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1y505y | are quantum fluctuations truly random (non-deterministic) or do we not yet possess the capacity to understand the perceived randomness of such fluctuations? | edit: simplified to single question to remove ambiguity. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y505y/eli5_are_quantum_fluctuations_truly_random/ | {
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"It is the general scientific consensus that the motion of these particles are truly random, and it would be impossible with any amount of technology to predict their behavior.",
"You want to look into [Bell's theorem](_URL_0_). Bell proved with some fairly basic assumptions that some physical property of particles, that we are just unable to measure thus far, cannot explain the experimental results. \n\nThe details of the experiment and the argument are explained in [this askscience](_URL_1_) thread in a fairly layman friendly way. "
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4s8nso | why is it so hard to know you dehydrated but really easy to know when you're hungry? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4s8nso/eli5_why_is_it_so_hard_to_know_you_dehydrated_but/ | {
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"Cell utilizes interstitial fluid to balance out hydration of cells, which we have an abundance of, shifting fluids throughout the body to move waste and nutrients. A lot of people typically get a hunger (or an extreme craving for salt) when they are thirsty because the body is trying to get sodium to help retain fluids. There is a cycle in your body that is vital for all cells called the sodium-potassium pump. \n\nFor hunger you rely on the primary chemical Neuropeptide Y (NPY) which communicates with different parts/chemicals of your body, ghrelin (chemical released for hunger), leptin link, and glucose (basic energy block.) When your stomach is empty, it releases ghrelin to signal hunger, thus void in your stomach as well as the effects of this chemical much more noticeable.\n\ntl;dr The signs are there, they are just more subtle. Understanding how your body functions as a whole will allow you to read the hints it is giving you.",
"The physiological processes which regulate thirst are much more diverse than the ones for hunger. The liver and pancreas work to regulate blood sugar. When your liver starts metabolizing stored sugar to increase blood concentrations it (generally) causes hunger.\n\nNow thirst is triggered by several mechanisms: cellular dehydration protein based receptors, low blood pressure, high blood pressure, the fluid pressure in the brain, mechanical receptors in the mouth, sweat production, the state of the external mucus membranes and renin from the kidneys. Strangely, there is but one primary indicator of thirst, those mechanical receptors in the mouth. The side effects of dehydration are pretty noticeable however. So when you become dehydrated you were consciously ignoring the primary indicator of thirst, but hopefully notice the effect of dehydration. Furthermore, the regulatory systems in your body effectively compensate for the loss of fluids, even in extreme cases. There are no major physiological symptoms for some time even while losing water, so it also takes time to reach a level of dehydration which is really noticeable.\n\nThere is another issue where the act of drinking water immediately stops those receptors in your mouth from feeling thirst, while not consuming enough water to stop dehydration. This is likely to protect the body against drinking too much water. This is why drinking sodas can 'quench your thirst' but are not actually remedying the dehydration. \n\ntl:dr There are many ways your body checks for thirst, but only one main way to notify your brain with the feeling in your mouth. This is easily ignored until symptoms of dehydration proper become noticeable. "
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ax9qlh | when women have their period, do they suffer effects from blood loss? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ax9qlh/eli5_when_women_have_their_period_do_they_suffer/ | {
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"Some women can become anemic from their periods. That’s why a lot of birth control packs have iron pills for the 7 days you are not taking hormones (if on a 21 day cycle)",
"I am borderline anaemic and my periods make me feel dreadful. Also, psychologically you take a battering as it feels pretty rubbish to bleed for 6 days every few weeks. ",
"If you already have and issue (such as thalassemia, anemic) or anything like that, and your bleeding caused by period is too much, maybe. But in general women don't have a blood loss above 30 mL. If so, then she should see a doctor to investigate endometriosis, policystich ovaries, hormonal disorders and stuff. ",
"As a general rule, no. Most women won't lose more than about 35ml of blood during their menstruation, which isn't really enough to affect their physiology in a significant way - when you donate blood, you typically give 470ml, which is over 10x the amount with no real negative effects.",
"By the time your period starts, you have already lost the blood, which is sequestered in the endometrium during earlier phases of your cycle. During your period, the blood you are losing is not coming from your bloodstream the way it would if you cut yourself or had blood drawn. ",
"The blood that we lose on our periods is actually the inner lining that was built during the menstrual cycle which is necessary for the embryo as it contains nutrients and other things. \n\nWhen we’re on our period this lining is simply degraded and shed as blood and blood clots. That‘s why we experience cramps, which are muscle constrictions that help this process.\n\nSo the blood doesn’t actually come from the blood stream. \n\nOf course every body is different and there are different experiences and problems that come along, but in generally speaking, no, there‘s no effect from blood lost as it‘s not the blood from the blood stream."
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2aajz7 | what is the point of the little dangly thing at the back of the mouth? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2aajz7/eli5_what_is_the_point_of_the_little_dangly_thing/ | {
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"The uvula prevents nutrients from entering your nasal cavity. It's the main reason water you drink doesn't come out your nose.",
"The dangly thing is called a uvula. It has a lot to do with someones gag reflex. Touch it = gag. Touch it a lot = barf. In the back of your throat you have two ways things that enter can go. Air you breathe travels through one, which is your trachea. That goes to your lungs. What you eat and drink goes down your esophagus. It makes sure you don't choke on anything too big...... -_- ",
"The uvula itself is not what separates the nasal and pro-pharyngeal cavities. The uvula is the termination of just *one* muscle in the soft palate (or velum) which is made up of multiple muscles. When these muscles contract they raise the soft palate. If functioning properly, the back of the soft palate should touch the wall of the pharynx (throat) and create a seal separating the two cavities allowing 1. you to swallow without any food or liquid coming out your nose, 2. you to create certain kinds of consonants (example, a /p/ unvoiced bilabial stop) that requires pressure to build up in the oral cavity/pharynx and the velum/soft palate prevents air from escaping out the nose while making these sounds.\n\nThe uvula has a muscle that runs midline in the soft palate and attaches to the back of the hard palate. The muscle is the musculus uvulae. When it contracts it does more to shorten and \"bulk\" the soft palate to assist with the seal but does not perform this action on its own (the levator veil palatini a major muscle for palate elevation). \nAnatomy chart with functions of muscles: _URL_0_\n\nIt also is not necessarily the trigger for the gag reflex. You can trigger a gag reflex by touching the faucial arches (the two strips of tissue on either side of your tonsils) or other areas of the pharynx. It isn't a necessary reflex and has no bearing on swallowing. Some people have very limited or no gag reflex and are able to eat and drink without issue.\n\nFun fact: in some parts of the world the uvula is removed in an attempt to cue stuttering. This does not work. It also may do nothing at all; unless a large amount of tissue is removed or other structures are damaged it is unlikely to stop the soft palate from creating a seal aka velopharyngeal insufficiency (which would lead to hyper nasal speech).\n\ntl;dr The uvula itself (just the little ball of flesh hanging at the back of the throat) doesn't do all that much on its own. You can even probably do without it.\n\nEdit: spelling and clarified",
"It is actually called the punching bag in your mouth..."
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7e7cyx | propellers behind the engines vs propeller in front of the engines in bomber planes during world war 1. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7e7cyx/eli5_propellers_behind_the_engines_vs_propeller/ | {
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"[This stackexchange discussion](_URL_0_) covers this topic pretty well.\n\nIt seems that pushers (props behind the engine and wing) lead to the wing having less turbulent flow over it and thus increasing the precision of the control surfaces. Think think the B-36 bomber.\n\nApparently one of the problems with that design was keeping the engines cool while on the ground. A tractor design (propeller in front of the engine) blows air over the engine and helps to cool it. Pushers don't do that so well.\n\nPusher type engines have a number of disadvantages (and a few advantages) over tractor type engines and are generally not used all that often any more.\n\nThe wiki article on pusher engines has a good [breakdown of the advantages/disatvantages](_URL_1_)"
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1a53sq | why if light is a particle, and sound requires particles to vibrate to produce sound, that when you try to make a noise in space, nothing is heard | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1a53sq/eli5_why_if_light_is_a_particle_and_sound/ | {
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"What you experience as sound is the change in pressure inside your ear. Light doesn't create pressure the same way as atoms do. So your ears have no way to pick up that you did something that affected the light partcles. That's what your eyes are for."
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3ffw1o | do other languages have as many accents as english? why or why not? | There are wildly different English accents across the globe, but does this happen with other languages? I feel like it would, but I've never heard/seen anything about it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ffw1o/eli5_do_other_languages_have_as_many_accents_as/ | {
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"Yes. Each Spanish speaking country has a different accent from each other. And within Spain there are varying accents of Castilian (Spanish). There are also separate languages in Spain (Catalan, Basque, etc).",
"I can confirm that there are tons of different mandarin accents in China. Since there are so many different dialects being spoken (50-ish I think), and since mandarin is the standard dialect for business, if you travel around in China you will definitely hear mandarin spoken in a decidedly non-Beijing accent.\n\nEdit: Also, you probably wouldn't have heard about it since accents are usually lost in translation. As someone pointed out, jokes about accents are hard to understand if you don't know the language, so people leave them out. However, sometimes in translations people do translate it, for instance when I used to watch a tom and jerry cartoon where I think they were speaking in mandarin with an accent comparable to a twangy [cowboy](_URL_0_) accent in America.\n\nSource: Am asian.",
"French accents vary widely around the globe. Canadian French sounds much different than African French which sounds much different than French as spoken in France. The same is true of Spanish in Spain and Central and South America. The accents even vary, though more subtlely, regionally within countries.\n\nWith that in mind, I would still say English has a wider diversity of accents than any other language. This is a result, I think, of a combination of factors: \n\n1) English is, geographically speaking, the most widely spoken language in the world. Chinese (Mandarin) or Hindi, for comparison, is spoken by a much larger number of people but those speakers are concentrated in a much smaller geographical area. As a result, accents are far more subtle as speakers are in constant contact with each other. The US, on the other hand, has about a quarter of the population spread out over more or less the same area. This relative isolation allows the accents to become more pronounced. Even more so between say the UK and Australia. \n\n2) English is allowed to be a more fluid language. In France, for example, the French language is actually managed by a governmental body. In the case of Mandarin and Spanish, there is \"pressure\" to speak with a common accent. That is, the language as spoken with a rural accent is seen to be uncouth, even indicative of poor education. \nParticularly in the case of US and Australian English, there was a concerted effort to move away from the traditional British accent as a form of Nationalism as these two countries claimed independence. \n\n3) English is by far the most widely held second language. Which necessarily results in a large number of speakers who bring a native accent to the language. \n\n\nNow, keep in mind I'm not saying that these and other languages do not have many accents. They most certainly do. Simply, there are factors that more strongly encourage the diversification of English that are not quite as pronounced for other languages.",
"Everyone is giving examples of specific languages, so I'll just give a general answer: it's a resounding yes. Virtually all languages will have some kind of accent variation based on geography. Accents may also be based on things like social class or ethnicity, and other languages will have those as well. \n\nYou hear more about this for English because it has the most widespread community of speakers (and in your case, OP, you hear about it because it's your language).",
"German is so diverse that the regional differences are considered not just different accents, but different dialects."
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2rg48a | can human energy affect kinetic watches? | So my friend and his family swear that they can't wear kinetic watches and that their "magnetic fields" throw off the time. Is this even possible?I have looked this up and so far have only found websites for metaphysical health that use words like, aura, so needless to say I don't have much faith in their scientific data. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rg48a/eli5_can_human_energy_affect_kinetic_watches/ | {
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"Stick a magnet next to any watch and see what happens...\n\nNothing.\n\nSounds like your friends might be a bunch of hippies."
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7104sf | would the horizon look any different on a considerably larger planet? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7104sf/eli5_would_the_horizon_look_any_different_on_a/ | {
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"It would look flatter, but because the curvature of the earth is undetectable by the human eye until you are a few miles up, it would look pretty much the same.\n\nOn a much smaller planet, the horizon would have a noticeable curve to it."
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2c3mjs | as a layman, why is trusting science/scientists not an appeal to authority? | What it says on the tin. My friend and I were arguing about climate change (he is a denier) and my argument boiled down to "because trends and numbers and science." His winding and somewhat off-topic response was (basically) "You shouldn't trust Neil de Grasse Tyson on astronomy because you haven't studied it yourself-- that's just an Appeal to Authority." While there are valid and invalid uses of that fallacy (don't trust a virologist to diagnose your mental traumas), deep in my gut I could feel my friend was somewhat(?) incorrect, but it got me thinking a bit, so I figured I'd field my question to you guys. I know a lot of people don't "believe" in science, I myself among them (because science is not an epistemology), and there are many different ways of thinking about the world, but logical positivism. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c3mjs/eli5_as_a_layman_why_is_trusting/ | {
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"It is, if you are making an argument with no facts besides \"people who know better say so.\"",
"At a basic level, yes, it is an appeal to authority. But not all authorities are wrong. If you could appeal to know authorities when learning or making decisions or beliefs about the world, you would need to attempt every single experiment and create every single belief from scratch. \n\nWhile appeals to authority may be 'logical fallacies' if the authority is the only source of evidence, the fact that the authority cites a body of physical evidence (even if you don't have the technical judgement to understand every piece of it yourself) is a great benefit to that argument; if there were reason for much debate, there would exist great debate between those authorities who had the technical understanding to judge that evidence based on it's merits toward the belief in question. And, ideally, if given enough time and assistance in studying a body of evidence, you could yourself become an authority on it and pass your own judgement of the evidence at hand.\n\nScience is great at self correction; if you prove an experimenter wrong, you'll get a pat on the back. If you prove a scientific theory wrong, you'll get a Nobel prize. There are few fields that self correct as surely as science, and that alone should be reason for most laypeople to accept the current scientific consensus on most facts. They'll be wrong sometimes, but as long as they accept change when the scientists do (and don't become attached to things they don't understand), they'll get more and more right all the time.",
"Maybe a professional philosophizer will answer differently, but my understanding is that it depends on what you're arguing. \n\nThis is **an appeal to authority**: Neil Degrasse Tyson says Climate Change is real. Neal Degrasse Tyson is an authority. Therefore Climate Change is true. \n\nThis is **NOT an appeal to authority**: If climate change is true, I would expect most of the people who study climate closely to believe in it. 97% of climate scientists believe in climate change. Therefore it is more likely to be true. \n\nAn appeal to authority as a fallacy is when you are saying X is true BECAUSE an authority said its true. It does not prohibit you from finding the argument of an expert more credible than another argument, nor does it make expertise valueless. **the key is whether the \"authority\" actually matters to the argument (He has read all the books, so his statement on what is in the books is credible) or whether you are just noting a fancy degree to make things look good.** Note that plenty of pro-climate change people do believe in climate change based on the first argument, though that's neither here nor there. ",
"That's a deep rabbit hole your friend's digging. Literally every scientific subject is a Russian nesting doll of appeals to authority. Biologists, for example, use mathematical tools they haven't personally derived - would that make their conclusions highly suspect, or are they okay just \"trusting\" the mathematical community? And if they do need to work out the background math for themselves, how far should they go? Shouldn't they also prove any secondary or tertiary theorem used to prove the first one? It's turtles all the way down.\n\nTrusting scientists *is* an appeal to authority - but it's an appeal to the *greatest number of agreeing authorities* - all of whom share their data and the reasons for their interpretations. Refusing to believe simply because you haven't personally sorted through a mountain of data is like refusing to stop huffing asbestos because you haven't finished all the existent textbooks on cancer.",
"Science by definition is not an appeal to anything but one's own ability to devine reality. *Practically*, you can't investigate every piece of human knowledge, so at some point, you must say, \"ok, that's not my field of expertise, but something-or-other seems legit and I'll go on that until I have better reason to doubt it\". And that doubt part is fundamental: In science, you don't \"believe\" anything, ever, and if your threshold for \"proven well enough for me\" is breached (and I suppose it's an important enough thing to merit your attention) you *must* investigate it. People might take their teacher's word for it when they explain Newton's physics and calculus. And they're doing it wrong, but it may be beyond their ability. But many others do not find it beyond their ability. People don't \"believe\" Newtons discoveries because \"he was smart\". They repeated his experiments many, many times and came to the same conclusions. We don't teach math and physics like we teach history - like a survey from beginning to end, or from important envent to important event - we teach it (roughly) in the order of discovery, following the process of how we came to know what we know, so that we are confident in our knowledge.\n\nYour friend's agruement is asinine but still valid. Climate change is hugely important, and if the vast consensus does not meet his threshold, it's a big deal, and it *must* be investigated. At some point though, I suspect the threshold becomes so rediculous that he'll either come around, we'll all have to listen to the biggest \"I told you so\" ever, or he'll find himself alone in his dogma."
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euciuw | if i were in a spaceship traveling away from earth, how far would i need to go for the stars/constellations to be visibly different? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/euciuw/eli5_if_i_were_in_a_spaceship_traveling_away_from/ | {
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"To be *visibly* different, to the point where you could look out the window and honestly say \"wow the stars are different,\" then you'd have to go out at *least* several light-years and usually a lot more. It also depends on the direction you go; you'd have to move perpendicular to the nearest stars for them to noticeably move. Alpha Centauri is the closest system, but if you traveled in the opposite direction from it then it wouldn't appear to change position for many light-years (though it would of course get dimmer).\n\nIf you have very precise instruments and you want to see the stars move a very tiny bit, then you don't have to go anywhere at all: just stand in one spot and wait six months. The size of the Earth's orbit is enough to make the closest stars move just a teeny tiny amount, which is how we determine how far away they are."
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240zaq | what happens to people that are stateless with no citizenship? | If for some reason a British or American person's citizenship was revoked and they were kicked out of the country, where do they go? are there countries that will allow them in? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/240zaq/eli5_what_happens_to_people_that_are_stateless/ | {
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"I don't think there's really a single answer that covers situation.\n\nDon't know about the USA's nationality laws, but I know that generally British laws are designed to avoid leaving people stateless. Revoking someone's citizenship only happens in extreme cases, and that's even less likely to happen if they have no other nationality. It does happen though. UK nationality laws can be quite complicated considering the various overseas territories, former colonies, former protectorates, etc. So there have been cases where people have been effectively left stateless."
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7idgmh | why can’t we feed and save polar bears? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7idgmh/eli5_why_cant_we_feed_and_save_polar_bears/ | {
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"Because once you start feeding wild animals, they switch from hunting to feed themselves to sitting around and waiting to be fed. Now, although this isn't so much a problem for adult animals, it becomes a major issue when said adult animals stop teaching their offspring how to hunt and teach them to wait to be fed instead. After a while, you end up with generations of basically zoo animals living in the wild and unable to fend for themselves (except defend themselves, but this is instinctive and not so much an issue for a PB since it has no known predators outside of man).\n\nAlso, there's the fact that, like all apex predators, polar bears clean up and help regulate the food supply by killing and eating weak and sick animals. This is something there is simply no substitute for in nature and it will impact many other species, starting with those that can't cull sick and old members from their groups. Sickness spreads and old members render the entire group weaker since the stronger members need to protect not only themselves, but also the elders and the young.\n\nObviously, the problem is much more complicated than what I just explained, but these are some of the more immediate consequences of feeding wild animals, regardless of species."
