40% jewellery 60% financial. So A huge chunk of it's value is as you call it perceived."
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} | train_eli5 | How much of the price of gold is perceived value (as an alternate currency) vs it's value as an industrial metal? Are other "precious" metals similarly valued?
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8b6oeg | Why do some countries wash their eggs and some don't? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The US washes eggs due to the belief that the coatings and dirt on eggs carry disease\n\nEverywhere else does not wash eggs because they like to leave the egg's natural coating which keeps any bacteria outside the shell\n\nUnwashed eggs can be kept at room temperature, washed eggs must be refrigerated\n\nPeople in places where eggs aren't washed do often wash their eggs immediately before use",
"Salmonella is a big concern for eggs. In some countries, they protect against this by vaccinating all of the hens. In this way, none of the eggs will have salmonella. \n\nOther countries wash the eggs in a warm water bath. This way, they don't have to take any chances that some hens might not be vaccinated. Because of the wash, the eggs must be refrigerated until use.\n\nIt's two perfectly valid approaches to public health.",
"In US they wash the eggs because of fear of bacteria(salmonella), this also reduces the shelf life and therefore we see eggs are kept in refrigerated section along with milk, cheese, dairy items. in Europe they vaccinate the chicken(fowls) therefore they donot wash their eggs and this have a larger shelf life and therefore not refrigerated.",
"Note that in the U.S. this applies only to commercial egg production. Many small farms don't wash eggs."
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15or7a | The end of Fight Club | At the end of the movie, when the narrator puts the gun to his mouth and says "my eyes are open" and pulls the trigger, "tyler" says "what's that smell?" and dies.
What did he mean by "my eyes are open" and why did shooting himself in the cheek put a whole through the back of Tyler's head? It's not like he could "trick" Tyler because what he knew, Tyler knew and vice versa.
what gives? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You are right op, Tyler could not be tricked. By saying \"my eyes are open\" the Narrator is indicating that he now fully understands that what happens to him will happen to Tyler. So he kills himself, thus killing Tyler.\n\nOf course he doesn't die - but that's not for lack of trying. If you go frame by frame you can actually see the bullet exit his face - I think it ricocheted off his jaw. The Narrator did not expect that to happen - he really believed that he was going to die. His survival was not some clever plan, it was dumb luck. In the instant when he pulled the trigger the Narrator really believed that he had killed Tyler by killing himself. Because Tyler was a figment of his imagination, *genuinely believing* that he had killed Tyler had the *actual* effect of killing him. By shooting himself in the mouth he believed that he was going to blow the back of his head off, which is why this happened to Tyler.\n\nThe bit about the smell was just something cool for Tyler to say, I think.\n\n@aragorn18 - your explanation *could* be right, but I just don't think that it works as well. For a start the Narrator is clearly trying to kill himself as he shoots himself in the mouth - he doesn't hold the gun out to one side and shoot though his cheek. Secondly there's the bit about Tyler knowing what he knows - why would giving himself a flesh wound kill Tyler? I don't buy the explanation that this is a metaphorical killing. He had wanted Tyler dead for a while - why would giving himself a flesh wound suddenly achieve this? And finally from a thematic and narrative perspective, being willing to die to save Marla from Tyler and prevent Tyler's apocalyptic vision from being fulfilled is much cooler than fixing everything by giving himself a flesh wound.\n\nBonus trivia - Chuck Palahniuk apparently likes the ending of the movie better than the ending of the book."
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} | train_eli5 | The end of Fight Club
At the end of the movie, when the narrator puts the gun to his mouth and says "my eyes are open" and pulls the trigger, "tyler" says "what's that smell?" and dies. What did he mean by "my eyes are open" and why did shooting himself in the cheek put a whole through the back of Tyler's head? It's not like he could "trick" Tyler because what he knew, Tyler knew and vice versa. what gives? | [
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7n3800 | Why do you have to eject a thumb drive before removing it from your computer? How does not ejecting damage your computer? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Imagine someone is writing on a piece of paper. By asking the computer to remove the drive you are letting that person finish their sentence and the writing makes sense to the next person reading it. \nBy yanking out the drive without telling the computer, you are ripping the paper from that person whilst they’re trying to complete their sentence and you’ll end up with missing words.",
"It can't damage your computer, but it can damage the file system on the thumb drive. When you eject, it closes any open files and finishes writing any data before saying it is safe to remove.",
"It doesn't damage the computer, but it can damage the data.\n\nThumb drives don't read/write instantly. If you've written a large chunk of data to the drive, and then a little later you want to remove it, the computer could still be in the process of actually writing the data to the drive. Ripping it out in the middle of that could leave your drive in a funny state, with parts of files written. Ejecting is just warning the computer, and giving it a chance to tell you \"hold up a sec, I'm not done with it.\"\n\nUSB drives are much faster than they used to, and if you haven't written anything or used the drive in the last few minutes, chances are it's safe to just rip out. The computer may whine about it but most likely it wasn't actually writing anything still.",
"To improve system speed and drive performance operating systems typically buffer at least some of the writes to a drive. For example if an application wrote 1 character at a time and that was replicated by the OS into changing 1 byte at a time on the harddrive it would be exceptionally slow and downright damaging to SSDs.\n\nSince there is a buffer of some data (both file data and the various meta data that says where files are and what their properties are) you need to be sure that it has all be written to the drive before it is ejected.",
"It doesn't damage the computer, but it can damage files on the external/thumb drive. Basically, the operating system may delay writing to the drive because it's busy with higher priority tasks. \nBy telling the OS you want to remove the drive, it will finish the write and then let you know it's now safe to remove the drive."
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} | train_eli5 | Why do you have to eject a thumb drive before removing it from your computer? How does not ejecting damage your computer?
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3e679u | Why is time distorted in space? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"'Why' is a bit of a tricky question to ask about knowledge such as this. We think they are related because that is the most elegant and consistent explanation for the available evidence.\n\nThe universe seems to work according to logical rules which we tend to describe as mathematics. Physicists had to figure out how to describe space and time in mathematical terms. It ends up that if you describe space-time as a unified thing with certain properties it explains light bending around stars and why Mercury's movement doesn't quite match what Newton predicted and why clocks moving at different speeds go faster or slower relative to each other.\n\nNone of this explains 'why' the universe should be as it is, only that it seems to work this way.",
"It's all about the curvature due to gravity. Things like to go in straight lines (even time) but in reality \"straight\" can be bent. For instance, the Earth is travelling in a straight line currently (for reals!) but because it's caught in the gravity of the sun that line happens to form a cycle. If the sun ceased to exist the Earth would just continue on at whatever tangent to the orbit it was currently on (though with wobbles due to other planets).\n\nTime is no different. The more gravity that is present the more time is bent away from a normal 1s per 1s rate and into slower and slower paths. 1s could take 3s for an outside observer to witness, etc and so on. Time is slower on the surface of Earth than it is in orbit (by microseconds per second). GPS for instance has to do 2 fixes. One because their clocks run faster due to altitude and one because their clocks run slower due to speed (GPS satellites move really really fast). The net correction is a handful of microseconds per second.\n\nBrian Cox explained it well using \"time cones\" as they approach a black hole (his special is on Netflix). Basically as you approach a black hole your \"futures\" (times) are projected further and further into a distance observers future because your time cone (the set of all possible futures) is rapidly being turned towards the center of mass for the black hole. This is why you also redshift and appear to be \"frozen\" at the horizon. Once you reach the horizon your time cone compresses and points solely to the singularity. For you, time has stopped."
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4xkpbw | Computers' difference in performance between multiplication and division | As I see it, some "lighter" languages such as C eat both multiplication and division for breakfast with ease. However, when taking a look at Java I've been adviced to pre-compute divisions (and store in memory) for performance's sake. Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The best algorithms we have for multiplying numbers are faster than those we have for dividing numbers. Informally, you might compare the time it takes to multiply two large numbers in the standard way and the time it takes to perform long division.\n\nFor this reason, *if you need to make calculations run faster*, then caching computed values that are re-used may speed up the program, and caching divisions may provide more of a speed-up than caching multiplications.\n\n**But remember Knuth's Law:**\n\n > The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.\n\n— Donald Knuth, 1974 Turing Award Lecture, *Communications of the ACM* 17 (12), (December 1974), p. 671. Via [Wikiquote](_URL_0_).\n\nFirst, there is no need to worry about efficiency where there is no performance problem. Writing clear and concise code trumps execution speed unless there is a clearly identifiable need for faster execution. Therefore, you should cache intermediate results if and only if doing so will make your program clearer to the next guy to read it (even if that's future-you).\n\nSecond, even when there is a need to improve performance, jumping to this sort of micro-optimization is not the first step. You have to identify exactly what section of your code is holding things up. Most of the time, the bulk of execution time is in a very small part of the program.\n\nThird, even when you've identified a certain piece of code as your bottleneck, before trying to shave a few instructions here and there you have to take a long look at the overall strategy the code embodies. If you're using the wrong algorithm for the situation, for example, then fixing that will do more than any amount of micro-optimization, and may fix the problem entirely.\n\nFourth, when you've gotten to the point of looking at individual line of code to see what's taking so long, the answer is not likely to be arithmetic. Operations like reading from a file or even reading from main memory will dwarf almost any amount of arithmetic. If your code is sending a message over the network, then probably no amount of arithmetic optimization will speed it up substantially because almost all the time is spent doing IO and waiting for the network.\n\nFifth, caching re-used intermediate results is precisely the kind of optimization that your compiler is probably doing for you anyway. Modern optimizing compilers are very good at this kind of thing, so even if a particular calculation involving division is holding up your program, caching results manually may not help if your compiler was already doing that behind the scenes. In fact, it may even make your program slower, because your optimization could interfere with the compiler's. There's no way to know but to carefully test it — and the outcome may vary from computer to computer, or depending on any number of other factors.\n\nSixth, I don't see any reason why this should be any different in C versus Java. I don't know why someone would tell you to do this optimization in Java but not C. If anything, I'd think it would be the other way around, because a need for maximum performance is a common reason to use C to begin with, and Java is more likely to be held up by much bigger concerns like automatic memory management or JVM startup next to which your arithmetic is insignificant.",
"[There is a small hand optimization](_URL_1_) that programmers have to do because the compiler will not.\n\n x = y / 2.5;\n\ninto \n\n x = y * (1 / 2.5); \n\nThe first form requires a division instruction that is about 3-5 times slower. The second one does not because the reciprocal can be computed at compile time and embedded into the instructions. Since the second form is ever so slightly less precise, most compilers (Java, C, etc.) will not make this optimization for you. \n\nLookup tables (using an array to store the values of a mathematical function) are useful for complex mathematical functions or functions that have been sampled from a physical source (simulations, music, graphics), but they're going to be a lot slower than simple division. 20-30 years ago tables were the way to go, but not now.",
"Division is always more expensive because the hardware in the CPU requires multiple clock cycles to process the instruction, whereas most CPUs can do multiplication in a single cycle (although some don't, but it's still a lot faster than division). \n\nIt's also no different in C than in Java. If you can avoid a division, you should. Although most compilers are smart enough to catch the cases where you would be able to precompute, but I'm not sure if java works the same way because it's an interpreted language."
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} | train_eli5 | Computers' difference in performance between multiplication and division
As I see it, some "lighter" languages such as C eat both multiplication and division for breakfast with ease. However, when taking a look at Java I've been adviced to pre-compute divisions (and store in memory) for performance's sake. Why is that? | [
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43zoqu | David Camerons deal with the EU | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Cameron told the EU he would stop promoting a \"Brexit\" if they made reforms in 4 certain areas. Yesterday Donald Tusk (president of the European Council) released a draft trying to find a compromise between Cameron and the EU. Here's what these 4 demands are, and the EU's response to them:\n\n**1. Demand**: Citizens of the EU coming to work in the UK shouldn't be able to apply for important social advantages to accompany their wage for their first 4 years. Also, those workers should no longer be able to send child support to their overseas families.\n\n**EU response**: London will be allowed to pull an \"emergency brake\" if it experiences an extraordinarily large influx of workers from other EU-countries. To do so, they'll have to alert the European Commission to their social security, labour market or social services being under pressure. With a majority vote, the other EU-members can then allow the UK to limit these services for up to 4 years. However, during those 4 years the emergency brake has to be gradually loosened, and the new system only applies to newcomers. Also, an EU-citizen working in London will still receive child support if their child is staying in their home country. In calculating the exact amount of child support, the standard of living in the country in question must be considered.\n\n**2. Demand**: Cameron wanted black-on-white that the principle of an *ever-closer union* would not apply to the UK. He also demanded that national parliaments could draw a 'red card' for European legislation they feel is best decided nationally. \n\n**Eu response**: According to Tusk, the 'ever-closer union' is about improving trust and understanding between the European peoples, not about political integration. Because of this, it can't be the basis for expanding EU legislation. The draft also states the UK doesn't need to strive for further political integration, which is legally binding. Also, if 55% of national parliaments protest against an EU law within 12 weeks, it will be put up for discussion by the national leaders. \n\n**3. Demand**: Cameron wants the EU to recognize itself as multi-currency, and that centralisation for the Euro should never apply to non-euro countries. Also, taxpayers from non-euro countries should never financially support operations within the eurozone.\n\n**EU response**: Laws concerning the monetary union will not be binding for non-euro countries, and they won't have to support operations within the eurozone. However, the EU will not be explicitly multi-currency. Also, non-euro countries can't form an obstacle for integration within the eurozone.\n\n**4. Demand**: Cameron wants the EU to be more competitive, which would lead to more jobs and growth.\n\n**Eu response**: Tusk says he'll be committed increasing competitiveness, and the burden on companies (especially gmo's) will be lessened, but no detailed policies have been mentioned.\n\nAnd that's about the gist of it. Cameron mostly loses out on the first demand, which it what the papers comment on the most."
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} | train_eli5 | David Camerons deal with the EU
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2iul3c | why as different races live in the same society will aren't starting to become more physically similar? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Mexicans, whites, blacks, asians in America tend to have different social norms which keeps them from being interchangeable as relationship material. You need some common ground for political views, world views, economic status to relate on that level.\n\nSo to answer your question, the melting pot isn't so hot as you would think. Many groups try not to melt and remain distinct in some way. \n\nThese barriers would need to dissolve first before you can expect significant mixup of the gene pool. To some extent it's happened and you just don't notice it. American white people is a combination of many nationalities that are mixing fairly freely."
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} | train_eli5 | why as different races live in the same society will aren't starting to become more physically similar?
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5b4on3 | What is actually happening when a single taste bud decides to stick way out and get super sensitive? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Welcome to the wonderful world of inflammation.\n\nThe most common scenario where this happens is when you happen to have too hot a cup of coffee or soup, or eat way too many salty snacks without refreshing your mouth with water.\n\nIn scenario 1, the intense heat manages to burn part of your tongue, or atleast heat it sufficiently enough to stop the enzymes and cell processes from working properly, and in scenario 2, your cells are exposed to so much salt, that they shrink too fast and damage themselves due to extensive water loss.\n\nIn either case, your cells are now damaged, and will start to give off warning signals into the local capillaries and blood vessels. Typically, what triggers inflammation is a change in the local environment of the blood vessels. During cellular damage, the cells release a wide variety of chemicals called prostaglandins, that perform a variety of functions. \n\nOne of the things that they can do, is trigger the process of inflammation. They also increase the sensation of pain, sort of like a throwback warning to remind you not to further damage that region, since repairs now have to take place.\n\nThe early stage of inflammation is characterized by vasodilation, wherein the blood vessels to the damaged area dilate and become leaky, creating more space in the tissues surrounding the damaged cells. This is what makes the burnt taste buds look so red and large.\n\nThis allows the local beat cops, the neutrophils and macrophages, to come in and survey the damage. If they find that any intruders and bacteria have come to crash the party, (and there will be a lot of them), they clean them up, and also send information into the blood to call for more back up. They also clean up any dead cells, and if any cells are too damaged to function, they shut them down and trigger orders for new cells to come up in their place. Most of the time, the nearby cells know when to divide and replace damaged ones, so they start growing anyway.\n\nThe tongue is very well supplied for blood, so most of the time, there's no real need for an exaggerated response, that's why pus rarely develops there, because the local cells are able to easily handle any infection that develops. But the repair process takes time. Taste buds themselves take about a week to grow back, so until that time, the gates to enter the body are open, meaning that the burnt area is exposed and raw, which means that the inflammation will continue, as more and more invading bacteria keep trying to enter and force their way in. Once a new set of taste buds have grown, the entry region for the tongue is now closed, and you stop feeling the sensitivity.\n\nEdit : An important thing to note, the bumps that you see are actually not \"taste buds\" but larger structures called papillae which line the entire tongue and come in different shapes and sizes. So when you see inflammation, the visible swelling is actually the inflamed papillae. \n\nTL;DR\n\nProstaglandins are amongst the first few cellular messengers that trigger inflammation, which is necessary for both cellular defense as well as cellular healing. A side effect of prostaglandins is increased pain sensitivity, and the inflammation typically continues until a new set of taste buds grow to replace the damaged ones, as the damaged region is an easy entry point for local bacteria to enter the body.",
"Your taste bud is getting inflamed because it was likely damaged, such as when you bite your tongue, eating something sharp, or something too hot for your mouth.",
"Ok now that i've learned what is happening, is there something that can help it heal faster or make it less annoying?",
"Is it bad that I rip these off of my tongue? I don't do it every day but it hurts like hell and ripping it out and bleeding for 5 minutes is way less annoying than a week of pain. Maybe I'm just weird though.",
"I don't know but I can tell you what works for me to get it to stop: Vinegar. \n\nDab a little straight vinegar on your fingertip. Dab that on the inflamed taste bud. Do it three times. \n\nThis solves it for me within an hour or two. \n\nCan't tell you why. My reasoning as a kid was \"I ate too many sweets and that's why my tongue is this way. What's the opposite of sweet? I know, sour! What's the most sour thing? Vinegar!\" \n\nYeah, not exactly thorough scientific reasoning there. I was like 8 years old. The explanation above absolutely cannot be why this works. \n\nBut unlike most deep philosophical conclusions when I was 8 years old, this one actually showed results. The results were great. \n\nSo I continue to do this. But cannot explain it.",
"Thank you for asking this question! This happens to me once in a while and I never knew what the hell was happening!",
"Thanks. Just ate way too many salted pumpkin seeds and now have an explanation as to what's going on and why! Cheers!"
