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2vtx2m | is there a scientific explanation for falling in love with one person, but not with another? | So i got broken up with today (stay with me, story is important. Im 27F, he's 36M and divorced). We had been dating for 5 months, i met his parents, family. He broke up with me bc he's not in love with me. He is a great person, i still believe so and he has always treated me with upmost respect. I believe he wouldn't lie to me. From our recent mail exchange: "(...) I know that you are kind and understanding and you give me warmth without asking, distance when I asked for it and support when I needed it; I've longed for those things in my life. I enjoyed your company and our time together and lord knows you're beautiful. " We had a great time together and there was chemistry and everything. WHAT I DON'T understand: Why then, for god's sake, is he not in love with me? It sounds like everything is great. Does any anyone have an explanation why we can be attracted to someone, have a great time with them, but not fall in love with them?
I mean we've all experienced this situation, yet if we have two people that are similarly a great fit for us- why do we fall in love with one of them but not the other? Is there a biological reason?
Reddit, help me make sense of this situation. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vtx2m/eli5_is_there_a_scientific_explanation_for/ | {
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"I was waiting for someone to comment with a good answer since i cant provide one but since I've experienced this exact same thing I understand how painful it is for it to end so abruptly. I for the longest time could not figure out why my girlfriend of 2 years just broke up with me for next to no reason except for she didn't love me anymore. I tried blaming the Honeymoon Phase, first part of relationship where your super happy your together, but we passed that so long ago. She explained it to me as a time in her life where she needed someone like me and after i had filled that void over a 2 year span she realized she didn't love me anymore. It sounds like he doesn't know what he's leaving behind, try staying friends with him as much as possible. At some point he may realize just what hes missing out on and if he hits that point you will still be in his life.\n\nEDIT: I know this doesn't answer your question but hearing something is better than nothing",
"I know Japanese has a word for it: 片思い (kataomoi), meaning unrequited love or one-sided love. \n\nThe opposite is 両思い (ryouomoi), or mutual love."
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4u38rp | would living on a constantly moving elevator be comparable to living with another planets gravity? | When riding on an elevator moving upwards it feels like there is extra gravity on me, and it is harder to move. How comparable is this is this to living on a planet with different gravity | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4u38rp/eli5_would_living_on_a_constantly_moving_elevator/ | {
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"Yes and no. You would need to keep accelerating to keep simulating a \"pushing\" force. You'll notice that when driving a car, you only feel the speed when accelerating (pushing you back into the seat) or decellerating (you feel moving forward into the seatbelt) but *not* when going at a constane speed.\n\nThis is one way to simulate gravity in space, accelerating in a spacecraft at a rate of 1G would feel like normal gravity.",
"Force (and thus apparent weight from gravity) isn't dependent on speed, it's dependent on *acceleration*. If the elevator is moving at a constant speed (up *or* down), you won't weigh any more or less than you do when the elevator is stationary.\n\nThat feeling of high gravity you get is only temporary, and is a result of the elevator accelerating initially.",
"No.\n\nAn elevator accelerating produces a force that's in line with gravity and makes you feel \"heavier\". Once the elevator gets up to a constant speed, the force you feel is the same as when the elevator is stopped.\n\nSomething like a centrifuge or a [chain carousel](_URL_0_ ) would be a better way to feel constant \"g\" greater than 1.",
" > How comparable is this is this to living on a planet with different gravity\n\nIt is exactly the same as living on a planet with slightly higher gravity, as long as the elevator is accelerating at that speed. If you were in space you could be accelerating at 1G and it would be identical to living on Earth with respect to simulating gravitational force.\n\nHowever you couldn't accelerate at 1G for very long before you start to reach relativistic velocities, and smashing into a pebble while going 50% the speed of light is going to be a bad time. But if you tried to make a circle to stay in the same area, such as a big centrifuge, you would have slightly unbalanced acceleration and so inconsistencies in the simulation of gravitational force.",
"A constantly **moving** elevator would not be to like living on another planets gravity. A Constantly **accelerating** elevator would be. If you were accelerating upwards the effect would be like a planet with greater gravity than that of earth. Accelerating downward the effect would be like a planet with gravity less than that of earth. \n\nFor a brief time when the elevator starts moving upward you are experiencing positive g forces and it feels the same as a planet with greater gravity, but as soon as the elevator reaches a constant speed you are now experiencing earth's gravity. When the elevator slows you then experience experience negative g forces and it feels like a planet with gravity less than that of earth.",
"No, if the MOVEMENT is constant, then you won't notice anything. You would need to be on a constantly ACCELERATING elevator, which isn't practical. If you want to see a good example of bad science in gravity and elevators, then watch the 2012 Total Recall movie; They get absolutely everything wrong!",
"Einstein had this law saying that, basically, if you're in a closed room and can't observe the outside, and you're being pulled downward, it is impossible to determine if you are experiencing a gravitational pull, or if you are accelerating through space."
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1zr4lr | why is human euthanasia considered unethical in cases where competent individuals exhaust all possibilities of recovery, and explicitly request to end their lives on their own terms? | What is the reasoning behind government refusal to allow people to die with as little suffering as possible, especially when there is absolutely no chance of recovery? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zr4lr/eli5why_is_human_euthanasia_considered_unethical/ | {
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"Because actively ending a life is defined and governed differently than passively ending one through care withdrawal. One is seen as allowing the natural order to take over, the other is seen, while not the same, as similar to murder, the active termination of life.",
"Because of several reasons:\n\n1: Very few people would be comfortable ending the lives of a human being on purpose - or even assisting. \n\n2: It is very hard to be absolutely sure that the decision is that of the patient, and not something he/she has been coerced into by relatives for whatever reason.\n\n3: Ethics. There is a prevalent beautiful belief that all human life is \"sacred\" (in a non-religious context) and as such, should be preserved as far as possible.\n\nThat being said, I'm pro-euthanasia if and when we find solutions to these problems."
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5wy2bt | does the human brain keep evolving? if so, how? if not, when in our history did it stop evolving? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wy2bt/eli5_does_the_human_brain_keep_evolving_if_so_how/ | {
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"Yes, it is still evolving. Evolution are simply heritable changes that are passed down, which can occur through a variety of causes, not least of which are errors in copying that occur. However, these are not guaranteed to be noticeable effects. There's no such thing as to 'stop evolving' for life, short of there to cease being new generations. ",
"Evolution doesn't happen to a person, but to a population. \n\n- If there is a (survival or sexual selection) advantage to having a person with more intelligence, that person will survive and have offspring with some of their genetic makeup which may include more intelligence. \n\n- If there is an advantage for a person to have less intelligence, that person will survive and have more offspring with some of their genetic makeup which may include less intelligence.\n\nIn either case, the \"human brain evolves\" to fit better in the environment. Fitting better survives. This is often stated as \"survival of the fittest\", though it should really be \"[survival of the fit enough](_URL_0_)\". So, yeah, it's still evolving, but not necessarily getting more intelligent."
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6jtoyy | why do emotions trigger certain chemicals in our brain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jtoyy/eli5_why_do_emotions_trigger_certain_chemicals_in/ | {
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"Well, being that we are organic life forms, our entire bodies are made of chemicals, and all of our experiences are due essentially to chemicals in your brain, at least if you take the materialist view. Without getting into philosophy and the questions of the soul and consciousness, we can think of the brain as a wet, chemical computer that runs on sugar. It's receiving a bunch of information from your eleven-ish senses and its job is to interpret all of that input in a way that keeps your body mostly intact and ensures that you successfully reproduce. Rational decision making is one tool that the brain can use to navigate reality, but another one is emotions. In the best case scenario, emotions influence our behavior in positive ways that help out the goals of survival and reproduction. The way that this works is that the brain gets some input, which is interpreted as maybe a dangerous situation. This triggers the chemicals associated with fear, which broadly influence behavior and physiology to prepare the body to respond to the danger in the best way possible. These chemicals will raise your heart rate, shift blood flow to your muscles and wake up the parts of your brain that want to be ready to further assess the danger and make decisions about whether to fight or flee. The chemicals are causing the experience of the emotion. You don't feel fear and then release fear chemicals, the release of fear chemicals is the same thing as feeling fear. You perceive danger, which triggers the release of chemicals associated with fear and produces the experience of fearful emotions, which then serve the purpose of causing you to avoid the danger. If this isn't making sense, I can try to be more specific.",
"To put it simply, emotions don't trigger chemicals in our brains. It's the other way around. Chemicals changes (triggered by perception - this can be memories, experiences, etc) in the brain cause reactions - these reactions are what we consider emotions. \n\nThe specific reaction/emotion itself is heavily influenced by culture. Ex. If someone cuts you off while driving, someone from the US would probably get mad, but someone from an Aision country wouldn't. Different reactions to the same stimuli. "
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341lz2 | how video game publishers and developers justify what is clearly a horrible decision? | In the past few years, I've noticed that game developers and/or publishers have been making clearly bad decisions. A few prominent examples include the Xbox One fiasco of strict online requirements, Ubisoft releasing what I'd easily considered an unfinished game, and the recently famous decision by bethesda and valve to monetize mods.