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2h04v4 | 7th dimension. and how any of this works | _URL_0_
No idea what is going on there. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h04v4/eli57th_dimension_and_how_any_of_this_works/ | {
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"Imagine you live in a piece of paper. You have a concept of forward-backward and left-right, but not up or down. Now, we perceive three spatial dimensions (plus one of time) and thus have no concept of fourth-dimension-forward and fourth-dimension-backward (or any higher theoretical spatial dimensions.)\n\nConcerning these images, it is relatively easy to show an object with one more dimension than it has; paintings depict a 3D scene on a 2D canvas. However, it is essentially impossible to draw more than one dimension higher. This is why the animations are so tricky.\n\nIf you are looking for an interesting read on this, check out Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott. It is short, but it was written in the 1800s and is a bit misogynistic.",
"This is math, not physics. Math is the most \"pure\" science, in that it has no physical constraints, it's entirely theoretical. \n\nIn Math, we can talk about things like Graham's number which is so unimaginably large that if you wrote one digit on each subatomic particle in the universe, you would need an equally unimaginably large number of universes to write the whole thing. If you could somehow think of this whole number in your head, there would be so much information that you would collapse into a black hole that immediately consumes the entire universe. This number clearly can't exist in reality, but we can still talk about it and use it to solve a problem. \n\nWe can also talk about higher dimensions. What if there were a 4 dimensional object? What would it look like to us 3 dimensional creatures? That's what you're seeing above. What does a 7-dimensional hypertorus look like to us 3dimensional people? (hyper-torus just means \"a higher dimensional object with the same properties as a torus\")\n\nThat's a really complicated example though, only expert mathemeticians can begin to understand this. For people like you and me, it's much easier to think about 4-dimensional objects, and simple shapes like cubes. A 4-dimensional hypercube is called a tesseract, and it looks like [this](_URL_0_). \n\nWhat you're seeing is a \"shadow\" of a 4th dimensional figure on 3 dimensional space. To get the idea of this, imagine holding a flashlight over a transparent cube, casting a shadow on a 2d plane. If the cube is upright, what a 2d creature would see is a square inside of a square, with arrows connecting their corners producing four trapezoids. \n\nIn the same way, when you have a hypercube, and you shine a light from it onto a 3 dimensional volume, the \"shadow\" is a cube inside of a cube, with the vertices connected resulting in six truncated pyramids. "
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6e3ehq | what use does vitamin a have in your body and how is it stored? | Hello! Just a Chem student working on a project for my final. Was wondering if I could get more of an explanation on it to help improve my presentation. Any help would be greatly appreciated! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6e3ehq/eli5_what_use_does_vitamin_a_have_in_your_body/ | {
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"My masters thesis is on Vitamin A! This may get removed because it's sort of high detail and not really ELI5, but PM me if you want more info.\n\nVA basically exists as a few different forms in the body. We don't make VA in our body, but we obtain it from our diets. By eating animal products, we ingest retinol (ROL) and retinyl esters (REs), which are the transport and storage forms of VA, respectively. We can also get VA from plant sources as the form of carotenoids, which are metabolized in the body to retinaldehyde (RAL).\n\nNow, RAL is essential for vision (retina, eye. retinal, VA. Get it?). Also, carrots are full of carotene. Ever hear that carrots are good for eyesight? That's where it comes from. Without getting too far into the biochemistry, it's involved in reactions in your eye that help us view color.\n\nAs mentioned, because we don't synthesize VA, we store the excess as retinyl esters in various tissues. When our cells need some VA (see below), we mobilize esters to free ROL, which can freely circulate through the body in the blood by binding to retinol binding protien (RBP).\n\nOnce the retinol gets to your cells, it gets converted to RAL. Now unless it's the eye, RAL actually isn't needed in the cell. But, RAL is a precursor to retinoic acid (RA). RA is highly toxic, and our bodies carefully regulate its concentrations because excess and deficiency both are bad news. That's why we have the whole RE - > ROL - > RAL - > RA mechanism to regulate.\n\nRA works by binding to DNA by working with a couple different proteins. Again, not too far into biochemistry. When RA activates these proteins, certain genes in the DNA is turned \"off\" or \"on\".\n\nIn developing embryos, RA signalling helps shape development of the body along the spine, designating what is the \"head\" and \"tail\" of the organism.\n\nIn the adult organism, RA is important in many functions of cell life and death as it is part of a lot of regulation mechanisms by it's action on DNA.\n\nVA also serves as an antioxidant. When we're exposed to dangerous chemicals or toxins, they can oxidize our DNA and cause mutations. Increased oxidation stress (exposure to damaging toxins) is associated with higher levels of mobilized VA, which suggests organisms cope with that stress by having VA oxidized by those compounds rather than your DNA."
]
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405k8g | why is rem sleep in humans usually calm but dogs bark, run and growl in their sleep almost daily? | sleep talking for humans doesn't happen nearly as often. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/405k8g/eli5why_is_rem_sleep_in_humans_usually_calm_but/ | {
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"In humans, there are two chemical processes that keep the body paralyzed during REM sleep.\n\n > Researchers conducted their study in rats to find that there are two separate chemical systems that seem to be at play in helping the body stay paralyzed during REM sleep. Specifically, researchers found that when they blocked both the metabotropic GABAB receptors and the GABAA/glycine ionotropic receptors, the rats moved when they should have been still during REM sleep.\n\n > \"By identifying the neurotransmitters and receptors involved in sleep-related paralysis, this study points us to possible molecular targets for developing treatments for sleep-related motor disorders, which can often be debilitating,\" Dennis J. McGinty, Ph.D., a sleep researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the new study, said in a statement.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)\n\nDogs dream just like humans do; they enter REM cycles at different frequencies depending on their size. While I wasn't able to find any sources that cited the same chemical processes at play in dogs as happen in human brains, it seems logical to assume they lack the same processes."
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3tg02h | why are students snapping their fingers instead of clapping? | Recently saw a video of college students and they were snapping their fingers instead of clapping. I've been out of school for over ten years. What did I miss? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tg02h/eli5_why_are_students_snapping_their_fingers/ | {
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"When I was in school that was a sorority thing. Clapping isn't lady like or something. I think only one actually followed that thought. ",
"Basically, among some students in some places, there has been a movement that seeks to minimize distress in vulnerable students.\n\nYou've probably heard of talk recently of \"safe spaces\". Originally, back in the 70s and 80s, safe spaces were rooms where victims of homophobic bullying could find respite, and where homophobes were excluded.\n\nRecently, this idea has been expanded. Now, some people regard \"safe spaces\" as areas where people will not be exposed to anything they find (or claim to find) disturbing, challenging to their personal beliefs, triggering or offensive. And increasingly now, it is being said that rather than have specific rooms that are \"safe\", entire university campuses are being declared \"safe spaces\", and so off limits to anyone or anything that could remotely be described as threatening.\n\nAnd in some places, some people have complained that they find the sound of applause uncomfortable. And so, instead of clapping, students are being asked to snap their fingers, so as not to upset those who don't like the sound of applause. In some British universities, it has been said that students don't make any noise at all, but wave their hands instead (I don't know if that's true; I would in fairness point out that waving hands is how deaf people applaud -- clapping in sign language, so to speak -- so maybe something got misreported).",
"Snapping fingers is a common way of showing appreciation after a poetry reading or during other situations where you don't want to \"break the mood.\"\n\nIt was common for those purposes when I was in college 15 years ago.\n\n**edit** [Here is an article from a student at Brown University talking about the snapping phenomenon, history, and meaning, written in 2013: \"Snap out of it\"](_URL_0_)",
"I'm a current college student, and I've found that snapping is less disruptive when someone is speaking.\n\nYou know how during speeches people will interrupt the speaker to applaud when they hear something they agree with? Snapping lets you audibly register your approval while letting the speaker keep going uninterrupted."
]
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2kp925 | why is it i can type without looking at my keyboard and i know where everything is, but if you ask me to draw a keyboard i don't know where half the letters go? | It's like I can remember the keyboard layout but I can't at the same time. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kp925/eli5_why_is_it_i_can_type_without_looking_at_my/ | {
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"Spell out the alphabet and place a key as you go through. \nYou're imagining an entire picture when it's actually several components.",
"Muscle memory. That's how guitarists do it. Pianists as well. You do something so much its just unconscious most of the time.",
"Oh this is something to do with \"Recall memory\" or something like that. The same reason that if someone asks you whether or not you've seen XYZ movie or read XYZ book you can answer with 100% accuracy, but you likely couldn't make a list of *ALL* the movies or books you've ever read.\n\nNot a complete answer, but hopefully a term you can use to help guide your googling on the topic.",
"Do you hunt-and-peck or do you type the proper way? I noticed I was the same way until I forced myself on to the home row and learned to type proper. ",
"In middle school in the 90s, we had the dumbest typing class.\n\nInstead of *typing*, we were given a paper copy of a keyboard, without the letters and numbers and symbols. We had to fill those in.\n\nTo this day, I can say \"QWERTYUIOP[]\\\" - That's open bracket, close bracket, slash in my head.\n\nI missed where the hell zxc and v go. I still couldn't *tell* you.\n\nAt the time, I'd been typing for 10 years. At the time, I could type a flawless 40 WPM -- not bad for someone that can't drive.\n\nThere's different memory systems, and recall isn't the same thing as location. Training the one doesn't give you the other one.\n\nAnd my typing teacher was stupid.",
"There are two types of long-term memory: procedural and declarative. \n\nProcedural memory is what is associated with doing a set of actions in a sequence. It is often referred to as \"muscle memory\" because you are essentially remembering which sequences of muscle contractions are required to do a task. Examples of this include typing on a keyboard or riding a bike. You can't really explain, step-by-step, how to ride a bike and how to balance, but you most likely know how to do it.\n\nDeclarative memory consists of facts, whether they are true or not. For example, the letter in the top-left corner of the keyboard is \"Q.\" Or that the moon orbits the earth. \n\nWhen you learned to type on the keyboard, the actions were encoded in your procedural memory, not the declarative memory. This means you can quickly type out the keys without even looking, but you can't exactly say which key goes where. If you want to do that, you would have to remember how your fingers move to reach every single key, and from that, you could theoretically make a map of the keyboard.",
"They're different kinds of memory. Muscle memory is more about doing than consciously knowing what you're doing. Can you enumerate all of your muscles, let alone spell out how you use them to perform an action? Keyboards become just like that.\n\nSide note: I _can_ draw a keyboard. But for a long time I couldn't, even though I'd already exceeded 100 wpm at the time.",
"Speak for yourself, it still use the t - Rex method. Started learning large in 6th grade - never really got the hang of typing without looking. ",
"Qwertyuiop (querty-yew-eeop)\nAsdfghjkl (asdif-jekle)\nZxcvbnm (zook-soov-binum) \n\nThat's how I remember it.. Just by saying the letters haha.. Sorry for the weird pronunciation..never really thought how you to spell it how it sounds",
"Typing without looking uses something called MUSCLE MEMORY while drawing uses VISUAL MEMORY. \n\nMUSCLE MEMORY - when you get used to doing something without having to think hard on it or use much concentration because your brain is used to the action.\n\nVISUAL MEMORY - when you can visually place things in your head and reproduce it - this is what artists usually do. ",
"I'm able to remember the entire keyboard layout. Am I the only one?\n"
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6h5ny6 | can your genome be used to determine that you have a preexisting condition and, if yes, how? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6h5ny6/eli5_can_your_genome_be_used_to_determine_that/ | {
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"In some cases, yes. There are some conditions (Huntington's, Fragile X, etc) that are identifiable in your genome through what we call \"trinucleotide repeats\"... basically a lot of repeats of 3 bases in the DNA. In the case of Huntington's for example, the repeat is C-A-G. \n\nThere are other conditions that are identified by looking at the chromosomes that are DNA coils into. For instance, we usually have 2 copies of each chromosome. However, when there are three copies of chromosome 21, it's Down syndrome. Or, if there's a specific deletion in chromosome 15, it can be Prader Willi or Angelmann syndrome. Or, if there's one X chromosome instead of 2, we get Turner's syndrome. \n\nThere are technologies that allow us to basically rip a patient's cell open, and take photographs of the chromosomes and stain them in a way that allows us to identify deletions or additions of pieces to entire chromosomes. "
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24pmzd | why do i get nauseated before i have to speak in front of people in a presentation? | It happens everytime and I'm tired of it. I just want it to stop | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24pmzd/eli5_why_do_i_get_nauseated_before_i_have_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"ch9fd0j"
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"text": [
"You're just worried about making a mistake or looking silly in front of a group of people. One side effect of anxiety is to tell you it's not the time to eat, so you can flee some threat fast if you need to. Hence the upset stomach. Some suggestions:\n\n* Prepare more material than you expect to present. That helps reassure you that you are ready.\n\n* Rehearse ahead of time in private. Some people do so in front of a mirror, but I don't. I'm more worried about talking too much and running out of time before I'm finished.\n\n* Pretend you're on TV as you move. Most TV people don't move fast or gesture a lot. When they do, it's to emphasize a point.\n\nGood luck to you!"
]
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4ilnfj | why do planes explode when they hit the ground? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ilnfj/eli5_why_do_planes_explode_when_they_hit_the/ | {
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"Airplanes usually have A LOT of fuel on board. Fuel that is even more flammable than gasoline. Hit the ground, cause a spark and boom. Also, the fuel is generally kept in the wings and outer surfaces where they are more exposed in a crash. Whereas, in cars, they are sort of designed to be protected in an accident.",
"If the car was full of gasoline - both the tank and then a whole bunch of gasoline in jugs in the seats - and it hit the ground at 400 mph, it would also explode. \n\nA plane's wings are basically stuffed full of gasoline. When they crash, these tanks rupture and then the gas and the gasoline vapors ignite. If a plane crashes because it runs out of fuel, there is hardly any explosion. ",
"It has to do with a plane being very fragile due to weight costraints, and carrying lots of highly flamable fuel. Exposing kerosine to a flame will ignite it, much like it is the case with gasoline. Also, fatal and explosive plane crashes happen at high speeds, where some kind of spark is very likly. So if you add all those factors up: much and very flamable fuel in comparison to weight and very violent crashes = you get an explosion.",
"They have alot more fuel. \nThe fuel tanks are much bigger and wider (the insides of the wings are usually fuel tanks). \nThe fuel they use ignites at a lower temperature, gasoline ignites at 280 °C (536 °F), jet fuel ignites at 210 °C (410 °F). \nThat being said, if you are involved in a plane crash, there is a 95.7% chance of you surviving according to the National Transportation Safety Board."
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uiasp | what happens when i click on "safely eject hardware" in the windows tray? | Here's what normally happens:
* I have one (1) USB stick in the computer
* I click the "safely Eject Hardware" thing
* Up comes a window asking me what I want to Eject which lists one thing: "USB Mass Storage Device"
* I have to click on that
* Up comes a window with *three* things in it:
* one of them is "USB Mass Storage Device" from the previous window
* one of them is "Generic Volume"
* one of them is the name of my device
* It doesn't matter which one I click on.
Then it's ejected.
I mean, seriously?
**NB**: my experience is mostly with XP. Maybe it's better in 7? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/uiasp/eli5_what_happens_when_i_click_on_safely_eject/ | {
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"If you're asking what happens when you click on the icon, it is just giving you a list of removable storage devices that you can disconnect. The repetition is to make it easier to identify which device you want to disconnect. If you want to disconnect fappy's device, you can do it by type *or* name.\n\nIf you're asking why you need to disconnect it, that's because the data essentially exists in two places. And all changes are not made until you eject the device. Imagine you have two buckets, bucket A and bucket B. In bucket A you have some water. You want to pour the water into the bucket B, but instead of waiting to make sure you're finished pouring all of the water from A to B, someone randomly snatches bucket B away. Now, all the water may have been poured into bucket B, and it probably has been because that bit of water pours fast, but then again there may be a bit of a mess to clean up. And water on the floor is very corrupt water.",
"Yes it's better in 7, no repetition tho the naming of the devices still isn't great :)\n\nYou can also eject the drives by right clicking on them in my computer.",
"**Pro-tip:** Just click on the icon once and wait a second or so longer. Instead of seeing this after right-clicking:\n\n_URL_2_\n\nYou'll see this after left-clicking and waiting a second or so:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt directly brings you to the list of items (with their drive names next to them) to eject. There will be a bigger list ([like this](_URL_1_)) if you have more things plugged in. If you know which drive it's in, click it. If you've only got one thing in, then even better, you just click directly on it.\n\nSo yeah! Left click and wait like half a second, then click, then it's done!",
"r/askreddit is that way.",
"AMA request: A person who safely removes all his hardware. "
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68dmye | why is fentanyl being cut into heroin? | I understand that it's much much more potent than typical opiates, but from what I've heard from interviews, it sounds like it's just being cut physically into heroin instead of using any sort of actual dilution or volumetric dosing which is causing the overdoses when people get the actual Fentanyl in their dose. Coming from even just an economical standpoint, it makes no sense why dealers or suppliers would sell this stuff, considering the rising statistics for overdoses with Fentanyl. Even if someone didn't care that they were enabling someone to ruin their life on Heroin, Meth, or Cocaine, you'd think they'd understand that they're losing profit by selling something so dangerous and having their customers die. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68dmye/eli5_why_is_fentanyl_being_cut_into_heroin/ | {
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"My understanding is that fentanyl is much cheaper than heroin. So the cash saved cutting dope exceeds any lost in consumer death. \n\nAnd I'm not sure how precise a heroin dealer's \"cost/benefit\" math is going to be ",
"when people die of fentanyl being cut into heroin, the consumers think that \"this guy died doing it, so the dealers heroin must be crazy.\" This way the dealer sells more and more money is made. Its an unethical and immoral technique but they donts cares.",
"Fentanyl is usually acquired as a pure powder from \"legitimate\" chemical manufacturers in China. Its also extremely powerful, a high dose of it is in the microgram range. Finally, its very cheap because it can be made from generic chemical precursors - you don't need to refine it from opium like you do heroin. \n\nThis makes it attractive to drug dealers who have shitty, impure heroin. You can add a tiny amount of Fentanyl to the heroin and your customer will never know the difference between your low quality product and \"the good stuff.\"\n\nWhat causes the overdoses is when drug dealers get a bit of it to add to their heroin but don't have enough experience with it to understand what they have. So they just take a best guess at how much fentanyl to add to their heroin, not realizing that a microscopic grain of the stuff can be the difference between a \"safe\" dose and enough to kill you almost instantly.\n\nThere are labs that specialize in fentanyl and produce fentanyl pills that are \"safer\" than what some random drug dealer on the street is going to be producing. But even those are still dangerous due to the fact that fentanyl is so strong that even a small oversight on the part of the lab can produce a pill with way more fentanyl than was intended. And fentanyl is cheap enough that there isn't a huge incentive not to waste product, so you're at the mercy of the quality control guy working out of a basement drug lab somewhere. And even when its properly dosed, people can still overdose on it because the end drug user doesn't necessarily understand that while he can safely snort 4 oxycodones, his drug lab fentanyl pills are strong enough that doing the same thing will kill him.",
"Something else to note is that as a recovering heroin addict I have seen a progression on the part of the dealers, they are not cutting the heroin as much, they are now mostly selling pure fentanyl, and as that continues the epidemic continues. I'm from new Hanover county nc which is or was the overdose capital of the country due to the fentanyl ",
"The short answer is probably that the typical drug dealer isn't doing detailed cost-benefit breakdowns, and doesn't know much about pharmacology or biochemistry. Let's pretend they did, though, and were doing a hideously amoral economic analysis that sets no value on human life. We'll make up some numbers:\n\nDrug dealer X has 30 regular customers, each buying about fourteen $10 bags of heroin per week. The dealer's wholesale cost is $5 per bag. Let's assume that cutting with fentanyl would reduce that cost to $4 per bag, but kill one additional customer per year over heroin alone.\n\n* Heroin alone=30 customers * 14 bags/customer-week * $5 profit/bag * 52 weeks/year=$109,200 profit\n* Fentanyl=29 * 14 customers bags/customer-week * $6 profit/bag * 52 weeks/year=$126,672 profit\n\nSo, if the improved profit margin is large enough, a decrease in business would be offset. Moreover, demand for opioids is enormous. Repeat business and reliable customers are surely important, but sellers are in a good position to sell as much product as they can obtain, even if it kills customers."