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} | train_eli5 | What is actually happening when a single taste bud decides to stick way out and get super sensitive?
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7ovj6h | How would the suicide net planned to be implemented on the Golden Gate Bridge and other similar structures work? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A very large majority of people who jump off of structures like the Golden Gate Bridge and survive say that they immediately regretted taking the jump, and if they were to land in the net it would be unlikely that they were to try again. However, if you block off the sides of the bridge, someone's just going to find something else. On the other hand, since most suicides are impulsive, the idea of netting on the sides may work, at least until word of the netting gets around and people no longer consider the bridge a suicide option. Of course, the same risk occurs with the safety net. It's just a battle over what is the best option when both have their flaws.\n\nSource: suicide survivor, and _URL_0_",
"I guess it would be nice in the case that maybe someone jumps and then realizes while falling that they don’t want to die. Just a sort of second chance opportunity to reconsider.",
"It's meant to make it more inconvenient, not impossible. According to [this article](_URL_1_) these nets don't significantly reduce suicides, they just make people choose a different place, so the whole thing doesn't seem quite thought out.",
"The first part is, it would catch the jumper, this has proven effective in the past, even on the Golden Gate Bridge when it was being built, as a safety net. Not knowing the plans for the suicide net I cannot answer how it works, but I suspect it is being designed to catch the person in such a way that they can be gotten to before being able to get out of the net, either through entanglement or being difficult to climb."
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} | train_eli5 | How would the suicide net planned to be implemented on the Golden Gate Bridge and other similar structures work?
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29bxkn | Whats going on in our brains when we "snap" and go crazy? | To expand what exactly is happening to the brain of a person who normally behaves in a normal manner but then snaps and goes crazy maybe violently attacking others or themselves or going on a rampage? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sounds a bit like an [Amygdala Hijack](_URL_0_).\n\nIn the case of an Amygdala Hijack, what happens is that the brain sends sensory input to both the Amygdala and the Neocortex. The Neocortex is the thinking part of our brain, and the Amygdala handles a bunch of emotional things.\n\nNow the Amygdala will check if it's in a Fight or Flight scenario, and when it finds a match it will hijack the Neocortex, overriding anything it comes up with, and go off on an adventure itself.\n\nThe brain essentially goes into red alert panic mode, shuts down all non essential thinking processes, and focuses completely on survival alone.\n\nI'm not sure if this is the same thing as the snap you're talking about, but it sounds familiar.",
"One thing to add on to this (and I'll try to avoid wild speculation here) is that your \"reality\" is always just an internal model of the world, constructed by your brain. More disturbingly, this model is not nearly as constrained by logic or reason as we hope it would be.\n\nHave you ever had a dream where you were *convinced* that you needed to do something random or illogical to accomplish some unrelated task? (For example, I once dreamed that I had to compress people like ZIP files so I could send them over the internet.) Or just dreamed about something that was really odd, like books being made of mashed potatoes? In your dream, that's just as real to you as anything else. But eventually you wake up and your higher level thoughts take over and you realize it was silly. But the point is that your reality is whatever your brain tells you it is at that moment.\n\nSo if your brain tells you that your spouse has been replaced by an impostor that looks and sounds like her, but is really part of a huge conspiracy, and everyone's in on it, because they're trying to kill you... you'll believe it. And if your brain is telling you that you NEED to kill all these people with a rifle to prevent Obama from turning us all gay, you'll believe that too. Everyone *thinks* that they would never be fooled by their brain; that they would reason their way out of it, or that *their* brain would never have those thoughts because they're just not that kind of person, but that's just not always the case.\n\nAs for *why* brains sometimes do this, it could be any number of things. They're highly complex machines that require constant maintenance and exact combinations of chemicals to function properly. Small things (like malfunctioning or overworked chemical producers/receptors, low blood glucose levels, or small tumors) can have a butterfly-effect like impact on the brain's functioning. Many people who snap have a history of mental illness or depression, which means they probably already had malfunctioning brains, probably due to chemical imbalances or psychological trauma. Others, like the clock tower shooter, have brain tumors or other physical things which are disrupting normal function. And some others may have perfectly functioning brains, but just decided that killing a bunch of people is what they wanted to do with their life. There's nothing preventing a human from *choosing* to be a mass murderer. Although it's definitely a less orthodox lifestyle choice.\n\nOther posters are right, it varies widely by person, and you're not going to find a single definitive answer. But hopefully this gives you an idea of how it could come about, and how it ~~can~~ will happen to you.",
"The idea of people \"snapping\" is largely a myth. Usually violent behavior is a progression that starts early in life and ends up getting worse, but not all of it is obvious to relatives and friends, or they are in denial so when the offending person commits a violent act, they say it \"came from nowhere,\" when really it could have been predicted. Just think of most of the violent crimes that get major media attention - any time they actually start digging around, they find plenty of past behaviors that led up to the violent act(s). \n\n_URL_1_\n\nThe only thing I can think of that might be an example of \"snapping\" is in individuals with PTSD. In that case, a person with a history of normal behavior could get triggered and be mentally transported to a time when they were in extreme danger. They will then go into fight-or-flight and could potentially attack a person seemingly out of nowhere.",
"That question is almost too broad to be answered meaningfully.\n\nBroadly, you've got mentally ill people that are acting out and \"normal\" people that are under stress failing to cope with circumstances. There's no solid line separating to two - there's a lot of grey area between the two.\n\nEven under the best circumstances, you can't really explain \"what's going on I.side their head\" in the same way you'd explain how a virus gives you a cold. There's a lot of hand-waving going on when explaining how childhood abuse leads to an adult believing they're surrounded by demons or how somebody can get wrapped up in a religion far enough to strap a bomb to their chest.",
"I'd like to preface this by saying I have never given in to my rage in this manner.\n\nWhen I get really mad, I feel some sort of twinge in the back of my head, I guess where my neck starts and my skull stops. In this moment, I can't help but think the nastiest thoughts possible in the given situation. Things like verbally tearing a fresh asshole into the person/people who pissed me off. It only lasts an instant, long enough for me to realize what's going on in my head and regain control. It's a very unsettling feeling, knowing just one more small push could send me over the edge in a full-fledged temper tantrum, for lack of a better term.",
"The problem with all such things is that people who usually never had such experiences try to understand them, which is a little bit like trying to understand a color you can't see.\n\nAlso, as I see it, there's a myriad different ways of \"snapping\" - the word is not really well defined.\n\nA choleric might \"snap\" at every little challenge. A person with strength but not so much self control might lash out against anyone who can't defend themselves and actually regret it. A criminal might have absolutely no scruples keeping him from criminal acts.\n\nThose don't seem to really be what you mean, though.\n\nWe also use this word on people where the brain actually works perfectly fine, who just happen to hate others so much, through religious, political, social, or other stereotypes, that they want to kill these, and eventually put their plans to action.\n\nPeople who do that within the limits of the law to people who are unpopular might even be considered perfectly normal by us.\n\nSimilar in a situation like war - no-one considers a berserker crazy, because if you \"snap\" when you are allowed to, it's completely ok. I suspect part of the reason why some experimental drugs are used in some militaries are side effects like reducing inhibitions.\n\nI had a lot of situations where I became aggressive - usually in self defense, and only where a fight was unavoidable due to the action of others. I'm actually a very peaceful person, but some people see that as a sign of weakness and think they can push me. However, I was always in full control of these emotions and easily able to stick to limits of what was acceptable (not necessarily what was popular).\n\nOnce, however, my brain went pretty much on autopilot. After years of rather bad situations, socially, economically, and also with people being aggressive against me, and deliberately sabotaging my education and career - the price of being an outsider - I suddenly regained a sense of self-worth.\n\nThat caused an unbelievable rush of emotions, and, with that, a lot of anger at the people who had constantly done everything to harm me, to insult me, or to harass me in other ways. I was completely overwhelmed by these emotions, and if any of my tormentors had been around, I'd be writing these lines (without any regrets) from a jail cell.\n\nThe rage was even visible in my eyes, anyway how calm I tried to act. Which was obviously not too much of a career boost, and therefore quite a blow to my newly found self-worth - which fueled my anger even more.\n\nToday I see it as part of a healing process however - and I also see it as necessary to fight against the kind of injustices I was facing, especially when people don't leave you a choice. Or in other words, I'd get aggressive much sooner to avoid things from escalating. However, at the times leading to that, there was nothing I could possibly have achieved with more aggressiveness. I was in a trap, and my subconsciousness understood that my situation wasn't normal ironically when I was just getting out of that trap - and nearly kept me from staying out.\n\nMy experience might be a little like that of a young lion who, after years of being kept away from the pride by force, manages to get on top of the pride and runs around killing cubs and roaring the lionesses into submission.\n\nDuring this time, btw, my brain was actually working at full power. It was just constantly fantasising about what I could do to get revenge, like a big aggressive adrenaline rush. But apart from that, I could well control what I would do when. I could also function normally in society - despite people being quite wary of me, which meant I needed to change jobs after I calmed down.",
"It's a fairly common metaphor in the field of psychology to [compare willpower with muscle](_URL_3_). For example, they both require energy (when you're tired, you have less willpower), using willpower temporarily reduces how much willpower you have available for other tasks, but regularly exercising willpower will make it stronger over time. Notably, like muscles, willpower is stronger when [blood glucose levels are high](_URL_4_). Glucose, or sugar, is the easiest fuel for cells to use - muscles take up a lot of glucose when they're in use, and the brain actually does too.\n\nWatch [this video](_URL_4_) of a boy's weightlifting attempt. When his muscles fail, they pretty much fail all at once - he doesn't have time to navigate the dumbbells away from his nuts because he has no more strength left. One might even call it a 'catastrophic' failure, though in this case the consequences of failure were (relatively) minor - he'll be icing his genitals for a while, but at least nothing broke!\n\nNow, I am not an expert, but I always imagine that people who just 'lose it' have a catastrophic failure of willpower in the same way that kid had a catastrophic failure of strength. Someone, or something, has been wearing their self-restraint out until they just cannot hold back any longer. Maybe the readily available blood glucose ran out, or maybe the 'willpower muscle' is just tired.",
"\"Snapping\" is generally not as much of a thing as people believe it to be.\n\nWhen people lash out or go on rampages, their behavior doesn't just come out of nowhere. There is generally warning signs often years in advance before they act out. The problem is these individuals often grow adept at hiding the signs because they recognize others won't react well to it aside from the general problem of people not recognizing or ignoring them.\n\nOther instances can be attributed to something called a \"[fuge state](_URL_5_)\" which, is basically a form of amnesia where you are disconnected from who you are and is often connected to instances of extreme stress; your brain literally cannot handle how stressful a situation is so it dumps you into a state of mind where the stressor and you are no longer connected.\n\nThe movie image of the perfectly normal person (spoiler: no such thing exists) suddenly going crazy and killing people is just that; a movie image. It basically never happens that way without some precipitating event or long history of symptoms leading up to a break, often as a result of stress.\n\nHead injuries can possibly create this kind of behavior but it would be rare. The damage would have to be severe enough to compromise parts of the brain that govern your active behavior yet not severe enough to immobilize you or jeopardize your life.\n\nTL;DR- Nobody \"snaps.\" \n\nSource: I work in mental health, we deal with stuff like this constantly.",
"The following is in no way totally accurate:\n\nBasically, in your head there is your brain, your cerebellum and your brain stem.\n\nYour brain stem connects with the rest of your body through the spinal cord. Your cerebellum and brain are both connected to your brain stem.\n\nThe brain has the higher functions (doing math, speaking languages, emotions), your cerebellum has lower level stuff (such as muscle memory) and your brain stem deals with the most basic (yet important) stuff, such as the fight or flight response, breathing and having your heart beat once in a while.\n\nWhen you snap, or go crazy, your brain doesn't act as a filter for the raw desires of your brain stem, you act on instinct. You can see it as your primordial brain taking over to deal with an especially stressful situation.\n\nSo yeah, my explanation isn't scientific (or accurate) at all, but I guess it explains the situation in simpler terms.\n\n\nEDIT: Go read what xzbobzx said.",
"I think Chris Rock said it best when one of the Bengal Tigers that was owned by Zeigfield and Roy attacked. The media stated that the Tiger went crazy and attacked Roy. Chris Rock said the media was wrong, \"That Tiger didn't go crazy, that Tiger went Tiger\". Human beings are in fact still animals at their core. The primal regions of the brain are still intact within every persons cranium. Every single person on the face of the planet has the inherent capacity to \"snap\". The higher functioning frontal lobes and cerebral cortex that reason in logical and socially acceptable behavior, hold back the floodgates of the driving forces of the primal regions. That's what seperates humans from the aforementioned Tiger. However, on a good note, those Tigers, for the most part, were tame and loving animals. Does this help clarify your question?",
"I had an ex who claimed he would \"snap\". Turned out, there was a definite build up to the behavior. He just lacked the insight to recognize it. I think when people claim this, it's usually bullshit. Even my bipolar best friend has a lead up to her behavior."
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"http://m.psychologytoday.com/blog/threat-management/201003/the-pentagon-shooting-they-don-t-just-snap",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlyeMRWlKSM",
"http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/a0019486",
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} | train_eli5 | Whats going on in our brains when we "snap" and go crazy?
To expand what exactly is happening to the brain of a person who normally behaves in a normal manner but then snaps and goes crazy maybe violently attacking others or themselves or going on a rampage? | [
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8b55b3 | Why is it easier to be angry and upset than to be happy and polite when you’re tired? | This question was inspired by another post about emotional instability when you’re tired | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The short simplified answer is that politeness and such things require more energy and computing power to generate than just being aggressive and defensive, which are more basic instincts. So when you're tired less energy is devoted to keeping up pretenses, so to speak."
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} | train_eli5 | Why is it easier to be angry and upset than to be happy and polite when you’re tired?
This question was inspired by another post about emotional instability when you’re tired | [
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8f4c7m | What is the point of bail? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> but if thsy were kept in jail wouldn't that havw better chances of stopping them from escaping?\n\nSure, but the point of bail is that you pay some sum in order to leave jail, and are incentivized to return at the appropriate time in order to receive those funds back. If you do not, you forfeit the money. \n\nIf you are considered a significant risk of flight, they might raise or deny bail altogether.",
"Essentially, under the interpretation of US law, with the exception of crimes of a severe magnitude or if the judge determines the accused is likely to flee or reoffend before the trial, it would be unreasonable to hold all persons accused of crimes in a jail cell before trial, not to mention that housing every accused person would be a burden on the court/jail system.\n\nFor lighter offenses, a nominal bail, determined by the accused's financial status and severity of the crime, is offered. The accused could choose to stay in jail and not post the bail, or post the bail and live life somewhat normally before trial. In the latter, the amount of the bail (which is only returned after a satisfactory appearance), along with the legal consequences of skipping a trial, should be enough of an incentive to show up for a trial."
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6yx0w1 | Why is soaking a wound in warm salt water or swishing salt water around in your mouth good for combating infection? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Soaking a wound in salt water can kill bacteria because it essentially draws the water out of the bacterial cells. However it's important to note that for wound care soaking in salt water is generally not recommended. This is because while salt kills bacteria it also kills healthy cells that are necessary for wound healing. \n\nWhen you get a cut the best thing to do is irrigate it with normal saline (which can be bought at any drug store) or regular tap water. This is just to get whatever immediate dead skin, dirt, bacteria are there out. The next step is to cover the wound. \n\nAnother false remedy is hydrogen peroxide. Although it kills bacteria through a different mechanism then salt it is not recommended for wound care because it can prolong wound healing. Hydrogen peroxide kills bacteria but also kills good skin cells",
"Salt is toxic to many organisms, especially if they havent tried adapting to it. Your body can combat the new salt introduction by dispersing it through the body, as well as the lymphic system, but the foreign organisms dont have that luck of mass.",
"It's because of diffusion If you have a permeable barrier (ie your mouth skin), salt/water/the like can pass through it, going from the side with more stuff in less space to the side with less stuff in more space.\n\nNow, let's say the inside of your mouth skin has an infection. There's a lot of water there now. If you swish salt water, as per the exaplanation above, there's more salt (stuff) in less space (water) in your salt water conpared to the infection stuff. Therefore, the water from inside your infection bubble goes into the salt water (since this way there's an equal amount of salt per water inside and outside your mouth skin, and salt can't really go through your mouth skin). Now your infection doesn't have enough water to survive and it dies.\n\nyaaaay\n\n\n\nEdit: what /u/matador2553 said is good too. I just explained how the bacteria dies.",
"You use osmosis to kill the bacteria. Stuff like salt, honey, vinegar, and anything super sugar drain the water from bacteria and kill it. \nSo yes a super salty water will kill the bacteria, it will also kill some of your cells.",
"There is a process called osmosis. Osmosis keeps a balance of concentrations both inside and outside of bacteria. So if you put salt water on a wound, the concentration of salt in the salt water is very high, however, it is very low inside of the bacteria. Due to osmosis, the salt will enter through the cell membrane of the bacteria and go inside of it. The bacteria will eventually be holding too much salt water and it will break open the cell membrame which eventually kills it.",
"Still killing the good stuff that is responsible for healing. Hydrogen peroxide increases healing time and the chance a scar will form. You want to clean a wound irrigate it or wash with soap and water."