How can they justify these decisions, when, at least to me, seem detrimental even in the concept phase of development? I'd like an answer other than greed, because that is quite obvious. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/341lz2/eli5_how_video_game_publishers_and_developers/ | {
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"For that matter, why do software companies make bad design decisions? There's an example floating on the front page via /r/mildlyinfuriating . I'll attach the link in an edit.\n\nEdit: _URL_0_\n\nHere we see the interface that indicates a volume change obstructing a video. Transparent interfaces have been around for what feels like a decade, minimum. It's ridiculous, like logic and consumer satisfaction has been thrown out of the development factor.",
"This isn't really exclusive to game companies, as it affects every company that has ever existed. There are a myriad of factors that probably all played a part in these situations.\n\nTake the \"always online\" incident. Its hard to predict how people will react to a certain change or decision. Someone at Microsoft felt that better security was necessary for the new console. The most efficient way to create this security is to have the system authenticate itself online at start up. \n\nSo someone at Microsoft checks the number, and sees that 95% of the time that people are on their 360, they're online. So the always online feature gets approved on the belief that the 5% aren't going to make waves. \n\nThis really isn't an illogical conclusion to come to, as I personally own 4-5 consoles that are always online, and I've never had a problem with them.\n\nSo the press event occurs, and a number of decisions that were all logical in their own right, come together to create a really bad presentation, which gets people upset, taking every neutral point and turning it into a negative.",
"Former game dev here,\n\nI can't speak to many of these horrible decisions, but I can speak to releasing unfinished games: The budget ran out. They either ship, make some money, and desperately patch as much as possible, or they fold.\n\nWhy did the budget run out? Poor project management. Straight up, plain and simple. Even a team of moderate to mediocre skill can complete a game on time and within budget if they're managed well.",
"It's usually a series of small harmless steps. Look at the Xbox One example:\n\n1. People like the benefits of digital downloads (can play on any device you own). Let's go with that. We can just use the discs as install media and treat everything else like Steam.\n\n2. People like used games, but current models for digital distribution don't do that. Let's make a way for them to sell used games, even with the digital model.\n\n3. Lots of people buy their games at Gamestop and similar stores, either because they like shopping in a physical store or because they want to give something physical as a gift. Let's make sure they don't get locked out of the used game market.\n\n4. If someone sells their used game back to GameStop, we need to make sure it's removed from their console. The only way to do that is to do an online authentication check. OK, so you have to go online.\n\n5. Well, not everyone has a consistent online connection. Well, almost everyone has an Internet connection. How about we just make sure they go online once in a while. That way, they don't get kicked off from a flaky Internet connection. That's a good compromise that will make both our users (who still have a \"used game\" market while getting the benefits of a Steam-like service) and the game producers (who don't have to worry about people installing the game and then handing the disk to their friends).\n\nNone of those steps was a particularly bad idea. But the end implementation has problems. You can get to similar steps with Valve's paid mods (\"shouldn't mod creators be able to get paid for their work?\") and pretty much any other design decision that you disagree with."
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29zmnb | do heart transplant patients need to be of the same blood type as the donor? | Or does the heart change the blood type of the recipient, or does the heart begin making the same type of blood as the recipient? Or something else? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29zmnb/eli5_do_heart_transplant_patients_need_to_be_of/ | {
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"The heart doesn't make blood. It just pumps it around. Bone marrow is what makes blood.",
"As others pointed out the heart does not make the blood, that's the bone marrow. But the blood type for a heart transplant needs to match just as it would for a blood transfusion or there will be acute rejection.\n\nHLA compatibility is a factor, but blood type takes priority, and all heart transplants are cadaveric so there is less choice in HLA compatibility. You aren't likely to closely match a random person. \n\nThey do blood tests to determine HLA compatibility.\n\nThis is as opposed to kidney transplants where if you have a close relative who can donate then the HLA compatibility will be better. \n\nRecipients are given immunosurpressive medications to prevent rejection.\n"
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9l22e4 | how does a fit bit know when you are asleep and what stage of sleep you are in? how accurate is it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9l22e4/eli5_how_does_a_fit_bit_know_when_you_are_asleep/ | {
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"it tracks your movement while you sleep. If the wearable has a heart rate monitor, it uses that as well to further it's accuracy. Generally speaking, the more you move in your sleep, the less accurate the readings will be. But overall, some studies were conducted on sleep trackers, like the Jawbone and others, and it was concluded that they're pretty accurate with sleep tracking.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nAlso, to this point, no matter what your sleep tracker says, it cannot accurately tell you about your REM, or deep sleep, stages. For this, it needs more sophisticated equipment like eye tracker, brain waves, etc...They try to do as accurate a job as they can with movement and heart rate to measure REM sleep but it's not really that accurate.",
"Anecdotally, I mentioned that I’ve been wearing a Fitbit to my sleep doctor who treats me for my sleep disorder and her immediate response was “those aren’t very accurate”. \n\nAs for how it works, it can only sense movement and heart rate so it would track your heart rate drop for deeper sleeps and for REM sleep, it would most likely be a higher heart rate with low/no movement. \n\nOverall, I imagine it’s kinda like weighing yourself everyday to track your health, it can give you a decent idea but is mostly just a rough estimate. ",
"It uses the same mechanism of movement equating to steps to track if you are asleep. If you are moving in bed, apparently you aren't sleeping. So it isn't really accurate at all. It doesn't accurately track steps either. It is a ballpark estimate. Because according to my fitbit, sensitive setting means I sleep 1 to 2 hours per night. On regular setting, I sleep 20 hours per day.",
"I was recently at a lecture on sleep health with a scientist who just studies sleep. She told us that if you're an active sleeper it's useless and even if you're not it can only tell that you're sleeping, not what sleep stage you're in. ",
"FWIW, I have a Fitbit Charge 2 and it does NOT track my sleep with any degree of accuracy. It usually says I've slept 1 or 2 hours a night. You will find many people are very disappointed with sleep-tracking not working as advertised if you peruse the Fitbit forums.\n",
"Similar question to the original. The new apple watch has fall detection. My father wants to get me one since I have epilepsy. How does it know you've fallen?",
"It doesn't know. I do sleep studies and EEGs everyday. My co workers and I always chuckle a little when a patient comes in with their fit bit sleep tracker statistics. ",
"the fitbit I used was accurate if the measurement involved movement: but inaccurate interpretation if there is no movement. Most nights I spend 60-90minutes lying very still trying to get to sleep. This non-activity was recorded by fitbit as sleep. It isn't.",
"#Answer backed by science:\n\n---\n\nThey're basically trash at sleep tracking. The first author of [this article](_URL_0_) does a good bit of his work on validation of health/fitness wearables. There really isn't a great way to track sleep through motion, so no matter how \"good\" they get, or how much they \"refine\" their sleep measuring algorithms, if they use the same method (accelerometers) they won't ever be that great. \n\nThey're also not great at tracking calories burned, but that's another argument. Their most accurate (and useful) metric is heart rate - and you can buy electronics and make your own heart rate tracker for like $5. \n\nThat said, health wearables have a pretty great ecosystem, are pretty motivating, and are also just cool and interesting. Sooooo if you want one and think it can help you change your health habits, I'd say it's worth it. ",
"Wow first time that I can talk about something I've worked on. I've worked on machine learning with sensory mobile devices (like fitbit or your phone). Generally most devices have only three sensors: an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and a clock. Using these three devices you can measure 7 different values at a given time (XYZ acceleration, XYZ angular acceleration, and time). By gathering several data points you can then get a sense of movement and associate certain combinations of acceleration and time as types of movements (lets call these different features). By performing experiments in the lab with people you can fit these features (predictors) to an observed action. Now you have a model that takes in predictors and outputs an (estimated) action. Depending on the model you'll have a wide range of accuracy but overall it's pretty good. Another way to think about is linear regression (or y=mx+b) where x is a predictor and y is an action. Except we have hundreds of x's.",
"Weird to me this is 7 hours in and the question hasn’t been answered. I’m a psychologist with particularly expertise in sleep. There are 4 stages of sleep, REM, and then Non-R.E.M. stages 1-3. We move around quite a bit particularly during non-R.E.M. stage 2 where we spend most of our night. We don’t move at all (unless there is a disorder) during REM stage, otherwise we would act out our dreams. Our muscles actually go into a state of paralysis during this stage.\n\nAnyway, I think the sleep trackers are bullshit because the level of movement during your sleep is not 100% correlated with the stages. ",
"I have a brand new versa. It's super inaccurate. Some nights I go to bed and fall asleep around ten, wakes up around 7 and it will tell me I got 4 hours of sleep and was awake from four am to six or something when I know I wasn't. Not sure wtf it thinks I'm doing maybe I just move a lot and it thinks I'm awake but whatever the reason, it doesn't work at all for me.",
"Well we both weren’t great sleepers. Some nights we’d have a great sleep or not a great sleep and it showed that in the pattern. If I was tossing and turning and she was sound asleep it would show just that. It was like a graph showing when you were in a deep sleep and I could tell if she’s having a great sleep and the graph shows it fairly accurately. And vice versa. ",
"I didn't see anyone mention HRV yet. Heart Rate Variability. By measuring tiny variations in a heartbeat, the Fitbit can detect REM and deep sleep. In my experience, it's pretty inaccurate about light sleep though. Just being really still can trick it into thinking you're asleep.\n\n_URL_0_"
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piysi | the arguments against "guns, germs, and steel" | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/piysi/eli5_the_arguments_against_guns_germs_and_steel/ | {
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"Every one I've ever seen has been either:\nA) a slight nuance to add to something in the book (it isn't perfect of course)\nB) an argument that is actually addressed in the book itself, indicating that the person making the argument probably didn't read GGandS very closely \nC) poorly researched bs meant to get attention\n\nIt's like a top comment with a bunch of irrelevant replies. People see something getting a lot of attention and try to piggyback on it. Some of these people honestly have something to add, but a lot of them just want to share the attention. ",
"My Anthropology prof had issues with it, since culture doesn't play a big role in the argument. Sorry that's not a very good answer, but it's a start.",
"He also really had a hard on for Papua New Guinea. I was reading the book and agreeing with 99% of it, but he kept going back to New Guinea. I mean, I get it, you go bird watching there, now lets get back to your scientific observations on world history please.\n\n Anyway, the book is pretty well done and the arguments in it are pretty dam solid. He does miss a few small things though, exceptions to the rule. Like why was Central America well developed with civilizations and North America only nomadic, and why did Europe surpass China? In both examples the two regions had the same climate and the same crops. These are questions that have answers, but Jared Diamond kinda skimmed over them since they weren't related to his crops and local animal theory.\n\nAnyway, bottom line is there were many, many factors that made the world what it is today. Guns, Germs, and Steel is a fantastic book that explains about 90% of what you need to know. It doesn't have *everything* but it does one hell of a job and it really is a book everyone should read.\n\nAdditional note: Many people that study history don't like it because the book states that man was never the master of his own destiny. The book pretty much says Europe and the US are leading the world because the world was pre-rigged for that to happen. That theory says nothing mankind has ever done had any effect on world power. The brilliant generals in ancient wars? The Romans investing in the arts and bringing law to millions? The Greeks discovering mathematical and philosophical brilliances?... Yea, none of that matters. All those billions of people and their life work did nothing to make Europe strong. Europe is just strong because it had cows and sheep.\n\nAnyway, you can see why his theory makes historians angry. But like I said, the book's bold thesis is probably ~90% true."