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bfudu1 | why do inflamed areas of the mouth taste more salty? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bfudu1/eli5_why_do_inflamed_areas_of_the_mouth_taste/ | {
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"text": [
" There can be lots of different reasons: dehydration, nasal drip, dry mouth, blood in mouth etc. [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)"
]
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[
"https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321202.php"
]
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1pu5k8 | how can animals such as the horse eat only one type of food and still be powerful versus humans who must eat many sources of food? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pu5k8/eli5_how_can_animals_such_as_the_horse_eat_only/ | {
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"To add to the previous comments and to clarify, you don't mean just grass with \"one type of food\" or do you? Because horses basically eat all the green plant material around them which apart from grasses includes many other herbaceous (i.e. green ans squishy) plants, the leaves off trees that they can reach, and even the occasional snail or ant that sits on the plants. There really is some variety, although it is mainly restricted to herbaceous plants."
]
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vmiuc | (2)1tb hard drives. 1st is completely full of data, the other is factory sealed & unused. will one hd weigh just slightly more than the other? | Even just a flake of dust more? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/vmiuc/eli5_21tb_hard_drives_1st_is_completely_full_of/ | {
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"No there wouldn't, assuming they are completely identical apart from the data. The data is encoded as the direction of the magnetic field in a cell. So a magnetic field pointing one way would be 1, and a field pointing the opposite way would be 0. Both these states weigh the same.\n\nOf course, in reality the hard drives wouldn't be completely identical anyway, so there would definitely be some tiny weight difference.",
"Mechanical hard drives store data on several disks made of magnetic material. The data is stored according to whether the tiny region on the disk that relates to 1 bit is arranged N-S or S-N. On a larger scale you can visualise it as a huge number of bar magnets on a table. Any magnets laid out N-S will be a '1' and any laid out S-N will be a '0'. To change from a 0 to a 1 you rotate the magnet, this doesn't change the mass because nothing is being added or taken away but what is already there is being altered in a way that doesn't change the mass.\n\nIn a solid state drive, which works by using transistors, I believe the mass would change (almost immeasurably) because charge is being added to individual transistors to change them from 0 to 1.",
"The one filled with data will not weight more or less. Data is just the way little bits are flipped so it would be like a bunch of quarters weighing more all heads up rather than half heads and half tails",
"Hard drives - no, the data is stored as little magnetic patches that either point one way or the other, they don't change weight when the direction changes.\n\nFlash storage - [yes, apparently](_URL_1_). They store data as an electric charge which does have weight, 0.000000000000000001g per 4 gigs. Discussions on the physics forum [seem to support this](_URL_0_).\n\nOf course, the facetious answer is the used hard drive will weight more due to having lots of dust on it :)"
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60n9z3 | why are r rated movies and m rated video games considered appropriate for ages 17+ but adulthood is considered 18+? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/60n9z3/eli5_why_are_r_rated_movies_and_m_rated_video/ | {
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"According to what I have heard, rating systems are pretty arbitrary in the way that they score and categorize games/movies/TV. For example, films with intense violence can pass for PG-13, but an otherwise violence-free film with some swear words and/or a sex scene will be rated R."
]
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9vgr69 | why do an all electric car needs a 12v battery. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9vgr69/eli5_why_do_an_all_electric_car_needs_a_12v/ | {
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"Because they don't want to reinvent everything that's already developed for cars. Window motors, headlights, radios, various sensors and every electronic device you can think of that your car needs to run all run off 12v power. There's no reason to redesign a new one of everything when it alread exists just for the sake of it running off the high voltage battery. ",
"Cars used to be 6vdc then manufacturers realized that you could be more efficient with 12vdc by simply adding more cells to the battery. So batteries became bigger in voltage and amperage over time.\n\nHeavy duty currently uses 24vdc pretty much across the board (except for most on Hwy trucks for the reasons the first commented supplied)\n\nHowever manufactures have looked into 36vdc applications in the auto world simply because we use more electronics in today’s cars, and higher voltages result in lower currents, reducing the amount of copper needed to carry the power and this save costs and weight.\n\nFor now though, 12vdc is the standard but we’ll see how long that lasts...",
"The battery in an all-electric car is over 100V. You plug a stereo into that and it will blow up.\n\nThe battery in an all-electric car is DC. With AC current that comes out of your wall, it's easy to efficiently transform voltages from large to small. With DC its maybe easier, but also really, really inefficient. You would be wasting a lot of juice just dropping the voltage down to a level your stereo can handle.\n\nSince battery life is critical to electric cars to defeat the range anxiety issue, plugging the auxiliary electronics into the man battery isn't really a good idea.\n\nSo there's a secondary 12V battery. This handles all the auxiliary electronics, and the main battery is focused on power to the wheels.",
"The 12 volt system is for control, the high voltage system is for propulsion.\n\nAlso, the 12 volt system must be active to close the switch to connect the propulsion battery. This way, the emergency crew can disable the entire car by cutting the ground cable from the 12 volt battery."
]
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3e9e56 | why is nicki minaj's outburst on twitter being backed as an exposing the racist side of the music industry? | I can understand that there are racial biases in the world and in the music industry, but i can't understand why this specific instance is getting at. 3 of the nominated videos are by black artists. 1 other features a black artist. She also states that only "thin bodies" are being celebrated when Beyonce's 7/11 features women of all body types and color. Is she just being butthurt or is she onto something that I can't see. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e9e56/eli5_why_is_nicki_minajs_outburst_on_twitter/ | {
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"Probably a slow news cycle, and right now race relations are a hot topic. It's a real good way to cause controversy which in turn draws viewers. ",
"Second-hand answer: \nNicki made several comments about the award nominations. Taylor Swift responded to one of them saying \"we're better than being pitted against one another like this\". Nicki responded by saying \"I wasn't addressing you, this isn't about you.\" \n\nMedia companies decided to spin this as \"NICKI AND TAYLOR IN A FEUD, CRAZY\" instead of \"There was a minor misunderstanding on twitter that they're both cool with and have publicly said so.\" Nicki's kind of upset about being portrayed in that as \"crazy angry black woman\".",
"I just asked the same question here\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI list the last 20 years worth of Video of the year winners and black women have won 25% "
]
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ea00t/eli5why_is_nicki_minaj_claiming_racism_for_not/"
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7hdu26 | do marketing companies intentionally make certain commercials annoying? what is the purpose of this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7hdu26/eli5_do_marketing_companies_intentionally_make/ | {
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"text": [
"Yes. Because it gets people talking about the brand. There is no such thing as bad press. They just want you to talk about it weather its a great add or shitty",
"Puppymonkeybaby. There's a thin line between clever and annoying. Like pulling off an awesome stunt and failing.\n\nNow there's YouTube. So even failed commercials get aired forever.",
"Even if it's annoying, people *remember* it. Especially the ones that get stuck in your head. They want potential customers to remember it, so it comes to mind if they ever want/need the product or service they are selling. For example, \"Joe's Plumbing\" may have an annoying commercial, but if you need a plumber and don't know who to call, you'll remember \"the plumbing company with the annoying jingle.\" ",
"We're in a really unique age for ads. \n\n\nAds are almost the red headed step child of multi-media.\n\n\nOn demand has really cut out the legs of ads on TV. \n\n\nYouTube and social media has lowered the relevance of ads. \n\n\nAd blockers are pervasive.\n\n\nAnd many ads can be opted out of after 5 to 15 seconds. \n\n\nSo ad creators must capture your attention IMMEDIATELY. \n\n\nAlso these 30 second spots have to exist as their own content. As the most successful ads must be shareable on their own. Rather then depend on a popular TV show or YouTube Creator, a good ad must be worth sharing on your timeline. \n\n\nWell, the issue is, you can't create good character development or even good story beats in 30 seconds. \n\n\nAlso online media and social media skews younger then ad agencies have normally aimed for. \n\n\nAs such, irreverent, self aware ads with quirky randomness is what the ad market has found as an equilibrium. It sort of matches with the popular comedy and humor of today. Movies like Guardians of the Galaxy or Deadpool are more sophisticated versions of this humor. Family Guy and South park are sort of the forefathers of this humor. And much of the viral comedy content online carries the same type. \n\n\nIt's natural that this is what ads are morphed into.\n\n\nOh and the Dos XX commercial and old spice commercial are simply the go-to template to copy in a very copy cat industry. Ads are only as creative as they need to be. It's all about *PROVEN* effectiveness, innovation is secondary."
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20wzh0 | why is dust-free cat litter so dusty? | Most [clay] cat litter claims to be 99% dust free, yet clouds of dust waft into the air and cover the room each time I scoop. What's going on here?
I assume that there's some scientific standard that the litter makers are using to back up this claim, but whatever that standard is seems profoundly divorced from reality.
Explanation, please! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20wzh0/eli5_why_is_dustfree_cat_litter_so_dusty/ | {
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"I'm sure there is not much regulation on the claim, other than general advertising laws/regulations. It's worth noting, that if your house was 1% dust you'd move out, it'd be so disgusting. What does 1% mean? Who knows...1% dust by weight in bag of liter is a crapload of dust. \n\nbut...the _reason_ it is dusty is that dust is prevalent in the absence of moisture, especially if you're looking for a nice \"clumping\" quality around the poo - the smaller the particles, the better the clumbing (concrete/cement being a good example of a dust that clumps really, really well).",
"Related: \n\n- No-tears shampoo",
"There is no scientific standard\n\n\nuse blue buffalo walnut based litters!!!!! best stuff ever. clumps great and has no dust (it can't because of what its made of)\n\nsource: used to work at petco and my ex used the stuff for their animals"
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4k5ck3 | how do live audience shows such as snl or studio c work? | The audience often doesn't laugh until the camera pans over to whatever the joke is, and sometimes they use green screen effects. Do they watch on separate tv's while the cast performs somewhere else? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4k5ck3/eli5_how_do_live_audience_shows_such_as_snl_or/ | {
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"text": [
"There is a big \"Applause\" sign that lights up to signal the audience to laugh.\n\nFor green-screen stuff, there is a separate screen that they can look at it to see it's full glory."
]
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9v5r4y | what are ionic, covalent, and metallic bonds? what makes them different from each other? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9v5r4y/eli5_what_are_ionic_covalent_and_metallic_bonds/ | {
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"An ionic bond is when two atoms trade an electron, one atom gives it up, the other gets it. The two atoms become ions because of this. Then the electric charge of the two atoms attracts them together.\n\nA covalent bond is where the two atoms share 2 electrons. Basically the electrons start orbiting around both atoms in a figure 8 pattern (not really, but it is a good ELI5 analogy). \n\nMetallic bonds happen with metals. Basically metals tend to have more than 1 or 2 missing electrons. So instead all the metal atoms share a bunch of electrons between them. The atoms form a lattice or crystal structure and the electrons flow between all the metal atoms.",
"Ionic- these are atoms held together by the differing charges between each other. They're usually found in salts, what happens is one atom rips an electron from another atom that wants to get rid of it making the one that gained an electron very negatively charged and the one that lost an electron very positively charged, and in these bonds you'll usually find alkali metals mixed with elements on the far right of the periodic tables\n\n\n\n\nCovalent- these bonds are two atoms that both want their electrons, sometimes one might have it a little more than the other but it's not quite ionic because it's shared, the electron gets passed between the atoms in the bond and that's what keeps them together. Sometimes you can can a polar covalent bond when the electron spends alot more time with one atom than the other such as with a water molecule, the hydrogens are more positively charged because they hold on to the negative electron much less than the oxygen, which in turn is negatively charged.\n\n\nMetallic- this is found in pretty much all metals and it is also what allows electricity to flow so well in metals. It's kind of a mix between covalent and ionic bonds in a way. The atoms all lose an electron, but they also share them. The atoms are in a free soup of electrons that are allowed to jump around between atoms freely, this is also why metals are pliable and bendable, the bonds are free to shift around because they aren't technically fixed in one spot"
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etjiw8 | why does spacex land it's used boosters on a drone ship in the sea and not on land? why take the risk of the booster toppling over or the whole mission getting scrubbed due to choppy seas? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/etjiw8/eli5_why_does_spacex_land_its_used_boosters_on_a/ | {
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"Rockets have to go stupendously fast to get their payload going, and they have to do it while tipping sideways. That means, when the Falcon stages separate, you're going sideways, away from your launch pad, at a fairly good clip. To return to the pad, Falcon would have to cancel out its sideways velocity, and then add more sideways velocity to get back, and then cancel it again for landing. It's a lot easier and simpler to just come down at sea, even though the landing is more of a technical challenge.",
"They do both land on sea and on land and at least one booster has tipped over in rough sea.\n\nThe problem is that you need more fuel to reverse the direction of movement and fly back to the launch site then to continue forward and land on a drone ship. So if they have enough fuel left when they have done the burn neede to put the payload in the correct orbit the do return to land if not they land on a drone ship. \nFor very heavy payload they do launches with no attempt to land because they do not have enough fuel. They cost more and you remove the parts of the rocket that is only needed for landing.\n\nThere are no islands out at sea where they launch so you cant build a land-based landing site where the drone ship is. The launch site was built on location so you can to launch over open sea in the 1950-60 so the stages that fell back down would not hit anyone.",
"Once the booster completes it's primary mission, it is more like a guided bomb than a powered flight vehicle. There is enough fuel to slow it down to land but not enough to \"pilot\" it like a plane. (plus it has no wings) Once it starts to return to ground, there is only so much choice for a landing spot. \n\nHaving the capability to land on water is also a tremendous advantage because it opens up a lot more launch locations. It also makes more sense not to risk something big and heavy and not very maneuverable going over land where the risk of hitting someone or something is a lot higher should anything go wrong.",
"It depends on what they're launching, where they're launching it to, and where they're launching it from.\n\nWhen the Falcon 9 launches and separates the second stage, the first stage must flip around and burn its engines to slow down to it will make a controlled reentry. If they land in the ocean then it just needs to kill most of its speed so it drops closer to straight down. If they want to land on the pad then it needs to keep enough fuel to bring itself to a full stop, then accelerate back towards the launch site pretty aggressively which requires significantly more fuel reserves than landing at sea.\n\nIf they're putting a small payload into a relatively low(aka slow) orbit then they won't need to use up nearly as much fuel in the first stage, and the second stage can take care of a lot of it. This leaves them with enough fuel to return to the launch pad when they launch small satellites into Polar SSO(Sun Synchronous Orbit) or bring cargo to the ISS.\n\nIf they're putting something large into orbit, or putting something into GTO(Geostationary Transfer Orbit) then they need to run the first stage out of most of its fuel to ensure they can get the satellite to its intended orbit with reserve fuel in the second stage. This means they won't have enough fuel to slow down to zero and then get back to the launch pad so they land at sea.\n\nLanding the rockets is a great cost savings for both SpaceX and the people riding those rockets, but at the end of the day the primary mission is always getting the payload into the desired orbit. If they have to lose a rocket to get the payload into orbit because of rough seas or an anomaly on the rocket, then they lose the rocket like everyone else did for decades.",
"My attempt at a literal, 'Explain like I'm five years old\".\n\nA rocket must not only go up to the right altitude but equally importantly, the rocket must fly around the earth, sort like an airplane needs to fly to its destination, it travels across sky. When the horizontal speed and altitude are just right, the rocket will go into orbit. If one is wrong, either not enough height or not enough speed to go into orbit, around the earth, the rocket will either fall down or be forever lost as it heads away. \n\nNow a rocket can be made to fly in any direction. Because of this, the rocket can go into any orbit. North, East, or in-between or backward, the other way around. Because rockets need a lot of propellant (fuel), to get going well, an extra tank is carried in the form of a booster. This booster always dropped off if it's empty. If heading over land, sometimes you have to worry about where it might crash down. Because almost never is a booster safe, the rocket guys always try to place their rocket near the ocean. For the USA, we pick either California or we pick Florida. Those have many miles of empty ocean with nobody worth thinking of to worry about crashing a booster on them. \n\nNow sometimes a rocket doesn't have to go so far to reach orbit. Sometimes it takes less propellant. In this case, the booster could be made to fly all the way back to where it started. This took a long time for smart people to figure out. Sometimes though, a rocket has to go much farther and that means way out in a very far away orbit. And that is why a booster can't land at home. Sad Booster. But rocket scientists care about Mr Booster and drive a ship to catch him far out to sea. Mr booster and Mr drone ship can return home together. Sometimes it's even worser. This is when the rocket has to go so far away it will never be seen again, maybe to the moon! Ahh, don't be sad. That's what he's made for. Mr Booster is also too far away to get home. He'll land on nothing of importance. Nobody ever goes out to sea. Now when China launches their rocket, they don't need to worry about where Mr Booster will be crashing landing. They have friendly people to take care of that mess. Everyone will be happy! If only china had more than one ocean to fly over. \n\nSo yeah, tl:dr. The orbital profile and destination have a lot to do with it. Because it takes so much reaction mass to push the envelope away from return. Poor Mr Booster."
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aadaku | how do credit card companies make money with all of their cash back deals? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aadaku/eli5_how_do_credit_card_companies_make_money_with/ | {
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"They make money from transaction fees charged to merchants and interest from people who don't pay them off every month.",
"Two ways.\n\nCredit card companies make money off of people who owe money and have to pay interest on the debt.\n\nBut also, credit card companies make money from merchants. If you buy a hamburger for $10.00, the hamburger shop only gets $9.70 of that. The credit card company takes $0.30 and gives you $0.10 back.",
"Average cash back rewards are around 1-2%, and the cash you get back only increases if you spend a lot more money on your card.\n\nAverage interest rates are around 17%, and the interest that you owe keeps getting larger and larger as long as you keep a balance on your card.\n\nThe card companies make a **lot** more than what they give back.",
"They actually make money based on the number of transactions. So for example, they offer a customer 5% cashback per transaction. So our little person buys $100 worth of merch and the company gives them 5 bucks. Meanwhile in the back end, that transaction has cost a store about $2-3. This is before the 19-20% interest that they have on the cards or the fees from late payments etc. At the end of the day, if our person decided to pay monthly, the company will make about $20-5+3= $18. However, if he pays everything in time, they make $-2. But if you multiply that by millions of transactions that loss of $2 is completely wiped away, by the late fees, interest, and transaction income. ",
"The 1-3% that is offered on certain types of purchases is nothing compared to the 25%+ interest they charge on balances. If only a small fraction of credit card users carry a balance on a credit card that offers cash back deals then the credit card company is making a profit on the deal. I believe the max interest rate allowed is 27.99%. Compare that to what we normally see on credit card rewards of 2% or less and you have a giant spread."
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r6jjs | - school funding in america. | I'm primarily asking about how the differences of local wealth/poverty play into the school's funding, but a good once over on the whole system would be appreciated as well. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/r6jjs/eli5_school_funding_in_america/ | {
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"Schools are funded based on property taxes paid in that school's district. The higher the property values, the more taxes paid into the system, the more money the schools get. Schools also receive government money based on the number of students enrolled at the beginning of the year. \n\nTa-da!",
"Schools are given money on the Local level (usually by county, sometimes by city, depending on the school district) This money comes primarily from property taxes, and makes up around 50% - 60% of their money. In general 30% - 40% comes from the state, and 10% comes from federal funding.\n\n[Here is info about funding in Utah as an example.](_URL_0_)\n\nThe way wealth and poverty come into play is that since the local funding that usually makes up the bulk of the budget comes from property schools in poor areas end up with less money because the property around them is worth less."
