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2omfrr | the opec price wars | I'm hearing a lot about these price wars that OPEC is orchestrating as of late. I heard something about how it's because OPEC is trying to put economic pressure on companies that use fracking techniques to get their oil. Is this out of environmental concern or is there something on their bottom line that I'm missing that benefits them as a result of them cutting their profit margins? The petroleum industry is a confusing one. Oh, and since petroleum is traded in futures is this going to piss off a lot of investors? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2omfrr/eli5_the_opec_price_wars/ | {
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"The price of oil has been decreasing in large part due to increased U.S. supply due to fracking. OPEC is concerned (for good reason) that continued expansion of U.S. fracking operations will undercut their potential profits. While there is a ton of shale oil potentially accessible in the U.S. it's expensive to get out of the ground, much more so than the easier to access oil that OPEC has access to. That means OPEC can afford to have oil prices be lower for the short term if it slows down the growth of fracking. If the price of oil being at its current level means that fracking isn't so profitable companies may be reluctant to expend money to continue to increase their fracking operations."
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24alwa | the skill gap between men's and women's extreme sports. | I was watching some olympics snowboarding footage from this year. The guys are doing like triple backflips and 1260's while the women were going crazy over like 720's and stuff. Why are the women so far behind in learning the tricks? I can't imagine it being a strength thing since lots of the snowboarding guys are rather small. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24alwa/eli5_the_skill_gap_between_mens_and_womens/ | {
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"Men have more dense muscle and broader muscle attachments. Pound-for-pound, they have a strength advantage that allows them to put more power out. ",
"Women have wide, shorter pelvises. It's less efficient, harder to move. Women are designed for fat storage and producing other humans. Men pass all that up with the Y chromosome.",
"* Funding - Male sports have higher viewership which means more money and better resources for training (coaches, travel, equipment, etc).\n\n* Less competition - Competition makes athletes better, there are fewer female snowboard events and competitors. \n\n* Strength - Strength definitely does factor in. The easiest way to see this is to compare how much air the female snowboarders get vs the male snowboarders. Higher jumps mean more time for bigger tricks. ",
"I would say it really comes down to competition. The reason that extreme sports are so much more extreme now than they were 5 years ago is because the winner is the best person to compete on that given day. People had to get more extreme to be better compared to their peers.\n\nBecause little boys are more encouraged by the society they grew up in to do things like skateboard, jump bikes, etc., there are more of them who continue to be extreme athletes and the standard for being a pro is higher.\n\nThe same reason that a modern female snowboarder would be as good as any man from the early days of the sport.",
"the upper echelon of sports is where the biological differences between the genders matter.\n\nin snowboarding in particular, a woman's center of gravity is lower by several inches. that means, among other things, that when they throw their upper body for a spin, they don't get nearly as much momentum so they cant translate as much force into the board. \n\nbreak dancers have a similar \"problem\"",
"Actually, it does come down to strength. A beautiful example of this is gymnastics.\n\nIn gymnastics, men and women share 2 events: floor exercise and vault. Vault scoring is seriously esoteric, so lets just look at floor.\n\nA little background: Any skill in gymnastics that will register a score is assigned a difficulty rating of A thru H, with A being the easiest. There is a difference in how the difficulties are scored between men and women, but the men's requirements are significantly higher. Let's assume, for the sake of this comparison, that the requirements are equal, but recall that they are actually harder for men.\n\nSo now let's look at some specific skills, and how they are rated in international gymnastics. For those of you who want to follow along (or fact check), reference the latest standards at:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\nFor men, a double forward flip (double salto forward tucked) is a \"D\" move.\n\nFor women, the same move is an \"E\" move.\n\nFor men, add a half twist, (double salto forward tucked with a 1/2 twist), and it's still a \"D\" move.\n\nFor women, this is an \"F\" move.\n\nFor men, to bring this up to an \"E\" move, it has to be done in the piked position.\n\nFor women, the double salto forward piked is not even ranked - you probably won't see this in competition this quadrennium.\n\nThese are lower-body intensive skills, where women and men are more closely matched. Upper body intensive, like the forward flip from handstand, are not even in F.I.G. for women. In other words, the disparity is even greater.\n\nSimilar disparities can be found in the layout backflip:\n\nMen, double back layout: D\n\nWomen: F\n\nMen, double back layout w/ 1/2 twist: D\n\nWomen: H\n\n\nThat's the facts, folks. Men can get to be stronger than women, everywhere, and especially so in the upper body. This will be expressed in any physical competition that strength plays a factor. As politically incorrect that fact is, it's still true. Anyone who says differently is refusing to see facts.\n\nGymnastics is a really good point to compare men vs. women, because most of the red herring arguments are plainly untrue in this context. For example:\n\nFunding: Women's gymnastics is, by far, better funded, with higher viewership, than men's gymnastics.\n\nCompetition: There are far more women's gymnastics competitors than men's gymnastics competitors.\n\nIntimidation: There's more social stygma on male gymnasts than female gymnasts.\n\n\nSource:\nI was a men's gymnastics coach and judge, and a women's assistant coach.\n\nTL;DR: Men are stronger than women, and can do harder skills."
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1ji9mn | mutual funds vs. etf's & why one or the other might be superior | I've researched both but have trouble explaining how they are different and why someone would choose an ETF over a mutual fund when investing | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ji9mn/eli5mutual_funds_vs_etfs_why_one_or_the_other/ | {
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"I'm sure you've looked at wikipedia and investopedia, etc. so I'll give you my (admittedly) laymen understanding of it:\n\nETFs are funds that seek to mirror the performance of different sectors. For instance, an S & P500 ETF will be a \"comprehensive sample\" of stocks of the S & P500 so that its performance matches what happens with the S & P500. You could do this for the DOW Jones, Hong Kong stock exchange, high value technology stocks in Europe, etc.\n\nBasically the ETF is set up for investors who want to match the performance of some set of stocks.\n\nA mutual fund, while similar, seeks to make certain returns with an associated risk. So there could be mutual funds that seek to have \"high returns with high risk\", \"low returns over long periods of time but with low risk\" \"medium returns over short period of time with high risk\" etc. Obviously there aren't \"high return very low risk\" because that's not really feasible, but I think that states the idea.\n\nThey are similar in that its groups of investors pooling their money into a fund, but the difference is in what the fund sets out to do.",
"ETFs you can buy/sell at market price during the day while mutual funds you need to wait until close to do this. Also mutual funds have an initial investment amount (usually 2000$) while ETFs are just shares correlated with the fund. ETFs will probably overtake mutual funds in the future.",
"There are a few major differences -\n\nTypically a mutual fund is actively managed which results in larger fees than an ETF which is a passive instrument designed to track a benchmark (say S & P 500). You are paying a money manager to try to \"underweight\" or \"overweight\" the stocks he or she thinks will under/over perform in the applicable index. An ETF is simply designed to track the index, without a manager actively trying to generate alpha (returns that exceed the benchmark return). \n\nNext is on tax efficiency - \n\nWhen you go to sell an ETF, since it is exchange traded, it's basically like selling a stock. There are prices quoted throughout the day and you can sell it at any time for the quoted price. You can also sell ETF's short, which you cannot do with a mutual fund. ETF's have \"in kind\" redemption which means that when you sell your shares, behind the scenes the basket of securities that comprise the ETF unit are exchanged to satisfy the sale. This differs from a mutual fund where when you place a sell the fund most sell underlying shares on the open market, resulting in a capital gains tax, that ultimately will flow through to the unitholders. \n\nAlong the same lines, mutual funds have a larger cash drag than ETFs. If mutual funds don't have some cash set aside to meet redemptions as they occur they can be caught in a \"forced selling\" environment in the event of a large market sell-off. For example : fed announces the unwinding of QE, everybody freaks out and sells, mutual fund has to sell underlying shares to meet redemptions, which lowers the price of the shares and therefor the fund, which causes more sales, and a downward spiral commences. If they have enough cash sitting aside, they don't have to sell shares at depressed prices to meet redemptions, but the tradeoff is that cash earns very little interest so the opportunity cost of not investing that portion of the fund's assets results in \"cash drag\".\n\nThese are probably the most notable differences.",
"Not from an expert by any means, but I believe ETFs have less restrictions and rules. \n\nWith mutual funds the fund manager must layout a prospectus and basically follow it exactly. Also there are rules as far as what percentage of the fund can be invested into one individual stock, and sometimes into an individual market segment. I believe in an ETF the fund manager has a lot more freedom.\n\nAlso on average mutual funds normally have a higher cost that is factored into the price. Also many times mutual funds have a minimum buy in amount for some are as low as $250, some are well over $1000.\n\nETF's are bought and sold like any individual stock. They have a price that fluctuates with the price of the stocks in the fund instantly not once per day. So you can buy 1 share in an ETF and then sell it 5 minutes later if you want.\n\nOther than that they are pretty much the same, you can buy Mutual Funds and ETFs that are very very specific to a certain segment of the market or you can buy ones that just track the market as a whole.\n",
"I prefer ETFs for one reason above all others: it avoids the inherent conflict of interest that plagues many mutual funds. \n\nAn ETF is passively managed by a publicized trading strategy. Most commonly they just buy a basket of stocks based on an index, sometimes focused on a particular sector, and track the market without interference from a fund manager. \n\nA mutual fund has a fund manager. The fund manager is a person who is compensated for doing a \"good job\", which usually means just keeping as much money in the fund as possible. Their incentive is more or less to lose your money slowly. They only need to keep you invested with them, so they can take their commission and please their boss. They don't actually need to make you money. "
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5gae9y | why do we pluralize *some* things that are less than 1? (ex., 0.25 seconds) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5gae9y/eli5_why_do_we_pluralize_some_things_that_are/ | {
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"That is not less than one. \n\nWhile it is less than one whole second you are not counting seconds, you are counting hundredths of seconds and you count 25 of them. "
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5w84uy | how does satellite navigation work? | I have a little bit of an understanding of this topic, but the part that still confuses me is since atomic clocks are needed to accurately measure the distance, how is my smart phone's clock accurate enough? And an explanation of why it takes 4 satellites would be appreciated! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5w84uy/eli5_how_does_satellite_navigation_work/ | {
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"If you know the distance between you and one satellite (whose position you know) then you could be anywhere on a sphere centered on that satellite with a radius of that distance.\n\nIf you know the distances to two satellites then you could be anywhere in a circle: draw a triangle between you and the two satellites and that triangle is free to rotate around the line between the two satellites.\n\nIf you know the distances to three satellites then you can only be in one of two positions: draw a triangluar pyramid between the three satellites and you and either that pyramid points down to your position on Earth or it points up into space. You can safely assume that you're on the ground.\n\n******\n\nThat just uses three satellites and doesn't answer the question about clocks, though. The fourth satellite comes in to answer that question: your phone doesn't have an accurate enough clock to work with just three satellites, so rather than judging time by looking at the incoming time vs the phone's time you look at the incoming times compared to each other.\n\nUsing this method if you receive one satellite you just know what time it is (with some error, since you don't know how far away that satellite is).\n\nWith two satellites you know what time it is (again, with error) and how much farther you are from one satellite than the other. When you work out the consequences of this constraint you're left with a hyperbolic surface. The shape isn't important here; the important thing to note is that you get a surface, just like how in the first example one satellite gave the surface of a sphere.\n\nWith three satellites you know one more piece of information. The result is that you could be anywhere on a line (just like how with the original example two satellites gives you a circle—just a line that's closed in on itself).\n\nFinally, with four satellites you get enough information that there's only one point that is consistent with all of the information you receive",
"Let's say you are standing in between two points A and B. At points A and B there are two trains traveling towards you at the same exact velocity at the exact same time (both trains carrying a piece of paper with the time written on it of when it left). Thing is you have no idea when the trains left. If train A reaches you first, you can assess you are closer to A than you are to B. Mathematically you can determine where on the exact point of the line you are by determining the time difference between train A and B reaching you.\n\nBasically you need 2 points to determine where you are on that line. The first train to reach you gives you the time. The second train to reach you gives you the same time, but you can determine the time difference it took for train B to reach you after train A by and calculate where you are on the line.\n\nOn a 1D line, you need 2 points.\n\nOn a 2D plane, you need 3 points.\n\nOn a 3D space, you need 4 points.\n\nWe use 4 points because the earth is a globe and not a flat surface."
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4sz57l | if we can try children, as young as twelve years old, as adults; why can't twelve year olds sit on a jury? | I was reading about Cristian Fernandez, who was the youngest person, at age twelve, to be tried as an adult. It made me wonder why the court system would recognize him as an adult and yet not have people his age on a jury. Shouldn't a person in that circumstance be tried by a "jury of peers"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4sz57l/eli5_if_we_can_try_children_as_young_as_twelve/ | {
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"Putting a child on trial is done because a crime they have committed is so severe and heinous that it is deemed worthy of removing the protections we place on childhood. We do not have a method for doing the same on the positive side that would allow children to enter into contracts and thereby sit on a jury. \n\nA \"jury of peers\" means that they are free citizens of your country. Not that they share your age, gender, ethnicity, economic status, job training, etc. So they are still being tried by peers. ",
"Being tried as an adult doesn't mean that the court recognizes you as an adult. It means that the crime you're accused of is so glaringly, obviously wrong that even someone your age understands that fact, and the consequences of committing that *specific* crime, as well as an adult.\n",
"A minor being tried as an adult is a rare circumstance, based on very very specific criteria. The minor in question has to have been shown to have acted in a manner that shows their understanding of their actions was at an adult level. This is generally done through a lot of professional and potentially traumatizing investigation.\n\nUsing the same level of investigation to find a jury of minors would not only be cost prohibiti9ve, it was be pretty cruel to innocent children when there is already an established means of selecting a jury that we already assuming are thinking at an adult level",
"In addition to the obvious issues of being legally an adult and the rights/responsibilities that go along with that, there are the purely logistical issues of a child being required to attend school at the same time courts are in session, lack of access to transportation, and lack of guardian/responsible adult.\n\nAlso, you're taking a \"jury of peers\" too literally... it means a jury made up of regular citizens who have no long terms stake in the system, as opposed to appointed judges, politicians, or others beholden to the government powers and who might act to please citizenry/those responsible for their job. Juries don't have to reflect the defendant's age/sex/race, etc. nor the composition of the city/state. "
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xa70z | what rights are gays actually being denied while their marriage is illegal? | I know civil unions exist, but don't know the difference in "rights" for a married couple and civil union. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xa70z/eli5_what_rights_are_gays_actually_being_denied/ | {
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"Note that I'm assuming you mean under US law. There are some one-thousand federal rights, with several more varying by state, attributed by a marriage license. The big ones are as follows:\n\n* Hospital visitation rights\n* Adoption\n* Joint taxes\n* Employment benefits\n* Next-of-kin status\n* Inheritance\n* Spousal Privilege\n* [Etc.](_URL_0_)\n\nFurthermore, thanks to DOMA, even if same-sex partners do obtain a marriage license, it will only be valid in states which perform same-sex marriages. One could gain those same rights by filing various documents, the fees for which will add up to over $10,000, not to mention the cost of legal counsel. Civil unions do exist, but they vary wildly under state law. Most states don't even have them.",
"Fun fact, the government originally got involved in marriage to regulate interracial relationships. Thanks government.",
"Right to live with equal privilege as a human."
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7frj2o | how can a piece of paper folded 103 times be larger than the observable universe? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7frj2o/eli5_how_can_a_piece_of_paper_folded_103_times_be/ | {
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"When you fold something once, you make it 2x as thick. Fold it again, you make it 4x as thick. Fold it N times, you make it 2^N times as thick. 2^103 is a very, very, very large number. (Approximately 1 followed by 31 zeros.) \n \nSo even if you are folding something very thin, if you were able to fold it that many times, it would become 10^31 times thicker. ",
"Exponential growth. Each fold doubles the thickness of the paper. If I gave you 1 penny today, and promised to give you twice as much money tomorrow, and twice as much the day after, and so on and so on, on day 30 I'm giving you over $5 million dollars. \n\nYou can do the math on this yourself pretty easily though. Open the calculator on your computer, and type in 0.0039 (the thickness of a piece of paper). Press the Times button, and then the number 2, and press enter. Now press enter 102 more times. By the mid-50's your calculator will actually reach a point where it has to start using exponents, and by 60 you'll have surpassed the what the calculator is capable of. ",
"It's math. Theoretical in that I think 10 times is about the most that's ever been achieved.\n\nMore interesting to me has always been how big a piece of paper would have to be to start with, assuming it possible to be in a position to fold it 103 times. That's even simpler math but I've never gotten around to it.",
"And not to be pedantic, but wouldn't the stack of folded paper be *thicker* than the diameter of the observable universe, but it's *width* would be 1/2^103 times the size of the original width dimension, and it's length unchanged? The point being the *folded paper* won't be bigger than the observable universe; only one of it's principal dimensions (thickness).",
"It's not so much an arbitrary number of folds, as it is an exponential increase in thickness. Imagine it took X folds of a single sheet to be taller than the empire state building. At X-1 (one away) it would only be half as tall. At X-2 it would only be 1/4 as tall. \n\nAnother way to think about it is each fold doubles the height, thus the 20th fold creates the same increase in size as all of the 19 folds that came before, and the 100th fold creates the same increase as all the 99 folds before it. \n\nWhat is interesting is when it comes to the maximum size something can be, and the minimum size, our existence is quite a bit closer to the maximum, than the minimum. \n\nLike if you changed your size by a factor of 10, you could do this farm more times getting smaller, than you could getting larger. ",
"As others have pointed, it's not physically possible. If it were, the surface area of the paper would also shrink by a factor of 2 each time. So you'd end up with more like one very, very, very thin rod that's longer than the observable universe.\n\nThe long and short of it is, exponential growth is *very* fast. The difference between a single byte and a kibibyte is just 10 powers of 2. Same with going up to a mebibyte, gibibyte, tebibyte.. That's still \"only\" 40 powers of 2.",
"Basically, because it doubles every fold, and when you double something that many times, it gets reeeeeally big. Of course, this is all theoretical, it is impossible to fold paper that many times. Go try it, i doubt you could even get 10 folds. ",
"It is the power of exponential growth. It is basically the same effect that bankrupts you with compound interest.\n\nMost people don't realize just how quickly and how big things can get with exponential growth, because most examples of that we see in nature break down when things become untenable.\n\nIn real life you would never be able to fold a piece of paper more than a few times or get enough rice to fit on a chessboard or anything like that. Looking at it in pure math terms however just shows hob big things can really get.\n\nIf you fold a piece of paper you double its width. There is nothing about that statement that most people wouldn't agree with.\n\nA piece of paper folded in half has twice the width of a single sheet and if you fold it again it has four times that width.\n\nIf you try folding it again and again in the real world, the whole pattern breaks down because it quickly becomes to small and big to fold again.\n\nHowever if you take the original math and continue it unrealistically as if you really had an infinitely big piece of paper that you could fold as often as you wanted you run into problems very quickly.\n\nFor every 10 times you fold the paper it becomes a 1000 time thicker. For every 20 times you fold it, it becomes a million times thicker.\n\nA 0.1 m thick paper folded 10 times will be a meter thick. Folded another 10 times (20 in total) it will be a kilometer thick. Folded another 10 times (30 in total) it will be a 1000 kilometer thick.\n\nWhen you fold it another 10 times (40 in total) it will be a million kilometer thick and several times thicker than the moon is away from us. Another 10 times (50 in total) and you are in the outer solar system past the orbit of Jupiter.\n\nIt grows really rapidly.\n\nthe observable universe has a diameter of 8.8×10^26 m according to Wikipedia and mathematically a piece of paper 0.1mm in thickness doubled a 103 times will have a thickness of over 10^27 m.\n\nPractically that would never work of course, but it is a good way to show just how strong exponential growth can be and that you need to beware of it.\n\nExponential growth breaks down before it can can get to big in most practical examples, but if the practical example is compound interest and the breakdown point is the bank taking away your home or loanshark breaking your leg it is too late.\n\nSo keep in mind that anything that growth by a set percentage over a time can grow very big very fast you are in trans-lunar orbit or have broken legs before you know it if you don't watch out.",
"I've got a two part question for clarification. 1: is this hypothetical piece of paper larger than the conceivable universe when unfolded only or even when folded is it that big? 2: just for curiosity's sake, what would the presumed total mass of that piece of paper be assuming the paper is average legal paper thickness",
"It can't. You will never find a piece of paper thicker than the observable universe, it is just a thought experiment demonstrating exponential growth.\n\nWhen things double they grow fast.",
"Question: what if every fold, the paper didn't get thicker, but became more dense? How many folds to create a singularity? ",
"Longer. It's longer than the diameter of the sphere that is our observable universe. Not even close to larger lol.",
"The folded paper is a highly theoretical thought experiment: If folding a piece of paper doubles the thickness, then folding it 103 times would increase the thickness by 2^103 which would be incredibly big. However, it's simply not possible to fold paper more than 8 or so times."