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} | train_eli5 | Why is soaking a wound in warm salt water or swishing salt water around in your mouth good for combating infection?
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45vjgp | What's the difference between a car with a "2016 plate" and another with a 2015 plate? | Just wondering why dealerships try so hard to sell cars with the previous year's plate at a discounted price when they seem to be almost identical in terms of design and features. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"People like new things. In 5 years that 2015 car will be 6 years old. The 2016 will be 5 years old. Why would you buy the 2015 if they were the same price? Obviously you'd get a 2016."
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} | train_eli5 | What's the difference between a car with a "2016 plate" and another with a 2015 plate?
Just wondering why dealerships try so hard to sell cars with the previous year's plate at a discounted price when they seem to be almost identical in terms of design and features. | [
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54z2vr | How can a single radio frequency carry two audio signals (for stereo left and right)? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A radio station is not 1 signal, it's 3.\n \nSince you are even asking the question, I assume you have a notion of the concept of frequency. Now, let us say that you have a radio station around 100MHz. What you will do is transmit a strong signal on the 100MHz wavelength. Not an audio signal, just a strong signal. Don't forget that your audio signal stretches over a window of frequency, so this signal is intended to be stronger than your audio, so that the receiver can find it over all the audio data.\n \nThen you have two side bands that are shifted a given distance in frequency on either side of your carrier. Your receiver knows where they are because it knows where the carrier was. One side is then a mono signal. The other is the left(?) signal which can then be subtracted from the mono signal to form the right signal.\n \nSo you have a total of 3 signals: Carrier in the middle, mono a bit above it, stereo a bit below it.",
"There are many frequencies involved. When radio frequencies are modulated, side bands are created. For frequency modulation, the frequency and amplitude of the sidebands depend on the frequency and amplitude of the modulating signal. FM changes the carrier frequency with changes in the audio. AM changes the carrier amplitude with changes in the audio. \n\nFM broadcasting uses a 38 kilohertz AM subcarrier modulated by Left minus Right (L-R) to carry stereo information. The subcarrier is mixed with the mono audio (L+R) before they are FM modulated. \n\nThe demodulator has two outputs (L+R) and (L-R). Their sum gives Left, and their difference gives Right."
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} | train_eli5 | How can a single radio frequency carry two audio signals (for stereo left and right)?
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1im7v7 | How does your body figure out when it's full? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your brain receives many different types of signals that tell you you're full including nutrient concentrations, glucose levels, external signals (such as knowing that an empty plate should mean you're full), and (most importantly) physical signals from your digestive tract telling you that it's full of food. These same signals go into hunger."
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} | train_eli5 | How does your body figure out when it's full?
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3c24ij | What do the laws recently passed in Montana, Texas, Utah, and Oklahoma about being Sovereign States free from the government actually mean? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"What laws? I'm not seeing any evidence of laws passed in those states that made them Sovereign States free from the government. There have been a few attempts by states to pass laws saying \"You know Federal Government, we're still in charge!\" but those laws aren't really binding in any shape or form.\n\nThe real issue is that these states are totally willing to complain about federal government intervention, but still want all the benefits of a federal government, like military protection."
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} | train_eli5 | What do the laws recently passed in Montana, Texas, Utah, and Oklahoma about being Sovereign States free from the government actually mean?
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zcgi5 | Broadband Pricing Tiers — Business vs. Home | These are the offers that Time Warner provided to my business.
Offer One: "8mb x 1mb $101 per month" = $12.60 per MB down
Offer Two: "10 X 2 $336 per month" = $36.60 per MB down
So, not only is the price more than what I pay for my cable modem at home—which is much faster at 22MB down—but **the price per MB down goes UP the more I buy.**
Time Warner Salesman: "I took this up the ladder and I was told that all carriers charge way more for business due to zoning costs.
That is what the difference in price is for." | explainlikeimfive | {
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"One reason that business is more than home is because it usually comes with higher uptime guarantees, different (better) technical support and issue response times, and less restrictions (generally you're not supposed run a webserver on a home connection, although you can certainly do it from a technical standpoint)\n\nIn regards to the difference between 8x1 and 10x2 you're not just paying for increased download speed, you're also getting double the upload speed. If you're running a service at your office that people need to pull data from (you host your own webservice, or something similar) the increase upload speed can help. However I find it absurd that 10x2 would be 3.3 times as expensive as 8x1 for similar plans. I'm assuming the 10x2 includes something else thrown in there, either a higher tier of service, better SLA or similar."
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} | train_eli5 | Broadband Pricing Tiers — Business vs. Home
These are the offers that Time Warner provided to my business. Offer One: "8mb x 1mb $101 per month" = $12.60 per MB down Offer Two: "10 X 2 $336 per month" = $36.60 per MB down So, not only is the price more than what I pay for my cable modem at home—which is much faster at 22MB down—but **the price per MB down goes UP the more I buy.** Time Warner Salesman: "I took this up the ladder and I was told that all carriers charge way more for business due to zoning costs. That is what the difference in price is for." | [
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6s3glr | If some humans have Neanderthal DNA while others don't, does that mean some humans are at least somewhat of a different species than others. | This has been really bothering me lately and due to my OCD has been constantly on my mind has been causing me a lot of distress. I recently learned that some humans have Neanderthal dna due to interbreeding while others don't. Given that Neanderthals are a different species (I understand the definition of species is somewhat loose), am I not fully human and instead a human-neanderthal crossbreed, whereas some of my friends who likely would not have Neanderthal dna be fully human and therefore a different species? Or would we both be considered equally human beings? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The definition of species is indeed somewhat loose but most agree on the basic that successfully interbreeding and having fertile offspring means that you are part of the the same species.\n\nThis is why many people now think that Neanderthals should be considered a different subspecies of humans not a different species altogether.\n\nIt is similar to wolves and dogs which can interbreed and are the same species but still obviously different enough to tell them apart.",
"Homo sapiens neandethalensis (neandertals) is a sub-species of homo sapien sapien (modern human). Both are homo sapien (human) because they are very close cousins, close enough that they could breed and make successful offspring together. The definition of a separate species is that it must be another group of organisms that cannot mate with the main group to produce viable(fertile) offspring. So by definition neandetals were not a different species.",
"No. The definition of a species is whether or not members can interbreed. All humans can interbreed as a species. We're all one breed much less not the same species."
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} | train_eli5 | If some humans have Neanderthal DNA while others don't, does that mean some humans are at least somewhat of a different species than others.
This has been really bothering me lately and due to my OCD has been constantly on my mind has been causing me a lot of distress. I recently learned that some humans have Neanderthal dna due to interbreeding while others don't. Given that Neanderthals are a different species (I understand the definition of species is somewhat loose), am I not fully human and instead a human-neanderthal crossbreed, whereas some of my friends who likely would not have Neanderthal dna be fully human and therefore a different species? Or would we both be considered equally human beings? | [
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3eidaq | What would happen if 9/11 is revealed to be a conspiracy? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It was a conspiracy.\n\nDo you mean \"a conspiracy within the United States government\"?\n\nIt would depend on who the conspirators were. If it was a rogue cell of CIA agents, they'd be prosecuted, various hearings would be held to determine how such a thing was possible, and there would be many early retirements and suicides followed by some stringent new laws passed that papered over the processes involved.\n\nIf the conspirators were senior members of the government things become much more complex. That conspiracy would require a very large network of subordinates in addition to an extraordinary web of people who would have learned the truth later and kept the secret. There would almost certainly be Congressional action and trials. Depending on how big the conspiracy was and how complex it was the result could be massive changes in the US form of government.\n\nBut it wasn't a US government conspiracy. It was al-Qaida."
],
"score": [
2
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | What would happen if 9/11 is revealed to be a conspiracy?
| [
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5lsx0g | Why do your hands stop working when you laugh? | Why do the muscles in your hands and fingers get so weak when you're laughing? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"There's a reflex pathway, the H-reflex (Hoffman's) that causes muscles to contract. It is a deep tendon reflex measured as the \"finger flexor reflex\" Massage, tapping and other pressure of the muscle decrease the reflex. Boisterous laughter can make it subside almost completely. Have you ever completely collapsed in laughter?\n\nIt's reflex. Or, more specifically, the easing of one particular reflex pathway. \n\nAs far as \"why\", as with any speculation in \"evolutionary biology\" whoreally knows why. Bonding behavior took over a lot of our functions at some point, and laughing is a big part. \n\nInteresting factoid: The H-reflex test was the first scientific test performed on the ISS because the reflex is greatly diminished in near-zero-g \n\nedit: [here's](_URL_0_) a great New York Times article all about how we know about the connection."
],
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
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]
} | train_eli5 | Why do your hands stop working when you laugh?
Why do the muscles in your hands and fingers get so weak when you're laughing? | [
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1btoh1 | What happened in Enron. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Courtesy of BBC News:\n\n\"Enron lied about its profits and stands accused of a range of shady dealings, including concealing debts so they didn't show up in the company's accounts.\n\nAs the depth of the deception unfolded, investors and creditors retreated, forcing the firm into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December.\n\nMore than six months after a criminal inquiry was announced, the guilty parties have still not been brought to justice.\"\n\n_URL_0_"
],
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} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
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} | train_eli5 | What happened in Enron.
| [
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1m81df | How do doctors get away with grossly overbilling insurance companies compared to cash customers? | I took my grandfather in for a treatment recently. Prior to doing so, I did some research online and found that the procedure runs around $2,000 cash total (I even think I saw that number on the site of the actual doctor that did the procedure)
Now when I got my grandpa's insurance statement, I see that the doctor has billed the company $5,000 for just the drug itself and another $1,000 or so for just the application and some other additional expense.
I understand that it's easier to deal with a cash customer than it is to have to deal with the insurance, but three times the prices seems like a pretty steep difference. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Medicaid and many insurances generally only give 1/3 of the asking price if they pay at all. This has forced doctors to inflate their prices just to get enough to cover their own expenses.",
"Insurance company worker here.\n\nBilled charge to the insurance company at 3 times what they actually want is nothing unusual. They could bill a trillion dollars if they want, but they're only going to get paid the $2000 the insurance company allows, and they'll need to write off the rest (assuming they have a contract with the insurance company.\n\nBilling numbers that have no relation to reality is standard. If they billed $2000 the insurance company would try to talk them down to $1800 the next time the contract is renegotiated.",
"As the other poster stated, most insurance companies will negotiate the price down heavily. \n\nIn some ways, it's win-win - the insurance company gets to claim they negotiated the price to 33% of what they were billed, and the clinic gets the price they really wanted all along.\n\nIn many other ways it's extremely unfortunate because it means the price is artificially inflated and you're sometimes screwed if you don't have an insurance company backing you."
],
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} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How do doctors get away with grossly overbilling insurance companies compared to cash customers?
I took my grandfather in for a treatment recently. Prior to doing so, I did some research online and found that the procedure runs around $2,000 cash total (I even think I saw that number on the site of the actual doctor that did the procedure) Now when I got my grandpa's insurance statement, I see that the doctor has billed the company $5,000 for just the drug itself and another $1,000 or so for just the application and some other additional expense. I understand that it's easier to deal with a cash customer than it is to have to deal with the insurance, but three times the prices seems like a pretty steep difference. | [
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3a5gwd | Why does your skin feel really sensitive when you have a fever? | Having fever now, just had the thought during shower when the body scrub felt kinda painful on the skin | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Fever causes inflammation, which is what causes the tenderness. Fever is your body's \"RED ALERT\" system designed to sort of burn up the harmful bacteria/virus. Low grade fevers are a great way to heal but anything over 101 F can start to get dangerous. Mostly because your body is using more water. Dehydration is the number one complication with fever. Dehydration is also a contributing factor to the inflammation and soreness of muscles and skin. Drink more water and soak in tepid bath. Your body absorbs water through your skin as well. Hope you feel better."
],
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} | {
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} | {
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} | train_eli5 | Why does your skin feel really sensitive when you have a fever?
Having fever now, just had the thought during shower when the body scrub felt kinda painful on the skin | [
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2pnz5z | How are the notes picked?(i.e. How did they determine what frequencies went to what notes?) | Ex. Why is the initial C at 16.35 Hz? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"From an older thread with a similar question: \n\n/u/TheloniusMonke: \nLet's start with what sound is. Sound waves are compression waves, which means that energy gets transferred from one chunk of matter (air, for our ears) to the neighboring matter in the form of pushing the particles slightly closer together (compressing them). If you do this process at certain frequencies, you get sounds of different pitches. That's all speakers do - move a piece of paper back and forth (very quickly) at different speeds to get different pitches. It simply transfers mechanical energy from the speaker cone to the air touching it.\n\nNow on to the musical scale. It appears to come from nature (it's a discovery, rather than an invention). A pure tone is said to have a \"fundamental frequency\" (its pitch is defined by that frequency). If you double that frequency, you're one octave above the fundamental frequency's pitch. If you triple it, you're a fifth above that. And so, if you go on and keep multiplying the original frequencies by integers, you fill in the scale most commonly used in Western music.\n\nHowever, there are musical scales that do not use the standard solfege scale. On that basis, I argue that the whole-whole-half-etc scale sounds normal simply because it's what we're used to. After 10 years of choir growing up/through university, we sang an Indian raga that used 7 evenly spaced tones to form an octave (the octave was still mathematically the same), and had to spend a couple weeks only singing the scales to get acclimated to singing these \"new\" intervals. But then we were used to them.\n\nI would guess the sound/feeling of resonance/dissonance has to do with how our auditory system works. A quick glance over wikipedia[2] confirms this, but adds that it's culturally conditioned. That is, all people can hear consonance/dissonance, but which intervals are consonant vs dissonant is determined by the musical tradition.\nSource: physics bachelor's, many years in choir, and an in-progress master's in systems-level neuroscience\n\n**TL;DR** Octaves/other intervals are mathematically defined, but how normal an interval, chord, or progression sounds is culturally determined",
"This is one of my favorite topics.\n\nAt the core of music is the idea that when you play two frequencies together you can just add up the waveforms. So if one note looks like [this](_URL_7_) and another note looks like [this](_URL_6_) (twice the frequency) and you play them at the same time then you get a note that \"looks\" (i.e. sounds) like [this](_URL_2_). This is the idea of superposition and is a property of waves.\n\nNext, we look at what consonance is—good sounding notes. If you believe the legends, this can be traced to Pythagoras (the guy who has the theorem about triangles) who was walking by a blacksmith and found that when two hammers were struck at the same time they sometimes sounded nice and sometimes sounded bad. They sounded nice when the weights of the hammers were some simple ratio (e.g. 2:1 or 3:2), but sounded bad when they were not a simple ratio (e.g. 6:7). It turns out that weight is directly related to the frequency that the hammers were producing. When you look at the waveforms, a 2:1 ratio looks [very simple](_URL_2_) (this is the same waveform from the previous paragraph). A 3:2 ratio is also [quite simple](_URL_4_). A weird ratio is [not so simple](_URL_5_). We hear these simple ratios as sounding nice and \"clean,\" but complex ratios sound more dissonant and \"dirty\" or \"noisy.\"\n\nWith this information you can start to build a scale. You start on any frequency (this step is arbitrary; you could start at A = 440 Hz as is done in the West, or you could choose A = 442 Hz or A = 438 Hz if you prefer). If you take the simplest ratio—2:1—then you can get a bunch of other notes, but the human hearing range only has enough room for a handful of notes this way. Thus, you start to employ the next simplest ratio—3:2. Every note that you can put between your first note and a note that is a doubling of that frequency (i.e. an octave up) can also be shifted up or down by any number of octaves (doublings/halvings of frequency) to appear across the whole range of notes, so all you need is to fill up one octave with notes and you'll have every octave filled up with notes.\n\nSo to begin with you have a frequency of X and a frequency of 2X. We'll call those A and A'. Then you bring in your 3:2 ratio which we know today as a perfect fifth. This gives you a frequency of 1.5X, which we'll call E. You could also go down from the A and arrive at a frequency of .6666....X. We're interested in filling up the octave from X to 2X, so we multiply by two and get 1.3333....X. We call this note D.\n\nNext we go up by a factor of 3:2 from E and we arrive at 2.25X. This is outside of our desired range, so we go down an octave (divide by 2) and arrive at 1.125 X. We'll call this B. Similarly, we go down by a factor of 3:2 from D and we arrive at .8888...X; once we put this into the right range we arrive at 1.7777...X which we'll call G.\n\nIf we continue the chain of going down by a factor of 3:2 then we'll get 1.185185...X which is C and 1.582X which is F. We can continue the process of going up by a factor of 3:2 from B and we start getting the notes that correspond to the black keys on a piano. \n\nEventually you get to a point where you have 12 different notes (plus the second A at the top of the scale) where each note is pretty close to the same ratio from the ones above and below it—each note is **about** 6% higher frequency than the one below it. This kind of approach leads you to a traditionally tuned scale, which would sound very odd to you today. Other cultures could stop this process earlier or later and wind up with more or fewer notes than the Western scale. \n\nAt some point in the past couple of hundred years people started to be annoyed with the word \"about\" in that statement. It is odd that a half step or a whole step or what have you could be a different size depending on what note you start on. The interval from a C to an E would sound different compared to the interval from a G to a B, even though both are major thirds. \n\nThis led to the creation of equally tempered tuning where every note is exactly the same ratio to the one below it. The octave is still fixed at a ratio of 2:1, but that's the only interval that is respected. The 3:2 and 2:3 (or 4:3 after adjusting up an octave) ratios are changed from 1.500:1 and 1.333...:1 to 1.49831:1 and 1.33484:1. You are likely used to this tuning and will hear it as correct, but there is a lot of classical music that was not written for this tuning. Using a different scale from previous graphs, compare a [true perfect fifth (3:2 ratio)](_URL_1_) to [an equally tempered perfect fifth](_URL_0_). Each note is a factor of 2^(1/12) higher than the one below it in this tuning. 2^(1/12) is an irrational number so octaves are the *only* \"still\" interval in this tuning. \n\nThe first minute or two of [this](_URL_3_) video highlights this fact in painful detail.\n\n*******\n\n**TL;DR** An arbitrary choice of starting point, then lots and lots of ratios that were ultimately abandoned in favor of one ratio that's sort of close."