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1z6xsy | why do certain breakfast cereals shred the roof of my mouth, but i can eat tortilla chips and other crunchy things and be fine? | As the title says... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z6xsy/why_do_certain_breakfast_cereals_shred_the_roof/ | {
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"This definitely isn't a scientific answer, but I have found that when I don't scoop such a large spoonful of cereal every time the roof of my mouth doesn't get \"shredded\". I have just always assumed that it's because when you are eating chips you aren't stuffing an incredibly large amount of them into your mouth at one time like you do when you grab a large spoonful of cereal.",
"Don't eat glass for breakfast.",
"I would wager the breakfast cereals are most likely things like 'Captain Crunch' etc... which have high amounts of crystalized sugar in them, which are far sharper on their surface (aka like little shards of glass) and rougher texture than your example of tortilla chips. "
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g0qft6 | how do our lungs get rid of undesirable things? | When stuff we drink "goes down the wrong pipe", when we've had a small buildup of anything in our lungs (such as pus), when we inhale dusty air, our lungs somehow eventually rids itself of some things. How does that happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g0qft6/eli5_how_do_our_lungs_get_rid_of_undesirable/ | {
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"Our lungs are lined with little hairs (\"cilia\") that wriggle together like the wave in a sports stadium. The wave pushes the phlegm in the lungs and anything embedded in it up to where it can be coughed out.\n\nSmoking screws up the little hairs, which is why smoking, a carcinogen itself, is also a multiplier for other lung carcinogens (notably radon and asbestos)."
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1lj7mu | how is the uk a country and there are countries inside of it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lj7mu/eli5_how_is_the_uk_a_country_and_there_are/ | {
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"The United Kingdom isn't a country but it is a sovereign state made up of several countries.\n\nThe countries within actually are fairly different similar to the states that make up the USA having different laws and customs but being governed by one higher body the federal government.",
"Note that the UK is the the \"United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland\". The United Kingdoms of England and Scotland, which is just 'United Kingdom of Great Britain' and Northern Ireland separately. They were 3 separate countries all glued together over a couple of centuries. \n\nWales is a different thing - it was conquered by England, and like Ireland they were all made to learn english. But in the case of wales this happened in 1301, with the independent laws of wales dissolved in 1542. So they have been part of England for about 70% of England's history, as England itself didn't really come into being until William the Conqueror in 1066. \n\nIreland had been a Kingdom under the papacy (with no King) but a Lord of Ireland acting on the Popes behalf from 1171, that Lord was the King of England. Then comes 1542 - and the Irish Parliament created the Title King of Ireland for Henry VIII (this was when he was breaking away from the Catholic Church and creating the Church of England, since the Papal state had no real practical authority over England or Ireland it was mostly affirming what everyone knew, the English were running Ireland). \n\nHenry Dies, the next guy dies, then a Catholic comes to the throne (Mary). Under her England is folded back into the Catholic community, with a recognition of their dominion over ireland. And then she dies. And Elizabeth the first (a protestant) takes the Throne. At this point, Ireland has been recognized as a sovereign Kingdom in personal Union with England (I.e. the King of England is the Kind of Ireland). \n\n40 years later, Elizabeth dies. Childless. And the Crown of england and Ireland passes to the leader of Scotland. So in the course of about 55 years they go from having A single King for England and wales and Ireland (but each with separate governments), and a different King and Government in Scotland, to a Single King for the whole mess, and separate governments for Ireland, Scotland and England (which then included wales), though Ireland was sort of like a province or satellite of England, they had authority, but less than scotland.\n\nThe comes the acts of union in 1707. Which basically dissolved the Scottish parliament and gave the scots seats in the English Parliament as the the \"British Parliament\", which is what happened to wales in 1542 essentially. In 1800 Ireland goes the same route and is folded into the whole show as a single Parliament for everyone. But of course the Irish are still catholic, the scots and welsh feel like they're getting a bad deal from London since England has ~50 million people, and they each have 4 million (scaled down proportionally for 2 centuries ago). \n\nSo another Century later you have WW1 and Irish revolts, and the Catholic Irish areas are spun back off into their own territory (1920/21), with Northern Ireland being, for want of a better description, a special administrative region of the UK. \n\n 70 years later you have devolution. Basically Tony Blair comes to power and undoes 5 centuries of centralization over the course of a decade. He hands a parliament to northern ireland, wales and Scotland, which are now independent in some areas from the UK as a whole. The devolved entities are sort of like provinces, they can be dissolved by an act of the central government in London, but they reflect the previously independent entities of Scotland, Wales, and then the mess than is Northern Ireland. \n\n",
"A great answer from CGPgrey\n\n_URL_0_"
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4vfj24 | what would happen if i try to throw up in space? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vfj24/eli5_what_would_happen_if_i_try_to_throw_up_in/ | {
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"Vomit is expelled by muscle action which isn't dependent upon gravity. You would spew normally enough and it would float away."
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aok38v | if ab blood is the universal recipient and let’s say it receives o blood, wouldn’t the a and b antibodies from the o blood destroy the ab blood? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aok38v/eli5_if_ab_blood_is_the_universal_recipient_and/ | {
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"When a patient receives blood they are really only receiving the red blood cells. Other things like antibodies are filtered out using a centrifuge.",
"Only the plasma contains antibodies. When AB Blood is called the Universal recipient, it is in reference to RBC only. For Plasma, AB is the Universal Donor, and they can only receive AB Plasma.",
"So your question sort of answers itself. \n If you think about it like keys and locks, yea? \n\nA can unlock[donate to] A and AB\nB can unlock B and AB\nAB can unlock only AB\nAnd O can unlock A, B and AB.\n\nThe existing bodies in type O blood do not impose on the home bodies of AB just as the B do not impose of the A portion of AB recipientd. Or just as the A's being donated to an AB recipient don't impose of the B portion. \n\nType O blood is the universal donor for this reason, there essentially are no antibodies to compete or be ill received, their genetic coding isn't read as a threat by the donor. Think about it more as just blank blood cells entering the body to carry oxygen until they die and are replaced by natural A/B/AB cells produced by the body. ",
"O is the universal donor of Red Blood Cells(RBCs). RBCs are considered separated from plasma (protein & antibody containing portion of blood) through centrifugation. O RBCs do not have A antigens or B antigens (antigens are molecules recognized by antibodies). Therefore, when a person who is type A- containing antibodies looking for type B antigens- receives O, no antibody-antigen binding occurs. \n\nGoing into more detail, people with AB type blood produce NO antibodies against A or B since someone with this type of blood has both antigens and would self-react. That’s why they are universal recipients as you said. \n\nAll this together means when you put O RBCs (lacks antibodies for A and B) into a person with AB blood (lacks antibodies for A and B) no antibodies should be present to react. "
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5wf6rp | why do employers use those "strongly disagree - strongly agree" type surveys with repetitive, reworded questions in applications and what do the results show? | I've been applying for a bunch of jobs recently and have encountered a number of employers who use those lengthy surveys with questions like "I enjoy projects that require little thought" and give you the options Completely Agree/Strongly Agree/Agree/Neutral/Disagree/Strongly Disagree/Completely Disagree and then about 15 questions later will ask "I do not enjoy projects that require little thought."
Are they trying to see if we're paying attention and remain consistent? And what do the result of these questionnaires look like to an employer? Is there an algorithm that just tells employers "nope not this one" or do employers read the answers themselves?
Thanks in advance for any answers! :)
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wf6rp/eli5why_do_employers_use_those_strongly_disagree/ | {
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"It actually is helpful! It A) makes sure you are reading the question and B) makes sure that they get the answer to the question they asked. For example, \"I am not satisfied with my job\", \"I am satisfied with my job\" and \"I am happy with my job\" all sound really similar but there is error that comes from the subtle way people interpret these questions differently that these scores typically get averaged out as a general score on that criteria. \nAs for whether they fully read it: that depends on the employer. The Likert Scale (strongly disagree, disagree, etc) is usually converted into numbers so organizations can quickly calculate averages/standard deviations, etc. Good organizations usually do look at both these results and long answer responses. \nAs for what you can get out of them: I'd recommend browsing the website O*Net. It's a site that compiles information on different occupations: from the tasks performed to qualities about the worker (what personality they have, their interests, skills, etc). \nSource: Student in Industrial-Organizational Psychology (the branch of psychology that studies the workplace and also invented the multiple choice exam.)",
"A critical note here, often tests seem randomly chosen, with no clear idea of what the test should measure and if those traits or states found are actually in any way predictive for performance. As a psychologist I'm bothered by this lack of thinking about the goals of the questionnaire. As a human being I'm just pissed about the time wasted by people filling in these tests.",
" > lengthy surveys\n\nThis is part of it. The intention is to 'wear you down' to get more 'reactions' and less answers where you are actively considering how you 'should' respond.\n\nThese might be designed to test if you are appropriate for certain jobs, but they are also designed to test attributes like honesty, integrity, and opinions of entitlement, which are predictors of theft or other bad employee behavior.",
"Coming from large corporations, I'm familiar with numerous instances of these tests as means to weed out people who would pose a risk in the roles they are applying. Basically the premise is that someone who is too intelligent or prone to excessive rationalizations will likely steal from the employer or devise ways to \"equalize\" situations where they may feel disadvantaged.\n\nFor example, simple retail will have questions that include hypotheticals about what the employee would do if the employee saw a co worker eating a candy bar that was stolen. Or what the employee would do if the rear door were not locked during close. Or questions about someone stealing from petty cash to pay for a sick family member before payday.\n\nThe questions by themselves aren't rocket science... the vast majority of people pass without thinking about it. Typically, it's the people that over think the questions and start to indicate a pattern of forming rationalizations that pose a risk and may not be hired.\n\nThe test is by no means random... throughout the test you'll have to prove basic reading comprehension, math skills, and simple problem solving. But there will need to be a mix of questions (some seemingly useless) so the taker doesn't feel like they're being interrogated and will approach the test more at ease.\n\nTL;DR... if you see a question that reads \"I have never stolen anything in my life.\" Answer \"Strongly Agree\" even if you remember stealing a cookie from your grandma when you were 11.",
" > Are they trying to see if we're paying attention and remain consistent?\n\nAttention, no. Consistent, yes. \n\nImagine if there was something like your example \"I enjoy projects that require little thought\" and only one question. Imagine if the particular wording made me give it completely agree, when in general I completely disagree. Because of there is only one question, it's more opportunity for an odd interpretation or mistake to completely change the outcome. ",
"Okay, there are a lot of things going on in this ELI5. I'll try to tackle them as best I can. \n\nLast question first: Do employers read the answers themselves? Only under highly specific conditions. In the case of pre-employment screening instruments (those pesky surveys), the goal is to collect as much quantitative data as possible as quickly as possible and subject it to some voodoo/statistical analysis on the back-end. If someone had to read long-form answers, we just added to the opportunity cost of the instrument, thereby decreasing its overall value to the organization. It's better to just look at an up-down based on the numbers. This is easily obtained from a Likert (pronounced LICK-urt not LI-kert) scale (multiple points expressing strength of feeling on a scale from negative to positive).\n\nWhat do the results look like?\nIt depends on the provider. Typically, there will be a raw score for the candidate. This will be compared to a pre-determined scale indicating suitability. Robustly designed instruments will have a window where ideal candidates fall; outliers are unsuitable because they represent extremes of the measured constructs (too much of a good thing is a bad thing). Again, depending on who built the instrument, there could be a stoplight system, positioning on an ICC (check out Item Response Theory if you want to suffer), a flat number, or (really) anything else. All that really matters is the score's relation to the ideal candidate zone; everything else is there to make it look pretty to whomever the target audience is.\n\nWhat's up with all these extremely similar items (questions)?\nThere are a number of reasons for odd items. First, some items are completely unscored; they are deliberately inserted to check for faking behaviors or offer some sort of \"break\" from the mind-numbing drudgery that is filling out these instruments, or some other thing that the instrument designer had in mind. Some items, like the negative item you mentioned above, are there for control purposes; they exist to check on something called \"reliability;\" that is, how well does the instrument measure specific constructs internal to itself (without reference to some external standard), over time and between respondents. This is done for a variety of reasons. For example, reliability is a legal standard and negative-items are a good way to avoid the problems associated with reliability of parallel forms (two instruments asking the same things to different groups of people) by building in the ability to split-half reliability (compare functionally identical items). So, yes, it is about consistency, but mainly consistency of the instrument. Of course, if your answers are inconsistent, it should throw a flag to the backend voodoo/statistics which indicates faking.\n\nFinally, I'll answer a question that you didn't ask but that is on most folks minds: how do I \"beat\" this? Don't; don't even try. You'll get advice from various sources talking about how such-and-such tactic is a surefire way to beat the system. Surprise: It's not. Building a psychometric instrument is a precise science and fairly complicated. We have developed ways to check faking behavior; they get included on well-constructed instruments. A good instrument is \"valid,\" that is, it predicts, to some degree, some thing (here, a psychometric construct). One of the easiest ways to do this is to give the instrument to your folks internally, see how they answer, and build your scales off that. You know what the internet cannot help you fake? If you said the specific scores internal to a specific organization's existing workforce, you are correct. Did you want to answer in a specific way, every time? Bad idea; doing so will place you in a weird place on the scales - one that you probably don't want to be on. Most importantly for you, psychometric instruments are meant to check whether or not you \"fit.\" If you fake (and don't get caught), the chances of ending up in a position or organization where you do not \"fit\" increases substantially. That is a bad result for the employer and a bad result for the employee. ",
"I would recommend reading the book, Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich. It explores this topic (as part of Welfare Reform), and how corporate HR departments use it."