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aqiu5a | how do medications that “bind to dopamine and serotonin receptors work? | I’ve been prescribed Buspar for anxiety and I’m curious how this works, but everything I find online is confusing medical studies. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aqiu5a/eli5_how_do_medications_that_bind_to_dopamine_and/ | {
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"So some background first, for your neurons to communicate to one another, you have an axon from one neuron, which sends signal, and a dendrite of another neuron, which receives it. These two things never touch, and are separated by a small space called a synapse. To bridge this gap, the sending neuron releases neurotransmitters, in this case it would be dopamine. The dopamine is then received by the other neuron thanks to little receiver ports that are shaped specifically to receive dopamine and nothing else. What this means is that if you get a medication that is shaped kind of like dopamine, but doesn’t have the same effects, it will block these little receptors and the message will no longer be passed from one neuron to another. ",
"Virtually all cells have small proteins on their outer surface called receptors. Each of these receptors is designed for a very specific set of hormone/chemicals(lignads). They express this specificity by having a unique shape that only the correct, corresponding chemical ligand can bind to so that the receptor is activated and kicks off a series of chemical reactions within the cell, which will ultimately release the desired chemical (e.g. dopamine, etc...)\n\nMany drugs mimic the physical shape of our natural chemical ligands at the molecular level, which allows them to also bind to the target cells, causing them to release the desired product. You can think of them like a copy of a master key. As long as you have a good enough copy, you can \"unlock\"/activate the cell to release its compounds. \n\nUltimately, many forms pharmaceutical development revolves around building molecules that are able to physically interact with cells to get them to do what they're supposed to be doing in the first place. \n\nThere's a lot more to pharmacology, but at the ELI5, the \"lock and key\" model is pretty easy to understand."
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1r950o | why is the nvidia quadro fx series so expensive if they perform so poorly? | I have a $3000 Quadro FX 5600 in my computer, and most games run maxed out at 15 FPS, while video cards that are much cheaper run at a much better framerate. Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r950o/eli5_why_is_the_nvidia_quadro_fx_series_so/ | {
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"The Quadro series is not optimized or even built for gaming - its optimized for rendering, graphics design, etc. Quadro drivers aren't built for gaming, so there are none of the gaming-specific optimizations for it.\n\n > Workstation graphics cards are clocked slower for better stability & power consumption and are heavily optimised for OpenGL/CAD applications (when's the last time you played a decent OpenGL game? Doom 3, maybe...). Many of them have special plugins for Maya, 3ds Max, Proengineer, Autocad and all of the most popular 3D design tools that enable them to do very specific things which are only necessary for 3D Design, like running FSAA on resolutions of 3840x2400, which is something no mainstream GFX card can achieve or very, very advanced lighting effects, which are only beneficial to a 3D designer creating CGI for example.\n\n > To give a comparison, the Quadro 6000 which is around $4000 AUD, is hardware-wise an essentially slower-clocked GTX 580 with less CUDA cores but 4 times the VRAM, and it doesn't come anywhere close in matching a GTX580's performance in any cutting-edge game.\n\n[source](_URL_0_)\n\nIf you actually spent 3K on a quadro card thinking that it would be better for gaming, you wasted your money. If you had a quadro card already for doing rendering/design work, and are trying to use it for gaming, you aren't going to get good performance out of it."
]
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[
"http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1608287"
]
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|
1vi0fc | why is it illegal to conceal a switchblade while it is legal to conceal a spring assisted knife? | A. If any person carries about his person, hidden from common observation,... (ii) any dirk, bowie knife, switchblade knife, ballistic knife, machete, razor, slingshot, spring stick, metal knucks, or blackjack;... he is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. A second violation of this section or a conviction under this section subsequent to any conviction under any substantially similar ordinance of any county, city, or town shall be punishable as a Class 6 felony, and a third or subsequent such violation shall be punishable as a Class 5 felony. For the purpose of this section, a weapon shall be deemed to be hidden from common observation when it is observable but is of such deceptive appearance as to disguise the weapon's true nature. It shall be an affirmative defense to a violation of clause (i) regarding a handgun, that a person had been issued, at the time of the offense, a valid concealed handgun permit | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vi0fc/eli5_why_is_it_illegal_to_conceal_a_switchblade/ | {
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"These laws were enacted in order to essentially add more felonious crimes to those who were known gang members. It was the general census that those committing the most common crimes were also using the said weapons that would now be considered illegal thus allowing more criminals to be locked up under federal law. Basically the laws against these weapons made it easier to lock up gang members for a longer time.",
"The real reason that it's illegal to conceal a switchblade and legal to conceal a \"spring-assisted knife\" is that \"spring-assisted knives\" are deliberately designed to be as close as possible to switchblades in form and function without actually being illegal."
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d4poug | what is the difference between a director and cinematographer? | I always thought the director did the camera work but I have a few friends doing film at uni and they’ve explained that I’m wrong but I don’t quite understand why. Between those and director of photography etc. It’s all just bamboozled me a little bit as to who is doing what on set | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d4poug/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_a_director/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"First off, [watch this](_URL_0_) for a super simplified rundown on what each person on set does. \n\nDirectors direct the actors, staff and general crew of the film. They are the ones that are in control of who says what when and how; and makes people do the same scene a hundred times.\n\nA cinematographer is the director of cameras. He decides where each camera is and what it's pointing at and how and decides on the lighting. He's responsible for making the shot look good.\n\nI.e Directors control the people on screen. Cinematographer controls the cameras pointed at the people.\n\nof course there is a lot of overlap, this is a group effort. Directors might work with the cinematographer to capture his vision and vice-versa."
]
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[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIxr1C52yO4"
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20kk6a | why do i get a boner even though i am not really excited about something? | Title. It happens while watching TV (no sex scenes), playing games (no sex scenes) and even when I talk with friends (no sex topic)
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20kk6a/eli5_why_do_i_get_a_boner_even_though_i_am_not/ | {
"a_id": [
"cg457jr"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Reflexive erections are normal behavior just to make sure the organ works."
]
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[]
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|
4izpha | why are anti-cancer drugs so expensive? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4izpha/eli5_why_are_anticancer_drugs_so_expensive/ | {
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"Cancer is not a disease. Cancer is a symptom. There are many, many different kinds of cancer.\n\nThe research and development of each cancer drug is very high (and testing has to be done for each type of cancer they want to use it for). The market size is effectively quite small because of how fragment cancer actually is.\n\nThen you have to factor in the risks with developing these drugs. If they don't pass clinical trials, they've just wasted a load of money. If they would not make profit on the ones that work, they would not develop it.\n\nUltimately drug prices would be a lot, lot lower if there was some global, publicly funded research group. In the short term though that would save no money, and cost loads of extra money, so it isn't in any particular politician's interest to push for it, and voters are too ill informed (or misinformed normally) to push for it, while lobbyists would push hard against it.",
"Cancer is a tremendous collection of wildly different conditions, each of which can require the development of very different cancer drugs to either treat or prevent.\n\nSome anti-cancer drugs exist now and are very expensive. Others have yet to be developed, with many of those in their research and testing phases now. When they're available, they will be very expensive too. \n\nThey're so expensive because they're being developed by private or public companies who have a responsibility to their own shareholders and owners to make a profit. To make a profit, the price you sell something at has to be greater than the price required to create it.\n\nAnd this is the problem: the price to create and sell an anti-cancer drug is **ABSOLUTELY ENORMOUS**. Here's the steps:\n\n* research and development to identify possible treatment vectors\n\n* animal testing\n\n* safety testing \n\n* clinical trials on volunteer patients, often over years.\n\n* approval from government medicinal and drug organizations\n\nEvery one of those steps takes time and costs a lot of money, and your new drug could fail at any one of those stages, meaning all of that money you spent you get NOTHING for.\n\nSo companies in the anti-cancer drug business charge a lot because they have to pay for the drug they're producing, plus finance all the drug variants that are in development, and cover the lost costs of all of the drug variants that didn't pass their tests... and still earn a profit for their shareholders.",
"When developing things like medicine and technology, there is a significant cost known as research and development cost. This is essentially how when the company is developing a product, the must spend a ton of money on trials and new formulas. This is why something that costs twenty dollars to make is sold for say, two hundred dollars, you aren't paying for the product, you are paying for the company to be able to pay off the massive amount of money they spent making the product so they can continue to operate in the future. "
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4btmud | why is searching for a "cure" for autism/supporting autism speaks bad? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4btmud/eli5_why_is_searching_for_a_cure_for/ | {
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"Because, like Susan G. Komen, the majority of your donations goes into their pocket or to their budget, NOT to research towards a cure or treatment. At least they don't sue everyone like Susan G. Komen, though. On the other hand, they actually tend to actively work against the autistic community.",
"As far as I understand it, its because they want to classify autism as a medical disease entitling autistic individuals to receive the same \"treatment\" and classifications that other mental diseases have out there. Some take a personal offense to this while others don't believe in the efficacy of how to solve the issue. \n\nThis \"medical\" paradigm of autism has led the organization to do some questionable things in the past such as promoting the now discredited link that vaccines cause autism. While the organization has reverted on their stance, they have spent many years downplaying the effectiveness of vaccines raising doubts into many parents' minds and driving the fear behind vaccination."
]
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3h2y1b | why are olive, coconut, and avocado oils considered to be healthy and cannot be deep fried, but oils like vegetable oils aren't? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h2y1b/eli5_why_are_olive_coconut_and_avocado_oils/ | {
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"Coconut and avocado oil actually have very high smoke points and very suitable for deep-frying, however they are not cheap to produce - a jar of good coconut oil is £6-8 here, and that will provide nowhere near enough to fill a deep-fat fryer. Also, coconut oil has a distinctive coconut flavour that may or may not be desirable - neutral flavoured oils are generally more agreeable.\n\nThe best, most stable fat to cook with is animal fat - such as tallow or lard. Grass-fed for omega-3! Seed oils are full of health-negative omega-6.",
"Ok cooking oils 101\n\noils are basicly long chains of hydrocarbons (molecules made out of hydrogen and carbon), \n\nNow depending on how many hydrogens are in the carbon bonding points an oil is defined as Saturated, semi saturated (also transfat) and non saturated, \n\nIts considered that non saturated fats are the healtiest due to them being able to be processed by the body better then the others. \n\nNow why you can fry with some and not with others depends on the production methods, \n\ntheres 2 ways to extract oil from a fruit or seed, \n\nMechanical and Chemical\n\nMechanical means that the fruit is pressed, chopped, grounded up and even centrifuged to remove the oil from the fruit. \n\nChemical means a solvent is used to extract the oil from the fruit being whole or a grounded up. \n\nEach one of those processes produces oils with more or less pulp and other fruit components in it, those components are the ones that burn and lower the smoke temperature of the oil. \n\nA good example is olive oil. \n\nOlive oil has many grades, From cold press extra virgin which is a rich cloudy green to extreamly light that is a very pale yellow and transparent.\n\nyou get different steps to get as much of the oil as you can out of both the fruit and the seed, \n\n- Cold press\n- Hot press\n- Repressing grounded up fruit\n- Centrifuging the grounded up fruit,\n- Soaking the fruit in a solvent to extract whatever is left, \n\nAnd with each step the oil is more refined, so you get a milder flavour (the solvent grade one is practicly tasteless), but the increased purity of the oil makes it more resiliant to heat, \n\nSo you have the first press extra virgin that can only hold up to 160 degrees C, then you have more processed mechanicaly obtained oil that goes up to 190c, and then you have the solvant produced olive oil called Olive Pomance oil which can resist up to 235c, \n\nIt all depends on the purity and extraction method of the oil which establishes the smoke point. ",
"While olive oil has a lower smoke point relative to other oils, it's by no means low. It's perfectly 'safe' to fry with, and is one of, if not THE, healthiest oils you can get. There's so much research showing health benefits\n\nAlso, omega 6 isn't inherently bad for. Generally it's your ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 fats that you want, but we tend to over consume 6 and under consume 3 which leads people to say 6 is bad."
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2fi1vk | why is egyptian cotton so much better than regular cotton? | People say it is so much better than regular cotton. Why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fi1vk/eli5_why_is_egyptian_cotton_so_much_better_than/ | {
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"The varietal of cotton utilized in Egypt historically was different than that used elsewhere. It's a form of \"extra long staple\" cotton. This means it has a longer fiber length. Shorter fibers are harder to spin and result in \"hairier\" threads. The longer stable results in the opposite. For this reason it was easier to get a high quality thread count of these long staples without it looked all darned, and so it was used for large thread count production adding to it's reputation as being high quality.\n\nAt this point, this type of cotton is grown in lots of places and the brand aspect of \"Egyptian cotton\" has stuck in much the way \"French Wine\" is synonymous with quality wine even though spain, the U.S., australia and so on all produce wines that are also high quality.\n\n\n"
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99pwcr | does gravity have a big impact on heart rate? | I know gravity affects the heart and basicaly the whole body, but i wonder how much does it affect the hearts effort to send blood to all the cells.
When I lay down my heart rate is slower than when I'm up.
I always assumed that because I'm in a resting phase, my heart doesn't have to work as hard, but does standing up and laying down have a big effect on the heart ability to pump blood? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/99pwcr/eli5_does_gravity_have_a_big_impact_on_heart_rate/ | {
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"text": [
"The body has a number of systems in place to prevent blood pooling in the lower extremities.\n\nThere are one-way valves in the legs and movement of the leg muscles constricts the circulatory system to push blood back up.\n\nThe system is designed to push blood towards the head and allow gravity to assist in removing it. That's why hanging upside-down is so unpleasant.\n\nLaying down takes load off the muscles and causes that drop in heart rate over time, but doesn't really help the circulation. Excessive sedentary behavior makes it perform worse."
]
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5tkutb | what is the difference between bond and debenture? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5tkutb/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_bond_and/ | {
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"The biggest practical difference between a Bond and a Debenture are that, if the company gets liquidated, Bondholders get paid first, and Debenture-holders will get paid later if there is still money left over. The trade-off being that bonds typically offer less interest because there is less risk"
]
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5tmp7v | why we always have to go through a company to have internet access. why can't someone create their own personal network? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5tmp7v/eli5_why_we_always_have_to_go_through_a_company/ | {
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"Because physically running fiber optics between cities is outside the financial ability of most private individuals. By all means you can create local networks, but the internet requires longer distances to be covered.",
"Using cables, switches and routers you can connect as many computers together as you want and create your own personal network. However it will not be the Internet. The Internet have a lot of different computers that you might want to interact with. You could in theory get a line from your home router and stretch it over to one of Googles data centers and hook it up for no cost but that would only give you access to googles services and no access to reddit or facebook. And stretching cables everywhere is expensive. So you pay a company to make sure you have access to every other machine on the Internet, and they likely pay another company, who have a connection with another company, who have the server you try to connect to as a client.",
"People do it every day - I mean, that's what home WiFi is. Some people even set up their own small-scale ISPs by getting a high-bandwidth connection and sharing it with their neighbors.\n\nThe catch is, to connect to a computer, you need two things: a network connection, and permission. ISPs already have agreements with other ISPs and the assorted companies that own the physical hardware that the existing internet runs on, so in practice you would end up leasing their stuff anyway - you might as well connect through your local ISP and not worry about getting agreements with anyone else.\n\nThere's nothing stopping you from making your own agreements and setting up your own infrastructure, other than the truly massive pain in the ass it would be. It would be wildly impractical to get the land to run your cables through, for instance. (hint: railroads own long strips of land running between major cities - but they've probably already got AT & Ts fiber running through there)"
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3mq59y | how can there be flowing water on mars when the temperature is so low? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mq59y/eli5how_can_there_be_flowing_water_on_mars_when/ | {
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"1) The temperature ranges from -80° F (or colder!) to 70° F.\n \n2) The salts dissolved in it reduce the freezing point so it stays liquid at lower temps.",
"The water is very, very salty. And in the sun it's not even that cold on Mars. Soil temperatures around 20°C is pretty cozy.",
"Atmospheric pressure, brine salt water has a lower freezing point, surface of Mars isn't always below the freezing point."
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6s0nd6 | when the continents were joined together (pangaea), did that mean that there was an entire hemisphere of ocean? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6s0nd6/eli5_when_the_continents_were_joined_together/ | {
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"Yes. This is given the name Panthalassa, or the Panthalassic Ocean. There would have been several different tectonic plates underneath this ocean, and subduction would have been occurring at the boundaries of some of them, creating island arc chains like this around the northern edges of the Pacific now. \n\n\nSeeing as Pangea was sort of shaped like a bar magnet (on its side), the ocean 'inside' Pangea is sometimes called the Palaeo-Tethys, indicating it's fore running nature to the Tethys ocean which separated India from the rest of the Asian continent. ",
"Take a look at a globe. The Pacifc Ocean takes up almost a whole hemisphere today. If you are in high orbit around the earth, there's a point where the Pacific will take up you're whole field of view."
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2vstg5 | why does the us keep arming rebels when years later history shows those same rebels kill us with those weapons? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vstg5/eli5_why_does_the_us_keep_arming_rebels_when/ | {
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" > history shows those same rebels kill us with those weapons?\n\nHistory also shows sometimes they don't.\n\nIt's always a tricky process of arming rebel groups. Sometimes its right, sometimes its wrong. It's also hard to predict the outcomes if they are or are not armed. The future isn't known, we can try to influence it to our advantage, and certainly the US does try to--just as every country does.",
"9 out of 10 times they don't. We also plan on leaving after and there has been no cases in history of them taking the weapons and coming to attack us or take over America. It is like giving the kid next door a BB gun then moving two states over. You kind of don't see the damage in it but maybe you move back in 5 years and now he is a gun nut a d shoots squires and your dog. Is it your fault 100% but you never expected to see him again and never thought it would get that bad. ",
"Two major drivers are responsible:\n\n1) The US arms industry is the largest in the world and is constantly seeking customers. \n\n2) US foreign policy tends to be dominated by various interventionist factions who claim the US is obligated to behave in certain ways.\n\nBasically, we've got the guns and the people running the show are happy to hand them out whenever they believe it serves their interests. \n\n\n",
"The US arms rebels that help further their interests. For example, the rebels in Syria, were armed and trained by the US, Qatar and the Saudi's to topple the Assad Regime. Now a lot of those rebels side with ISIS. Then again, even ISIS serves the US's interests in destabilizing the region. And to be frank, the arms industry doesn't really care whether there weapons kill Americans or any other nationality for that matter, the bottom line is profit.",
"because you only hear about the times when it comes to bite us in the ass.",
"A lot of cynical responses would have you believe that the US arms industry drives a lot of the push to arm rebel groups -- a lot of people also blame the military industrial complex.\n\nHowever, a deeper investigation shows that the argument has many flaws. For one, the US has very strict rules on arms exports and tightly regulates what is sold overseas. You will never see other countries, even close allies like the UK, with big-ticket items like Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, F-22 Raptors, B-2 bombers, etc. \n\nEven expensive exported items like the M1 Abrams or F-35 are sold usually with extensive downgrades - only the closest of allies (like the UK) get our top equipment.\n\nSimply put: the biggest money makers in the military industrial complex rarely if ever go overseas. Not to mention, the amount of logistics and training required to operate said equipment (of which the US relies heavily upon advanced equipment) can only go to organized forces around the world, namely countries' armed forces.\n\n------\n\nAlso important is the fact that a lot of groups DO receive American arms never turn their arms on the US.\n\nSure, we hear all the horror stories - but that's confirmation bias. It isn't news when countries like Colombia get weapons to fight FARC and Pablo Escobar, nor is it news with the Contras. Another famous group are the Montagnards in Vietnam who fought against the communists with American military advisers and arms -- they were fiercely loyal and many of their refugees settled in the US after the war.\n\nAnd ultimately that's what it is: we have had success and failures in the past. Given the impossibility of predicting the future, the best the US government can do is hope they've chosen the best groups that can advance their interests."