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"http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=graph+sin%28x%29+%2B+sin%28%282%29x%29+from+x+%3D+0+to+500",
"http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=graph+sin%28x%29+%2B+sin%282x%29+from+x+%3D+0+to+50",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBt6APk21tU",
"http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=graph+sin%28x%29+%2B+sin%281.5x%29+from+x+%3D+0+to+50",
"http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=graph+sin%28x%29+%2B+sin%28%286%2F7%29x%29+from+x+%3D+0+to+50",
"http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=graph+sin%282x%29+from+x+%3D+0+to+50",
"http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=graph+sin%28x%29+from+x+%3D+0+to+50"
]
} | train_eli5 | How are the notes picked?(i.e. How did they determine what frequencies went to what notes?)
Ex. Why is the initial C at 16.35 Hz? | [
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303ej4 | Why did the Romans put olive oil on their bodies after bathing? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Normally it was done before bathing, not after. They would rub on oil then remove dirt with a small hook. They would then rinse the oil off, then they would soak in the baths."
],
"score": [
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} | train_eli5 | Why did the Romans put olive oil on their bodies after bathing?
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2wjn5a | What qualifies as a religion under the freedom of religion protection laws? | Recently I've been reading on reddit that it's not possible to do anything against scientology because of freedom of religion laws. I've also read the large number of cases of parents with unvaccinated children that can do that because of religious exemptions.
But scientology is a corporation that was founded shortly ago and no religion had anything against vaccines since there were no vaccines when the sacred books were written!
So I was wondering.. Is there in the law something that specifies what qualifies as a religion and what doesn't? If it has to be old or what? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It has less to do with how old/established the religion itself is, but whether the religious practices infringe on someone else's rights. For instance, there have been a number of cases where parents opted to deny their children medical treatment and instead go for Christian faith healing, then were arrested for child abuse as a result.",
"> ...to do anything against scientology because of freedom of religion laws.\n\nIt is hard to answer your question because I do not know what you mean by \"do anything\". You bring up vaccinations, but there are no laws requiring someone to vaccinate their kids. People can just choose not to vaccinate their kids they do not need freedom of religion to do that.",
"I can't speak for any other countries obviously, but in the US, the government makes absolutely no attempt to define what is and isn't a religion.\n\nInstead, it sets rules that apply to all religions equally. These include requirements for tax exempt status and reasonable accommodations for employers.\n\nThis issue comes up much more frequently in the business realm, as employees and employers argue over what is and isn't a religion.\n\nThe Supreme Court has stated that courts will not weigh in on that matter, and will only seek to find reasonable accommodations for whatever religion an employee claims to follow."
],
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} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | What qualifies as a religion under the freedom of religion protection laws?
Recently I've been reading on reddit that it's not possible to do anything against scientology because of freedom of religion laws. I've also read the large number of cases of parents with unvaccinated children that can do that because of religious exemptions. But scientology is a corporation that was founded shortly ago and no religion had anything against vaccines since there were no vaccines when the sacred books were written! So I was wondering.. Is there in the law something that specifies what qualifies as a religion and what doesn't? If it has to be old or what? | [
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2h8cy8 | if there are 30 people in a room all making the same noise at 10 decibels what would be the level of noise produced | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Decibels are logarithmic - for every 10 dB you go up, you multiply the volume by 10 - going up 20 dB multiplies the volume by 10 twice, or a hundred times the original. So we can see immediately that since you're multiplying the level of sound by 30, which is between 10 and 100, our volume increase must be between 10 and 20 dB. \n\nI'll assume all 30 people are concentrated together so we're not accounting for things like different distances to the crowd. In that case, the increase in volume is log10(30) = about 1.47 Bel. Then to convert to decibels (one tenth of a bel), multiply by 10, so our volume increase is 14.7 dB, for a final volume of 24.7 dB."
],
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} | {
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} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | if there are 30 people in a room all making the same noise at 10 decibels what would be the level of noise produced
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4it8xt | Why are fleas the size of a speck of ground pepper but they can jump so high? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Part of the answer is the relationship between size and mass. If an animal is half the size, it's one-eighth the weight - so the smaller an animal is, the stronger it is in relationship to their weight. This allows very small animals to perform relatively amazing feats of strength.\n\nAdditionally, fleas have a special adaptation for jumping - rather than flexing their muscles to leap into the air, they repeatedly flex their leg muscles to put tension on a \"spring\" made of elastic protein. Then they release that tension all at once to jump."
],
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15
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} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why are fleas the size of a speck of ground pepper but they can jump so high?
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2o0dve | How a group like Lizard Squad could take down such a large money filled network | Lizard squad took down Xbox live. Wouldn't the Xbox live be more secure and harder to hack? I do not much about this, but it seems such a large company would have better security.
Edit: Ok, so DDos. My bad. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"cminpq5"
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"text": [
"They didn't hack it. They DDosed it. A 5 year old can DDos.",
"They can't really defend from massive amounts of information flooding their servers. There is always going to be a point where they would shut down because many people sending all those packets of info to Xbox Live at once, combined with all the people online, the servers wouldn't be able to handle it."
],
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} | {
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} | {
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} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How a group like Lizard Squad could take down such a large money filled network
Lizard squad took down Xbox live. Wouldn't the Xbox live be more secure and harder to hack? I do not much about this, but it seems such a large company would have better security. Edit: Ok, so DDos. My bad. | [
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3zg95y | Why do many people see policing and military as necessary things to support with their tax dollars, but see a more subsidized healthcare system as a form of communism? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because everyone needs the police and the military. The rich and the upper middle class dont need subsidized health care and dont want to help fund it."
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} | {
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} | train_eli5 | Why do many people see policing and military as necessary things to support with their tax dollars, but see a more subsidized healthcare system as a form of communism?
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3m0hn4 | Why is it that I find my reflection somewhat attractive but dislike how I look in most photographs/videos? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your face is mirrored. You are accustomed to looking at your face in the mirror and have grown to like that look on the account of you seeing it every day when you look into anything reflective. But as soon as you look at your face in a photograph (which is how you really looks) your brain notices that something is wrong and you don't like it as much. You like your face mirrored; you don't like it as much when you suddenly see it right way around.",
"It is not just that it is a mirror image, in fact I would say that is a trivial part of it.\n\nWhen you look into a mirror you realize that *is* you on a deeper level and that is the perspective that you are familiar with.\n\nA photo is not from your perspective, but someone else's, the proverbial out of body experience. A photo is from angles that you never see yourself from.\n\nSimilar to how nearly everyone dislikes their own voice when hearing it on a recording..or thinks that it is not theirs.",
"This explains it pretty well \n_URL_0_\n\nand here's a product that would help you perceive yourself the way you wish in photographs \n_URL_1_",
"You're probably presenting yourself well in front of a mirror (good posture, neutral expression or a smile, etc.). Most people look strange mid-sentence because that's how we normally see them.",
"Part of it may be lens distortion. Lenses, even on good quality SLR cameras, have distortions that screw with symmetry. Some photo apps have a database of the different lenses and distortions, and can apply fixes:\n\n_URL_2_",
"I would posit that this is because you have depth perception in a reflection and your brain can determine the shape of your face to be as you expect. It informs your assessment of the depth of your eye placement, the width vs depth of your head, and the size of your nose. All of this is lost in a picture. Without depth perception, all you have are the outlines and shading suggesting depth but not providing it. You are finding out that you are less attractive as a drawing than as a sculpture.",
"Part of this may be that mirrors actually show a reversed, or opposite version of yourself, while camera show you how others see you. But since we are used to seeing ourselves in mirrors, the version we see in pictures can look strange or ugly",
"Because the focal length is different and can be more or less flattering. Perfect illustration : [this gif](_URL_3_)",
"You know how, when you're driving and take a really fast turn it doesn't feel as crazy as it does when your friend is behind the wheel and does something similar? \n\nWhen you're the driver, your body subconsciously anticipates and responds to bumps and the degree of pull from a turn. When you're the passenger, a ride going the equivalent speed can seem a bit more wild and reckless. That's not because your friend is a bad driver and you are the only good driver in the world... it's just that your body didn't anticipate and respond as well when you're not in control of the driving.\n\nSomething similar is happening when you stand in front of a mirror. When you first look up at the mirror, odds are you're looking just as frumpy as you do in photos. But, a split second later, your subconscious mind is already responding and your body adjusts to present itself in the most comforting way to yourself. You may roll your head slightly to your \"good\" side, tighten up your cheeks, purse your lips a bit, open your eyes just the right amount (not that wild, wide open you do when you're excited in a pic, or the half blink of a surprise pic), etc etc. \n\nContrast that subtle automatic response you have in the mirror to when you're not in control and not able to anticipate and respond so precisely to the instant when the camera snaps. You look like shit.\n\n**tldr:** Your body very quickly and subtly adjusts to present the best version of yourself in the mirror. It can't adjust as well when it can't accurately anticipate the exact moment a picture will be taken.",
"You can adjust your reflection to how you want it, and be satisfied with a results. Further, mirrors reflect light, so the image is as close to real life as seeing the real thing.\n\nWith pictures, there are pixel limits and resolutions. When someone takes your picture, they capture a discrete moment. Further, with video you don't have a mirror every time you talk to someone. This is why video looks so different.\n\nIf you dislike how you look in photographs and video you could think about what it is you dislike about them. What would make you like them more? Sometimes anxiety is the biggest factor, I know it is for me. I don't have the high fashion model body or face. I accept how I look in pictures, and it's okay for me.\n\nTLDR: Reflections are based on light and much more detailed and dynamic. Photos and videos are based on digital capture and less true to life.",
"It's because you're dead sexy. The molecules of sexiness are transmuted through waves of confidence. When it strikes a mirror, a percentage reflects off the surface and back at you. Selfies taken in a bathroom can capture some of your delicious waves because of the close proximity to the mirror but there is always a loss of amazing.",
"You see your reflection more often than you see photographs, so it matches your \"self image\" more closely than photographs do.",
"I'm sure the reflection of light has something to do with how different people look when compared with a photo and mirror. But, I think the real reason you look different in pictures/videos is because you are conscience that other people will be viewing/judging the picture/vid, or that you are taking these pic/vids around people. At home in the mirror by your self you look different because you are more confident. \n\nI feel the same way about looking at myself in/at the mirror vs pictures or videos. I don't like taking pictures because it is not consistent with what I look like in the mirror. And, every time I want to take a picture/video, I am always thinking what people would think about me.",
"mirrors display dept and perspective as well as movement, obviously. this means that when you look at your reflection from an angle, you'll be able to see the different volumes and your brain can interpret the shape in its spacial perspective. \nA picture taken by a camera flattens these volumes and your brain has to interpret the shapes it sees, which might be distorted compared to reality. This is part of the reason why it's easier to draw from a picture than from real life. If you're leaning your head back slightly for example, you might think your chin is bigger than it is, while your forehead looks smaller. \nLens also distort the picture depending multiple factors such as distance and focal length.",
"Have you noticed that whenever you pause a video the characters on the screen always have a ridiculous facial expression or something is always out of whack?\n\nWatch an episode of Star Trek TNG. Find a scene with Will Riker and Deanna Troi. They're both attractive people, right? Now hit pause. Do they both look fantastic or is one or both of their faces frozen in a ridiculous expression?",
"Vsauce made an excellent video describing this. I'm on mobile and don't have the time to link it but check out his YouTube channel."
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} | train_eli5 | Why is it that I find my reflection somewhat attractive but dislike how I look in most photographs/videos?
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3zjn8z | If Amphetamine is a relatively cheap and non-difficult drug to produce, why does the Adderall brand cost so much? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A for-profit industry that can set it's price for brand-name medications at any value they feel the market will bear."
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} | train_eli5 | If Amphetamine is a relatively cheap and non-difficult drug to produce, why does the Adderall brand cost so much?
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2e7adq | I thought Ebola was totally incurable? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The fact that we do not have a cure for a disease/condition does not mean that the disease itself cannot be overcome. There's no cure for cancer, for example, but people manage to defeat cancer fairly frequently.",
"Incurable means there isn't a cure. It doesn't mean there won't ever be a cure. Lots of incurable things became curable when antibiotics were developed.\n\nEven without the new drug that's being developed, Ebola, despite being incredibly deadly, is not a 100% sure death sentence. Some lucky few survive, that doesn't mean they had the cure, just that they were fortunate enough not to need it."
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} | train_eli5 | I thought Ebola was totally incurable?
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2gknkb | Why are pennies still made when it cost more than 1.8 cents to make one? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The purpose of making a physical currency is not for profit, but to maintain a medium of exchange which will make the economy liquid. The price of each currency unit to produce isn't particularly relevant.",
"The penny has been phased out in Canada and we've managed better without it.\n\nAs for retailers, they simply round up/down to the closest 5 cents when cash is used for a purchase and use the exact amounts when plastic is used.\n\nCash registers in retail environments were often out by +/- $1 or more daily anyway. This rounding isn't any more significant than that.\n\nFor taxes, direct deposit/withdraw, etc. etc. exact amounts are always used. Rounding is *only* done with cash purchases.",
"Because it would be somewhat onerous to change all of the infrastructure in place to use pennies. Taxes of all sorts would suddenly be calculated to make the total cost of any purchase round to the nearest nickel instead of the nearest penny. Retailers don't want to deal with this so any time this idea comes up their lobbyists are against it. And there's not a significant enough popular *need* to do a way with pennies to counteract that influence, so politicians, although occasionally a bill will be introduced, are not likely to want to champion that change (pun intended.)",
"Pennies are very durable and last for decades. The cost to make one isn't a major concern with such a long useful life.",
"Because congress [can't fix](_URL_0_) anything.\n\nThere are lots of good reasons to eliminate the penny. It's a smaller unit of currency than many countries have. It's the smallest unit of currency (inflation adjusted) that the US has ever had.\n\nBut who is surprised to hear that there is a Penny Lobby, consisting of people who profit from the production of pennies?",
"The idea of eliminating pennies was first proposed in Congress [in 1990](_URL_1_). Nickles are in a similar situation and it make make more sense to skip ahead and just round everything to the nearest dime.",
"Politics. Just because its a good idea, does not mean it will happen."
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} | train_eli5 | Why are pennies still made when it cost more than 1.8 cents to make one?
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6l44tf | What exactly is a beer belly and how does alcohol cause it? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Beer, while being an often time refreshing adult beverage, contains an alarmingly high amount of calories and carbohydrates. Beer, on average, has around 13g of carbs. The same roughly as a slice of white bread. A beer (356g), a can lets say, can have 154 calories. That's about 2 slices of white bread.\n\nIf someone who is prone to drinking, say, drinks a 6 pack a night, or over the course of a day, they are essentially eating a loaf of white bread every day. But with out the solids of bread, its a lot easier to not feel as full after drinking 6 beers, as opposed to eating 12 slices of white bread.\n\nAdd on to the fact that those with a beer belly may have 'regular' diets that contain fatty and unhealthy foods, beer is just another shovel of carbs and calories aiding to the formation of a beer-belly",
"it's not necessarily the beer, nothing inherent in beer that causes a beer belly. more so a lifestyle that goes with drinking much beer., eg not much activity to burn off those beer kilojoules. Men tend to deposit fat around their belly region. If women were portrayed as stereotypical beer drinkers, it would be beer bums, or hops hips."
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} | train_eli5 | What exactly is a beer belly and how does alcohol cause it?