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2ube4n | how do we learn to recognize emotions that we are feeling ourselves? | So I understand that we learn to recognize outward signs of emotion- like smiling, frowning, crying, etc. Even though we tie those outward signs to emotions, how do we learn to recognize the emotion itself, without the outward sign?
For example, how do we know that we feel "happy" specifically, even if we aren't smiling? I guess what I'm asking is how we learn to assign words to feelings that we feel and don't show. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ube4n/eli5_how_do_we_learn_to_recognize_emotions_that/ | {
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"You might get a much better answer via /r/askpsychology as that could be complex. I'd imagine it comes down to learning early on to associate what you were feeling with an emotion via external observation/source."
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2eov3g | what is the gold star on people's comment? | I think it comes from the give gold on the comment section. But what is it exactly? What's the purpose of giving gold to a comment? What happens if I get a gold on a comment? What's the benefits of getting a gold on a comment?
Edit: To the guy who's gilding almost everyone, on behalf of everyone you gave a gold to. Thank you mysterious stranger! I personally think I don't deserve this gold lol. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2eov3g/eli5_what_is_the_gold_star_on_peoples_comment/ | {
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"Reddit gold, you can purchase it or it can be given to you by someone else.\n",
"The money goes towards helping reddit stay running. ",
"You can now access /r/lounge and let me know how shiny it is. \n\n\nEDIT: It's shiny alright! ",
"The gold star signifies that the commenter received reddit gold from another user who saw that comment. Giving gold shows appreciation to the commenter and helps to fund this site. As you can see by the gold-meter on the right side of the main page, reddit doesn't always make as much money as it hopes to make, due in part to its limited use of moneymaking strategies like including ads. \n\nIf you get gold, you get a trophy on your profile and access to a special subreddit. You also get access to special settings like the ability to see whenever someone else mentions your username in a comment or have the site remember how much of a previous thread you've read. Having gold isn't a huge advantage, but it supports the site and it gives you a few cool features. \n\nEDIT: Thank you to the person or people who seem to be giving gold to everyone in this thread. ",
"It's a big upvote! An upvote that pays Reddit.",
"It is the symbol of the elite, the reddit elect. It is a badge which can only be gained through victory upon these battle lines. Once attained you are worthy of the gods of reddit to notice your significance. Alas, we without gold are but mere peasants in this land. One day the dragon of gold will be slain, and we all will become golden knights of nobility. ",
"Where do you purchase it? Sorry for the dumb question. ",
"To answer my own question: Oh wow! Someone just gave me a gold. I don't know what to say honestly. I don't deserve to get this one just for asking what it is. But to answer my own question, I discovered it's an upgrade to your account and you get some site features like seeing which ones are the new comments, filtering your searches better and other features that makes using reddit more convenient. You also get a ton of free codes for some sites that are like coupons that you get on those books/planners with a lot of sponsors.\n\nI don't think it's really much of a big deal to get gilded other than for bragging purposes. The site features are nice but it's not something that makes reddit use better but just enhances it a bit. Also, the free codes, I don't think I will ever be using them because they aren't useful to me anyway. I really don't deserve this gold..\n\nJUST KIDDING BITCHEZ!! BOW DOWN TO YOUR NEW GOD AND MY SHINY GOLD! ALL HAIL ME!! BWAHAHAHAHA!",
"Gold is reddits way of paying for server time.. You could use it for certain perks eg. New comment highlighting, remembering links you've visited across computers, and notifications when you're mentioned in the comments. More Info at _URL_0_",
"How do I give gold?"
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2dku68 | rolling friction | What actually causes the friction? And theoretically can a perfectly round and smooth ball roll on a perfectly flat and smooth surface forever? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dku68/eli5_rolling_friction/ | {
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" > And theoretically can a perfectly round and smooth ball roll on a perfectly flat and smooth surface forever?\n\nAs the ball comes in contact with the surface it sticks and peels off. If that results in no loss of mechanical energy, yes, it could roll forever.\n\nBut if it takes more energy to unstick than to stick, the ball would experience rolling resistance and the difference would be released as heat.\n\nWith car tyres, the major source of rolling friction is hysteresis in the deformation of the carcass - kind of a mouthful, but it's the same idea: two processes are not exact reverses of each other.\n\nWhen weight is applied to the tire, the sidewall bows outward and the belts (under the tread) flatten out slightly. If the weight is removed, the tire pushes the hub and road apart.\n\nEnergy transferred is force integrated over distance (calculus vocab) or average force times distance, or force added up over the distance it's applied or released (LI5 vocab). The distance is the same, but remarkably the average force is not.\n\nIt takes more force to squish a rolling tire than to keep it from expanding out. This happens because the structure of the tire tries to keep its current shape, it slows down changes in shape. \n\nPicture the flat spot rolling down the road. The front part of the flat spot is pushing a little harder on the wheel rim than the back part. When you add all the forces together for a flat surface, the total force is straight up when the wheel is stationary but tilts when the wheel rotates.\n\nThat tilt acts to slow the vehicle down, and there's the rolling resistance.\n\nThe only question left is *why* materials \"exhibit hysteresis under elastic deformation\" - spring back with less force than it took to compress them. A complete answer would involve statistical thermodynamics and fancy chemistry - materials science is a whole course of study for engineers. What it boils down to is as the polymer chains in the rubber slide against each other, chemical energy is stored and released. Some of this energy becomes disorganized, producing heat, which means it cannot be released to push the material back into shape.\n\n"
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35fbi5 | the queen's (uk) absolute powers vs practical powers. | I asked this in another thread, but thought it might be better to let it have its own post:
The U.K.'s sovereign is often said to have no real powers in a practical sense, but almost absolute powers in a theoretical sense. Is that because she chooses not to use her powers, or because there's an actual mechanism to dissuade her? Since the head of state is not chosen, it seems that eventually you'd have a sovereign who would gladly take advantage of his or her powers. What could the House of Commons do to stop that?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35fbi5/eli5_the_queens_uk_absolute_powers_vs_practical/ | {
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"Within the existing legal structure there's not much that Parliament could do. They can pass a law removing the monarch, but that requires Royal Assent which can assume the megalomaniac monarch won't grant.\n\nEffectively there'd be a very quiet revolution. Parliament would declare that it is now the rightful government of the UK and that the UK is no longer a monarchy. If the people support that and other countries recognise Parliament rather than the monarch, then it's true. The question becomes what can the monarch do to stop that.",
"To quote a certain Lord Varys, 'power resides where men believe it resides'.\n\nIf the Queen suddenly decided to use her powers, they would only have any effect if people actually followed them. That is simply not the case. The democratic mechanisms in Britain are such that nobody would follow her over the will of Parliament. The Queen is a ceremonial leader, nothing more, and even the idea of her using her authority is unthinkable. She would be told in no uncertain terms that she could either back down or abdicate.\n\nThis idea is so powerful that it is problematic if the Queen even expresses opinions on matters. While she has no direct power, she would have the effect of influence on opinion, and even this is considered dangerous. The Queen has specifically abstained from politics her entire life, but it could be interesting when Charles eventually becomes king - he's so notorious for 'expressing opinions' that some letters of his have been prevented from being released to the public. \n\nEdit - turns out the government lost a challenge in the supreme court over the publication of the [Black Spider memos](_URL_0_) a couple of months ago, so at least some may eventually be published."