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caftrg | what exactly is “duty free” and why are we allowed to make duty free purchases when traveling internationally? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/caftrg/eli5_what_exactly_is_duty_free_and_why_are_we/ | {
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"Duty free is essentially allowing a traveler to purchase certain goods tax free, because they are leaving the country (where the goods are purchased), so they goods won't be \"used\" there. So since its not used there, and its immediately leaving the country, the govt allows leniency to not pay certain taxes on it.\n\n\nThe primary goods sold like this are generally \"sin goods\" that have \"sin taxes\". That means stuff like alcohol and tobacco (and occasionally luxury goods) which often have large taxes put on them to discourage their purchase in the country.\n\nBuying duty free goods is popular for people from countries which heavily tax certain goods, like alcohol, to purchase at duty free without tax, so the price is much lower. People from countries that heavily tax these goods (such as say Singapore) often go wild at duty free as the price there is very affordable compared to their prices at home.\n\nFor people from and/or traveling to countries with fairly low taxes on such goods (such as the US), the prices generally are not particularly competitive, as compared to just purchasing the goods locally, so many people from these countries aren't very familiar with duty free goods.",
"Duty Free stores are a chain of stores in airports started post WWII by an enterprising person. They realized that stuff purchased after customs at an airport isn’t subject to the local taxes, so they convinced places to let them sell items in stores there. Post WWII, there were particularly high taxes on a number of categories of items, like liquor. They also kind of have a monopoly because you typically see duty-free items being sold only at the branded Duty Free stores. So they can sell the items at s premium price, but they can often still be good value since there are no taxes."
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112rp9 | why do most penises hang to the left instead of the right? | I googled it and looked it up on here and no one takes it seriously. I honestly want to know! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/112rp9/why_do_most_penises_hang_to_the_left_instead_of/ | {
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"Don't you mean why all of the penises you have seen hang to the left?\n\nYour personal experience is prone to confounds (other explanations) because of sampling error. The population you are basing your assumptions upon do not necessarily reflect the true population. ",
"I'm not an expert on it or anything, but if there is such a trend, I have a theory.\n\nWhen right-dominant people break into a run, jump, or even sit, their right leg generally makes the most movement, and moving around more than necessary isn't too comfortable for those parts. If one's wearing tight clothes that tighten the penis to one leg or the other, it's by far more comfortable to keep it on the left. For instance, when I pole vaulted in high school, I made sure to tuck to the left because vaulting form required pulling the right leg up really quickly. Pulling willy up with the right leg was very uncomfortable.\n\nBasically, my guess would be it's trained to go left because it's more comfortable to keep it left.",
"Right hand operates the mouse, left hand operates the penis.",
"One possible explanation is that the left testicle hangs lower (except in rare cases like situs inversus). This may result in more room for the penis to bend to that side without resistance.",
"Because most guys are right handed and thus use their right hand.\n\nThe thumb is thus on the left with the other 4 fingers on the right side creating more pressure overall on the right side pressing to the left.\n\nOver time, you end with a hand to the left due to that. I'd predict that most lefties who use their left hand hang to the right.",
"Penises are magnetic. Most men keep change in their left pocket.",
"Guys like to masturbate. Most of them do it with their right hand. The comfortable angle to do this isn't with your junk perfectly parallel with your body, you're pulling it at an angle.\n\nBecause of this, the muscles/ whatnot around the base get worked/ stretched differently and over time cocks tend to swing away from the preferred hand. Mine goes to the right!"
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1gqskv | why does the military want a multi-caliber rifle for snipers | I don't see why anyone would want to change the caliber in the military. Don't you always want to train with your 'real' equipment?
I can't see why you would not always go with your biggest caliber.
*Edit* I am talking about the new US army PSR that shoots 308 300win 338. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gqskv/eli5_why_does_the_military_want_a_multicaliber/ | {
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"The largest weapon is not always the best, like the largest hammer or the largest shovel isn't always the one to use. A smaller round might yield a lighter load on the soldier, more ammo capacity, an easier rifle to fire without beating up your shoulder... Any of a variety of reasons would compel someone to use a different caliber.",
"The largest caliber isn't necessarily the best caliber to use when engaging targets. A common misconception is that the .50 caliber bullet is used a widely used anti-personnel round, but it's actually used more commonly as an anti-material round. It's used to penetrate armor on light vehicles, disable engine blocks, and destroy static armor. The bullet is massive and travels very fast, and would be overkill in most engagements, which are under 600 yards. Now, i'm not an expert, or claim to be in the military, but, as a shooter, there are other rounds capable for hitting things under 1000 yards that are cheaper, easier to carry, and don't need such a heavy gun to fire from. Carrying a large caliber rifle, such as the M107 or something like that would be pretty difficult for snipers to take in and out of the area of operation. Now, there will probably be some instances where a large caliber rifle like that will be necessary for them to carry, but for the majority of snipers, a rifle chambered in .338 or .308 would be appropriate to engage their targets with.",
"Let's say you're a US Army Ranger sniper trying to take out a bad guy in a hostage situation.\n\nThrough your scope, you can see that the hostage taker is standing alone in one room, and in the room behind him (on the other side of him from you) he has the hostages. The wall between the two rooms is made of drywall.\n\nOne problem here is that if you miss your target, you risk putting your bullet through the drywall and into a hostage. Another problem is that even if you do hit your target, large caliber ammunition will pass through his body and into the drywall and the people behind.\n\nIt's the same principle as to why we still have SMGs. Low-caliber ammunition is much better suited to situations where you don't know what will be behind your target. ",
"A multi-caliber rifle can be adapted to a variety of uses and distances depending on what is needed. Having one platform that can fire any number of rounds reduces training time, cost, and logistical concerns. ",
"Each caliber has a different use.",
"Lower caliber subsonic rounds = Perfect for stealth shots\n\nHigh caliber DU rounds = Wreck house on light armored personnel and vehicles.\n\nIf we have one multi-caliber platform that can be outfitted based on the mission then we have one less gun we need to buy.\n\nLook at it this way, in a video game you switch out you scope to a longer range one for certain maps. Why? Because it's better used in those maps.\n\nA 338 could preform better in flat areas where the soldier doesn't have to lug around 270 .556 rounds along with all of his .338 but swap out the barrel and he can easily carry the lighter .308 or 300 win.\n\nIt's modular to adapt to more situations. The same reason we were looking at SCAR platforms.\n\nSource: U.S. Army"
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1geba1 | why does wearing wet clothes (for extended periods of time) give you a rash? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1geba1/eli5_why_does_wearing_wet_clothes_for_extended/ | {
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"text": [
"Wet clothes increases friction due to it sticking to your body more. All that rubbing on your skin causes the rash. "
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||
1l2mxz | how do video games (or video game content) get leaked? | The recent leak and decryption of content from Grand Theft Auto V got me thinking (although my question doesn't refer to GTA V specifically, and in fact, I'm trying to avoid reading information about the leak because I know there are mischievous people out there who want to ruin the game for those waiting anxiously). In general, how does this happen? I know that sometimes early versions of games are given to publications for reviewing and advertisement purposes, but how do these end up in the hands of the public? Is it usually a case of someone in the publication being untrustworthy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l2mxz/eli5_how_do_video_games_or_video_game_content_get/ | {
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"text": [
"Yep to the last bit. Its somebody down the line that gives it to the press/somebody they know for a favour or a good old fashioned wad of green when it comes to bigger titles. "
]
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|
5zsxaa | why are foods associated with times of the day? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zsxaa/eli5why_are_foods_associated_with_times_of_the_day/ | {
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"Not scientific at all, just a possible observation.\n\nImagine it's 1910. You don't own a refrigerator. When you wake up in the morning, what seems fastest? \nGoing out to get eggs from the chicken coop, milking a cow, and eating some leftover bread (or even baking some fresh bread). \nSlaughtering a chicken, defeathering said chicken then roasting the chicken for several hours. \n\nIt's likely certain foods became morning foods just because of their ease of access in the morning. Since people didn't exactly have refrigerators, everything had to be eaten fresh. Wake up, get some eggs from the chickens for breakfast, pull a few potatoes out of the celler, grab the milk from the porch and that's your breakfast. Run down to the store and get some cheese, stop at the bakery for some bread, run to the butcher and grab a roast for dinner start cooking at one, five hours later serve dinner leave just a bit left over and make a quick sandwich to throw in a lunch pail for the next day."
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9qsbdz | why is the mega million lowest prize odds at 1/37 when the mega ball is only ranging from 1-25? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9qsbdz/eli5_why_is_the_mega_million_lowest_prize_odds_at/ | {
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"text": [
"Yes, you have to incorrectly guess all of the normal numbers to get the lowest prize. So it's (1/25) \\* (69/70)\\^5\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI think the normal numbers go up to 70? Not 100% sure on that."
]
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||
1sk27c | why a round-trip flight from madison, wi to washington dc with a stop in detroit is $180, while a round-trip flight from madison to detroit is $400. | In this case, I used flights from 1/24 to 1/26 on Delta. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sk27c/eli5_why_a_roundtrip_flight_from_madison_wi_to/ | {
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"No one wants to go to Detriot. It's all about supply and demand. Flights to and from detroit are empty and therefore the airline charges less in hopes that people will choose to take that flight. Flights to and from DC or Madison, are more in demand so the airlines charge more.\n\nEDIT: misread the question. Please ignore this response, I would deleted it, but rather will leave it out there with an extra \"detroit still sucks\" for good measure.",
"[Edit: fixed typos] Airline pricing has almost nothing to do with where the stop is; you price against the origin-destination pair, not the individual flights. For Madison-DC, the airline is competing against all other Madison-DC routes (direct, those that connect in Detroit, those that connect in Atlanta, etc.). DC is extremely well served, so there are many many Madison-DC competitors, so the price is low.\n\nThere is far less capacity going in to Detroit; the Madison-Detroit market is much less competitive, so the price is higher."
]
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3ezpq0 | how does insulation reduce energy costs? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ezpq0/eli5_how_does_insulation_reduce_energy_costs/ | {
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"You need less heating in the winter and less air conditioning in the summer; the insulation keeps heat from the heaters in and heat from outside out respectively. ",
"Same way your clothes keep you warm. Or a thermos keeps cold drinks cold and warm drinks warm. It blocks heat transfer. So you need less energy maintaining your desired heat level.",
"If you don't have insulation, most of the heat from your heater will just end up outside, and you'll have to turn up the heater even higher to keep yourself warm, wasting energy and money. Same goes for air conditioning, without insulation, the air inside and outside your house will mix and you'll have to turn up the air conditioning really high in order to stay cool, which wastes energy, and money. "
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3somyv | facebook tracking my data from years ago?! explanation in text. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3somyv/eli5_facebook_tracking_my_data_from_years_ago/ | {
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"Facebook has this feature where you can lookup people using their email addresses. You can also give Facebook access to your address books and it will do the lookup for you. \n\nI have no way of confirming this but I'm guessing if someone looks an email or a name up, Facebook maintains a record of it and maybe if and when a person with that email or name joins, that guy might be suggested as a friend.\n\nIt also knows what stuff you browse, what stuff the other guys likes and their algorithm might be smart enough to put two and two together.",
"I had the same issue when I first joined a few years ago. One of my friends from Wow popped up(with 9 mutual friends etc). He lives across the globe,we literally had no connection outside WoW\n\nI still don't know how they did it,but it makes me extremely paranoid about putting any info on fb."
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c7f419 | how do heat waves effect sound waves? | I had a bonfire last night and was playing music on my Bluetooth speaker. I sat directly across from it and noticed my speaker was acting up (or so I thought) because it sounded like every song was panning from left to right randomly. My friend told me it was due to the heat waves from the fire. If this is true, what causes it to happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c7f419/eli5_how_do_heat_waves_effect_sound_waves/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Temperature changes the density of air. Cold air is denser than hot air. (Ever notice how great you car starts on a winter day, particularly with a carbureted vehicle?) \n\nThe air around and above the combustion is several hundred degrees hotter than the air further away from it, and the air will be roiling and very turbulent as well. This will distort the sound."
]
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zey9u | the origin of the term's "devil's food cake" and "angel's food cake" | I had always attributed the name Devil's Food cake to it being so good it's sinful and the name Angel's Food cake to it being light and fluffy, but yesterday a friend of mine (an African American, majoring in Racial Studies) told me that the term Devil's Food cake was originally derogatory towards black people because the cake was chocolate (black) while Angel's Food cake was white and therefore angelic. This theory sounded pretty ridiculous to me but I truthfully have no idea where the terms originated from. Hoping one of you could clarify. Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zey9u/eli5_the_origin_of_the_terms_devils_food_cake_and/ | {
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"_URL_1_ \n\n_URL_0_\n\nYou're right, your friend is wrong. The Angel's food cake is named for its light, fluffy qualities and the Devil's food cake is named after the \"sinfulness\" of the taste. \n\nIronically, Angel's food cake is apparently an African-American post-funeral meal (I cannot confirm however, I just got it from Wikipedia). Implying that the names of the cakes are racist is simply ridiculous. \n\nEDIT: Added source for Devil's food cake's name ",
"Yes, your friend is wrong unfortunately. The two terms simply apply to the texture and density of the foods. Like 2ndbestusernameever said \"Devil\" or Diabla is a cooking term denoting a rich or highly seasoned dish. To say that a devils food cake was named in a derogatory manner is ridiculous because at the time the cake came around, chocolate (cocao) was still a very expensive commodity, and only used by the affluent households. "
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel%27s_food_cake"
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4dwfyc | the issues and impact of the wisconsin primaries. why does requiring a photo id help keep republicans in power? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dwfyc/eli5_the_issues_and_impact_of_the_wisconsin/ | {
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" There is a clear racial disparity in terms of who is most impacted by the law. In 2012, African-American voters in Wisconsin were 1.7 times as likely as white voters to lack a driver’s license or state photo ID, and Latino voters were 2.6 times as likely as white voters to lack such ID. More than 60 percent of people who’ve requested a photo ID for voting from the DMV have been black or Hispanic, according to legal filings.\n\nThe law also targets students. Student IDs from most public and private universities and colleges are not accepted because they don’t contain signatures or a two-year expiration date (compared to a ten-year expiration for driver’s licenses). “The standard student ID at only three of the University of Wisconsin’s 13 four-year schools and at seven of the state’s 23 private colleges can be used as a voter photo ID,” according to Common Cause Wisconsin."
]
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||
2yt07u | 9/11 and how it all came to be. | The internet sucks so much on this topic. Especially digging around all the conspiracy stuff.
- Planes melting steal or having the force to collapse the towers? How did it fall?
- 3rd and 4th planes?
- Pentagon and building 7?
- Things not solved?
- All parties involved? Was it preventable or known?
- Any truth to the (massive) conspiracy theories out there?
- Clear up any popular myths from the facts. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yt07u/eli5_911_and_how_it_all_came_to_be/ | {
"a_id": [
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" > Planes melting steal or having the force to collapse the towers? How did it fall?\n\n* steal doesn't have to melt to lose it's structural integrity. It only has to get hot enough to soften a little bit. Once it gives, inertia takes over. \n\n > Any truth to the (massive) conspiracy theories out there?\n\n* no \n"
]
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|
8qfr98 | how easy is it for an open wound to get infected | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8qfr98/eli5_how_easy_is_it_for_an_open_wound_to_get/ | {
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"text": [
"Every wound you've ever had has most assuredly been infected. The question is with what.\n\nThe common bacterias and viruses your body has T-Cells for. So the infection is fought and won quickly.\n\nThere is always a small chance you could catch legionaries or flesh eating because that shit just lives in the soil. Movies play to this risk for obvious reasons.",
"Anytime you open up skin, there is a risk of infection. The severity of the infection all depends on how clean its surroundings are. Most of us have Stap species on us. The danger is in bacteria getting into blood stream, this can happen VERY easily leading to toxic shock. The likelihood of infection is high however severity is dependent on multiple factors. A deep laceration in the middle of the woods with no first aid can certainly lead to toxic shock. \n\nMultiple factors at play here."
]
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7lt4kh | how an electric motor generates so much torque from a complete stop. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7lt4kh/eli5_how_an_electric_motor_generates_so_much/ | {
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"The windings of an electric motor apply the most torque at 0 revolutions. The full force of the magnetic field is applied until the armature moves. Then torque drops a little as the motion changes the path the current takes.\n\nSince an electric motor makes a twisting force, that's much more efficient than a piston engine which makes a sliding force and translates it to rotation through an eccentric crankshaft."
]
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351vt6 | why do i forget whether or not i locked the door every morning? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/351vt6/eli5_why_do_i_forget_whether_or_not_i_locked_the/ | {
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"It's not definitely understood, but I believe this is the best reason. \n \nWhen you make a memory, you usually assign a cue to it. This cue is either context-dependent (where you are, what is around you) or state-dependent (how you feel). This explains why you experience that feeling of leaving a room to go get something, forgetting what you were suppose to get when you leave, and remembering when you go back in the room. \n \nWhen you lock the door (or don't), you try and assign a cue. You don't assign a state-dependent one because locking a door doesn't make you feel any different to not locking it. You try and assign a context-dependent cue, but the only you could relate is the locked or unlocked door. Since you are trying to remember whether it is locked, and you are also trying to use that as your cue, you create a paradoxical loop - going over the same thoughts forever because both thoughts make you think of the other thought.",
"Probably because it's such a routine that your brain is on autopilot when you do it, so you don't create a specific memory for it every day. "
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3323yv | why companies actively fight to not sell their products in other countries. | Why do record labels, movie studios and such work so hard to make sure nobody in certain countries can buy their content legally? Why do studies care if Netflix is accessed in Japan or why does HBO block people from Australia. Why do Japanese manga producers block Japanese raw manga apps from USA app store. What is the reason to prevent people from paying them for legal content resulting in greater piracy? Whats the benefit to them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3323yv/eli5why_companies_actively_fight_to_not_sell/ | {
"a_id": [
"cqgsht4"
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"text": [
"They feel they will make more money by selling distribution rights to their materials to companies in other countries, instead of doing it themselves. If I am a record label in Japan, and I want American money, I will sell the rights to an album to an American distributor, as they will know the American market and how best to get money from it. They pay me for the exclusive rights, which means I have to make an effort to keep Americans from buying it from me directly.\n\nThe problem becomes A) when the local distributor either is so backlogged they can't release the product in a timely fashion or B) when one hasn't been found yet, but you need to keep it region exclusive in case you get one in the future.\n\nIt's not ideal, but that's their mindset. Keeping it local so that you can sell international distribution rights and make more money."
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2yuaj7 | why do leaders of al qaeda and islamic state accept aid and weapons from the us? | Today i discovered that the leader of Islamic State in Libya is [Abdul Hakim Belhadj](_URL_0_), former head of Al Qaeda, was backed by the US to remove Gaddafi. But if they hate the West, why do they accept their money? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yuaj7/eli5_why_do_leaders_of_al_qaeda_and_islamic_state/ | {
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"Belhadj was part of a non-Islamist anti-Gaddafi coalition when we helped him. He has essentially defected. LIFG was never an al Qaeda affiliate, although some of its fighters have switched over at various points. LIFG never waged international jihad -- it was always a Libyan movement.\n\nEDIT: Belhadj did an interview on TV a month ago and didn't sound like a man about to join ISIS. _URL_0_\n\nI think this story is a hoax.\n\nSecond EDIT: \n > Leaders of Libyan political parties partaking in the first round of dialogue held in Algiers highlighted the importance of this meeting which they dubbed prelude to a cease-fire and the formation of a government of national unity leading to national reconciliation.\n\n > In a statement to the press after the first round of inter-Libyan dialogue, chairman of the El Watan party Abdelhakim Belhadj said that \"the Algiers meeting is a gain in the Libyan dialogue process.\"\n\n > \"We can reach a political agreement, stability and security in the context of dialogue and reconciliation,\" he argued.\n\n > Abdelhakim Belhadj called on all parties involved in the dialogue \"to consider reconciliation a top priority and ignore personal interests to reach an agreement that would guarantee the reconstruction of Libya.\"\n\nThat's from a story from the last 24 hours! Definitely a hoax, and shame on Fox for starting a dangerous rumor like that.",
"I hate lots of people. If any of them want to give me money, I would accept. My love of money is not influenced by my hatred of others. Hate the person, love the cash, that's what I always say!"
