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6t15wg | why does half-and-half have a 2 month expiration date if milk expires in 3 weeks or so? | And they're both dairy products? Why can't milk have that long of a shelf life? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6t15wg/eli5_why_does_halfandhalf_have_a_2_month/ | {
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"The water in milk is host to the bacteria that spoil milk. They cannot live in pure fat -- butter doesn't spoil by \"going sour\" (bacterial action) it only \"gets rancid\" (oxidizes). The less water you have, the less bacteria get to live in their happy place. \n\nHalf and half is half cream, thus, has less water content to provide a home for bacteria. In addition, the creaminess covers the distinct \"cooked\" taste of ultrapasteurization. Ultra pasteurization kills more bacteria leaving the starting product more sterile. However, in the US, consumers prefer the taste of standard pasteurization. Usually only cream products are ultrapasteurized. ",
"Half & Half is pasteurized more intensely than regular milk is - pasteurization can reduce the appealing 'taste' of the dairy product, but this is not much of a problem with half & half since it is used to add to other things rather than drinking it directly. The increase pasteurization improves its shelf life.\n\nFat content also plays a role since it inhibits bacteria - you can refrigerate butter by itself for quite a long time. Milk has more water content (which the bacteria lives in) allowing it to process the lactose"
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4urhs1 | when current is passing through a complex circuit filled with resistors, capacitors, and inductors, how does it know ahead of time what the path of least resistance is? does it send electrons out through all possible paths and then pick which one has the least resistance? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4urhs1/eli5when_current_is_passing_through_a_complex/ | {
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"It's easier to picture circuit flow like a series of pipes. If you were to branch a pipe and restrict flow through one end, most of the water would flow out the other. The water doesn't \"know\" anything nor test out which is the easiest. But rather the incoming water pushes against the water in the restricted path and the open path. Since the water in the restricted path pushes back more, most of the water goes through the open one instead.",
"It's a common misconception to believe that electricity *only* follows the path of least resistance. \n\nIn truth it follows all the paths that are available. The less resistance a path has, the more electricity will flow through it.\n\nRemember that electricity is moving electrons. Some materials have lots of stuff for the electrons to smash into, and some don't have very much. The materials with less stuff for the electrons to smash into (aka less resistance) will obviously allow more electrons to pass through (aka current). ",
"I see a few good answers that touch the right topics. I'm gonna try to explain with an extended analogy. Electrical resistance is really just a number describing how difficult it is to push a bunch of electric charge through some material. It should all make sense soon.\n\nSay you have a table covered with jars of different sizes and a lot of ping pong balls. Without aiming for any particular jar, you toss a ping pong ball at the table. Assuming the ball has to fall into a jar, the whole table surface is covered with jars, and the ball is equally likely to fall on any point on the table. Which jar is the ball most likely to fall in? The one with the biggest diameter? Why is that? If the probability of the ball falling on any coordinate on the table is the same, then the jar with the most \"coordinates\" is the likeliest to get the ball.\n\nNow, let's imagine that some jars have false bottoms which the balls fall through and the jar gets emptied. We also start shoveling ping pong balls onto table, so that many balls go into jars quickly. You can see that while initially the jars without false bottoms will get balls at a rate consistent with their cross-sectional area, once they are full, they will no longer get new balls. Perhaps one of the balls might balance on the others, but that is highly unlikely, more likely it will simply roll over to the closest empty jar. \n\nNow, we're gonna get even less realistic, and switch from ping pong balls to iron balls and fill up each jar with a liquid of different density. Except in this case all jars have false bottoms which only lets the iron balls through when they sink to the bottom, never any of the liquid. Ignore any splashing. You can see how the jar filled with honey is going to significantly slow the balls, causing new balls falling on it to get rejected. Compare that to the jar filled with water or oil, those jars will have more balls falling through. \n\nSo that's pretty much it. Electrical resistivity is electrical resistance of the material times the cross sectional area of the specimen divided by the length of the specimen. In my ball-jar analogy, resistance of the material is analogous to the density of the liquid in the jar. \n\n**Individual electrons chose their path randomly, but according to the different probabilities of choosing each path. But the current involves many orders of magnitudes of electrons, so collectively all electrons statistically chose the \"path of least resistance\", which is really the likeliest path.**\n\nI'm glossing over the fact individual electrons don't actually travel down the circuit, but electrons in a \"sea of electrons\" push neighboring electrons all along the way which moves electrical charge along the circuit. So really, the balls in the analogy is electrical charge, not electrons. I don't think that part is as relevant your question as the statistics aspects of it. "
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4qtktq | how are horseflies able to chase people for miles? | I would think that the tiny amount of blood they can get from biting a person would not be able to balance out the immense amount of calories they spend flying after you. Plus, all they do is bump into your head and don't usually bite unless you stand still, and even if they do bite, they are likely to be swatted before they have a chance to drink any blood. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qtktq/eli5_how_are_horseflies_able_to_chase_people_for/ | {
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"Insects in general do not think. An insect can't tell whether you're going to keep running or stop, and in a certain respect can't even tell that you're running in the first place. It's more useful to think of an insect as a little biological machine, and like a machine it only moves the way it's programmed to move. Sometimes this results in doing ineffective things like flying miles and miles to get a bit of blood when there's much easier blood to be had, but even if the individual insects that do things like that might end up not reproducing as a result, there are many many other insects, and most of them don't end up doing things like that, so it doesn't matter to the species when a few of them do. And since the decision-making capabilities necessary to avoid doing things like that wouldn't add any particular competitive advantage to the species as a whole, those capabilities aren't evolutionarily necessary, and the insects remain biological machines."
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81o5os | what are nat type and upnp and how do they affect my internet experience? | Basically all i know is what NAT AND UPNP Stand for and they seem to be causing me problems that my isp doesnt want to help me fix | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/81o5os/eli5_what_are_nat_type_and_upnp_and_how_do_they/ | {
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"Internet communications get where they are going using an address, your IP address, which is unique worldwide. If a message is sent to your IP it will get to you specifically. The address is recorded as 32 binary digits, or bits.\n\nThe problem then is that there are only 4 million combinations with 32 bits and a lot more than 4 million devices on the internet. To get around this smaller networks will have one IP address facing the internet at the router, and everything inside the network has a local or private IP address.\n\nNow when you send a message out to the internet expecting a reply your router repackages it with a special return code and sends it on. When it gets the reply with that return code it knows the reply is for you and not the router itself or your roommates phone. This is basically what NAT does, it translates between the public IP address and the private IP address. \n\nThis leaves another problem, you have to make the initial outgoing message so that your router can mark it, and now no-one can just send a new message to you first. So how do two people that are each behind a NAT router talk to each other if neither is able to listen?\n\nSome routers allow devices on the private network to tell them \"please forward me any messages you get with return code X\". If your program asks for this and the router supports it then it will set up this forwarding rule for you and you are now open to receiving messages and listening to anyone using that return code. The program you use is configured to use specific return codes, so it knows what return codes to send out with. This is, very basically, UPnP.\n\nSo NAT allows for one public IP address to sit in front of many private IP addresses and send messages back and forth keeping track of which messages are for whom. UPnP is asking your NAT to leave a messaging channel open for you.",
"NAT - Network Address Translation was invented in part to deal with the problem of the Internet running out of addresses.\n\nIPv4 (Internet Protocol Version 4) has a very finite number of IP addresses available for use (2^32 = 4+ billion) which is less than 1 for every person on earth. This was considered adequate when the standard was defined, but now with everyone owning multiple devices it's grossly inadequate.\n\nThe long term fix was implementation of IPv6 which was 128bits vs 32 bits for addresses, which is currently an ongoing process. But was far off in the early 90's when NAT was invented.\n\nThe idea comes from Telephone Switches or a PBX (private branch exchange). There are only so many phones lines coming into a business, less than 1:1. So when you make a call from you extension the local PBX opens one of these lines for you, and then closes it making it available for someone else when your done. The idea being that not everyone will be trying to make a call at the same time.\n\nNAT kinda does the same thing with IP addresses.\n\nThe first commercially available NAT device was actually called a Public Internet eXchange. More commonly known as a Cisco PIX. The ancestor to today's Cisco ASA.\n\nIn order to make this work computers are assigned un-routable (un-useable addresses on the web) similar to how you would assign an extension to a phone.\n\nIP space has been specifically reserved for this purpose. So any address 192.168.X.X, 172.16-32.X.X, or 10.X.X.X is reserved for NAT and is illegal to use on the web. In this way every business and home can use the same 192.168.X.X addresses and it's fine because they are locally unique and unusable on the web.\n\nA single public IP is assigned to your router by the ISP. As traffic leaves your network to go to the web the router alters the packets translating your computers internal IP to the public IP and then back again as the traffic returns.\n\nSo when you try to open Google for instance google won't see 192.168.1.103 (your PC) it will see the routers IP, something like 23.222.204.97\n\nWhen the traffic returns your router translates the address back to your internal IP and forwards the traffic to your computer. The magic is this all happens seamlessly as far as the source and destination devices are concerned.\n\nThe router keeps track of this connection by connection (Computer A is trying to talk to google, computer B is trying to talk with youtube, etc) by use source and destination ports.\n\nThe destination port will almost always be 80, or 443 for websites. But your computer by design will generate a pseudo-random source port as the source. Something like port 35468. By keeping track of this port in it's memory and comparing the port # on the incoming packets, the router knows who to forward returning traffic to, allowing multiple devices to connect to the web simultaneously with only a single public IP.\n\nThe catch with all this is that it only works in one direction.\n\nTraffic has to originate outbound, if traffic originates in-bound to your network the router won't know where to send the traffic. So you have to create what are called static-NAT rules to manually define where this traffic will go.\n\nFor instance all traffic inbound on port 80 gets forwarded to my webserver.\n\nFor most home users this is irrelevant because you probably won't be hosting anything that requires an in-bound connection like your own website or email server. But for a business this is critical.\n\nThe unexpected upside to this is that NAT acts as a great firewall, because it blocks all unwanted inbound traffic by design."
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3j4234 | why do a lot of people prefer a salary over contracted hourly wage? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3j4234/eli5why_do_a_lot_of_people_prefer_a_salary_over/ | {
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"Because you get a salary no matter what. You only get your wage if you can specifically prove that you were present and working for a particular amount of time. \n\nAlso, salaries usually come with benefits and contracts that are better than what you'll get in a wage-work job. ",
"Salaried jobs aren't dependent on hours spent working. With a year-long contract signed on a salaried job, you don't have the risk of somebody cutting your hours (which is legal) or decreasing your hourly pay suddenly (which is also legal).",
"1) A salary is dependable. It's much less likely than an hourly wage to get cut, and if it does you'll have substantial warning. If you're earning an hourly wage, you could come in tomorrow to find out you're only working half days until further notice.\n\n2) A salary is steady. An hourly wage can change from week to week, depending on number of hours worked. A salary is the same amount each pay period, making planning for future expenses slightly easier.\n\n3) Salary jobs are flexible. If you need to take some time off to take care of a sick kid, having a salary position usually means that you can just make up those hours in the evenings or on a weekend. As long as you're getting the work done, the exact hours you work are less important."
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1ohl1y | why is falsification considered the line between science and pseudoscience? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ohl1y/eli5_why_is_falsification_considered_the_line/ | {
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"It's only one line. But to answer your question, if a claim cannot be tested, if it isn't subject to refutation, analysis, debunking, or re-evaluation, it isn't a scientific claim. "
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7p6efy | do clouds muffle the sound of thunder (or other sounds)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7p6efy/eli5_do_clouds_muffle_the_sound_of_thunder_or/ | {
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"The way sound is muffled when going through some sort of foam material is that the air has to be pushed through the small holes, reducing the speed at which the air moves and turning that energy into heat. Clouds consist of very small droplets of air, kinda like very fine dust - which move with the air rather than rubbing against it.\n\n"
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4t75wd | definition of "metafiction" and some examples of it? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4t75wd/eli5_definition_of_metafiction_and_some_examples/ | {
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"Metafiction is used when a writer alludes to the fact that the thing the reader is experiencing is in fact just a story, but they do so within the story itself.\n\nCommon metafictional elements include the author inserting themselves into the story, characters acknowledging they are in a story, a character in the story writing a story that itself refers to the story in which that character exists, characters or the narrator directly addressing the reader, characters that refer to other works by the same author of the story they're in, etc.\n\nDeadpool is probably the most obvious big recent example. He's totally aware that he's in a superhero movie, addresses the audience directly, makes references to things from other films that characters in the movies wouldn't understand (like when he asks \"McAvoy or Stewart?\" when he's told that he's being taken to see the professor), etc. ",
" \"Meta\" is a prefix that roughly means \"self-referring.\" If part of something is meta, it means that part is related to or talking about the thing it's a part of. If I tell you this is the third sentence in my comment, it is a meta fact because this fact about my comment is contained within my comment. Get it?\n\nMetafiction can be several things, all of which are contained in a fictional story that refer to the audience or story. It's a literary device with many forms and uses.\n\nExamples: \n\nCharacters in a story that say \"this crap never happens in the stories.\"\n\n\"Recap\" episodes of a TV show - Avatar, the Last Airbender has an episode where the main character watch a theatrical production of their adventures so far. The whole thing was a commentary about the story so far.\n\nIf something unbelievable happens to a character, and the character says \"I can't believe that happened,\" the author just let you know they agree, but can we please move on... This is often referred to as hanging a lampshade.\n_URL_0_\n\nAlso, The Neverending Story. That is all.\n\n\n"
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40m6om | gravitanional waves | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40m6om/eli5_gravitanional_waves/ | {
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"There's a general scientific belief that gravity isn't an instant effect and *something* travels at the speed of light causing the effects of gravity, between 2 objects, in a similar way to how light does.\n\nIf something big enough and fast enough moves across the sky, its gravity will sweep along, like a wave. Imagine sweeping your hand through some perfectly calm water .... it will create a wave of water, eminating sideways from and behind your hand."
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16vi3s | what is the real difference and benefit of all the different cylinder engines?(4,6,8,10,12) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16vi3s/what_is_the_real_difference_and_benefit_of_all/ | {
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"There are two ways to make an engine more powerful (and then there's also optimizations and such): you can make the cylinders larger, or you can add more of them. Making the cylinders larger will add more power, but adding more cylinders will make the engine smoother (this is because internal combustion engines only have power one instant every other time they go around—adding more cylinders can make that power more distributed over time).\n\nSo for example, if you were comparing a 500CC one cylinder engine and a 500CC four cylinder engine, the first would have a lot more power, but the latter would be a lot smoother.\n\nAlso because of all the power in fewer cylinders, they can be hard to start. I tried to kick start a one cylinder 500CC bike once, and I couldn't get the thing to move at all (I believe it did have some mechanism that I didn't know about to make this easier though).",
"When the car-maker decides what engine to put into his new car, he has a lot of things to think about. Of course, power is one thing, but also how much fuel will get used, how complicated it is to make and maintain, and how expensive the whole thing will be also need to be taken into consideration.\n\nMost cars have 4-cylinder engines because they use the Otto cycle; each piston needs to go up and down twice to produce any power, and only produces that power on the final down-stroke. Since it's only making power 25% of the time, you need four of 'em to make constant power.\n\nThe simplest way to arrange these cylinders is all in a row, like chimney pots or milk bottles. But if your car is particularly small you might want them in a V-shape to make the engine wider but shorter, or you might even try laying them down flat facing away from each other, known as a boxer engine. These configurations allow for small, light, compact engines that can be fitted to small city cars. Because they're small and light, you can spin the engine up to high speed very quickly which is great for the stop-start traffic of a busy town, but because they're so small they'll never make much power. Even to make decent power you need to get them spinning very fast all the time, and that can be really noisy and tiring if you're going for a long drive like on a motorway.\n\nIf you want more power, you therefore have two options; make the cylinders bigger, or add more cylinders. The first idea seems to be the simplest, and it is *up to a point*. But once cylinders get too big, they just can't burn all the fuel inside them quickly enough, meaning the engine can't reach a very high speed. For slow-moving trucks and machines, that's fine, but for cars that change their speeds regularly, we need an engine that can react as soon as we press the gas pedal. So it's a lot better to put more normal-sized cylinders in the engine, than a small number of massive cylinders.\n\nHow many is up to the manufacturer. The original issue was balance; all those pistons thumping down into the engine would make things wobble, so you had to organise your pistons in a way to reduce that wobbling. Audi and BMW had engines with 5 cylinders, but these are fairly costly to produce. Peugeot, Renault and Volvo put their faith in V6 engines, while BMW prefer a straight-6 which is better balanced but harder (i.e. more expensive) to make \"perfectly\". Americans love big V8 engines which are little more than two inline-4 cylinder engines locked together in a balanced pair, which is very easy to make and can give a lot of power, but is too large and heavy to put in small cars. \n\nThe 10 and 12 cylinder engines are very, very smoothly balanced and make great power, but they're complex, heavy and expensive to make, which is why they only show up in top-level models.\n\nIt would be great to have an inline-12 cylinder engine, but it would make the front of the car about 3 metres long, which is awful for parking.\n"
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txqbn | satellite internet connection? | I'm curious as to why companies like DIRECTV/Dish can't offer services like this and why they usually are tacked on to bundles instead. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/txqbn/eli5_satellite_internet_connection/ | {
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"The infrastructure to build a two-way data link is pretty different than what's required for a one-way broadcast. So, it's not that they *can't* offer the service, it's that they don't want to. They've determined it's not in their business interest to be an internet service provider."
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2rt4mo | what is the difference between android and iphone's mms abilities? | Now I know reddit loves Android so please don't tear me apart until reading the whole thing. I recently switched from an iPhone 4 to an HTC One (M8) and I absolutely love my new phone, but I noticed that for some reason iPhone has much better MMS capabilities. On my android I can't send more than two pictures without them being blurry or overly compressed, I can't send a video that's any longer than .1 seconds (exaggerating, of course), and if someone sends me a video it is always blurry no matter what. I thought it was just my phone, but I noticed from other friends with Android that it is the same way. On my iPhone I could send pretty long videos and not lose quality, I could send 10+ with no problems, any video I got from an Android phone was blurry, and overall things just felt like the phone wasn't struggling like my phone now. What is difference between the two and why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rt4mo/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_android_and/ | {
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"You were most likely not using MMS on your iPhone, but iMessage. There are some Android apps that can do this from app-to-app, but IOS is integrated."
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5u738m | can someone please explain the mechanisms behind "overcharging" and damaging your phone battery? | I heard that if you leave your phone on charge when it's on 100% it can damage the battery. I was skeptical, but I have no knowledge of batteries or technology. Could someone please explain this to me?
I'm sure most people do this, so hopefully will be of some interest.
Thanks in advance. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5u738m/eli5_can_someone_please_explain_the_mechanisms/ | {
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"It used to be possible with older batteries, and you also had to avoid charging it too often as well, but modern batteries cut themselves out from the power when they're fully charged. They will also leave the battery with a very small amount of charge when the phone dies to prolong the battery life and keep the internal clock going too.\n\nBasically, lithium batteries would overheat when left plugged in, which would cause damage to the battery over time.\n\n* Source: [Older batteries shouldn't be allowed to overcharge because they would overheat -- \"modern devices are way smarter with managing power\"](_URL_1_)\n* Source: [Old batteries would have a limited number of recharge cycles -- \"with modern Li-ion batteries, you don't need to worry about performing shallow charges.\"](_URL_0_)",
"Modern device batteries have their own internal logic to control the input and the output of power. They come programmed with a safe range of charge and would not let you charge beyond an upper limit or discharge below a lower limit.\n\nTherefore you cannot overcharge your battery unless you're using a device from the 90's with those ancient nickel-cadmium chemistry.\n\nThe worst enemy of your battery is heat. This is what slowly chips away its efficiency. Unfortunately heat is a byproduct of both charging and discharging process, therefore there isn't much you can do to improve your battery life (apart from not using it, that is).",
"You charge a battery by forcing electricity through it backwards. So if you have a 12-volt car battery the alternater and charger and such can put up to 18 volts across the terminals. That extra 6 volts forces the electrons to go in the \"electrons come out here\" side of the battery.\n\nBatteries work through chemistry. You take some stuff (usually metal) and make a sandwich of the stuff around some other stuff (usually some acid or alkali). The middle stuff dissolves the metals releasing electrons and pushing them one way or another.\n\nSo your car battery is a lead-acid battery, and your flashlight takes D-cells that used to be carbon/acid, but are now (something I don't remember)/alkaline. So that's what an \"alkaline battery\" is.\n\nSo some batteries, like lead-acid, are easy to charge because the chemestry is really easy to reverse. Other batteries are just about impossible to charge because it's like trying to un-burn a log. This second type is the normal batteries and alkaline batteries you buy from the store. They just aren't _safely_ rechargeable.\n\nWhy? They tend to catch fire and explode, or when you run the electricity through them backwards they don't produce the same chemicals they were built with.\n\nSo we've always had the big rechargable lead/acid batteries. But making little ones has required a lot of development.\n\nThere are different bad things things that can happen when you recharge a battery...\n\nFor example the metal in the metal sandwich can fall apart from being repeatedly changed and changed back. This is why car batteries go bad. The lead flakes off and eventually the flakes form a conductor from the two sides of the sandwich and that fraction of the battery becomes useless. The typical 12 volt car battery has six sandwiches so when you lose a cell it's now a 10 volt battery. Lose another and it's an 8 volt battery and that's not enough to do the job.\n\nThe battery can get hot and literally \"cook\". So the modern lithium-ion batteries have little thermostats in them and as you charge them they get warm, and the warmer they get the less electricity they can stand to take, so the thermostat slows down the charging by slowing down the current. That's part of why your \"quick charger\" for your phone will, on an empty battery, charge to 80% real fast and then take longer and longer to get to 100%. It got warm as fast as it got charged and so it can't charge to full without slowing down.\n\nFinally there's that whole thing where batteries \"get memory\". This is not what's happening. As you charge and discharge some kinds of batteries they get pits and cook into new chemicals \"fractionally\" So every time you recharged the old batteries you \"used up\" a little of teh metal or the acid/alkali. With some of the material used up, the total amount of available stuff to make electriciy was reduced and the batteries lost their \"capacity to hold a charge.\" People called this \"memory\" because it was easier. But in truth you were more likely to ruin a battery by \"topping it off\" than you were likely to ruin it by charging a nearly dead battery. So it _seemed_ like frequent short charges were \"remembered\". But, no..\n\nSo finally, what is over charging.\n\nEach sandwich inside any battery has a limit to how much electricity it can store. If you reach that limit and _persist_ in forcing electricity through it backwards then it _can't_ save any of that electricity as chemicals. So it _cooks_. Heat is generated and the good chemicals may bake or burn.\n\nFor instance, as your car battery dies the headlights visibly dim. This is because the 12 volts becomes 11, then 10, then 9 (and so on) as you use up the stored energy. And as you charge the 9 become 10 then 11 and 12. (the actual peak number is something like 13 volts for a car battery, but let's stick with 12.)\n\nThe charge/voltage regulator in your car stops charging the battery when the target 12 volts is reached because after that it's just doing damage. But if you've ever had a junker car that \"Eats Batteries\" you know it was really that your voltage regulator went bad. It wen't bad by being unable to stop the \"overcharging\".\n\nNow over time, because of different battery materials _and_ by the proliferation of _better_ electronics, the whole \"overcharging\" thing has largely gone away. We simply got better at the whole task from every angle.\n\nBut we still hear of whole phones (by part number) that are \"prone to explode\". This happens when the phone in question, or the battery pack itself, has a design fault or was built with inferior parts. The bad design, or bad parts, lets the battery take in, or give out, too much electricity too fast. It gets hot. It get's unstable. And then it goes \"boom\".\n\nThat's overcharging in a nutshell.",
"What batteries are you talking about? Phones nowadays are generally smart enough to disconnect the charger voltage from the battery when the battery is charged.\n\nRechargeable batteries generally convert electrical energy to chemical energy and back again, as needed. They do this best under specific conditions, over a limited range of temperature, for example. Li-ion batteries like in our phones are most efficient when charged between 50% and 80%. They do this through reversible electrochemical reactions. If you discharge them to 0% and charge them back to 100%, often some measure of irreversible chemical reaction occurs.\n\nIf you want a specific explanation of the irreversible chemical reaction, can you provide a specific battery or application for the inquiry?"