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1l5ivf | how do blood thinners (rat poison) work? what makes the blood "thin"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l5ivf/eli5how_do_blood_thinners_rat_poison_work_what/ | {
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"Your blood contains things called platelets - these are basically a type of cell whose job it is to plug any holes that might form in your bloodstream. And normally, these holes and tiny tears happen *all the time*, but you never notice them because your platelets plug said holes and prevent any leakage. Blood thinners, both as a rat poison but also used for medical treatments (such as heparin and warfarin), work by preventing these clots from forming. This can be done through different pathways, such as interrupting the chemical signatures the body uses to conduct the clotting process or by accelerating the processes that the body uses to break down bloodclots.\n\nRat poisons operate through the first method - by interrupting the clot-forming pathways. Also included in rat poison are other chemicals that cause the blood vessels to be more 'leaky', speeding up the process of internal bleeding.",
"Your body produces a large number of \"clotting factors\" to assist in helping your blood coagulate. This is really useful in terms of minor cuts and trauma that need fast clotting and happens very regularly.\n\nRat poison usually contains warfarin, a chemical that stops vitamin K from forming these clotting factors. Blocking these clotting factors leads the blood being unable to coagulate and causes internal bleeding in the rat. Only a very small amount is needed to cause serious bleeding.\n\nThis chemical is also used as a drug to prevent strokes, DVT and other conditions caused by blood clots."
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ofsre | world's current political status | O.K. There is economic crisis since few years, China's economy is booming, Middle East is in deep shit, Right-wing, even racist political parties are in rise in Europe and etc.
+All the governments are trying to get the internet under control.
Is everything is as usual with the World or some kind of shit storm is coming? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ofsre/eli5_worlds_current_political_status/ | {
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"There's a lot of shit storms always coming. A couple decades again plenty of people assumed that we were on the brink of the end of the world in a massive world wide nuclear winter. Almost no one thinks anything like that is expected to happen soon.\n\nI would bet Europeans leadership is in general less racist today then they have been in the past (not too long ago they mass killed members of other religions/cultures).\n\nChina's economy is doing quite good, and most people assume it'll continue on a decent upward clip for the near future at least.\n\nMany nations in the middle east are in an unprecedented level of public unrest. In general I Think the shit storm already came and went though. I suspect syria will collapse like libya, and it will be violent, but violent revolution is par for the course in that part of the world, it's just been relatively successful this time.\n\nThat's a more optimistic outlook on the worlds state with some historical knowledge to put it into some perspective."
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4i2dul | what's the difference between a regular and an impact drill? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4i2dul/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_a_regular_and/ | {
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"Regular drills just rotate the bit. Impact drills actually hammer down as well as drilling.",
"[This GIF visualizes an impact drill pretty well.](_URL_0_) It's basically a hammer that rotates to get rid of the debris inside the hole.",
"Impact drill (hammer drill) or impact driver?"
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1jk4jo | why are there so many programming languages to essentially write the same programs? and the same with web pages? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jk4jo/eli5_why_are_there_so_many_programming_languages/ | {
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"Probably for the same reason so many regular languages exist.",
"People believe they have a better improved logical language that would either be more compact or more intuitive for those writing it.",
"**tl;dr** Different languages give you different levels of control over what you are able/required to tell the computer to do. The more you tell the computer to do, the faster your code runs but with the trade off of being harder to code.\n\nIf you want a more detailed explaniation then [this wiki page](_URL_0_) is decent and [this page](_URL_2_) is even better. But I'll try to give you a higher level difference below.\n\nYes, every programming language does the same thing: it takes human-speak code and turns it into 1s and 0s to make the computer do things. The biggest difference is how much you have to tell the computer to do. Sometimes you have to tell it everything, sometimes the langauge will tell the computer to do things for you.\n\nLet us look at two *very* simplified examples: [Java vs C++](_URL_1_). These are argubly the two most common languages used (let's ignore COBOL and other server langauge since OP mentions programs and web).\n\nBoth of these languages are what is known as \"Object Oriented\" (OO) languages. What this means is that I can have a \"class\" which defines an \"object.\" Every object has different things that define it that we store inside of the Class\n\nLet's say I want to make a program that does something with people. In order to make my life easier, I would make a Person class. Each class, or Person, then has things (properties) that define it. What are some things that define a person? Gender, Name, Age, Race. So those would be our properties or members of that class. Essentially we'd have something like this:\n\n > Person\n > > Name\n\n > > Age\n\n > > Gender\n\n > > Race\n\nSo I can have Bob, a 20 year old White Male and Jane, a 30 year old Black Female.\n\nSince both Java and C++ are OO, both languages allow you to make a Person class with the same properites. So your question remains: what is the difference and why do they both exist? Well one large difference is known as \"Garbage Collection.\"\n\nLet's say we have a Person called myPerson. First we define it by writing code that looks something like this\n\n > myPerson as Person\n\n > Set myPerson as new Person\n\nSo now we have a brand new Person with no name, age, etc. At some point we will give this person properties. Let's say we are dealing with Jane.\n\nJane gets married. She needs to change her name from Jane Doe to Jane Smith. So we change her name, which is easy enough, and then we are done with Jane, we have no more work to do with her.\n\nEven though we are done with her, Jane (a Person, if you remember) still exists out in the computer's memory. She is sitting there taking up space, taking up *memory*. And, as we all know, the more memory you have, the faster things run. Because she is taking up space and not being used, she is considered \"garbage.\" What do you do with garbage? You clean it up. How? Well that is where one major difference between the languages comes in.\n\nIn C++ you need to clean this up yourself. What this means is you need to write code that will tell the computer \"hey, I don't need this anymore. Delete it so that memory is freed up.\" This is a bit harder to code, but by telling the program to clean things up *now* you are able to free up more memory that can be used to make your program run faster. You are also able to better predict how much memory your program will use. Important to know if you are dealing with limited resources.\n\nNow let's look at Java. The first steps are the same: you make a Person, you do stuff with it, then you are done. Again, that Peron exists out there taking up memory and being annoying and slowing things down. Java, however is very friendly. Every so often it goes around and looks for garbage and then deletes it itself, without you (as the programmer) having to tell it to do so. This means that the programmer doesn't ever have to write code saying \"delete this unneeded thing.\"\n\nOk, but both languags end up cleaning up the garbage, so what is the difference? \n\nWell the Java \"cleanup\" or \"garbage collection\" only happens every so often, and we don't know when it will occur. This can become a problem if we make and stop using a lot of People. If we make and stop using a lot of Persons before the cleanup happens we can have a LOT of unnecessary People sitting out there in our memory doing nothing but taking up space. And if more memory makes things run faster, less memory obviously makes things run slower. This is ~~bad~~ not ideal.\n\nWith C++, by manually telling the computer to clean things up now, you have better control over your program's memory use which helps make your program run faster.\n\nSo why not use C++ always? Because sometimes being that strict and efficient is just not needed. Think of it this way: why do you not wear a suit and tie every day to work if that is what makes you look the most professional? Because sometimes that much attention to detail isn't necessary. Sometimes all you need is a quick and dirty outfit to get the job done. \n\nIf your computer has a massive amount of memory and your program is small in comparrision, then you can afford to have less efficient cleanup because you know you'll never use all of your space, so Java would be easier to use than C++, so you use that instead. Do you have to, no, but you can, and so some people choose to do so.\n\nObviously there are much, much bigger and more complex differences behind them, but that is just one example of how languages that are very similar can be different enough to warrant using one over the other.",
"There is no catch-all when it comes to programming languages because each one is typically better at a certain type of programming. This might not mean it's just \"easier\" to write for but it can mean that when compiled (packaged/put together) the language has performance gains over another one for the task that is being performed.\n\nThere is also the problem that once a programming language is widely accepted it will stay around for quite a long time even if a newer language does the same thing but better. This is due to the fact that it can take quite a long time just to become comfortable with a language, and once someone does they typically don't like moving right into another one and learning it all over again.",
"Every language has it's advantages and downsides. For example applications coded in C++ run with good performance but/because the programmer has to handle a lot more by himselfe. Other languages do those tasks for you but this also makes it a little slower. Other advantages might be multiple platform support like Java gives you.\n\n",
"The constant search for perfection. You see, there are different enviorments in which programs are being run. Think of different cars performing different tasks. While I can get to work on Mazda 626 to work just fine, I have some problem while driving off road. And while Land Cruiser is awesome for off road, it's might be a problem to roam amazonian forests on it. And both of these cars can't handle narrow streets in Rome where a motoroller might come in handy. \nNow say we need to get some heavy weights somewhere. We gonna need a heavy car. \nThere's also a historical aspect. Cars evolve through the history, different models come out. \nThe same things can be said about programming languages. Different languages handle different kinds of tasks in a different way. Programming languages evolved to be able to resolve more complex tasks in a more efficient way. And the last thing: personal preference. Some people like Ford, some people like Fiat. Some people like C#, some people like Java. \nTL;DR Different kinds of tasks are handled differently, evolution, personal preference ",
"Same reason why you have a fork, a knife and a spoon. Some things are better for some tasks then others.\n\nNot only that, but people who are very good with computers sometimes think, \"I bet I can make something that is even better then a knife at slicing cheese!\" and comes up with a cheese slicer.\n\nThen another person thinks: \"I like the fork, knife and spoon, but they take up too much space.\" So they invent the spork.\n\nSo there are a lot of languages that have their own specialization. So it's better to write scientific programs in R and web applications in Javascript.\n\nEdit: The same goes for the question \"Why are there so many databases\" and such..",