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/3/frank-gaffney-jr-us-backed-rebel-reportedly-leads-/"
] | [
[
"http://www.euronews.com/2015/02/03/libya-s-abdulhakim-belhadj-we-are-working-to-find-a-solution-to-end-this-crisis/"
],
[]
] |
|
75ah4w | why is it that during the day, deer and similar animals in the same family avoid roads but at night they gather on the roadside by the dozens? why don’t they just stay where they are during the day? | I searched and found a couple posts about why animals only cross the road when you are driving by, but all the answers were “they are always crossing, this is just the only time you see it.” However, this doesn’t explain the obvious difference in the number of animals that gather by the roadside at night as compared to the day even when the roads are just as populated. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/75ah4w/eli5_why_is_it_that_during_the_day_deer_and/ | {
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" > However, this doesn’t explain the obvious difference in the number of animals that gather by the roadside at night as compared to the day even when the roads are just as populated.\n\nThe distance at which you can see is much shorter at night compared to daytime. This means animals are more willing to come out into the open to get to relatively untouched grazing area as predators will presumably have a harder time spotting them.",
"Same reason you don't really see many Humans milling about at night, but during the day they're friggin everywhere. \n\nHumans are diurnal. We're active at day, and pretty much sleep at night. \n\nDeer are nocturnal or crepuscular. That means they are active at night, or during dusk/dawn. That's why you see more of them during that time. During the day, they're hiding somewhere and sleeping. ",
"They aren't on the move during the day generally. Deer for example are crepuscular. Meaning they typically (always exceptions) bed down during the day and middle of the night. They are up and moving at sun up and sun down. Thus why you see them crossing the roads so much at those times.\n",
"Deer have to eat.. and they like to eat grass. Where is it easy to find grass? Beside the roads! In the day they hide in the trees so predators cannot see them.. but there isn't much to eat in the trees and they need to eat a lot more in the fall to get ready for winter. The roadsides are a great place to eat and get grass... also in the fall deer tend to form small herds so you are more likely to see them than if there was just one deer there. At night they feel safer in the roadside ditches than they would in the day. The do think of vehicles as sort of strange predators normally so would avoid them in the day.\n\n",
"To add to the other answers, road surfaces collect and retain heat more effectively than almost any type of soil. Some species like to congregate near roads at night to keep warm when the temperature drops.",
"I've heard that during the night, the woods get cold faster than the roads, so they go for warmth."
]
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3bnt1w | why do the highest ranked players of 1 on 1 sports (badminton, tennis, judo, etc.) still have coaches, even though they are the best in their field? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bnt1w/eli5_why_do_the_highest_ranked_players_of_1_on_1/ | {
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"No matter how good you are as a player, you still need someone who can watch you train and play, to catch your mistakes, correct your bad habits, and keep you focused on a training schedule. This person doesn't necessarily have to be a better player than you. I mean, I can watch professional baseball and see the reason why a player committed an error. It doesn't mean that I would have done better, I just probably saw something that they couldn't.\n\nAlso, the coach generally spends a lot of time learning about the competition - their strategies, their weaknesses, etc. They can use this knowledge to help their player get an edge, without the player losing hours of training time to do that research."
]
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||
bypd48 | why is having reduced hearing and blockage in one of the ears a common cold symptom? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bypd48/eli5_why_is_having_reduced_hearing_and_blockage/ | {
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"Our ears and sinuses are connected inside the head. When you get an infection such as a cold virus, those passageways can become inflamed and fluid can buildup causing congestion."
]
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||
10g8do | why am i starting to go bald on the top of my head while growing a healthy mane on my balls? | I understand that your body produces a chemical (DHT?) which starts to kill follicles/hair growth, but if it kills off the hair on the top of my head, why wouldn't it also do the same to my pubic regions? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10g8do/why_am_i_starting_to_go_bald_on_the_top_of_my/ | {
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"If you're 5, and going bald with ball hair, DOCTOR, NOW.",
"The simple answer is testosterone .\nTestosterone makes the hair on your head go on a permanent vacation to other areas of your body . Specifically , it's androgenic testosterone that does this .\nAs you age , your body goes through stages of testosterone production .\nYounger people tend to have more anabolic testosterone (which works to help build muscles) in relation to the androgenic version (which makes you smell bad and grow hair in the wrong places)\nBy the time you're 90 , you've basically got very little testosterone production at all anymore . \n\nSo , basically , this is one of the reasons women don't tend to be really hairy nor do they tend to go bald (although their hair does thin out) You , on the other hand , are going to continue to get hairier until your balls call it a day , pack it in , and leave you with next to no hair .",
"More or less the same reason as all the answers to this question from earlier today: \n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)",
"The one's on your head are T sensitive. ",
"Wait, you're not done, back, ass and ear hair are next.\n\nAin't life grand!"
]
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[],
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/10fpsf/why_doesnt_your_beard_go_bald/"
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k8wkq | what will happen in 50 years if america doesn't invest in renewable forms of energy (solar, wind, etc.) | How will our (or other similar countries') economy be affected if we never switch over to solar, wind, whatever power and continue focusing on oil and such terminal resources? Will we be able to rebound if/when it runs out? Do we have a backup plan? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k8wkq/eli5_what_will_happen_in_50_years_if_america/ | {
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"Have you seen wall-e?",
"What generally happens is thing don't just run out in one go. They become increasingly more expensive as there is less of it. This is called supply and demand. So for example if we continue to focus on oil, then eventually we'll start to run out and oil prices will go up (Which is already happening.) As oil prices go up things that need oil will go up in price as well. So for example cause you need trucks to drive food the grocery store the price of food will go up. You also need oil to make fertilized and plastic to hold food so food prices will go up even more. \n\nIf we don't have other solutions then everything that requires oil (Which is practically everything) will go up in price. Eventually people won't have enough money to purchase food and they'll be a problem.\n\nOn the other hand the reason why solar and wind power aren't being used everywhere is that Oil is cheaper. There are many reason that Oil is cheaper and I won't go into them but as Oil become rarer then it's price will go up. At this point other means of making power will seem like a better idea. They'll still be expensive but less expensive then Oil. Eventually though, through technology alternative energy solution may be cheaper then Oil.\n\nWhat the big debate is now is how much money we should invest in making Solar, Wind and other Alternative energies cheaper and how much we should spend on keeping Oil cheaper. The more we spend on keeping oil cheap the cheaper it make stuff now. The more we spend to make Solar, Wind and other Alternative energies cheaper the cheaper things will be in the future. Countries that spend money on Alternative energy now will probably have a better economy in the future. BUT if one country spend alot of money to invent new Alternative energy solution then it's rival could steal those technologies or buy them for it. This would save the rival country alot of money. ",
"Let us reason like 5 year olds.\n\nIf cars stop, we stop going to school. Yay! Mommy and daddy stay home all day! Yay! But we gotta play with the old toys, because the xbox360 won't turn on. :( There's no Hannah Montana because the t.v. won't turn on. The fridge is hot and getting empty, and mom says there are no more supermarkets anymore. That sucks.\n\nConclusion, if we don't use another power source, it will suck.",
"Have you seen wall-e?",
"What generally happens is thing don't just run out in one go. They become increasingly more expensive as there is less of it. This is called supply and demand. So for example if we continue to focus on oil, then eventually we'll start to run out and oil prices will go up (Which is already happening.) As oil prices go up things that need oil will go up in price as well. So for example cause you need trucks to drive food the grocery store the price of food will go up. You also need oil to make fertilized and plastic to hold food so food prices will go up even more. \n\nIf we don't have other solutions then everything that requires oil (Which is practically everything) will go up in price. Eventually people won't have enough money to purchase food and they'll be a problem.\n\nOn the other hand the reason why solar and wind power aren't being used everywhere is that Oil is cheaper. There are many reason that Oil is cheaper and I won't go into them but as Oil become rarer then it's price will go up. At this point other means of making power will seem like a better idea. They'll still be expensive but less expensive then Oil. Eventually though, through technology alternative energy solution may be cheaper then Oil.\n\nWhat the big debate is now is how much money we should invest in making Solar, Wind and other Alternative energies cheaper and how much we should spend on keeping Oil cheaper. The more we spend on keeping oil cheap the cheaper it make stuff now. The more we spend to make Solar, Wind and other Alternative energies cheaper the cheaper things will be in the future. Countries that spend money on Alternative energy now will probably have a better economy in the future. BUT if one country spend alot of money to invent new Alternative energy solution then it's rival could steal those technologies or buy them for it. This would save the rival country alot of money. ",
"Let us reason like 5 year olds.\n\nIf cars stop, we stop going to school. Yay! Mommy and daddy stay home all day! Yay! But we gotta play with the old toys, because the xbox360 won't turn on. :( There's no Hannah Montana because the t.v. won't turn on. The fridge is hot and getting empty, and mom says there are no more supermarkets anymore. That sucks.\n\nConclusion, if we don't use another power source, it will suck."
]
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2t9hhg | why "the rise of spotify" is considered a bad thing for the music industry? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2t9hhg/eli5_why_the_rise_of_spotify_is_considered_a_bad/ | {
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"The most important thing to remember is that Spotify is not the radio. People defending it often consider it to be \"just like the radio,\" but it is not at all. The radio very quickly became a form of promotion for artists and labels because they paid to get played on radio stations that were targeted at their own target demographic. Then, at the end of the day, the listeners didn't own the song, or get to hear it again until it came back on, which could pretty much be whenever, you never knew. If you liked the song, you usually went and bought the whole ALBUM, because no one wants to sit at a record player and keep swapping vinyls after every song nor did they want to just leave the radio on all day, hoping to hear it again.\n\nSpotify is a free, on-demand, impersonal service that provides the artists/labels with no information on, or advertising to, listeners. It is literally just free music. When you go on Spotify, only a very small few who paid to be mentioned in one of those pointless commercials make you hear any of their music and it's a whole 10 seconds. So you go and listen immediately for what you already know and love, without having to pay a single penny for it. Is it a wonderful experience for the listener? Absolutely. Is it a viable way to do business as an artist or label? Absolutely not. No one will discover your band on Spotify, they will go there to get your music FOR FREE after they already have discovered you. So you work hard and pay money for people to discover you, so that they can go listen to your music for free on Spotify. That's just not cost effective.",
"Money...but the game changed long ago as most people will tell you. Artists rely more on touring for financial gains.\n\nDepending on your record deal, artists would make a dollar off every cd sold. This fluctuates depending on the scale of the artist but generally...let's say a dollar a cd. \n\nThen came digital downloads..\n\niTunes - a $9.99 album will net the artist around 94 cents. The record company takes $5.35 and Apple keeps the remaining $3.70\n\n\nAnd Spotify’s stated payout range – $0.006 to $0.0084 per stream\n\n...it's great for the consumer. But it's easy to see why artists like Taylor Swift and the like are taking their music off of the service. The sums are pitiful...\n\nNow you could argue that program's like spotify give the consumer an opportunity to discover new artists and the like, or that it is bad for the industry...either side of the argument has it's valid points. \n\ni.\n"
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6ivc3a | how did my gatorade water itself down? | I came to work yesterday morning with a frozen Gatorade. I drank about half of it in the afternoon, as the rest of it remained frozen solid. Then today I began drinking what was left, but it tastes relatively watered-down. How does this happen to the Gatorade when nothing was added or removed from the drink? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ivc3a/eli5_how_did_my_gatorade_water_itself_down/ | {
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"The sugar and salt thaws at a different temperature then water. What you drank was the majority of the sugar and salt while the water stayed frozen. ",
"The flavors melted at a faster rate than the water, you drank what had melted, what remained was more water to flavor than earlier.",
"Frozn liquids often separate into ingredients, in this case water and most everything else (the gatorade). As they thaw, they may become liquid again at different rates. Yesterday, you drank what had melted which was a higher ratio of gatorade to water than normal. Today you have more water than the 'standard' gatorade mix.",
"Sugar depresses the freezing point of a liquid. When you freeze something like that, the frozen bits tend to be only water, no sugar. Thus as it freezes the liquid bit gets sweeter and sweeter. If you remove this liquid, you are removing a disproportionate amount of sugar. When the ice melts, it will add all that water back, and the sugar ratio will be low.\n\nThe process is known as [fractional freezing](_URL_0_), and it's how we make things like apple jack, ice wine and ice beer (though technically, real ice beer is illegal in the US so things sold as ice beer are actually watered down ice beer).",
"As the water froze it left behind a concentrated solution of salt/sugar water. The concentrate may not have fully frozen at the temperature of a typical residential freezer.\n\nSo you initially drank the concentrate first leaving behind a giant ice cube of frozen water. So the final bit was mostly water.",
"What you describe sounds similar to freeze distilling. To simplify lets say your Gatorade consists of water and sugar. The sugar lowers the freezing temperature of water. That does not matter that much as the sugar will have distributed itself evenly throughout the water. Except that in some local random locations there will be a few less sugar molecules then the rest of the drink for a few short moments. Well if the drink were just on the boarder of being frozen then a few less sugar molecules might make the difference and allows the water to freeze. When water freezes it releases energy and so the drink might stay on the edge of being frozen for quite some time. But what you have managed now is that the ice is the part that had the fewer sugar molecules in it and the liquid had more sugar in it. So you have essentially managed to separate some of the sugar from the water."
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egzgn6 | how does memory foam work exactly? | Is it a relatively new technology? Does it cause cancer? Does it last longer than a traditional spring mattress? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/egzgn6/eli5_how_does_memory_foam_work_exactly/ | {
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"Memory foams are viscoelastic polyurethane foams, which have low resilience. Resilience is the technical term for how fast the foam springs back when compressed. The foam industry uses a standard ball bounce test, where they drop a steel ball form a certain height and literally see how high it bounces.\n\nStandard polyurethane comfort foams have pretty high resilience, with ball rebounds in the 40%-45% range. Memory foams measure in the 10%-15% range. They tend to feel \"dead\" compared to standard foam. Note that this isn't how hard the foam feels, how supportive it is, or how dense it is - those are each different properties that can be measured and controlled in the polyurethane formulation. \n\nNow, here's the good part. Resilience is usually a function of temperature. A warm foam is much springier than a cold foam, and that property can be manipulated by how much of what kinds of polymers go into the foam formulation. \n\nHeat-activated viscoelastic foams are tuned to become substantially more resilient between room temperature and body temperature. When you warm up part of the memory foam, it conforms to your shape. When you get up, they hold their shape!\n\nThat can be a down side in a mattress, where rolling over puts you onto cold hard foam until your body heat can activate it again to conform to your new position.\n\nNote that most modern foam mattresses today have only a layer of memory foam among other layers of different kinds of foams. For example, the top few inches might be special high-resilience foam, with another couple inches of memory foam, and the bottom half being standard supportive foam. \n\nFor history, it was invited in the 60s by NASA for cushioning aircraft cockpit seats. In the 80s they released the technology to the public. In the 90s Tempur-Pedic brought it to market. Since then, costs have come down substantially and memory foam had shown up in all kinds of applications besides beds, cushions, and pillows. \n\nFoams are very safe by the time they get to the consumer. The actual process of making a polyurethane foam involves highly reactivate isocyanates, which can be a severe respiratory irritant. But, they react very quickly during the foaming (on the order of minutes), and any excess isocyanate is consumed when it reacts with humidity in the air. Consumer goods like mattresses need to pass testing like CertiPUR to prove that there are extremely low levels of organic compounds evaporating out of the foam.\n\nGenerally, a foam mattress lasts just as long as a spring mattress, in the range of 8-12 years."
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a860vr | why different tv colours? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a860vr/eli5_why_different_tv_colours/ | {
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"Different contrast and brightness, they all vary from different companies. Some have a more \"blue'er\" resolution than other tv's.",
"Well, some stores might change the tint and contrast settings on lower-end televisions to make the 80\" $50000 16K TV look that much more impressive.\n\nBecause when it comes to Television watching, all of these TVs are going to be good enough.\n\nThe ones under 40\" (give or take) don't have 4k, but you're never going to notice. People will easily talk themselves into buying a slightly cheaper TV instead of the mondo-big-screen.\n\nBut if the cheap TVs have *ugly* video, you'll consider the more expensive one."
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rdl9i | when i pee, why does the liquid height stay the same? | Shouldn't the water inside the bowl rise with urine in the mix? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rdl9i/eli5_when_i_pee_why_does_the_liquid_height_stay/ | {
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"[This diagram may help you understand why.](_URL_0_)"
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1q4p0l | the word "bayesian" and why it's thrown around in discussions like a trump card | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q4p0l/eli5_the_word_bayesian_and_why_its_thrown_around/ | {
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"[The simple explanation](_URL_1_).\n\n[The Complicated Explanation](_URL_0_)."
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"http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability"
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blknx4 | why coriolis force does not affect humans ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/blknx4/eli5_why_coriolis_force_does_not_affect_humans/ | {
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"It does but it's effect is insignificant, given the scale.\n\nSuppose you jump in the air at the Equator. You are no longer being accelerated on a circular path but are free to travel on a tangential path. Your own inertia has you still traveling at effectively the same rate as the ground you just left. It's not like jumping up stops all your motion and the world spins by underneath you at the equitorial speed of over 1000 mph. You continue also traveling at that speed for the second or so that you are in the air.\n\nAt some tiny interval, yes, the earth moved slightly differently than you did. If it weren't for gravity bringing you back down, you'd continue moving away from the earth, being carried along by the atmosphere as it continued past you but eventually you'd leave the atmosphere and THEN you'd be able to see your jumping off point move away from under your feet as that point rotates away from you. \n\nBut you wouldn't be going straight up, you would be going in the tangential path that the last bit of atmosphere put you on, at that same speed of 1000 mph, due east, like a bullet released from a sling. In 12 hours, your jumping off point will be on the opposite side of the planet moving away from you at a relative 2000 mph."
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4vpjbh | why are electrons "locked in" to certain energy levels? | I understand that the [Bohr-Rutherford](_URL_0_) model isn't actually how the atom looks, rather, electrons exist in ([cool shaped](_URL_1_)) shell orbitals, but what makes them stay within their specific [energy level](_URL_2_), like n=1, n=2...etc.
I've heard that this is related to "quanta" but what does that mean?
---
**Edit:** Thanks everyone for all the great answers! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vpjbh/eli5_why_are_electrons_locked_in_to_certain/ | {
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"It's hard to explain without getting into the math. But when you solve for the state of an electron bound in an atom with a definite energy, you find that only certain energies are possible. As for the different shapes, you also find that the electron states can be characterized not only by energy, but by angular momentum as well.\n\nUltimately the quantization of the energy levels is due to the boundary conditions you apply to the state of the particle.",
"Physicist here! In quantum mechanics, particles are described by waves, which determine the likelihood that the particle is located at a given point. They behave as particles because these waves are usually well localized, in that most of the wave is contained around a small point in space, which we see as the location of the particle. \n\nThese waves obey a set of equations called the Schrodinger equations, which are a type of \"wave equation\". Wave equations just describe how any type of wave propagates; there are wave equations that describe how water waves move, or how slinkies move, or how electron orbitals take the shape they form. \n\nA key property of waves is that when they encounter a hard surface, they reflect. If you take a slinky and fix one end of it to a wall, then you wiggle the other end once, you'll see a wave that travels down the spring until it reaches the fixed end, where it will reverse both its direction of travel (left or right) and the direction the wave is pointing (up or down).\n\nAnother key property of waves is that they \"superpose\", meaning that if you take one wave and add another wave on top of it, the new wave is the sum of the old ones. If you take two big waves pointing up and superpose them, you get a bigger wave, but if they point in opposite directions, they cancel out. In our slinky analogy, if you wiggle the spring at the right frequency, you can create [standing waves](_URL_1_), which happen when the waves going one direction superpose on top of the reflected waves from the other direction, creating a wave that appears to wiggle in place, as shown in [this short animation](_URL_0_)\n\nOkay, let's get back to electrons. In the Schrodinger equation, the property that \"fixes\" electron waves (called wavefunctions) is potential energy. In the case of electrons, this potential energy is mostly electrical potential energy - that is, the energy required to push or pull the electron away from a negative or positive charge. If you have an electron wave moving to the right, and it encounters a region with very high potential, it will reflect to the left and switch its orientation, just like the slinky wave reflects off the wall. \n\nThe opposite charge of the nucleus of an atom creates a negative potential, so the potential away from the nucleus is much higher than near the nucleus. You can think of this like having \"walls\" around the nucleus, just like the kind we described. So if you have an electron wave that is near the nucleus, it is constantly reflecting off these walls and creating standing waves with itself. In our slinky analogy, if you have a slinky that is pinned at both ends to walls, then you can only create a standing wave with an integer number (1,2,3,...) of peaks, like in the animation above.\n\nThe reason that electrons can only have a discrete set of energies is because the energy of a particle is determined by the wavelength of the electron wave. Smaller wavelengths mean higher frequencies and higher energies, just like how it takes more energy to wiggle a slinky into a standing wave with two peaks than it does to wiggle it into a standing wave with only one peak. Just like how the walls pinning a slinky only allow for an integer number of peaks, the \"potential walls\" around the nucleus of an atom only allow for a discrete set of energies.",
"Electrons are waves. The fixed energies correspond to states where standing waves and the harmonies can exist."