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kxzwd | the bleeding virgin Mary and the milk drinking Ganesha statue "miracles" from a scientific perspective. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not familiar with the bleeding virgin Mary; however, the Ganesha drinking milk works basically through capillary action. Basically that means that the surface tension and adhesion combine to lift the liquid. You can test this yourself next time you go to drink with a straw. Don't bother capping off an end, but dip it in your drink and take it out. You'll notice that most of it drops out but there is a drop or so left in the bottom of the straw. If the straw was thinner there would be more liquid there. \n\nWith this in mind, the mouth of Ganesha, or maybe even just the porous nature of the material used to construct it, has a ton of little capillaries that can suck out the milk from the spoon.",
"Simply put, they are hoaxes who get misrepresented as real. \n\nThe wikipedia article is a great read. There are even kits you can buy to make weeping statues. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nReading some of the cited articles shows that the cases that haven't been disproven are generally not disproven because the owner of the statue will not allow further investigation."
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} | train_eli5 | the bleeding virgin Mary and the milk drinking Ganesha statue "miracles" from a scientific perspective.
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p3vqa | Why do computer processing speeds continue to increase? | I know Moore's Law, and it's clear that it's essentially true, but I have a couple questions:
1. Why do computers seem no faster now than they used to?
2. If Photoshop and FCP and whichever other processor-heavy applications aren't really changing that much, why do computers need to keep getting faster?
| explainlikeimfive | {
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"Things have gotten a lot faster, really - in even the last 10 years, processor speeds have gone up by a pretty good margin. Now you can buy stuff that clocks in at like 3.3GHz, which would have been totally crazy back in the year 2000.\n\nBut I suppose you're talking about things \"seeming\" faster. Well, that's probably because computers are super, super fast. Like, right now I programming something that is for a board that clocks in at 50MHz, something that most people would balk at - fifty megahertz, that's terrible! The computer's clock only ticks 50 000 000 times a second! If there's something I want to do that takes, say, 5000 steps, the computer takes a hundred microseconds to do it. (100 * 10^-5, or 0.001 seconds.)\n\nNow, I could pick up a nice processor today that runs at... say, sixty times that speed (3GHz). I do the exact same operation with the exact same steps (aside: computer people, let's just assume the exact same instruction set, ok?). Now I get a result in 166 *nano* seconds (that's 0.000000166 seconds).\n\nThat's a lot of zeroes, so the two are off by a *huge* factor. But how about this: you tell me the difference between the two. I'll start my stopwatch, and you tell me STOP! once some time between 0.000000166 and 0.001 seconds have passed. I'm not sure you'd get it on your first try.\n\nHumans just have this limit of perception when it comes to things that are very small. You can't easily tell the difference between 10 nanoseconds and 100 nanoseconds any more easily than you can tell the difference between 10 nanometres and 100 nanometres, even though if it were the same factors' difference on a larger scale - like 10 centimetres and 100 centimetres - it'd be very, very obvious to you. It's just that computers live in this world where *literally billions of things are happening every second* - and it's hard to tell when that changes.\n\n~\n\nAs for the second part of your question, well - why not? If we have better hardware, we can attempt bigger and better things with software. There's kind of a symbiotic relationship between the two - better hardware means that people can attempt more complex things with software; when people push machines to their limits, other people want to make better machines.\n\nIt's also worth mentioning that even on a supercomputer that has hundreds of processors all working together, some things can take *hours* to finish computing (mostly in scientific fields). I've done some work with a supercomputer, and when I wanted to submit a job for it to run I'd have to get in a virtual line and wait for my turn - even running constantly and doing trillions of things per second, there was more demand for the supercomputer's time than there was actual processing time available.",
"Well, over the last few years, the performance gains have been in specific areas. \n\n1.Multi-core architecture means running more processes at the same time, assuming the OS and software can handle it. That and more memory means you opening 20 browser tabs, running iTunes, and doing photoshop at the same time. You wouldnt want to have tried that some years ago. \n\n2. Also, graphics processing has gained comparative leaps and bounds, and even been encorporated on chip now. The quality of graphics has gone up drastically. Today, with no discrete video card you can power 2 displays that have roughly 3-4x the pixels each, of yesteryears machines.\n\n3. The still massively more power chips today, use far less energy today on average. Also more focus has been put into mineraturization, for mobile, and small form factor uses. 10 years ago you couldn't dream of playing a 3d game on a phone. Now they damn near look like a PS2. \n\nEven though the clock speeds don't keep increasing exponentially, doesn't mean the processing ability is not radically increasing.\n\nAlso, the limit to most systems, for longer than 10 years for sure, is the hard drive. It cannot throw data at the processor fast enough to affect program launch times, etc. that's why flash is so popular for performance today. It is also why your computer doesn't seem to be getting perceptibly faster. The one part hasn't made great strides until the flash HDD, and that is still not popular.",
"Can I just add an additional question or two - what is it that's actually going on physically that drives the increase in computer speeds? I understand that as time passes we can fit more and more transistors onto the same space (or something) - how are we able to do this? What is it that keeps changing?\n\nI've also heard that there's a physical limit to this process i.e. there's only so many transistor you can fit onto a silicon chip, so eventually we'll reach the end of Moore's law. Is that right? What if we find a new substance to use (e.g. graphene)? What difference does that actually make? \n\nAlso, if we continue finding new substances to use will Moore's law continue forever or is there some other known limiting factor which we will we eventually run regardless of the substance used?"
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} | train_eli5 | Why do computer processing speeds continue to increase?
I know Moore's Law, and it's clear that it's essentially true, but I have a couple questions: 1. Why do computers seem no faster now than they used to? 2. If Photoshop and FCP and whichever other processor-heavy applications aren't really changing that much, why do computers need to keep getting faster? | [
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1ymgrs | If space is a vaccum how does heat travel through it? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Heat is a measurement of how quickly molecules are moving. Hot things have quickly moving molecules, while cold things have slow ones. Since a vacuum is empty (no molecules), technically heat can't travel through space.\n\nHeat is a type of energy. Energy can be transmitted through space in the form of electromagnetic radiation, or photons. Photons are light particles that have energy but no mass. They travel through space, and when they hit something, they could be absorbed and transfer their energy to that thing.\n\nFor example, the light from the sun (visible light and UV rays) travels through space, gets absorbed by things on earth, and transfer their energy. The things that absorb that energy start to warm up (their molecules start moving faster)."
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} | train_eli5 | If space is a vaccum how does heat travel through it?
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75rc7j | What exactly is inflammation and why does it contribute so heavily to our demise? | Been reading more and more about how bad inflammation is lately.
Further, what can we do to prevent it? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's actually an immune response. When your cells are damaged, they need your immune system to come in and clear them out. The damaged cells release a chemical that expands the nearby blood vessels to allow your white blood cells better access to do their job. The expanding blood vessels is the inflammation.\n\nSo the response itself isn't necessarily bad. However, if it occurs in a confined space of your body (such as your brain), it can apply pressure to normal, healthy cells and inadvertently deprive them of oxygen and cause them to starve to death.",
"Inflammation is not inherently bad for you. It's your bodies natural response to certain things going wrong, especially cell damage. Your blood vessels open up to allow more blood to flow to the areas that are damaged and your body's defense system (white blood cells mostly) begins to target everything that it recognizes as foreign. The influx of blood is what causes the redness and the sensation of heat, and when the blood plasma begins to leak out of the vessels into the surrounding area, that's what makes what ever body part swell up. Now problems start when inflammation begins to go haywire. You may miss foreign cells entirely or begin attacking your own cells or have to make so many blood cells that you run into issues where they are produced (i.e. Bone marrow). Also swelling in areas where there shouldn't be (I.e. The central nervous system) tends to cause a whole host of issues",
"Inflammation (aka edema) is a fancy medical word for swelling - the accumulation of fluids (~~blood, lymph,~~ interstitial, ~~etc~~) in places where it shouldn't accumulate. \n\nInflammation can be caused by many things, including trauma, allergens, toxins, etc. \n\nWhile inflammation can directly cause death (if it happens, for example, in your brain or lungs, conditions known as cerebral edema or pulmonary edema), it is usually a symptom of some other, more dangerous condition. \n\nEDIT: Edema is, by definition, only interstitial fluid. Accumulation of blood is a hemorrhage.",
"Inflammation is good in and of itself, it's reacting to bad things in your body to take care of things. It's a bit like traffic construction, it's a pain but it fixes the roads to make them better in the long run."
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Been reading more and more about how bad inflammation is lately. Further, what can we do to prevent it? | [
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24in40 | Do other animals see in different frames per seconds than humans? | I've noticed that a fly always seems to be able to react to my motions very quickly. I assume they have evolved to have quick reactions but I was curious if their "speed of sight" had anything to do with this. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Surprisingly, the answer is yes. Sort of. The phrase you're looking for is \"temporal resolution\".\n\n/u/Kitworks explains that unlike cameras, animals have no \"set frame rate per se\", and that's strictly true. However, what is true is that while you can watch a vintage black-and-white movie at 16 frames per second and perceive it as motion, a pigeon would perceive the more modern 24 frames per second of a movie on film as a series of still images -- their vision has a much finer temporal resolution."
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3wrnzv | Sleep Difficulty | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your circadian rhythm (internal clock) is messed up. Humans are instinctually inclined to rest at night and be active during the day. In order to sleep better, you need to start going to bed earlier. Try moving your bedtime 30 minutes earlier each night until you're going to bed at a normal hour. Also, I'm no expert, but I don't think the air mattress is helping either. Any chance you could get a real mattress?"
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38xg3r | What did Barcelona FCB just win? Does that team play in multiple leagues throughout the year? If so, are these the same players? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Barcelona just won the Champions League (which used to be called the European Cup 20 years or so ago). In soccer, each country will have its own league - Barcelona plays in La Liga, which is Spain's national league. However, the top teams in each national league from the previous season will also qualify for a continental league, which runs over the course of the year alongside the national leagues. You can kind of think about it like NCAA basketball, where there are conference champions (= national leagues) and then the national tournament (= continental league), except the national tournament would be held at the same time as conference play. Better conferences (= countries) have more teams qualify for the tournament than others, as well.\n\nIn Europe, the top continental league is the Champions League, and the winner is considered the best team in Europe. (There's also the Europa League, which is for the next-best teams in Europe that didn't qualify for the Champions League - think NIT for basketball). There are also smaller national tournaments that run over the course of the year that those teams will also compete in.\n\nAnd yes, the same players can play in all leagues, but depending on the importance of the particular game, they may choose to rotate out certain players to not overwork them."
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1mp3yh | Why do light things bounce, while heavier don't? | Why is it that an object such as a pencil being dropped would bounce but something like a large building wouldn't? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Heavier things can bounce. A decent counter example to your proposal would be to compare a rubber ball to a crumpled up ball of paper of relatively the same size/volume. The former, while heavier, will bounce quite high; whereas the crumpled up ball of paper won't.\n\nThe difference is how the energy of the system is dissipated/returned. In the former (rubber ball), energy is returned to the ball in an elastic deformation and largely conserved back to kinetic energy (movement energy). The latter (paper ball), the paper will deform plastically and not return the energy back to kinetic energy. It will instead largely dissipate as heat due to the bending of the material.",
"All items have an elastic limit. This is the where a force goes from 'springing' the item to permanently deforming it.\n\nWhen a light item hits a surface, the forces are small. The forces can remain within the elastic limits of both the surface and the item. The items flex, storing the energy, and then spring back, making it bounce.\n\nA heavy item has much larger energy and much higher forces. The forces exceed the elastic limit of the surface, the item or both. The energy gets spent permanently deforming the objects, converting it to heat."
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2y51o6 | Traditionally, why do Conservatives support Israel while Liberals do not support Israel? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"'Neoconservatism' is a branch of conservatism which deals with the creation and maintenance of popular social myths.\n\nDeveloped in response to the perceived failure of the civil rights movement to bring racial unity, the American Neoconservative movement promoted the myth of the Cowboy - that America was a heroic nation which rides in to save the day when the bad guys are all around. This myth was dependent on the existence of an enemy - the soviet union.\n\nBack in the 1970s, Donald Rumsfeld (later to be Bush's secretary of defense) sat on a special intelligence task force known as [Team B](_URL_0_). Among their findings were that the soviets had an underwater laser sensor net and directed energy weapons (eg laser beams). The later collapse of the soviet union necessitated a new lie - the idea that there is a War on Terror where America is Freedom and Terrorism is Tyranny.\n\nWhat makes these myths dangerous is that they're mostly-truths. The US does intervene positively in international affairs, and Terrorism is scary. But when we believe these things on a mythological level, where they evoke emotions in us, we can make terrible errors, invading the wrong country or escalating tensions when there could be peace.\n\nThe current leader of Israel is a neoconservative. He is facing increasing division at home due to the many disparate cultures that his people come from, and is attempting to promote the myth of the 'Bastion of Democracy', that Israel stands with barbarians at the gate under a constant siege.\n\nThe danger of this myth is that it blinds us to opportunity. Israel does have enemies beyond it's border, but when we believe on a mythological level (eg, one that makes us feel an emotion) that Israel is under siege, then we fail to notice chances to improve the situation. A permanent peace with Iran is a good example of an idea like that - Mossad has made it clear, both publicly and via wikileaks, that Iran does not have weapons of mass destruction and is not presently trying to acquire any. The peace under the current terms poses no risk.\n\nLiberals are often seen as opposing Israel because they do not support the neoconservative fantasy of the Bastion of Democracy. We believe that Israel is best served by increasing it's integration with other regional powers through bilateral trade agreements and avoiding insulting rhetoric.\n\nThere is also the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the West Bank that defies solution. The present administration in Israel has done nothing to halt the expansion of political radicals from Israel into the west bank, leading to increased violence and deteriorating chances for peace.\n\nIn short, everyone in the west supports Israel as a nation, but many believe that Benjamin Netanyahu is little more than an Israeli George Bush, crying for war on false pretenses with little regard for the innocents he destroys in the process.",
"Both parties in the US support israel. At this moment, however, we've got political gamesmanship. The GOP invited a foreign leader to speak to Congress in an unprecedented move, because they want to undermine the POTUS and Sec. of State's negotiating power so that they have an election item to sqwauk about. Similarly, the POTUS administration when it heard the foreign leader was coming and had set up the appointment to speak, decided to snub him because it was the other party doing the inviting.\n\nBoth Liberals and Conservatives have supported israel and the middle east peace process, back to Jimmy Carter.",
"Liberals and conservatives tend to have a very different perception of violence. Liberals tend to view violence emotionally, as a negative part of life. Conservative tend to view violent neutrally, as a regrettable part of life.\n\nYou see this manifesting in everything from foreign policy to law enforcement to gun control. In terms of Israel, what liberals see is the powerful Israelis beating up on the weak Palestinians. What conservatives see is the civilized Israelis defending themselves from the barbaric Palestinians.",
"On top of what's been said already, you may also want to look at things like this : Israel is a pretty conservative country, and since 2001 has been mostly governed by conservative parties. So it's only natural that conservatives love them while liberals don't so much. Liberals would probably love Israel if it was left-leaning. I think Clinton had a pretty good relationship with the Israeli government in the late 90s / early 2000.\n\nAlso, the conservatives are very much in an \"us vs them\" view of the situation : Israel is part of \"us\" (they're white, they're non-muslim, they have a \"western\" culture) and its neighbours are part of \"them\" (they're less white, they're muslim, they have a different culture, they're not democracies...)",
"Traditionally in American politics there has been broad support of Israel by both Democratic and Republican politicians. The current situation is more that American conservatives and Israeli Likudniks have become very, very closely aligned, to the exclusion of some American liberal support Likud"
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462lxy | Why does flicking a small insect not kill it? Is the force not as strong as squishing it? | Same thing with swatting them out of the sky.