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[],
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1qbhrv | uk redditors - why is the gov proposing introducing the 'living wage' rather than raising the national minimum wage? | What the gov seem to be saying is that the minimum wage isn't enough to live on. If that's the case, surely it makes sense to raise the minimum wage rather than introduce a slightly higher 'living wage'. Why would you have both? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qbhrv/eli5_uk_redditors_why_is_the_gov_proposing/ | {
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"So this is the labour party making a proposal, not the government, and they intend it to be part of their party platform.\n\nLiving and minimum wages are different things - though similar. A living wage in London and a living wage in Manchester aren't the same. The Labour party idea is to give incentives (i.e. tax breaks) to companies that pay living wages, but not outright require it. \n\nThe main thing is that it would be 'voluntary' - unprofitable businesses could still pay minimum wages, but profitable ones would be get tax breaks for paying living wages. \n\nI think it's mostly Labour trying to appeal to many groups, and as a result coming up with complex legislation that sort of half appeases everyone. "
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2ojzc4 | gene therapy and how it works in this article about my disease | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ojzc4/eli5_gene_therapy_and_how_it_works_in_this/ | {
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"So your body's \"blueprint\" is kept in a giant molecule called DNA, and a small section of that DNA is flawed causing your disease. It's like a lengthy instruction manual with a page ripped out or smeared. So that part of your instruction book is now telling your body through a series of indirect steps to produce a certain protein (sort of like a scaffold for the building that is your body) that is also defective, and that defective structural element is what's causing your condition.\n\nSo the first problem is providing correct instructions via inserting a printout of the corrected pages. They know what the pages are, but how to get them to the sites where they can be used instead of the flawed ones in your DNA? (They're not actively tackling the original instructions in your DNA, but tackling some temporary instructions in the middle of the process between DNA and protein manufacture) \n\nThis is the second part of the problem, and they solve it with tiny virii. The process of telling your body to create the protein is buried behind a massive firewall in your body called the blood/brain barrier, and sending in better instructions to fix the issue requires a VERY tiny messenger that can pass through this barrier. \n\nNormal virii reproduce by passing through cell membranes and inserting their own instructions to tell the cell to \"make more virii, not more cells\". What these sciency guys have done is to take a virus that's tiny enough to pass through the blood-brain barrier, and then fill it instead with replacement instructions THEY WROTE into the cells involved in the process that creates the bad protein. \"Here's the bad bit of instructions, snip that out and replace it with this good bit of instructions.\" Massively. Cool. Stuff.\n\nSo your body uses these replacement instructions (at least for a while as they may wear off depending on the specific therapy and cell/defect types and have to be retreated), generates the good proteins now, and the issue is fixed. \n\nSource: parent of a child with a genetic disorder for which similar therapies are in development."
]
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"http://smanewstoday.com/2014/12/05/dosing-completed-for-type-1-spinal-muscular-atrophy-clinical-trial/"
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ek3mot | how do those underwater flares work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ek3mot/eli5_how_do_those_underwater_flares_work/ | {
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"You need a fuel, like magnesium, an oxidizer (something that releases an oxygen containing molecule) to react with the fuel, and a water repellant binder, like linseed oil mixed with certain other stuff to hold the whole mess together inside a tube. For an underwater igniter, you can use a metal that reacts more forcefully with water than magnesium does, to generate the necessary heat to start the reaction.\n\nThe oxidizer replaces the need for air allowing the fuel to burn underwater or in the vacuum of space.",
"A fire needs fuel and oxygen. Normally water stops oxygen (air) from reaching the fire. Underwater flares and stuff like that contain some form of oxygen that is liberated when burning",
"It has an oxidizer. That means it has oxygen in the burning material, or burning the material creates oxygen. It also burns got enough that the water can't cool it down enough to stop the fire.\n\nAn example of an oxidizer is Nitrous. Yes, the stuff in Fast and Furious. By itself, it's not flammable, but it makes other things more flammable."
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3kr7vv | how ac can be converted to dc without a source of electrons. does dc drain electrons? | Is AC using alternating movement of electrons "back-and-forth" to transmit energy.
Is so, how is this converted to DC which (so I imagine) is a single-directional flow of electrons to transmit energy to things like Batteries.
This has always puzzled me, a complete moron. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kr7vv/eli5_how_ac_can_be_converted_to_dc_without_a/ | {
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"text": [
"Using things called diodes. More specifically, a diode bridge. Even more specifically, a full wave bridge rectifier. A diode is like a one-way check valve. Current can only flow through in one direction, but not the other. Putting diodes in a bridge configuration, you can convert the AC to choppy DC. It's choppy because it has dips when it's switching phases. That can be smoothed out with a decent sized capacitor. (capacitor acts as a temporary energy storage unit that fills in those dips to make the output smoother like normal DC)\n\nIt's very difficult to describe how the diodes are laid out for a full wave bridge rectifier, so here's a link to a quick youtube video that explains how they work: _URL_0_"
]
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[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSHVg9Cdg1s"
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2o44aw | what happens to the animals killed during crop harvesting? | I'm not a farmer, but I've always been curious about it. All of the animals that are killed by harvesting machinery... what happens to their carcasses? I tried Google searching but I just get a bunch of arguments against being vegan. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2o44aw/eli5_what_happens_to_the_animals_killed_during/ | {
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"What animals?\n\nAre you talking about things like field mice and rabbits killed when harvesting plants? Or animals that die and are unsuitable for consumption?",
"A farmer friend of mine said, yes they do occassionally clog up the works (bigger animals) but for the most part they end up in the harvester, and caught by various filters, and by the sorting devices later. Larger animals, once freed (they are obv dead), are often tossed off to the side for the predators/scavengers. \n\nAnimals around farms are often smart, and a 'pecking order' is visible while driving. The combine scares the mice from the swath, the eagles/falcons swoop down for the mice, the cyotes run out to catch the birds once they land OR hunt for the nests these birds have near by. Apparantly the crows will mess with the other animals - they wait for the eagles to do the heavy lifting and catch the mice, then the crows attack the eagles making them drop it. "
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1l986g | why isn't it over 'til the fat lady sings? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l986g/eli5why_isnt_it_over_til_the_fat_lady_sings/ | {
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"It's a term that emerged in reference to operas.\n\n_URL_0_"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_ain%27t_over_till_the_fat_lady_sings"
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1qw3ek | how is a ghetto/ bad neighbourhood formed? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qw3ek/eli5_how_is_a_ghetto_bad_neighbourhood_formed/ | {
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"1. population density\n\n2. poverty- lack of jobs\n\n3. isolation caused by infrastructure (highways that create a physical barrier, large buildings, etc.)\n\n4. drugs\n\n5. lack of access to resources like supermarkets, schools, clean parks, fire/police/medical. \n\n6. and, unfortunately in the United States, population demographics. \n",
"BA in Criminology (Wouldja like fries with that?), I offer two theories:\n\nBroken Windows Theory; one broken window (or graffiti, or an unkempt area) will breed more because the area will look unlooked after and vulnerable to more vandalism or theft. Drive through an alley that has a sofa dropped into it. Pretty soon you will see a television, some ripped-open garbage bags, broken children's toys, etc. \"Oh, this is the area where people dump their shit. Who really cares?\"\n\nOn the contrary, areas where you don't see a leaf out of place convey a sense of security and being well looked after. \n\nI think this is the same reason why police advise you to walk with a sense of purpose as a way to avoid being victimized. Criminals prey on the weak, who are you going to go after if you're looking for a mark, a guy with his head down and looking unguarded, or a guy with his chest out who will tell you where to go and how to get there if you fuck with him?\n\nA neighbourhood with graffiti and broken windows and garbage and unkempt houses conveys disorder and chaos, so people do not shy away from bringing more of that in. It means the community likely isn't bonded together, won't come together as a whole to keep a watch for the undesirables. \n\nThere's the Social Bonds theory, a theory that suggests the stronger your bonds to prosocial institutions like church, family, after-school activities and community involvement, the more likely you will be on a good path. If your bonds as a child are that you have good neighbors, good friends, good family and you believe in all those institutions, then you will likely grow up to be like that. If you see people doing drugs, shooting up on the stairway or front porch, you'll tend to gravitate towards that.\nThink of areas in a rough part of town that are known to be ethnically homogeneous. A nice Italian or Portuguese neighborhood. It may not be in the most expensive part of town due to the working class immigrants that started it, but despite not having high land value (maybe near a processing plant, an industrial area, etc.) the houses look proud, and the people take pride in their communities and do what they can to keep bad people out. \n\nThere is another theory that I have, which is very unpopular in the social sciences because it's against the left-leaning curriculum of the course, even though everybody knows it's true.\n\nIt's called the *if you don't work for something, you don't appreciate it* theory*. \nWhat are the characteristics of a shitty neighborhood? Lots of social housing. Lots of people living in cramped conditions, in government-owned homes or at the very least slumlord owned houses that are dilapidated and paid for with funds from welfare checks.\n\nYou get people who don't work, put them in an area for free, give them a financial incentive to breed irresponsibly and they will trash the area. Do not address any issues of drug addiction, welfare fraud, alcoholism or absentee fathers. Just let them all hang out and fester in a state of uneducated clusterfuckdom. Assign them a team of social workers who will reinforce or even plant the belief that their social situation is due to unfairness in society. Make sure to avoid the topic of personal responsibility, pride, job training, education or the like. Make them as dependent on the system as possible. \n\nTake a lot of these people, put them closely together, and you will have a crime filled neighborhood. \n\nThere are still single parents, single mothers and fathers alike, that live in those neighborhoods, work two jobs, take 3 buses home from work, cook a hot meal for their children, help them with their homework and get up to do it 7 days a week and God bless 'em. Unfortunately with one parent watching them and the majority of their neighbors and peers setting an example that being strung out on welfare is cool, it's not hard to see how they succumb to hanging out, vandalizing a building that \"doesn't belong to anybody, anyways,\" and experimenting with hard drugs.\nThink of slum houses, with the holes in the walls, boosted appliances, rampant drug use. People give landlords shit for not maintaining them, but how do you think they got so run-down in the first place? Lack of maintenance doesn't steal the fridge, or punch a hole in the wall. So they don't repair much because they will lose their shirt on the rent, so they patch it up and it gets shittier and shittier every tenant. \n\nIn a nutshell, unloved things tend to be abused. Allowing the area to fall into a state of disrepair from general apathy for its wellbeing will invite more of the same until it spirals out of control.\n",
"By naming it Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. \nSeriously guys, he would be ashamed."
]
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2w45m6 | how do other countries program in languages such as php? | I countries such as Japan, I know English is a part of the curriculum, but how do they program in languages westerners use?
Do the languages themselves get translated, or is it English-or-Bust?
If we need to make sure something is on the server, we use `file_exists()`. Do they need to use that too? Or would they have a translated version such as `ファイル_が存在()` | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2w45m6/eli5_how_do_other_countries_program_in_languages/ | {
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"It's English-or-Bust.\n\nIt's not all that weird though. A lot of industries operate in English; computer programming is one of them. Even though it might be easier for a native English speaker to learn the key words everyone needs to get them exactly right so it's not as though a fluent Anglophone can just write useful php without learning the language. ",
"Languages don't get translated (mostly). Everyone uses the same built-in function names. Learning the English alphabet is a basic requirement for being a programmer.",
"English-or-bust for the most part. Python was created by Guido Van Rossum, a Dutch guy who was at the time working for a Dutch research institute, and Ruby was created by Yukihiro Matsumoto, a Japanese guy. Linus Torvalds, of Linux fame, is Finnish but all of his code is in English. \n\nThere are programming languages that are based off of non-English languages, but all of the globally popular languages use English."
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[],
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a1psmm | being knighted? | ELI5. Can women be knighted? What benefits are there to it? Somehow I only hear about celebrities being knighted? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a1psmm/eli5_being_knighted/ | {
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"Yes. Well, no. Women become dames-are given imaginary titles. There is no SirThatcher, but there was a Baroness Thatcher.",
"It differs a bit from country to country, but for example in Britain if a woman is inducted into a chivalric order or at the appropriate rank in some Order of Merit, the get to be called Dame instead of Sir.\n\nThe benefits are mostly bragging rights.\n\nthe reason you only hear about celebrities being knighted is that those are ones that get reported the most. Articles about some celebrity that people care about get read by the public. Some rather unknown civil servant, millionaire, retired politician, scientist etc won't get as many clicks as some well known actor.\n\n",
"The equivalent title for women is a damehood, making you Dame Jane rather than Sir John. There are few official benefits apart from adding Sir or Dame to your name.\n\nYou can see the most recent list of recipients [here](_URL_0_). They're typically awarded for achievements of international significance, so they do tend to be people who are at least fairly well known. However, there are plenty of scientists and similar who will be well-known in their fields but aren't household names. News coverage tends to focus on the celebrities who have received honours, precisely because the audience is likely to know who they are."
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"https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/714829/Birthday_Honours_2018_-_notes_on_the_higher_awards.pdf"
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|
5lq78v | the main difference of a fruit and vegetable is that fruits have seeds. so, where the heck do vegetable seeds, used in gardeningand such, from? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5lq78v/eli5_the_main_difference_of_a_fruit_and_vegetable/ | {
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"Fruits are the seed-bearing structures of a plant while vegetables are the other parts of plants such as leaves (lettuce), roots (potatoes), and stems (celery). But this doesn't mean that vegetables don't *have* seeds, just that what we eat isn't those seeds. Carrots have seeds for example, but we eat the root.",
"The definition of fruit and vegetable are rules with a couple exceptions. The definition that covers most fruits/vegetables is as follows:\n\nA fruit is the part of the plant that *develops from a flower*. It's also the section of the plant that contains the seeds. *The other parts of plants are considered vegetables*. These include the stems, leaves and roots — and even the flower bud.\n\nWe call several (technically) fruits \"vegetable,\" but the main point here is that your premise is wrong - ***both fruits and vegetables have seeds***.\n\n[More reading](_URL_0_)"
]
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| []
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[],
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"http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-blog/fruit-vegetable-difference/bgp-20056141"
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|
a0w1sv | why plea insanity? | If you’re a mass murderer why would you ever plea insanity? Is there a benefit for being deemed insane instead of guilty? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a0w1sv/eli5_why_plea_insanity/ | {
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"The trick is proving temporary insanity, in which case you are not really responsible for the murder and are not likely to commit one again, leading to a lighter or possibly suspended sentence.",
"To (successfully) plea insanity would mean that you can not be held criminally liable for the crime as you were, for whatever reason, not aware of the facts of the situation you are being charged with. (In technical jargon, you lacked Mens Rea)\n\nThis means you will not be sent to prison, but instead will be sent to a psychiatric care facility until such a time as you are no longer deemed a threat to yourself or others due to your mental illness.\n\nThis can avoid a large number of criminal penalties including incarceration in a prison, and a successful plea to insanity more or less guarantees that you will not be subject to the death penalty.",
"Let's be clear, criminal insanity is not the same thing as normal insanity.\n\nLots of criminals have mental health issues. But they are still criminals. If I kill people because I find it fun, I'm clearly insane. But I'm not criminally insane.\n\nTo be criminally insane a person has to not be aware that what they are doing is wrong. For example, let's say I'm having Hallucinations where I see a monster about to eat a child. Turns out it's just a mother and a child walking down the sidewalk. I kill the monster to protect the child. \n\nDo I deserve to go to jail as a murderer? Am I a bad person? Did I really choose to kill that mother?\n\nSo when a person pleads insanity what they are saying is that they are not criminally responsible for their actions. They were not \"in control\" or did not know what they were doing at the time.\n\nBack to my example. I thought I was doing a good thing, protecting a child from a monster. I was wrong, but should I go to prison.\n\nThe place I really should go is some kind of mental institutions where I can get treatment and perhaps cured. So the plea of criminal insanity comes into play. I admit that I did what I did but I object to the fact that I am responsible for those actions. I say that I did kill that mom, but I thought she was a monster.\n\nSo rather than a trial where they determine if I'm guilty of the killing, we get a trail where they attempt to figure out if I'm faking or not. If they decide that I genuinely believed that there was a monster there, then they can send me for treatment rather than sending me to prison.\n\nI go get the treatment I need, get on medication that works, and now I'm a normal person again, not going to be killing anyone because I no longer see monsters where there are only mothers."
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52g72e | why wasn't there massive latino immigration to the us until the 1970's? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52g72e/eli5why_wasnt_there_massive_latino_immigration_to/ | {
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"Latin American immigration still existed it was just different. Look up info about the Bracero program if you want a little understanding on one of the things that started the major shift towards higher numbers of Latinos immigrating to the US.\n\n_URL_0_",
"The Hart-Cellar act of '65 removed racial quotas for immigration and replaced it with a point system, allowing the whole of the 1/6th of a percent of the US population total quota to get filled, instead of having most of it dedicated to white countries that never used it. As the population of the US went up, so did the quota.\n\nIllegal immigration from Mexico has been a problem for a lot longer though, with the dubiously-named Operation Wetback having taken place in the 50s to try to deport them all, going full Trump and actually accidentally deporting 500 US citizens who just didn't have their papers on them at work. Despite repeated civil rights abuses, the program was not effective; demand for cheap labor won out over enforcement."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_program"
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||
z302n | if we are living in a simulated universe, created particle by particle, are there any ways we could tell? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/z302n/eli5_if_we_are_living_in_a_simulated_universe/ | {
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"Not unless we could see outside the universe and someone was there to tell us it was fabricated or left behind something for us to infer that from.\n\nBut would it matter?",
"Depends on how good the simulation is.\n\nIf it was perfect, preserving every possible observable phenomenon, then we would observe it as being just as it simulates.\n\nSome people might ask \"what if you could see the simulation from the outside\". Well, how would you get to the outside without invalidating that above assumption that every observable phenomenon is preserved?"
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491ytb | in space which way is up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/491ytb/eli5_in_space_which_way_is_up/ | {
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"Any way you choose.\n\nSome choices are made for you - for example if you're under thrust then your down will be towards the rockets - assuming they're at the back - and control panels often have writing on them which though not enforcing an up or down at least suggest one.\n\nBut in terms of outside, not much. When docking some [systems permit only one angle](_URL_0_) but others are more flexible.\n\nIn time, perhaps, we'll learn/evolve to not care. ",
"I'm also interested 🙋, also how could you determine it. (Which way is in fact up) if you were floating freely in space? (Not that it would help much) ",
"All I know is that the enemy gate is down.\n\nif there's a nearby planet, maybe that's down because you need to nullify the effect of gravity. \n\nIn deep space, you need to be at the same relative velocity, so maybe being at the same orientation is important for that.\n\nYou'll get better answers at /r/asksciencefiction"
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docking_and_berthing_of_spacecraft#List_of_mechanisms.2Fsystems"
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8bf7is | what is the difference between a normal person's brain and the brain of someone who has a personality disorder? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8bf7is/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_a_normal/ | {
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"Am layman who has spent lots of time in research of this, and also unfortunately has experience in this area. Other answers that get posted may do a better job of explaining or at least have specific sources to link. \n\nPersonality disorder is basically when disfunctional behaviors or beliefs are a core, persistent part of that person. The core part of a person is affected by what it experiences since at least birth, regardless of lack of conscious memory of infancy. We are learning from the very start basic things like what we should be afraid of. (Imagine having a root instinctive fear of people, in place of one you have about spiders, rats, closed spaces, or even vicious predators like enraged bears, or whatever makes you cringe or tense involuntarily. This is just one example of an effect this can have on a person and how deeply it's embedded.)\n\nIt's like your brain is wired abnormally due to either traumatic experience or, less often if at all(?), birth (being born with a differently formed brain).\n\nIt seems like the most severe personality disorders stem from abuse in the earliest parts of life, like neglect or physical abuse to an infant. This causes them to adapt extremely central and core beliefs such as inability to trust anyone to meet their needs, a strong belief that you will be abandoned by anyone who cares about you, learned helplessness, even general insecurity and anxiety can have their roots there.\n\nTL;DR They experience the world in an abnormal way, often due to an abnormally neglectful and abusive formative experience, and their brain develops in an abnormal way to cope. ",
"A couple of big-picture points. First, the various personality disorders are very different and likely barely related. Schizotypal personality disorder acts like a sort of milder cousin of schizophrenia, avoidant personality disorder may or may not be meaningfully different from social anxiety, and borderline personality disorder involves problems in all kinds of emotional and behavioral regulation.\n\nSecond, there has been a healthy controversy in psychiatry over what to do with the personality disorders. It's quite common for patients to show features of multiple personality disorders rather than cleanly fit one. In DSM-IV they lived on a separate axis from other diagnoses. While DSM-V was being developed, there was a push to scrap the individual diagnoses and measure personality problems along multiple dimensions. This didn't pan out, but it stresses that these diagnoses are sort of descriptions of a classic type of patient, who many real patients will only sort of resemble.\n\nThird, if you compare the brains of 100 people who are generally feeling/working/socializing OK to 100 people who aren't, or 100 chess players to 100 cab drivers, or 100 people with borderline personality disorder to 100 people with avoidant personality disorder, you'll find some kind of average difference. This doesn't necessarily tell you much about any individual's brain, or about what's bad and what isn't.\n\nAnyway, let's take borderline personality disorder as an example. People with BPD have significant difficulty regulating emotions and behavior, tending towards wild mood swings and massive overreactions. Some studies have suggested hyperactivity in areas like the limbic system associated with emotion, and too little control from decision-making areas like the prefrontal cortex, whether via underactivity or inadequate connections."