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2zcnal | why doesn't the royal family of england have a last name? or if so, how come they don't use it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zcnal/eli5_why_doesnt_the_royal_family_of_england_have/ | {
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"Names are a funny thing in royalty.\n\nFor example, Queen Elizabeth II was born: Elizabeth Alexandra Mary. The name of the *house* is Windsor, which is kind of like a dynasty.\n\nBut take a look at her father, King George VI. He was born Albert Frederick Arthur George, also of the House of Windsor. Growing up, he was Albert. But once he took the crown, he had to chose a \"regnal name\" which is the name we know and think of when we talk about them, and he chose George VI.\n\nSo, personally, yes, they have last names. But in their official capacity as a ruler, it is their Regnal name plus the house name, and a variety of titles.\n\nSo the woman Elizabeth Alexandra Mary is also Elizabeth the Second of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ierland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.",
"(Not ELI5)\n\nBy law since 1917 their last name is *Windsor*. \n\nDynastically, they belong to the House of *Saxe-Coburg-Gotha*, as the current ruling family is descended of two Saxon (German) houses, Saxe-Coburg and Saxe-Gotha, which are from the so-called Ernestine branch of the House of *Wettin*, one of the oldest surviving noble families of Europe.\n\nOther Saxe-Coburg-Gothas are the monarchy of Belgium (now going by *De Belgique*/*Van België*) and Simeon II, deposed King (and former PM) of Bulgaria.",
" > Since 1917, when King George V changed the name of the royal house from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, members of the Royal Family belong, either by birth or marriage, to the House of Windsor. Senior titled members of the royal family do not usually use a surname, although since 1960 Mountbatten-Windsor (incorporating Prince Philip's adopted surname of Mountbatten) has been prescribed as a surname for Queen Elizabeth II's direct descendants who do not have royal styles and titles, and has also sometimes been used when required for those who do have such titles.\n\n[source](_URL_0_)"
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1wguei | for concert, sports and any other events, the tickets get sold out almost immediately, then gigantic swaths of these tickets show up on broker websites for scalpers. how are brokers able to buy so many tickets using the same websites that i find not even functional to buy one. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wguei/eli5_for_concert_sports_and_any_other_events_the/ | {
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"The reason that websites like Ticketmaster are not functional is because scalpers use ticket-bots which hammer the website the second the tickets become available. This basically causes a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack for everyone else while the bots purchase all the tickets to resell at usurious prices. CA recently banned these bots, but the industry (who primarily use tax-payer funded venues) hasn't really done a lot to fight this practice. Paperless tickets would resolve a lot of this.\n\nHowever a little known fact is that promoters hoard most ,if not all, of the prime seats for artists, radio stations and credit-card companies and those tickets never even become available for direct sale to plebians, but they often show up for resale.\n\n",
"Many ticket brokers have access to pre-sales. If the broker has season tickets to a venue then they get access to buy tickets for an event being held in that venue before the general public. They also sign up for pre-sales for certain bands, shows, etc. Furthermore, these tickets are generally the best tickets in the venue. Many of these people buy tickets to events or places they've never heard of. I know someone who does this as his job and he purchased 40 front row tickets to the play, 50 Shades of Grey in Des Moines Iowa because he heard it was a \"HOT\" ticket. ",
"I work full time 5 days a week as a ticket broker. 100% of our income is from ticket reselling, there are two of us in the operation. The whole idea that all these \" scalpers\" use bots is ridiculous. IPv4 is in such short supply and ticketmaster blocks Ips within minutes. It is very hard to keep a bot fed with IP. Also the captcha sysem is constantly changing so the OCR is very expensive to maintain. There are some tips and tricks for being faster, having a solid connection and a good PC will go a long way. But the biggest key is just knowing what boxes your going to select on the onsale page and being fast. like i said there are some other tips and tricks we use but i promise you they arent that special or super tech savy like some movie hacker. To the guy who said brokers DDOS attack ticketmaster, your an idiot. Its the fact that they do entire timezones onsales at the same time. you literally have the entire eastern seaboard hitting there TERRIBLE servers everyday at 10am, then centeral at 11am, so on and so forth. I promise you there are FAR more fans hitting the servers than scalpers and bots.\n\nLet me leave you all with one final thought. Say beyonce plays a show in NYC where 10 million people live. The venue holds maybe 65,000 in concert setup. The promoter keeps all the good tickets, the venue keeps a handful, and a large chunk goes to various sponsors. THEN there is a fanclub presale, and american express presale, a citi card presale, a venue presale and a radio presale. THEN finally the public onsale. by this point ALL the good seats are gone you MIGHT get decent lowers if your super fast but for the most part its simple odds. hundereds of thousands of people are trying to get tickets. what makes you think you should be able to just go hit search and get 1 of the maybe 30,000 tickets left? dont go crying that the scalpers took all the tickets, go complain that shes only playing 1 night in NYC. Final fun facts, one time jay-Z played 8 shows in a row in NYC and sold out every single one. that right there explains how much demand there is in a big city and that demand is why your slow ass doesnt get tickets on the public onsale. not \"scalpers\" because of that 60,000 seats per show MAYBE 5k will show up on the resale market. you NEVER see 20k seats on stubhub to any show EVER. why is that you ask? because liek i said brokers dont have any way to really get seats better than you do, or else you would see WAY more tickets on the secondary market per show than you do.",
"Many ticket brokers have an internal source for mass amounts of tickets. As teams and venues accept secondary markets as legitimate, they can use tickets for high-end events as leverage with the brokers. Brokers can be forced to buy a huge amount of tickets for a lower end event for the guaranteed privilege of buying a lower amount of tickets for the high end event.\n\nSource: I sold tickets to sporting events for a few years.",
"Former ticket broker here. We never used bots or anything like that we had everyone in the office on the computer waiting for the moment tickets dropped. We also gave the homeless a new pair of shoes and some money to stand in line at the box office to get us tickets. Our record was 25 homeless in one line each buying 10 tickets.",
"Presales. Any ticket broker is going to have access to the presale for events. Most venues will not send tickets even etickets to the customer until after the event is available to the public. So the day of sale you see all the presale tickets on other websites. ",
"Premium account api and a buy order."
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k16j4 | . ntfs and fat. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k16j4/eli5_ntfs_and_fat/ | {
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"NTFS uses a giant table, called MFT, that is much more complex than FAT.\nThe table has a lot of records, and every record contains these information about a file: the name, the size and the data stream (you can think of it as a reader: you ask the file, the data stream reads you the content).\n\nEven a directory is a file: more precisely a specific file which contains all the name of the files contained in itself, arranged in a special structure (a tree) that makes the search faster. (And this is why people says NTFS is based on inode, which is not true).",
"NTFS uses a giant table, called MFT, that is much more complex than FAT.\nThe table has a lot of records, and every record contains these information about a file: the name, the size and the data stream (you can think of it as a reader: you ask the file, the data stream reads you the content).\n\nEven a directory is a file: more precisely a specific file which contains all the name of the files contained in itself, arranged in a special structure (a tree) that makes the search faster. (And this is why people says NTFS is based on inode, which is not true)."
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bifnu0 | why did organisms choose reproduction instead of immortality mathematically speaking? | I had a professor explain this in class mathematically in such a way that it made perfect sense. This was, however, 10 years ago and I have completely forgotten all aspects of his lecture. I know there is an answer out there but have been unable to find anything in words I can understand. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bifnu0/eli5_why_did_organisms_choose_reproduction/ | {
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"Let's assume that at a certain point in evolutionary history, fifty percent of the living organisms had developed reproductive systems while the other half had \"decided\" (that's not a correct usage of terms though, nature doesn't choose or decide anything, it's all random mutations and combinations) to go with immortality: the former, by reproducing and all, mastered new abilities, developed new features; the latter, remaining the same thing for centuries, at some time happened to meet a new organism which for some reason was better at eating them up than any other previous one, which ability had been reached thanks to reproduction itself; plus, at some point our planet went through some changes and, as you'll understand, had not the creatures dwelling on it at the moment been able to change themselves they would have died out in a matter of years",
"The idea put forth by Richard Dawkins in \"The Selfish Gene\" is that the focus on the organism is wrong -- it is the gene that is reproducing, not not the organism. The organism is just a way for a gene to make copies of itself. Viewed through that lens, some things become clearer, including your question.\n\nReproduction allows a gene to make many copies of itself. If the genes of an organism endowed it with the ability to live forever but at the cost of not reproducing, there would be only one copy of that gene. A gene that is part of a reproducing organism makes many copies of itself and spreads far and wide and doesn't give a damn whether or not it is part of a specific organism.",
"If you are immortal then your species is less likely to evolve. Lack of the ability to evolve means certain extinction."
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67570g | why would anyone willingly take fentanyl if it’s going to kill them outright, and why would a drug pusher would willingly kill his clients with it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67570g/eli5_why_would_anyone_willingly_take_fentanyl_if/ | {
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"\"Yo man did you hear Joey died from an OD last week?\"\n\nYa? He must have had some Strong shit and fuck up.\n\nYa Mikey has the best shit in town if even Joey OD..we gatta get some.\n\n\nSomething like that",
"The first reason is that people often think \"It will never happen to me.\" They take hard drugs believing they will be immune to the negative effects. They think they are stronger, smarter, less susceptible, whatever. Consider [the redditor who tried heroin](_URL_0_) \"just to see what it's like\" and ended up ODing so badly it temporarily stopped their heart. He didn't think \"heroin will kill **me**\", he thought \"heroin kills *other people* but I'll be fine.\" So some people think they can get away with dangerous drugs because they think it won't hurt them. Maybe they've been doing MDMA recreationally and it never got them hooked or hurt them, so they think \"MDMA was fun, I've heard fentanyl is way stronger, I'm sure it'll be fun [and I'll be fine].\"\n\nThe alternative is people who are so hooked they just don't care anymore. They've been doing heroin or morphine for years and have become used to it, it doesn't give them the high they crave so they turn to something like fentanyl. They *know* it will kill them, but it doesn't matter. They need the fix. You could pull a gun on them and say \"I will literally shoot you if you touch that heroin needle\" and they'll still reach for it and hope that they can at least die in the euphoria of the high. At that point, your rational thinking is completely subservient to the need for the drug. You're chemically dependent on it, you're psychologically dependent on it, and when you hear about the promise of a drug that's way better, the possibility of dying is there, but it's shoved into the back because the alternative (not getting high) is no longer acceptable."
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9ohdc/2_weeks_ago_i_tried_heroin_once_for_fun_and_made/"
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1kilwy | how do the clocks in cars stay up to date even when the car is off? | Something Ive been wondering for a while. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kilwy/eli5_how_do_the_clocks_in_cars_stay_up_to_date/ | {
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"Same way your computer does. Battery. Clocks take very little power, so the battery can last years."
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mqf1t | the stock market crash of 2008 and how it lead to the occupy wall street protests (also explain those please) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mqf1t/eli5_the_stock_market_crash_of_2008_and_how_it/ | {
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"It's complicated. \n\nBasically the banks were screwing around with home mortgages that suddenly lost all their value, leaving the banks carrying a ton of worthless mortgages that they couldn't cover. \n\nThe banks however were so important to our economy that the government sort of had to step in and give them free money to keep them going. \n\nThe banks took the money, but didn't do what the government wanted them to do with the money. \n\nSo obviously people were pissed. Pissed at the government for giving out the money, which they sort of had to do, and also at the banks for just being dicks. \n\n\n\nOWS is angry that the banks created a problem, got bailed out, and were then dicks about being bailed out. They're also angry at corporate America as a whole because of income inequality and the increasing role of corporations in government. \n",
"The banking system is like Watto from Star Wars episode 1. Scrupulous, but a necessary evil to control our wealth in a democratic and capitalistic society. Imagine Watto losing a WHOLE LOT of money in a pod race bet but still expects money and special treatment. Banks misused money and mislead many people and did not face the consequences of their actions because the government thinks that they are too important to simply let collapse/fail. Occupy Wall Street was founded by people not satisfied with this system.\n\nAnother metaphor: Imagine the son of a rich family that is a total douche; he has really big parties, pees on other people's cars, frequently engages in drunken wreckless behavior, but when he gets in trouble, his parents always bail him out. The douche are financial institutions and the parents are the government.\n\nMany also argue that while capitalism and democracy are useful at creating mass wealth (They are the best we've got), they are still flawed in many ways. Like barnicles that attach themselves to a boat, capitalism is bound to have certain flaws that stick around. The real question is: Do we address the barnacles or get another boat?",
"It's complicated. \n\nBasically the banks were screwing around with home mortgages that suddenly lost all their value, leaving the banks carrying a ton of worthless mortgages that they couldn't cover. \n\nThe banks however were so important to our economy that the government sort of had to step in and give them free money to keep them going. \n\nThe banks took the money, but didn't do what the government wanted them to do with the money. \n\nSo obviously people were pissed. Pissed at the government for giving out the money, which they sort of had to do, and also at the banks for just being dicks. \n\n\n\nOWS is angry that the banks created a problem, got bailed out, and were then dicks about being bailed out. They're also angry at corporate America as a whole because of income inequality and the increasing role of corporations in government. \n",
"The banking system is like Watto from Star Wars episode 1. Scrupulous, but a necessary evil to control our wealth in a democratic and capitalistic society. Imagine Watto losing a WHOLE LOT of money in a pod race bet but still expects money and special treatment. Banks misused money and mislead many people and did not face the consequences of their actions because the government thinks that they are too important to simply let collapse/fail. Occupy Wall Street was founded by people not satisfied with this system.\n\nAnother metaphor: Imagine the son of a rich family that is a total douche; he has really big parties, pees on other people's cars, frequently engages in drunken wreckless behavior, but when he gets in trouble, his parents always bail him out. The douche are financial institutions and the parents are the government.\n\nMany also argue that while capitalism and democracy are useful at creating mass wealth (They are the best we've got), they are still flawed in many ways. Like barnicles that attach themselves to a boat, capitalism is bound to have certain flaws that stick around. The real question is: Do we address the barnacles or get another boat?"
]
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2i1ng2 | why does ingesting charcoal help with many poisoning cases? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i1ng2/eli5_why_does_ingesting_charcoal_help_with_many/ | {
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"Because of it's amazing powers of absorption. It absorbs the poison so your body can't. ",
"The carbon in charcoal powder is able to bind onto a variaty of chemicals, by making the patient drink it, the carbon enters the stomach and intestines, sucks up the poison before it can be absorbed into the blood. The patient can then poop out the charcoal safely. Charcoal powder has lots of microscopic holes, which gives it a lot of surface area relative to it's volume, allowing it to adsorb more poison. ",
"Activated charcoal has an insane amount of surface area and is great at absorbing chemicals like a sponge. The more it absorbs, the less gets into your system."
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5gl7qx | how can we know that galaxies are moving away from eachother? | If we have had the technologie for some hundred of years to observe the galaxies outside of our own, a body as big as a galaxy traveling fast enough for us observe a change in the possitioning just seems absurd? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5gl7qx/eli5_how_can_we_know_that_galaxies_are_moving/ | {
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"Some elements emit light at very precise wavelengths. Starlight has very constant patterns that remain the same, whatever star or galaxy we look at. When we look at distant galaxies, we recognize these patterns, but we see them at the \"wrong\" wavelength. The displacement of the wavelength (the \"red shift\") tells us the rate at which the distance is increasing between us and the distant galaxy. ",
"We don't observe a change in position. Listen to a police car or an ambulance while it passes you on the street: the sound is deeper when it moves away from you.\n\nThe same effect happens with galaxies, their light gets \"deeper\" (redshifted)."
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5cdicq | why do neon signs have a buzzing noise to them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cdicq/eli5_why_do_neon_signs_have_a_buzzing_noise_to/ | {
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"I think the most likely culprit is the transformer for the neon sign. The transformer takes the 120V or 240V 60Hz from the outlet and steps it up to several kV. The way it works is by running current through a coil of wire to create a magnetic field, and then converting that field back to a current in a secondary coil of wire with a different number of turns. The oscillating magnetic field can cause vibrations of any magnetic material in the vicinity (casing, core, etc). \n\n"
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6wflm2 | how does a new episode able to be streamed to millions of people at the same time? is it just one file or many files that are accessed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6wflm2/eli5_how_does_a_new_episode_able_to_be_streamed/ | {
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"Most are using multiple hosting locations. The location you connect to is usually determined by some sort of routing software/hardware and tries to distribute/connect you by region and load.\n\nIn addition, most ISPs have or subscribe to huge caching services that further replicate the content in an attempt to not transmit the content quicker to its customers."
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cikt5o | why when you heat up vegetable oil, some waves start to appear on the bottom of it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cikt5o/eli5_why_when_you_heat_up_vegetable_oil_some/ | {
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"What I believe you're describing is technically called a mirage. If you've ever seen something incredibly hot, such as a jet engine, against a detailed background, you can see that the air around the hot object ripples. This comes from the immense heat of the object warming the air around it. This air becomes less dense, and rises. This means that hot air and colder air are swirling past eachother in a turbulent dance, and the place you're looking switches between more and less dense air. This difference in density bends light, which you see as a sort of shimmering or rippling. The same, more or less, happens in transparent (or near-transparent) oils on a hot burner."
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7jt6nb | why was tutankhamun's reign so special ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7jt6nb/eli5why_was_tutankhamuns_reign_so_special/ | {
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"It really wasn't. By all accounts, he was a terrible king and his reign was not noteworthy at all.\n\nWhat makes him special is that he was such a dud of a king, his tomb was not well known or well marked, which meant that it was never plundered by grave robbers. When we discovered it, it was perfectly intact, giving us our first glimpse into what a tomb actually looked like untouched.",
"As far as I know, his reign was not all that significant. He was Pharaoh for nine years and died at the age of 18. If I remember correctly, evidence suggests that he was severely handicapped and was a borderline invalid. However, it was his tomb that brought him fame. His tomb, which included his sarcophaguses and other treasures hidden in multiple chambers and anti champers, was one of the best preserved, most complete archaeological discoveries in Egypt, and in all of history. The expedition itself was was newsworthy at the time, and many of the items discovered were seen by millions in museums, newspapers, books, etc. The curse of king of king Tut increased his appeal on a supernatural level as well. In a sense, he is like a Kardashian of antiquity."