Does it have to do with surface area? Do their bodies have structures to resist immediate strong impacts, but fail against sustained moderate forces? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's mostly to do with mass. The less mass an object has, the easier it is to accelerate (so more energy goes to actual movement, and less to the object deforming.)\nInsects have very little mass, so they don't experience much resistance to acceleration (the flick.)\n\nAlternatively, squishing against a hard surface results in most of the energy being used to actually deform the insect, as it doesn't have anywhere to accelerate to.",
"If you are walking and get hit by a car going 20-30 mph you might fly through the air and live. Now if you were standing against a building and that car hit you at 20-30, different results. More resistance and no give against the force.",
"There's actually a very interesting physical principle behind _URL_0_'s called the the square cube law. When size of something doubles, the surface area quadruples (2 squared) and the mass octuples/ is multiplied by eight (2 cubed). \n\nThe reason is because surface area is 2 dimensional and volume, upon which mass depends, is three dimensional. The area of a square is l x w. Double the size of the square, and you get 2l x 2w. Separate out the 2s and you get 2x2xlxw, or 2 squared times the surface area you had before you doubled it's size. Now for volume, you have l x w x h, so double that and you get 2lx2wx2h, 2x2x2xlxwxh or 2 cubed times the previous volume. Thus the law. It's called the square cube law rather than the four eight law or something because this principle holds for any multiplier. Triple the size, the surface area becomes 9 times larger (3 squared), and the mass becomes 27 times larger (3 cubed)!\n\nNow, strength of materials is proportional to the cross section, so let's look at a leg bone as an example. Cut a leg bone in the middle and you'll see how thick it is, the cross section. This cross section is proportional to the surface area: double the size of the leg, the cross sectional area quadruples. But the mass that leg must support is eight times heavier. \n\nSo say you have a leg that can carry 20lbs of weight. But the creature it's attached to only puts 10lbs of weight on it. Supposing it has four such legs, the creature can therefore carry 40 extra pounds, or 4x its body weight. The weight carrying ability of the leg is once again proportional to the cross section and thus the surface area. Double it's size, the leg can now carry 80 lbs because it quadrupled. But the mass it must carry is now 80lbs! Still just fine because there are four legs, the creature can now carry 240lbs extra. Seems like an improvement, right? But it's not, really, when you compare that to the body weight. The creature can now only carry 3x it's body weight instead of the previous 4x, and that keeps diminishing the larger the creature gets.\n\n Now, i used weight carrying ability because it's more intuitive, but the same principle applies to any other force you apply to the creature from any direction. A flick technically counts as an impulse, I believe, which makes the math a little messier, but it's the same principle at work. A smaller creature can resist larger accelerations/forces/impulses compared to its body weight because it has proportionally less mass compared to its structural and muscular strength.\n\nEdit: I screwed up the example a bit. If the creature puts 10lbs of its bodyweight on each leg, it would weigh 40 pounds total, and could carry it's bodyweight extra. Double the size, and it would barely be able to carry it's own body weight and could carry no extra.",
"> Do their bodies have structures to resist immediate strong impacts, but fail against sustained moderate forces?\n\nThat's basically it. The smaller the animal, the stronger it is per pound. That's why ants are able to lift so much more than their body weight. If they were 10 feet tall, they'd crumple under their own body weight. They're so strong and resilient because they're so small.",
"I don't care that no one is going to read this. I've waited years to give this analogy. \n\nIt's the difference between the mass (weight) and surface area. To put it crudely, if it fell off a high building an insect would feel nothing, a cat would bruise and bounce, a person would crack and a horse would splash.",
"Way back when I was in 1st grade, I noticed a mosquito finishing up a nice lunch on my veiny arm. As he started to fly away, I said to myself, I have to take a stand to these assholes. If I let this one go, then they'll all walk over my ass for the rest of my life. So what did I do? I'll tell you what I did, I bitched slapped that mother fucker. I'm talking full rotational force straight up his ass. The only thing that spoiled my moment of greatness was that when I hit him, he exploded and I ended up covered in my own blood.\n\nSo to answer the OPs question, you can kill them, you just have to be a total and complete badass. Maybe you should try putting a stick on your forehead to harness the suns power.",
"You aren't beating them to death, you are squishing them. When pushed against something the bugs body will colapse under the force of your finger, but when you flick it all that force flings it across the room. The force has somewhere to escape after travelling through the bugs body, whereas when crushed the pressure has nowhere to go=ded/crushed/outplayd",
"When you squish it, you're squishing it *against* something, generally something big and hard with a lot of inertia. The entire force you apply to it goes into (destructively) changing the shape of its body to be flatter. Whereas when you flick it, there's no extra resistance on the other side, only air resistance and the inertia of its own body, which are both tiny because air is thin and the insect is so small to begin with. Almost all the force you apply to it goes into accelerating it in the opposite direction, rather than changing its shape.",
"Wow, some spectacularly wrong & /or complicated explanations here.\n\n1) insects have a protein called \"chitin\" that is used to make their exoskeleton. A skeleton is what gives something structure, like a buildings I-beams. Our squishy bits are outside, but for insects that you are picturing, the skeleton is on the outside, like armor.\n\n2) if you apply a force (flick in this case) to an object, it will push back with the same force (Newton's 3rd law) but if the object being flicked can't push back hard enough, it is accelerated. The insect experiences very *large g forces* which are just accelerated, since their inertial mass is small.\n\n3) a very hard flick *will damage/kill* an insect, but falling from a great height won't. This is due to a small mass/surface area ratio ... Air resistance pushed back harder than gravity pulls.",
"There is a lot of shitty science going on in here. F=ma, if an object has low mass it will experience higher accelerations. The real answer is the square-cube law which is a relationship between volume and surface area and shows that they scale disproportionately. Surface area will mostly determine strength but volume determines its mass. Thus smaller animals have significantly higher strength-weight ratios allowing them to survive much high accelerations.",
"It does kill it. If you press your flick finger against the blocking finger with so much force that it hurts, and then release with the most possible power you can do, then it will kill most insects. I did this a few times as a kid until I started feeling bad for the insects.",
"Ever hear of those giant people who had pituitary abnormalities?\n\nThey have to have braces or sometimes wheelchairs, they can't stand for too long, and have a whole host of problems because the structure and relative strength of their bones did not evolve for a body that large.\n\nElephants are huge compared to humans. Look at how thick and squat they are. That is a frame designed for a large mass.\n\nInsects on the other hand are tiny, their bodies can handle huge amount of force compared to their size. They are build more robust than larger animals are.\n\nAs far as flicking them goes, their small mass means they have very little inertia. The same way you can slap a balloon as hard as you can and it won't break, but if you were to hit a human hard enough to send it flying it would die. \n\nSmall scale things can handle relative force a lot better than large scale. In school we once built a bridge out of popsicle sticks. It could hold the weight of a 100 pound middle schooler. In full scale, say 100x size, it would crumple under the weight.",
"Okay a lot of these responses are really bad, and over complicating things. Think Newton's third law. Every force has an equal and opposite reaction. The force experienced by the bug must be the same force that your finger experiences. The only thing resisting motion on the bugs end is air, so the force the bug experiences is much less than you'd expect. \n\nConsider this scenario. Have a friend hold up a piece of paper, then punch it as hard as you can. As long as you're not an infant, you probably broke the paper. Now throw the paper in the air, and punch it as hard as you can. You can try as hard as you can, but it is almost impossible to punch a hole through the paper while it's only in the air. This is the same reason as why bugs don't get as hurt from a flick. \n\ntl;dr - The only thing resisting the motion of the insect is air.",
"I think these answers fail to point out the REASON why flicking it doesn't kill it. When you flick an insect/swat it out of the air, you're imparting force from you to the animal. However, as said by other posters, just imparting force onto an insect (like an ant or wasp) isn't enough to kill it (because it is very small and you're not able to impart enough force to damage its carapace, instead of squishing it just gets accelerated by most of the force of the strike from you). However when you 'squish' an insect, you are hitting it against something. In effect, think of it like hitting a baseball off a batting T. If you hit the ball with a baseball bat and it flies off into the distance, the ball might be damaged but may still be functional. However, if you hit that same ball again but it hits a wall this time, the ball may be squished or flattened against the wall instead (assuming it doesn't bounce off the wall).",
"When you flick a bug, a lot of that energy is used to move the bug in the direction you flicked it.\n\nWhen you squish a bug, that energy can't go very far in the direction you're pushing, or back at the thing you're pushing with. But it has to go somewhere -- and so it goes into deforming the bug's body until it pops.\n\nA similar thing happens with people: [if I hit you, you'll move](_URL_1_), but if there is a wall behind you, you'll squish. The latter will harm you a lot more.\n\nBugs take proportionally more force to injure by not-squishing in part because they are so small and light that they move more readily, but also because they don't have all the squishy, easily-hurt parts that people do.",
"It's a \"roll with the punches\" sort of effect. If you're getting punched in the face, standing completely still or trying to resist the punch will hurt much more than if you move with the punch. A body with mass that small has little resistance to being moved, so you're just applying so much force that it's basically being made to roll with the punch.\n\nThat being said, there are some bug:flick ratios that result in dead bug.",
"Dude, have you seen Iron Man? Exoskeleton and all that",
"They have hydrostatic skeletons. Essentially they have fluid filled central cavities. Pressure against a surface will squish them but swats or flicks may not due to fluid displacement within that body cavity",
"Squashing an insect causes the applied force to be reciprocated on the surface said fly is squashed on. More force = more death.",
"it is like shoving someone into an open area where they decelerate, vs shoving them into a brick wall, what hurts more?",
"You have to *really* smack them hard or [against a surface] (_URL_2_)",
"Ants don't take any fall damage either. Why is that?"
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Same thing with swatting them out of the sky. Does it have to do with surface area? Do their bodies have structures to resist immediate strong impacts, but fail against sustained moderate forces? | [
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26ypnd | How do we determine if an animal has feelings, is self aware, or is sentient? | On the topic of animal cruelty... I feel like it isn't bad to eat animals, and birthing an animal just to be eaten may seem harsh, but are the animals even aware of their own existence?
Edit: Wow! Thanks for all of the responses, I have read many but I'm gonna start reading the rest! I'm starting to feel guilty for my opinion up there, but I know you all just wanted to help!
Edit 2: I came here to see if I should feel bad eating a burger... Now I'm back to the question my sentience phase. Thanks Reddit.
Edit 3: While I would like to get more comments if anyone has anything to say, but I feel as though this has been answered the best it can. I got a little ethics lesson in as well. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is an interesting question and there is no single answer. It's not really a question of is an animal \"self aware\" or \"not self aware\" and more, \"how self aware\" is an animal. Even though it is a bit more complicated than this you can think of there being levels of self aware. \n\nThe standard test is called the mirror test. It's very simple but really clever. You put a mark on an animal (when it is asleep or not paying attention) in a place that it can't see it, like on it's head. Then you put the animal in front of a mirror.\n\nIf the animal sees the mark in the mirror and reaches up and grabs the mark then it recognized that the animal in the mirror was itself. If it doesn't do that then it doesn't realize that the thing in the mirror is itself and then probably doesn't even have an idea of \"self\". \n\nYou can look up lists of animals that can pass the mirror test. Great apes can definitely pass it. Elephants can, probably some types of birds but it is a little less easy to test a bird. \n\nThere are some other tests too, some are \"easier to pass\" than the mirror test meaning they show a lower level of self aware, and some are more difficult.",
"I think a good start is to ask, _How do **I** know that **you** have feelings, that **you** are self-aware or that **you** are sentient?_\n\nAfter we get done with the solipsism, we see that I have sufficient information on my own to conclude that you do have feelings, that you are self-aware, and that you are sentient. Then we ask, why is it any different to apply the same analysis to *other* animals? (Remember, humans are animals). \n\nHumans are not *sui generis* qua *animalia*. (That was a complex way of saying: humans are not completely unique inasmuch as we are animals - we have similarities with other animals). \n\n----\n\nIt boils down to: we have feelings, we are self-aware, and we are sentient because we have a mind that is sufficiently complex to feel, be aware, and be sentient. Our mind is an emergent property of our brains; so look at other animals with similarly complex brains and we can infer that they, too, have minds; we can further infer they have feelings, awareness, and sentience. \n\n----\n\nWe can also infer these things from their behavior. African Grey Parrots, Dolphins (Orcas are Dolphins, too), and other animals demonstrate incredibly complex and intelligent behavior. From the complexity of their brains, their incredibly intelligent behavior, their ability to teach their offspring, and other observations, it is completely consistent to conclude they feel, are self-aware, and sentient. \n\n----\n\nThe real question you should ask is, \"If other animals we eat have feelings, are self-aware, and are sentient, is it still ethically permissible to eat them?\" \n\nI think the answer is, yes. In the end, we are omnivores. We are animals and eat meat. There is no necessary ethical principle against eating animals that have feelings, are self-aware, or are sentient.",
"Is an animal self aware/sentient? as others have said, very difficult to answer.\n\nDo animals have feelings? based on my own anecdotal evidence i would say absolutely yes, anyone with a mammal for a pet should be able to observe this.",
"It's very, very complicated and the bottom line is we don't know. Do monkeys have feelings? Mice? Bears? Ants? The only thing we know is that we have feelings and self awareness by the standard that we judge it by, and we judge it by what we have. Pigs (for example) could have more feelings than us, why not?\n\nWe can't even judge it within humans. A common question about this topic is, is my experience of consciousness the same as yours?",
"Animals feel pain and fear death. They can perceive a threat and react to it (fight or flight response). So yes, they have feelings and they are sentient. Self-awareness is a different topic and is irrelevant to animal cruelty and killing.",
"Make it watch the end of My Girl, if it doesn't cry it has no feelings.",
"One thing I hope is clear: consciousness is a spectrum not a binary property. Children are less conscious than adults. Among adults, some are less conscious than others. \n\nAlso, pain is just our brains interpretation of electrical changes in nerves. We have evolved to avoid pain, so we are sensitive to it. Imagine an animal that actively seeks damage to itself. They would seem to enjoy pain. Would it be immoral to torture and kill such an animal?",
"As soon as something responds to stimuli intelligently it can be considered aware. Something like a dog running away from you if you hurt it is a sure sign that the animal's consciousness is on par with humans. Also, seeing as there is no sure way to distinguish different \"levels\" of awareness it's a little bit redundant to ask such a question. Sir, I recommend you spend some time with real animals and decide for yourself.",
"A sentient is a being who is subjectively aware and has interests, preferences, desires and wants. Animals are sentient. They do not have the same cognition or thought processes that humans do, but they are sentient.\n\nIs it wrong to cause unnecessary suffering of sentient beings? Many people would agree that it is. Is one sentient beings pleasure, amusement and convenience a necessity that justifies causing another sentient being to suffer?",
"One test that I have heard about checks to see if you can recognize yourself in a mirror. If you can then you are considered self-aware. Elephants, primates including humans can, dogs and cats cannot."
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} | train_eli5 | How do we determine if an animal has feelings, is self aware, or is sentient?
On the topic of animal cruelty... I feel like it isn't bad to eat animals, and birthing an animal just to be eaten may seem harsh, but are the animals even aware of their own existence? Edit: Wow! Thanks for all of the responses, I have read many but I'm gonna start reading the rest! I'm starting to feel guilty for my opinion up there, but I know you all just wanted to help! Edit 2: I came here to see if I should feel bad eating a burger... Now I'm back to the question my sentience phase. Thanks Reddit. Edit 3: While I would like to get more comments if anyone has anything to say, but I feel as though this has been answered the best it can. I got a little ethics lesson in as well. | [
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1qe5vo | Will a tattoo remain after a cut or gash on the tattooed skin heals? | For example, you have a forearm sleeve, fall, and get deep road rash along most of the tattoo. When it heals, will the tattoo look the same assuming there is no scarring? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Depends how deep the gash is. Tattoos sit really deep in the skin. If the cut reaches that layer, then yes, it can damage the tattoo. If it's just a superficial cut that doesn't go deeper than the epidermis the tattoo should still look the same.",
"From personal experience, I can tell you that if you get road rash, no the tattoo will not look the same after healing.",
"About 6 months after getting mine. I got a really bad pimple on the tatoo that scratched really bad. My tattoo was fine after. But I remember thinking that I ruined it while it was healing."
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} | train_eli5 | Will a tattoo remain after a cut or gash on the tattooed skin heals?
For example, you have a forearm sleeve, fall, and get deep road rash along most of the tattoo. When it heals, will the tattoo look the same assuming there is no scarring? | [
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1z1szl | Why Hasn't the U.S. Signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because in the US, people under 18 can get life sentences in prison, which the Convention would prohibit.",
"There's no appetite in the US on either side of the political spectrum to enter into any treaty that cedes sovereignty to the UN. Ratification requires a majority vote in the Senate, which would require a supermajority to overcome a filibuster. No UN treaty is likely to overcome the filibuster threat in the current political climate, and it's doubtful if any could even muster a simple majority."
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} | train_eli5 | Why Hasn't the U.S. Signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child?
| [
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2dafwd | Do internet bandwidths really make a difference to ISP's? | I was wondering for companies like Rogers or Bell who introduced bandwidth restrictions on consumer internet just as Netflix was about to come to Canada. Does it really make a difference to them/ to their cost of providing service if consumers are using 30GB/month or 300GB/month on average or is it just a cash grab to charge people more money? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The ISP's would much rather simply allow everyone to use all the bandwidth they want. Usage caps and tiered plans are extremely unpopular, and are generally employed when you don't have the capital required to upgrade the whole system, so you're simply trying to make a deterrent to the highest users.\n\nI planned a couple upgrades for a cable company. It's hugely expensive; one head-end might serve 50,000 customers. Replacing the CMTS's and edge routers was about $1.5 million, just for the boxes, never mind support, power, and staff to manage them. And if you time a replacement badly, build it before there's demand, you burn up your cash reserve very quickly.\n\nI got the hell out of the business because it's the more commoditized race to the bottom around.",
"They cannot provide you with the speeds they state if everyone uses the Internet all the time. So there's two ways that ISPs sell Internet: business class Internet, which guarantees that you get a certain speed no matter how much you use the Internet and is rather expensive, and residential Internet, which is faster and cheaper, but only works if you only use the Internet in bursts. The ISPs could increase capacity, but that is rather expensive- it requires digging up the road to add more wires, which requires permits from the city and so on. Bandwidth caps are both a way for them to raise more money (and if the cap is 30 GB/mo, it's probably mostly a way to raise rates without actually raising rates), as well as a way to manage congestion- they don't want the 1% of users that are downloading stuff all the time to make the rest of their customers have slow Internet."
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} | train_eli5 | Do internet bandwidths really make a difference to ISP's?