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"https://www.howtogeek.com/169669/debunking-battery-life-myths-for-mobile-phones-tablets-and-laptops/",
"http://www.androidauthority.com/battery-myths-688089/"
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ckm0uy | what happens to your mortgage if your lender fails? | Let's say I'm a Canadian guy who got a loan to buy my house. I pay my lender every month, but then they fail. What happens next? I assume that I still have a debt to that institution, but what happens if they're not around to collect. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ckm0uy/eli5_what_happens_to_your_mortgage_if_your_lender/ | {
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"Another company will buy all of your lender's debt, including your mortgage, and you will now owe this new company instead.",
"When institutions fail, their assets will usually be bought up by other institutions. So if your mortgage company fails, another company will buy their debt and you now owe that company instead.",
"That depends on how the fail. If they get bought up by someone else, the dept also are transferred, if they go bankrupt completely, the people handling the bankruptcy might sell the dept, how to whom or with what consequences depends details of the canadian law I am not familiar with.",
"Mortgage 's are bought and sold all the time by financial institutions. Makes no difference if they are doing well, or close to failure.",
"I’ve bought three houses and in every case the original lender has sold my loan to another company."
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71dm38 | how does salt soften water? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/71dm38/eli5_how_does_salt_soften_water/ | {
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"It doesn't. The resin beads that the salt back-washes over is actually what is making water soft.\n\nYou can't pour salt into water to make it soft. The way water softeners work is via an ion exchange system. Hard water with calcium and magnesium pass over resin beads coated with sodium ions. When the water passes over the resin beads, it \"pulls\" the calcium and magnesium out whilst \"dropping\" sodium ions out. Thus, you add a small volume of salt to your water as a consequence. But it isn't adding salt that's making the water soft, it's taking calcium and magnesium out."
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2ffk6s | why does every human civilization discovered have some of the same core practices as each other? ie: bread, writing, marriage, religion, etc | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ffk6s/eli5_why_does_every_human_civilization_discovered/ | {
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"I think the easiest way to explain why these things were successful is that they were the best. \n\nThe best ways to survive survive. \n\nBread is a high calorie food source that is highly reliable and somewhat drought resistant. \n\nWriting allows you to pass ideas along to new generations, exponentially increasing how we thrive. \n\nMarriage was effective because it provided stability within the family. Women were highly vulnerable for 9 months and couldn't survive on their own. Therefore, women would seek out partners who would stick around to ensure the baby was raised successfully. \n\nReligion is a little different, but probably just comes down to a simple explanation. We all saw the same things. The sun, the stars, the rain and the wind so we all came up with similar answers. ",
"Bread is far from universal. Ever been to Asia? Bread can be incredibly hard to come by outside of tourist areas even today."
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9s9v04 | why do strongmen often have big guts and you never see body builders in "world strongest" competitions? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9s9v04/eli5_why_do_strongmen_often_have_big_guts_and_you/ | {
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"Fat feeds muscle. While body builders are impressive looking with their swollen, well defined muscles; they are more or less starving themselves to look like that. Meanwhile strong men tend to focus not so much on look as on actual strength so their muscles are actually more well nourished and strong. ",
"Strongmen have big guts because all the strongmen exercises revolve around core muscle strength. They might look fat, but they have a ton of muscle, and it's cincentrated around the abs, glutes, and back.\n\nThis isn't always the most sightly muscle, which is why body builders and strongmen are mostly mutually exclusive",
"Bodybuilders alternate two kinds of training:\n\n* \"bulking\"- where they train intensively to get bigger muscles and eat a lot, prioritizing stuff that helps grow muscles. But they also gain fat from that.\n* \"cutting\"- where they go on a very strict diet to eliminate fat, while training lightly to maintain the muscles as much as possible.\n\nThe cutting actually makes the bodybuilder weaker, but is neccessary to achieve the \"ripped\" look. Right before the competition they also dehydrate themselves. It's not unheard of for bodybuilders to faint on stage.\n\nStrongman don't do cutting because it doesn't help them get strong. They just keep the fat they gain while building muscles.",
"The occasional strongman does look more like a bodubuilder e.g. Mariusz Pudzianowski.\n\nBut generally the eat huge amounts to build muscle but they aren't so bothered about keeping body fat down as it doesn't impede their performance much.\n\nGiven how intense the training and eating is for strongman it just isn't worth adding aesthetic considerations too. It would probably limit their strength gains which is what they really focus on.",
"Because most top strongmen don't have a weight limit for their class. They can make their total muscle mass higher if they allow their body fat to be higher. This means they can be stronger. This is different from other strength sports like powerlifting, where most competitors have an upper limit as defined by their weight class. In powerlifting, you don't want to be fat. If you can only weigh 181.7 lbs to stay in your weight class, you want as much of that to be muscle as you can muster (to a certain limit, as being excessively lean does start to impact performance).\n\nIn body building, being lean is the name of the game. These guys are at their strongest in the off season, when they are at their fattest. On stage, they tend to be very dehydrated, and very weak. They are prone to getting cramps on stage. Doing lots of super heavy work isn't really useful for their goals.\n\nTop strongmen and top bodybuilders are both pretty strong. But being very lean isn't very useful for maximizing absolute strength, and being fat isn't very good for bodybuilding. They're different sports, and have different criteria to win."
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daq305 | why do most processers have twice the threads than the number of cores? | Was just watching an ltt video and was wondering. Ex: 8 core 16 thread |16 core 32 thread | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/daq305/eli5_why_do_most_processers_have_twice_the/ | {
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"Before we had cores we had hyper threading where a CPU could natively divide into two virtual processors. \n\nThe cpu maintains two sets of registers so splitting workloads is more efficient than in software multi threading.",
"Because that's how [hyper-threading](_URL_0_) works. It is a mechanism that allows each physical processor core to act as two separate virtual cores, allowing the operating system to execute two threads on that core in parallel."
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9hvzg9 | how do movies make such realistic-looking fictional characters? | I'm talking about the likes of [Thanos](_URL_0_) from Infinity War; these characters look so incredibly detailed and their movements and voicing so natural, that it's almost hard to imagine how they were made. Are they simply modelled in extremely detailed 3D? Are they computer-edited scenes of real people in heavy makeup? Why are video games so behind on character movements and face animations compared to these movie characters? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9hvzg9/eli5_how_do_movies_make_such_realisticlooking/ | {
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"Videogames have the disadvantage of needing to be rendered in real-time. When you push a button you expect a response immediately, not *after* the hardware has made a ton of passes on lighting and shadows and all that. With a movie, time is on their side to render everything as it doesn't need to be 60 frames, on your screen, this very instant, and the hardware can do more work to make it more realistic even if it takes 60 seconds per frame rather than 60 frames per second to render. Also they generally (or at least used to) use whole farms of computers to do things like Pixar movies and other Full CG stuff. A single PlayStation 2 could do some impressive stuff for its time, but you would need tons of PS2s somehow all networked together to be able to work together to render something like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which IIRC came out during the PS2's lifecycle.",
"In movies you use motion and face capture of real actors most of the time so you can create another face using there movement and voice.\n\nYou can look hot they are captured _URL_0_ That in combination with a large special effect team that can look at the face and change how it move compared to a human face. \n\nSo you need to preform all possible moment with a actor and find a way to stitch them together as you can constantly look at a character in a game but a movie will cut to another scene.\n\nSo you could do a full motion but you would need to do more then in a move as the number of possible motion is a game is large compare to a simple fix script in a move. \n\nDoing it for a film is expensive but game would be more complex and you would need to do that for all characters. So it would be expensive.\n\nAnother problem is the uncanny valley. look at _URL_1_ and notice that the human face look ok but the alien look good. The problem is that we know how human looks so we can see any imperfection. So a almost perfect human look worse then bad human imitation. The bad imitation is obvious not a human so we accept it. But the almost human face is intreprited as a human but there is somting wrong with them. So we like the bad face better\n\nA example is the Recreated Grand Moff Tarkin and princess Leia from Rogue One _URL_2_ Ships, androids and aliens look good but the human does not.\n\nSo it is extremely hard to create good human faces that is what is common in games.\n\n"
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f7zy8y | what determines the limits of how in shape a person can get? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f7zy8y/eli5_what_determines_the_limits_of_how_in_shape_a/ | {
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"First, what kind of shape do you want to be in? A basketball player looks very different from a ballerina or a sumo wrestler. If I trained to become an Olympic long-distance runner or swimmer, I’d probably stop menstruating, which would make me less able to accomplish a goal of motherhood.\n\nOnce you have set the goal for which shape you want to be, all kinds of factors such as genetics, epigenetics, childhood, diet, exercise, culture, and opportunity come into play.",
"Genetics set the ceiling. It's very hard work and consistency that will get you as close to your genetic potential as possible. \n\nI might also add, using PEDS (Performance Enhancing Drugs) will drastically increase what you are able to accomplish as opposed to being natural.",
"There are genetic effects, but past history of nutrition and exercise are also factors.\n\nNo amount of working out will make you as fast as Usain Bolt.",
"Genetics will come into play along the line but motivation is the deciding factor in most people far before they notice the limitations of their own genetics.\n\nObviously having medical conditions that prevent you from working out is the exception to this."
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4frxh4 | why are nvidia's gpu chips ideal for deep learning while cpus like intel's are not? | Nvidia is booming in today's machine learning craze while Intel had to cut 12000 jobs to stay afloat and it's future seems bleak.
Can someone explain why a GPU chip is so great at this compared to CPUs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4frxh4/eli5why_are_nvidias_gpu_chips_ideal_for_deep/ | {
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"The biggest difference between CPU and a GPU is that CPU is designed for general purpose computing, meaning it's supposed to be able to handle large amount of different tasks and change between them quickly. A GPU is more like a Chinese sweat shop, where you have tons of cores doing the exact same thing over and over again.",
"* CPU stands for Central Processing Unit. A CPU has relatively few processor cores. That means it can do only a few calculations simultaneously but it can run advanced calculations. So if you want to follow a complicated set of instructions but work only with one or two variables, then a CPU would be good at that.\n\n* A GPU or Graphics Processing Unit is good at doing a simple calculation on large numbers of variables at the same time. It’s like a lot of really primitive CPUs that all respond to the same instruction. So if you have a matrix of numbers and you want to add it to another matrix and divide by a number, a GPU is good for that. A lot of the calculations needed to display graphics on a screen need this kind of calculations. But you wouldn’t use a GPU for editing text, for example, as that doesn’t involve simple calculations in parallel.\n\n# Why are GPUs popular for deep learning?\n\nA lot of the deep learning that’s getting hyped now are these applications made by Google and others, where you have a neural network and you can give it an image, and it can tell you, for example, what breed of cat it is. These are normally a kind of neural network called Convolutional Neural Networks. They work by taking an input image as a matrix and repeatedly applying simple matrix operations to it. The algorithms are optimised so that the input image is often 256x256 because this makes efficient use of the number of processing cores in the Nvidia GPUs. The operations are simplified to addition/subtraction/multiplication as much as possible so that a GPU can do it quickly.\n\nIt is possible to run a convolutional neural network on a CPU but it is very slow. In particular what is critical is that to make a network that recognises dogs, cats, etc, you need to have enormous numbers of example images called your training set, and you need to pass them through the network millions and millions of times, each time making small tweaks to make the network more accurate in recognising what it needs to recognise. This is essentially donkey work: adding and multiplying stuff by the same stuff in enormous amounts. This is what GPUs are good at!\n\nI tried to train a Convolutional Neural Network on my laptop (which only has a CPU) to recognise two different company logos on labels. It was taking a long time. I calculated it would take almost 2 months to finish. Later I bought one Nvidia GPU and I trained my neural network, and it took a few hours. I sped up my deep learning by a factor of 160 with just one GPU. GPUs aren't smarter than CPUs, just that they can do lots of donkey work faster!\n\nThe biggest manufacturers of GPUs are two companies: Nvidia and AMD. The most popular software used in deep learning are frameworks called Caffe, Theano, and Torch. They all work with Nvidia. If you wanted to use them with GPUs manufactured by AMD you would have to hack something. Since everyone already uses Nvidia, it would be hard for one person to go against the flow and use a different GPU and still stay competitive. So we have a “winner takes all” situation!\n\ntl;dr GPUs are like a team of donkeys, good for lots of simple tasks simultaneously. It’s useful for deep learning because that involves doing the same simple task many times over so better to do more than one thing at once and cut the time. Nvidia already has the largest market share so that makes it even more popular."
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1arz3e | what is metaphysics? | Wow! I was not expecting this much attention. I will try to read through all of your comments, and the material you have provided. Thank you, by the way.
Edit: This reached the front page! You guys are awesome. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1arz3e/eli5_what_is_metaphysics/ | {
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"It isn't really a type of science. It is actually a part of philosophy (one of MANY). Metaphysics is meant to explain what things *are.*\n\nIf I were to ask you what a pencil was you would say that it is a tool used for writing. Metaphysics asks what makes a pencil a pencil. At what point does the graphite, wood and rubber create our concept of a \"pencil\"? When these parts are separate they have a different identity than when they come together as a whole. Imagine you had a machine that could take any thing you put in it and tell you things like its mass and what it is made of. It wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a pencil and that same pencil after you snapped it in half. But in our own minds we think of these, essentially identical things, as different. \n\nRegular physics describes the rules of things we can usually touch or see. Metaphysics describes the rules of things in our mind. Its like *THOUGHT PHYSICS!*\n\nPhilosophy, metaphysics in particular, is pretty interesting. If you ever get a chance take a Philosophy 101 class. If you have any more questions on metaphysics or philosophy in general I'd be thrilled to answer.\n\nEdited to be more ELI5 friendly, and because I'm a horrible writer.",
"Here is an awesome introduction to metaphysics: \n\n[1959 - Donald Duck - Donald in Mathmagic Land](_URL_0_) \n \nPlease give it a chance, I hope you enjoy it! (this is not a joke, this is a fantastic way to introduce kids to metaphysics and I honestly feel that it fits perfectly here in ELI5)",
"These are all not quite correct. The name metaphysics refers to the book that follows the physics in Aristotle's collected works. Hence it was called the beyond-physics, the metaphysics.\n\nIn general, metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with such topics as being (ontology), what sort of things exist, and \"things that do not change\". \nHistorically, topics like the ultimate nature of the universe, god, the soul and the connection between mind and body have been central to metaphysics. But these topics are no longer studied as much, and contemporary metaphysics deals more with formal descriptions of entities. \nSorry if this explanation is a little too hard for a 5-year old to understand.",
"You might also try /r/AskPhilosophy. ",
"Here a link to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that got me through my undergrad:\n_URL_0_\n\nMetaphysics studies, among other things, questions of the nature of truth, knowledge, being(existence), free-will, beauty (art and aesthetics), language, identity, consciousness and reality in general (whether it exists as a product of the mind or actually is mind independent). The only way to define it is by listing the topics it studies, and the only way to understand what it studies is to do metaphysics. \n\nEveryone has pre-reflective metaphysical beliefs about many of these topics, and others they've never thought about, but have some sort of sub-conscious working model which they use to operate in the world. Metaphysicians examine these assumptions, usually calling one or more into question and then build an argument as to \"how the world really is\".\nThere is also arguably a thread of understanding that will grow as you encounter and understand various philosophers throughout the ages from Plato to Descartes through Liebniez to Kant, and then Nietzsche through to postmodernism. You will come to some sort understanding of what the frame of the debate is currently and come to some conclusion of your own that is then true or useful to you.\n\nPeople go their whole lives without a metaphysical thought beyond some vague, badly defined \"why are we here\" or \"what is the meaning of life\" and still lead perfect normal, successful, happy lives, hence the assertion that metaphysics is bullshit, and completely useless. To me living your life in that way is following the path of least resistance, and BORING. As a person suddenly thrown into existence without anyone asking what I might think about the matter, it feels like my right and duty to ask myself what the fuck is going on here in this mysterious event called life.\n\nSorry for the rant. Its a complicated question, and I know I rambled\n\nEDIT: Grammar, spelling. Still new to Reddit, don't know how anything works",
"Imagine you are conducting a thought experiment. ",
"\"Whenever someone is talking and the other person doesn't know what the first person is talking about, that is metaphysics\"",
"Real ELI5: Physics means thinking about and figuring out how everything works. Metaphysics means thinking about why everything is the way it is. ",
"No etymological explanations? Come on guys...\n\nMeta- (from Greek: μετά = \"after\", \"beyond\", \"with\", \"adjacent\", \"self\")\n\nThe name is actually just a fancy way of saying \"Educated philosophy\". The origin of \"Metaphysics\" was from alphabetical organizing of academic texts. Philosophy and Physics show up right next to each other. However, physics is a hard science, and philosophy is a soft science. Because they can both cover the same questions (from different vantage points) it's sometimes useful to include both in the same list. So \"metaphysics\" or \"along with/ next to physics\" became the nickname for philosophy as applied to the physical world.",
"Metaphysics is the study of what there is and what it's like. You might think, \"Don't we already know what there is and what it's like, from everyday observation and science?\" The metaphysician will say that ordinary observation and science don't tell us what there REALLY is and what it's REALLY like. You might think, \"What the hell is that supposed to mean?\" Here are a few examples of metaphysical questions that might help to get at this distinction.\n\nA nice place to start: Ordinary observation tells us that there are tables and chairs. Physics tells us that these ordinary objects are made up of elementary particles. Now, how many objects are there when I look at a table? Is there just a table, or is there a table plus all of the elementary particles that make it up, or are there only the elementary particles? Are there really tables, or just particles arranged table-wise? \n\nThis question might seem meaningless and perhaps even empty. But it may bear on the issues of personal identity that others have noted. \n\nHere is another example, which raises related issues. Suppose that you, a five-year-old kid, make me a statue out of Play-Doh. There once was a lump of Play-Doh; now there is a statue. How many objects are in front of me? You might think, \"Just one. Two objects can't occupy the same space at the same time.\" But then suppose I destroy your Play-Doh statue. There is no longer a statue – just a lump of Play-Doh. The statue could not be identical to the Play-Doh, because the statue no longer exists even though the Play-Doh does exist. So both objects existed in the same place, with one (Play-Doh) constituting the other (the statue). \n\nSimilarly, are we identical with our bodies? Our brains? Or are we just constituted by our bodies and our brains, just like the statue is constituted by the lump of Play-Doh? \n\nThese kinds of questions may seem trivial. But all of us are committed to some kind of metaphysical views. Most people in the world believe, for example, that they will survive in \"the afterlife\" even after their brain and body cease to function. People who reject the possibility of the afterlife often do so on metaphysical grounds. Both views take some kind of side on metaphysical questions. Metaphysicians just make a habit – and a living – out of thinking clearly through such questions. "
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26ipe5 | the european election | I've been seeing things in various subreddits about them, but I don't know what they are really all about. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26ipe5/eli5_the_european_election/ | {
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"People from each country are voting for party's in their country to represent them in the European Union/Government. "
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c2v837 | how does changing a country's debt from the usd to its local currency benefit that country? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c2v837/eli5_how_does_changing_a_countrys_debt_from_the/ | {
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"Other countries can't control the value of USD. If they have USD debt and the value of the dollar rises against their local currency, their debt gets bigger.\n\nMany emerging markets are having this issue right now. They took out a bunch of USD loans in the aftermath of the 2008 crash, and now that debt is getting harder to service as the dollar gets stronger.",
"A country generally has more control over the value of its own currency. Specifically, a country can devalue its currency by issuing more of it. \nThis means that its money is worth less, and therefore its debt is lower. \nThis also means that the cost of imported goods and services becomes higher (because they must be paid for with expensive foreign currency) and domestic goods and services become cheaper (which may boost domestic industry and exports). \nThe danger is that issuing too much currency can lead to hyperinflation, where the currency quickly becomes worthless. This wipes out the government debt, but it also destroys everyone’s savings and wrecks the whole economy.",
"Using their own currency allows a country to control their inflation and interest rates and change the monetary supply. This gives them a lot more control over the economy to help stimulate growth in weak periods or slow down overheated markets.\n\n*But*\n\nIt also gives them the power to cause economic disaster if they do it wrong. Set the inflation rate at 10,000% to devalue government debt. Force workers to accept useless state currency instead of USD with actual value. Overly restrictive monetary supply that reduces people to bartering with chickens. Unstable currency that global investors won't touch if you need a loan.\n\nHaving your own currency is a powerful tool, but also easily abused by inept or corrupt governments. Nations that struggle with corruption and ineptitude have often found it easier to abandon their own unstable currency and adopt the USD.\n\nMoving from USD to your own currency is an announcement that you think you're stable enough to handle a local currency, but interest rates will jump for a while until investors believe you."
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75ld0l | what are the references being used to describe higher dimensions in maths and physics? | I'm really hoping there are people out there who can help me to grasp this in a more tangible way.
As the title suggests; I'm looking for an accessible (i.e linguistic, not mathematic - if at all possible) explanation of what exactly is being referred to when talking about higher dimensions. Such as, in the article that prompted me to realize I have no idea what's going on:
[New Scientist – The brain’s 7D sandcastles](_URL_0_)
I, kind of, understand abstractly that a dimension is defined by its measurement, or ability to be measured in some fashion. But my intuition really only extends this understanding to 4 dimensions (Space: X,Y,Z and Time).