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mpq2n | dimensions (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) | EDIT: So what's all the business with the 8th, 9th, and 10th+ dimensions? I understand 1-4 now but...how do the others work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mpq2n/eli5_dimensions_1st_2nd_3rd_etc/ | {
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"Okay, I'm going to give this a start; although someone will undoubtedly come up with a more efficient explanation.\n\nThe easiest way I can think of to understand dimensions is through the familiar ones. The three dimensions that make up 3D (Three-Dimensions) which is what we see objects in, are commonly described as 'Height', 'Width', and 'Depth'. \n\nIf you are mathematically-minded, it might be helpful to envision these as the x, y and z axes that are typically used in geometry.\n\nThe most important aspect of the first three dimensions is that they are at right-angles to each other. For example, 'Width' usually means the 'dimension' that is from side-to-side < ------- > . So if you drag your browser window from left-to-right, you are moving it in this dimension. The side-to-side dimension is usually represented in mathematical things as \"x\". For the sake of explanation, 'width' will be the \"1st Dimension\", although in reality the difference between the first 3 dimensions is fairly arbitrary.\n\nThe up-and-down dimension (which we'll call the 2nd dimension for the sake of explanation - it's fairly arbitrary) is often called \"height\" or, in mathematics, \"y\". So if you move your browser window up and down, you are moving it through the 'height' (or up-and-down) dimension.\n\nThese dimensions are always at right angles, like this;\n(height, or 'y')\n^\n|\n|\n|\n|_______ > (width, or 'x') \n\nIn the same way that moving your browser window up/down is moving it in the height dimension only, and moving it left/right is moving in the width dimension only, *moving your browser window diagonally is moving it in both of these dimensions*.\n\nThe 3rd dimension, \"depth\" or \"z\", is the one at right angles to the first two dimensions. In the example of your browser window, moving your browser window through this dimension would mean moving it backward or forward out of the screen. \n\n---I HOPE YOU GOT THAT PART DOWN GOOD---\n\nSomeone else take over for the higher dimensions, and please clarify or correct anything I got utterly wrong.",
"Okay, I'm going to give this a start; although someone will undoubtedly come up with a more efficient explanation.\n\nThe easiest way I can think of to understand dimensions is through the familiar ones. The three dimensions that make up 3D (Three-Dimensions) which is what we see objects in, are commonly described as 'Height', 'Width', and 'Depth'. \n\nIf you are mathematically-minded, it might be helpful to envision these as the x, y and z axes that are typically used in geometry.\n\nThe most important aspect of the first three dimensions is that they are at right-angles to each other. For example, 'Width' usually means the 'dimension' that is from side-to-side < ------- > . So if you drag your browser window from left-to-right, you are moving it in this dimension. The side-to-side dimension is usually represented in mathematical things as \"x\". For the sake of explanation, 'width' will be the \"1st Dimension\", although in reality the difference between the first 3 dimensions is fairly arbitrary.\n\nThe up-and-down dimension (which we'll call the 2nd dimension for the sake of explanation - it's fairly arbitrary) is often called \"height\" or, in mathematics, \"y\". So if you move your browser window up and down, you are moving it through the 'height' (or up-and-down) dimension.\n\nThese dimensions are always at right angles, like this;\n(height, or 'y')\n^\n|\n|\n|\n|_______ > (width, or 'x') \n\nIn the same way that moving your browser window up/down is moving it in the height dimension only, and moving it left/right is moving in the width dimension only, *moving your browser window diagonally is moving it in both of these dimensions*.\n\nThe 3rd dimension, \"depth\" or \"z\", is the one at right angles to the first two dimensions. In the example of your browser window, moving your browser window through this dimension would mean moving it backward or forward out of the screen. \n\n---I HOPE YOU GOT THAT PART DOWN GOOD---\n\nSomeone else take over for the higher dimensions, and please clarify or correct anything I got utterly wrong."
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2m1adm | why are pop songs considered "old" after a little while, but songs in other genres aren't? | For example, a song is used in a commercial 8 months after it was big and some says "Why are they using that song? It's so old!"
Is it a novelty thing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m1adm/eli5_why_are_pop_songs_considered_old_after_a/ | {
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"cause most pop songs are come out crazy fast, so by the time they want to use katy perry's \"fireworks\" in a commercial or some shit, she already released like m4 other songs, in like 5 months or some crazy short time",
"Pop Music stands for popular music. So that would be the music that is popular at a given time. After a few weeks or months there are new songs that become popular and the ones that came out earlier songs are considered old."
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6rzsx2 | do we age slower because of earth´s speed? | I once heard that time is slower for things that are moving fast. Does that count for us when earth moves? Would we age faster if earth was not moving? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6rzsx2/eli5do_we_age_slower_because_of_earths_speed/ | {
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"I think the question would be \"slower than what?\" We would experience time slower than something moving slower than Earth, but faster than something moving faster than Earth.",
"No. I think you misunderstand special relativistic time dilation a bit.\nBy explaining time dilation, your question should be answered I believe.\n\nWhat time dilation is not:\n---\n\nIn order to explain time dilation, let me fist explain what it is **not**. A popular, but entirely wrong notion of time dilation states, that time passes slower the faster you move. A quick examination of this claim, however, reveals that it cannot be true. There is no absolute velocity, so velocity only makes sense with respect to a frame of reference. That means, velocity only makes sense if we state relative to what we are measuring. Thus, if this version of time dilation were true, time on your spaceship would magically speed up and slow down depending on the frame of reference you measure your spaceship's velocity against. Thus, the statement that the rate at which time passes depends on your velocity (relative to an arbitrary frame of reference) cannot be true. \n\nNow, let's get started with actual time dilation: \n\nWhy does time dilation happen?\n---\n\nTo understand how time dilation can happen, let's consider the following thought experiment:\n\n\nA clock is any object that does an action periodically. As such, a light beam bouncing off two mirrors can be considered a clock, with each period of the photon bouncing up and down again being one tick. \n\nLet's now consider a train with such a clock in one of the compartments, as seen [here](_URL_0_).\n\n\n\nImagine a person in a resting train with a flashlight. They shine the beam of the flashlight to the ceiling of the carriage and time how long it takes to return to them. Very simply it is just the distance the light travels (twice the height of the carriage (d)) divided by the speed of light (c). Someone on the embankment by the train will also agree with the measurement of the time that the light beam takes to get back to the person with the torch after reflecting from the mirror.\nThey will both say that the time (t) is 2d/c.\n\nNow consider what happens as the train moves at a constant speed along the track.\nThe person in the train still considers that the light has gone from the torch, straight across the carriage and returned to them. It has still traveled a distance of 2d and if the speed of light is c the time (t) it has taken is 2d/c. \n\nHowever to the person on the embankment this is not the case.\nFor them, the train has been moving during a tick of the clock, and the photon has to travel a longer distance accordingly. Instead of a straight vertical path up and down, the photon now follows a triangular path, like [this](_URL_2_). As we know, the beams of a triangle are longer than the straight line, so the photon now has to travel a longer path. \nNow in classical physics, pre relativity, we would now say that since the light beam has moved further in the same time it must be moving faster, in other words we have to \"add\" the speed of the train to the speed of the light. \n\nBut the theory of relativity does not allow us to do this. It says that the speed of light is constant. Thus, the photon will take longer to reach its destination from the point of view of the observer on the embankment. Hence we know that it takes the photon longer to complete this journey from the point of view of the observer on the embankment than it does from the point of view of an observer resting in the train. And we know that the time it takes the photon to complete its journey up and down again corresponds to one tick of a clock. Thus, it follows logically that the observer on the embankment sees clocks on the moving train as ticking slower than someone resting in the train. Which is exactly what special relativity is all about. \n\nThe twin paradox:\n---\n\n\nOne of the central claims in special relativity is, that all inertial frames of reference are equally valid to describe a phenomenon. That is, the laws of physics are the same in all frames of reference that are not being accelerated. This is called the equivalence principle. \n\nConsider an inertial frame of reference I and another inertial frame of reference I' that moves at a constant velocity v relative to I. Time dilation states, that an observer O resting in I will measure clocks resting in I' as ticking slower than their own clocks. \n\nAccording to the equivalence principle, the same statement has to be true for an observer O' resting in I' as well, since they are both in inertial frames of reference. Thus, the observer O' resting in I' sees clocks resting in I as ticking slower than their own. \n\n**Time dilation is a symmetrical effect. Both observers see clocks in the other observer's frame of reference as ticking slower.** \n\n\"But wait\", you might interject at this point, \"what about the [twin paradox](_URL_1_). The twin making a trip to space ages less than the twin remaining on earth. Doesn't that contradict what you are saying?\"\n\nWhile that seems true on the first glance, this is actually not a contradiction. In order for the twin paradox to work, the twin traveling in the space ship has to return to earth. In order to do that, he has to change direction at some point. This change in direction implies acceleration, and acceleration breaks the symmetry of the problem. Remember, that we stated that all *inertial* (un-acclerated) frames of reference are equal. By accelerating, the space traveling twin breaks the symmetry of the equivalence principle, thus leading to the observable difference in passed time. \n\n",
"What I think is something important you're missing is that when time is faster/slower for someone, that affects their perception of time as well. If time was slower for someone, they'd age up slower but they'd perceive themselves aging up at a normal speed."
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7fcqzu | why do warmer alcoholic beverages get absorbed into the system quicker? | Lately when my drinking buddy and I drink we have had the beer as it's been sitting out. We feel immensely more buzzed, or intoxicated when the beer is warm.
We've reasoned it out to our bodies having a tougher time absorbing when we drink something ice cold.
What's happening?
Also, we drink the warm beer slower, because it's gross.
(Had to repost cause I forgot the tag, and knew mods would delete) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7fcqzu/eli5_why_do_warmer_alcoholic_beverages_get/ | {
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"Because your body absorbs any liquid only once it reaches body temperature, and warm beer has less to go to get to body temperature. \n\n",
"I can't find any literature linking the temperature of a drink to it's absorption rate. And as far as I'm aware, the temperature of alcohol doesn't affect the rate of absorption.\n\nThings like how full your stomache is, weight, gender, do. And because how \"buzzed\" you feel is a \"feeling\" vs. an objective measure like blood alcohol content, the placebo effect is significant. \n\nIf you believe the temperature of a drink affects absorption, it'll definitely feel like it.\n\nIf you have a home breathalyzer you can experimentally check. One day get drunk on cold beer and measure your BAC periodically. The next day get drunk on warm beer. Be sure to eat the same amount of food before hand and consume at the same rate.\n\nPlease get drunk for us in the name of science and report back your results.\n\nEdit: abortion doesn't have anything to do with absorption",
"It seems like I've read before that warmer temperature promotes gastric motility? Like Warmer food/liquid is transferred from stomach into intestines quicker than colder temp stuff. \n\nIs alcohol absorbed in the stomach or more so in the intestines? Would this have any bearing on answering OPs question?"
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21022m | what would happen if your heart rate didn't change while running or during other physical activity? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21022m/eli5_what_would_happen_if_your_heart_rate_didnt/ | {
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"Physical activity requires more energy than usual. That energy is primarily derived from aerobic processes (which means they require oxygen). To get more oxygen to the muscles, your heart rate increases to pump more blood to them. If your heart rate didn't change, your muscles would run out of oxygen. Anaerobic processes would be used to generate energy instead, but they are a lot less efficient and produce lactic acid in the muscles.",
"Eventually your muscles would not receive enough oxygen and you would become lightheaded and possibly pass out. People with slow heart rates will have a permanent pacemaker put in to prevent this from happening. Permanent pacemakers often have accelerometers in them to detect vigorous activity and will increase the patients heart rate. \nSource: I assist in pacemaker procedures for a living.",
"This is actually a real condition, called [bradycardia](_URL_2_), or more precisely \"relative bradycardia.\" Bradycardia proper is defined as having a resting heart rate of below 60 BPM when you're not a professional athlete in ridiculous condition like Michael Phelps. They have what's called [athletic heart syndrome](_URL_3_), which would be wildly problematic for a regular person but is really just what happens to the heart when you reach a really, really high level of fitness and stay there for a long period of time.\n\n\"Relative bradycardia\" is the condition when your resting heart rate is above 60 BPM, but is still to low for your condition. It can be intermittent too. Like, for example, you're fine when you're sitting around, but you simply can't get your heart rate up high enough to support physical exertion. It's a real thing.\n\nThe symptoms in that case would look very much like those of [heart failure](_URL_0_). You'd feel like you couldn't breathe, and would get tired very, very quickly. Shortness of breath. Possible [cyanosis](_URL_1_) if things got bad enough. You'd find yourself basically incapable of doing any activity that would raise your heart rate under normal circumstances for more than a minute or three.",
"The heart is a pump designed to move blood where it's needed. In reality, for physical exercise this equates to oxygen, because your \"fuel\" is already residing in your muscles (it's moved there over the course of the day normally).\n\nThink of exercise like stoking a fire. You need more exhaust, and more fire. Sweat is one way to rid of things, and blood also moves things as well. So you're slowing down your exhaust system just like a car (lactic acid build up). Additionally, you are not getting oxygen as fast as you need it, so, your body start going into Anaerobic (vice Aerobic) mode. This isn't as efficient, and just produces more waste (exhaust) which has to be dealt with, which in turn makes you slower.\n\nBasically, your system clogs down until you are forced to slow to a point where your body can get rid of the crap that has built up.\n\nYou can maintain a walking pace all day long. You can burst to a jogging pace for a good bit, but then you have to slow BELOW a walking pace so that you can \"recover\" and then go back up to a walking pace.",
"Isn't all this supposed to be explained if you were 5? If I were five I wouldn't understand any of this."
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6e91w1 | what are the long term affects of medicines for add | I'm self diagnosed so in no way have I actually been told by a doctor I have ADD. Although I've always been a good student/employee it is getting extremely hard for me to focus on tasks. I used to ignore it but it's starting to really affect my performance at work. I feel really inefficient and it's bothering me a lot.
I'm considering having a conversation with a doctor but I'm hesitant to start taking medication because I'm afraid it may have long term affects. Any experience with this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6e91w1/eli5_what_are_the_long_term_affects_of_medicines/ | {
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"As someone who was prescribed these medications at a young age of 7 during the nineties and am now 27 I often wonder this. At age 18 during my senior year I stopped taking them all together because I felt like I \"didn't know who I was without them\" I can imagine minor liver damage. Interested to see what other users have to say. Now I just take them to focus at work. ",
"Please note: ELI5, reddit and *the internet in general* are *extremely bad venues* for medical advice. \n\nIf you think you have an issue, you should *absolutely* see a real doctor, and this question is a *perfect* one to ask them! \n\nAlso, see a qualified *therapist* rather than a medical doctor if you suspect a mental disorder such as ADHD. ",
"Well my schools kinda competitive and people r willing to abuse add pills. my ex-friend started last year during finals, and has been using them ever since from his other friend because they are prescribed. he uses the pills non-stop these days... he relies on these pills to focus instead of trying to get self-discipline to study",
"It's a rather controversial topic. Some studies say that certain medications have no long-term consequences, others do find long-term consequences. Consequences like a reduced brain size in certain areas.",
"You should absolutely discuss with a doctor. My doc had me take a quick EKG to make sure my heart wasn't at risk for side effects.\n\nI think the book \"you me or adult ADD\" 'does a good job of laying out a realistic expectation for finding a treatment.\n\nMedication can take some time to try on and get right.\n\n[Edit] also, there are many different forms of medication. Stimulant, and non stimulant. /r/ADHD "
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1y4i2k | why is it when i'm in a sad situation, and feeling real sorrow, i sometimes can't help but to smile or even laugh even though i feel like crying. | So I went to a funeral for a good friend today and I feel extremely sad. Yet When I found out about his death I smiled, despite feeling broken and dismayed. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y4i2k/eli5_why_is_it_when_im_in_a_sad_situation_and/ | {
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"I also do this. I am so distraught by the bad news I do not know what to do and end up laughing because my body feels so awkward. "
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3tsfpd | the video game market crash of 83. | What was it? How did it happen? Can it happen again? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tsfpd/eli5_the_video_game_market_crash_of_83/ | {
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"In 1983, the game industry was a very different landscape. It was the wild west, where no one had all that much design experience to draw on, and things we take for granted just didn't exist.\n\nThe Atari 2600 was wildly successful, but to keep the price tag on each console down, the consoles were sold at a loss. Like today's big publishers, they were relying on the game sales to actually make a profit. At first, this worked fine, profits were rolling in from their games, but Atari held their staff in an iron grip. Their creative teams were not given royalties or authorship of their work. These people left and founded their own video game companies.\n\nThese people trained with Atari knew one secret, the 2600 basically had no software protection for unofficial games. If a cart fit into the slot, it would play basically anything that didn't put to much strain on the system. Atari laughed, thinking they had a higher protection than software protection the law. They went to court to shut down these other companies... only for the judge to rule *against* Atari, stating these other companies producing their games for the 2600 was entirely *legal*.\n\nThis wouldn't have been to much of a problem if the 2600 was the only console in town. However, it wasn't. There were now *so* many game consoles out there. You had the old pong consoles (kind of like the plug and play consoles of today, they only either just play pong or a few variants of pong), the Colecovision, Mattel's Intellivision, Vectrex, Coleco Gemini, Emerson Arcadia 2001, Atari's own 5200. There were so many consoles on the market. Then the first real wave of usable home computers hit the market with comparable specs to the dedicated consoles of the time. Worst of all, there were just to many games.\n\nGames journalism just didn't exist. There were no reviewers, no scores, nothing to indicate what was gold and what was shit. Investors just assumed any game would always sell, and thus forced programmers to push out titles in shorter and shorter times. There were just *so* many games. Everyone and there mother were making games, often being carbon copies of titles that had any kind of success. You think you find many angry birds clones on IOS, you have no idea how many people just made Pac-man back in the day. Just imagine if on Steam there was no way to tell Fallout 4 from [Bad Rats](_URL_0_). Either you buy one or the other, and once you are stuck with it your stuck with a *really* shitty game. And the shit outnumbered anything worth a damn 20 to 1.\n\nThe market was just over saturated with garbage, so consumer confidence started to fall. Atari got in the middle of a scandal as the president of Atari had sold off all his shares before making an announcement in 1982 that profits were only projected to rise about 10% rather than the 50% investors were expecting.\n\nFinally, in 1983, Atari took the plunge. In a desperate move, they licensed the rights off for a port of Pac-man and an ET game. Both were complete disasters. Both programmed in a matter of weeks being glitchy messes. This is what [Pac-man looked like](_URL_1_). The reason there is only one ghost is because the programmers weren't given enough time to find a way to show all four ghosts at once, so the game just rapidly switched between the four ghosts. 12 million Pac-man carts were made, 2 more than Atari 2600s. About 4 million copies never were sold. ET was also a bust. They spent a massive amount on the license, and only managed to sell a fourth of the carts they made, and many of the ones they sold were returned by angry customers.\n\nOver saturated with consoles and shitty games, without any way to insure quality before you buy, the industry crashed.\n\nCan this happen again? Unlikely. We have extensive systems of reviewers and the internet. If the game is shit, people are going to know on day one. The main problem is now that consumers actually have to high of expectations. The demands for better and better graphics are pushing game budgets ever skyward, even as the customer base isn't growing as fast as it use to. However, with the industry move to a smaller selection of cheaper and easier to program game engines (such as Unreal and Unity) this problem *might* solve itself.",
"First of all, the so-called 'crash' is often over blown. It only affected North America and the markets in Europe and Japan were relatively unaffected. Secondly, it lasted at most two years, which would make it one of the mildest economic recessions in history. \n\nThere are always complex reasons when discussing any market but the main reason is thought to be market saturation. Put simply, when everyone who is going to buy a games console has bought one you can't sell any more consoles. The full effect of the 'crash' wasn't felt until 1985, some six years after Activision, the first third-party developer, was formed so no serious economists attribute the crash to that.\n\nThe reason for such a short recession was the speed at which the consumer base and the tehcnology changed. Children grow up and so families which previously had no desire to own a games console or home computer became potential consumers. Also, the technology changed so rapidly that the within a few short years the existing consoles were obsolete and replaced with newer models plus home computers began to compete with them."
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8p4lkj | if mountain ranges occur from tectonic or volcanic activity on plate boundaries, how do mountain ranges like the urals and the alps exist far away from any tectonic boundary? | Like the Urals are practically in the centre of the Eurasian plate...why is there a mountain range there? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8p4lkj/eli5_if_mountain_ranges_occur_from_tectonic_or/ | {
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"Plates move away from faults as new plate material is created and drive to the surface. \n\nYou can see this clearly in North America where there are several parallel rows of mountains. \n\nThe Sierras in California are young and jagged. The Rockies are moderately jagged but are still huge. The Appalachians to the East are old and well worn down, since they were created much earlier. ",
"Plate boundaries can form, change, become inactive, merge, or disappear entirely. If a plate boundary produces mountains and then becomes inactive, the mountains can persist for some time afterward.\n\nThe Urals are such a mountain range. They formed during a continental collision, as the Himalayas did. The collision eventually stopped with the continents essentially stuck together, but the Urals haven't worn away completely yet. They are notable for having persisted for quite a long time, considering how long ago the tectonic action that formed them stopped. All things being equal, they *should* look more like the Appalachians by now, which stopped rising at about the same time.\n\nThe Alps on the other hand are not finished rising yet. Parts of them are still being driven upward by tectonics, while others are rising in response to the removal of the weight of glaciers after the last Ice Age. The situation in the Mediterranean is actually pretty complicated, more like a large highway pileup than the clean tectonic diagrams in textbooks."