I was wondering for companies like Rogers or Bell who introduced bandwidth restrictions on consumer internet just as Netflix was about to come to Canada. Does it really make a difference to them/ to their cost of providing service if consumers are using 30GB/month or 300GB/month on average or is it just a cash grab to charge people more money? | [
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65snty | Why is Latin not widely used anymore if many languages used today derive from it? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not widely used anymore precisely *because* Latin-speaking people branched into separate, new languages instead.\n\nIt's a bit like asking why your great-grandparents are dead, if they have so many descendants. There's nothing unusual about that, if you think about it--and really, the more generations you get away from your great-grandparents, the less likely they are to be alive.",
"Just to add in to the other answers, Latin was *very* complicated. If you've ever heard Spanish, you'll know they conjugate their verbs (amo - I love, amas - you love). Anytime you use the word differently, it changes the word. Latin conjugated everything. Nouns, verbs, adjectives - everything had to agree with each other. It was so bad, the Romans spoke a simplified version or their language, using the formal version only for state matters. \n\n_URL_0_"
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} | train_eli5 | Why is Latin not widely used anymore if many languages used today derive from it?
| [
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1p3mu5 | I love the film "The Shining" but I feel I need a better explanation. | The movie "The Shining" with Jack Nicholson is a wonderful movie but I feel like there are some things that I still don't understand.
Would someone be willing to sort of give me a full explanation, please? Thank you!
Edit: It has now been explained but feel free to give your interpretations or have a discussion! | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's a lot going on. Can you be more specific about what you don't get?",
"Is there something specific you don't understand because there's a lot of plot threads.",
"So what are the things you don't understand?"
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} | train_eli5 | I love the film "The Shining" but I feel I need a better explanation.
The movie "The Shining" with Jack Nicholson is a wonderful movie but I feel like there are some things that I still don't understand. Would someone be willing to sort of give me a full explanation, please? Thank you! Edit: It has now been explained but feel free to give your interpretations or have a discussion! | [
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2lj6at | Sonic employees, how can you advertise hand mixed shakes yet tell people the machine is broke when they ask for a shake? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think you're being a little to literal with the term. It just means that it doesn't go into a shake machine like at Wendy's, McDonalds or BK."
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} | train_eli5 | Sonic employees, how can you advertise hand mixed shakes yet tell people the machine is broke when they ask for a shake?
| [
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kyjx9 | Saliva, and how the body makes so damn much of it. | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Saliva has enzymes (proteins that 'do stuff') that are really useful. salivary amylase is an enzyme that starts the digestion of sugars. Lysozyme is an antibacterial enzyme that helps keep bacteria in our mouths from making us sick or making our teeth rot. Lastly, saliva helps keeps mucus membranes in our mouths and digestive tracts lubricated to help food go down smoothly."
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} | train_eli5 | Saliva, and how the body makes so damn much of it.
| [
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1vak1l | What is a carbohydrate and why do people go on no carb diets? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Carbohydrates are sugars, some more complex than others. The more complex, the more effort they take to break down and digest, but the general rule is that they break down into simple sugars that the body can use for fuel very easily.\n\nCarbs are a necessary part of the diet, as they are the sole food that can be used by parts of the brain. This represents a very small amount of the overall human diet, however. Humans can exist on very few carbs, and more fats quite easily.\n\nPeople go on \"no carb\" diets because of the disproportional amount of carbs in the average N.A. diet. We've moved toward getting the gross majority of our calories from carbohydrates, and increasingly simple versions of those carbs--like high fructose corn syrup. This disproportionate diet results in insulin resistance--which is a complicated way of saying that the body starts to produce more insulin and hence store more carbs as fat. Dropping carbs for a while allows the body to decrease insulin resistance to normal levels and begin using fats more efficiently as fuel.",
"Carbohydrates, very simply, is an energy source for your body. It's one of the four main macromolecules that constitute life, along with proteins (amino acids), lipids (fats), and nucleic acids (DNA and RNA). As far as carbs go, they're really just an energy source that your body uses to produce ATP. They are not inherently good or bad. In terms of energy alone, carbohydrates are not exactly necessary, but they are remarkably efficient at providing a steady flux of energy. \n\nPeople tend to think they're bad because things like sugars and starches are also carbs and can be associated with weight gain. Excess carbohydrates, meaning you've consumed more than your body requires, will be eventually converted into fat via lipogenesis and stored in that form until you need it (side note: fat is not the only way to store energy. but it is the most efficient one). Most people in our society these days consume carbs in gratuitous excess and thus can be correlated to weight gain. \n\nAlso what is important is not just the amount of carbs you intake, but what kinds you consume. Simple carbs, like glucose and fructose, are broken down far quicker and far more easily, whereas complex carbs (lactose and maltose) are broken down more slowly, allowing for a steadier flux of energy; if it's broken down too quickly, your body cannot use it all right away, so it store it away for later. \n\nCarbs are not inherently bad for you. Simply put, people who avoid them are not the most educated in metabolomics and don't have a good understanding of what carbs actually are. I've simplified a lot of the information here, but the subject matter can get vastly more complicated. The general gist of it is here."
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} | train_eli5 | What is a carbohydrate and why do people go on no carb diets?
| [
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22v5sg | Why we prefer the flavor of unhealthy food? Why didn't we evolve to prefer good that makes us healthier/feel better? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It we take, for example, just sugar: it's a very useful way to get energy very quickly. But in the natural world, sugar is very hard to come by, and refined sugar simply doesn't exist. It's only since we've been refining sugar on an industrial scale and putting it into absolutely everything that it has become a health issue -- in evolutionary terms, no time at all.",
"Fat and sugar are fast energy, which is much more important in a survival situation.",
"We did evolve to prefer foods that are good and make us healthier and feel better. That is sugar and fat. The thing to remember is that virtually all of humanity was very close to starvation all of the time till roughly the 1800s. \n\nNow we simply have easy access to them and tend to overindulge."
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} | train_eli5 | Why we prefer the flavor of unhealthy food? Why didn't we evolve to prefer good that makes us healthier/feel better?
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6h2d87 | Why can't a PS4 title be played in PC even though its designed & created in a PC ? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Creating a game *using* a PC isn't the same as creating a game *for* a PC. Its technically possible to use a PC to make a ps4 game without ever having a version that will actually run on a PC.\n\nThe way it works is you have a ps4 devkit, which is a special ps4 for developers. That connects to a PC and allows the PC to upload the game to it and connect debugging tools. So all the development work is done on the PC, but it's tested on a ps4.\n\nHowever most developers do have a PC version of some form. Doing that means some developers can work on the game without a devkit. \n\nBut that doesn't mean that PC version is necessarily fit to release to the public. It may be missing features that PC games are expected to have, it may have debug functionality you don't want consumers to have access to, it might not work well on a range of PC hardware and so on. It takes extra work to turn that into a viable product.",
"A computer program consists of a bunch of instructions for the computer. Many of those instructions refer to sequences of instructions defined by the OS manufacturer- these collections of common instructions are referred to as \"libraries\". So an operating system might define a \"draw triangle\" sequence and a game developer would just refer to that sequence of instructions instead of re-writing how to draw a triangle from scratch. \n\nA Playstation 4 program will refer to the set of instructions that Sony bundles with the PS4. That is different than the set of instructions that Microsoft bundles with Windows. You can write a program that knows all of Sony's bundled instructions- that would be an emulator- but Windows out of the box doesn't know them. \n\nWhen writing the game, the developers use tools given to them by Sony that include descriptions of all of the PS4's libraries and how to refer to its sequences. They can use these to build programs for the PS4."
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} | train_eli5 | Why can't a PS4 title be played in PC even though its designed & created in a PC ?
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3cuylx | Why do some reddit users delete their top voted comments? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Like in a thread when the top rated comment got deleted? That's typically a mod stepping in and removing it for whatever reason."
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} | train_eli5 | Why do some reddit users delete their top voted comments?
| [
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3deyx4 | What does the sun rotate around? | Does a high gravity center exist for the entire universe? Or is our galaxy rotating around our sun simply not moving? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The center of the Milky Way galaxy, which contains a supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A, which is about 1.6 Million solar masses",
"The sun orbits around the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, which is just one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. The sun takes about 220-225 million years to complete its orbit around the galaxy.",
"Technically, the sun orbits literally orbits everything in the universe. Gravity attracts every mass in the universe towards a central point, but velocity, dark energy, and a whole mess of other factors mean that it's not apparent.\n\nBut let's move a little closer to home. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has a super-massive black hole called Sagittarius A in its center that moves through the universe, with all sorts of junk in orbit around it due to the gravitational attraction of this mass. That junk consists of dust from supernovae and lots of hydrogen and helium.\n\nThis leftover debris from supernovae billions of years go was sent flying in all directions, some of it winding up within Sagittarius A, but the bulk of it settled and eventually was attracted by its own weak gravitational pull to clump together into a cloud called a nebula. As the nebula bounces around, angular momentum is conserved and it becomes a disc of stellar material.\n\nThis disc is still in orbit around Sagittarius A, slowly making a revolution every 220 million years or so. As it did so, the disc was still affected by gravity, and 99% of the material clumped in the center of the cloud, with the rest clumping into balls, about 10 of them. Of these, as pressure built in the center, eventually it was enough to kick off nuclear fusion, and a star was born. Sol, our star.\n\nAs the pressure wave swept through the solar system, it cleared a lot of the excess away, leaving five rocky planets in the warm zone, and five gas giants beyond that. The planets formed, and we had a happy system of around 10 planets. However, Jupiter shifted its orbit, sending one of these gas giants flying out of the system and crushing the fifth terrestrial planet into what we now know as the asteroid belt. The debris that was pushed away formed into the Oort cloud and other debris throughout the system.\n\nAnd that was that... until a rogue planet slammed into the third terrestrial planet, sending a glob of molten material into orbit around it and dumping quite a bit of iron into it. The glob rounded out under its own gravity, and the iron settled into the core of the planet, eventually forming a weak magnetic field to protect the planet from solar radiation and discharge, eventually letting a bunch of primitive apes evolve a big enough brain to discover how this stuff works.\n\nAll while still orbiting Sagittarius A.",
"> Does a high gravity center exist for the entire universe?\n\nThere is no centre of the universe.\n\n > Or is our galaxy rotating around our sun simply not moving?\n\nAll movement is relative. You can't reasonably claim something is movement unless you compare it to something else. \n\nWe would generally say the Sun orbits the galaxy, not the other way around.",
"Everything in our galaxy is rotating around the center of the galaxy, which is believed to be a supermassive black hole (which is probably at the center of many galaxies). This thing is massive enough that its gravity has billions of stars and all of their systems spinning around it - it's insanely, insanely massive.",
"The sun is attracted by lots of different stuff around it, but the thing that dominates the gravitational force acting on our sun is the center of our own milky way galaxy. The sun, and the solar system with it, revolve around the center of the galaxy once every 250 million years or so. The other stars in the milky way tend to revolve around the center of mass for the galaxy as well.\n\nThe milky way as a whole is moving about ten times the speed of a bullet being fired toward an object we cannot see (because it is obscured by the light from our own galaxy) scientists have called \"the great attractor.\""
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} | train_eli5 | What does the sun rotate around?
Does a high gravity center exist for the entire universe? Or is our galaxy rotating around our sun simply not moving? | [
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6ns4h6 | teaching/learning robots | How much groundwork programming does it take to let a robot know that "stand up" shouldn't look like a topsy-turvy turtle? Is it like: these are the rules, now bring it to a usable order? How does the robot know what makes an order usable? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"imagine you have some inputs (sensors, energy), some internal nodes (stuff that can be connected together), some outputs (motors) and a simple test to \"score\" the result, f.e. how close you are to the desired result. now a computer connects everything randomly, and uses it as start state. now it keeps repeating 2 things 1) scoring; check how close we are 2)random changes and scoring again; if we got somehow better, use that as new start state... and repeat that until you are within an \"error margin\", aka, your are close enough to the target. this can take a few cycles or billions, it depends on how you choose inputs/nodes/outputs, how you \"randomly change\" stuff (what changes how much?) and how good your score function is. \n\ntl;dr: learning here is just \"random\" trial & error until you are within a defined goal setting, the pro is also the con, in that you dont need to or can know \"how\" it solves the problem, just how reliable (test alot)"
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} | train_eli5 | teaching/learning robots
How much groundwork programming does it take to let a robot know that "stand up" shouldn't look like a topsy-turvy turtle? Is it like: these are the rules, now bring it to a usable order? How does the robot know what makes an order usable? | [
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8zgfp2 | Why is Paris the city of love? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Dammit, the etymology seems to unknown. Possibly a lot if it had to do with Napoleon's obsession with romance and celebrating it, but it also might come from a combination of it being \"The city of lights\" (thanks to its early employment of gas Street lighting for all major thoroughfares) and it being a common destination for poets and artists.",
"One of the reasons is that monuments in Paris are pretty old and we want to keep them that way. So you find yourself in the capital of a country that doesn't look like modern buildings, most of the hings you look at have an historical touch to them. Also, there is that big river running through the city, so you can get on boat and watch the city from the river.\n\nYou've got buildings that are old, therefore not high enough to cover the sky, so you've always got a landscape view of the city. You could say that any picture will be a pretty picture.\n\nIt's basically a kind of a Disneyland with rude people in it. What's not to like ?"
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} | train_eli5 | Why is Paris the city of love?
| [
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3ak1lv | How come games no longer have cheat codes? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's a number of reasons for this. Cheat codes were implemented in games for various reasons, all of which fell away in recent years.\n\n\n1. Cheat codes were often implemented for debugging purposes, with many games going as far as including a 'debug mode'. This stopped happening when development tools started improving and you could instead hook a test machine to a PC to see the debug info or set variables.\n2. They were often implemented for marketing. Cheat codes for popular games got kids talking about games, so more kids heard about the game from word of mouth. It also gave the game some publicity via cheatbooks. This stopped happening when the internet became big, as most people were using Google to get the codes, negating the marketing effect.\n3. They were used to make hard games easier. This is redundant today as modern games are much easier than 90s games",
"Cheatcodes aren't that common anymore, but some games do have them. Tropico 4 and GTA V are two I can think of right now. Many games have secret debugging menus, such as KSP.",
"The competitive nature of video games. Between multiplayer and trophies/ achievements I imagine cheat codes no longer have a place.",
"I think part of the reason is because DLC exists. Certain cheat codes would give you things in game like extra costumes or items, or whatever else. Now they can just *sell* them to you.",
"Because, while before, multiplayer games were locally played (in the same room) now they are played online.\n\nWhen you allow cheats in a game like that, you ruin the game for everyone. Cheats are fun in single player games and games where you play against people with 2 controllers or whatever, and you'll still find them in those types of games.",
"It takes extra effort to implement cheat codes and make sure they don't break the game. An engine like Unreal Engine 4 or a game from Bethesda Game Studios supports console commands due to it's modability, which means the developer only needs to allow the player access to commands that already exist rather than create them from scratch.\n\nAll modern engines support dropping into a game anywhere at any time, while older games from the 90's may have required them to play to the point they want to test. To bypass this they included cheat codes that could bring up a level select or perform other functions. Chrono Trigger used a special room you could get into that would teleport you to certain parts of the game.\n\nIn addition to built in console commands and variables, Unreal Engine 4 supports mods they call \"mutators\". These mods are not always cheats, but they can be. Mutators can change anything in the game, and can provide easier access to specific commands or variables."
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} | train_eli5 | How come games no longer have cheat codes?
| [
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620ff1 | What is the social language mechanic that caused the words "aggravation", "conversation", and "definitely" to be abbreviated in slang form as "aggro", "convo", and "deffo"? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is a type of Morphology called \"clipping.\" Common examples that are well-accepted in Modern English are:\n\nAd - > Advertisement \nGym - > Gymnasium \nRoach - > Cockroach \n\nThere are some truncations that are in the middle of the word, like Madam - > Ma'am.\n\nAs well, there are some clips that are two truncated words shoved together. While there are many in English, this is actually a very common usage in Japanese (Pokemon - > Pocket Monsters being a common example).\n\nSitcom - > Situation Comedy \nMotel - > Motor Hotel",
"This the linguistics mechanism known as [clipping](_URL_0_) also called truncation or shortening. It is well understood by linguists such as those at /r/linguistics. It happens when people reason that saying just the first part of a word is sufficient to indicate the whole word, so they don't bother finishing it when speaking."
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"url": [
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} | train_eli5 | What is the social language mechanic that caused the words "aggravation", "conversation", and "definitely" to be abbreviated in slang form as "aggro", "convo", and "deffo"?
| [
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3g6kug | When I'm touching my skin with my finger, does my finger feel my skin or does the skin feel the finger? Or does it both? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Both! There are some areas of the body that are more sensitive than others though. Lightly rub your fingers across your lips. You'll feel a lot of sensation on your lips but little on your fingers. Then run your finger across the bottom of your foot near the heel. You'll feel the touch sensation much more on your finger than on your heel.\n\nFun fact: There are two main types of touch receptors. The first is the type that lets you feel your finger drag across your arm, and these mostly do this by sensing the disturbance of the hairs on your skin. Remember, humans are still absolutely covered in hair but it's so small and fine that you don't really see it unless you look for it. The second type is much deeper in your skin and is responsible for sensing pressure."
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} | train_eli5 | When I'm touching my skin with my finger, does my finger feel my skin or does the skin feel the finger? Or does it both?
| [
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3hj83e | Why is every show involving a demon use christianity to exorcise the demon? What if the demon was Jewish or Muslim? Or am I just missing something? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I feel like most of these answers miss the point.\n\nMost movies/shows you watch have Christian exorcism because Hollywood is a Western movie industry which makes movies mostly for the Western world. And the West is Christian, historically anyway.\n\nIf you watch shows from Muslim countries that have exorcism than they will use Islam for the exorcism. I have watched such shows. In animes demons/spirits are often fought by Shinto or Buddhism.",
"Christianity is a popular religion. If someone gets possessed in an anime, then they're probably a lot more likely to exorcised with shinto.",
"Most use Catholic priests, it's more prevalent among Catholics. Also spirits aren't of a specific religion, rather the religion of the person who is possessed.",
"Correct me if I'm wrong but Jewish people don't have a real belief in the afterlife, so the whole demon and angel thing seems too get a bit lost on them.",
"There is no word that is translated demon in the Old Testament. As far as Islam is concerned I don't know why there is no popular culture representations of djinn/jinn in that way."