What I'm *really* struggling to wrap my head around is: **What** (if that's even applicable) is/are the measurements, or *things* being measured that are defining dimensions beyond the 4th, 5th, 6th and so on? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/75ld0l/eli5_what_are_the_references_being_used_to/ | {
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"Thinking of time as 4th dimension is kinda wrong. If and when you get to depths of theory of relativity, you kinda have to think of time as a dimension, so it's not a wrong way to think if you're a theoretical physicist... But for the rest of us, you probably are thinking about it in a way that's either wrong or not helpful. So assuming you're not physicist that's extremely familiar with theory of relativity, let's just talk of the world as 3-dimensional, and ditch time.\n\nDimensions basically determine how much junk you can store. And this depends on the type of junk you are storing.\n\nSo let's start simple. From 1d world. Something quite a bit like a string. Imagine you were 1d being confined to this string. So all directions you know of are either forwards or backwards. That's also limiting how much junk you can store. If you have a thing that you want to store, and it takes, say, one meter of space, then on 10 meter long spread you can only store 10 of these items. Seems simple right?\n\nFor 2d being, they could live on a, say, a surface of some very large sheet. They would only know forward and backward, left and right. So if they have their junk they want to store, how many squares, 1meter by 1meter, could they store on a safekeeping house which is 10m by 10m? And surprisingly, you can store 100 of these 2d items.\n\nFor 3d beings, like humans, we have 3 directions available to us. up/down, left/right, forward/backward. So we can stack items and 10m x 10m x 10m space would hold 1,000 boxes with dimensions of 1m x 1m x 1m.\n\n4d being would likewise have space for 10,000 boxes on their 10m hypercube. This would be because they had a new direction they could stack these boxes at.\n\n5d would go up to 100,000, and 6d up to 1,000,000.\n\nSo one way of thinking about dimensions is that, in higher dimensions, there's more space near any given object. So things like, checking what's right next to you are easier when you're in lower dimensions. Like our 1d string being could just check what's immediately behind them, and what's immediately in front of them to know all that is close to them. 2d being would have to be checking a lot more ground. And us, well, there's already 3 dimensions in which stuff can be near us.\n\nThis also affects things like radiation. If you're radiating something evenly to all of your surroundings, in 1d this radiation would never get any fainter. In 2d, the further it got from you, the more ground it would have to cover, so if it got 10x further from you, it would only be 1/10 as bright.\n\nIn our 3d space, things like the sun becomes much fainter as distance grows, because there's more space into which the radiation has to spread. So the sun at 10x closer is actually 100x brighter.\n\nThe article you linked doesn't actually refer to any physical dimensions either. They simply argue that there is benefit in thinking of the brain as 7d mathematical thing, because intuitions such as the ones I provided here can help one better understand the brain, but that's helpful to people who are not me. Basically, their target audience is mathematicians that have spent years studying dimensions and other branches of maths, to them this is a helpful way to think about the brain. Not to me :p"
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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 | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wjn5a/eli5_what_qualifies_as_a_religion_under_the/ | {
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"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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5srekk | how is it that wladimir putin, in contrast to many big western nations, is so successful in keeping russias middle and lower class 'happy', thus strengthening his position as president? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5srekk/eli5_how_is_it_that_wladimir_putin_in_contrast_to/ | {
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"* He has carefully orchestrated the Russian media to reflect favorably on his administration.\n\n* Within that media he takes on a carefully constructed appearance with lots of photo shoots like [these](_URL_0_), appealing to the sense he is a strong virtuous leader. Compare that with the images you see of European leaders.\n\n* He has spent the past 15 years upgrading and modernizing the military, which fell into disarray under Yeltsin, and standing up to the international community to reassert itself as a superpower, and this is seen to increase Russia's standing in the world.. the people like to see this.\n\n* He strongly promotes policies that promote mining, gas, and oil exploration, which are an important part of the economy and act as leverage against Europe and the US, and again that translates to a strong economy and improved world standing.\n\n* Many Russians suffered during the 1990s economic decline under Yeltsin, and these years saw a huge consolidation of wealth among a small number of tycoons at the expense of the working class. Many Russians want to see a return to the days of the 1970s Soviet Union, which was a prosperous time for the working class. Putin is viewed as a leader who reins in some of those excesses and takes the country more toward what it used to be with strong leadership.\n\nRussia's culture is strongly militaristic and very conservative, much more so than the US, and he pushes all the buttons that appeal to \"traditional\" Russians. Combine that with TV channels that are essentially Fox News on steroids, and it's easy to understand how he has a wide base of support.",
"My friend is Russian, and older too.\n\nShe told me that after the Cold War the nation was plundered and things got really bad for the average person. No jobs, everything corrupt, basic living very hard. \n\nUnder Putin he may take from the State, perhaps, but he isn't robbing the place blind. \n\nMy friend said Putin stop the corruption and the pillaging of the state and made it possible for the average Russian to have a job and go about their normal business. \n\nIt makes sense. Those people who looted the state just wanted to get their money and get out. Putin actually wants something resembling a state to rule so you can't take out all the money and services. ",
"Russia hasn't had democracy as long as Western nations. The freedom of the press is stifled even today, and critics are even murdered. See the [news story](_URL_0_) about the poisoning."
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1fuxxe | why doesn't our constitutional right to privacy apply to the internet? | Sorry if this has been asked before, I tried search, but I'm afraid I didn't really know what to search for.
I understand that since the internet is an international thing no one country's laws govern it, but shouldn't American corporations have to respect the rights of American citizens, regardless the medium? Or am I completely off with this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1fuxxe/eli5_why_doesnt_our_constitutional_right_to/ | {
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"Our constitutional right to privacy doesn't apply to companies, Internet or no. It only applies to the government. If a company wants to give all my private information to other people, they're allowed to, as long as they're not lying about doing it.",
"Your right to privacy ends where you are giving the information to someone else.\n\nIf you call me on the phone, the government can't tap the phone line, but I can tell them everything you told me.\n\nFor better, or worse, the various companies which provide all of your internet services are not government entities. If you agree to give them private information (which includes when you send an e-mail through their lines), they can track it, trace it, record it, sell it, or give it to the government.\n\nIt's not \"corporations aren't respecting the fourth amendment.\" The reality is that once you put the information in the corporation's hands (just like if you put it in my hands) your constitutional protection ceases.\n\nWhat you're misunderstanding (and it is a common misunderstanding) is that the Fourth Amendment does not protect the information *itself* it protects against certain ways the government can obtain information. They can't ransack my home, but they can ask my girlfriend. They can't tap my phone, but my phone company can tell them who I was calling. They can't hide a bug in my house, but they can get my friend to wear a wire."
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8hoyqt | how did they do math before arabic numerals? | I know it has to do with relations between numbers, but that isn't really clear | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8hoyqt/eli5_how_did_they_do_math_before_arabic_numerals/ | {
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"[Abacuses](_URL_0_) were in use long before the invention of the Arabic writing system, and are still used today by students who can not do math with Arabic Numbers (like the blind).\n\nIt's a frame with bars, each bar with a number of beads on them. And they can be used to great effect for most simple mathematical calculations.",
"There were various methods of calculating, often by using tokens such as beads that could be strung on bars and slid from one side to the other (i.e. an abacus) or moved around on a patterned board.\n\nAbout the time of the Norman invasion in the 11th century, English government officials used cloth with a chequerboard pattern to make financial calculations: tokens representing different values could be placed and moved around on this cloth. To this day Britain's finance minister is called the Chancellor of the Exchequer."
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1we9sg | why are there cheerleaders in the nfl? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1we9sg/eli5why_are_there_cheerleaders_in_the_nfl/ | {
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"Because sex sells.",
"The average football game is around 8-10 mins of actual playing time. What is better than cheerleaders to stare at while you wait",
"Because the average demographic the NFL is trying to attract is very interested in looking at cheerleaders.",
"They also do dances during time outs. ",
"Titties ain't gonna stare at themselves.",
"The question is why would you want to be one? They're make next to no money. ",
"Because NFL cheerleaders are marketable and bring in money for the teams outside of their work at games. No one is going to stop going to NFL games if cheerleaders suddenly disappear, but the teams make money by selling cheerleader merchandise (think calendars) and personal appearances.",
"Imagine that you really wanted to be a cheerleader in school starting in jr. high. Maybe you liked the attention. Maybe it was a clique thing. Maybe it was something your mom wanted or had done and you wanted to be like her. Whatever.\n\nYou spend 6 years being a cheerleader. You go to college. You spend four more years doing it. Now, at age 23, you've spent almost half your life as a cheerleader. Clearly, you really, really love doing it.\n\nWhy not keep doing it as an adult? 99% of the people who did it for 10 years won't keep doing it. But the 1% who are really, really into it and have the body and face for it will have a chance to keep doing it in the NFL or the NBA.\n\nWhy do the NFL and NBA have them? Because fans like spectacle. Because in football, cheerleaders are a part of the tradition. For a long time cheerleaders were party favors for football players but that's probably not much of a thing anymore. \n\nNow it makes plenty of economic sense - the cheerleaders are a revenue source from merchandising. They're an asset to the team - they go out and do publicity that helps sell tickets. They build community support by doing charity events. The networks like to show some pretty girls during slow moments of the games.\n\nIt's a win/win situation for everyone involved."
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2l7acz | what does anti-perspirant actually do to us that 'stops' us from sweating? | Does it actually work? Why do I still sweat when I use it? Can your body adjust to it so that it is recommending to change brands every few months? Does underarm hair impede most of it if you do not account for it?
Thanks. :)
(Edit: Added extra question on the end.) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l7acz/eli5_what_does_antiperspirant_actually_do_to_us/ | {
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"Clogs the pores (sweat glands) so the sweat can not get out. I'm pretty sure it's as simple as that. \n\n\nEdit: as for the rest of your questions, if you are using gel, stop, use the white kind it works way better. Also just like everything it isn't perfect, you will naturally miss some pores, and throughout the course of the day some will become unclogged, especially if you are a heavy sweater.",
"[Here](_URL_0_) is a good video that explains it. Basically there is an aluminum compound (I think aluminum oxide is the most common, but don't quote me on that) that blocks or clogs the sweat glands. ",
"It doesn't work for me.\n\nEven Certain Dri (which is a miracle for most people) stopped working for me. My next stop is botox.\n\nBut try the Certain Dri if you haven't! You put it on at night and it works some sort of magic that regular antiperspirant can't match.",
"It does work by blocking the pores, but not the way the top answers I see are suggesting. Most antiperspirants contain an aluminum compound as the main active ingredient. \n\nfrom [wikihow](_URL_0_):\nThe aluminum ions are taken into the cells that line the eccrine-gland ducts at the opening of the epidermis, the top layer of the skin, says dermatologist Dr. Eric Hanson of the University of North Carolina's Department of Dermatology. When the aluminum ions are drawn into the cells, water passes in with them. As more water flows in, the cells begin to swell, squeezing the ducts closed so that sweat can't get out.",
"If most people on here are saying that it clogs the pores, why don't we get super bad acne in our pits?",
"If you still sweat badly like I do I recommend looking into the Thompson tee. It's just a white te shirt with absorbing arm pits. I've been wearing them for about a year now and haven't had an issue once with sweating through to my dress shirts. \n\n_URL_0_ \n"
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1qkjd2 | why there are really absurd laws in different countries? | Stuff like... It's illegal to put an icecream cone in your pocket. Or you are not allowed to chew gum in public on wednesdays. Nonsense like that. Or is just stuff I read on the internet simply not true? (Who would of thought!) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qkjd2/eli5_why_there_are_really_absurd_laws_in/ | {
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"There are really absurd laws here too. Most of them come from silly things, like a court case that boiled down to \"I'm innocent because it's not illegal to walk your pet alligator on the sidewalk\" so the guy gets off free, and they pass a law making that illegal so that defense won't work again. Usually started on a very small scale.",
"The citations you see are actual laws, created in one of two ways, generally. The first is to expand on an actual law on the books. For example, you see on the internet that in Miami, Ohio, that it is illegal to hitch an alligator to a parking meter outside a barber shop on Sunday. The actual law on the books may be intended to keep people from tying their dogs to fire hydrants outside Starbucks while the owner goes inside to grab a cup of coffee. However, to cover all instances, the law may read something like: It is unlawful to tie secure any animal by means of a tether or similar device to any signpost, fire hydrant, street lamp or the like for the purposes of engaging the services of a business establishment. See how the law could be interpreted to cover the alligator tied to a parking meter? \n\nThe other way is someone writes his representative regarding a situation that offends him greatly. Representatives like doing what people ask of them, so the city councilperson may decide to craft a law so as to secure a supporter in the future election. Here is an example: Suppose you are driving down a dark country highway late at night when you approach a pick-up truck hauling manure shoveled and uncovered in the bed of the truck. The truck hits a bump and some of the manure flies out and lands on your windshield. You write your representative and tell him that if it was daytime, you would have known to pass the truck or not follow so closely and that it should be illegal to carry manure after dark. \n\nYour representative decides to help you out and stays late at work one night when there are only a couple of other representatives there to vote. He begins reading the proposed laws into the record, votes on it himself, and since there is no one to object or vote against, your law may be read into the record, creating a law along the lines of: Manure may not be transferred along public highway by means of flatbed or pickup truck between 9pm and 4:30 am. The law is on the books, but unenforced because no one knows it is there. "
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8bgc4p | what is acid, and how can it "burn" things into almost nothing? | My knowledge of acids are very limited: All i really know, is that it has to do with the value of the PH-scale. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8bgc4p/eli5_what_is_acid_and_how_can_it_burn_things_into/ | {
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"Acids are compounds that provide hydrogen ions when in solution. Since a hydrogen molecule is just a proton plus an electron, a hydrogen ion is really just a proton.\n\nThese unattached protons are like groupies backstage at a rock concert, willing to make attachments with anything they encounter, whether they were previously attached or not. If you have enough of them, especially in high concentration, they will break down existing substances as they destroy the molecular bonds in those substances.\n\nThey don't turn other substances into \"nothing\"; they just produce what are usually soluble salts, as opposed to the solids that were there before. So, like the Wicked Witch of the West, those solids turn into liquid and melt away.\n\n\n\n",
"Chemical reactions happen because of the electrons that orbit the various atoms in whatever the substance is.\n\nIf you take a brief look at the [periodic table of elements](_URL_0_), the elements on the left have single or pairs of electrons orbiting the outer layers, and thus very little energy is required for these atoms to give up their electrons. Hydrogen (H), Sodium (Na), Potassium (K), etc. are electron donors.\n\nThe elements on the right side of the table have outer layers that are almost full of electrons, missing just one or two from having a \"complete set\", so it takes very little for these atoms to \"take\" any \"free\" or \"loosely held\" electrons that may be nearby to complete their set. Oxygen (O), Nitrogen (N), Chlorine (Cl), Iodine (I).\n\nThe elements on the very last column on the right are \"Noble Gases\" because they have full sets of electrons and thus don't need to exchange electrons and will not react with anything.\n\nAnd the elements in the middle, like Carbon (C) and Silicon (Si) have exactly half the electrons in their outer layer, so the glass could be half empty or half full - they can either accept or give electrons, but mostly they \"share\" - Carbon is so good at sharing with other Carbon that it can form long chains of hundreds of atoms, and this complexity allows cells to have really complicated organic chemistry machinery inside that transports and uses oxygen, water, sugars, etc. as food and energy.\n\nAnd finally, water, H2O, is a solvent; it can easily break up into H^+ and OH^- and have the H^+ absorb electrons from substances that prefer to give them, and the OH^- give electrons to substances that prefer to take them.\n\nSo, acids are substances that will aggressively take electrons. Take HCl (hydrochloric acid); the Chlorine atom Cl really wants an extra electron, and is currently taking it from the H atom, but as soon as it comes in contact with anything else, esp. electron-givers like Na, K, or even Carbon, it will prefer to take the electron from them, cause it's easier, and it will react. In the case of Sodium (Na), the reaction forms NaCl (sodium chloride, otherwise known as table salt), but if you drop HCl acid on your skin, it will react with the carbons and other atoms in your cells, completely breaking apart whatever delicate structures your cells have, causing damage (chemical burn).\n\nBases are substances that will aggressively GIVE electrons, and similarly to acids, if you put your had in lye (potassium hydroxide, KOH), it will aggressively react with the delicate chemical structures your cells have and cause a chemical burn.\n\nSalts are neutral, sort of. NaCl has both the Na and the Cl satisfied with the electrons they've given and taken, unless a stronger acid or stronger base is added to the salt, in which case the stronger acid / base will force a reaction, like a bully.\n\nYour pH instrument measures the \"strength\" of acids (and bases) by detecting how many H^+ ions are left / remaining when an acid or base is dissolved in water, after the water breaks up into the H^+ and OH^- and reacts with the acid or base to satisfy that chemical's \"need\" for electrons.",
"What makes something an acid is that it readily gives hydrogen ions. Where as a base readily takes hydrogen ions. \n\nCombine an acid with a base, and the PH becomes more neutral, as the acid and base combine to form salts. \n\nOne of the reasons why drinking citrus juice after brushing your teeth is so unpleasant is because toothpaste is a mild base (calcium carbonate), which reacts with the weak acid in citrus juice, and the result is SALT. Yuck. \n\nThe more an acid wants to give ions, the stronger the acid. Not all acids physically work the same though. \n\nFor instance nitric acid will not dissolve gold, and it has nothing to do with the strength of the acid, and more to do with the chemistry of it. Hydrochloric acid also will not dissolve gold, for the same reason. However if you mix hydrochloric acid, and nitric acid together, you get something called aqua regia which is the only acid known to dissolve gold. One acid changes the structure of the gold in such a way, that the other acid can then dissolve it. It works not because combining the acids increases their acidity, but instead works because each attacks the gold in a slightly different way, allowing the combination to do what neither could alone. "
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1ugjq4 | why is cannibalism banned in modern society and accepted in some of the remote tribes that still exist. the cannibalism ban has a biologic support? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ugjq4/eli5why_is_cannibalism_banned_in_modern_society/ | {
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"As time has progressed, social morals have changed and become more uniform, protective, and liberal in general. This means that most societies in the world accept roughly the same principles, and those principles are designed to ensure peoples' safety and freedom. While this is not strictly the case everywhere, it is a general trend.\n\nThis trend probably has some very deep evolutionary roots. First, the uniformity of morality across the world stems from a desire for conformity and normality. Here is an [MIT lecture on the subject](_URL_0_). Secondly, the protective nature of morality probably comes from the fact the in social societies, altruism (caring about others) is better for your own gain. Many high level animals exhibit this same trend- dolphins, elephants, and gorillas. Lastly, global morality has focused on individual freedoms, probably because these are the things which make us happy, another important feature of survival in the past, but adapted to modern culture.\n\nThe point here is that cannibalism violates the evolutionary tendencies which we now interpret as morality. It is harmful to others, and thus become less accepted by cultures over time. Today, I would argue that the it violates the normality and conformity more than the protection of our global morals, but all of these things probably have some deep biological roots nonetheless.",
"And you can get super mega weird sick. Kuru, spongiform encephalitis. And it still happens, outside of New Guinea and Dahmer. The Leopard Society, Korea in the early 90s, apparently Syria 6 weeks ago.",
"When you eat a cow, you eat all the diseases and parasites that cow has. Luckily, most of them aren't harmful to humans, so you aren't likely to get sick.\n\nBut when you eat a person, you get person diseases and parasites, and they are very likely to be harmful to you and make you sick."
]
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"http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/brain-and-cognitive-sciences/9-00sc-introduction-to-psychology-fall-2011/social-psychology-i/"
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||
11okzo | value added tax (vat) or goods and service tax (gst) | How does these taxes work? I understand that the consumer pays the tax and the company gets levy from the government. Can someone give me an example? Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11okzo/eli5_value_added_tax_vat_or_goods_and_service_tax/ | {
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"Australian here. I can't tell you what VAT is because we don't use it but I can explain GST: \n \nGST was introduced in 2000 by then prime minister John Howard which replaced the Wholesale sales tax. This tax was literally randomly assigned to products and was either 11%, 22% or 33%. For example, chocolate milk might have an 11% tax whereas full cream milk might have a 22% tax (just as an example; not actually true). \n \nThe GST replaced this stupid tax and is a flat 10% on almost every single good and service in Australia. The only goods this does not apply to is fresh produce such as fruit and vegetables. \n \nThe advantage of the GST is that it is unavoidable. Unlike income tax which can be evaded, there is no way for a consumer to evade GST because every time you buy something, it is already included in the price. \n \nAll revenue from the GST is redistributed to the state governments and is spent on things such as health and education.",
"Canadian / Briton here.\n\nGST and VAT adds a chunk on top of the price of most stuff you buy.\n\nEvery three months, businesses add up all the sales tax they collected, and subtract all the sales tax they paid themselves to buy stuff in. Then, they pay the government the difference.\n\nIn Canada, the GST/HST is added at the to the sticker price at checkout when you buy something. So, when you see a sticker price in a shop for $10, you have to remember that you'll have to pay 15% on top of that when you hand over your money.\n\nIn the UK and a lot of other places, the tax is already included in the sticker price, so if the sticker says £10, you'll pay £10."
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52i67r | chiropractors | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52i67r/eli5_chiropractors/ | {
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"Chiropractors \"manipulate\" your joints to help the move better. Think about it like someone stretching the joints in your back that you can't stretch on your own. ",
"There are two kinds of chiropractors, the \"alternative\" kind and the real kind.\n\nAlternative ones pitch their practice as a cure for ailments ranging from autism to obesity.\n\nREAL ones simply feel, and then manually manipulate your joints into better, more natural and comfortable positions. Rigorous exercise and physical trauma can not only damage bones, but it can displace them. \n\nReal Chiropractors only seek to \"re align\" your skeleton so it works better, nothing voodoo about it.",
"Going to a chiropractor is like going to an evidence-based physical therapist with the one tiny exception that chiropractic is based on the teachings of a nineteenth century con-artist who purported to communicate with the dead at séances to establish the fundamental tenets of his school's curriculum. \n\n_URL_0_",
"Have worked several years as an insurance claims adjuster for personal injury cases. It is very common for an \"injured\" person to treat with a chiropractor two to three times a week for a year or two. \nWas explained to me by an orthopedic surgeon that in many cases a chiropractic \"adjustment\" is just a re-injury of the area which releases endorphins and makes the pain go away for a few days but\n needs to be repeated every few days to sustain the effect. This fits very well with the cases I have worked with. \n \n\n"
]
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[],
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"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_David_Palmer"
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||
xcsx9 | what would happen to earth if another sun was exactly one au from earth? | The normal sun would be on the same plane as the new sun. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xcsx9/eli5_what_would_happen_to_earth_if_another_sun/ | {
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"First of all, there would be twice as much energy coming in to our atmosphere, so twice as much would have to be radiated out. This would increase the average temperature of Earth. Exactly how it would play out is uncertain since the ecosystem is so complex. However, we can estimate using the [Stefan-Boltzmann law](_URL_0_) that the average temperature would be about 1.19 times as much. Currently the average temperature is about 59 F. After this, the average temperature would be about 157 F. ",
"There is no gravitationally stable orbit for the earth in that configuration. It would either be thrown into a longer, colder orbit, or on a collision course with one of the suns."
]
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[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law"
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2t8usm | how do the french eat food covered in cream and butter and still stay healthy and slim? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2t8usm/eli5_how_do_the_french_eat_food_covered_in_cream/ | {
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"They don't eat nearly as much of it as Americans do. You can eat rich food, provided you eat a small amount of it. They also tend to take longer at meals, which ironically often means people eat less, since they start to feel full before cleaning their plates.",
"As was mentioned, fat doesn't make you fat. Neither does sugar or starch though. Eating too many calories are what make you fat. The French do eat some rich foods, but if you look at their typical portion sizes, they are about 1/2 or even 1/3 of what the typical American usually stacks onto their plate. So even if you're eating cream and butter and stuff, if you're eating smaller portions of it then your calorie intake will still be lower. \n\nShort answer: The French typically eat smaller portions than Americans and they don't usually eat big snacks between meals like many of us Americans do. "
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31wvlu | can we pinpoint the angle of our trajectory from the source of the big bang? | the physics required to deconstruct this type of problem seem absurd but Im just curious if there was ever any formal investigation into the matter I guess | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31wvlu/eli5can_we_pinpoint_the_angle_of_our_trajectory/ | {
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"The big bang wasn't what you seem to think it was. It wasn't an explosion *in* space that things are moving away from. It was an expansion **of** space, and it occurred at every location in the universe at the same time.\n\nGalaxies aren't moving away from some central point. Rather, space itself is expanding, which causes every point in the universe to see the rest of the universe as if everything else were moving away from that point. Every location looks exactly the same. There is no central point."
]
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1d9496 | why are there three separate languages for the scandinavian countries, mainly norway, sweden, and finland? | As an 'Murrican, I've never been taught Scandinavian history but I plan to visit there soon, and this question crossed my mind. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d9496/eli5_why_are_there_three_separate_languages_for/ | {
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"[Wikipedia](_URL_0_)\n\nNorway and Sweden spoke the same language under Viking rule, and for a while after, but they were always different dialects. Eventually they diverged completely, apparently sometime in the Middle Ages.\n\nFinnish is completely different. It comes from the Uralic family, rather than the Germanic family. It sounds really weird to my ears.",
"Finland isn't part of scandinavia, though.\nScandinavia consists of Sweden, Norway and Denmark.\nBut there is what we call the 'Nordic Countries', which, in addition to the scandinavic countries, includes Iceland and Finland.\n",
"Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are related, with varying degrees of intelligibility. Finnish is completely different."