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mfx5d | city of london and why it is controversial? | What is the City of London corperation? What makes it special and why is is controversial? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mfx5d/eli5_city_of_london_and_why_it_is_controversial/ | {
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"It's the name for the a small area that used to make up medieval London. It's also the location for many of the financial institutions based in London. When a british person refers to 'The City', they usually mean the financial and business hub of London.",
"It's the name for the a small area that used to make up medieval London. It's also the location for many of the financial institutions based in London. When a british person refers to 'The City', they usually mean the financial and business hub of London."
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q44l3 | why are monitors wider, and not taller? | And TVs for that matter. Also, why don't they have the same height and width? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/q44l3/eli5_why_are_monitors_wider_and_not_taller/ | {
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"Human vision is much wider than it is tall. You can see things far off to the side without moving your eyes much. So TV and movie screens are wide. And computer screens are wide in case you want to watch a TV show or a movie on them. Some computer screens can rotate so they are tall and narrow.",
"Another reason to consider is that the first monitors (and computers) were designed for typing/reading text, and most countries write words horizontally, so it may be a reason for monitors to be wider than tall.",
"Weren't TV sizes switched [from square] to more closely match movie screen aspect ratios?",
"For programming I turn my monitor sideways so it's taller",
"I have dual monitors that are mounted vertically for work. Web pages are vertical, not horizontal, so it just makes sense. ",
"This has a very simple answer.\n\nOur vison is wider than it is taller.\n\nLook at your face. Notice how you have two eyes. Notice how the eyes are left/right of each other. They are not stacked above/below.\n\nLeft/right pair of eyes means our vision is wider than taller. Hence wider movies and monitors.",
"Our eyes are situated horizontally so that we can scan the horizon and have better peripheral vision relative to the Earth. Same goes for our ears.",
"After a quick glance, no one has said the golden ratio & phi. Op Google it, in the pub on smoke/reddit break ATM so can't elobrate",
"Because our eyes are side by side not one on top of the other"
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be49zm | why does healthcare is the usa differ from most western countries? i don't think any european country practice healthcare in the same manner. why is there such a big difference? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/be49zm/eli5_why_does_healthcare_is_the_usa_differ_from/ | {
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"Basically, the USA was very opposed to socialism and anything that even HINTED of Communism for decades, as part of our cold war with the USSR. As such, there's generations of Americans who believe that government run health care will be a terrible idea and kill people, and that even suggesting that we go that route is a violation of everything America stands for.",
"if anything ever seems weird about the US, the answer is that it's making a few people very rich. \n\nwe're at war because it's making a few companies rich. We fuck you over if you get sick or injured because it makes insurance companies rich. Our police are the way that they are because it puts healthy, younger men in prison for labor, and prison labor is making some companies rich.",
"Very much oversimplified, in Europe, the government sees it as one of their main tasks to ensure that businesses don't trample on the rights of the citizens. In the US, it's the other way around.",
"The two big reasons are:\n\nA) During WWII a law was passed controlling wages, to prevent inflation when labor markets tightened up. So companies used health care benefits to attract workers instead. This became standard practice to this day.\n\nB) After the war the Cold War made anything that smacked of communism difficult to accomplish. We managed to get single-payer for people over 65, but not the rest. It was FDRs goal, but we have never been able to do it. Now our health insurance companies spend millions to block every attempt.",
"You can combine the statements of both /u/mugenhunt and /u/sikkerhet into a more or less complete explanation.\n\nThe 'Red Scare' to this day continues to be exploited by the private sector to avoid regulation and maximize profits. Deregulation allows for both incredible corner-cutting and price-gouging, and that sort of profitability means the \"pennies\" you can throw at political campaigners in exchange for their backing once in office are quite huge.\n\n* You'll notice however that they're very quick to claim that unlike everything else, copyright needs incredibly powerful 'protections', lest you or I 'download a car'\n\nSo you've got politicians bought and paid for by unbelievably-profitable (AFTER those fabled R & D operating costs they always claim as the reason) companies whose interests are best served by the system we have now. This is why you get attack ads 'warning' that universal healthcare would be composed of \"death panels\" - partly because that sort of misinformation-disseminating is not prosecuted. Single-payer systems negotiate or even (gasp) regulate prices to ensure the government's treasury isn't being fleeced *too* badly every second. Because your money is \"the government's\" money, rather than merely *your* money.\n\nSimply put, ultra-rich corporations own our lawmakers, so the laws are written or unwritten to benefit them at every step.",
"This is because in USA a group of people found out that people will pay \\_anything\\_ for their health, and started exploiting it.\n\nThen they used those money, to buy poiticians to establish anti-competetive laws, and spread propaganda, that any effort to cut their profits, is a comunist plot to destroy America.\n\nSo now there's an entire country of people who think that their system is absolutely the best, even though it's worst, thanks to carefully crafted propaganda campaign financed by their own money."
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1molcy | how do maggots grow in infections (ex. the mouth) if there aren't any to lay eggs in such places? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1molcy/eli5_how_do_maggots_grow_in_infections_ex_the/ | {
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"The maggots are the larvae of the flies that lay the eggs."
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170v89 | why doesn't the nes zapper for duck hunt work on new tvs? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/170v89/eli5_why_doesnt_the_nes_zapper_for_duck_hunt_work/ | {
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"When you pulled the trigger, the screen flashes black with a white square around the object. A photodiode on the zapper detects what colour the aimed screen is, and if its white you get a hit.\n\nThat's all I know, as for why it doesn't work now I have no idea. Probably because the form of photodiode doesnt pick up the light from a LCD, LED or Plasma display.",
"The NES zapper is synchronised with the refresh rates and scan rates of old CRT TVs. New TVs use different methods of displaying frames and show full frames instead of scanning across the screen in lines. This causes the zapper to go out of sync with the TVs and not detect the white square when used."
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5zas9s | how do bullets go out of the barrel without destroying the gun? | I Get that this place isn't R/nostupidquestions
But I seriously wonder how bullets go out of the barrel so fast without lets say touching the side of the barrel or the bottom of the chamber where they were fired from.
So yea I want to know how, Especially when there are videos of untrained people using guns, Who trip and fall and their hand remains on the trigger, While they are falling the bullets go straight out of the gun and never hit the gun itself from the inside. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zas9s/eli5_how_do_bullets_go_out_of_the_barrel_without/ | {
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"It does touch the barrel. The bullet is exactly the size of the inner bore of the barrel, that's how the barrel can project the bullet in a perfectly straight direction. (along with rifling which gives the bullet spin which also helps with accuracy)",
"The bullet is almost the exact same size as the barrel. In fact the bullet slides along the barrel just tightly enough that the grooves (rifling) in the barrel contact the bullet and cause it to spin in flight.",
"Bullets touch the inside of the gun's barrel during normal operation. There's *rifling* inside the barrel that's supposed to impart spin on the bullet. Part of the reason you need to frequently clean guns is to get rid of the metal that's rubbed off.\n\nAs for why the bullet doesn't hit the bottom of the chamber, most (all?) modern mechanisms make sure the round is firmly inside the barrel before you can fire. Sometimes a gun will jam, when a round doesn't feed properly but the gun shouldn't be able fire with it like that.\n\nFor reference, here's an animation of the AR-15/M-16 mechanism in action so you can see how everything feeds & lines up.",
"Something nobody has mentioned yet is that bullets are generally made of a much softer metal than the barrel. \n\nThe barrel is steel (very hard), and the bullet is lead, which is extremely soft. It may be jacketed with a copper alloy, but those are also much softer than steel.\n\nA soft metal has a lot of trouble damaging a much harder one.\n\n(Steel-jacketed bullets exist for special purposes, but they're rare exactly because they wear out the barrel quickly.)",
"A good example could be a tube of tennis balls (that's what they sell 'em in). The balls are almost exactly the size of the tube. If you have a single ball in an open-topped tube and swing it in a wide arc, the ball doesn't start bouncing around the tube since the tight space only allows the momentum of the ball only to move along the length of the tube. The ball should exit pretty straight from the tube at that point.",
" > So yea I want to know how, Especially when there are videos of untrained people using guns, Who trip and fall and their hand remains on the trigger, While they are falling the bullets go straight out of the gun and never hit the gun itself from the inside.\n\nIf you are wondering why the bullet doesn't arc into the barrel itself, when the gun is traveling in an arc while being fired, this is simple physics. It is the same reason the Earth spinning doesn't mean you have to run to keep up with it's rotation: you are rotating too. If you are moving the gun in an arc while firing it, the bullet is also moving in that arc, affected by the same force that is moving the gun in that arc. It will only be when the bullet is free of the gun, when the force being applied to the gun is no longer being applied to the bullet, that it will start traveling in a straight line.\n\nedit: Of course the key is what others have said, the reason the bullet isn't free of the force moving the gun in an arc the moment it is fired, is that the bullet is touching the gun for the entire time it is in the barrel.",
"The bullets do rub against the inside of the barrel. But the barrel is made of very hard steel, while most bullets are lined with a very soft metal like copper or brass. So the barrel rubs grooves in the bullet (this is how CSI can match a bullet to a gun) but the softer bullet does little damage to the gun.\n\nI did say little, though, not none. It leaves behind traces of metal that need to be cleaned out periodically (along with soot and such from the gunpowder), and will eventually wear down the grooves in the barrel (rifling) to the point it should be replaced. It's just that the amount of shots you need to fire to get noticeable damage is much much more than most guns are ever fired.",
"Using a regular semi-auto handgun like a Glock as an example here: \n\nThe bullet does touch the inside of the barrel, but just barely. When the trigger is pulled a thing called a firing pin hits the bottom of the shell casing (the brass thing on the bottom of the bullet which hold the bullet and gunpowder. The casing is designed to fit fairly snugly and create a bit of a seal. \n\nThe firing pin ignites a tiny explosion which *then* ignites the gunpowder right behind the bullet. That creates tremendous pressure in a very small space and both pops the bullet out of the shell casing *and* out of the barrel. Picture the way a space rocket launches in stages, it's sort of like that. The shell casing is like the first and second stage. The explosion of gunpowder builds up a bunch of pressure and gasses inside the barrel and the bullet, which just barely touches the inside of the barrel has nowhere to go but out the end. As was mentioned, rifling (like spiral grooves in the barrel) puts a spin on the bullet, kind of like when you throw a football. That helps the bullet stay on a more level path longer as it flies through the air.\n\nThe bullet is like the space capsule or satellite or warhead. The difference being that as the bullet is fired the shell casing is \"stuck\" so it can't follow it out of the barrel. The energy of the explosion is also used to cycle the guns action (moves some pieces in one direction and then they are forced back into place by strong springs.)\n\nThat cycling action pulls a little hook called an extractor back that grabs the rim of the shell casing and flings it out a hole in the slide (the boxy metal tube that surrounds the outside of the barrel on a semi-automatic pistol like a Glock). That makes room for the next shell (fresh casing with a bullet inside) which gets pushed into the chamber by springs in the magazine (a little box inside the grip of the gun that holds the ammunition).\n\nGun barrels are made from very strong steel that can contain all of that pressure and are much harder than the lead and/or copper that the bullet is made of. Once you fire a gun a bunch of times, say 2-300 bullets, the inside of the gun gets kind of dirty. Most of it is black soot and stuff left behind by the gunpowder burning, but a little bit is lead or copper that rubs off the bullet on its way out of the barrel. You clean all that out using special solvents and a brush and little cloths. \n\nThe bullet moves in a straight line and doesn't bang around in the gun even if someone doesn't hold the gun firmly because its all held in place by the shell casing and because the bullet is just the right size to loosely fill the barrel. It also helps that the bullet exits the barrel so quickly with so much force that there is no way anything can knock it around. Bullets move VERY fast. Like 800-1000 feet *per second* Many go faster than that, like 3000+ feet per second. 1000 feet is as tall as a skyscraper. So imagine of you fired a gun straight up from the bottom of One World Trade or the Sears Tower. The bullet would reach the top of the building in about a second! Or if you use a football field, a *slow* bullet can cross the length of 5 football fields in *one second*. A fast one can cross 10-15 football fields in a second! Most bullets go so fast they break the sound barrier and that's part of the \"bang\" that a gun makes when you fire it (along with the gunpowder exploding) "
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15bal1 | the nuremberg trials and how "following orders" isn't a valid defense. | This is going to be a long one.... td;dr at the bottom.
In the military, if you disobey an order (and I'm talking a big/important one) you'll get court martialed correct? And the results of such court martials are lengthy jail or prison time right?
Now let's say it's during a period of high tension or aggression, where the consequences of such a court martial would result in extremely long prison sentences, being sent to a labour camp or execution. What then? Are you still supposed to follow orders according to your own conscience? What if following or not following orders would result in lengthy prison sentences or eventual execution?
***
~~Here's a scenario, you're Hans Fritz in the Wehrmacht and you come across a bunch of jewish, homosexual, communist,Poles who really don't like the idea of getting into a train. Your CO orders you and your buddies to line them against a wall and execute them. You're a loyal member of the State but somehow you feel that this *isn't* right. What are you supposed to do? You don't know that the Allies are going to win.~~
~~####On one hand:~~
~~* You're a loyal member of the state, party and military. You *did* volunteer...~~
~~* It's expected of you and while your buddies are looking uneasy about it, a job is a job and you *were* ordered.~~
~~* If you don't follow through, you'll get court martialed, your family may suffer consequences at home and you might get sent to one of those prison camps you keep hearing about.~~
~~#### On the other hand:~~
~~* *If* the Allies win, you'll probably get sent to prison or executed. **But you don't know that.**~~
~~* What *can* you do about it? It's not the best situation but you can't just shoot your CO and the rest of your group.~~
~~* If you don't do it, someone else will.~~
My question is ~~**how valid are these statements?**~~ Lets say you refuse to do it and your CO points his Walther at your head. What then? **Are you "legally required" to let him kill you?**
My other question is according to the international courts, **what are you supposed to do when ordered to commit a war crime or do anything "unethical"?**
##I could come up with a more modern, less ambiguous scenario if necessary.
Lets say you're an American Soldier sent to an area that has been recently hit by a natural disaster. When you get there, you are told by the state to collect firearms from anybody you see. As in somebody is protecting their house with a shotgun, you're to go over to them and relieve them of it. Or (now this is hypothetical) you're supposed to detail citizens and leave them tied up in the streets. Or you're ordered to break into peoples homes and seize their property? Or (now super hypothetical) what if you're ordered to execute American citizens without a fair trial during a national emergency or martial law?
According to the American constitution that's supposed to be illegal. And don't soldiers say an oath when they enlist that they'll obey the constitution?
And god forbid, you as an American Soldier, disagree with your orders and are forced to shoot your CO and anybody not with you. What's going to happen to you? What if **you do agree** with your orders and violate the constitution and/or commit a war crime, what kind of defense can you put up?
TL;DR What if worst came to worst and [THIS GUY](_URL_0_) had to shoot his CO? What if he didn't and was tried? Is he allowed to say "I was just following orders?" What if he was forced to by either a gun to the head or by prison time?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15bal1/eli5_the_nuremberg_trials_and_how_following/ | {
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"Just to point it out, no lowly guards as you described got killed. They got fines, and small ones. And there were many who were noted as sadistic that then hid behind the \"following orders\" defense. But few people who did not plan things got prison, and none got death.",
"To start with Nuremberg only dealt with the highest ranking Nazi Party officials & military leaders - people in positions of great power. People like Hans would have been picked up in one of the smaller post-war trials, if at all.\n\nIn the vast majority of cases, it was only people in leadership positions that were convicted. The 18yo kid that was conscripted and forced to load people onto a train was ignored - it would be the people that ran camps, performed medical experiments on prisoners & the handful of guards that actively & openly abused prisoners (rather than just keeping them in inhumane conditions).",
"It is and it isn't, its quite a grey area in a lot of cases. Basically the cases general go that if you did more then you were forced to (like getting promoted or volunteering for things like the SS) then you are guilty. Low level individuals who had to partake or be shot would not be prosecuted.",
"For the most part, \"following orders\" *is* a valid defense...soldiers are expected to carry the orders of their superiors. In most situations, their superiors will be held solely responsible for the consequences.\n\nWhat the post WWII trials established is that it is not a *universal* defense. There are certain crimes so horrible, like rape and torture, that a solider is considered complicit even if they were just following orders. Where exactly that line is is a matter of much debate.",
" > My other question is according to the international courts, what are you supposed to do when ordered to commit a war crime or do anything \"unethical\"?\n\nWhat your are generally 'supposed' to do (when serving in the military) is follow orders. What you are asked to do is make a simple determination if the orders are to do something against the law (murder, rape, etc.).\n\nI'm not sure what the confusion is but in your example, in the U.S. armed forces there is not a CO that has the authority to murder anyone in their company. If a CO is threatening an enlisted solider with a gun, then I would think we drift into the realm of self defense.",
"The Milgram experiment shows that it should be a valid defense... "
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2zyiey | why can't people in the us sue individual police officers like we can doctors? | If something happens to me in the OR, I'm able to sue both the hospital and the individual doctors involved (the reason they carry malpractice insurance). Why is it then that I'm only able to sue the police force as a whole and not the individual officers as well? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zyiey/eli5_why_cant_people_in_the_us_sue_individual/ | {
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" > Why is it then that I'm only able to sue the police force as a whole and not the individual officers as well?\n\nThe officers are expected to put themselves into difficult positions as part of their duty, and are not paid enough to afford the expensive malpractice insurance that doctors must carry. The assumption of the risk is taken on by the government agency itself as a necessity of having anyone be willing to take the job.",
"The state asserts \"sovereign immunity\". In other words, you can't sue the King (or the King's agents, etc.) unless the King agrees to let you. We don't have a King, but our government retains sovereign immunity.\n\nThere are many times you can sue the state even when it doesn't want to let you. Exceptions to sovereign immunity have been carved out of many laws and are commonplace, but one place it is not is in the exercise of police power. It makes good sense for this to be so, or everyone who was arrested would sue, and the police force would be unable to operate.\n\nTypically the redress for issues with police misbehavior is through the ballot box, not the court system. The police are accountable to elected authorities, who can, will and do force them to alter their behavior and in some cases waive immunity so a lawsuit against truly egregious behavior can go forward.",
"In many places you absolutely can. You can sue the officer for a particular incident. If the department stands behind the actions of the officer and says \"this guy/gal was acting within the legal scope of his/her duties and didn't act outside departmental policy\" then the department is required to cover any/all costs associated with the lawsuit. Honestly, this is what lawyers and plaintiffs are hoping for as the city/county/state has much deeper pockets than the officer. \nIf the department says the officer acted outside policy and/or law, the officer can be on their own. \nMany officers have started suing people who assault them and they're winning. Goes both ways. "
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bl701r | money laundering. i've seen all the tv shows and i still don't fully understand how you "clean" it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bl701r/eli5_money_laundering_ive_seen_all_the_tv_shows/ | {
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"You can’t just deposit large amounts of money into a bank without people taking notice and wondering where it came from, that just screams illegal income. If you have a business you can deposit that money and say it came from the business instead. Thus it has been “cleaned” and appears to be legitimately earned and taxed money.",
"Okay. So let's say that I earn a lot of illegal money from selling drugs. If all of a sudden, I start dropping thousands of dollars left and right when I don't have a job, the police and the IRS are going to investigate where all that money is coming from. I could get caught and sent to jail. BUT, I want to be able to spend all that illegal money I've gotten! \n\n\nThe trick is to have a business that isn't expected to have lots of records, which people are likely to use cash to pay for. Like, a laundry. I can then run a laundry, and while it may only earn a few hundred dollars a day, I can lie and pretend it made a lot more, by using that illegal money I made. So if I get someone with my illegal drug money to spend all of it at my laundry, it's now easy for me to spend all of that money because I \"earned\" it. \n\n\nSo the trick is to have a business where people use cash, and where it's hard for folks to examine and check how much you are actually selling, so that you can convert your illegal money, which if you use will get you arrested if the police figure it out, into money that you can explain where it came from and thus the police won't be able to arrest you.",
"You need a legit business that deals in cash, say a car wash.\n\nThen, let's say you cook the best meth in all of New Mexico and you need to be able to use the money you make selling it to pay for legitimate stuff, like cancer treatments. \n\nNow, you'll slowly bring some of the cash you made selling your meth to the car wash and give it to your accountant wife, who is in on the game.\n\nShe will create receipts for things that never happened and attach them to the illegally gained cash. She'll probably tell you to dump out some car carpet shampoo and such to support the fake receipt.\n\nNow, just bring all that cash to the bank and deposit it into the car wash's account.\n\nYou'll probably run into a problem with having to launder too much money to stand an audit. So you probably should have set up a chicken fast food restaurant with a lot of locations.",
"In the simplest explanation I can give - if you need your ill-gotten gains to be in your bank and not in a box under the bed you need some explanation for where that money came from otherwise it’ll raise some eyebrows.\n\nTo do this you need a business that you can falsify records in to “launder” the dirty money through, which you then pay tax on, and have the “clean” money more legitimately accessible.",
"Car wash, hotel, bar, restaurants... Lots of ways to do money laundry.\n\nRendezvous hotels are the best. You put your rooms as occupied, nobody pays with credit card there anyways while putting your own cash money in the cash register. Of course you lose money during the progress but at least now you can bring it to the bank."