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} | train_eli5 | Why is every show involving a demon use christianity to exorcise the demon? What if the demon was Jewish or Muslim? Or am I just missing something?
| [
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21uo5u | Why do I get really tired and sleepy after an argument or when I'm sad? | Whenever I get really sad, maybe even cry, or have an argument with someone, I always feel so tired I could go to sleep right after. Why? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Getting sleepy is a defensive mechanism. If there's too much to deal with you can end up being sleepy. You are subconsciously trying to avoid what's troubling you."
],
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} | train_eli5 | Why do I get really tired and sleepy after an argument or when I'm sad?
Whenever I get really sad, maybe even cry, or have an argument with someone, I always feel so tired I could go to sleep right after. Why? | [
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5km2xr | How can different SD cards with same physical dimensions offer several different read/write speeds? Are they somehow wired differently or efficiently? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They do have a different wiring(schematics) and newer chips. Imagine a 1Gb sd card as a single chip. You have to write each byte after previous byte. You can't write two bytes at the same quantum of time.\n\nNow, the easiest way to increase speed is to have two 500Mb chips combined through a controller that allows writing/reading from two chips at the same time. Having that setup you double your speed as now you can process two bytes at the same time. \n\nYou can get a four chips setup and get even more speed. Real life is a bit more complicated but that's the idea",
"I believe that SD card data transfer speeds are mostly limited by the memory controller speeds, and as that technology develops and becomes faster, so too will the SD cards.\n\nI couldn't find anything about an actual interface max speed anywhere, so I imagine we haven't been able to saturate it yet."
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} | train_eli5 | How can different SD cards with same physical dimensions offer several different read/write speeds? Are they somehow wired differently or efficiently?
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3ac8qb | How come politicians run for US president even though it's clear to everyone that they will never ever win. Even I know it and I'm an idiot. What gives? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In politics, attaining power through being democratically elected to a position of authority is not the only way to gain power. By standing for president (or Senator, Member of Parliament, party leader, ect), politicians are effectively 'putting their message out there', causing a stir in the political landscape, bringing a new viewpoint to the table, promoting discussion. \n\nI'm from the UK, so I'll use a UK-context as an example (although this can easily apply to US Presidential elections).\n\nThe Green Party in the UK is a vaguely socialist-ecologist party. In the UK, our country is divided politically in seats (very similar to Congressional Districts), each of which elect a single Member of Parliament, or MP, which are like Representatives or Senators. There are 650 seats. The Green Party stood in over 550 of these seats, yet they realistically had no chance of winning in any but one or two (they have one MP or Representative in the House, and only came second place in a single constituency). However, by making their presence known, they help to give a political voice to people who support them and, with the increased number of votes they achieved over the entire country, it increases their political power in the sense that they have more democratic 'credibility' - in that, even though they did not achieve any real 'power', more people voted for them, thus they have a level of influence. They get people talking, give people a voice, raise issues and ideologies up the political agenda. \n\nThe same applies to US Presidential elections. A Candidate can say \"hm, no other candidate is standing on this issue/holds this viewpoint, even though many people in the country do. Maybe I should, even though I'll never win, I can help put this issue in the spotlight\".\n\nFirst time I've ever answered an ELI5, so maybe this is bad. Oh well! Hope it helped.",
"A more cynical take than some of the other comments, but most of the presidential candidates are less concerned about influencing the debate or moving the eventual candidate to the left or right and more concerned with raising their own public statue and name recognition. Serial contenders are looking to sell their new book, get or keep their cable news talk show, and up their speaking fees.",
"If we're talking about Donald Trump, don't underestimate the power of a man's ego. He may have no realistic chance, but that doesn't mean he realizes that.",
"They want to influence the conversation. Even if Bernie Sanders can't beat Clinton, he gets to debate her in a public format and force her to commit to policies that will appease the progressive wing of the party. \n\nSome also just want the name recognition. They may not win the presidential campaign, but it gives them a better shot at governor or senator down the road.",
"Attention. Nobody gave a fuck about Donald Trump but now he's talked about on every news station and social media."
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} | train_eli5 | How come politicians run for US president even though it's clear to everyone that they will never ever win. Even I know it and I'm an idiot. What gives?
| [
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1vy21r | How do geysers work? Also why are some so predictable and other's are completely random? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Geysers happen when water is heated by a hot spot in the earth's crust. Water flows into a void, is heated, and steam and water rush out of the void rapidly. \n\nPredictable gysers are predictable because they have a low cycle time which allows many observations and the different variables can be estimated (the time since last eruption and length of eruption frequently). Less predictable gysers have a long enough cycle time that it's hard to keep records of previous eruptions (the only record of the eruption may be an observation unaided by a mechanical clock) or there haven't been enough observations to judge how the length of eruption affects the next geyser's cycle. Some guysers are predictable after major eruptions (emptying the void) but don't always fully empty the void (with minor eruptions that make the guyser unpredictable)."
],
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"url": []
} | train_eli5 | How do geysers work? Also why are some so predictable and other's are completely random?
| [
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27tetd | What exactly does this new Student Loan Plan Obama signed do? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"President Obama announced an expansion of a program that helps student loan borrowers manage their debt, a White House official said.\n\nThe official said Obama will expand the criteria for an alternative repayment program, which caps monthly payments for certain federal student loans at 10% of a borrower's discretionary income.\n\nThe alternative payment programs are designed to help borrowers struggling under the weight of student loans. They include forgiveness programs for on-time payments and public-sector employees. Teachers can have their balance canceled after ten years, for example. Low-income borrowers can have their balance canceled after 20 or 25 years of on-time payments.\n\nBorrowers who don't quality for forgiveness but use a repayment program find their monthly payments reduced but spread out over a longer period of time. That means they will pay more over the lifetime of the loan, as there is additional time for interest to accrue.\n\n[Read more at](_URL_0_)"
],
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
"http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/studentloan.asp#h9VLjHQeC4uBK1ep.99"
]
} | train_eli5 | What exactly does this new Student Loan Plan Obama signed do?
| [
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xb3uy | independent athletes in the Olympics | Why are there some athletes without a country? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"In the case of 2012, it's actually handy because there are two examples of the type of situation that can arise. Three athletes come from the Netherlands Antilles, which was dissolved as a country in 2010 and was removed from the Olympics books in 2011. However the athletes involved were already in process to compete.\n\nFor the 4th competitor, he comes from the newly created South Sudan, which has yet to form it's own Olympic organisation within the nation. However as the man himself had qualified for the marathon event, he was still allowed to enter.\n\nTo recap, 3 athletes had a country and lost it (in Olympic terms) and the 4th had no country then found one, but not in time for the Olympics to recognise it."
],
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10
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | independent athletes in the Olympics
Why are there some athletes without a country? | [
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6he8ia | Why does the sound of flowing water sound different as a bottle is being filled up? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Due to the bottle having a confined space. The air in the bottle being forced out by the water displacing it causes the difference in sound. Flowing water, like a river, does not displace air and therefore has a different sound",
"As the water level in the bottle rises, the flowing stream has to travel less distance to reach the water.\n\nThe shorter the fall, the lower the tone of the sound emitted from impact"
],
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why does the sound of flowing water sound different as a bottle is being filled up?
| [
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2ps0j5 | Why I should not be excited to invest in Cuba as an American? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"cmzhdly"
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"text": [
"Because the Canadians, Brazilians, British, Spanish and Chinese have been there for years already and have locked down many of the key development deals and important relationships."
],
"score": [
7
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why I should not be excited to invest in Cuba as an American?
| [
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1t7eko | Why we get the sudden urge to pee when our body comes in contact with water, eg swimming pools, shower. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ce54ayp"
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"text": [
"When you come in contact with water, or even when you see some nice amount of water, your brain automatically thinks you are somehow going to ingest that water, and it cuts the supply of a certain hormone in your blood ([antidiuretic hormone](_URL_0_)). This cause your kidneys to increase the production of urine, a.k.a. pee. The function of that hormone is to maintain a minimunly healthy amount of water in your body, but when your brain thinks you are going to ingest some more liquid, it just process to release the \"stored\" water in the form of pee, wich will also carry some metabolism by-products that can be toxic to the blood if held in high quantity"
],
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4
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasopressin"
]
} | train_eli5 | Why we get the sudden urge to pee when our body comes in contact with water, eg swimming pools, shower.
| [
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43sp1u | Why don't all States do proportional representation instead of winner take all in the electoral college? | [removed] | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"czko7p2"
],
"text": [
"Since it goes state to state as far as rules my first inclination would be power. If you live in a state with a powerful majority party, it's in the interest of that states party to go for winner take all so that the party ,with it's deep reach in all districts, can try to coerce said districts to support the candidate that the party wants to win. Smoke filled back rooms and whatnot."
],
"score": [
3
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why don't all States do proportional representation instead of winner take all in the electoral college?
[removed] | [
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3bm8kl | Is China still a communist country? | And if it is still communist, based on how wealthy China is, should America consider communism? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Not by the general definition of communism.\nThe Government structure is very central to the one party and all laws and rules are based on communist philosophy, while the economic structure is not.\nBasically economy is driven by a very active trade system, while people living within the country are bound by the very restrictive rules and laws of the country.\n\nAlso, China appears wealthy because it does not put as much money back into the infrastructure of the country. Also, you are comparing a country that focuses on production, has drastically lower wages and a bigger poverty problem.",
"Mao and Stalin had a split over differing beliefs on how a country should be run.\n\nChina is ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. They do not hold general elections. They hold elections from within the party. The country is ruled by a committee. Everything about this is fairly similar to your standard Communist type of party.\n\nThe main difference is that Mao wanted parts of capitalism. He wanted the trade opportunities, he wanted investment capital, he wanted prosperity. So he opened the country into a mixed system that would allow for central government with a single ruling party while allowing for good relations with America.\n\nOne would ask, is any country really communist. Communists have long argued that none of the communist countries of the 20th century were \"true\" communist countries because they were not a revolution from the proletariat but instead a revolution from peasants. This was in fact the charge of Karl Kautsky who believed revolution in Russia and China would not result in communism and it was this speaker that Lenin was specifically targeting when he began his own branch of socialist theory often referred to as Marxist-Leninist."
],
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Is China still a communist country?
And if it is still communist, based on how wealthy China is, should America consider communism? | [
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1v402j | Why do we find certain animals cute and certain animals gross? | Why do people (reddit) find cats to be cute and things like bats gross? Cats are pretty vicious too. Also we don't really find dangerous animals like tigers to be gross or cute. | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ceohmze"
],
"text": [
"I think it has to do with certain features they have, like large round eyes, rounded faces, soft fur or skin and the sounds they make that are somewhat compatible with that of a human baby triggering a maternal or paternal instinct to love and protect the creature. \"Gross\" things probably have to do with things like scales or mucus which could activate am instinct to be fearful or repulsed by these things because many poisonous, venomous or dangerous animals have these traits."
],
"score": [
5
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | Why do we find certain animals cute and certain animals gross?
Why do people (reddit) find cats to be cute and things like bats gross? Cats are pretty vicious too. Also we don't really find dangerous animals like tigers to be gross or cute. | [
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2fn8j1 | How do TV Street Magicians work? If actors are used then why does nobody expose them online? | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Any magician employing actors to fool people with would get non-disclosure agreements signed by the actors and could pursue civil action (i.e. lawsuits) if they did speak out. So there is little to be gained from actors speaking out since people already know magic acts are trickery, and potentially a lot to lose like the actors job or future job prospects or paying for a lawsuit.",
"I don't think they're all actors. Surely they have an assistant or two helping out, like when the card suddenly appears behind a store window, etc. Distraction techniques, sleight of hand and power of persuasion are serious forces. I've had my watch removed from my arm when I thought I was being alert for any trickery.",
"Some tricks do not use actors, but some indeed do. One of the best examples, IMO, is in David Blaine's \"Street Magic\" special. The show teases viewers with shots of his \"levitations\" with what I believe are genuine reactions from people on the street. But in these circumstances the camera never shows his feet. In he one shot where his feet are shown, here actors are used. A different method was used for this levitation and then a shot was taken with actors being amazed. For more information on this sort of thing see Penn and Teller's :Off the Deep End.\"\n\nSource: I'm an amateur magician.",
"99% of the people who witness these performances know there was a helper after they rethink the magic trick. Street magic is all about that moment where we see the trick, in hindsight it's pretty easy to say that someone helped out while the magician was distracting the audience.",
"Plenty of people have exposed these guys. For example: [Secrets of Street Magicians Revealed!](_URL_0_)\n\nThe TLDR: this guy proposes that Blaine edits down longer interactions with the audience that would've explained how he has time to set up his reveals.",
"Former semi-pro closeup magician here, have done some street work myself (I was once \"invited to leave\" Caesar's Palace in Vegas for the crime of entertaining their guests without them making a profit on it).\n\n*Most* street magicians you see on TV are \"honest.\" That is, what you are seeing is a reasonable representation of what you would have seen if you'd been there. Maybe there's a little light editing, but for the most part, it's representative. If the stuff they're doing seems almost like REAL magic, it's because what they're doing is what's called \"closeup magic,\" and you've probably never seen anybody do it competently before, much less well. Closeup magic is nothing like big-box stage magic, it happens literally right in front of your face. Stooges are *almost never* used in closeup magic.\n\nNow let's set the Wayback Machine...\n\nFrom the earliest days of televised magic, there has been an unwritten code among magicians for doing magic on TV: no camera tricks, no deceptive editing. Period. The reason is obvious: with camera tricks and editing, *anybody* can be the world's greatest magician. But if anybody can be, nobody is. Furthermore, people who come to see you perform live are always going to be disappointed, because you can't do any of that stuff live.\n\nI know magicians who are fanatical about this; one of them actually threatened to walk off the show if they went ahead with their cutesy plan of using a dissolve to make it seem like he appeared on stage by magic.\n\nBut guys like Copperfield started to push the boundaries of that policy. Some of his most famous televised tricks involved the use of *seriously* controlled camera angles and \"live audiences\" that weren't quite what they seemed. IOW, if you'd happened by the location of the trick, you would see something VERY different than what was shown on TV.\n\nAnd then David Blaine just crapped in the pool. In his first two TV specials, he made *outrageous* use of deceptive editing tricks, and even a few actual special effects. Furthermore, to get the one hour of footage of people reacting to him like he was The Second Coming, he filmed over 100 hours of footage. Do the same cheap trick enough times, and you'll eventually get somebody who reacts like that. Prior to the TV specials, Blaine was nobody special, they impression the TV shows left was that he was the Best Street Magician in the world. Most of us in the magic world had never heard of him.\n\nThen guys like Criss Angel took up the mantel and started pretty much just doing whatever the hell they wanted with stooges, editing, and special effects. That's about the time I stopped watching magic on TV.",
"Plenty of them don't use any actors or unannounced assistant. There's a huge collection of tricks a single person can do that are plenty hard to explain - even for other magicians. \n\nThere was a great show a few years ago where people had to try and do a trick Penn and Teller couldn't explain, and quite a few people who did street performances were on. A few of them did tricks Penn and Teller couldn't explain in conditions when it was guaranteed they used nothing but what they brought on stage with them.",
"lol expose them? The vast majority of them are not taking anybody's money, giving life advice, or making predictions. The best reaction they can get is \"how the hell did you do that?\", not \"you must really have magic powers!\""
],
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} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": [
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx1InfybhsY"
]
} | train_eli5 | How do TV Street Magicians work? If actors are used then why does nobody expose them online?
| [
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75vq38 | do screws used in surgery truly turn to bone? If so, how? | If one needed surgery on their knee and they used screws to hold it together again, the doctor mentions that it is undetectable by metal detectors and will turn to bone eventually. How does this happen, if that is at all accurate? | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"do9ard5",
"do9anp5"
],
"text": [
"There is a type of surgical screw that is made from polylactic acid and hydroxylapatite. The polylactic acid will slowly dissolve into your body and disappear leaving behind the hydroxylapatite which is a main component in your bones. In time your body will \"fill in the gaps\" left by the polylactic acid leaving you with essentially a bone plug instead of a hole where the screw was. This is quite an upgrade from previous technologies which generally required a second surgery to remove the screws after you had healed.",
"Most medical screws and fixtures are just metal. It's cheap and easy to use. There ARE degradeable mineral-based screws available. These screws are made of *hydroxyapatite* which is the same mineral your body makes to make bone tissue, so on a molecular level it fuses with bone and as bone tissue in constantly being broken down and reassembled on a microscopic scale, the hydroxyapatite screws will eventually be gone."
],
"score": [
39,
9
]
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | {
"url": []
} | train_eli5 | do screws used in surgery truly turn to bone? If so, how?
If one needed surgery on their knee and they used screws to hold it together again, the doctor mentions that it is undetectable by metal detectors and will turn to bone eventually. How does this happen, if that is at all accurate? | [
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