]
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2k550z | im 25 yrs old, how come when i wear my glasses i have 20/20 vision but when an old person wears their glasses they can still barely see anything | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2k550z/eli5im_25_yrs_old_how_come_when_i_wear_my_glasses/ | {
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"Prescriptions for glasses vary based on how much corrective power your eyes need. Prescriptions can only correct so much, however. Older people who's vision has deteriorated far more than your vision may not be able to be completely corrected, however a strong prescription may at least help. It's the same way pain-killers can't always relieve all the pain without killing you. Impossibly strong glasses won't kill you, they just don't exist."
]
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||
1puegc | why do we start a new day at 12 and not 1am + why does daylight savings starts at 2? | Why do we start a new day at 12 and not at 1am?
Also, during daylight savings, why do we start it at 2am to go back to 1am if we 'start' the next day at midnight?
It would make better sense to me if (according to our time keeping) if we went back from 1am to midnight, otherwise the latter would make better sense.. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1puegc/eli5_why_do_we_start_a_new_day_at_12_and_not_1am/ | {
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"We start the day at midnight insted of one because you start at zero and not one like in military time the day actuall starts at 0000 and goes up 0100 0200 blah blah up to 2359 then resets to 0000 im not sure about daylight saving time",
"I think DST changes over at 2am for convenience more than anything else. It is less annoying to just change your clock, go to sleep, and forget about it. If it changed over when more people were awake, more people would be awake to be confused about the time. "
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36qp1q | why do so many companies want you to use their brand's credit card? | Amazon keeps offering me $40 if I get their credit card. What is the value of me using their credit card versus another, and why is that value worth more than $40 to them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36qp1q/eli5_why_do_so_many_companies_want_you_to_use/ | {
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"because they make money from transaction fees every time you swipe that card so in the long run $40 is nothing. on average they will make 1-1.5% of the amount you swiped each and every time. ",
"A lot of misinformation here. Amazon, for example, is not a credit card processor; they will *not* make 1-1.5% of the amount you swiped each and every time. *Visa* might make that, but not Amazon. However, it is likely that Amazon gets some cut, but nothing like what Visa itself is getting. And the bank is not Visa or Amazon but rather Chase; they're the ones who make money on interest. \n\nInstead, Amazon wants you to use their co-branded card because it makes you a more loyal customer. You're literally carrying around an advertisement and reminder for shopping at Amazon everywhere you go. You're going to be more motivated to buy stuff from Amazon because the cost is subsidized by the rewards points. You're generally just going to buy more and more stuff from Amazon (at least ideally) because the card makes you \"part of their team.\"\n\nIt's essentially no different than the Subway Club or a myPanera rewards card. It's a loyalty program. You get involved deep enough in their system, and they give you some free stuff, and you become a loyal customer. "
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78durg | how did the crash of the mortgage markets result in people unrelated to the housing industry losing their jobs? | I get how the housing crisis resulted in a banking crisis but how did that result in massive unemployment? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/78durg/eli5how_did_the_crash_of_the_mortgage_markets/ | {
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"Banking crises can have flow on effects because of how integral banking is to modern business.\n\nFor example, lots of businesses borrow money on relatively short timescales to have the cashflow to pay employees.\n\nWhen the banks get hit by a crisis and don't have enough money available, they can't lend out money. Borrowers can't find the money they need to pay employees, and have to make them redundanr instead.",
"Most business owners are consistently running in the red.\n\nNo they are not in debt. That are in a perpetual deficit. Where they technically are $1,000 in the red. But realistically if they cut a little of this and a little of that they are perfectly fine.\n\nBusiness owners do this because its a really great way to expand and grow. Yes you went a thousand into a red this week, but next week you'll be making three thousand because you added more staff or made improvements to the company.\n\nIn order to do this owners were always in a state of Borrowing money for those investments. Hiring on an employee, buying a new machine. Yes they were always borrowing but their company was booming and successful. and both them and the bank would see positive results.\n\nAnd then the banks lost money... ALOT of money. When a mortgage fails banks do take a hit but since they have hundreds of other people making payments. They are more then fine. When suddenly hundreds of thousands of people fail their mortgage... shit gets real bad. Then add in the fact that all of those failed mortgages are going to cause everyone elses mortgage to essentially fail. Well, that's a global crisis. And can result in annihilating the entire economy. Which it almost did.\n\nBecause remember most businesses were in a perpetual deficit to grow. Suddenly not only could they not borrow, but now that had to pay in full for that deficit. Which depending on company could be a few thousand dollars to millions. Some companies had to liquidate alot. Some had to lay off a few people, some companies had to lay off everyone and sell everything. \n\nAnd because almost every business was in the red. nobody wanted to hire anyone... which meant people didn't have money to spend... Which caused a very vicious cycle until the big boys stepped in.\n\nAnd this is why crashes are a terrifying thing. Because until big boys come in to save the day... the entire economy is on a steady spiral to death. ",
"When you put money in the bank, the bank loans some of that money out. Most of it, in fact - it's common to keep less than 10% of deposits in cash, since most people bank electronically most of the time. So, when you put $100 into the bank, the bank lends out $90. Now, what's interesting is that that $90 also winds up in a bank. The person who borrowed it probably used it to buy a car or a house, and the person selling that car or house deposited the money. So, the bank can lend out $81 more. \n\nThis carries on until the actual amount of cash the bank possesses matches what percentage of accounts they keep in cash. So, in this case, for a bank that keeps a 10% reserve, your $100 in cash is now shared between $1000 in accounts. This phenomenon is referred to as 'imaginary money'. We treat imaginary money just like real money, and 90-95% of the money in your bank account and that you spent today was imaginary money.\n\nWhen the mortgage crisis hit and defaults came in, the bank wasn't refunded for the houses it helped to buy. Before, it had $100 in cash, $900 in accounts receivable, and $1000 in obligations. But post crash, it only might have had $100 in cash, $400 in accounts receivable, and $1000 in obligations.\n\nIn order to get back to it's reserve rate, the bank had to stop issuing loans for a while, until accounts rose. So, when one of the people who owed the bank money made a payment, say $100, the bank still only had $100 in cash, but $300 receivable and $900 in obligations. Effectively, the imaginary money that people were using to pay their mortgages was leaving the economy - the money supply shrank. The total amount of money in bank accounts went down.\n\nWith fewer dollars around, people start to feel the crunch. At first, this was noticed near the outflows where money would normally leave the bank - people getting loans. But those same people were buying fewer things, and hiring fewer people, and that meant that the money shortage spread outwards, to all other sectors.\n\nOne of the typical solutions debated during recessions is called 'quantitative easing'. Basically, the government prints new real dollars to replace the missing imaginary money. The government basically prints money and uses that money to buy back debt it owes, transforming treasury bonds into real money. During the Wall Street Bailout, the US government bought back bonds owned by the major banks and stock trading companies. This helped a little, but you'll find a lot of arguments that it could have been done better. I won't get into those here.\n\nTL;DR: Economics is complicated like rocket science but basically mortgages create imaginary money, and when you default the bank needs to fix it's numbers and that reduces the amount of imaginary money, which makes money harder to get while the banks soak it all up to replace their losses."
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7raner | is it possible to predict the chemical properties of compounds from the properties of the singular elements they are formed with? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7raner/eli5_is_it_possible_to_predict_the_chemical/ | {
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"I'm gonna make a general statement and just say no\n\nThere has been some research into how the arrangement of the elements may be used to predict molecular properties, but for the most part we can't predict very well.\n\nA lot of chemical properties are due to the configuration of electrons and possible energy states of the atom. Forming molecules tends to change both of those things, and can result in very different properties\n\nThat being said, it is sometimes possible to predict chemical properties of large molecules that are made up of smaller molecules, but not generally as much from the atomic level "
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4tuv68 | what is the difference between steel and iron? | Basically my question is in the title. I understand that iron ore is mined, and steel is refined from iron. But when is what used, and how is each made. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4tuv68/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_steel_and_iron/ | {
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"Steel is iron mixed with other materials. There are hundreds types of steel. Every slight change in additives will change the properties of steel. ",
"iron is an element. in its purest form, it's made up of all atoms with 26 protons. \n\nsteel is an alloy. it's iron mixed with other elements, primarily carbon. "
]
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29ulc5 | eli: what are the little glowing dots i see moving around after i sneeze? | When I sneeze, cough, or just get up too fast, I sometimes see little tiny glowing, blinking dots that seem to move around randomly. They almost move like living organisms in the weird patters they make. What exactly am I seeing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29ulc5/eli_what_are_the_little_glowing_dots_i_see_moving/ | {
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"text": [
"eye floaters, its actually part of your own eye, this vid explains it\n\n_URL_0_"
]
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[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bscDeT4tV9g"
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b44hag | why does greek yogurt turn into the chunky bits when it's left alone for a while? | ELI5: I recently started to include healthier options in my diet, and I've began to eat more greek yougurt. I always open it to find that the texture is more chunky than smooth. I always stir it to make it smoother lol but I was wondering why it did that. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b44hag/eli5_why_does_greek_yogurt_turn_into_the_chunky/ | {
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"text": [
"Non greek does this too. More than likely from separation of water, but Greek yogurt is strained more, so it has less water making it thicker (chunkier) anyway.",
"The separation occurs because the solids are pulling away from the liquids. Cream cheese does the same for the same reason.\n\nIt's simply because there's water that's been mixed with cream and milk.\n\nThink what happens to pulpy orange juice when you let it sit."
]
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5cuw4i | could someone explain to me, in the simplest of ways, the 0, 1st, and 2nd dimension. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cuw4i/eli5_could_someone_explain_to_me_in_the_simplest/ | {
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"A zero dimensional space is a point, it takes zero coordinates to specify location in a zero dimensional space\n\nA one dimensional space is a line, it takes one coordinate to specify location in a one dimensional space\n\nA two dimensional space is a surface, it takes two coordinates to specify location in a two dimensional space\n\n \nA space of any number of dimensions can be created, mathematically anyway, and if it has N dimensions then it takes N coordinates to specify a location in that space."
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17daxr | what changed in burma regarding aung san suu kyi? | Decades under house arrest and now free. There didn't seem to be some massive uprising (al la the Arab Spring). America didn't roll tanks in to liberate their democratically elected leader. The government... just sorta faded away and they've since started having elections again. Isn't that odd and against what usually happens in other countries? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17daxr/what_changed_in_burma_regarding_aung_san_suu_kyi/ | {
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" > Isn't that odd and against what usually happens in other countries?\n\nNot really. It's uncommon but I wouldn't qualify it as \"odd,\" historically there have been a few dictators (and even tyrants, because dictator just means absolute control, and not necessarily bad or tyrannical) who have set aside power (some have fled, some have died, some have just went into isolation/exile) and left their countries with a freer form of government. \n\nThere was talk about Assad making reforms when he took office from his father, especially since he wasn't the heir apparent until later in life, people thought perhaps his political viewpoint was different from his fathers. People seem to be wrong. \n\nThere was talk about when Fidel Castro stepped down, the same. This time Raul Castro does seem to be making some (slower) changes. \n\nThere are a large number of factors that can go into dictatorship, and not all repressive dictatorships are inherently tyrannical. Many dictators believe they have the best interest of their people at heart (some don't believe all the people in their country are \"their people,\" which among the reasons why some of them commit such atrocities). \n\nIt's possible, but by no means definite, that this was the case here. "
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2wap8z | why are cats so interested in the sound of your tongue clicking against the roof of your mouth? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wap8z/eli5_why_are_cats_so_interested_in_the_sound_of/ | {
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"They think you have a mouse in your mouth for them.",
"It's a sudden, sharp noise.\n\nCats are hunters; they're going to be interested in noise because that's an excellent way of tracking prey.\n\nYou'll notice that even when there's nothing especially noisy going on, their ears have a tendency to rotate around like little radar dishes.",
"As already said, it's an unnatural noise that catch their attention. \nIf you start making that noise before feeding them, they will associate it to food in no time. "
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3gd12f | how did the minimum wage movement choose $15/hour? why such a big jump? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gd12f/eli5how_did_the_minimum_wage_movement_choose/ | {
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"The movement got it's start in California where the minimium is around (9) dollars so for them it wasn't much of a stretch. The concept got picked up nationally as the number still s mains a living wage in most other places.",
"Generally wages have been stagnant for many years. Inflation has increased, which means goods and services have gone up, while the purchasing power of the dollar has gone down. What that means is that people today are making more than they did in the 80's, but they can't purchase the same goods with that money.\n\nThe large jump is meant to catch up to where wages \"should be\". The idea behind a lot of the protests is that no one can live on the current minimum wage, and that the minimum wage should be a living wage. "
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3qd6r4 | why does tv (and other media) use the most irritating, annoying sound humanly possible to censor "profanity?" | I'm watching The Ultimate Fighter, and when the two teams are getting into it I'm forced to mute the TV because the **BEEEEEEEEEEP BEEEEP BEEEEP BEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP** noise just drives me absolutely insane. It makes me seriously consider punching babies.
Why does such a noise need to be used to censor stuff like this? Why couldn't it be of a lower pitch? Seems to me that wouldn't have such a nails-on-a-chalkboard sound to it. Or maybe just something else entirely, white noise maybe? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qd6r4/eli5_why_does_tv_and_other_media_use_the_most/ | {
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"It's a 1kHz sine wave. That noise is usually a test tone on large format mixing consoles. Before reality TV, censorship was usually only needed on live broadcasts. The test tone was something that the mixing engineer could punch in and out quickly during live broadcast.\n\nWith shows that are edited like Ultimate Fighter, they use it because of familiarity. The same reason that your car's turn signal clicks, even though they haven't used switching relays for decades. People are just used to that sound. We even talk about bleeped curse words.\n\nBut I don't disagree that they could use something else. Problem is, with a show like Ultimate Fighter with so much swearing, any sound that gets repeated often enough will become annoying."
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5zmc8v | when i'm accerelerating my car from a stop, what causes the steady increase in engine rpm's, followed by a "kick", and a rapid decrease in rpm? | This happens several times when accelerating. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zmc8v/eli5_when_im_accerelerating_my_car_from_a_stop/ | {
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"I assume your car is an automatic transmission? What you are feeling/observing is the transmission shifting gears. ",
"That's your automatic transmission changing gears. \n\nA car engine can only generate a useful amount of power when it's spinning in a quite narrow range of speeds. \n\nIn order for that narrow range of engine speeds to translate to a high range of road speeds (standstill to full flat out speed), then the car needs to have several gears which can be switched through. \n\nThe way to think of these is the same as a normal pedal bike. \n\nYou have low gears which are easy to turn the pedals, good for climbing hills, no good for high speeds. Then you have higher gears which are harder to turn the pedals, but can get you going faster. \n\nThat's how car gears work. Starts off on the low 'easy' gears to get the car moving, then switches up as you need the higher speeds. \n\nThis is the stuff you all would do yourself if you had a stick-shift car. You choose what gear you're in then. \n\nThe automatic transmission decides when's the appropriate time, and moves up to the next gear, which slows down the RPM of the engine, with an accompanied increase in speed.",
"This is the transmission changing gears. In a manual transmission this would be your signal to push in the clutch and shift. If you are accelerating and experiencing this a lot you are accelerating to fast. If you are not accelerating quickly but the gear change is drastic this is a sign of an issue with your transmission. Get that sucker looked at.",
"**Automatic:** The car is changing gears. Basically when you accelerate hard on an automatic, the car assumes that you need instant power and so it keeps on a lower gear limiting your speed. Once the gear kicks in, your revs go down as the higher gears are designed to take on higher speeds. You can control this by simply letting go of the accelerator (as you would in a manual car) and the car will shift up if you're at the right speed.\n\n**Manual:** Your gear isn't engaged (didn't completely remove your clutch) and so it's somewhat in a neutral position. As you slowly increase the accelerator, the revs go higher as you're not engaged yet until you take your foot of the clutch. The increase RPM cause the car to 'launch' before it slowly steadies due to you not going hard.\n\n**Turbo:** Depending on the car, 3km is when you hear the orgasmic whine of the turbines. That's when a somewhat fast car gets an injection of steroids... giving you that super kick. ",
"This is called \"shift shock\". Your transmission has a sequence of gears, and you're going from one ratio to another. So if 1st gear is 3:1 (for easy numbers), your engine's output is rotating the transmission's input shaft 3x for every 1x rotation of the transmission's output shaft.\n\nNow, let's presume you're at the top of your engine speed in first gear, 3:1, engine 5,000 rpm, 25 mph. We'll, you're at the top of your engine speed and you want to keep accelerating, right? So we go to 2nd gear. Let's presume it's 2:1. But you're still going 25 mph, so the engine has to lose speed (the difference has got to go somewhere and you're not going to accelerate instantly to top engine speed of 2nd gear), about 1/3 of it's rpm, so to go 25 mph in 2nd gear which is 2:1, your engine only has to rotate at 3,333 rpm. Now you have 1,667 rpm to accelerate in 2nd gear up to whatever speed before you repeat the process with the next gear, and the next, until you achieve effectively 1:1 at top gear. That is, the last gear of your transmission, for every rotation of the engine, there is one rotation of the transmission's input shaft, and one rotation of the transmission's output shaft.\n\nThere are transmission calculators out there if you're curious what the speed of a gear is per engine RPM. Gear ratios are not such nice numbers and are almost always fractional. There is another gear in your differential, which splits the transmission output between your two drive tires, presuming FWD or RWD. If you have AWD, you have 3 differentials, because you have to split transmission output between front and back, and then again each to left and right. Your diff is likely somewhere near 2.1:1, a sports car can be closer to 5:1.\n\nThe shock is because that drop isn't some perfect action. The car's computer is going to cut your throttle, but if you have an automatic, the engine and transmission are connected hydraulically. The two components are allowed to slip past each other, and viscosity of the oil, the now slower rotating input shaft is going to \"drag\" the engine down to matching speed. Then you apply throttle and the engine \"drags\" the transmission up to speed.\n\nA manual transmission has a clutch, these are two friction plates made of material similar to your brake pads and rotors. When engaged, the engine and transmission are physically linked. That means if the wheels aren't rotating, neither is the engine, and you stall! The trick is to ease the clutch together so the plates are allowed to slip until the car is moving with the engine for a complete connection.\n\nThere is something called overdrive, and this is a ratio that is greater than 1:1, typically 1:1.15. The goal is to lower engine rpm for fuel economy without sacrificing the power needed to maintain highway speeds. It's even a thing at all because people want cars that can accelerate, so you need gas hungry monsters and large gear ratios, but people also want fuel economy, which you can do with smaller engines and slower acceleration, or by running your gas hog real slow.\n\nYou need a transmission because engines are terrible at producing torque, which is force - the same force you use to push a heavy box across a room, but used to rotate an axis, it gets it's own name. They especially suck at it at low rpm. You need force to move a heavy ass car, and your engine sucks at it, so the transmission multiplies torque. Electric motors produce 100% of their torque even at 0 rpm, and they can run in reverse, which is why they don't have transmissions.\n\nHorsepower is a measure of work. So are Watts. In fact, you can convert between them. Anyway, work is best described as, \"If you want to cross a room in half the time, you need to perform twice the work.\" A strong man can march across a room dragging a boat anchor, and that's like torque, but that strength he has doesn't get him there any faster than if he would move his ass...\n\nTorque can be converted into horsepower through a transmission, but that would require lots of gears. Quickly you'll have more gears in a big heavy transmission, spending more time shifting than accelerating, than is practical. That's why diesel engines aren't used in racing outside of diesel racing categories. Speed favors work, not torque."
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11wq5n | why do professional athletes take steroids if they know they will be tested? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11wq5n/eli5_why_do_professional_athletes_take_steroids/ | {
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"In some cases, athletes only get tested randomly, so there is a good chance that they will never be tested. Secondly, even if an athlete is selected for testing, there are some ways to cheat the exam.",
"I'll give you a different answer:\n\nMoney",
"It's only cheating if you get caught."
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3d8xwp | how can the new version of firefox block adobe flash when most web content use adobe flash? | I hear because of security vulnerabilities facebook's chief security officer wants to kill flash for good. Doesn't most content on the web run on adobe flash? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d8xwp/eli5how_can_the_new_version_of_firefox_block/ | {
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" > Doesn't most content on the web run on adobe flash?\n\nAbsolutely not. Adobe Flash is becoming less used and more obsolete. Video sharing sites such as YouTube are moving away from Flash to using HTML5 video. Lots of mobile browsers (such as Safari for iPhone and Chrome for Android) don't support it anymore at all."
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4iwo41 | since i don't understand the oracle, google lawsuit, what is an api? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4iwo41/eli5since_i_dont_understand_the_oracle_google/ | {
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"API stands for \"Application Programming Interface\". \n\nIt's basically a set of \"black box\" functions that do what you want it to do and give you the result. \n\nAs an analogy, a computer is like a child being way too literal like \"you didn't tell me to *potty* in the restroom when you said 'go to the bathroom'!\" Or the endless streem of ever deeper nesting \"why?\"s. An API is just a pre-built mechanism for going through all that so you just have to say \"go to the bathroom (and poop)\" and not have to deal with taking off pants, sitting on toilet, flushing, blah. ",
"API stands for *Application Programming Interface*.\n\nThey function as a set of common tools that programmers can use to connect applications to each other. They are primarily used to help automate common functions and streamline the process from the user's perspective as well as the back end systems.\n\nWithout API:\nAn app finds the current weather in London by opening _URL_0_ and reading the webpage like a human does, interpreting the content.\n\nWith API:\nAn app finds the current weather in London by sending a message to the _URL_1_ API (in a structured format like JSON). The _URL_1_ API then replies with a structured response.",
"An API is a Application Programming Interface - in other words it is a method for disparate systems to communicate (think of it as a contract. You give me these parameters, and I'll return you this data). \n\nIn the case of Google vs Oracle, google bought Android and created a SDK (Software Development Kit) (think of it as a set of tools in a toolbox that a programmer can use to interact with the device's OS) that includes an API that was part of JAVA SE. At the time Java was owned by Sun Micro Systems, sun was OK with this. \n\nFast forward a few years, oracle purchased Java from sun and found that Google was using an API that is part of Java and wants to sue saying that they have intellectual property of the given APIs",
"It's the manual for how to use a widget. \n\nANALOGY: Everyone has different types of screwdriver heads, way more than the typical phillips and flatheads. The API/manual describes the shape of the head. With that, anyone can make a tool to go use your screws. \n\nEveryone has bought a bunch of Oracle-type screwdrivers and has been buying Oracle screws. \n\nGoogle used Oracle's API to make screws that fit into the Oracle-type screwdriver so everyone who already invested in Oracle tools could go buy Google screws. \n\nI'm siding with Google on this one hard. If interfaces are copyrighted IP, then the entire world blows up with lawsuits and software interoperability becomes non-existent. "
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azlb1m | what causes kids to walk on their tiptoes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/azlb1m/eli5_what_causes_kids_to_walk_on_their_tiptoes/ | {
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"I am not an expert but I think it is just a different sensory experience. Kids do a lot of things for the feeling it gives them. ",
"Never heard this discussed before but I have a brother who is a lefty and he walks more on his toes. Knowing this, I have observed that other left handed people rock up on their toes; mostly guys. Can’t say I have ever noticed this with left handed girls. ",
"I’ve done this as long as I can remember. When I was little I did it without thinking, it just was natural to me, but now that I’m an adult I realize that when I have to walk normally my back hurts badly but on tiptoes it doesn’t. ",
"It’s called “sensory seeking behavior,” and early on it’s common in children. Walking on tiptoes creates a pleasant pulling sensation.\n\nPast a certain point, a parent or therapist might need to intervene because very long term it can cause flexibility and core strength issues.",
"It's actually natural to walk on the balls of your foot, and this is better for the long-term health of your feet, legs, and back. It's only once we grow accustomed to wearing shoes all the time that we learn to walk in an unnatural way where the heel goes down first and then we slap the ball of the foot down. It's not a big deal, but it's not the best way to walk. "
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2frdi9 | why is scalping illegal? | In terms of tickets resale. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2frdi9/eli5_why_is_scalping_illegal/ | {
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"Anti-scalping laws are generally passed to protect the financial interests of professional sports teams.\n",
"Scalping is generally not illegal. Anti-scalping laws usually just restrict selling of tickets at or near the event itself, but not resell of tickets in general. The NHL for example (i'm sure it's similar in other sports) actually runs a service to let season ticket holders resell their tickets, including above face value (it actually restricts you from reselling at below face value).",
"I didn't read the description and thought you meant the act of removing a persons scalp with a knife.\n\n\n\nGlad that's illegal.",
"1. banning scalping will help cut down on counterfeit ticket sales.\n\n2. some places ban scalping near the arena because if someone gets all the way to the stadium, the stadium will want you to give them the money for a ticket instead of giving it so someone who already gave them money."