"Let's start with the mother of all languages: Assembler.\n\nAs you might know the only thing a computer understands are 0s and 1s. So everything has to be translated into bits. The way a processor is designed every instruction is basically a triple: (What, where, value) like\n(move,AL,42) which means move value 42 into memory AL (which is a processor register but let's not bother with this)\n\nThe processor gets the instruction in 0s and 1s. So everything is encoded it bits so it looks something like this: \n\n1100100110 100101010 10100001 (just a random example). \n\nYou see no one would be able to read a program that way. So Assembler was developed to translate these bits into words so we get something like \n\nMOV AL 42;\n\nNow a human is able to read the code, which is then translated to bits in a 1:1 fashion. This is called compiling. But as you can imagine creating complex software in that manner is very complicated and completely unpractical.\n\nNow there were a lot of people that came up with ideas for languages which introduced new concepts, which made it very easy to create a computer program. But every language had a different approach to syntax and semantic. Think of spoken language. It all has the same goal, communication with other people. But they all have different grammar and you can't say which language has the best grammar. Some have easy grammar but in turn problems with expressing complicated constructs. Others have complicated grammar whit a lot of overhead when saying simple things but can express very sophisticated thoughts.\n\nThe same is true for programming languages and it is a matter of personal taste what you prefer.\n\nTL,DR: There is no objective criteria to pick a \"best\" language.",
"It's kind of this phenomena: _URL_0_\n\nSometimes you need a claw hammer, sometimes you need a drywall hammer, sometimes you need that tiny crowbar thing that can pull nails out of the corner where you can't get the claw hammer on the nail-head and pull it out.\n",
"This is similar to asking \"Why are there so many vehicles to essentially get you from point A to B?\". Each language has it's own Pros and Cons (unless it involves .Net which just sucks all together) and we use that knowledge to chose which language to use for the application's needs.",
"Why are there so many different makes of cars? They all work the same way and get you from point a to point b.\nAre we allowed to answer a question with a question or is that bad karma?",
"Being in this industry for way too long, I'm a bit of a cynic.. So a lot of people here have given good technical explanations, but I'll add my top three non-technical reasons:\n\n1. Because books and training are very profitable\n2. Because tech evangelists are idealogues who get very entrenched in *their* way of doing things\n3. Because companies dump millions into things and can't afford to change.\n\nThere really is no need for the vast bevy of languages we have right now, especially the many competing frameworks and dialects of similar languages. I am not, of course, talking about specialized scientific languages. But in the \"general purpose\" realm, we really could do with one low level language (say Lisp) , one higher-level language (C++ or Java), and one dynamic language (say, Python). Maybe throw a scripting language in there like Javascript and we'd be good to go.\n\nEDIT: I get that Lisp is academically a \"high level\" language, if not the \"highest\" by some definitions. I have lots of feelings on LISP that aren't so great. Oh well. I understand there's lots of LISP zealotry. And yes, C++ and Java are not equivalent - and Java is not great. C++ closer to the metal, maybe C# higher up in a perfect world. \n\nReally. The tech world would and could work fine this way. We'd still have all the neat stuff we have today. Really, I promise. Erlang or Scala or Lua are not going to solve any problems that aren't solvable in Java or Lisp or Python. Arguably, some of these other languages were \"stops along the way\" in developing the more common languages. That is part of the explanation, but there's really no need to maintain these developmental languages.\n\nWhile a lot of the technical justifications for esoteric languages are arguably valid at a simple tech level, in reality, the fact that they exist and actually get promoted is based on a whole bunch of politics and conflicting ideologies. Many languages just get promoted based on quirks and theoretical practices, and the fact that certain groups and people are trying to promote *their* way of doing things, for whatever reason.\n\nOne could argue that this \"competition\" is good in some ways, but I believe it has also hurt the \"Engineering\" part of Software Engineering, in that it has been nearly impossible to develop any kind of long standing best-practices, even though in reality we *are* actually still doing the same thing over and over again. OOP was a major step towards that which everyone seemed to agree on after a while, but even that seems to be up for debate these days.\n\nSo, ever in flux, companies invest in the \"next big thing\" that becomes the \"last big thing\", and before you know it, there's a whole industry based on maintaining the last wave of popular practices. In that way, the old \"obsolete\" languages never die out - which is why you still even see FORTRAN and COBOL today. Likewise, every new platform \"sells\" some (usually tenuous) form of efficiency or cost savings, so new stuff will continue to be adopted. And the cycle continues.\n",
"**Like with human languages, it's not just a language, it's a *culture*. There are many things that you can do in different ways. A programming language consists of how you *write* things (the syntax), and a lot of other things that come with it (the \"culture\").** The syntax is the least important one.\n\n**Ever so often, someone invents a new one, and sometimes, enough people like it and start using it.**\n\nLanguages are often created specifically for a certain purpose (e.g. JavaScript - running on websites) and consequentially, are most often found there. That doesn't mean they cannot be used elsewhere - JavaScript is now also used to create server programs.\n\n***Longer version***\n\nProgramming languages differ in multiple areas, the most important of which are:\n\n* How the program is run in the end\n* Which kind of convenient functions are provided by default\n* What development tools are available\n* How you write things (the *syntax*)\n\n\n# **How the program is run in the end**\nThe first point (how the program is run) includes totally different philosophies: In compiled languages like C/C++, you take your source code, run a program called a \"compiler\" on it, and it creates a *native binary*. The compiler basically translates your human-readable source code to commands the CPU (processor) of your computer can actually understand. These commands will only run on that specific type of CPU, of course, and the program will depend on things in your operating system, so a program compiled for Linux won't run on Windows - you might be able to use a Windows compiler to create a binary for Windows from the source, though.\n\nThen there are *interpreted* languages like PHP, where a *runtime* (a program to run PHP programs) reads your source when you want to run it, and tells the computer what to do. That runtime is usually written in a low-level language like C++. Also, there are languages like Java where you compile your source code to an intermediate code, and then a runtime reads and runs that. All of these have advantages and disadvantages. The programming language is typically built around this concept. While it is, with certain constraints, possible to e.g. turn a PHP program into a native binary ([see here](_URL_0_)), it is uncommon.\n\nAnother difference is how low-level the languages are. In C, for example, you access raw memory all the time. This means you can tell the computer \"put this number at memory position 5\". If you make a mistake, memory position 5 contains other data, you overwrite it, and the program crashes. It is fast and for some things (like encryption) very convenient, in other cases, it's just an invitation to make terrible mistakes. Most security issues in software are caused by this. In Java, memory is *managed* - you cannot access raw memory. This makes some things much slower, but it avoids many mistakes and makes some things easier.\n\n# **What is it meant for, which kind of convenient functions are provided by default**\nSome languages are great for filtering text (Perl, for example). Some are great to generate web pages (PHP, for example). You can do all these things with most other languages, it is just more convenient.\n\nA large part of this stems from the commands the language understands by default, the *standard library*, and the set of commands you can teach it by adding modules made by others (libraries). Languages were often made for a certain purpose, so you will find a lot of functions for that.\n\nThe libraries you choose to add are often more important than the language you choose, so if there is a good library for what you want to do in C++, but not in Java, then you'll probably have to use C++.\n\nYou could use PHP to develop a multiplayer game server. It would just be a LOT more work than using a language more suited for that.\n\nBy replacing the standard libraries, and keeping the rest the same, you can vastly change what a language is. JavaScript, for example, is what runs on web sites and does things like upvotes and downvotes on reddit. However, you can also put it into a node.js environment on a server, and it becomes a powerful server language, because node.js provides it with the functions it needs for that. The syntax is the same, and the running concept is at least similar, but you use it in a totally different manner.\n\n# **What development tools are available**\nTo create a program, you need to write the source code, run it, find errors, etc. Depending on which language you use, there are different programs to help you with that. Some are better, some are worse. If they suck, programming in that language will suck. This is why we don't have much more languages - the \"small\" languages don't have good tools, while the \"big\" ones do.\n\nEven if the standard library and the syntax are better, without good tools, a language is useless.\n\n\n# **How you write things (the *syntax*)**\nAnd finally, what you most likely were looking for: How the language looks, how code is written. This is, surprisingly, the least important part. Of course, you have to learn it, but you rarely pick a language due to the syntax, you pick it based on the features it supports. \n\nIn some cases, the syntax makes certain things really easy, and then it becomes relevant (e.g. working with text in Perl, or doing multiple things at the same time in Scala).\n\nHowever, the basic stuff is the same, and despite looking totally different, a programmer won't really care if he writes a loop that prints each element of a list in Java, Python, PHP, or C:\n\n // Java\n public void printList(Collection < String > list) {\n for (String thing : list) {\n System.out.println(thing);\n }\n }\n\n # Python\n def printList(self, list):\n for thing in list:\n print thing\n\n // PHP\n function printList($list) {\n foreach ($list as $thing) {\n echo \"$thing\\n\";\n }\n }\n\n // C\n void printList(char** list, int listlength) {\n for (int i = 0; i < listlength; i++) {\n printf(\"%s\\n\", list[i]);\n }\n }\n\nNote that these are rough examples which probably have mistakes, they should just give you a feel how the same thing is done in four common languages. In some languages, it is very convenient to do (e.g. python), others detect certain kinds of mistakes very early (e.g. Java will make sure you are actually putting in a list and not something else).\n\nYou will also notice the syntax of Java, PHP and C is similar - because everyone else copied much of it from C. Just because the syntax is the same, doen't mean the language is - C and Java look similar (to the point where you cannot always tell from a piece of code without context if it is C or Java!), but they have vastly different philosophies.",
"There is a whole lot of teleological reasoning going on in here - \n\n**Programming languages, like every other language, were designed by thousands of people all over the world, some working in tandem, some working at odds. As a result, many different languages were created.**\n\nWhat you are getting in this thread is that language A may be better than language B for certain tasks - and this is undoubtedly true.\n\nHowever, what is also entirely too prevalent is the engineers mindset that this is the *reason* that so many languages exist. And it is *a* reason but not **the** reason. In other words, the fact that there are so many language is both an accident / result of the fact that there are thousands (millions) of people working on the problem as much as it results from the fact that certain groups of programmers saw tasks a certain language couldn't perform well, so they created a new one. ",
"[This is not an explanation](_URL_0_), but a fun and interesting look at how many different languages handle the same thing.\n\nedit: forgot a word",