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cg36hr | why do children fight the urge to sleep? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cg36hr/eli5_why_do_children_fight_the_urge_to_sleep/ | {
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"I don't have a biological/psychological answer for this, but kids are energetic and would rather have fun even if they're being made to go to bed. It's a lot easier to sleep if you actually WANT to, so that's why they tend to conk out on their own when they are sleepy, rather than when it's bedtime.",
"I’ve read somewhere that small children don’t have a concept of time, one night can feel like years to them. Combined with the inability to understand what sleep is , it’s suddenly dark and they’re gone, they sometimes feel frightened by going to sleep. Some children even have night terrors and fight sleeping till the point of panicking and throwing up/wetting them selves out of fear. I’m no expert at all but this is what I’ve found out from google on the topic since my toddler hates going to sleep. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Would love to hear that they just love punishing their parents and taking away from their few hours of freedom at night!",
"A lot of kids have ‘FOMO’ (fear of missing out) and think all the adults are having fun while they have to go to bed. It seems unfair to me that the ones who want to go to bed have to put ones to bed that don’t want to go to bed!!\nAlso some kids get over tired and because they have a bad nap schedule or never learnt to self soothe (like always being put to bed when already asleep so they never learnt how to go to sleep themselves) they are super difficult to wind down and get into a calm mindset to get to sleep.",
"not an answer but I had to laugh so hard when I saw this; I'm a grown ass person sitting in front of the computer in the middle of the night and just not going to bed even though I'm super tired because? yeah, about to find out!"
]
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23pwx1 | why is air invisible to infrared cameras? why isn't the entire image the temperature of the air? also, what is the relationship between infrared light and heat? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23pwx1/eli5why_is_air_invisible_to_infrared_cameras_why/ | {
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"Infrared light is just like any other color of light, its just below the level that we can see. Heat is a measure of how much motion particles have. We know that hot things give off light- this is why metal glows when it gets hot, or why the sun is bright. Things that are not quite that hot also give off light, it just doesn't have enough energy to be of a color that we can see. Infrared cameras take a look at that light, and then shift the frequency to be a color we can see.\n\nJust like all other light, infrared can only be detected when it bounces off of something. Air does a really bad job of bouncing light (of any color) back at us, so cameras don't pick it up well. "
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5lkcvi | why goats climb on top of stuff, please. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5lkcvi/eli5_why_goats_climb_on_top_of_stuff_please/ | {
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"This just my guess but most animals try to climb on to stuff so they can see more. That way they can see predators that might come and attack them, and find prey (if they need to) or other food sources much easier. ",
"They just love that pose , it's great for natgeo shots.\n\nVantage points to look over their harems during the breeding season, and watching out for predators would be a reasonable guess",
"Put simply, practice makes perfect.\n\nGoats are mountain animals. Mountain animals need to know how to climb or they fall and die. Goats and their kids are programmed to practice this at all stages of life because it results in higher survival. Similar to how horses and foals like to run around because they are animals that tend to run from danger and practicing helps!"
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35k0vc | is it possible for a planet to exist in open space without orbiting anything? | Like would it eventually reach an orbit or what? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35k0vc/eli5_is_it_possible_for_a_planet_to_exist_in_open/ | {
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"text": [
"yes, rogue or orphan planets orbit the galaxy alone. They are likely to be numerous, but they are near impossible to discover since they are not lit and their gravitational effects cannot be detected as a wobble in its star. There are other ways, but very situational and not reliable.",
"Analog (magazine) had a serial called \"Lockstep\" about a group of societies which developed on so-called rogue planets. It's [now](_URL_0_) available as a book from Amazon. In the magazine, it was accompanied by a Science Fact article describing the science behind the story."
]
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61vnmg | why do birds never shut up? | There's an enormous tree outside my window where the birds are making noise day and night. It never stops. Doesn't it take a lot of energy? Doesn't it reveal their location to predators? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61vnmg/eli5_why_do_birds_never_shut_up/ | {
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"You know the Reddit-ism, *doesn't matter, had sex*? That's a big part of it; bird songs are often a mating display.\n\nThey're also not all that costly: they don't take a lot of energy, and as for revealing a bird's location, well, it reveals that there are songbirds *present,* but that's a risk the birds just have to take. You can't announce your presence to potential mates without also announcing your presence to potential enemies. That sanguine attitude has its limits, though: when there's a more immediate danger- like a cat or a hawk seen nearby, you'll notice the birds tend to shut up.",
"Birds are often brightly colored and noisy. They don't avoid predators by hiding - they avoid them by simply being able to *fly away* at a moment's notice. The noise is helpful actually, as birds warn each other if there are predators nearby. \n\nThose birds tryin' to get laid, man. They squawk so females come to them.",
"Mockingbirds are notorious for singing 24/7 until they get a mate. Don't hate on them, they're horny and desperate.",
"The louder the bird the higher its' mating chance. If you would habe a higher chance of getting laid by running around screaming 'FUCK ME!!!\" you would "
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9gl6o3 | what causes that echo/screech noise when driving across bridges? | I’ve noticed this mostly when I drive on the interstate, it’s hard to describe the noise. Sometimes it’s louder or softer, or at a higher or lower pitch. It’s more obvious with windows down. Is there something specifically that causes this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9gl6o3/eli5_what_causes_that_echoscreech_noise_when/ | {
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"text": [
"It's the vibration of wheels due to a repeating pattern on the road. Usually these are grooves cut in to the road to improve drainage. The closer the interval, the higher the pitch.\n\nThere are [musical roads](_URL_0_) where artists have used this type of vibration to create specific melodies as you drive down them. "
]
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[
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3xew4w | how are artificial waves created? | Oh, yeah sorry I didn't specify. I was talking about the waves on the water pools. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xew4w/eli5_how_are_artificial_waves_created/ | {
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"\"Waves\" is an extremely broad term and \"artificial\" does little to narrow it. As a kid I produced artificial waves in a pool by bobbing up and down in an inner tube at just the right speed that the pool had rather tall waves. A flashlight artificially makes light, which is a form of wave. Radio antennas do the same thing but with much longer waves. Speakers make sound waves by using an electromagnet to push a cone forward and back, while explosives create an artificial sound wave by rapidly expanding air in a small area.\n\nWhat kind of artificial wave are you talking about?"
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7hod92 | one belt one road initiative | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7hod92/eli5_one_belt_one_road_initiative/ | {
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"What do you want to know?\n\nIt is basically China's revived silk road. It is basically their overall strategy for trade and development with the rest of Eurasia and parts of Africa. \n\nThis encompasses several fronts: \n\n* Infrastructure - where China will 'invest' in infrastructure across the continent to aid in trade. \n\n* Cultural - More exchange in terms of diplomacy and between citizens. Actually proposed sending students to... Afghanistan, Pakistan, and fucking Syria. \n\n* Trade - related to the above, encourage more trade with the continent. \n\nThe \"road\" funnily enough refers to the maritime trade routes through the South China Sea (and so the disputes with its neighbors) through to the Indian Ocean to the middle east. The \"belt\" refers to the overland routes most akin to the silk road, heading through to Central Asia to Europe. \n\nAs you can see this is as much an economic strategy as it is geopolitical strategy (which are almost always interrelated, if not part and parcel of the same). The details and implications are far too wide and deep to really summarize. This is essentially the one core of China's geopolitical strategy going forward. For example, you can see why China was so happy now that Trump is in office, essentially killed TPP (which was designed to balance power in Asia against China in the first place. With that gone, many APAC countries have had to go back to trading with China, pretty much with China holding the cards), and withdrawing America from the world stage, all for China to fill in; such as with the OBOR initiative. As the saying goes, \"whoever controls Asia controls the World\".\n\nHistorically China has always seen itself as the middle kingdom; in fact its Chinese name means just that literally. It is the nation at the centre of the world upon which all other countries revolve. This new silk road is trying to build that; China is expanding its reaches across the continent. By sheer economic power, such as developing infrastructure in exchange for trade or resource rights, it is entrenching itself in the development of many nations with a view of essentially making them *de facto* vassal states in the future., ruled over by economic might and power. Whether this is actually good or bad for the host nations is highly debatable, from what we have seen.\n\nFactoid: the Chinese name is actually \"One Road One Belt\".\n\n"
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3e3tcz | how can cats/dogs smell a disease inside of a person? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e3tcz/eli5_how_can_catsdogs_smell_a_disease_inside_of_a/ | {
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"We don't really know. It's likely that certain disease cause your biochemistry to change and this might cause you to emit different levels of certain things the animals can smell. So they don't so much as smell the disease as they probably smell that you smell 'funny' which is a result of the disease."
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2l88pi | how can we have gpus that have a lot of cores with a decent clock rate, but our modern cpus have at best a handful of cores at a fast? | Why is it that I always hear about how some GPUs have thousands of cores at several hundred MHz, but when I look up CPUs, they have less than 20 cores, and around 4 GHz at best?
EDIT: Title should say fast clock rate* at the end.
EDIT 2: I should elaborate a little bit. I am asking how we can make GPUs with so many cores while having a very hard time adding a large number of cores to CPUs, as opposed to the difference between the two. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l88pi/eli5_how_can_we_have_gpus_that_have_a_lot_of/ | {
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"GPS cores are very simple and can only perform a small number of types of calculations. They are useful for doing a few things that need to be done massively in parallel, but they cannot function as a general purpose computing core like a CPU can. If you try to \"reprogram\" one to the other you end up building the other, along with the downsides.",
"CPUs are designed to be general purpose. They perform many different types of instructions and can handle many different types of data. They are also connected to many different types of hardware such as PCIe, USB, RAM, etc. Which means that they need to be even more general purpose.\n\nGPUs are specialized enough that nearly all of what a CPU does is stripped out of the design. They're designed to do math, but only very specific types of math, and therefore they're very good at those types of math because that's all they really do.\n\nAlso, in some cases, GPUs are used for special computing. See: Folding@Home, Bitcoin, Litecoin, video editing, 3D rendering (render farms), GPU-based supercomputers, etc. In these areas, the GPU's ability to perform very specific computations very quickly makes them far, far more useful than CPUs.\n\nBy the way, Ghz is quicker than MHz.",
"The number of cores is a diminishing return for typical computing applications. Adding a second core is a big advantage, but once you get to 4 or 8 cores it becomes hard to come up with enough work for all those cores. At some point, adding more cores just costs power and doesn't buy any more performance. Therefore, running 24 cores at 700 MHz is not the same performance as running 8 cores at 2.1 GHz."
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chalsq | how stock owners pay for stuff | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/chalsq/eli5_how_stock_owners_pay_for_stuff/ | {
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"Either dividends, sale of stock, or borrowing against their stock holdings. \n\nIf the company pays dividends, even a small dividend becomes a large amount of money when one owns millions of shares. \n\nSelling stock reduces the portion of ownership, but most founders don't have influence because they own 51% of the company, they often own substantially less than 51%. Rather their influence comes from having super voting shares (which is the case for Google). These shares are converted to normal shares before being sold, so even significant sales don't reduce voting share much, or they have influence because they're the founder and still an officer of the company. \n\nFinally, banks will lend money based on the value of one's shares. The major risk is a large decline in the stock's price means the bank will come take the shares away to sell which usually results in the stock price further declining.",
"Generally, executives who receive their compensation in terms of stock are already wealthy enough that they have enough liquid funds (i.e. cash) to live quite comfortably. They also will do periodic selling of small amounts of their stock to cash in on particularly good stock performance. \n\nAlso, company execs are different than the board of directors/majority shareholders of a company."
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19mzzt | what is with all the gold-buying shops popping up all of the sudden? | In case location is relevant, I live in the Bay Area, California.
I've been noticing all these gold buyers pop up out of nowhere. They're becoming as common as Starbucks over here, with a new one opening every week it seems. Is there any reason behind this? Is the gold economy booming? I have no idea... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19mzzt/eli5_what_is_with_all_the_goldbuying_shops/ | {
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"The price of gold isn't at the highest ever, but it's pretty close. And people are still in a bad state so selling that gold is more necessary then it was in other times.",
"Gold buyers work on an arbitrage model: they buy your gold for a bit less than what it's worth on the commodities market, then resell it for a small but reliable profit. As a result, they don't care what the open-market price of gold is, so long as they can convince you to sell for a bit less than that. When market prices are high, people are more willing to do this, because they see a big number on the sign, which makes that the best time to be in the gold-buying business.\n\nGold prices are currently high."
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1tdb5v | why is it that when people read orders from others such as "you're now breathing in manual mode", they become aware of breathing and find it laborious? | I just read several comments telling people that they're now aware of their breathing, or that they've now got an itch somewhere on their body that they just *have to* scratch, or manually blink, and others below are cursing the guy out for making them feel uncomfortable.
Why do people become "aware" of these facts, why does it make them uncomfortable, and why can't they just ignore such comment?
Or am I weird for not being affected by such suggestions? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tdb5v/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_people_read_orders_from/ | {
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"All of the functions you describe are semi-autonomous. Normally, your body just kind of takes care of blinking and breathing by itself, like it does with your heart and digestive system. \n\nThe ability to actively control blinking and breathing has its obvious advantages, but the mere ability to consciously control them means that we tend to take \"manual control\" whenever we specifically think about the action.\n\nItching is a bit different, that's mostly a psychological trick.",
"Our body is set up in such a way for breathing that we can either go to the default of autonomous breathing, or closely control our breathing rate for situations that demand it. Thinking about breathing allows it to go from a passive, background action, to a monitored one. An interesting exception to this is Ondine's curse, where damage to the brain stem prevents autonomous control. This means that those with this condition will stop breathing during during sleep. \n\nAs far as other things, like the edge of your nose in your vision, blinking, etc., a lot of it boils down to your brain's natural ability to filter out useful information. Yes we can see our nose in most of our vision. But our own nose isn't useful information the vast majority of the time, so the brain just ignores that it is there. When you think about your nose though, all of a sudden it becomes the object of your attention, and is no longer filtered out of view.",
"I see what you did there."
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2l2jpd | why does it take hours to install big programs and games but seconds to uninstall it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l2jpd/eli5_why_does_it_take_hours_to_install_big/ | {
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"When you are installing a game, you are writing the files to your hard drive. It has to remember where to access those files. The uninstallation is just forgetting those locations on your drive, not actually erasing them.",
"Think of a hard drive like a book. Books have a table of contents, hard drives have a FAT (file allocation table). Books have chapters that the table of contents refers to, hard drives have files that the FAT refers to. \n\nWhen copying data to a hard drive think of it as two steps. 1) copy all the data to the drive. 2) update the table of contents (FAT) to point to the new data. In the process, it's the data copy that takes the majority of the time. \n\nTo delete a file, a hard drive simply removes the entry in the table of contents (FAT). The data gets left alone, but can't be located any more. ",
"It doesn't actually remove the files, it just says they're no longer neccesary and lets other files overwrite them. In effect, they're \"free\" space.",
"Just to add to the other good answers here: if it's taking literal hours to install something on a modern computer, then the installer is most likely downloading large portions of content/software from servers over the Internet, and this depends largely on your internet speed, and the speed of the software company's hosting and/or the number of peers available. ",
"/u/jortbru1299's explaination is decent, but there's a little bit more.\n\n##ELI5\nImagine that you just bought a book. After you quickly unwrap it, you find that it's short, but you can't understand it. It comes with another small book on how to read it. Apparently it's in another language which is shorter than English. Less text means that the book is cheaper.\n\nBefore you can read the book, you need to translate it into English. You won't be able to read it until the whole book is translated. After a long time, you've translated it via the little book that came with it.\n\nYou finally read it, but it's a terrible book. You want to throw it away, but the paper that you've written it on cost a lot. Good thing erasers are cheap and quick to use. They're much faster than translating. After a quick moment, you're done. You can now go to the store and buy another book.\n\n##What this means\nThe translating is compressing. The plastic wrap was just the bundle of files in a single file. I hope that this makes sense. Below is what I originally wrote.\n\n##Original Post\n\nSay you download an installer, that takes a little while. This installer has all the information for your program. Thing is, you don't want it to take forever to download. What they do is compress it. This takes a big file, and turns it into a small file, but it takes time to convert between the two.\n\nThis is where most of the time is. In some installers, you'll be able to click a button to show what's happening. It'll say, \"extracting extra.dat - 55%\", or something like that. After that's done, it'll show the same thing, but with another file. It takes awhile to get that information out.\n\nIn addition, it might take a little longer, because it takes just a tiny bit more time to write to your hard drive. Later, when uninstalling, it doesn't need to compress or decompress anything. Also, forgetting a file (deleting it) is so much faster than creating and writing it.",
"The same reason it can take months or years to construct a building but only seconds to demolish it.\n\nEntropy is a bitch.",
"OP, what program is taking you hours to install? Just curious. ",
"Three main reasons:\n\n- Nowadays installing a program involves downloading it first. The small installer file is nothing compared to the whole program. When you uninstall it you don\"t have to upload it back but just let it get lost, hence (way) faster.\n\n- Creating files with data on it, takes more time than deleting the files. Because there is no \"deleting the data in it.\" The data is still there untouched, it's just that it is in a place that is now marked \"free space\" and it will be overwritten eventually when the disk will need the place for another file.\n\n- Programs are typically distributed, compressed. The installation needs to uncompress the data, which takes time. When uninstalling, there is no need to recompress the data back, you just let it get lost.",
"When your computer is writing large files to your hard drive, the hard drive has to write every single bit to the disk. When it's done that, it then writes an entry to the directory and tells the computer where the file starts and how big it is.\n\nWhen you're deleting a file, all the computer does is delete the directory entry for the file so the computer doesn't know it exists; the data itself is still there, but the computer will write over it as though it were blank space. \n\nIncidentally, this is why it's possible to sometimes recover files that have been deleted with special utilities; if the data hasn't been overwritten by something else yet, it's possible to still find it.",
"It is never deleted. The only thing that gets removed is the reference to the program. Rest is simply overwritten by data that comes after. In theory you could overwrite all the \"empty\" space in your computer with random letters. That would make it impossible to retrive parts of the program.",
"A lot has to happen with most \"big\" software installs; checking the operating system and service pack version to make sure the software will even run, checking for needed support runtimes like .NET or other components, then checking for previous versions of the software to avoid conflicts, then copying files from the source (CD/DVD or downloaded archive) to the hard drive, then updating the registry with shortcuts or DLLs. \n\n\nThe vast majority of time spent during an install is the copy/unpack function. To uninstall, most of the time is spent undoing the registry modifications, which takes almost no time at all. Then it \"deletes\" the files on the hard drive, which amounts to basically updating the file allocation table that the space the deleted files used to occupy is now free space. This part takes just a second or two, depending on how many files there are. ",
"Because when you delete content off the disk the disk just marks it as \"deleted\" and give programs permission to write over it when needed. It doesn't actually write 0's to the place where the data was.\n\nThis is why you can recover deleted files and they say not to use your disk too much if you need them.",
"When you install a game it's like writing a book, you have to fill all the pages.\n\nWhen you Uninstall the computer cheats and just erases your table of contents and pretends the pages are blank for your next book.",
"Moving into a new house and unpacking all those boxes and putting everything away takes a long time.\n\nBurning the house to the ground doesn't.",
"It's because deleting files is a much faster process than writing files. To write a file the hard drive must write an exact copy of the desired data to disk, block by block. However when deleting something, the file system just deletes the references to that data not the actual blocks, which is much faster. If you use a book to illustrate this process, installing the program would be like writing out entire pages of a book, whereas uninstalling the program (and deleting the data) would be like just erasing the page numbers in the table of contents and index. ",
"Installing is like moving a large building brick by brick.\n\nUninstalling is like setting it on fire."