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3hxnhi | ; why is the practice of psychiatry so controversial? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hxnhi/eli5_why_is_the_practice_of_psychiatry_so/ | {
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"It's not really controversial. It's a long-established medical practice. \n\nUnless, of course, you're Tom Cruise. ",
"Let's not mince words: there are some legitimate controversies worth discussing (and I will), but there are a lot of very [crazy](_URL_1_) and/or [stupid](_URL_0_) people who believe the practice of psychiatry as a whole is \"controversial\" - that it's bad science or bad medicine. **It isn't**. As a science, it's incredibly useful and beneficial. ADHD is [not caused by sugar](_URL_6_). Vaccines [do not cause Autism](_URL_7_). Those are not medical or scientific controversies, those are *media* controversies (see: \"crazy and/or stupid people\"). Those people are deliberately manufacturing false controversy so they can sell their books and their fake medicine and their fake medical science.\n\n*However*, like any other science, we're still learning. And the human brain is something that we currently ~~don't know a whole lot about~~ know a shit-ton about, but is so complicated that it's still just a drop in the bucket. We are coming to understand new things about the mind all the time, so some practices that seemed effective have been shown to be less effective than we thought. That also means that it's sometimes hard to keep up. Mind, sometimes it's really **not** hard but people don't anyways, like the [\"we only use 10% of our brains\"](_URL_3_) myth. Or institutions are too invested in a particular methodology, like how we still tell new teachers about \"learning styles\" even though those are [absolutely false](_URL_2_). Again, those aren't controversies, those are just lingering misinformation.\n\nWe're also adjusting to some bad psychology from the past. We made a lot of bad assumptions back in the day. For instance, we thought black people were actually, scientifically dumber than white people because whites consistently scored higher on IQ tests...Turns out, the tests were poorly written, so they were very biased in favor of white people who generally had more money (and therefore a better education). Thankfully, that's a \"controversy\" that's [mostly] over. But then there's the idea that homosexuality is a \"disorder\". It used to be described as one, because the psychologists at the time saw it as a disruptive, negative, aberrant behavior. Since then, we've dropped it from the list, but that's also \"controversial\" because of religious people who want to continue defining it as a disorder (again, see: \"crazy and/or stupid\". I don't mean religious people are crazy and/or stupid, just religious people *who are bigoted and homophobic*). Once again, not really a controversy, just fixing bad science, and not everyone wants to agree with that.\n\nThere *are* some legitimate controversies, though. We tend to diagnose ADD and ADHD very quickly and easily in the US. There are many reasons for that (and the supposed greed of big pharma trying to sell pills is not actually one of them). Mostly, it's because US citizens are accustomed to quick fixes, and medicine has evolved to a point where we have a lot of those. We're also learning that there are chemicals (like certain [food dyes](_URL_4_)) that can cause hyperactivity. So...is ADHD overmedicated? Yes, probably. There are a lot of coping mechanisms that aren't usually explored because they're hard and time-consuming, so families choose medication. Is it over-diagnosed? Again, yes, probably. But we live in a hyperactive world. I have two monitors on my computer, and I regularly pay attention to both, plus my phone, plus whatever music or show is playing, and that's assuming I'm not playing a game. I don't have ADD, but if you gave me a test in the middle of a League of Legends game and I will probably show symptoms (because games like that require focusing on a lot of information at once). Is it as overmedicated and overdiagnosed as much of the media would have you believe? Not even slightly. But...we're still figuring that one out.\n\nIn any case, psychology and psychiatry involved a lot of close, personal life decisions, so people have a lot of strong feelings about it. Even worse, a lot of it involves children, so parents are making those choices *for* them, and people get very, very upset about [anything involving children](_URL_8_).\n\nSo while there *is* some controversy, don't be fooled into believing there's more than there actually is. And the controversies that do exist are being investigated *by scientists*, so it's not something you should generally have to worry about. Read scholarly articles, *ask your doctor*, and do real research (aka: don't just google shit and read the first pseudo-science pro-homeopathy all-natural-free-range-GMO-and-gluten-free-[bleach-enema](_URL_5_)-paleo-kale-diet blogger you find... Actually check the facts and where the source is getting them from)."
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"http://scoopwithmysoup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Zen-on-Oz.jpg",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology",
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"http://theparisiandream.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/lucy.jpg",
"http://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/childhood-adhd/food-dye-adhd",
"http://www.vice.com/read/parents-are-giving-their-children-bleach-enemas-to-cure-them-of-autism-311",
"http://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/busting-sugar-hyperactivity-myth",
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126g1s | why do we feel ashamed about our bodies?
(further elaboration inside) | What I mean to ask, is why did people start viewing them as shameful to begin with? (especially with such zeal, sometimes) Why do we get embarrassed about it if, say, our jeans rip by accident and we're like "OSHIT COVER THAT SHIT UP RIGHT NOW".
I can see where some possible sources of this attitude might come from, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. Any insight is appreciated.
And thanks in advance for (genuine) answers. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/126g1s/eli5_why_do_we_feel_ashamed_about_our_bodies/ | {
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"It's just habit and cultural conditioning. We're taught from a young age to cover up when other people are around and throughout our lives we (or at least most of us) are so rarely exposed in public that it feels weird to do otherwise.\n\nThese feelings can build up around almost anything we do habitually. For example, do you have a watch that you always put on before you leave the house (or it could be a piece of jewellery or sticking your phone in your left pocket)? What happens when one day you forget to put it on? You won't have walked more than a few steps from your front door before you'll feel a tingling in your wrist. Your body knows you're doing something that is against habit and it makes you feel uncomfortable.\n\n**EDIT:** Just re-read your question and it looks like you're asking more along the lines of why people hold that moral view that nakedness is indecent. That has to do with the idea of sex being something private (note that it's the sex organs that people worry about most) and therefore anything to do with it should supposedly be hidden when in public. It's just like you wouldn't be buying something in a shop and start chatting to the cashier about your sex life; you wouldn't get your bits out in front of them either. At least, probably not.\n\nAs to where prudishness comes from, and whether it's a good or bad thing, that's another matter.",
"On a basic level, I think it's because that once we gained rationality, there was a part of us that was fundamentally disturbed by the irrationality of our sexual aspect. The way we can't help being aroused in certain situations, and the way that is obvious to others (especially if you're a guy). It's our animal side fighting against our rationality. So that's something that all cultures try to remove from public view."
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20ob1z | "fast food" from other countries. what are they? | N.America has brand name fastfood joints like McDonalds, Burger King, Subway, and...dare I say...Arby's(I actually really like them).
Are there equivalent names in other countries that are medium-large scale like its N.American counter parts?
For example, some drive thru noddle shop all around Korea or some Indian joint pumping out paneer burgers. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20ob1z/eli5_fast_food_from_other_countries_what_are_they/ | {
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"All 10 of the world's largest fast food chains are [American brands](_URL_0_). Other countries almost ubiquitously also have these brands (although sometimes under other names, but typically keeping their american name). \n\nPlaces also often have their own types of foods that are 'fast'. Japan has Ramen, vietnam has Pho and lots of other \"street foods\", the middle east has shawarma (donor, gyro) - most locales have some sort of fast food, even if it doesn't conform to our ideas of a fast-food-resturaunt.",
"Bit of an open ended question really. Here in the UK we have a lot of American brands. McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Subway. We also have Nando's, which a chain from Spain or Portugal, I forget which. \n\nMost places just basically have McDonalds and KFC and those as they're such big brands and hold a monopoly on most fast food industries throughout the world. \n\nHere in the UK, we have a lot of chip shops, which I suppose you could count as fast food, but much like pizzeria's, they're not really branded. You'll find a shop called say 'Paul's chip shop', but this won't be a brand like McDonalds, they all have different names. ",
"One chain I know of in Japan is [Yoshinoya](_URL_0_), which is common enough there that their sign/logo is occasionally used as a throwaway background gag in anime and manga. Kind of a Japanese equivalent of \"Here we are, 9000 light-years on the other end of the universe... oh look, a McDonalds!\""
]
} | [] | [] | [
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"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/12/global-fast-food-chains_n_2855020.html"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshinoya"
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2bl7j6 | how come off-brand food products seem to taste so much worse than their brand counterparts? | Same could apply to the quality of non-food products. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bl7j6/eli5_how_come_offbrand_food_products_seem_to/ | {
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"\"Off-Brand\" products are usually marketed by their lower price. Companies that produce a copycat product expect it to sell because it costs less than a recognized brand, and is still similar in function or quality.\n\nThe wager is that price-conscious shoppers are less concerned with absolute quality, and more concerned with value. They can be made with less expensive ingredients, or sold for a lower margin, or both. \n\nThe opposite also holds true -- premium products often taste better or are made of better ingredients than their more popular name-brand counterparts. They are also more expensive. People primarily interested with absolute quality in a product are the least price-conscious, and therefore willing to spend the most money.",
"I used to work as a food technologist and used to design food for companies. The two responses below are both correct. Sometimes it is a cheaper quality item, reflected in the price. They are made specifically for very price-conscious consumers who aren't fussy about the quality at that point in time. \n\nIf a brand is associated with a product, take cadbury chocolate for example, you would expect it to taste the same every time and be of the same quality. When it isn't you may tell your friends, complain to the company, expect a refund. This damages the brand. When you get a bad quality home brand product, if you are unsatisfied, you simply think \"well what did I expect?\" and if you complain to your friends, they will probably say \"well you should have bought cadburys\".\n\nIn some cases, the home-brand/ no name product is actually the same as the branded product and it is only your perception of the product that makes it seem different. I live in Australia and there are two major supermarkets called Woolworths and Coles, lately they have really flooded the market with their own labelled products. Aldi also makes a lot of imitation type products. I used to make a very popular product for both the branded product and the supermarket-branded product. We put exactly the same ingredients in. If I asked people which one they liked better, they would pick the product that has been producing the product for 40 years. They have a relationship with this product. They would say that the other brand didn't taste as nice. If I performed a true blind taste test, they couldn't tell the difference. \n\nIn short, sometimes they use inferior products, reflected by their low price. Sometimes they use exactly the same ingredients but can offer it cheaper as they do not have to spend any money on fancy packaging or advertising which is very very expensive, and this makes you think it doesn't taste as good.",
"It's both physical and psychological. Physical, because off-brands are concerned about keeping a lower price point than the name brand, so sometimes can cut corners in quality. Psychological, because of years of ads that tell you that the name brand is always better than the off brand, and look how fulfilled and happy you'll be if you just buy our product!",
"In my country - Denmark - many of the off-brand cheap products in stores like Aldi are made by the same producers as the expensive brands (just turn the container around and look at the stuff in small writing.) But I gotta admit, the off-brand nutella tastes horrible - and incidentally isn't produced by Ferrero either.\n\nBut bread, cheese, milk etc is the same thing just different packaging."
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foudbh | why oceans on earth are not absorbed by earths crust completly | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/foudbh/eli5_why_oceans_on_earth_are_not_absorbed_by/ | {
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"Not 100% sure what you're asking but here I go. The earths tectonic plates are super close to each other, some over lap some form ocean trenches under that is a super dense layer of earth made from rock called the mantle, it's made up of iron, silicon, etc. Water most likely seeps into the mantle but the mantle is virtually impermeable,enough so to withstand a large amount of erosion. Of course there is alot more to it than that but that's a quick little summary (ps parts of the mantle that are eroded off usually join the tectonic plates as lava or a new plate,the later it takes a super long time and is rare, its very unlikely to happen during our or even our great great great grandkids time)",
"Rocks are heavier than water. The water from the oceans gets in whatever cracks are present between the rocks, but there's a lot more water than there's space in the cracks, so the oceans \"float\" on the Earth's crust because it's made of rock.\n\nSimilarly, the air \"floats\" on the water and the rocks too.\n\nGravity pulls everything down, the heaviest things will be at the bottom, displacing and pushing up the lighter things.",
"What if there was a massive earthquake that ripped open a cavern in the mantle from the surface? Would water flow in?",
"Actually, earth's oceans are very slowly being absorbed and bound up by the rocks in earth's crust. Luckily, it will be billions of years until this becomes a big problem for earth's climate."
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34080p | why is reddit so pro-gun when it seems to be much more liberal regarding other issues? | Whenever a thread comes up about gun control or gun rights, almost everyone in the comment section is against gun control, and for expanded gun rights. Given that this is following a more conservative school of thought, I am somewhat surprised that most people on this site are in favor of gun-rights. Why is that when American redditors look to improve systems of their country such as healthcare, they look to Europe as an example to follow, yet for something like gun control very few want to follow the European ideals? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34080p/eli5_why_is_reddit_so_progun_when_it_seems_to_be/ | {
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"It is not so much the liberal/conservative issue, but more about what gun control legislation tries to accomplish. Reddit is against any legislation that tries to impose a prohibition on people, whether this is for guns, weed, marriage, or internet speeds.\n\n",
"Reddit doesn't like to be told what to do by stupid rules. Most liberal issues Reddit is for have to do with removing stupid rules. Gun control has to do with making stupid rules. So Reddit is really just pro-dont make up and enforce stupid shit upon me.\n\n[I speak for all of Reddit](_URL_0_)",
"Plenty of liberal guns rights supporters running around. \n\nAlso, reddit has a major libertarian streak. ",
"Well first as someone with left-leaning political views, I'd describe reddit's collective bias as more like “techno-libertarian”. It has views that, from an American perspective, align a bit more with Democrats than with Republicans, but from a broader perspective aren't really leftist.\n\nSecond, there's a self-reinforcing effect here. As a gun owner who supports strong gun control laws, pretty much every time I say something to that effect I get downvoted. And I see this phenomenon in other pro-gun-control comments: no matter how well-reasoned or politely expressed, they almost always go deeply negative. After a while a person feels less inclined to even bother commenting. This effect only amplifies the existing bias, it doesn't explain why it exists in the first place.",
"Confirmation bias. Those who're really passionate about the issue jump,in on every thread and downvote people they don't agree with. There are simply more people who care enough about guns to put in that sort of effort. ",
"Because Reddit does not follow the party lines. America has 2 parties, 2 platforms, that tries to unify all of those different opinions. That's impossible, it's just marginally (read 2x) more efficient than those one party states in representing the different opinions and has to suffer from constant campaigns.",
"I reject the notion that forms the basis of your question. I consider myself liberal on most social issues and am very pro-gun. To me being a liberal on social issues means it's the responsibility of the government to do what it can, within the bounds of the Constitution and fiscal responsibility, to promote social justice and ensure that the rights of all people are protected. Gun control is antithetical to this. Gun control means some people will have guns and others will not. That's the exact opposite of guaranteeing liberties and promoting social justice. "
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2897v5 | why do you have to buy domain names? | I started a new website. Why do I have to pay GoDaddy a yearly cost for a domain name? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2897v5/eli5_why_do_you_have_to_buy_domain_names/ | {
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"You pay for your phone number too, don't you?",
"You don't actually buy the domain name, you rent it from your registrar. The price you pay them is for the service of routing the domain name to an actual server. Without that service a domain name would lead nowhere, they have to point visitors to the right server. They need servers to do that, which you pay for."
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4go92f | what would be the effects of a completely cashless society? is it possible, and how would it affect things like drugs, prostitution, illegal trade, and the homeless, for example? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4go92f/eli5_what_would_be_the_effects_of_a_completely/ | {
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"People would find something valuable and reasonably untraceable to use as cash - just like prisoners often use pre-paid phone cards for the purpose. \n\nBasically, if the government didn't provide something to use, the citizenry would.",
"If by \"cashless society\", do you mean to only rely on electronic transfer of funds or do you mean going back to a barter system?"
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cqyrbk | how exactly does taking a cold shower help you sober up? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cqyrbk/eli5_how_exactly_does_taking_a_cold_shower_help/ | {
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"It doesn't. Coffee doesn't. Time sobers you. Your liver removing the ethanol. That is the only thing that lowers your blood alcohol level."
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8tk3ds | what happens to them massive metal containers that are used to carry cargo once they have reached their destination? surely they are not shipped halfway across the world and then returned empty? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8tk3ds/eli5_what_happens_to_them_massive_metal/ | {
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"They're filled with new cargo and sent back (or elsewhere), either being rented through the shipping company or bought and sold second hand. \n\nSometimes they're converted into apartments for students, garden sheds, or just used for storage. ",
"There is usually traffic going in both directions. They may be filled with raw materials going in, and completed products coming out.\n\nIn certain places there is far far more incoming cargo than outgoing cargo. In these scenarios, containers are sometimes just discarded in the local area. There are many \"shipping container towns\" in China where people have taken to living inside of the discarded shipping containers."
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383d62 | how were big business transactions done in the days before credit cards? | I was watching There Will Be Blood and it dawned on me that they didn't have credit cards during that time. I find it hard to imagine oil men or even steel men like Andrew Carnegie handling big business transactions by transporting cash via horse and buggy.
Any idea if this was how they did it? Was it done by check? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/383d62/eli5_how_were_big_business_transactions_done_in/ | {
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"You've answered your own question. Congratulations. I can only answer this from the point of review of UK and European banking really, as I'm not 100% sure on American banking. Though, I suspect it runs more or less parallel.\n\nBank accounts are actually pretty uncommon for individuals or small businesses historically, even at the turn of the millennium around a [quarter of UK low income households](_URL_1_) lacked access to a bank account. Doing everything through the use of credit and debit card is a very new idea on the grand scale of things.\n\nBefore the times of credit and debit cards large payments (usually by businesses) would have to be paid through a giro (a direct bank transfer that took off in the 1700s) where they literally withdrew the amount from one book and added it to another, to show that the funds had been transferred. This was simple enough as most businesses were local and operated out of the same banks, it would take slightly longer, but the system could also be done by post.\n\nThis system was used concurrently with the slightly more complicated cheques, which were only available for high denominations for the purpose of trade and they didn't really take off for [individuals or small businesses](_URL_2_) in many areas for some time (in the UK, it's because Banks didn't issue any note smaller than £50 - and the average annual income was £20). Cheques themselves would be carried in batches by clerks between banks to work out who owed what to whom, and subsequently credit the accounts as appropriate.\n\nBefore the 1700s the proto-cheques in existence were far more informal, consisting of bills of exchange (or drawn notes, meaning that they allowed a customer to literally draw on the funds held in a bank account) and were hand written. It was more of a \"made out to cash\" kind of deal initially formulated by [Venetian banks](_URL_0_) for international trade in the 1300s.\n\nTransition between the cheques and proto-cheques was murky, and it took some time for banks to officially issue cheques on proper cheque paper (1717, I believe by the Royal Bank of Scotland) and before that you would just issue them on any old piece of paper. That said, you still *can* do that with some banks...\n\n**TL;DR: Cheques and bank transfers were used for businesses and wealthy individuals. Everyone else had no real need.**"
]
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"http://www.chequeandcredit.co.uk/cheque_and_credit_clearing/history_of_the_cheque/the_advent_of_the_cheque/",
"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/bank-accounts/10301834/A-300-year-history-of-British-banking-and-the-rise-of-current-accounts.html",
"http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7839823.stm"
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31rn9m | how you decide whether something you read on the web is true or false? | How did you decide which sites are credible and which are not? Is the same criteria applied to watching tv or reading a paper? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31rn9m/eli5_how_you_decide_whether_something_you_read_on/ | {
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"Never trust one source. And preferably use sites that normally have very different opinions. Even BBC can be wrong. ",
"I have a store of knowledge from school and various sources I trust, such as science books, magazines, certain documentaries, and personal experience. \n\nWhen I read an article on the internet I determine if the facts presented in the article are in line with what I know to be true based on my previous experiences and level of knowledge. If they align, then I assume the article is good. If not, then I will either reject the article's facts or search for clarification from other sources (that depends on how much I care about the topic, usually).\n\nThe next filter is if the conclusion follows a logical path from the facts. For example, if the fact presented is something about evolution (which I know is true based on my experience) that sounds true and then the conclusion is, \"Therefore the world cannot be more than 10,000 years old.\" I immediately try to figure out how they made the leap. If it's illogical I'll reject the article and move on (or do more research). If the logic flows and the conclusion makes sense, I'll accept the article.\n\nI've also developed a 'trusted sites' mentality. If I read a lot of articles from certain sites and they continually meet my two major filters, then I'll be more apt to accept their information (articles on _URL_0_ is a good example for me). If I go to a site I've never been to before, or if the site has failed to pass my filters in the past, I will scrutinize their information more and will regularly compare their conclusions against sites I trust.\n\nTL;DR: I use a couple of filters based on logic, my education, experiences, and critical thinking skills to find sites that make sense. Then I evaluate the quality of articles I've read on the site before to determine the level of scrutiny the article deserves. ",
"If its too good to be true, it probably isn't.\n",
"Something I learned from a college professor and a little bit I gained from experience:\n\n1. Does the article have a link to the study?\n2. Where is the study published? Nature isn't always reliable, but loved by Reddit. The New England Journal of Medicine is highly prestigious, however. Also, make sure it's been peer-reviewed.\n2. Does the [logic](_URL_0_) make sense? Ex: If A is true and B is false, then is the conclusion true? (A+B = C?)\n3. Read other articles; do they tell the same story?\n4. Is the writer knowledgeable with the subject? Obviously, I'm not going to take a study on black holes seriously on MSNBC unless the author is also an astrophysicist.\n6. Read the study if something doesn't seem right. How many people are in the study group? What age are they? Where do they live? Does this information pertain to the group involved? What was the control?\n\nAlthough watching TV doesn't often cite sources, this is where the internets or journals become useful. \n\nI want to expand a little more on the logic. Here's a valid argument:\n\nEither Waspocracy owns a Honda or it owns a Toyota.\nWaspocracy does not own a Honda.\nTherefore, Waspocracy owns a Toyota.\n\nInvalid: \n\nEither Waspocracy owns a Honda or it owns a Toyota.\nWaspocracy does not have a Ford.\nTherefore, Waspocracy owns a Toyota.\n\nEven though the invalid statement has a true conclusion, it's an invalid argument because it's impossible to know whether I own a Toyota or not based off the premises provided."