"This requires a bit of a history lesson. Buckle up.\n\nWhen transistors were first packaged up and sold as integrated circuits, there were no tools to develop software for them. I remember sitting over circuit boards, setting little switches that represented 0s and 1s, and then pressing a \"save\" button that would save the instruction to memory. We'd develop software by writing out codes on graph paper.\n\nThis was not productive but amazing amounts of stuff could be [laboriously] done that way.\n\nCompilers hit the market fairly quickly - these programs could take some textual instructions, e.g. \"if (i = 1) then swivel robot arm 30 degrees\" and translate them into the computer codes we used to enter by hand.\n\nThis was productive! And everyone was happy forever and we were done.\n\nOk. Not really. Because software grew in complexity as it grew in ubiquity. And so came more interesting compilers and languages optimized for certain tasks. And of course, you've got your computer science professors doing language research and releasing languages around object-oriented ideas, around functional programming ideas, around event-driven and reactive programming ideas.\n\nBut the real fun hadn't even started yet!\n\nAs computing platforms became more diverse - windows, flavors of unix, mobile platforms, tablets, and other form factors, it became clear that compiling to each platform separately was incredibly tedious and expensive.\nAt roughly the same time, we've got the explosion of the internet and orders of magnitude jumps in the number of users targeted by sites. We've now got software (aka websites) used by a billion users at a reasonable frequency. In addition, we've got massive market competition driving not only scale, but features.\n\nSo what you needed was software that can scale across machines, that is stable, and that can run on multiple devices and that can withstand rapid releases - no once a year, but many times per day.\n\nAs a response, we've got virtual machine languages: C#, Java, Scala, F# and the like. But these usually have compiler hit times and so can be hard to do rapid incremental releases with. So we've got JavaScript/Node.js and we've got Ruby on Rails and Python. And then we have a myriad of tools such as Closure and Typescript to try and make these scripting languages, notoriously hard to maintain at large code sizes, scalable. And we've got specialized languages for expressing massively scalable tasks, often built on top of frameworks such as Hadoop and Storm.\n\nIt's all pretty amazing and it's only getting more interesting.",
"As others have said, so many languages exist because they may be better suited for a particular task when compared to others. Programming, as a whole, still possesses the same concepts despite differences in a developer's language of choice though. It's pretty much like once you learn one language, picking up another becomes much easier because, despite syntax differences, many of the concepts still hold. ",
"There are a lot of good answers here, but it really comes down to something else. Programmers love to make something new. It's a real problem and it even has a name: Not invented here.\n\nWhat happens is that a developer sees something and they think: that's nice, but I don't like this and that. Instead of improving the existing programming language (or whatever) they rewrite it from scratch.\n\nWhat they forget is that a programming language on itself is meaningless. Without a huge library, development tools (I like it when my editor gives my code fancy colors) and a supporting community, a programming language is meaningless. This is also the reason why there are so many (relatively) unused programming languages out there.",
"DandyLion made a good \"fork, knife, spoon\" analogy, but for me it's more just a matter of how I think and work.\n\nI grew up learning BASIC, then moved on to C and C++ and Java and Perl and PHP and finally Python. I've used a bunch of different languages, and I am capable of accomplishing pretty much any task I want in any of those languages. So it's not really a matter of what I'm using it for (with the exception of PHP), it's more a matter of which language feels right for me.\n\nEach language has its own syntax and logical structure. For me, C was good but I wanted an object-oriented language so I switched to C++. Then I wanted a language that was easy to compile and use on multiple platforms without major changes, so I switched to Java. Then I realized Java was just too damn bulky for my tastes, and I didn't like the way their hierarchies were structured and other things about the language... It took too much typing to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish.\n\nThen I found Python. Python is cross-platform, open-source, free, powerful, and quite easy to learn. It can do anything I want, from the high-level I/O and processing all the way down to low-level bit manipulation, and it's in a friendlier package than Java was to me.\n\nSo I've stuck with Python ever since. I've never found a need for any other language. So for me, language choice had more to do with how I think rather than what I was going to build.\n\nEverybody thinks differently, and everyone solves problems in their own way. For this reason, we each have our own preferences when it comes to language choice.\n\nYou can make art using pastels, oil paints, charcoal, watercolor, pencil, ink, clay, markers, colored pencils... It's all capable of making art, it's just a matter of which medium you prefer.",
"Similar response to everyone else but here it goes...\n\nProgramming languages and particular constructs are all the tools in your toolbox. Your goal is to take some known input (the degree to which it is known my vary) and provide some known output. So you open your toolbox and look at all the tools and say, \"Which tool(s) would be the best for this?\"\n\nIf you were given a piece of plywood and some 4x4s as input and told your output should be a workbench you would use certain tools of your toolbox (drill and bits, screws, maybe a saw, sander, et cetera). Similarly, if you have customer data as your input and you need output that allows you to quickly access the customer that visits the most number of times you would probably use C and maybe a heap data structure (or Java if you didn't want to deal with memory management yourself). Or have you have tried to solve one of those logic puzzles like this one: [Halloween Costume Contest](_URL_0_). You can find the correct answer to these types of puzzles by providing the rules and facts in the language Prolog, which is a very different tool than C or Java.",
"[Also possibly this](_URL_0_)",
"Also, there some jobs out there that are pretty easy to do with a big frikkin' hammer. It won't look pretty and it feels like a lot of hard work and sweat, but the hammer does the job so the people working with it never really consider using something else.\n\nMeanwhile, other people are looking a the same kind of jobs and at the guys using the hammers, see all that hard work and sweating, and think they can do better with a pneumatic drill. After shopping around for an expensive piece of kit, getting it to the workplace, teaching their employees to work with it and finally getting one of many jobs done, they look again at the guys with the hammers who are still sweating it but have completed many more jobs in the mean while. And then the drill breaks down.\n\nSource: a guy used to working with somewhat fancy drills, who just started using a big ol' hammer at another firm. I thought the hammers didn't really exist anymore, but here I am!",
"Why are there so many vehicles that essentially do the same thing?\n\nI can use my Civic to transfer barrels of oil to the golf coast but that doesn't seem very practical. I can use a truck cab to drive to work but that doesn't make much sense either.\n\nI'm close enough to bike to work. It'll take longer but I'll save on gas. I could even walk to work but I'll probably have to walk back as soon as I get there.\n\nAlso, some people like driving manuals, others don't.\n\nThe point is there are always trade offs and also preferences, just like most other things.",
"As a subsection of the world's population, computer programmers must be just about the smartest group. And that's what makes it so disappointing to observe that so many of them are too stubborn to let go of their personal preferences and work together to create a single language that does everything. There's no logical reason that it should require learning a completely new language in order to achieve one thing a bit better. \n\nOccasionally in spoken languages there are words for which no equivalent exists in another - for example, Ohrwurm - but in those cases the healthiest languages (e.g. English) simply adopt them. Of course English is by no means a model of linguistic perfection, since its spelling system is broken and ridiculous, but it has become the global lingua franca because its grammar is fairly easy to grasp. What is the \"English\" of computer programming languages?",
"Why are there so many models of vehicles? And why so many alternate routes to get somewhere?",
"Like everyone says, different languages specialize in different tasks. Each language usually has different libraries than can be used to accomplish the same task as well. Take a look at PHP and web frameworks. There are hundreds, and they all essentially do the same thing. Some languages and some frameworks just click with the programmer. If a programmer likes how something is done, they would be more productive. Some people really like Ruby, others are die hard PHP fans, and there are always Python enthusiasts when it comes to popular web languages. It all does the same thing, but again, programmers like their languages.",
"Because no one can agree on the right approach. Different languages handle things differently. The output looks the same but how you arrive at that output can be completely different. And each side is convinced their way is right. All I meet are people who only program in one language because they are convinced that is the right language. It is all a matter of opinion."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Java_and_C%2B%2B",
"http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/173154/what-are-the-differences-between-programming-languages"
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"http://xkcd.com/927/"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HipHop_for_PHP"
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"http://www.roesler-ac.de/wolfram/hello.htm"
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"http://www.puzzlersparadise.com/onlinelogic/HalloweenCostumeContest.htm"
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"http://xkcd.com/927/"
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27i580 | what actually makes f1 cars so loud? | I understand that they don't have silencers or baffles but what actually causes them to be so loud? Is it the combustion or the movement of the parts? This has been intriguing me for some time. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27i580/eli5_what_actually_makes_f1_cars_so_loud/ | {
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"I would wager the lack of coventional exhaust. \n\nTake any jacked up truck, and straight pipe the thing from the engine/headers, and it will sound (probably pretty shitty) similar. The cat converter takes a lot of the power away, but helps reduce emissions. \nIt's all about the exhaust/muffler system. \n\nEDIT: mufflers do not save admissions.... sp. ",
"Ordinary cars are just as loud.\n\nBack in the day, I took off the exhaust in my 2liter 4 cylinder. At full tilt, it would ring your ears if I sped past. ",
"Well sadly, that authentic noise you refer to is no longer. Starting with this 2013-2014 season, the cars are switched to a more hybrid type of system, more electric and KERS based, and they sound like a moaning dinosaur, not that high-pitched orgasmic sound. :(",
"If you've noticed, they aren't that loud in the start of the race (from the line) and get much louder, i'd guess that it's because the drivers keep the engine \"revving to a maximum of 15,000rpm\". Which is very high, resulting in the high-pitched sound that is associated with F1 vehicles. Bikes are significenlt louder than cars, which is due to the fact that bike engines revv much higher than cars; as well as the fact that their exhaust systems aid in the sound. ",
"Making more hoarse power means a bigger boom in the engine couple that with higher rpms and you have more explosions in a shorter amount of time and you get a louder sound.",
"You should ask this at r/formula1. There are many hardcore technical fans there."
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4doewn | when (especially in the old days of analogue phones) we are dialling a phone number, what does actually happen? how is the right person reached at the other end? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4doewn/eli5when_especially_in_the_old_days_of_analogue/ | {
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"The phone number is a coded \"address\" of sorts. When you dial a game shop's phone number outside of your city to see if they have a used copy of a hard to find game, you're really sending a set of instructions for the switching system to connect you to a specific phone. Let's say the game shop's number is 509-555-8865. When you are dialing this 11 digit number (with a 1 for long distance if applicable), here is what you are saying.\n\n1: Country Code - USA. This number is in the USA. Mobile phones generally do not require this unless you are dialing into the country from outside, or if you live in an area with more than one area code for local calling. The 1 is only required for long distance.\n\n509: Area Code - Eastern Washington state. This number is located in the cities including and surrounding Spokane, Washington. It simply tells the system that this is the area you are trying to reach.\n\n555: Exchange (obviously fake number so I don't accidentally peg a real phone number for the example) - The number is located in this exchange. This is just another grouping of numbers to further narrow down where the call is being sent at this point. It used to be that this number was also based very closely on geographical location in a certain area code. So 366, 367, 368, and 369 would all most likely be in or around a certain neighborhood. With cell phones and number portability this doesn't apply so much anymore.\n\n8865: The phone's actual number - This is the final bit. You are trying to reach number 8865, in the 555 exchange, in the 509 area code, in the United States of America. Wherever this phone number is routed to by the phone company will ring when this number is dialed."