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5a3nf9 | how are traditional film-based movies duplicated for mass distribution? | I know that film is film. It begins as a raw product, it's put in to a camera and becomes exposed, the film is developed, and then hits the cutting room, where the director selects scenes to cut and stich together into a movie. So now the movie is made. Presumably, there's a master cut. I've always wondered, how is that master cut duplicated? Film isn't digital or even electronic. You can't push the image to hundreds of recievers like you can a VCR tape to hundreds of VCR's or DVD to thousands of DVD burning devices.
How is a film efficiently duplicated thousands of times for mass distribution?
(The presumption to this question is that we're filming a movie with traditional film for traditional distribution to the projection-based theater. I know that's very uncommon today, but my understanding is that, even Tarantino's Hateful Eight was originally distributed on film.) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5a3nf9/eli5_how_are_traditional_filmbased_movies/ | {
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"Photography! \n\nThe original bit that the camera makes is a negative of the image it recorded. Passing light through that negative doesn't noticeably degrade the original in the slightest bit, and allows you to make a (nearly) perfect copy of the original onto some new film. \n\nYou've got 1000 feet of movie? Get 1000 feet of unexposed movie film, lay down a couple of feet of each at a time, shoot some light through the movie onto the unexposed film, wind both up a little, and repeat. When you're done, you'll have a really nice copy of the original (assuming your darkroom isn't too dusty). \n\n > Film isn't digital or even electronic.\n\nNope, it's totally analog. And there are *great* ways of copying analog stuff. Not quite as perfect as copying digital stuff (which is why the RIAA hates digital audio so much), but pretty damn excellent nonetheless. \n\nIf you take a 35mm camera, and take a black-and-white photo of my mom playing with a cat, your film, after developing, will give me a spiffy negative of that image -- with amazing resolution. If I shine light through that negative onto an unexposed bit of photo paper (or film), I'll get an exact copy limited only by the quality of the lenses I use in my enlarger (and the lack of dust in my darkroom). With a movie, it's much the same thing, except instead of a single image, it's like a bazillion images, but due to the nature of the task at hand, movie folk have come up with fairly clever mechanical ways to copy lots and lots of frames at the same time. \n\nHope this was a good explanation.\n\n"
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1s8c4b | why are computer science and other computer related fields male-dominated? | Me and my roommates are talking about this and right now I understand why some fields are male-dominated because (like politics) because women were disadvantaged from the start by not being allowed to participate. However, I'm under the impression that the technological field developed relatively recently when women had the same opportunities as men. So I don't understand the lack of participation by women in this field. In fact, computer science is still experiencing a decrease of women. So far I've only seen shallow explanations.
Found this article about it but still doesn't satisfy me: _URL_0_
So I was hoping you guys have a better explanation? And feel free to correct my most likely flawed assumptions. Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1s8c4b/eli5_why_are_computer_science_and_other_computer/ | {
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"Computer science is male-dominated because it fits in with a lot of fields that are also male-dominated--things like electrical engineering, or engineering in general, as well as math and science. The cultural biases tend to steer women toward less-technical fields. If we, as a culture, [tell women that they should be bad at math](_URL_0_) then they will tend to be driven away from math-related fields which CS is among.\n\nThis isn't a full explanation I realize, but I think it serves to answer the narrow question of \"why does the gender imbalance in CS follow the gender imbalance in other engineering and engineering-like disciplines?\" Thus, the natural followup question is \"Why are we, as a society, still driving women away from math, science, and engineering fields?\"",
"I've taught basic programming at university and I certainly find women are often intimidated and convinced they're incapable of learning it. That's completely untrue of course and they often end up being some of the best students. It's my impression it's the same in similar fields. \n\nAnother huge issue is the fact that few women are comfortable going into such an extremely male dominated field. CS has the reputation of being filled with socially awkward males. Not really an enticing prospect for young females. It's a vicious circle in that aspect. \n\nTV shows like big bang theory certainly doesn't help by implying that cute sexy girls become waitresses and only awkward nerdy girls go into science. ",
"I teach in a Computer Science department, I have asked numerous women in our program this question. The answer can be summarized as \"How many 5-10 year old girls do you know who are told they should consider being programmers?\" At that age they get the impression they should be homemakers, K-12 educators, nurses, secretaries, assistants, etc. \n\nThe women who are in computer science tend to be independently minded. They know what they want to do, regardless of what culture suggests. Most are older too. Women in CS are rare, but it's even rarer to find an 18 year old freshman wanting to be a CS major. Those who do almost always have a parent who is a developer who talked them into computer science.\n\nEdit: I've seen some bad and/or trolling answers elsewhere in this thread, so I'll explain more of what I see and hear. I've noticed women in computer science outperform the men. On average they pay greater attention detail, they study better, their work is of higher quality, and they work better in teams. Whether this is due to gender differences, or because only more confident women major in computer science, I'm not sure. Also, women have all responded that they have not been the target of unwanted attention to due their gender. Harassment apparently isn't an issue. But a few women who work in industry as software developers have said some men do treat them as inferior. But fellow male students don't treat them as inferior. \n",
"It's a very difficult question to answer without actually conducting a scientific study.\n\nHere are several *potential* answers to your question:\n\n* Males have an inherent genetic advantage over females in relation to computers / logic. That's why males score better on tests.\n\n* People have trouble breaking out of \"socially acceptable\" roles. In other words, people are afraid of being \"abnormal\".\n\n* Females just don't find computers as interesting as males do.\n\n* Females have a tendency to hang with other females, and males other males. So if a female joined a CS program, she'd be less likely to be around her normal friends.\n\n* Females might be afraid of being discriminated for a job in a male dominated field, so they're less likely to pursue the field.\n\n* Females are expected to perform badly, and those expectations hurt their performance psychologically. \n\nAnd there are probably some more potential answers that I'm missing. But in short: it's complicated. And the answer that we *want* to be true isn't necessarily the one that *is* true.\n\n"
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dxrhvk | does the moon peak the most at midnight just like how the sun does at noon? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dxrhvk/eli5_does_the_moon_peak_the_most_at_midnight_just/ | {
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"moon is on a different orbit to the planet than the earth to the sun so it varies with the moon"
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2edyu8 | why does it seem as though dry cleaners are universally closed on sundays? | Hear me out, I realize that businesses need a break, but this a business that thrives mostly off of business people who work during the week. If a day off is so important why would it not be during the week like Monday or Tuesday? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2edyu8/eli5why_does_it_seem_as_though_dry_cleaners_are/ | {
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"Because Sunday is a standard day for businesses to be closed or have reduced hours. "
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3sag5c | why are coding languages so hard to understand? | I don't mean this as in they have a learning curve, I mean in the sense of their intuitiveness.
For example Javascript's regex's:
function toTitleCase(str)
{
return str.replace(/\w\S*/g, function(txt){return txt.charAt(0).toUpperCase() + txt.substr(1).toLowerCase();});
}
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sag5c/eli5_why_are_coding_languages_so_hard_to/ | {
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"The languages were made to be easy to understand without limiting functionality. Many of the functions in your line of code have multiple purposes and can be combined in many many different ways to achieve a whole bunch of different things.\n\nIf i make a language that allows me to write liftThatMug(), it would be great for lifting a mug, but not much else.\n\nIf i instead wrote lift(that.Mug) it allows me a bunch of choices as to what i can do. I can use lift() for many different things.\n\nYou can do many things without having to learn a bunch of additionall words, you just have to figure out what order to put them in.",
"First off, because of your formatting. Proper white space and formatting makes code a lot easier to read and understand.\n\nSecondly, because you aren't that trained in it. German and Japanese sentences might seem unintuitive to you for a long time, even after you learn the basics, until you truely become fluent in it and understand its structure and why sentences are formatted the way they are, instead of just trying to say English words in German or Japanese.",
"On the contrary, programming languages have very specific structure that's defined and documented. Much easier to understand than English. You just need to study the rules. Rules in English are just suggestions, rules in Java are completely rigid.",
"Languages aren't intuitive period. You still have to learn what words mean before you start to understand sentences. And there's a lot going on in this snippet if you don't know what all the functions mean.\n\nFirst, it helps to format the code to make readibility easier:\n\n function toTitleCase(str) { \n return str.replace(/\\w\\S*/g, function(txt){\n return txt.charAt(0).toUpperCase() + txt.substr(1).toLowerCase();\n }); \n }\n\nDo you have any experience with code? What aren't you understanding specifically?",
"regular expressions are just a royal PITA, as is XSLT. Languages are an attempt at making programs human readable and writable, but sometimes shorthand wins the day and programmers get tired of typing, and we end up with alphabet soup. ",
"It depends on the language. There are languages out there, such as BASIC, that are designed to be \"easier to read.\" I personally find those irritating. Once you get used to it all of the shorthand is easy to understand and much easier to type.\n\nMostly it is just practice.",
"It's not that they're unintuitive, it's just that they're different from the languages that you're used to. \n\nThey're written primarily so that computers can interpret them usefully, and computers \"think\" differently than people. Computers are pretty much entirely deterministic and literal. They will attempt to run the code exactly as you've written it. \n\nWith that in mind, code has to be very specific and precise. Things can't really be left ambiguous or rely on assumptions. Computers aren't good at guessing what you might have meant if the code doesn't work. \n\nSo that's why the syntax is significantly different than human languages. \n\nAs for the content, code tends to be interconnected in a lot of ways, so you're quite often referencing things that are laid out elsewhere. You're referencing functions or variables or whatever that are defined elsewhere in the code. If you're not familiar enough with a language to recognize many of its common references, then it's not going to make much sense. "
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71y74i | why is there so much activity with the ring of fire recently? how do we know which earthquakes are directly linked? should california be as worried as the media makes out? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/71y74i/eli5_why_is_there_so_much_activity_with_the_ring/ | {
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"The surface of the earth is collection of huge 'plates' that float over a layer of partly solid and partly molten rock called magma; collectively referred to as the earth's 'mantle'. These plates floating on the mantle are called 'Tectonic Plates'. They are in constant, if very slow, motion. Where the plates bump against each other there is friction and pressure. The 'Ring of Fire' is where the edges of the plates meet. The fire in The 'Ring of Fire' refers to volcanos created when one tectonic plate is shoved under another. This movement of the ocean floor produces a \"mineral transmutation,\" which leads to the melting of magma bubbling out at a gap in the seams: that is volcanos.\n\nEarthquakes are caused by buckling and cracking of the earth's plates caused by the pressure of them pushing together at the seams. The pressure is so great that 'something has to give'. One of the plates moves violently, and that is called an earthquake.\n\nWe know that the earthquakes are related in the sense that they occur because of a particular plate moving in a general direction. What we don't know is the specific reasons underlying the movement of any particular plate, the speed of the movement, or the specific amount of pressure required to cause a quake. \n\nAs for the danger to California, yes, someday there will be a disaster, and since we know where the plate seam is, we can roughly predict where. However, we don't understand enough of the variables to say *when*, even within an error range of a thousand years. \n\nI prefer to take to the approach of the late Warren Zevon on the danger to me personally from 'the big one' in California.\n\n\"*And if California should fall into the ocean, like the mystics and statistics say it will, I predict my hotel will stay standing until I pay my bill.....and I never will.*",
"It is called the \"Ring of Fire\". The whole region is unusually active compared to the rest of the world. With anything that is randomly active, you will always have periods of more activity and less activity than the average for that thing.",
"SoCal resident here - which \"media\" are you talking about? All I've seen is the usual \"This is a good time to make sure you have an earthquake emergency plan and supplies\" type of stories in the news. \n\nWhich is a great fringe benefit to being a camper - you pretty much always have earthquake supplies on hand....",
"Californian here who studied a bit of geology. \n\nCalifornia building codes assume there will be earthquakes. We bolt our houses to their foundations and use materials that can handle ground movement. You won't see brick buildings in CA. That being said, there are still a lot of old buildings that I would never live in. Retrofit or not, I'd never live in a masonry building. \n\nHaving 5+ quakes is actually a good thing. They relieve stress on the plates. The more 5s we get, the longer it will be before we have an 8.\n\nSo, is there a lot of activity in the ring of fire? Yes. Should Californians be worried? No, but they should be prepared."
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183uhi | why do perishable ingredients such as butter, milk, or eggs no longer have to be refrigerated after they've been baked into a cake or cookies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/183uhi/why_do_perishable_ingredients_such_as_butter_milk/ | {
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"Butter, milk and eggs don't have to be refrigerated. It's *customary*, particularly in the United States, to keep them in the refrigerator, but it isn't necessary.\n\nInterestingly, this is one reason why many people struggle to make simple egg dishes, like omelets. The cooking of eggs was most thoroughly explored in the French tradition … and the French do not refrigerate their eggs. So if you're using cold eggs, the cooking times are all off.",
"The proteins and fats have been cooked and thoroughly denatured, and most of the water content has been driven off, these two steps do the most to prevent the cookie from reacting with oxygen and going 'off.' Consider when eggs are pan fried and the liquid part of the egg changes color and solidifies -- that's thermal denaturing; what we called being 'cooked.' This turns the protein strands from a wildly wavy, unconnected net into a tight, coherent structure that can be picked up with a spatula and slid onto a piece of toast.\n\nDairy products like milk and butter also suffer from oxygen exposure; that's how butter goes rancid and milk goes 'off.' Basically they consist of milk proteins and butterfat suspended in water; butter is just concentrated milk fat, with very little water. \nThe French use a [butter dish](_URL_0_) with an air lock to hold butter at room temperature for weeks at a time. The water in the lower part of the dish seals the butter compartment off from the air, and preserves the butter. And your butter is still spreadable! Awesome!\n\nThey're still susceptible to bacterial contamination, but it's really the water content that does the most damage in terms of any kind of contamination. Let's compare really crispy cookies with soft cookies, which ones mold first? The soft cookies get moldy first, because they're moist and still have some appreciable water content -- which mold loves. Water and sugar make mold happy! Decrease those ingredients and you'll get items that last a long time. Think of zwieback toast, Swedish flatbreads, hard chocolate chip cookies or even something like baked pita chips -- all those items are pretty perfectly dehydrated, thus they last pretty much forever!\n\n**TL;DR:** Cooking good, water bad. Sealed containers good, oxygen bad.",
"Because cake and cookies get eaten immediately...especially if there are 5 year olds around.",
"People who keep butter cold piss me off. Nothing worse than trying to spread cold butter on toast. \n\nOtherwise, once those other things are cooked they are no longer hospitable environments for bacteria growth. "
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5rn3tj | what happens if you only eat rarely/one small meal a day? | I know starvation/dehydration have their horrible side effects, but what would happen if a person just goes extremely long periods without eating? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rn3tj/eli5_what_happens_if_you_only_eat_rarelyone_small/ | {
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"An important thing to remember about fasting and starvation is that the only fuel that the brain can use is glucose. Other tissues can use protein, fat or glucose to get energy - but the brain can only use glucose. \n\nBut glucose gets used pretty quickly by the body after a meal - this means that when we haven't eaten for a long time, there are very low levels of sugar in our blood and our body does everything it can do keep the remaining glucose around for the brain to use. \n\nSo other tissues stop using glucose for fuel and instead use protein and fat for fuel, leaving all the glucose for the brain. When we haven't eaten for a while, we get this protein and fat by breaking down fat (for fat) and muscle (for protein). \n\nTherefore you will get thinner but you will also get muscle wasting. You will feel like you have very little energy as the body tries to conserve as much fuel as possible. It will take a lot longer than cutting out food entirely, but eventually you will die once there is nothing left to break down to make fuel. So all the glucose is used up and the brain dies. "
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3mn59p | why are total lunar eclipses so rare? | I'm having a hard time visualizing exactly why it is that lunar eclipses are so rare. Shouldn't the earth's shadow project onto the moon relatively often? What is it that I am missing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mn59p/eli5_why_are_total_lunar_eclipses_so_rare/ | {
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"The Moon's orbit goes \"above\" and \"below\" the Earth's (if you think of Earth as orbiting in a flat plane). It has to be both _behind_ the Earth, and aligned with its plane, for an eclipse to occur, and that usually doesn't happen.",
"The moon's orbit is tilted relative to the earth's orbit around the sun. See [this image](_URL_0_). So lunar (and solar) eclipses can only occur during two \"windows\" during the year, when the moon-earth system is in a location where the moon's orbit can take it between the earth and sun."
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6fuuvq | why are white rats mainly used for studies instead of other rodent species? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6fuuvq/eli5_why_are_white_rats_mainly_used_for_studies/ | {
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"They are a standadized lab rat, bred for this purpose, readily available in large numbers. But actually, mice are used more.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Lab rats are often of a particular strain, or a family that mice are taken from that are as genetically identical as possible. This is to be able to conduct effective studies on the effect of individual genes, and partly to limit the effect of genetic diversity in influencing the results of trials.\n\nSeveral of these strains, though not all, were derived from albino rats."
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61y73f | why are the edges of transparent objects (glass, plastic, acrylic) almost opaque? | Examples: [Image](_URL_0_), [Image](_URL_1_) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61y73f/eli5_why_are_the_edges_of_transparent_objects/ | {
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"Because light entering the edges is entering at a sharp angle, is bent to travel through the length of the material, bouncing off the sides until it exits the other end. Similarly, the light you see coming out of the edges has already travelled through the length of the material. This means that the material absorbs and distorts more of the light."