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j2fhj | explain to me how a movie camera focus on one image close to the camera, than a further image? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j2fhj/explain_to_me_how_a_movie_camera_focus_on_one/ | {
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"How focusing in a camera works:\nObjects reflect light, and the light rays come off each point in all different directions, so the light spreads out. To create a focused image of the object, you need to redirect the rays so that they go back together to one point again, and then you need to position the recording media (film or a CCD) at that point.\n\nThe lens in the camera is a convex lens, meaning it is thicker in the center than around the edges, and this type of lens catches the rays that are divergent (spreading apart) and bends them so they are convergent (going together). It does this for all the objects in front of it. \n\nSo if you point the camera at a long line of people, one of them along that line will be at just the right distance for the lens to bend the rays coming off him just enough to meet back together on the film, and he will be in focus. The other people in the line will look blurry, though, because the rays coming from them are at different angles, and the lens bends them differently. The angles vary with different object distances in a predictable way; an object further away has divergent rays reaching you that are closer to parallel, while a closer object has rays with a greater angle between them.\n\nIf we want to focus on a closer person in the line, we need to make that guy's light rays converge on the film instead of the current guy's. Since his light rays are coming into the lens at a wider angle, the lens needs a longer distance to focus them into a point. So we move the lens forward in the camera, a little farther away from the film, until this new guy is \"in focus\".\n\nIt's the exact same, only reversed, for someone farther away. To focus on someone farther away, we move the lens backward in the camera, a little closer to the film, because his light rays are less angled.\n\nThis whole idea is called depth of field; basically, how \"deep\" in an image is the camera still focused? When there's a very short distance that stays in focus, the camera is said to have a short or shallow depth of field, and when there's a large distance that all stays in focus, it has a long or deep depth of field. So if you want to do a shot where two people are talking in a room and you want to focus on one and have the other blurry, you would use a shallow depth of field. Then if you want to go outside and take a picture of a whole scene, and have the mountains in the background and the trees in the foreground all in focus, you would use a long depth of field.\n\nSource: basic optics, _URL_0_"
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9uzzng | why do horses need horseshoes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9uzzng/eli5why_do_horses_need_horseshoes/ | {
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"To protect their hoofs, they need it or they're screwed. Have you seen a hoof starting to peel off of a horse? Not a pretty sight. \n\nIt's basically the same reason why we need shoes, so that rocks and other things that are found in nature/roads don't get stuck to the skin. ",
"The ancestors of the domestic horse didn't, necessarily. Domestication has changed the wear patterns for horses, they pursue different activities, they move across different surfaces, and they travel at different rates, than their ancestors did. \n\nThis contributes to increased and/or uneven wear on natural hooves, which predisposes the horses to various forms of injury or discomfort. The horseshoe is meant to help account for this, and protect the hoof. ",
"They don't. We need horseshoes to allow the horses to walk on surfaces they wouldn't naturally walk on. If we left the horses alone, they'd manage just fine without. ",
"Depending on what type of surface/work your horse will be doing, they don't always need to wear shoes. Also some horses have healthier stronger hooves genetically than others. It just depends on different factors. \n\nCurrently my horse doesn't wear shoes but she also doesn't do super strenuous work and is usually in a soft surface area. I do have protective boots (think rubber shoes) that I put on whenever I take her riding or somewhere that could be hard on her feet. She used to wear shoes but has been without for a while because she does fine without them and her hooves are healthy. \n\nThat said- some horses absolutely need shoes no matter what depending on circumstances or medical issues with their feet and I am in no way advocating a horse always going barefoot. Also, I do have a trimmer come out regularly about every 4-6 weeks to trim, file, and evaluate the health of her feet. As mentioned, domestic horses feet do need to be trimmed often. It's very very important to take care of their feet proactively and address any issues as they come. ",
"I've read that it is also due to bringing horses to live and work in environments that are more humid and wetter... that in a dry or arid environment their hooves would be less prone to issues.",
"Also just as interesting fact, if we equate horseshoes with steel toe boots, we can draw another corrollary: along with protection for the hooves, this added a stronger weapon to the warhorse's arsenal.\n\nThese animals were trained to bite and kick in combat, and some horseshoes were smithed with knobs or spikes to further amplify the force of a kick.",
"They have a soft sensitive spot in the middle of their hoof. They can step on pointing rocks and hurt themselves. And other stuff too. ",
"Most horses do not need shoes just their hooves trimmed regularly. Your average horse will do better barefoot as nature intended. In fact shoes cause a lot of damage to the hooves and legs. Horses have a built shock absorber, called the frog and when they wear shoes it doesn't do it's job. Hooves also expand and contract When making contact with the ground and shoes limit that function.\n When horses wear shoes holes are being created that allow bacteria and fungi in that weakens the hoof. \nHorse shoeing has been going on for hundreds of years and it's a practice a lot of people have moved away from because it's not good for the animal. A lot of people still do it \"because that's how it's always been done\" but we need to move away from it for the sake of the animal. A good diet low in sugar and regular trimming off excess hoof growth the animal can't wear off is what they need. \n",
"Primarily because they won't get any service without them. Businesses look past the lack of a shirt just because of the issues of getting them on, but bare hooves bring in a ton of dirt so shoes are necessary.",
"Imagine you walked on your fingernails all day long, everywhere you went. And you don't live in nature anymore-- you live in a place with paved streets. Oh, and you and your whole family have kind of soft fingernails just because you're sort of city folk and have never lived the tough life. \n\nWouldn't you want some help from a *serious* nail strengthening manicure?"
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u52vl | evolutionary gaps. why is the missing link missing. | I strongly believe in the theory of evolution. Having said that if we ARE in deed constantly evolving then where did these gaps come from. I guess im wondering if we started from square 1 and are now on square 100 as far as evolution goes....why dont we see squares 99 and 98...the creatures we were just before we are what you see today. Like some type of half ape half human...I hope im explaining myself. Feel free to ask for clarification if needed.
Edit: maybe im not asking the right question to trigger the answer im looking for. If there has been a constant string of evolving animals why dont we see all of them? And im not necessarily talking about fossils and dinosaurs just maybe between lets say Apes and Humans. Why are there just apes and just humans but we dont see any species that are clearly in between us in the evolutionary chain? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/u52vl/evolutionary_gaps_why_is_the_missing_link_missing/ | {
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"There is a sequence of like 30 or 35 \"missing\" links, how many do you want? ",
"The conditions to form fossils are very rare. Most creatures die and their bones decompose completely. So when we do find fossils it's a big deal. Let's say you had a perfectly preserved fossil for every 100,000 years that passes. Just 1 set of bones per hundred thousand years! The \"missing link\" would be every living creature that was born, lived, and died between the times of those fossils you found. If we then found a set of bones for every 50,000 years, the \"missing link\" would be every creature that was born and died between those examples.\n\nThere will *always* be gaps. But we continue to shrink the size of those gaps with each new find. When the term \"missing link\" was first coined, we've proceeded to fill in many of those links since then. But short of going back in time or finding a magic wand to help us locate some new fossils that are exactly what we're looking for, we'll always have the spaces between.",
" > Why are there just apes and just humans but we dont see any species that are clearly in between us in the evolutionary chain?\n\n[We see plenty.](_URL_0_)",
"I think that the idea of a \"missing link\" itself is fundamentally flawed, as it implies a linear evolution from chimpanzees/monkeys to us. In reality, we merely share a common ancestry, and so we wouldn't have a link going from them directly to us, but rather a series of common denominators between us. As for why we don't necessarily have fossil records of these common ancestors even though we know they exist, I would direct you to limbodog's [response](_URL_0_).",
"take a look at this video: [Evolution is the Blind Clockmaker](_URL_0_)\nIn it, the author uses a computer program to simulate evolution on a clock's components. (warning: this isn't real evolution, and won't stand up to heated debate, but it serves as an educational tool in many ways).\n\nI ran and tweaked the code myself, and I found this:\n\nin the simulation, the clock will find great advantage in jumping to a 'higher' species (like by adding a second hand to get second hand precision).\n\nGenetic drift is slow and constant: the clock will slowly increase in accuracy or plateau, while unmeasured properties continue to change (like other, extraneous gears being added). The genetic drift serves to set up a rebound for another gene to get the layup, all it has to do is make that last connection.\n\nThe amazing thing was, it was fast.\n\nHere you are minding your business, and in 3 generations the entire population of pseudo clocks jumps from 1 handed hour clocks to 2 handed minute clocks. 3 generations at most.\n\nThe big jump in the begining from a pendulum clock to the 'learning to walk on land' 1 handed hour clock involves at least 4 or 5 unrelated steps to occur before it is viable. And these steps are not very positive mutations either, being neutral at best and dangerous at worst. Yet those too, only took a dozen generations for the last two steps to pass by.\n\nI was able to record and pick apart every single generation and its 'DNA', and only saw the new species arise within a few generations. If I added holes, like by only seeing every 10th generation or fewer, I would never see the transition period. I would have hour handed clocks first, and then minute handed clocks a few minutes later.\n\nIf you use matlab at all, try the program yourself (protip: learn about Cells). But it does illustrate why there are gaps in some places, especially when fossilization is such a chance process.",
" > I strongly believe in the theory of evolution\n\nThat's irrelevant and ultimately useless. Forget believing it. You should *understand* it. It will serve you far better.\n\n > Having said that if we ARE in deed constantly evolving then where did these gaps come from.\n\nDo you know who your parents were? How about your grandparents? Great-grandparents? Can you trace your full genealogy back to the mayflower (or whatever significant migration applies to you)? If you can trace any ancestry back to the year 1000 I will be *very* impressed.\n\nAs some point you just lose track. In fact, the further back you go, the fuzzier it gets. Eventually we have fossilization, but that doesn't even preserve ancestry information. It took a very long time before researchers realized that Neanderthal was not a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens. Then even longer to realize that most humans alive today are actually a hybrid of Neanderthal, Homo sapiens and yet a third Human sub-species known as the Denisova (about which we know almost zero -- I could summarize the entire knowledge in about 2 paragraphs of text, but I will skip that for now.)\n\nThe simplest reason why there are gaps in the fossil record, is that not all animals have their bones preserved by burial, then layering by a volcanic lava flow on top of them in a way that is then exposed to that we can easily examine them. Do you know of any human in history whose bones have met with this fate? Of course not -- the contents below any lava flow from recorded history is inaccessible to us right now. We need to wait for techtonic plate movements to expose them for us.\n\n > Why are there just apes and just humans but we dont see any species that are clearly in between us in the evolutionary chain?\n\nThat's not an accurate assessment of what we know. The following sequence: \n\n1. Sahelanthropus tchadensis\n1. Orrorin tugenensis\n1. Ardipithecus kadabba\n1. Ardipithecus ramidus\n1. Australopithecus amnesis\n1. Australopithecus afarensis\n1. Australopithecus africanus\n1. Australopithecus sediba\n1. Homo gautengis\n1. Homo habilis\n1. Homo georgicus\n1. Homo ergaster\n1. Homo heidelbergensis\n1. Homo sapien \n\nis a *plausible* sequence of human ancestry. Given 14 points on a 7 million year old time period, spreads them out *about* half a million years a piece (though the distance between africanus to georgicus is actually a little more than half a million years total) is not too bad in terms of observable continuity. But I think most paleoanthropologists would be very cautious before endorsing that sequence as the true one that describes our ancestry. And its take quite a bit of time and research just to make it possible to describe that possible time line. Nevertheless its a very good, plausible guess as to the evolutionary sequence. I encourage you to look each member up to verify that I am not full of crap, and see for yourself.\n\nWhat you see in that sequence is fairly good continuity. It's very hard to imagine what exactly to put between each adjacent pair. There is enough overlap of features, that you know there is *some* sort of continuity or high degree of relatedness between the adjacent sub-species I've listed there. These are represented by many hundreds of fossils, which is why we are able to see as much as we can in this sequence.\n\nAt the same time, Chimpanzees are represented by exactly 1 fossil from about a half million years ago. And as far as apes before that, I think there is 1 or 2. The simple fact is that jungle environments where they live are rarely near volcanoes so there is nothing to vacuum seal their bones for later posterity. We don't get to pick which animals will be preserved in the fossil record. We just get what we get.\n",
" > Why are there just apes and just humans but we dont see any species that are clearly in between us in the evolutionary chain?\n\nFirst, you misunderstand evolution a little. Humans did not evolve from modern apes. They evolved from a common ape-like ancestor. If you saw one today, you'd probably say, \"hey, look at the ape\", but the important thing is that we evolved from *different* apes than exist today.\n\nAnd we have a lot of links in the chain from this ape-link ancestor and both humans and modern apes. Most of the links went extinct tens of thousands of years ago, but a few lived on to become modern humans, gorillas, chimps, and orangutans.\n\nWhat about the missing link? Well, imagine your squares, but none of them have numbers. For any two of them, I can always say, \"yeah, but what's in between them?\" Unless we have a fossil record of *every* parent-child link throughout history, there will *always* be gaps."
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b3as0t | if we can see cells with a microscope, why can’t we just keep adding lenses/magnification to see atoms fairly clearly (with electrons etc.)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b3as0t/eli5_if_we_can_see_cells_with_a_microscope_why/ | {
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"We can only see things by bouncing light off them and then into our eyes. Lenses help us focus light so we can see smaller things, but evsntually, the things you're looking at are smaller than the wavelengths of light. Light itself has a size and you can't bounce it off things that are smaller than it and get a good picture. We can get around this a bit by using electrons instead of light, But even that has a limit as well. We'll never see things like quarks, they're just too small. ",
"Light is a waves that have larger wavelength then the size of a atom. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe wavelenght of visible light is 380-740 nm. A larger atoms have a diameter of 0.5 nm and the smaller hydrogen have a diameter of 0.05nm. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nWhen a wave interact with object that is smaller then the wavelength it will diffract. So light start to bend around object and other effect so the result is that you cant use light with microscopes for sizes below 200nm. So light can pass around a small object and you cant see it is a way to look at it. The minimum object you can see depend on the wavelength.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIf you use electrons as the illumination instead of light you can ave a resolution smaller then 0.05 nm\n\n & #x200B;\n\nAll particles can be looked at as both particles and waves. The wavelength of a electron will depend on the momentum and when used in electron microscopes the momentum depend on the voltage you use. At 200 000 V the wavelength of a electron is 0.0025nm and that is smaller then a atom. So in some condition you can see individual atoms with a election microscope.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;\n\nWavelength also determine size of antennas in radio communication. Lower frequency require larger antennas. So cellphones that can receive FM radio need to have the headphones inserted because it is used as the antenna. You cant have a good antenna builtin as the phone is to small.",
"There’s even something else that comes into play before what the top comments are mentioning. If you zoom in with a microscope, you’ll notice that the image gets dimmer and dimmer the more you zoom. That’s because light from a smaller and smaller area is being spread out to your entire field of view. At some zooming point, there will be almost no photons to even produce that image, and this point is far before the wavelength of light.\n\nEDIT: Hmm, I guess it’s not that far before the wavelength of light. And you can of course just pump more light in. But the image quality definitely degrades a lot due to the limited amount of light, and using too much of a high energy bulb could come with other effects as well.",
"The way we see things is by light reflecting of of it into our eyes.\n\nLenses take reflected light and make the image appear bigger.\n\nIn order for the \"reflection\" to work the wavelength of the light has to be smaller than the object. This isn't a problem with anything we interact with in the normal world because everything is massive compared to wavelengths of visible light.\n\nThe problem is as you try to view something small, like cells, you need increasing smaller wavelengths of light. For most cells visible light is fine as they're still quite big.\n\nThe problem is on an atomic level the wavelength of light is too big compared to the object, it will just go around it. If you keep adding lenses there will be no visible light for the lens to make bigger.\n",
"Just because atoms are smaller than \"light\" we use to see. it's like trying to catch a bug with a net with big holes, it won't work. ",
"Lots of good comments here already about how the wavelength of light is a limiting factor for conventional microscopy. It's worth mentioning that we can \"see\" things smaller than that, but through indirect means. One such way is by using the power of X-rays, which have a much shorter wavelength than visible light, such that the X-rays interact with the electrons of molecules. Growing crystals of something and then measuring how these X-rays are scattered is the basis of a method called X-ray crystallography, which is regularly used to \"visualize\" (or more accurately build models that are consistent with the data) to \"see\" what proteins and nucleic acids look like on an atomic level. ",
"Light is made out of teeny tiny things called photons. We see things when photons bounce off of them and land on the retinas of our eyes.\n\nPhotons are really really small, but there are lots of things in the universe that are even smaller, like atoms and electrons.\n\nWhen we try to look at these super-small things by bouncing much-larger photons off them, it doesn't work so well. We can add lenses, but no matter how many times we magnify the image, it's still fuzzy because the photons are bigger than the things we're trying to look at, and we can't hit just one atom or electron without hitting all of its neighbors.\n\nThat's why there are other types of microscopes that work by bouncing even smaller things, like electrons, off of the subject. We can't see electrons, but an electron microscope uses electronic circuits to sense their bounces and make an image on a screen, which we *can* see.",
"Diffraction occurs when a wave (light) passes through a slit. \n\nThe smallest angular detail you can see is given by \n\nθmin =1.22 λ/D\n\nOptical microscopes all use normal optical light in the λ=500nm range. If you want to take the human eye for example then our pupils is the lens light has to pass through and our pupil's diameter is around D = 4mm. The closest distance we can focus on something is also around 20cm so the smallest spatial resolution we could possibly see with our eyes are around 30.5 µm or around 0.76 × radius of a human hair. \n\nWith a microscope it's the exact same thing. You just change the D to something larger to get a better resolution. However as always when you push things to the extreme there's always quantum mechanics which fucks you up. Light is not only a wave but also a particle and you can't know the exact position of a photon so with diameter larger than 0.15ish meters you see objects only 800nm wide, like a human blood red cell but you can't go beyond that because of the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.",
"With current technology we actually can use a electron microscope which uses a stream of electrons to help show what we are looking for by stimulating what we are looking at with electrons. Currently you can see a neutron and proton but unfortunately with current tech we cannot see a electron. \n\nOn the bright side who knows what we will be able to see in 50 years! Technology has a way of rapidly improving. \n\nSo to answer ELI5 our equipment isn’t good enough yet ",
"Light microscopes work by shining white light (or sometimes single coloured light) against an object, and letting it bounce off a mirror through our magnification lens. This is great when the object we want to see, is big. \n\nOur issue is with light, not the object. Light is understood to be a particle (the photon) and an energy wave at the same time. Different colours of light have different characteristics to their energy waves. One of which we call a wave length. Higher energy light has shorter wave lengths. Blue and purple are low wave-length, and red is high wave length. This is part of the reason the ocean looks blue. Red, with a high wave length, is more easily knocked off course than blue, so you lose red light faster.\n\nWith our microscope, an object like a cell is 1000-10,000 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in size. A light wavelength would be between 400 and 700. Because the cell is bigger, it bounces a lot of light off for us to collect and see. The smaller an object is, the less light it bounces off. So we make up for it by using smaller and smaller wavelengths as the object gets smaller.\n\nThe rule is, when your object is smaller than the wavelength of light you use to see it, you probably won't see it.\n\nOnce an object gets past the wavelengths for light, we might use something like X-rays (~10nm). Thats great for seeing single proteins (around the same size) or structures.\n\nAn atom is around the size of 0.1 to 0.5nm in diameter. We simply don't have tools which can produce a wavelength that small, with enough power and enough precision to view an atom. \n\nTo quote Scotty, \"...like trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet, whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse.\"",
"It's essentially the idea that you're only as accurate as your tools. Microscopes use magnified lenses, as well as \"Light\" to help focus the certain wavelengths of light. The light passes through the magnified lenses, bounces off the object, and feeds back into our eyes, which is how pretty much how all human eye sight works. However, if the object you're looking at in the microscope is smaller than a wave of light, it won't be able to reflect light and thus we cannot see it in a microscope. It's sort of like if you were to try to measure a grain of sand with a 12 inch ruler.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe Electron Microscope was invented to fix this. Electron microscopes work in a way to mimic how our eyes receive and translate light. While regular microscopes rely on shooting light through the magnified lenses reflecting back into our eyes, Electron microscopes work by shooting electrons through a magnified lens. The electrons then bounce/reflect off the object, and the angle/impact of the electrons on the object can be reverse calculated to determine the shape and size of the object you're trying to look at. Electrons are smaller than light wavelengths, so the electrons are able to reflect back off super small objects that normal light wavelengths wouldn't reflect off of.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;",
"because light itself is a small particle(kinda) and the way we see is by catching those particles(photons) that bounced off of objects. this works because photons are incredibly small so they dont affect anything we see really. but at atomic scale photons arent that small anymore so they can interact with things like atoms. so at an atomic scale seeing using light would be like determining the distance of a beach-ball by bouncing another beach-ball off of it",
"This is what I do my research in!\n\nHow light bouncing off electrons is used in optical microscopes has already been answered, so I’ll just add some neat facts about how we CAN see (or rather, make images of) things on a smaller level.\n\nThere’s a branch of equipment called Atomic Force Microscopes (AFM) that have levers with tips that are only a couple of atoms wide. That tip is brought in contact with the surface of a sample and is dragged across it. The equipment can sense the very small movements of the tip and use that information to draw a picture of the surface. This is great for characterizing samples that we have put a material on, and determining if it is smooth on an atomic level. \n\nIt’s a little more nuanced than that, and different kinds of technologies can incorporate other things, like running a small electric current through the tip and into the sample, but that’s the gist of it.\n\nHope that helps! :)\n\nEDIT: fixed the microscope name to be correct",
"Light waves are bigger than atoms, would be like trying to identify a bird species by running it over with your car. ",
"People have done a good job explaining it at a basic level. I just want to add a concept I haven't seen here, called the airy disk. In simple terms, the airy disk is a region of light that is focused by lenses after diffraction. It is unavoidable. The distribution of light intensity varies with the most intense region towards the center that dissipates in waves going outward (and can be explained mathematically using an airy function). \n\n[Airy disk](_URL_8_) \n\n[Airy function](_URL_7_) \n\nOur ability to discern from two separate objects using magnified light is dependent on this concept. As two objects are imaged closer to each other, our ability to tell them apart becomes less tenable as the airy function of each object comes closer together. \n\n[Airy function of two points 1](_URL_1_)\n\n[Airy function of two points 2](_URL_0_) \n\nNotice that the regions overlapping in the middle point cannot be resolved from each other. Our ability to tell apart two points is dependent on the Rayleigh Criterion, which is defined as the minimum distance two points can be resolved by diffracted light. This can be explained visually by the airy function of two points above. \n\nWhen light in the airy disk overlaps, they are closer than the Rayleigh Criterion. If you can distinguish two points, then it is either at or above that minimum resolving distance. \n\nConsider the airy function: the waves decrease in amplitude and wave length as you move away from the center. The peak of each crest decreases as well as the distance between peaks. This means that light at the outer regions of the airy disk can be better resolved than it's whole. \n\nSo if someone were able to collect light only from the outer regions of an airy disk, you can resolve two points that would otherwise overlap. This is true because the crest peaks are smaller and without overlapping light below the Rayleight Criterion. \n\nIn fact, this has been done using a technique called airyscan. A special array of detectors collect light in parallel around the airy disk of each point and discard the central crest. It uses a honeycomb array that then makes use of an algorithm to then stitch information from each sensor into a single image. \n\n[Sensor array](_URL_4_) \n\n[Sensor array light distribution](_URL_2_) \n\n[Application of array in microscopy](_URL_3_) \n\n[Resolution comparison 1](_URL_5_) \n\n[Resolution comparison 2](_URL_6_) ",
"It's like trying to figure out what a ping pong ball looks like by shooting bowling balls at it and look at how the bowling balls bounce."
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3m7eha | when, and why did they start calling uav's "drones"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3m7eha/eli5_when_and_why_did_they_start_calling_uavs/ | {
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"Seemingly since 1935. The RAF had an unmanned aircraft called the *DH.82 Queen Bee* - the term drone stemming from the bee connection."
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5gz20w | linear regression | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5gz20w/eli5_linear_regression/ | {
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"Linear regression is where by calculating the distance of a load of points from the mean, you can see how closely it fits a straight line. The Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (PMCC or r) is a number between -1 and 1, where 1 is **perfect** positive linear correlation (all the points join up to make a straight line that has a positive gradient), -1 is the same but a negative gradient (negative correlation), and 0 is no relationship whatsoever (the points are completely random). Between 0 and ±1 is how strong the correlation is.\n\nIf you plot one variable against another (eg temperature of water vs time on heat), you can calculate how strongly related the they are. Above ±0.8 is very strong."