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3b9wx8 | i'm british. how could greece defaulting on its loan repayment and leaving the eurozone affect me, the rest of the eu and the global economy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b9wx8/eli5im_british_how_could_greece_defaulting_on_its/ | {
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"For one thing, some of that debt is owed to UK banks and institutions. They will have to take a loss, which could mean everything to high interest rates to outright bank failures.\n\nIt will heard the economies of the EU in general, and those are some of the UK biggest trading partners.\n\nOne the other hand, the weakened euro might make the pound more attractive, which could boost the UK economy.",
"If Greece defaults on its loan payments, the following might happen (in no particular order):\n\n1. It sets up a bad precedent. Perhaps it will encourage other countries to borrow too much money and do risky things in the future. If Greece doesn't have to repay its loans, why should other countries?\n\n2. It means Greece will have difficulty borrowing any money for a long time. If they decided not to pay back these loans, they might not pay back similar loans in the future.\n\n3. It means people will be more pessimistic in the state of the Greek economy and Greek's trading partners, and by extension in the global economy; such pessimism can hurt stock markets.\n\n4. It means Greece will not pay back the entities it owes money to, which may include your country.\n\n5. Other countries may be more likely to emulate Greece and default on their payments.\n\n5. Other countries may be more likely to leave the Eurozone for other reasons when times are bad, sticking Britain (and other countries) with the bill for their mistakes.\n\nThat's just off the top of my head..."
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1rx3g9 | is it possible to put a backdoor in linux? | And is it worth it? I ve seen an interview of Linus Torvalds (creator of Linux) who is asked quite this way "did the n.s.a asked you to put backdoors in linux" and he answered "no" but made obviously a face that meant "yes". | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rx3g9/eli5_is_it_possible_to_put_a_backdoor_in_linux/ | {
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"It's certainly possible. The problem is that all of the source code of Linux is open source. That means everyone in the world can read the lines of code. So if someone wrote in a backdoor, it's there for anyone to find. \n\nIf such a backdoor was found it would seriously question the credibility of Linux and could very likely spawn forks of the code that had much stricter security requirements. ",
"Someone tried in 2003.\n\n_URL_0_ (the guy who runs that is a princeton prof)\n\nWe don't know if any efforts have since succeeded. There's some evidence that Linus was asked to put in a Linux backdoor, and since Linux itself rarely ships entirely by itself there could be a backdoor in say Ubuntu or Redhat or the like and you suddenly realize the scale of the problem. Thousands upon thousands of programmers writing hundreds of thousands or millions of lines of code, and a single 'mistake' and you've got a problem. \n\nThe 'it's open source' argument isn't so good. The scale and complexity of the system means even if you think it's been reviewed and checked lots of places, or if it gets discovered a problem could have been there for a while. \n\nWhich ultimately is what all linux kernel vulnerabilities could be, a deliberate vulnerability made to look like a coding mistake. "
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fnn31c | how are any factories able to retool at all, let alone quickly? (like from cars to n95 masks) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fnn31c/eli5_how_are_any_factories_able_to_retool_at_all/ | {
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"A car factory usually have a subsection of the assembly line making the textile for the interior of the car. They use common machines for cutting and sowing the material from the same model line as the factories which make face masks. The machines might be a different size so they would not be ideal for setting up a face mask factory but they operate just the same and you might just need to change out the tools in the machines, change the input material and reprogram them for the different pattern and they will now make a very different product. Another way to make face masks is to press fiber together. And a car factory is in no short supply of pressing machines. However again most of their presses are heavy duty presses for pressing big steel sheets into car parts but they can be adjusted for lower pressures in order to press together fiber into face masks. You are now using a big expensive machine for a job that can easily done by a much cheaper lighter duty machine but it is still fully possible. They just need to adjust the pressure and change the die from car parts to face masks. And instead of sending the work to the nearby drilling and wielding machines for finishing they need to send them across the entire plant to the sowing machines to be finished. It is also possible to use similar techniques to make face shields, gloves, etc.\n\nThe issue is that you are now using the wrong model of machines for the job. The work needs to be shipped back and forth across the factory to the different machines as your assembly line is set up wrong. A lot of machines will be without work. Even the machines with work will mostly wait for other machines or for the work to be transported. So yes, it would be inefficient to convert a factory but it is possible. Depending on how long they are going to do it for they might also move the machines around to make a more efficient assembly line and they might buy some new machines where there are bottlenecks.",
"Might just be a reason to keep doors open.. maybe while your “re-tooling” you are also running normal production or other activities."
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6bt7s0 | what causes the supercontinent cycle? | Why do tectonic plates that are being forced together suddenly reverse direction and begin to move apart? Why do plates moving away from one another reverse direction and begin heading towards one another? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6bt7s0/eli5_what_causes_the_supercontinent_cycle/ | {
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"As you can imagine, it's a slow process. Tectonic plates move at a rate of anywhere between mm to several cm a year. No plates coming together ever 'suddenly' reverse direction, they slow down and may stay joined together for millions of years before breaking apart. \n\n\nTo answer your question though, you need to understand the forces that are acting on tectonic plates. There are lots, but only a couple of important ones to mention here:\n\n\n• Slab pull, in which the [subducted](_URL_1_) slab of a tectonic plate is pulling on the rest of the plate and dragging it along the length of the ocean floor. \n\n\n• Ridge push, in which the mound of newly generated crust at a [mid-ocean ridge](_URL_2_) causes gravitational instability and so effectively pushes the crust down the slope and out across the ocean floor. \n\n\nThis ocean basins are like a conveyor belt of rock, gradually creeping across the Earth's interior and being recycled back into the mantle at subduction zones. The continents are made of more bouyant rock which doesn't subduct into the Earth, and so they are just shuffled around and slotted together, broken apart and deformed as they take a ride on the tectonic plate. (A plate can have oceanic crust on it, continental crust, or combination of the two). The motions are somewhat unpredictable partly due to the complex processes going on deep in the Earth, which have consequences for tectonic motion, but also because the Earth is (almost) a sphere. Make a bunch of separate sections in the outer layers of a sphere and for them to move around they will need to move at different rates, jostle about, have subduction arcs that curve across the Earth and create differential motion. \n\n\n[Check out this animation of tectonic motion, which illustrates nicely the migration of spreading ridges across ocean floors.](_URL_0_)\n\n\nWhere things get interesting is when one of the spreading ridges themselves, or perhaps a large area of seafloor material erupted in some ancient superplume event meets a subduction zone. This can change the rate of subduction, change the direction a bit, or even jam it up. When a continent meets a subduction zone it definitely jams it up, and the only way to go is over or up. If there is a continental crust on the other side of the subduction zone then they will get squished together and start to deform upwards. This is how the Himalayas formed, when the Indian plate rammed into the Eurasian plate some 50 million years ago. Initially there was plenty of oceanic crust to subduct, but when continental crust met continental crust the mountain range began to form. \n\n\nOne of the mechanisms thought to be able to break apart supercontinental landmasses is this: once the supercontinent has formed, it effectively forms a 'blanket' of thick crust on one side of the Earth. The heat flow from mantle convection currents will therefore build up under this continental blanket for millions of years until it's hot enough to affect the dynamics of the crust above, weakening parts enough to thin it and punch through. If this evolves into a spreading ridge then you have new directions of motion for plates to be pushed in and eventual breakup of the supercontinent. "
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5d2e7u | why are there so many different sim card sizes when the 'chip' is always the same size? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d2e7u/eli5_why_are_there_so_many_different_sim_card/ | {
"a_id": [
"da17e07",
"da1ovpm"
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"score": [
16,
6
],
"text": [
"You can ask the same question about file formats or usb connector types..\n\nFor something that is made in big numbers with machines to be used by many people, it must be made in the same way each time. In order so that we don't have to make a special sim card for every phone model we just agree on a size. We call this standardization. It saves a lot of time and money. How a sim cards looks is the result of standardization. At first they were big like credit cards, because we also had calling cards, which people already knew. Then they realised they can make them even smaller, which would also save space in the casing of the phone. But each time they had to agree with other makers of phones what the exact sizes were. They did this many times, that is why we have so many different sizes.\n\nCould they have made them very small (like micro sim) to begin with? Probably, but I think they were trying to make them easy to use. (No tweezers or similar needed.) Also older phones were quite big so it didn't matter much. \n\n\n(heh writing for a 5 year old seems a little condescending when it's actually adults that read it.)\n",
"The \"standard\" in that picture is actually mini.\n\nA full sized SIM is the same as a credit card."
]
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[],
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||
6rp4da | why is it easier to imitate someone who has a voice with a higher pitch than your own, rather than lower? | I've been trying to get better at doing impressions. Some people have requested that I try to do certain celebrities or characters, but when I imitate men, it's hard to make the voice sound natural. The lower register sounds breathy and weird. I also noticed men seem to be able to imitate women pretty easily. Is there a reason for this, and possibly a way to get better? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6rp4da/eli5why_is_it_easier_to_imitate_someone_who_has_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"dl6qex5",
"dl6unwh"
],
"score": [
5,
2
],
"text": [
"Muscles in the larynx control the tension on your vocal chords, producing higher tones when they are taut and lower tones when relaxed. You can tighten them the way you would tighten any muscle, but you can only relax them so far. On their own, the chords produce a sound sort of like a trumpet's mouthpiece when air passes between them. Your throat, mouth, nose, and sinuses cause that sound to resonate in different ways to produce the sound we make when speaking. Everyone differs physically meaning everyone sounds a little different. As for improving your impersonations, try recording yourself and playing it back - you will hear what others hear and not your own voice in your own head. ",
"You are describing a falsetto voice technique.\n\nA falsetto uses harmonics (segments) of your vocal cords to produce higher pitches, while your normal speaking voice uses the entire length. Since you physically can't get lower than the entire length of your vocal cords there is a limit to the low. The harmonics however use whatever smaller segments you can learn to control."
]
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[],
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|
d0rd85 | what makes the brain go “wow this is delicious!” | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d0rd85/eli5_what_makes_the_brain_go_wow_this_is_delicious/ | {
"a_id": [
"ezd0bh6"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Any food which are high in energy. Mostly, that means food that are high in sugar or fat, which is why junk food at sugary food taste so good.\n\nThe reason is because of evolution. For probably 180,000 years, humans were living as hunter gatherers, much like a lion. This means that food is hard to come by and people often starves. So, for that period of time, it make sense for our brain to crave high fat and high sugar food because food is rare and those food contains a lot of energy. Also, in those times, we move a lot so we can burn off the fat and it doesn't cause any issues. \n\nBut, now, food are abundant, but our brains do not have the time to re-adjust this evolutionary trait, so we still prefer high fat and high sugar food."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
a99zaw | why can't we see the moon's surface well enough to see lunar lander sites, but we're able to produce deeper space images with orbital telescopes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a99zaw/eli5_why_cant_we_see_the_moons_surface_well/ | {
"a_id": [
"echlw2x",
"echm3e1"
],
"score": [
12,
3
],
"text": [
"The deep space images we get are of objects which are really, really big and usually emitting huge amounts of light on their own. It is like asking why you can't see an ant from 100 meters away but you can see a stadium from a mile away. A stadium which is on fire.",
"The atmosphere really clouds our vision (pun intended). It distorts what we see and how far we can see, orbital telescopes don't have that problem. Modern telescopes can see the moon's surface rather well though, but how well the details can be distinguished is limited by the atmosphere."
]
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[],
[]
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||
3s3het | professional football | I don't understand anything except there are four quarters and a touchdown is worth 7points. I want to learn. I feel like there is a whole culture I am missing out on and want to learns about it | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s3het/eli5_professional_football/ | {
"a_id": [
"cwtsvm5",
"cwtt0pt"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Well what do you want to learn about it? There's a whole lot going on. \nThe games are weekly, there is a 17 week schedule, and each team has a mid-season \"bye\" where they don't have a game and get to rest. After that, the best teams go to the playoffs and compete for the Super Bowl. \nA normal game has 4 quarters, divided into 2 halfs. In between, there is halftime, where the teams go to the locker rooms and take a break, get a new game plan, and tend to their sorenesses. \nTeams consist of lots of players with very specialized roles. Now I don't know what other sports backgrounds you come from, but there are offensive players, defensive players, and \"special teams\", the in-between for offense and defense. Quarters are 15 minutes, between the halfs play restarts, between the other quarters, you flip sides (so wind and other factors aren't unfair). While you are on offense, the other team is on defense, and you have 4 chances to get the ball 10 yards forwards. If you fail 4 times in a row, the other team gets the ball where they stopped you. On offense, you can run or pass. The coaches call plays for each team and if it's a run, the quarterback (fancy throwing dude) hands the ball to the running back (quick offense guy), and he gets to run with it until he is tackled or steps out of play. If he drops it, it's a \"fumble\" and either team can pick it up and run with it. If it's a pass, the quarterback has a chance to throw the ball to a wide receiver (pass catchy man) for much more yardage. If he drops it, the play is dead and nothing happens. If the other team catches it, they can run with it. \nTouchdowns are actually worth 6 points, and then the kicker has to come on and kick an \"extra point\". Field goals are just longer extra points, and are worth 3 points. If a team goes too far backwards, and gets tackled in their own end zone, it's worth 2 points to the defense.",
"The basic gist is that each team tries to advance the ball towards the other team's end-zone. To advance the ball, the team can either run with it or have the quarterback pass it forward from behind the line of scrimmage. Each attempt to advance the ball is called a \"play\", and the play is over when the ball is \"down\", either because the ball-carrier was taken to the ground by an opposing player (a \"tackle\") or the ball touches the ground without being caught (an \"incomplete pass\").\n\nWhen a team gets the ball, they will have four chances (\"downs\") to advance the ball 10 yards. If they make it, they get another four downs to advance 10 yards, and so on. If they cannot make 10 yards in four downs, the other team gets the ball. Because of this, on fourth down, teams will usually either punt (kick the ball far down the field so the other team has further to go to score) or if they are close enough, they'll kick a field goal for 3 points.\n\nIf a team advances the ball to the end-zone, they score a touchdown for 6 points. After the touchdown, the team will get a chance for one more play for \"bonus\" score. They can either kick a field goal from 33 yards away for 1 point (a \"PAT\" or Point After Try), or they can attempt to reach the end-zone from 2 yards away for 2 points (a \"2-point conversion\").\n\nThat's pretty much the minimum you need to watch and enjoy football."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
248spi | what is the cause of death when a person jumps off the george washington bridge? | _URL_0_
_URL_1_
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/248spi/eli5what_is_the_cause_of_death_when_a_person/ | {
"a_id": [
"ch4pn66"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"The sudden stop at the end.\n\nWhen falling fast/far enough water has roughly the same consistency as concrete. The impact will break bones, crush organs and probably damage the brain. "
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd-rescue-man-woman-jumped-george-washington-bridge-article-1.1771596",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_bridge"
] | [
[]
] |
|
4v62c1 | alcohol in cosmetics | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4v62c1/eli5_alcohol_in_cosmetics/ | {
"a_id": [
"d5vqlke"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"In my understanding, alcohol is still widely used due to it's anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory properties. Alcohol is mostly preferred compared to water as solvent in many cases as well."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
7szfr9 | how do massive college campuses (especially ones in major cities) provide wifi accross such a large area | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7szfr9/eli5_how_do_massive_college_campuses_especially/ | {
"a_id": [
"dt8nxhe",
"dt92nct"
],
"score": [
40,
3
],
"text": [
"This is part of what I do and the short answer is a lot of access points.\n\nThe slightly longer answer is that we use special wireless access points that are meant for high density campus use. These access points have several differences to the one you probably have at home. They are only access points, for starters, and not routers. They are centrally managed, meaning that at our Network Operations Center, our technicians are able to see and monitor in real-time the status and performance of every access point at every location on every campus in our state-wide system. All the settings of the access points (channels, transmitter strength, etc.) can be remotely changed. There’s even software that dynamically monitors and adjusts those settings to try to optimize the performance. \n\nIt’s very complicated, as you can imagine, and very expensive, especially once you factor in the training and salaries of the on-site technicians and the initial set up, which usually includes outside specialist engineers. \n\nAnd that’s why your tuition is so high.",
"The antennas used in enterprise-scale wifi are sometimes a bit unusual. Indoors in large buildings they sometimes use a distributed antenna; essentially a long coax cable with slits cut into it’s shielding so that it leaks RF along it’s entire length. DISCLAIMER: I am not a network engineer, and this info is second hand from a friend who is an RF engineer for a major wireless carrier who designs large wifi installations professionally."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
3m8m7a | is there a science to why giant things like godzilla move slowly or is that just hollywood? | Even in video games giant stuff moves slowly. What's the deal? Someone said it was air resistance, but I'm unsure that's true. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3m8m7a/eli5_is_there_a_science_to_why_giant_things_like/ | {
"a_id": [
"cvcxh2j",
"cvcxmcm",
"cvcxwrx",
"cvd3r7w"
],
"score": [
2,
20,
34,
3
],
"text": [
"It looks unnatural when something large moves very fast. There was a commentary on Transformers (maybe it was Michael Bay?) and he said that the farther from the frame the robots got, the more slow their movements would need to become in order to seem \"heavy\" and give them the appearance that they were massive.",
"It's perspective. When you walk, you may swing your arms a couple of feet every second. When Godzilla walks (assuming human-proportioned arms/legs), the arms would have to swing maybe 20 feet every second to make it look like it's walking at the same \"speed.\"\n\nThat's also why sometimes it looks like large airliners, such as the 747 or A380, look like they are just hanging there in the air. They're not, it's just that they are so damn big, they are farther away than they look and so don't appear to be moving very fast.",
"The science behind it is the [square-cube law](_URL_0_). When something gets bigger, it's volume and mass increases more than the surface area. It takes more energy to move with the same relative speed as something smaller in size, so it moves more slowly.",
"fiction is fiction, so ignore that. \n\nthere's certain physical reasons like /u/hotdudgefries [pointed out](_URL_0_)\n\nevolutionarily speaking, large animals have their size as a defense mechanism, so they don't need to be as fast to survive."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law"
],
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3m8m7a/eli5_is_there_a_science_to_why_giant_things_like/cvcxwrx"
]
] |
|
3zwu3g | on extremely foggy days why doesn't the fog drift into homes or vehicles parked outside? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zwu3g/eli5_on_extremely_foggy_days_why_doesnt_the_fog/ | {
"a_id": [
"cypm3ne"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"It does. But fog is mostly transparent. That's why you can still see your hand in front of your face in the midst of fog, but not the house down the block. When looking at the house, you're looking through more fog than when you're looking at your hand. If there's just a little bit of fog in your house, it is pretty much invisible and quickly dissipates. Fog is just moisture in the air, and while there's not as much of it, there's still plenty inside your house so it's not that out of place."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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