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19chvt | why do we curse as a reflex? | Well, when something gets messed up we often react by cursing. It's almost a reflex. I say almost because I never curse in front of my father and am otherwise doing it around friends. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19chvt/eli5_why_do_we_curse_as_a_reflex/ | {
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"I would think it is just a learned behavior. As children we see swearing from our parents, the media, and our peers and some of us develop the desire to swear because it's new and often times forbidden. Usually because of the new and forbidden nature of swearing most children become EXTREMELY foul mouthed but break themselves of that habit as they grow. But years of repetively swearing on a whim or swearing when we are subjected to negative stimuli just become habit. Habits take work to break. \n\nFrom personal experience I used to swear like a sailor (as did many of my friends) but I was forced to cut back (A LOT) because I joined the work force and obviously that's not appropriate in a professional setting. For instance, after working with kids for 3 years I've found that these days if I stub my toe or cut myself I don't yell, \"FUCK!\" I yell, \"Ouch\" or \"Shucks\" or \"Crud!\" lol\n\ntl;dr I feel it's just habitual and habits are something that take work to break oneself of. I'm not qualified to say on a psychological level though.",
"Screaming out obscenities or 'bad words' relieves stress, anxiety, and even pain to a limited extent. We say these words in moments of heightened stress to do just that.",
"That isn't a reflex. It's a habit.\n\nComparing the two introduces some really interesting neuroscience topics that have to do with habituation and learning.\n\nA reflex is, broadly speaking, any response that happens *without* conscious thought. If you touch a hot stove, you're gonna pull your hand back *before* the fact that you just touched a hot stove even gets to your brain. It happens entirely without your input.\n\nA habit, on the other hand, is kind of like a *learned reflex.*\n\nThings happen in the nervous system because chemical reactions propagate from one nerve cell to another, like a row of dominos falling over. When an electrochemical reaction propagates from one neuron to another, a kind of feedback happens that ends up strengthening the connection between the two cells. That makes it easier for the same reaction to happen next time; it takes less energy, basically, to knock the next domino over.\n\nThat means when a \"signal\" (it's not really a signal in the sense you might be thinking, but that's a useful metaphor) propagates down a particular neuronal pathway just one time, it becomes *slightly easier* for a \"signal\" to propagate down that pathway the next time.\n\nNeuroscientists say \"What fires together, wires together.\"\n\nThis is the key to *all* learning. You know how you can't really learn something — a skill, or a fact you want to remember, or whatever — by just experiencing it once? You have to practice a skill, or review a fact multiple times before it \"sticks.\" That's because you have to stimulate those particular cells in that particular way a number of times before they \"grow together\" enough to make it easy for that signal to propagate.\n\n*Habituation* is the logical extreme of that process. It's when you do something *consciously* enough times that it becomes unconscious. Like biting your fingernails, or tapping your foot. You don't *decide* to do that — if that's your habit. Instead, it happens \"automatically,\" because you've *so wired* those particular neurological pathways that signals propagate down them *all by themselves.*\n\nSo it isn't a reflex to swear when you hurt yourself or whatever. It's a habit. It's something you did enough times consciously that you've begun doing it without conscious intent. Cause you've *changed your brain.*\n\n(For the record, unlike reflexes, habits can be broken. You just need to *interrupt* the action by conscious intent often enough, and the interruption will itself become habituated, breaking the habit.)",
"It's primal. It even spontaneously erupts in primates taught how to do sign language back in the 1970s:\n\n*A small doll placed unexpectedly in Washoe’s cup elicited the response “Baby in my drink.” When Washoe soiled, particularly clothing or furniture, she was taught the sign “dirty,” which she then extrapolated as a general term of abuse. A rhesus monkey that evoked her displeasure was repeatedly signed at: “Dirty monkey, dirty monkey, dirty monkey.”*\n \n*Occasionally Washoe would say things like “Dirty Jack, gimme drink.” Lana, in a moment of creative annoyance, called her trainer “You green shit.” Chimpanzees have invented swear words. Washoe also seems to have a sort of sense of humor; once, when riding on her trainer’s shoulders and, perhaps inadvertently, wetting him, she signed: “Funny, funny.”*\n\n--a selection from \"Dragons of Eden,\" by Carl Sagan"
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26qcyb | what would be the protocol for abandoning the current us constitution? | Is this even possible? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26qcyb/eli5_what_would_be_the_protocol_for_abandoning/ | {
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"We couldn't remove the constitution, but with a 2/3 vote in congress and then 3/4 of the state's ratifying we could delete and replace everything within it.",
"Theoretically, you could pass an amendment to the Constitution invaliding it. But then you'd have to come up with something else really quick. Despite some of the more...esoteric...viewpoints, abandoning a modern government is a pretty bad idea if you want to, y'know, survive.\n\nYou'd also need something to replace it with quickly otherwise quite a lot of people would be dead before a new government emerged. Unless you got down to 150 people or so, then you might be able to get by without government but, in groups larger than that, governments emerge as people start codifying social pressures to eliminate defectors.",
"The Constitution does have a provision in it which allows for the calling of a Constitutional Convention, at which it would theoretically be possible to vote for a new Constitution altogether. Some of the founders (especially Jefferson) actually hoped that each successive generation would have its own Constitutional Convention. \n\nAlternatively, a Revolution would mean the abandoning of the old Constitution and implementing a new one, although hopefully it wouldn't come to this. \n\nOf course, it's also possible that a new state mechanism would come into power by means other than violent revolution, oust the old guard, and make its members (i.e. police and military) swear allegiance to its new constitution. *As an aside: the Articles of Confederation are technically still in effect, because they didn't include a provision for dissolving themselves, but obviously no one swears allegiance to defend the articles of Confederation."
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8bdi90 | what exactly is a light year? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8bdi90/eli5_what_exactly_is_a_light_year/ | {
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"A light year is the distance light can travel in one year. It is equivalent to 5.879e+12 miles or 9.461e+12 kilometers. "
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3vka1a | why can't tv channels just upload their shows to youtube? | I mean, it's a win for everybody! Viewers can watch it whereever they are on the globe for free, and the companies will get more people watching their show. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vka1a/eli5_why_cant_tv_channels_just_upload_their_shows/ | {
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"TV companies don't make money from you watching their show. They make money selling advertisements, which you would be less likely to do on YouTube. Unless they use product placement, which if cord cutting continues will be what TV channels use. Trust me, you will be advertised to. Don't try to fight it.",
"YouTube ad revenues are terrible compared to those of TV shows. YouTube ads give the uploader about $1.36 per thousand views: compare that to a rough estimate of American Idol, one of the shows with the highest ad revenue, at about $700 per thousand views.",
"TV channel make money through international rights to other channels and advertisement during show. Thats why geographical restrictions.\n\nWe are slowing moving to online model, but may take awhile"
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ew10km | rain water has no salt, but eventually gets back to an ocean from streams and rivers. surface water on the ocean condensates into clouds to repeat the cycle, but where does the salt go? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ew10km/eli5_rain_water_has_no_salt_but_eventually_gets/ | {
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"if you try to boil salt water you'll se once the water has completely evaporated the salt is left on the bottom",
"The salt stays in the ocean; it doesn't evaporate with the water. Only the water evaporates into vapor."
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3h4q40 | how do people learn to float? | When learning to swim, the first thing you must learn is how to float. Based on my understanding of basic physics, buoyancy force is equal to the mass of fluid displaced by an object. Assuming this is correct, how is floating an acquired skill? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h4q40/eli5_how_do_people_learn_to_float/ | {
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"Not an answer to the question, but I wanted to ask where you have to learn how to float first before learning how to swim? Yes you have to be able to keep your head over the water using thrust created by your feet, but never heard that you have to be able to actually float.",
"Your instincts go against keeping still and trusting something you can't grasp to keep you up. Before your experience tells you it will work you'll tend to thrash and that's how you go under water making you panic and thrash around more making you sink again and again. Only when that stops you float to the surface again ... With your face down if you're unlucky. \n\nOtherwise I agree with /u/Hajaku I didn't learn the floaty thing before learning strokes and stuff. "
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put0m | stock market from a corporation and stock buyer view. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/put0m/eli5_stock_market_from_a_corporation_and_stock/ | {
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"Suppose that you want to start a company, but don't have enough money. So you ask a friend for money and in return you give him some ownership in the company. This is private ownership since only you and your friend have control of it.\n\nCorporations, likewise, raise money by selling ownership (called shares) of their company. The stock market is basically where you can buy/sell those shares. The stock market is open for the public meaning anyone can buy and sell shares. That's why when a company sells their shares in the stock market they become a publicly traded company.\n\nCorporations can sell any % of the company as they wish. If they sold off too much, they can try to regain control by buying back those shares.\n\nAs a buyer you want to buys shares as an investment. Share prices go up when a company does well so you make some money when you sell them. A lot of companies also pay dividends; some of the profit they've made. They'll tell you when and how much.\n\nSome people buy shares in a company just to collect the dividends.\n"
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n2sfx | how is gravity a theory. | I hear it many times but never understood what it means. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/n2sfx/eli5_how_is_gravity_a_theory/ | {
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"Wikipedia has two great explanations.\n\n > Some scientific explanations are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them. The explanation becomes a scientific theory. In everyday language a theory means a hunch or speculation. Not so in science. In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature supported by facts gathered over time. Theories also allow scientists to make predictions about as yet unobserved phenomena.\n\nAnd\n\n > A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not \"guesses\" but reliable accounts of the real world. The theory of biological evolution is more than \"just a theory.\" It is as factual an explanation of the universe as the atomic theory of matter or the germ theory of disease. Our understanding of gravity is still a work in progress. But the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is an accepted fact.\n\nMake sense? What they're saying is that\n\n* We've repeatedly observed gravity to behave in a certin way.\n\n* We've built mathematical models that describe this way in which gravity behaves.\n\n* These mathematical models are able to predict how gravity will behave in other ways.\n\n\"Theory\" in a physics sense doesn't mean something speculative. Things are extremely evidence based by the time they're called theories. The other term you'll hear sometimes is \"law\", as in \"the law of gravity\", but I don't really like that term, because it connotes something unchanging and predetermined, when in reality our understanding of science evolves over time.",
"Gravity exists. There is no doubt about that; if we drop something it falls. No matter what we believe, gravity will always exists.\n\nIn order to get on with our lives we like to be able to know what is going to happen in the future: Will this cannonball hit that ship?; will a boat this big float?; will my ice-cream fall off the cone?\n\nIn the process if trying to predict the future we come up with theories. I theorize that if I drop this ball, it will fall at 9.8 meters per second, per second. If my theory is right we know we can continue to use that theory that make predictions about the future.\n\nAnd that's what the theory of gravity is: The mathematics -- it just happens to be mathematics, but it could be any system -- that allows us to theorize about the future most accurately. \n\n",
"Wikipedia has two great explanations.\n\n > Some scientific explanations are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them. The explanation becomes a scientific theory. In everyday language a theory means a hunch or speculation. Not so in science. In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature supported by facts gathered over time. Theories also allow scientists to make predictions about as yet unobserved phenomena.\n\nAnd\n\n > A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not \"guesses\" but reliable accounts of the real world. The theory of biological evolution is more than \"just a theory.\" It is as factual an explanation of the universe as the atomic theory of matter or the germ theory of disease. Our understanding of gravity is still a work in progress. But the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is an accepted fact.\n\nMake sense? What they're saying is that\n\n* We've repeatedly observed gravity to behave in a certin way.\n\n* We've built mathematical models that describe this way in which gravity behaves.\n\n* These mathematical models are able to predict how gravity will behave in other ways.\n\n\"Theory\" in a physics sense doesn't mean something speculative. Things are extremely evidence based by the time they're called theories. The other term you'll hear sometimes is \"law\", as in \"the law of gravity\", but I don't really like that term, because it connotes something unchanging and predetermined, when in reality our understanding of science evolves over time.",
"Gravity exists. There is no doubt about that; if we drop something it falls. No matter what we believe, gravity will always exists.\n\nIn order to get on with our lives we like to be able to know what is going to happen in the future: Will this cannonball hit that ship?; will a boat this big float?; will my ice-cream fall off the cone?\n\nIn the process if trying to predict the future we come up with theories. I theorize that if I drop this ball, it will fall at 9.8 meters per second, per second. If my theory is right we know we can continue to use that theory that make predictions about the future.\n\nAnd that's what the theory of gravity is: The mathematics -- it just happens to be mathematics, but it could be any system -- that allows us to theorize about the future most accurately. \n\n"
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88ki5m | what is gpg encryption and how does it work? | I tried using it once but got lost in the multiple directions given considering I'm not a super computer 'geek' (no offense intentions). I have something coming up where I will need to learn this and what it's about and how to encrypt a message or letter. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/88ki5m/eli5_what_is_gpg_encryption_and_how_does_it_work/ | {
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"You generate a private key and a public key. The person encrypting should do so with the public key. The one receiving/decrypting should use the private key along with a passphrase. Kleopatra is an easy program to use to manage this along with gpgforwin. After reading more, you should post a more specific question if you are still stuck.",
"The Gnu Privacy Guard (GPG) is a an _implementation_ of PGP, (initially) a method for encrypting emails. Searching for PGP might yield more information.\n\nPGP is built around public key (assymetric) cryptography, which essentially means that everyone using it has a key pair; one of the keys can encrypt but not decrypt (the public key) and one can decrypt but not encrypt (the private key). This opposed to symmetric cryptography where one key can both encrypt and decrypt.\n\nThe idea is that you give the public key away to anyone, they can then encrypt a message and send it to you, and only the one with the private key (hopefully only you) can decrypt the message.\n\nPGP can also sign messages, which is where it creates a cryptographic hash of the message contents that enables anyone with the public key to check if the message really was from you, and if it was tampered with along the way (while not necessarily encrypting the message). It's possible to both sign and encrypt messages, the signature is then from the sender, telling the recipient that this could only come from a specific person.\n\nBut how do you find someone's key and how do you know that that key really is their key? Most PGP implementations are able to connect to keyservers around the world so that you can search for someone's public key (say by name or email address). But since you didn't get that key from the person themselves, there's no telling who uploaded it. This is where something called the web of trust comes in, and key signing.\n\nPGP public keys can be signed, that is to say, a private key can add a signature (like when signing a message) to a key, this is a cryptographic way of saying \"I, the holder of this key verify that the owner of the key is who they say it is\" so you may not be sure about a given public key, but if it's signed by someone whose public key you do know is trustworthy, it gives you a clue that this key probably is good. Keys can be signed any number of times (potentially strenghtening your trust level), and the chains of trust can be any length.\n\nBack in the day there used to be PGP key signing parties, where people would meet up and sign eachothers' keys and upload them to keyservers so that they were sure that the person with the key were who it said they were and helped others be more sure (hardcore security people would say that you couldn't trust a key unless you were given it on a floppy or something by the owner, signed in triplicate or whatever).\n\nPGP never had any real mainstream pull, most of the programs for it were difficult to use and the whole web of trust thing never really got enough signatures to be useful. These days, PGP signatures are mostly used for verifying that software hasn't been tampered with, I think debian linux uses pgp with their apt system."
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1xfzyp | why do videos from middle-eastern countries always have someone repeatedly saying 'allahu akbar'? | I know it means God is greater, but why do they constantly repeat it again and again and again throughout videos? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xfzyp/eli5_why_do_videos_from_middleeastern_countries/ | {
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"It means \"God Is Great\" and seems to be the words that fit for a number of occasions - victories, fearful times, in mourning, you name it.\n\nCompare to \"Oh My God!\" in the US and UK where we use it when we see something unexpected or hear good news or many other situations.",
"\"Allahu Akbar\" is a celebratory phrase. It's also the most frequent phrase in the islamic prayer. \n\nThe literal translation is \"God is great/greater\".\n\nIt's either because they're trying to simulate a mosque sound in the background, or someone celebrating success/victory.\n\nIt's the equivalent of \"Hallelujah\" in a way."
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13azt9 | why everyone is dressed up in paintings and photos pre-20th century. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13azt9/eli5_why_everyone_is_dressed_up_in_paintings_and/ | {
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"There were no digital cameras or iPhones to take pictures. Photos were taken and developed by professionals and took relatively longer. As such, they were a lot more expensive and getting your photo taken was a luxury.",
"Getting your photograph taken back then was a big deal. It wasn't like today, it wasn't even like the 60's when Polaroid was huge. \n\nSome peoples only got a photograph taken when they were babies, at their wedding, and one with each child. A family photograph may have been the only thing a new bride had to remember her parents and siblings. The one photograph of your parents would have been all you had to remember them after they died.\n\nAlso because it was such an important thing and took awhile to complete you could lose a half or even a whole day of work. It made sense to dress up and make it a highlight.\n\n",
"Before photographs there were portraits. Most people barely had enough money for food, so only very rich men could afford for an artist to paint for them. They didn't just to it for fun though, rich families would hang up the pictures of their granddads because being rich meant that you came from a very famous and important family. They were very proud of their granddads and great granddads.\nHaving an important family means they were very important people, most likely officers in the army. So they would wear all their fancy army clothes to remind their children's children how important they were.\n\nWhen cameras were first invented, people with a bit less money could afford to have this done. A big use for photography was to take photographs of their recently dead family members all dressed up, so having a photo taken was always thought of as a serious and formal thing to do.\n\nAll this changed in 1926, with the invent of photomatons! Little booths were set up by the seaside and everyone who could afford to go (everyone except the poorest of people by this point) could go and have a photo taken in their casual swimwear. Photos started to get more silly, as young people could afford to play with different poses in the machine and this is around the time 'smiling for the camera' became a thing!"
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5d1y97 | why do devs with completely free apps, not make it open source? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d1y97/eli5_why_do_devs_with_completely_free_apps_not/ | {
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"Usually, open sourcing something takes more work than not open sourcing it. If you're just doing something on a lark or to learn something, you generally don't want to bother putting unnecessary effort into it."
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8mp9cr | how do stars burn or react for millions of years in the cold vacuum of space? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8mp9cr/eli5_how_do_stars_burn_or_react_for_millions_of/ | {
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"There's two false assumptions here\n\n1) About the \"dissipation of heat\" in a vacuum\n\nand \n\n2) Stars don't burn\n\nSo, about 1), note that there are 3 ways to transfer heat: conduction, convection, and radiation. Conduction and convection are similar and involve the particles of two objects to be in contact.\n\nFor example, when you touch a cold countertop, this is *conduction*.\n\nNote that there are no particles in a vacuum. That means there is no conduction or convection. This means it is **hard** to dissipate heat in a vacuum; that's why Thermos bottles have a **vacuum** layer, and why the ISS has giant *cooling* wings.\n\nIf you were to jump into space naked, heat would be one of the last things you'd worry about!\n\n2) Stars don't burn like wood, it's nuclear fusion expediated by the massive pressure and quantum tunneling.",
"I take an ice cube and hold it in my hand. How does it melt? The heat from my hand travels into the ice cube by conduction, because I'm holding it. Thus a lot of heat can be transferred. \n\nWhat about a hot rock in space? The vacuum of space may be cold (in the shade) but how can the heat in the rock leave it? It's not touching anything, not even an atmosphere. There is nowhere for the heat to go except to radiate outwards as low frequency light. Thus heat in space is radiated out instead of through convection or conduction. \n\nOn top of that, stars are incredibly powerful and new energy is released every second, so even if the star was under the biggest ball of ice in the universe, it would still burn hotly and melt it over time instead of cooling down. \n\nStars don't burn though. In fact they are kind of the opposite of burning. When you burn something you take a complex molecule and break it apart into less energetic molecules, releasing energy. But stars work by taking simple elements, and fusing them together into a more complex and heavier element and releasing some of the left overs as energy. This is what fusion is, the opposite of fission or splitting the atom, aka nuclear reactor. \n\nEvery atom in your body (other than hydrogen) was created in the heart of a star. Hydrogen fuses to itself to create helium and energy. Helium fuses to create heavier elements, and so on and so forth. Stars turn hydrogen and later, helium, into heavier elements plus energy. That is what causes them to shine. They are fusion reactors. \n\nAll of the oxygen, carbon, an calcium in your body was formed from the nuclear reactions inside of a star. When stars die, they cast off much of their material, including the heavier elements they created, out into the galaxy into huge clouds of gas and dust. Gravity later pulls these dead cast offs into balls of hot material that form new stars and new planets, making use of the heavier elements created by a long dead star. "
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1soe0s | why are so many baby animals "fuzzy"? babies of mammalian species (i'm thinking ducks, bears, kittens, etc) are all fuzzier when they're young. anyone know why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1soe0s/eli5_why_are_so_many_baby_animals_fuzzy_babies_of/ | {
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"ducks are not mammals",
"I would guess because fine and fluffy hair/feathers would provide better insulation and keep them warm.",
"As a trained biologist, I feel the need to point out that the mammalian genus of ducks is nearly 30% fuzzier at birth than non-mammalian duck species. The OP is now vindicated. \n\n\nAlso - insulation is the correct answer. ",
"Also, it makes them adorable which is a pretty useful trait, evolutionarily.\n\nSource: i am a fox. "
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67yrlr | why is it that there are so many advancements in the world, yet it never feels like anything revolutionary is happening? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67yrlr/eli5_why_is_it_that_there_are_so_many/ | {
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"We live in an age where increments between improvements of products are much smaller than \"back in the day\". Coupled with this, we are constantly being informed about these changes, so we never really get surprised when something big happens (unless it's REALLY big, like if fusion was perfected today, the world would be singing praises).",
"Because revolution is rare, what you usually get incremental improvement. Especially in modern times, as most of the low hanging fruit has already been done.\n\nTake for instance VR. They started experimenting in the 90s, but the tech wasn't up to it. There were 3 kg helmets with CRTs and wireframe graphics. Things eventually died because there wasn't much practical use for huge, unwieldy, expensive hardware, and awful graphics.\n\nThen recently the Oculus Rift appeared. DK1 was demo quality -- it worked, sort of, but it was extremely unpolished and text barely worked in it. \n\nDK2 was crappy quality -- better, with text on the edge of readability in say, Elite. Graphically unimpressive, but at the point where at least some things could be played without redoing the whole game around it.\n\nNow we have CV1, which I would rate as \"okay\" in comparison to normal graphics. It's still low res-ish, but not unacceptably so. It's at the point where you're rarely limited by its abilities. It's not yet at the point where it can replace a normal monitor, so it's not the thing to browse the web or work on a spreadsheet (doable, but not very well). It does work quite nicely for gaming, though. Despite these issues it requires high end hardware anyway, and good controllers for it just came out.\n\nIn an iteration or two it could be mainstream and have all the kinks ironed out. But that will be after 4-5 preceding generations, all of which were incremental improvements on each other.",
"Quite frankly, it probably is because you are not paying attention.\n\nI'm not that old, but in my lifetime, I have witnessed the emergence fo the following revolutionary, life-changing technologies:\n\n* microwave ovens\n* satellite communications\n* carbon fiber\n* home computers\n* fiber optics\n* lasers\n* optical storage\n* solid state storage\n* the internet\n* cell phones\n* smart phones\n* LED/LCD displays\n* voice recognition\n* GPS\n* medical imaging\n* orthoscopic surgery\n\nI'm sure I have missed several, but each of these impact my life on a daily basis. If you don't see the revolution, you need to look more closely."