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1kciz7 | what caused the egyptian's to start fighting each other? | so i havent watched the new for a while and i wanna know why the people in egypt are having something like a civil war between them.
didnt they overthrow their last president and put an other one in his place?did the new president start treating his people badly like the last one or it has nothing to do with him? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kciz7/eli5what_caused_the_egyptians_to_start_fighting/ | {
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"The last president was a dick, so he was overthrown. Then the Muslim Brotherhood got their candidate elected. Unsurprisingly, his presidency started to look like an Islamic theocracy, so the younger, more liberal-minded folks were pretty unhappy, and started protesting. Eventually, the military stepped in (for reasons that are open for debate) and removed him from power. Now, the Muslim Brotherhood, and others who favor a government run according to Islamic laws, are protesting, saying (correctly) that the democratically-elected president has been removed via military coup.\n\n\nWhere you fall on this probably depends on your feelings about whether the majority should always get their way, even in cases where that means the minority will be oppressed, and on what you believe the real motivations of the Egyptian military are.",
"Essentially more people took to the streets protesting morsi than actually voted in the election. Something around twenty percent of the population.\n\nThe morsi government had this idea that since they were legitimately elected that this wasn't a problem. They were the government and public opinion be dammed.\n\nTo deal with this, the military deposed morsi. Not a huge problem really, a similar level of protest would probably get the same result in most countries.\n\nThe issue is that instead of just holding things stable until they found have new elections, the military started arresting Muslim brotherhood candidates and trying to ensure they couldn't run in the next election. This needless to say has had some serious issues and conflict.\n\n\nTL;DR the Muslim brotherhood won the election, tried to rig the constitution, got thrown out, but then the military went nuts.",
"The truth is that even though Egypt overthrew Mubarak the military establishment was not touched. The Egyptian military is heavily subsidized by the United States and the U.S. holds an enormous amount of clout with them, so when the Muslim Brotherhood took power and started to refer to the U.S. as an enemy the Egyptian military along with U.S. intelligences services took action and ousted the Brotherhood.",
"Economics are at the base of it all. Jobs, fuel prices, food prices. If economy had been good, Mubarak never would have been overthrown. Morsi wasn't improving things, and was taking country toward a religious dictatorship. But if Morsi had been fixing the economy, he'd probably still be in power today. Military doesn't know how to fix economy; probably no one does. More trouble ahead."
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8uydad | how do animals such as tigers and gorillas have so much muscle without "working out", where as humans have to go to the gym for years to obtain massive muscles? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8uydad/eli5_how_do_animals_such_as_tigers_and_gorillas/ | {
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"Probably because we haven’t had to hunt and kill for food and survival in thousands of years.\n\nAlso, that’s just our DNA. That’s like Koko the gorilla saying, “How come I had to work so hard to learn the basics of a language when human kids are learning mathematics with letters and putting chemicals together and shit?”\n\nWe survived with brains. They survived with brawn"
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73s8qo | where do banana nets come from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73s8qo/eli5_where_do_banana_nets_come_from/ | {
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"Do you perhaps mean [gnats](_URL_0_), and not [nets](_URL_2_)?\n\nRegardless, what you're seeing are [fruit flies](_URL_1_). The adults lay eggs on fruit, and those eggs hatch while you have the fruit at home.\n\nYou can help prevent them from hatching by thoroughly washing fruit and vegetables as soon as you bring them into your home."
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2ell74 | can a company like comcast rig speed test results? | Like maybe something on their servers that say "if the user goes to _URL_0_ give him all available bandwidth" | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ell74/eli5_can_a_company_like_comcast_rig_speed_test/ | {
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"It's even easier than that, and it isn't even considered cheating. The congestion is almost always between networks. For example, the line between Comcast and Level3 (the ISP that hosts Netflix) is almost always over capacity and going slow. But when I run a SpeedTest, I connect to a server that's plugged directly into Comcast's network in my city (as seen on the [little badge](_URL_0_) in the lower right corner of the speed test), so it doesn't pass through any of the congested parts."
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1yitxp | how can companies add bloatware (toolbars, "special offers") to software with the default option always being "yes, i want this"? | What I'm specifically referring to is when companies package in this piece of software or that toolbar, and whenever questioned as to whether or not the user wishes to accept the terms provided, the "Yes, I want this is" always selected. Many of these must be specifically opted-out of, rather than opted-into.
I understand *why* companies might want to put this bloatware into their free products (turning a profit and whatnot), but not why they are legally able to do it in the way they have. Is this just simply a field that has not had cases brought up in court (no filed damages) or have they all been settled out of court?
**Edit:** A slight expansion. My question is focused around the concept of ["intention to create legal relations"](_URL_0_). Only by opting out can one state that they do not consent with installing the software, rather than willfully opting-in to say that they do indeed wish to use the product. I don't see how what they have is sufficient.
Unless I'm thinking about this in the wrong way... I do not honestly know... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yitxp/eli5_how_can_companies_add_bloatware_toolbars/ | {
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"Because there is no law against it, nor anyone really to enforce it. ",
"What are you going to argue in court? You didn't like their free offer, and accepting it voluntarily caused you damages? It's an impossible case to argue, and you'd be guaranteed to lose against the marketing companies behind bloatware."
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d64aoq | if every contestant on game shows like "spin the wheel" won the maximum amount of money, how would they be able to pay that money out? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d64aoq/eli5_if_every_contestant_on_game_shows_like_spin/ | {
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"The real trick is that game shows are very cheap to make, compared to a scripted comedy or drama, and thus the money saved by not hiring actors and writers and building sets and buying costumes or having special effects can be put into a fund to pay off prizes.",
"Game shows also function somewhat as casinos: while they do give out prizes to winners, the amount they actually earn is way higher because they make sure the odds are stacked in their favor. Think of the amount of game shows with mechanisms in place that allow contestants to build up a large prize, yet still go home with nothing due to a gamble they can choose to make. In the end, their profits will always be higher than the prizes they hand out.",
" > \tWho's backing that payout?\n\nBelieve it or not, insurance! Such shows know statistically what they should pay out but also know there is a remote risk of much more. Insurance can be bought to cover such eventualities.",
"Shows have statistical odds of winning and over time the results should settle near that level, even if there is variation in a shorter term. \n\nOne thing to remember is that game shows are incredibly cheap to produce... they have one highly paid host, one set, contestants are not paid performers, sponsors cover much or all of the prize costs in return for mentions. The anticipated larger payout is built into the production budget. \n\nHowever, contests, games shows, and such that could see surprisingly large payouts also typically carry insurance that pays out sums above a certain amount."
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1p3r5j | if you are killed out in public (i.e. hit by a car, stabbed, etc.) how do the police find out who your next of kin is to notify them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p3r5j/eli5_if_you_are_killed_out_in_public_ie_hit_by_a/ | {
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"Depends. The easiest way would be to find your wallet. They also try and ask people around the scene or wait until a missing persons report is filed.\n\nEdit: Oh and fingerprint, dna, and dental records can be used too."
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42j3yw | euler's number | I understand that it is used for compounding interest at a continuous rate. How does this work though. I know what e is, I know logarithms very well. I just don't understand how **THIS** number can be used.
**EDIT:** I wasn't expecting this to blow up like this. Thank you all. Just for clarification, I understand how interest works. I understand how compound interest works. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42j3yw/eli5_eulers_number/ | {
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"There's much more to it than this, and the *real* reason why e is interesting requires some (very basic) knowledge of calculus to explain, but I'll explain where it shows up in compound interest:\n\nSuppose you have an account with $100 in it, and it earns 6% interest per year. In other words, every year your balance is multiplied by 1.06. So in 10 years, you'll have `100*((1+.06)^10)`, or **$179.08**.\n\nThat's if you only compound the interest once per year, which basically never happens. In the real world, the stated annual interest rate isn't applied all at once once at the end of the year, but spread out over several \"periods\". If that $100 were in an account that earned 6% interest compounded monthly, that 6% is still an annual amount -- instead of giving you 6% after 12 months, monthly compounded interest splits the 6% into 12 equal parts, and gives you 0.5% each month. In the long run, higher compounding rates (i.e. shorter periods) accrue value more quickly. So this time, you're multiplying your balance by 1.005 twelve times a year, so after 10 years your balance is `100*((1+.005)^(12*10))`, which is **$181.94**.\n\nOkay, you did a little better that time. Let's keep increasing the compounding rate. We should keep doing better and better, right? Let's see.\n\n$100 compounded weekly at 6% for 10 years would be `100*((1+0.06/52)^(52*10)`, or **$182.15**. \n\n$100 compounded daily at 6% for 10 years would be `100*((1+0.06/365)^(365*10)`, or **$182.20**. \n\n$100 compounded hourly at 6% for 10 years would be `100*((1+0.06/365/24)^(365*24*10)`, or **$182.21**. \n\n$100 compounded ten times per second at 6% for 10 years would be `100*((1+0.06/365/24/60/60/10)^(365*24*60*60*10*10)`, or **$182.21** again.\n\nHuh. So that's interesting. Your account grows exponentially at any compounding rate, and higher compounding rates increase more quickly, but only to a point. There's diminishing returns and a hard upper limit you'll never get past. Even if you have $100 compounded a trillion trillion times per second at 6% for 10 years, you'll still end up with $182.21, to the nearest cent. Something's special about this particular kind of exponential growth. If you think back to what you know about exponents, everything that grows exponentially can be represented as `(starting value)*(base ^ (rate*time))`, more or less. Okay, the starting value here is 100, and the rate is 0.06, and the amount of time is 10, but what's the base? **It's *e*.** `100*(e^(0.06*10))` comes out to about 182.21188, the hard cap we were approaching but never quite hitting with those crazy high compounding rates.\n\nEdit1: formatting \nEdit2: misremembered the definition of simple interest",
"If you're wondering how to compute *e*, you can use the Taylor Series expansion for `e^x`:\n\n`e = 1 + 1/(1) + 1/(1*2) + 1/(1*2*3) + ...`",
"The more often you calculate interest the more interest you get, up until a point.\n\nYou have 100$, if you calculate 100% interest once a year, you end with 200$\n\nYou have 100$, if you calculate 50% interest twice a year, you end with 225$\n\nYou have 100$, if you calculate .1% interest 1000 times a year, you end with 271.6$(e is ~2.718)\n\nYou have 1$, if every penny you have and every penny you get is constantly growing, you will have e$.\n",
"Can someone re-explain this like I'm five? Or at least like I've basically got high school math and know how to calculate a tip?",
"e just happens to be special and have very convenient mathematical properties for exponential functions in calculus, the same way that 0 is for addition and 1 is for multiplication, and pi is for circles.\n\nthe derivative of e^x is e^x",
"#This is something I posted in response to another thread... But I think you'll find it useful!\n\nI actually have an interesting piece of information I'd like to add that no one here has really touched upon.... And that's **where the hell did e and the natural log actually COME from?** (I wrote a paper on this at one point).\n\n**Edit: [Here is the paper that I wrote](_URL_0_). Please understand that this was always meant to be a private paper for myself. I have never written a mathematical paper before, and this wasn't for a class or assignment. I literally only wrote it for my own personal understanding of the topic. So please don't be super critical of it!** *There was also some funky stuff that happened when I uploaded it to google docs to share it... hopefully the formatting is all still readable...*\n\nI'm going to go back in time to the development of the logarithm. The log was a way of performing multiplication (in some base) by simply using addition. Meaning, every time you add one number, your output is proportional to the last output.\n\nAt some point in time shortly afterwards, mathematicians were working on integration techniques. They noticed that the basic methods of finding anti derivatives worked for everything except for 1/x. However it was realized, that if you break down the graph of 1/x, into increasingly large segments (1-2, 2-4, 4-8, 8-16...) That the area under the curve stayed the same. this is actually very easily provable! But now look what they found..... They found that the area under the curve increases by simple addition as you double the interval. (Meaning adding the area interval (1-2) + (2-4) + (4-8), is simply the same area added together 3 times). \n\nThis should stick out to you, because this is exactly how we defined a logarithm to work. Addition carrying out multiplication with some base number. \n\nBecause this logarithm seemed to be so \"natural\" (it just came about all by itself), it was called the \"natural logarithm\". So the relation was known that ln(x) = integral of 1/x, before it was known what that base number was. Euler was actually able to calculate the number, and the proof for that is very interesting as well! (See my paper for the proof). \n\nMost of the other comments here have been talking about why functions containing e are interesting, but from what I've read, no one has answered your question of \"what is e and where did it come from\". Hopefully my answer helped a bit!",
"__The importance goes far beyond \"compound interest\" and \"bacteria growth\". It is used in automation -- things like flight control, missile control, prediction {e.g. of the stock market}, etc.__\n\nIf you have some function like f(t), you get a number for each t. To make it concrete, you can say you get a number over time. So f(t) could be the temperature in a room at time t. f(3 seconds) might be 20 C and f(50 seconds) might be 19.4 C.\n\nWhen the independent variable is time, you can think about how fast the function changes per unit time. So you can say it's changing at 1 C per second (increasing) or it could be -2 C per second, decreasing. How fast it changes can also change over time. Maybe the room has no heating element and is changing at 0 C/s for a bit. Then, we turn on a stove at t = 20 seconds that ramps up its impact slowly. f(20 sec) might be 0.001C/s. Then f(21 sec) might be 0.0011C/s. f(500 sec) might be 0.05C/s.\n\nThe function that increases per second the same amount as what it currently is is e^t. So at t = 0, the temperature would be increasing at 1C/sec (e^0 = 1; remember e is just a number like 3 or sqrt(2)). At t = 1 sec, it is increasing in value at e C/sec. At 2 sec, it is increasing at e^2 C/sec. It just keeps increasing faster and faster at the exact rate equal to the current temperature.\n\nThis is used in models of systems. A very simple \"system\" is the money in your account over time compounded continuously. Another is an approximate population for bacteria in a dish. It grows more as there are more bacteria reproducing, so this model works for a good while (until the dish is full...). These are called differential equations where you say you want an answer written in terms of the answer itself and in terms of how fast that answer changes. It's a bit like algebra where you write a relationship in terms of the answer you seek (x+1 = 2 means x = 1) except you are using entire functions over time *and* how fast those functions are changing per unit time too.\n\nLet f'(t) be how fast f(t) changes at t. We solve f(t) = f'(t) and arrive at the answer f(t) = e^t. We could add a constant. Maybe the rate of change is only proportional to the current value, say half of it. f'(t) = (1/2) f(t). Turns out f(t) = e^{t/2}. \n\nBut that model is so simple and quite frankly not as useful as we often need. We can throw in more rates of changes... maybe we want to include how fast the change itself changes. Think of it as acceleration, it's how fast you are increasing how fast you change. f(t) = position, f'(t) = speed, f''(t) = acceleration. We could form a more complex relationship like\nf(t) + f'(t) + f''(t) = 1. It turns out a huge part of the answer to a \"system\" like this involves e. Specifically, it involves a bunch of ae^{bt} where a and b are numbers (e.g. 4 e^{2t} has a = 4 and b = 2). You can add more and more complexity (and ability to express more complex situations) by including additional rates of change. You can include how fast the acceleration changes... and how fast what we just included changes... so on and so on.\n\nThere's not much more that can be explained simply about this relationship as it quite frankly loses a lot of intuition at this moment, and its use is not exactly intuitive. But relationships like this can model problems whose answers are very useful for us. Solving the model and having the answer before us, written in large part in terms of e, can then be used to do practical and worthwhile things. For example, you can use equations *like* these a bunch of times to make sure a plane is flying smoothly instead of jumping all over and ultimately losing control, crashing. A toy lab version is [balancing something](_URL_0_). The video shows the math (which is the same as the ones I showed except more complicated, involving f'''(t) and f''''(t) ...). Keep in mind how amazing what that program is doing with the double pendulum... and it's done using standard, almost free results from this theory. A human would almost surely have the 2 pendulums crash in less than a second. Even if he were able to balance it for a bit, the part where someone smacks it around would for sure cause the person to fail. If you want some wiki references, look up control theory, differential equations, linear differential equations, nonlinear differential equations, stochastic differential equations, stochastic control, stochastic filtering, filtering and control, etc.",
"I seriously feel so stupid for not understanding what everyone is talking about, and i'm 19 years old (sophomore in college). I think the majority of people i've met are at a much higher math level than me. ",
"Nobody explained this like a 5 year old, so I'll try\n\nThe number e comes from things that grow faster the bigger they are (or also that get smaller faster the bigger they are)\n\nA simple example: get a glass of water, empty half of it. Then take half of what's remaining. Then again and again.\n\nNow if instead of doing it half by half you break this down into half steps (for example, have a faucet on a water tank that is open by an amount proportional to the amount of water in the tank, eventually you'll get e\n\nEdit: thanks for the gold! (also wording changes)\n",
"_URL_0_\n\nComplete ELI5 with both video and pictures. ",
"How is Euler properly pronounced? ",
"Lots of euler applications... but very few explained what is the \"magic\" about euler number. I will give my best shot at showing you why it is and you only need high school math to grasp the concept.\n\nFirst you need to learn a simple detail of calculus, very easy to understand:\n\nThe very basic concept of derivative is to determine how fast that function is increasing (or decreasing) at single point.\n\nLook at the function x^2, lets get a single point of that function, f(3)=9 for example. Now we want to know how fast that function is increasing at that point, so we will derive x^2, which is 2x, and apply at the point we want. Note that 2x is the derivative of x^2.\n\nApplying the point in our derivative now: f'(3)=2*3=6, so we have a ratio of 6. At that point, for every 1 you increase in X, you will increase 6 at Y.\n\nIf you pick different points in the function, you will find different ratios of increase, even negative ones. Each function has its own derivative and you dont need to know how to find that, just understand what they mean.\n\nWhat does that have to do with euler? The magic of euler, is that e^x is the only function where it's derivative is it's own function. At e^2, the ratio increase at that point is e^2, which is a real number ~ 2.71^2. If you graph the function of e^x, in every point of that function the rate of change of each point is e^x, and it's the only function that works that way.\n\nThis magic propertie provides thousands of mathematical applications.\n",
"To answer your question : Radioactive decay, population, the amount by which charge goes up or down in capacitors, among a lot of other things. It is a number deeply ingrained in a lot of natural phenomena. I found the below link offering a very intuitive explanation about e and its importance. Do check it out.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Here's a very mathematical approach for anyone who knows calculus.\n\ne arises when the rate of change is proportional to the current value. This can be represented like:\n\n > dy/dx = ky\n\nas in the gradient or change in y as you move along dx (a small amount) is equal to the current value of y times a constant k.\n\nBy dividing through by y you get:\n\n > (1/y) dy/dx = k\n\nfrom this, it can be seen that:\n\n > integral ((1/y)) dy = integral(k) dx\n\ngiving:\n\n > ln(y) = kx + c\n\nin order to undo the ln(y) we must find the inverse, which is raising e to the power of ln(y), apply this to both side to get:\n\n > e^ln(y) = e^(kx+c) = > y = e^(kx+x)\n\nwhich can be written as:\n\n > y = Ae^kx\n\nand A can be found by substituting some values of x and y. The point is, that e, and ln appear quite naturally. Scenarios where the rate is proportional to the current value occur very often in physics, for example in; decay, rates of reaction, quantum tunnelling.\n\nTo expand on one example during radioactive decay:\n\nFor every nucleus in the sample, a certain percent will decay, reducing the number of nuclei by that number. This gives:\n\n > (dN / dt) = -kN\n\nwhere N is the number of nuclei, t is time, and -k is the fraction that will decay.",
"I'm not quite sure what you're asking, but let me try.\n\nFirst, recognize that *e* is one of those magical numbers that shows up when you go looking for general rules, kind of like *pi*. If you measure the circumference of *any* circle of *any* size, and divide that by the circle's diameter, you get *pi*. Nobody made the number up - they discovered it. One of the most interesting things about circles is revealed by the fact that pi is irrational: no matter what unit of length you use, the diameter and circumference of a given circle can never *both* be whole numbers of that unit.\n\nSo *e* is like that. It was originally discovered in the realm of compound interest, which you say you understand. If you start with the idea of compound interest, and then start wondering \"hey, if I do the compounding constantly instead of just at a few discrete occasions every time period, how fast does the money grow?\", you can come up with a formula and solve for the answer - and the answer is *e*. It doesn't matter how much money you invest or what the interest rate is; at the end of the interest period, continuous compounding will have gotten you you *e* (to the power of the interest rate) times your starting investment.\n\nIf you plug that back into the formula for compounded interest, you will realize that this means that as *n* gets larger and larger, (1+1/*n*)^*n* gets closer and closer to *e*. Using that fact in conjunction with a little calculus, we find another place where *e* shows up that is not obviously related to compound interest: If you graph the function *y = 1/x* and drop vertical lines at *x=x1* and *x=x2*, then the area surrounded by the plot of the function, those two lines, and the x-axis will be exactly equal to the difference between the base-*e* logarithms of *x1* and *x2*. \n\nJust like the compound interest case, we started out with dead simple stuff - the number 1, and plain division - and out the other side we got logarithms and *e*.\n\nSo that's where it comes from. What can you use it for? Well, the fact that *e* shows up out of nowhere in those examples above is an indicator that it's somehow built in to the way we do math; that's why we say it is the *natural* basis for logarithms. And it shows up in physical nature as well - wherever you find exponential growth, whether you're talking about cells or petals or rabbits, you'll find *e*, even with no banks or calculators involved.",
"The basic notion is that the amount of interest that can be compounded continuously has a cap.\n\nIn a non-continuous situation, there are a discrete or countable number of steps. Interest compounded once a year has 1 step. Interest compounded monthly has 12 steps. \n\nYou can make as many steps as you want, but at the end, even if you take a million (billion/trillion, etc) steps to compound interest (say you add interest every second of every day of the year), there will be a cap to the amount of interest accrued. This cap is the limit of this function. This limit is Euler's number. Somehow, for some reason, this value is the limit of that function*, just like pi is 3.1428....\n\n*to clarify, I mean, the fact that e = 2.71828... is a matter of coincidence. There is nothing special about that sequence of numbers, it just so happens that this particular one occurs frequently enough to be given a name.",
"e is a way to calculate growth when it size is a factor of the growth.\n\nTake for example rabbits. Let's say there are two rabbits and every year they again make two rabbits who also make two rabbits every year(they breed like rabbits)\n\nIf you would want to predict their growth you could say like the first year, or year 0 we had 1 pair, year 1 we had 2, year 2 we had four and so on.\n\nThis is an exponential growth equalling 2^t where t is the amount of years. But know you are wondering how many new rabbits there will be in the 20th year. So how do we do that? Well mathematicians came up with something they call a derivative. Something that measures the growth at a specific point of a curve( in maths terms: the derivative of a function in a point is equal to the inclination rate of the tangent to the function in that particular point.).\n\nSo what we would need to do is find the derivative right? Well, yes, except that that isn't easy for exponential functions because the derivative of an exponential function is another exponential function times something.\n\nMathematicians being mathematicians, meaning wonderersof theoretical things without clear use, wanted to know what the exponential function was that was his own derivative. So they looked at that something that they needed to multiply with. Which was the natural logarithm of the base of the exponential function, in more common terms with using the rabbits as example you need to multiply the function with the ln(natural logarithm) of 2\n\nSo they searched for a number where ln(x)=1 and found e. except for the fact that all of my last paragraph was found out backwards because mathematicians are crazy genius and love theoretical stuff only to later find a use for it."
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ck18cc | how does cryogenic preservation work for both sperm/eggs and entire human bodies/entire human heads? | Is the process extremely similar in both of these cases? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ck18cc/eli5_how_does_cryogenic_preservation_work_for/ | {
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"The short answer is that the process is very similar, but the results are night and day. If you freeze a head, it's *not* coming back using any conceivable technology; it's done. In addition to the reality of widespread cell depolarization and death in the brain, what actually dying doesn't finish, the process of freezing will. Even with \"antifreeze\" added, you're still talking about huge sections of tissue being lacerated by ice crystals. Ever freeze and then thaw out a steak? See the mess of liquid it's sitting in, and how it's gotten a bit mushy? Yeah.\n\nSperm and eggs are easier because they're both single cells, are extremely simple, and have a *huge* surface area to mass ratio. As a result you can literally flash freeze them in an instant, which just isn't possible with something like a whole head. Even then, you don't recover anything like all of the sperm or eggs, but you don't need to. Losing a bunch of sperm in particular isn't a problem, you're freezing millions of them after all. A brain however, is kind of a delicate organ containing many billions of cells, the arrangements and states of which *are you*. Losing a bunch of them to the process, not to mention the ones you lost to actually dying and transport to the facility, is just too much even if you could be thawed without the \"mushy steak\" problem.\n\nFinally, while not a technical hurdle, it's worth considering that eggs and sperm are stored by the people who \"made\" them, and who value them highly. They're not intended to last forever, and wouldn't, and they're something that people who have a connection to them want to recover and use. A frozen head on the other hand? How many generations would need to pass before no one is left to give a crap about it? What future society is going to prioritize reviving a bunch of primitives with more money than sense, and no connection to any living soul?"
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5hogpw | why did new york stop speaking dutch around the 19th century? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hogpw/eli5_why_did_new_york_stop_speaking_dutch_around/ | {
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"I don't know the answer to your question but I have heard that Dutch is the basis for the unique New York accent.",
"The dutch lost control of the new york colony in the Anglo-Dutch war around 1664. However the dutch influence in the area was still around, most people in the area spoke the dutch language for 200 yrs. In 1764 preachers began to use english in church. During the mid 1800s the dutch language was present in brooklyn, which caused the origination of the brooklyn accent. Forms of Dutch were still being spoken in the 1900s, but somewhere between the 1920s and 1950s \"Jersey Dutch\" died out.",
"Mass immigration from other parts of the world, such as Ireland, made a major difference. This was not without conflict - some of it was covered in the movie *Gangs of New York*. ",
"The British did not really conquer New Amsterdam. They did at first but the Dutch won it back also after the Dutch conquered Surinam and Guyana from the British. As the Dutch new the trade in beaver skins over the Hudson River with the Indians was getting worse the Dutch made a deal with the British and officially traded New Amsterdam for Surinam and Guyana and peace was restored in 1674. That's why in the end they speak English in New York and they drive on the typical British left side of the road but speak Dutch in Surinam.",
"I think I saw on QI that the Dutch swapped New Amsterdam/York for some spice islands that the English had. Is this accurate?",
"Assimilation.\n\nIt happens with any small community in the middle of a larger one. At first, it's distinct, and it has distinct customs and maybe even a distinct language. Over time, that community gets less distinct. People marry out, and the kids are raised outside the community. People move around the country. People speak the language of their neighbors instead of their own. Eventually, it disappears; all of its members have joined the larger culture or died.\n\nSometimes, there are exceptions. For example, the Jews have always been small communities in the middle of larger ones for most of the last 2600 years or so, and yet we have managed to not only survive but preserve our traditions, to some extent. On the other hand, while many American Jews used to speak Yiddish (before the waves of Eastern European Jewish immigration to New York, there were many Sephardim in the US, who wouldn't have known Yiddish; indeed, the poet Emma Lazarus, who wrote the poem on the Statue of Liberty, was Sephardic), very few do now, and they're the most orthodox of the Orthodox. Most American Jews today are virtually indistinguishable from other Americans, the only difference being the religion, but it wasn't always like this.\n\nWell, the Dutch community didn't have anything specifically keeping it together in the face of massive pressure to assimilate, so they assimilated.",
"Dosen't the language of commerce override these things and that language is English. Gotta eat so better learn English.",
"I would guess the advent of radio pretty much sealed the fate of Dutch as a spoken language; people listened to radio back then for news, entertainment, etc. much as people now watch TV, or browse the internet. And it was pretty much all in English in the US. Children growing up in Dutch speaking households were probably at that point exposed to more English than Dutch in their homes after the spread of radio.\n\nRadio has been attributed to why French died out as a spoken language in certain areas of the US, like Vermont, where there were pockets of French speakers.\n\nThis is also why the Quebecois in Canada are so \"aggressive\" about protecting the French language.",
"I want to add that English is also easier to speak than Dutch. \n\nAnd as a third gen Turkish immigrant in Flemish Belgium, I can see many Turks being worse and worse in speaking Turkish. I myself can barely speak Turkish. It's just starting to fade slowly, my grandchildren will probably even have Dutch names and lose touch with their origins. It's called assimilation I guess. ",
"I did not know about this. Are there any traces of Dutch in the New York dialect?",
"You have to remember that there's more to NY than the city. If you head north of the Catskills you see plenty of Dutch influence. Even then name of the mountains (Kaatskills) is Dutch. I'm in the Albany area and we have towns and cities like Guilderland, Rensselaer Schenectady that have heavy Dutch influence in their names. A lot of the creeks up here are called kills. Also Albany (formerly Beverwijk) has an annual tulip festival. Just because the the English seized the New Amsterdam colony from the Dutch, didn't mean that everything got anglicized. So the Dutch influence is pretty apparent up here.",
"There is a fascinating book about the Dutch history of NY called \"The Island at the Center of the World.\" Dutch influence is everywhere, but with the English as victors, it was hidden or actively squashed, and the history overwritten. \n\n_URL_0_",
"Although I do think that assimilation is largely the answer. Another factor is the anti foreigner feeling associated with world war one. There was considerable social pressure to speak English during this time and so things like church services switched to English.",
"Ok I know I am late to the party but the prevailing belief is that the great fire of NYC in 1776 was started by the British to blame the largely local Dutch population . The British used it as an excuse to confiscate houses churches and hospitals and food . They turned the city into a cesspool of crime and overran the sanitation . These conditions caused many of the original Dutch inhabitants to flee to Brooklyn NJ and PA."
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bj8cpf | when jump starting a car, why do instructions say attach the jumped cars negative cable to the frame? | Because that has never worked for me, in any car I've ever jumped.
Every instruction I read, it says attach the negative jumper cable for the car being jumped to unpainted metal on the frame. Every time I've done that, in every car I've ever jumped, nothing happens. It's as if nothing is connected at all. When I attach the negative cable to the negative terminal of the battery being jumped, it works. When negative is connected to negative, the car being jumped indicates it's receiving some power.
It bugs me that the common instructions for this procedure have never ever worked for me, and that what has worked is something folks say to specifically not do.
Clearly I'm doing something wrong, but don't know what. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bj8cpf/eli5_when_jump_starting_a_car_why_do_instructions/ | {
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"You can do it both ways, but it actually has to be a ground. I have a 2015 Jeep and it has a special post connected to the frame that is to be used. It works great..I believe my wife's newer suburu also has this grounding post.",
"Piggybacking on this:\n\nIs there a proper way to jump a car in terms of which clamps to put on first and which car to do first?\n\nI.e. positive on first on running car and positive off first.",
"Look for a bolt head and clamp onto that. They are unpainted and are easy to get a good grip on and they go deep into the metal frame. Parts of the frame itself can be painted or have a coating that prevents a good contact. I have never had a problem using a bolt head. I saw a mechanic do it and copied the idea.",
"It's mostly for liability purposes.\n\nBy jumping directly to the positive and negative terminals, you increase the risk of igniting potentially flammable gasses coming from the battery via the spark that often happens during the connection. These gasses can occur in certain scenarios, though is much more rare in this day and age.\n\nIf they tell you to connect both the positive and negative, and you cause an explosion, they could potentially be held liable. \n\nIf you find a CLEAN ground, you *can* successfully jump a car in the manner described, and it IS safer. But it is often hard to find a clean ground inside an engine chassis on a vehicle that needs a jump.",
"A good way to think about that is that same battery will be in the hands of lets say millions of consumers with millions of variant automotive background and knowledge in general.\n\nThats millions of variables as to what might happen, not to mention the type of car, the condition, condition of the battery, etc....\n\nImagine a car, engine bay looks like absolute shot, things are wired waayyy not close to safe, the battery has tons of oxidation, its been used in a teactor, then a makeshift electric storage thingy connecyed to other batteries, then back in a car, the cable used to jump said car are stripped and fucked up, there might be fuel and oil everywhere, even on a rag near by. So they have to recommend the safest thing to do for the most obscene conditions you can think of because with those odds, thats probably happened more than once.",
"The frame is sometimes problematic. I have always used a spot on the engine block, away from belts and fans. \n\nWorks every time."
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88aukh | how a dust explosion happens | I was reading the Wikipedia article on the 2008 Imperial Sugar dust explosion and couldn't quite understand how dust caused a large explosion. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/88aukh/eli5_how_a_dust_explosion_happens/ | {
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"A dust explosion happens because of how burning works. Basically, only the surface of a thing can burn, because only the surface is exposed to the air. Dust has a lot of surface area for its mass, so it burns really fast. Fast burn=lots of energy release in a short time=explosion.",
"The dust explosion thing happens when you have some sort of fine solid substance that is in theory flammable. This includes a surprisingly wide variety of stuff.\n\nSugar burns, but if you take your cigarette lighter to a sugar cube you will find that it doesn't really burn that well, it will mostly just melt first.\n\nYou get similar results for many other materials ranging from corn to chalk to various metals.\n\nIf you grind your substance into dust and let that dust hang in the air and put a lighter to it however you will find that not only does it burn, it will explode. It might also hurt or kill you in the process so don't experiment with that idea.\n\nThis is mostly because fire takes two things in addition to the initial ignition: something that burns and something to burn it with. \n\nThe something to burn it with is usually the oxygen in the air.\n\nThese two need to come into contact with each other. If you have a solid block of some substance only the outside of that substance has easy access to the air around it. The stuff in the middle can not burn because there is no air anywhere only more substance.\n\nIf you turn it into dust however, all the bits of the same substance are in close proximity to air. There is much more surface area to go around because fine dust is really just mostly surface area.\n\nThis means that a sold block of wood won't catch fire very easily, but smaller kindling will catch fire more easily and a cloud of sawdust is and explosion hazard. It is all the same substance but the finer you grind it down the more surface area in contact with air the same amount of substance will have.\n\nThis is why grain silos can explode occasionally and why when you are working with materials that are normally pretty safe to expose to fire you still have to look out for dust of the substance which will react quite differently to a spark or an open flame.\n"
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1xxrtk | why do i feel so relaxed and calm after a workout? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xxrtk/eli5_why_do_i_feel_so_relaxed_and_calm_after_a/ | {
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"Chemicals called endorphins. "
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2t4dbg | why do we find some people cute as apposed to sexy, adorable etc./what makes these qualities noticed by us to describe them differently? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2t4dbg/eli5_why_do_we_find_some_people_cute_as_apposed/ | {
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"Desire to nurture vs. a desire to be nurtured yourself.\n\nCute = I like this person and want to elevate them.\nHot = I like this person and want them to elevate me."
]
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2h0th6 | why do cameras need flash indoors when i can see just fine? | In a dimly lit room, I can see fairly good. I take a picture, it comes out black. Why does this happen? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h0th6/eli5_why_do_cameras_need_flash_indoors_when_i_can/ | {
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"Your irises dilate to let in more light and your eyes have special low-light sensitive light receptor cells called rods.\n\nYou could emulate this with a modern camera by using a lens with a wide aperture ( < F2.0) and a high ISO setting ( > 3200). You wouldn't need a flash with the appropriate camera and lens."
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1vjbp8 | when home alone, why do we hear creepy noises? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vjbp8/eli5when_home_alone_why_do_we_hear_creepy_noises/ | {
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"I guess they exist even when you're not home alone but you don't pay attention to them. And when you're alone, your imagination goes wild,too. "
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3kn7oa | why are the turks and kurds currently in conflict? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kn7oa/eli5_why_are_the_turks_and_kurds_currently_in/ | {
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"The Kurds are an ethnic minority that live in Kurdistan (parts of Turkey, Iran and Iraq). Turkey does not recognize this minority and does not grant them many rights. Also, there is a long history of massacres against the Kurds. \n\nThe Kurds have formed separatist groups with the goal to become independent from Turkey. The main rebel group is the PKK which is recognized as a terrorist organization by Turkey and the NATO (not by EU). They mainly operate out of Iraq and launch attacks against Turkey."
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1cznj1 | the difference between fajitas, tacos, burritos, enchiladas, quesadillas, etc. | As an ignorant European who has only just begun to eat a lot of mexican-style food, I am confused by all these terms for what is (as far as I can tell) the same thing. ELI5 how these are different or, if not, why there are so many names for one thing. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cznj1/eli5_the_difference_between_fajitas_tacos/ | {
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"tacos--hard corn tortilla shell(or soft flour tortilla, depends which you like better) with meat, lettuce, tomato, sour cream, cheese, or some combination thereof. they look like [this](_URL_5_)\n\nfajitas--meat, bell peppers and onions stir fried together, then you put them in a taco shell with lettuce tomato etc. they're kinda build your own tacos with bell peppers and onions. they look like [this](_URL_1_) when served, then [this](_URL_2_) when you've built it\n\nburritos--some combination of meat, cheese, lettuce, tomatos, rice, beans, etc all wrapped up in a big flour tortilla. sometimes they have sauces over them. they're a lot bigger than a taco. they look like [this](_URL_3_)\n\nenchiladas--usually just meat and cheese, sometimes some small veggies like onions, rolled up in tortillas with a sauce over them. they're more the size of a taco. they look like [this](_URL_0_)\n\nquesedillas--usually larger tortillas like the size of a burrito tortilla stuffed with cheese and meat and sometimes veggies. they're folded over in half and usually broiled or baked to melt the cheese. they look like [this](_URL_4_)\n\nthese are all tex-mex style dishes and don't really hold any relation to mexico...well enchiladas you can find in mexico, and different kinds of tacos, but these are all really americanized dishes.",
"Fajita: Someone fries up a bunch of strips ofchicken/steak/meat with spices, also fries up some onions, bell peppers, maybe tomato or something like that. They give you tortillas and you add meat, vegetables, and cheese to your liking and eat.\n\nTaco: Similar to fajitas but made for you. Meat and toppings are places on a soft or hard tortilla shell in [taco shape](_URL_1_). The spicing is often different from fajitas, and there are some standard patterns for what to put in your tacos. For instance, a classic one is pork with onions and cilantro, topped with lime juice. [Wikipedia](_URL_2_) has some descriptions of basic taco forms.\n\nBurrito: Take a large tortilla (~12 inches or ~30 cm across), and onto it put rice, beans, meat, and toppings, then wrap it up so it looks kinda like a [newborn puppy](_URL_0_) but without legs. The tortilla wraps everything up into a nice package.\n\nEchiladas: Take a tortilla, apply some cheese and or meat and onions, wrap it up kind of like an egg roll and pour enchilada sauce over it. Enchilada sauce is a sauce made from tomato and spices.\n\nQuesadilla: Take a large tortilla, throw some cheese and toppings on it, then fold it in half and flatten it a bit, and throw it on the grill until the tortilla is somewhat toasty, then cut into sections like a pizza.\n\nBonus round: Chimichanga: Like a burrito or large enchilada but they take it and deep fry it for a bit first.\n\nTaquita or flautas: Really thin enchilada with no sauce and fried.\n\nChalupa: Take a tortilla, fry it crisp, and top it with taco ingredients\n\nSopas: Same as above but leave the tortilla soft.\n\n\nBasically your simple mexican or tex-mex food is all about combining the same general ingredients in different ways.",
"[Fajitas](_URL_0_): Grilled meat, onions and peppers that come with flour tortillas and toppings (usually cheese, sour cream, avocado, salsa and lettuce). Put all of the ingredients inside the tortilla and roll it up and then consume. \n\n[Taco](_URL_2_): tacos come in 2 varieties; soft and hard, both usually are filled with ground beef and toppings. Soft tacos are 6\" flour tortillas you fill fold in half, while hard tacos are 6\" flour tortillas that have been deep fried in a \"U\" shape. \n\n[Burritos](_URL_1_): basically pre-rolled fajitas, except much larger. Often topped with melted cheese (queso)\n\n[Enchiladas](_URL_4_): **corn** tortillas filled with meat and covered with chili pepper sauce and cheese and baked \n\n[Quesadillas](_URL_3_): large flour tortillas toasted on a grill with cheese, meat, onion and pepper inside. ",
"Wow, there are a lot differences in this thread.\n\nI live in the Northeast of US, but we have Mexicans in the kitchen at the 3 places close by.\n\nFor me a fajita is nothing like an enchilda and neither of them have beans. I've also never had a quesadilla with beans or rice.\n\nPerhaps I am too far from Mexico to know better.",
"The only thing these really have in common is that the involve tortillas.\n\nA taco is just some stuff (generally based on finely minced, slice or ground meat) served in a tortilla that is folded in half.\n\nA burrito is stuff rolled up in a (usually hand holdable) tortilla. Often they include rice and beans. Larger than tacos.\n\nA quesadilla is like a grilled cheese sandwich made with a tortilla. If you want to make it fancy you can add a few other bits but it is mostly cheese.\n\nFajitas refer to the specific meat - it is grilled with onions and bell peppers. It is eaten in tortillas bit that us because almost all Mexican meals are eaten with tortilla.\n\nEnchiladas are like tiny burritos, covered in a.Chile sauce and cheese and baked, like a casserole.\n\n",
"Mexican here\n\nFor what I see here the description of the dishes is quite different in us and mexico.\n\nTacos - are mainly made from soft corn tortillas, the hard shell variant is almost exclusive from the tex mex style. (Basically the tortilla was used much like in mid orient countries as an edible tool to eat your food. That is why most of our well known dishes are served that way) So tacos are nothing more than meat or whatever minced or sliced meat put inside a torilla. The most popular tacos in mexico are: pastor (pork marinated with local spices and slow cooked in front of stand up grill), carnitas (slow stewed pork), suadero (from the breast of the beef), steak and chicken. All of them served with finely chopped cilantro and onion as garnish. Lime is optional. Salsa is a customary must but can be opted out if you want.\n\nQuesadillas - nothing more that soft corn tortillas stuffed with cheese, preferably string cheese. Although here in mexico quesadillas are stuffed with many other fillings from potatoes and chorizo, sauteed mushrooms, poblano chilli with corn and cream, etc. In some parts of mexico even crickets, they are delicious but it isn't everybody's taste.\n\nBurrito - large flour tortilla, about 12 inches. Stuffed with beans (this is what makes a burrito a burrito) meat and/or rice and many other fillings. Mostly stuffed with cheese as well. The purpose of the burrito? It was like the take-out choice from past times. Since it was already wrapped in its own tortilla you could eat it wherever you were. \n\nEnchiladas - most of them made from chicken, vaiances may be made from turkey breast, or beef. These are folded tortillas stuffed with chicken, covered with green salsa, red salsa or mole sauce. Topped with uncooked onion rings, cream and fresh cheese. \n\nFlautas - rolled tortillas stuffed with stewed beef or pork, deep fried and bathed in salsas much like the enchiladas. The difference? Flautas are hard and crispy. \n\nMany of these dishes vary depending on the part of the country they are made. In northern Mexico tortillas are mostly made from flour, in the center and the south are made from corn.\n\nSource: I'm a chef :) ",
"Jim Gaffigan. \"Mexican food's great, but it's essentially all the same ingredients, so there's a way you'd have to deal with all these stupid questions. \"What is nachos?\" \"...Nachos? It's tortilla with cheese, meat, and vegetables.\" \"Oh, well then what is a burrito?\" \"Tortilla with cheese, meat, and vegetables.\" \"Well then what is a tostada?\" \"Tortilla with cheese, meat, and vegetables.\" \"Well then what i-\" \"Look, it's all the same shit! Why don't you say a spanish word and I'll bring you something.\"",
"See: [Tortilla-based-food flow chart](_URL_0_), by /u/Csschew"
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"http://api.ning.com/files/7FH2vTozKkRn611K5orzyWpgRqbgU0od4nuvYq3D7C1dXk72G7ZmTB*En5LC9ZxdCE9Y1e-sFfjqXGSrm-XibkiAjNfCO0Y0/chicken_quesedilla_web.jpg",
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11a9wy | how do people get website statistics? | How does Alexa and companies similar to them get there information? Are there any accurate traffic estimators for websites? Where can I find accurate info about a website? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11a9wy/eli5_how_do_people_get_website_statistics/ | {
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"the ISPs know. Most people who click on websites have to go through an ISP. Those ISPs can release info. The owners of the websites also know each and every request that gets filled for their website - and where it came from. Alexa uses user submitted data from their toolbars. \n\nSo there are 3 (main) ways that we see website statistics. \n\n1) data from an ISP - which would only account for people who use that ISP. You would have to poll each ISP. Or make predictions backed on that ISPs market share.\n\n2) user submitted data like alexa. and then make predictions for people who dont have the toolbars installed. sometimes these can be jaded predictions. \n\n3) the website itself will know each and every request it has filled. - sometimes that data is private.\n\nAlexa rankings are pretty respected right now, but alexa is owned by amazon so be weary of that. "
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z26em | the $750 billion that republicans keep saying obama cut from medicare | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/z26em/eli5_the_750_billion_that_republicans_keep_saying/ | {
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"It's from Medicare Advantage, a private insurance option to Medicare. No money is cut from actual care to seniors, this money is merely the government saying that it's cutting back on how much it pays hospitals and doctors for seniors on Medicare Advantage (leaving them to pick up the difference). This is one of the concessions that doctors and hospitals agreed to during the healthcare debate. Paul Ryan liked the idea so much, he keeps the cuts in his budget proposal. "
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16nfn2 | why do many photos of the recent protests in india show signs in english? | I've noticed that almost all photos of the protests in India show them carrying signs written in English. Is this a simple matter of only the English signs getting into the media I view. Is it an attempt to broadcast their message past India and to the rest of the world, or is English simply more common in India than I thought? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16nfn2/why_do_many_photos_of_the_recent_protests_in/ | {
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"English is one of two official languages in India, the other being Hindi. English is widely used among the educated and in government. English and Hindi are supplemented by dozens of regional languages that most people use in day to day speaking.",
"A good deal of Indians speak English, considering it was a British Colony. There's a reason why a lot of English language call centers are in India.",
"Remember that India used to be a territory of the British Empire, which introduced English to the area in a very influential way."
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3b99kh | how do people "measure" the hotness of a pepper? | Ive watched travel channel shows that show chefs making spicy buffalo wing sauces and they claim that a certain pepper is hotter than the other (e.g. "this habanero pepper is 5 times hotter than a jalapeno!")
What are the standard methods of measuring the spiciness of peppers? Is there a control pepper or a base level of spiciness that people refer to? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b99kh/eli5_how_do_people_measure_the_hotness_of_a_pepper/ | {
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],
"text": [
"[This Article](_URL_0_) does a pretty good job explaining how to measure the hotness of peppers.",
"\"Spiciness\" is caused by a chemical called capsaicin. They measure the volume of that chemical present. Habeneros have about 10x as much capsaicin as Serranos, for example, and Serranos have about 10x as much capsaicin as Jalapenos. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.chilliworld.com/factfile/how-to-measure-chilli-heat.asp"
],
[]
] |
|
1r16b6 | why doesn't laser light elongate when you shine it at an angle? | I know it's tough to understand but think about if you were to shine a flashlight and hold it ALMOST parallel to the wall. The light would come to a sharp cone near where it first hits the wall and the other end would be a very rounded and large edge. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r16b6/eli5_why_doesnt_laser_light_elongate_when_you/ | {
"a_id": [
"cdiiuqj"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"A laser will do the same thing, it's just that it's such a small point of light that it's hard to notice unless you do it at a very steep angle."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
Subsets and Splits