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1u87nl | why do i find male comedians consistently funnier than female comedians, is there a reason behind this? | Apologies to anyone who finds this sexist, it's not intended to be and I am just inquisitive as to whether there is an explanation behind this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1u87nl/eli5_why_do_i_find_male_comedians_consistently/ | {
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"Christopher Hitchens explained it as men need to be funny to get laid and women don't. Men have to have all sorts of tricks up their sleeve to be appealing to the opposite sex. Women just have to show up.\n\nHe said it's not that women don't have a sense of humour, it's just that men are naturally funnier than women. \n\nFemale comedians seem to tell jokes about periods, and tampons, and handbags, etc. Men listen to that and go,\"Huh? I don't get it.\" However, even when a male comedian is telling a sexist joke against women the women laugh and go, \"Yeah, I am a bitch sometimes lol!\"\n\n",
"I just listened to some female comedians, and the first thing that popped out was their voices. They have no impact. The sound of their voices just don't do a joke justice most of the time. Also, I feel like a lot of the mainstream female stand up comedians are just shock-value comedians.",
"Laughter is an involuntary response, and whoever can make you laugh is in a bit of a position of power over you. We as a society are not accustomed to seeing women in positions of power. I think that as we -- both women and men -- get over this, we will find women funnier.\n\nI do not think that women are simply less funny. If you look at comedic actresses through time, those have always been accepted as funny. But only if they were acting -- telling a story, being someone other than themselves, and often someone stupid. But when a comedian stands up as him/herself, then that's a different thing, and we are not as accepting of having a woman in a position to make us laugh, to have that power over us.\n\nI think it's a little like the issue of a female president of the United States. At this point, most people envision a female president as either a faux male, or else incompetent. There is no \"script\" for a female who can wrangle Congress or wield military power. But eventually we will elect a female president, and then we will see how a woman can be a woman and also do all those things we think of as \"male\" activities.",
"We are wired to. [Source](_URL_0_) \n\nDeep voices are perceived as leaders. This implies competence, trustworthiness and attractiveness. \nThis is why we prefer male stand-up comics. This is why we prefer male narration in films. ",
"Because that's what the culture wherein media exists is constantly reinforcing. It's the same reason there aren't very many female CEOs or very many 'great women painters.' Not too long ago, all of these areas of life were entirely male-dominated; for centuries. That's a long time to entrench ideas about what things should look like and sound like and act like in order to be worthwhile. Nowadays, as more and more women enter these spheres of life, it seems weird to those who are entrenched in the male-dominated culture of said sphere. There aren't very many of them (women) doing this...they must not be very good at whatever it is, or not like it very much, otherwise there would be more, right? Maybe the reason women are less likely to participate in a certain sphere of life is because they are constantly being told they don't belong in that sphere! \n\nTina Fey wrote in her book Bossypants about how when she was starting out she worked in an improv troupe, and when they were considering changing from a cast of 2 women and 4 men to 3 women and 3 men, her boss plaintively said 'no one wants to see a show with just women' or something along those lines. She was stunned, but unsurprised. Just as I am to see this thread and this topic of discussion brought up again and again, in all areas of life. It's the same old tune. Women care about and can be interested in everybody, while men only care about other men. I think that's bullshit, and really insulting to men. This is the reason \"womens\" issues are supposedly special interest. Mens issues are called the news. \n\nDon't kid yourselves, it's not their high-pitched voices, or the fact that they only ever joke about relationships and vaginas, or the fact that they have to be hot enough to fuck in order for them to hold mens interest long enough to crack a joke. It's the same-old boys club holdover that begs these questions about women's competence in every other area of societal life. Few **people** could face such an obvious uphill slog to get to participate in an area of life they enjoy without risking the bullshit dampening any desire they have to do what they love, not just women. \n\nI wish we could do an experiment and see how many male comedians made it to a place of moderate fame if they had their ability to be funny questioned at every juncture. What if Louis C.K. or Jim Gaffigan or Kevin Hart or George Carlin had been asked why they thought men just weren't that funny in every other interview? What if they had to constantly defend their right to even be on stage? What if they had throngs of people discussing whether they thought men were evolutionarily able to be funny? It seems to me that if that were the case, many hilarious men would never have gotten into comedy.",
"There's certainly a lot of unabashed sexist speculation in this thread and not a lot of good answers.",
"Clip from UK show QI, gives a basic idea and a few laughs.\n_URL_0_",
"Its all of these things and more really, there are less of them, and I (and i assume others) am pretty picky about what kind of comedians I find funny. Louis C.K. is probably the only guy that consistently makes me laugh.\nI'd say sexism plays a part too though.\nWhy don't we respect their voices? The fact that men through history are deemed more worthy of respect, and are listened to, could have an impact.\nWe as a society also tend to see women as less funny (think of how few buddy comedies there are starring women), and are more frequently the butt of jokes (Think of comedians who like to joke about their nagging wives, etc.) This not only creates an uphill battle for women comics, but also kind of creates a gender role where they might not feel compelled to do stand up comedy.\n\nSo that can in part explain why there are so few women comedians, which leads to significantly less hysterical ones. Because women are also rare in comedy, being a woman in comedy becomes part of their comedic identity, which could lead to more jokes about vaginas (which I agree, are not typically that funny).\n\nThat being said, the whole voice thing might not just be about sexism, we do generally prefer big deep voices, and being able to project correctly is crucial to comedy.\n\nTL,DR: Its not sexist to prefer male comics, but the lack of female comics and our distaste for a lot of their comedy can be explained in part by a sexist society.",
"There's a lot of long replies here, but I'm guessing it's to do with you being able to relate with men more than women.",
"They're associating with your perspective better",
"I think it has to do with how modern comedy is more about a funny take on somewhat familiar situations or a funny story as opposed to conventional jokes. That familiar situation helps set up an expectation for the outcome and then the comedian humorously snatches that expectation away. The people who have an easy time getting that reaction from you are most like you in terms of experience and background and as a performer comedy, like other kinds of writing and performing arts, is about your experiences and what you know.\n\nFat comedians tend to make fat jokes. Minority comedians tend to make jokes comparing their race with people of other races. If a comedian has a disability then that's probably all you're going to hear about for their set. Some of that might be funny because it's tweaking an expectation you'd have about those kinds of people but a lot of it won't work for you because you can't really relate to their experiences.\n\nHere is a white guy example: For my part I think [Bill Burr](_URL_1_) is great but I bet my wife wouldn't like his stuff nearly as much because it comes from a very masculine point of view. [John Mulaney](_URL_0_) is a white catholic guy but his work is more general interest and has a broader appeal. That's the same kind of difference between Cedric the Entertainer and Chris Rock.",
"I feel that women just aren't nearly as funny as men, generally speaking. Not to say there's no funny women comedians out there, there are. It's just that if you put the funniest male comedian up against the funniest woman comedian there's absolutely no contention and they're miles apart in wit and humour. i.e. Louis C.K, Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Dave Chapelle etc.",
"I think a large part of comedy is being able to associate with the comedian. Quite a lot of male comedy relates to sex and dicks and stuff, and we generally just find that funnier because most of it is you going \"yeah I think that too\".\n\nAlso I find that most women comics aren't quite as edgy as male ones, and for me at least I find it boring if a stand up hasn't offended at least like 25% of the audience. I know this is true for me because there are female comics I find funny who aren't afraid to be disgusting like Jo Brand, and conversely there are the more 'family friendly' male comedians who bore me to tears (like Michael MacIntyre). ",
"[As answered by a female comedian - Sandi Toksvig - on QI](_URL_0_)",
"I think women comedians are thought unfunny because what our culture considers comedic charm is extremely antagonistic to what we have decided femininity should be. \n\nGood comedians have a sort of devil-may care attitude. They scoff at authority. They mock they status quo. They aren't the most up-right citizens. They like to walk the moral gray, indulge the vulgar and force you into a world that you known you shouldn't be laughing at. \n\nWhat happens to a woman if she has all the qualities that makes her just as funny as the guys? Well she suddenly, becomes an inferior version of a woman. A *tomboy*, a *dyke*, \"a *feminist*\" or whatever people like to say when they want to imply that you aren't feminine enough to have a romantic relationship with a man or be a mother. \n\nFrom the get go, women are already handicapped because they have to choose between being a naturally funny person and being a woman that society accepts and the result is a sorta funny female comedian that never goes as far as she could (or really wants too).\n\nMany women that are successful comedians became so because a lot of them have already been rejected by society because of their weight, race, religion, appearance, age, sexual orientation, etc. and their comedy is a way of flaunting that. \n\nSociety still treats funny women like they are doing something wrong and that maybe if you put on a pretty dress and work on your milkshake instead to being \"coarse\" you'll get the boys and won't end up lonely and fear of being alone effectively curbs a lot of \"negative\" behavior. \n\nI know many lesbians have experienced societies silly rehab for women that fail to fit. They same thing happens to women in STEM fields, politics and also corporate environments because it seems that certain personality traits are not acceptable for certain crotches. Instead of being recognized as a woman with qualities acceptable for the field she has chosen to pursue, she gets accused of trying to be a man. \n\n**tl;dr woman comedians are afraid of being rejected by society so they never really give it their all and stick to safe feminine topics.**\n\n\n",
"Sex. Comedy is communication, if men communicate well they can procreate. Women do not need to hone their comely skills as they are the ones being seduced. Huge oversimplification I know."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/03/06/rspb.2012.0311.full"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aX26k5ZNzI"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYIwPu50Fic",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnOg01N1u3w"
],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aX26k5ZNzI"
],
[],
[]
]
|
|
c8mocp | how are logic chips (and/or/nand/etc) actually built to work like their chosen logic gate? | Like with an AND gate I understand how it works in that an input of 1 AND 1 make an output of 1, but how do the logic chips actually perform the function? How would you build a logic gate without using logic chips? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c8mocp/eli5_how_are_logic_chips_andornandetc_actually/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The basic building block of electrical/electronic gates is the transistor. You can think of a transistor as an electrically operated switch. This switch has an input, output and a \"switch\" (also an input). If the switch is \"on\" it connects the input to the output, if the switch is \"off\" the input is disconnected from the output. \n\nBy differing configurations of this switch (several transistors connected in different circuit patterns), all logical gates can be constructed.",
"The basic building block is a transistor, which is basically just a little switch with three connections: the input, the output, and the gate. If the gate value is 1, the output value is the same as the input. If the gate value is 0, the output value is 0.\n\nAn AND gate can be made with two transistors. You connect each of the inputs to the gate of one of the transistors. One transistor has the input connected to a constant 1 source and the output connected to the input of the other transistor. The other transistor's output is the output of the AND gate. As long as both transistors are switched on, the 1 value will flow through and out to the output. If either is switched off, the output will be 0.",
"_URL_0_ This video might help you out. Demonstrates the actual construction of a chip."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[],
[
"https://youtu.be/VNzkhZBjo5k"
]
]
|
|
2pm2en | why did the us and cuba hate each other? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pm2en/eli5why_did_the_us_and_cuba_hate_each_other/ | {
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"cmxxa8q",
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"text": [
"The US and Cuba were best friends 1898-1959. Cuba was a US territory for a time, and was considered for admission into the union.\n\nIn 1953 Fidel Castro led a communist revolution against the Cuban Batista government. Because the United States was friendly with Batista's government and hostile to communism (what with the Cold War going on) the US opposed Castro and supported Batista.\n\nBecause the US was trying to be covert and apply a soft touch, and because Castro and his men were very clever and dedicated, Castro won the revolution and became the leader of a communist Cuban state. \n\nIn the 1962, Cuba allowed the USSR to station nuclear weapons on their territory, which posed an uncomfortably close threat in the minds of the United States. This was called the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it was the closest mankind came to destroying itself in nuclear war. Older generations remember this, and remain distrustful of Cuba.\n\nThe United States has long refused to recognize the legitimacy of Castro's government and insists that US-Cuban relations cannot restart without fair and free multi-party elections. This has made travel and trade between the two nations legally impossible, though in recent years a cooling of relations has allowed some travel.",
"1. The embargo officially came in to force in 1959 when Cuba nationalized private businesses, including several businesses that were at the time being run by US citizens and companies.\n\n2. Occasionally it is claimed by proponents of the embargo that it was instituted, in part, as an objection to the treatment the Cuban people have received from the Castros. Realistically however USA has never really expressed any legitimate concern for the welfare of Cuban citizens, but rather has opposed Cuba on the grounds that the country has opposed private business entities operating within their borders.\n\n3. Cuba is a communist state. And USA has been (and in many ways still is) ideologically opposed to communism of any kind, sometimes to an irrational degree.\n\n4. The [Cuban missile crisis](_URL_0_) was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war, and that certainly played a role in prolonging the embargo.",
"As with most other things, it comes down to corporate profits.\n\nThe Batista regime was wildly corrupt, and was more than happy to let American companies ass-rape the country's resources and use Cuban workers as serfs, while ruthlessly crushing any radical, commie voices saying silly shit like workers should be paid a fair wage.\n\nSo this led to a big socialist movement in Cuba (as it had in 19th century America), and Castro managed to overthrow Batista and kick the American companies out. \n\nUnfortunately, as it usually is with \"socialist worker's paradises,\" the new \"populist\" leaders found they really kinda LIKED silk sheets and solid gold cutlery. That, combined with America's butt-hurt vendetta against Castro by way of embargoes and diplomatic pressure on other countries to play ball, led to the Cubans mainly remaining serfs. Just under a new boss, but at least with universal healthcare, something the US has not managed to produce.\n\nCastro, for his part, immediately offered friendship to the US, and even made an official state visit to Washington and received a perfunctory \"head of state\" briefing from the CIA. But the US kinda had a thing about communism, so they told him to fuck off and die in a fire. He took his amigo-ship to Russia, who was MORE than happy to have a friend with land just 90 miles away from US soil.\n\n"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_missile_crisis"
],
[]
]
|
||
3f2c6s | what exactly is vevo? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3f2c6s/eli5_what_exactly_is_vevo/ | {
"a_id": [
"ctknyhm"
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"score": [
4
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"text": [
"It's a video hosting site that owns the rights to show music videos from major music labels. It has a separate site, which is intended to attract advertisers. However, they also have approved Youtube channels for their most popular artists. I guess they realized pretty quickly that Youtube is sort of the king for video hosting, so rather than force everyone to their separate sites to watch music videos, they instead have approved music videos on Youtube (any channel whose name is 'artistVEVO'). The ads on the Youtube video generate money, which goes back to the artist, the record label, and VEVO. \n\nIt sounds like some artists have issues with this, however. They don't get any say in which ads appear on their video. In my 3rd link below, _URL_1_ of the Black Eyed Peas offers some perspective on this point of view.\n\nTLDR: VEVO owns the right to show music videos from major labels, and makes money through ad revenue, mainly on their Youtube videos.\n\nSources:\n_URL_2_\n_URL_0_\n_URL_3_"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/seven-ways-musicians-make-money-off-youtube-20130919",
"will.i.am",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vevo",
"http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/10/30/williamstuffvevo"
]
]
|
||
5z7n2b | how are reflections of camera men/women avoided in films? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5z7n2b/eli5_how_are_reflections_of_camera_menwomen/ | {
"a_id": [
"devxsli"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"In the editing process, ideally once the movie has what they call \"picture lock, (meaning all the cuts are in place but the special effects havent been done yet) they find each surface where there are reflections and paint them out.\n\nOne common way of doing this is by \"clean plating,\" which is when visual effects artists find a frame of the shot where there are reflections and nothing is blocking them like characters or props or whatever, then paint out the thing being reflected, then use that \"cleaned up\" frame and move JUST the cleaned up bit through the rest of the shot. Most of the time this means then adding another instance of the original shot containing just the things blocking the reflecty thing so it all looks seamless. \n\nSorry about the formatting/brevity. On mobile and I figured this was a good enough explanation for r/ELI5"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
1u9zqx | why does ice make alcohol more drinkable? | Cold alcoholic drinks go down much much easier than room temperature, why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1u9zqx/eli5_why_does_ice_make_alcohol_more_drinkable/ | {
"a_id": [
"cefy6wu"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Cold temperatures cause molecules to move slower, which liquids to release fewer molecules into the air when cold. This decreases the scent of the liquid, and one's sense of taste is dominated by one's sense of smell."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
|
3kwqpx | why are school textbooks so large and complex, when teachers never have time to use the whole book in a year? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kwqpx/eli5_why_are_school_textbooks_so_large_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"cv149q5",
"cv14bts"
],
"score": [
13,
5
],
"text": [
"Because they want to cover as many different topics as possible and some teachers might want to cover different things than other teachers. Also they should offer pupils the possibility to read them by themselves and thereby cover things that the time is missing for.",
"In grade school, you may not use everything, but everything is used by someone. Different schools, different teachers, different syllabuses and testing, may require using different sections.\n\nWhen you get into college/graduate school, there's a decent chance that every page gets read/reviewed/tested. It's quite common to cover a chapter per class and finish the book by the end of the semester."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
]
|
||
1b2a1w | what is culture? | I'm doing a project in my research class and we are trying to figure out how to explain culture to young children. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1b2a1w/eli5_what_is_culture/ | {
"a_id": [
"c92wvtd",
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2,
2,
2
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"text": [
"cul·ture /ˈkəlCHər/\n\nNoun: The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively. \n\nVerb: Maintain (tissue cells, bacteria, etc.) in conditions suitable for growth. ",
"Culture is everything that makes your home familiar to you. It is the food you eat, the way people act around you and the meanings things hold. It can be something you can touch, or it can be something more complicated like beliefs and values of yourself and those around you. Culture is always changing, and it always growing. Culture is one of the most interesting aspects of the world because everywhere you go, it will never be the same. Exploring the cultures of other areas you will travel to and people you will interact with is one of the most exciting things you will experience in life.",
"To sum up, culture is everything that people do, in contrast with nature.\n\nSome people like to do different things, so there are always different cultures (the music culture, the painting culture, the writing culture, and so on) around at any given time.\n\nPeople change as time goes on, so you have ancient culture, and modern culture, and so on.\n\nPeople are different in different places, so you have Asian culture, American culture, African culture, and so on as well.\n\nYou can also say there's a youth culture, or an adult culture... If you can divide people in any way, you'll find a culture for them as well.",
"culture is a what people are interesting in - culture is therefore connected to family members and close friends and therefore countries/nations",
"Culture is the way a group of people describe themselves. It usually involves a self-identity based on religion, norms (values, rites of passage, etc), race and ethnicity, a shared language, a territory with a border, and a historical heritage."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
|
|
6ka75s | how does my brain allow me to start a sentence without knowing exactly how it will end while still making coherent sense | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ka75s/eli5_how_does_my_brain_allow_me_to_start_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"djkhk23"
],
"score": [
19
],
"text": [
"Unless you're reading a speech or other pre-written work you always make up what you're going to say as you go. Because everyone does this the thing that we call \"coherent\" has room for small errors in continuity, word choice, etc. We also usually use a lot of filler words (\"uhms\" and stuff like that) that give our brain a second to make up the next bit.\n\n"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
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