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6ysyrs | when you jar a finger or bend it right back, why does it feel like it 'locks down' and is hard to move? | Recently jarred my finger and along with the pain, after the event it was hard to move my finger very far, very fast - it's fine now but why does this happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ysyrs/eli5when_you_jar_a_finger_or_bend_it_right_back/ | {
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"It means you have sprained that joint. When a joint gets moved in a way it's not supposed to, the ligaments and connective tissue get stretched unnaturally or tear. This affects the joint's ability to function for a while, and in severe cases for a long while and may be accompanied with swelling. It's the same if you've ever rolled an ankle, just less severe as you have multiple fingers and don't walk on them.",
"This is all from swelling.\n\nWhen you have some kind of blunt traumatic injury you do damage to tissue somewhere. Additionally you activate pain and pressure nerves that let your brain know that you are hurt.\n\nYour body responds with swelling. Swelling is one of the oldest and most ubiquitous forms of immune response known. It's caused by a whole host of things including:\n\nWhen you smash tissue and cells fragments get noticed by the immune systems monitoring cells and they release chemicals that cause swelling.\n\nEven minor trauma causes local dilation of blood vessels (kind of like when they are going to draw blood and they tap on the vein) resulting in increased blood flow and swelling in the area.\n\nAlso, in response to the pain signals from your nerves, your brain sends signals back releasing pro-inflammatory chemicals in the area. \n\nSo, this all begs the question why? Well, like I said, this is one of the oldest mechanisms known in immunology. Many plants have really similar mechanisms in their immune systems. One of the most basic reasons for it is to stabilize the injury like a splint. It really is the bodies version of splinting. You can imagine in a plant, if you damage the stalk, one of the most important things the plant could do to survive would be to stabilize that injured stalk. It's the same idea in us.\n\nAdditionally this is the first response of a much larger immune response in case something worse is wrong. Your immune system is more like and army than individual system. The swelling (inflammation) is kind of like the shock troops. They take the beach and stabalize everything and report back.\n\nNow many times a traumatic injury is accompanied with cuts, scrapes, bleeding, etc. so often they find germs and report back to start sending white blood cells.\n\nIn the case of your finger, the inflammation finds nothing else and goes away pretty quickly. If it stayed, that would indicate a worse or ongoing problem.\n\nNow, the poster below said it means that it's a sprain. That's not really true. Some people will use the term to just mean \"hurt joint\" but that's really a specific term for damaging a ligament. You will certainly have swelling with a sprain. But you will have swelling from really minor injuries too. A sprain can only be diagnosed by a doctor, but you will know something is wrong because it won't get better. Sprains take months to heal in general.",
"Your body has evolved to protect the parts of itself that are damaged. Jammed fingers are damaged, and bending the finger opens the risk of damaging it more. By swelling and locking up, the finger prevents itself from moving so the healing process can go down uninterrupted. This is the work of your immune system. Without it, your finger would probably be able to move but the damage would never heal and after a few small injuries the finger would be entirely fucked! So be glad that your fingers lock up -- it's like closing down a road for road construction. You need to keep the streets empty in order to fix the damage! Otherwise I don't really think the human body could reliably really repair tissues if they were also being used while the repairs were being done."
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dc4tds | how does a dry cleaner work? beginning to end? | I don't know why I have never questioned this before.
What actually happens inside a dry clean store? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dc4tds/eli5_how_does_a_dry_cleaner_work_beginning_to_end/ | {
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"Drycleaning machines use a product called Perc (sort of like a gasoline solvent) to clean clothes. The machines are a washer/dryer combo so it’s a sealed unit. The solvent keeps clothes from shrinking and getting crazy creased up. \n\nThen its the usual pressing machines - one specifically for pants, one for shirts, jackets and blazers and then normally a presser for other stuff plus irons. All the pressers abs irons are steam based and they tend to have a huge boiler to make it all run. \n\nMy parents owned a Drycleaners my entire childhood, so spent a lot of time there!"
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ehgaok | if an individual in the hollywood business plays a role as the director, executive producer, and an actor in the fim/tv show, do they take a salary for each position? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ehgaok/eli5_if_an_individual_in_the_hollywood_business/ | {
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"Executive producer either manages the money or provides it. The director handles all the top-level decision making about the actual filming process. The actor acts. \n\nThe most likely scenario is that Danny McBride found a script or concept that he really liked. He approached HBO with the idea, they liked it well enough to let him make the show. As far as compensation, he probably gets a percentage of the total the show makes to cover his pay for all 3 job titles, or he may get a salary for the acting portion (sag rules?) and a percentage for EP and director."
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3206av | what's the problem with loaning money for college in the states? | I've heard not all people are able to loan money, why is that? Shouldn't the US support their citizens getting educations? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3206av/eli5_whats_the_problem_with_loaning_money_for/ | {
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"The US government will lend each person a certain amount of money for their education. The issue is that the cost of college usually exceeds that, and private lenders are a lot more discriminating based on income and credit.",
"Our education system is in complete meltdown mode. So here's the deal - all college students have to fill out a FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). The FAFSA tells you how much you can get in government grants (don't have to be paid back) and how much of a federal loan you qualify for. Here's the issue - until you're 24 ~~(I think it might be 26 now)~~, you don't qualify as an independent student, meaning you have to provide your parent's income on your FAFSA, making it impossible to get grants, and the amount of federal loans available drops (I believe.) The only way to become an independent student before that age is to get married, have a baby, join the military, be an orphan, or get legally emancipated from your parents.\n\nNow, if your parents aren't actually helping you pay for school, then the only place left to turn is private bank loans. And without a co-signer, a college student without a lot of built up credit ends up with an outrageous interest rate. After a couple of years, private banks no longer want to give you a loan. Then, you're basically dead in the water.\n\nThis is exactly what happened to me.\n\nEDIT: Checking my facts *after* I post. Silly me.",
" > Shouldn't the US support their citizens getting educations?\n\nThe US government does, and this is exactly why education costs have spiraled out of control. There is a limited supply of top notch universities, an ever increasing number of students wanting spots in those universities, and a government all to willing to provide education loans for those students.\n\nMore dollars chasing fewer spots is a recipe for increasing costs.\n\nIncreasing the amount of loan money available will not solve the affordability problem. Price controls on universities will further increase the difficulty of getting in to a good university. The best solution is the complete abolishment of the federal loan system.",
"if you don't pay back loans lenders will garnish your wage (up to 25%), even if you are working in the field you studied taking home 25,000 a year with nearly 10 years of experience and leave you with a 513 credit score. (personal experience)",
"I'm not sure where you're hearing this, but pretty much anyone who wants a loan for college can get one in the United States. The catch is, it's pretty much impossible to get rid of the debt.",
"**tl;dr** The US strongly supports citizens getting education. Millions of people use those programs every year. Unfortunately there are many thousands of idiots willing to enter into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt without considering the consequences.\n\n---\n\nLong version\n\n\nThere are (or were when the stats were published in 2010) 5758 post-secondary schools (colleges and universities) in the US. \n\nRelative to most other nations, that is an extremely high number. Only India has more at around 8500. The next highest nations are Argentina (1705), Spain (1415), Mexico (1341), and so on. Many nations have only a double-digit number, or a low number relative to their population. The UK has 242 (the nation makes a distinction with 109 \"university\" schools and 133 \"higher education\" schools), Germany has about 70. Australia has 43, but considering their population that is actually relatively good. \n\nBased on US government stats, the median cost as of 2010 is $2916 per semester. So half of the schools, roughly 3000 colleges and universities, charge less $3000 per semester to study as their baseline. \n\nBut the costs are not a bell curve. If you were to chart the number of schools by costs, the bulk of the schools are in a bulge in the low end, but the high end of the scale goes way, way, way up. It is a lump around $2000-$3000 with an extremely long tail going up to around $30,000 per semester. While MOST schools charge under $3000, many schools -- especially the popular and private schools -- charge much more. \n\n[A useful tool](_URL_0_) listing schools broken down by type, you can sort by cost.\n\nPublic schools tend to top out around $20,000 per year, or about $10,000 per semester. Based on that tool, about 300 major 4-year public schools, and nearly 900 major 2-year schools cost under $6000/year. (You can generally get an associates at a 2-year school then transfer to a 4-year school and continue for the remaining two years.) \n\nThat is extremely affordable for most people. Even if the student put the entire cost of the school into a student loan, their degree will cost less than an automobile and can be paid off within 5-10 years. \n\nThe private schools, and especially the for-profit private schools, are the expensive side of the chart. MIT is $21860 per semester. Harvard is $22000 per semester. USC is $23000. Scripps College is $23,700. Columbia University is $25,504. That is NOT affordable to most people. But many people still choose these school.\n\nToo many young students look at the brand name, they look at the popular schools, they look at the schools with extensive sports teams, they look at the schools with famous people. But they never stop to look at the price tag.\n\nThat's the primary side, the cost of education.\n\nThe second half is funding for students.\n\nIt is extremely easy to get scholarships and grants in the US. [Nearly 90% of all students are receiving federal money](_URL_1_).\n\nMost people qualify for at least a few scholarships and grants if they take the time to apply for them. It is pretty easy to get federal grant money, typically $4000-$10000 per year. If students do their homework and maintain a B or B+ grade they should qualify for a few scholarships of $500 or more beyond those grants.\n\nSo getting a few thousand dollars is easy, and nearly 90% of students are getting that funding.\n\nThe difficulty is in determining just how far the money will go. That depends on the cost of the school.\n\nIf you get $8000 for a one year federal education grant, that will pay for the entire school year at an inexpensive school. It will only pay a portion of a single semester at an expensive private school.\n\nSo when you put all that together...\n\nYou get smarter people who figure out what they can afford, they apply for federal aid and for private scholarships, they search for inexpensive schools, and they work hard in school to learn all they can and earn good grades. Most people graduate with only a few thousand dollars in student debt, if they took on student debt at all.\n\nBut then you also get people who have very little money, they apply to the very expensive schools, then instead of looking for free grants and scholarships and free money they turn directly to student loans. Instead of paying $2000-$3000 per year after grants and scholarships, they voluntarily sign up for loans of $50000 per year. Assuming they graduate, instead of having either directly paid or taken out loans for $12,000 in school, they have $200,000 in loans.\n\nOther people apply for those loans, as you pointed out in your original comment, they do not qualify for the loan. The banks are smart enough to figure out that $50,000 * 4 years = $200,000 which is far more than the individual is likely to repay in a reasonable time frame. But the young and foolish student does not understand this, crying out \"I really want to attend the big-name school! Loan officers are so unfair!\" \n\nFor me personally, I worked my way through school. I attended an inexpensive school for a bachelor's degree, then went to a different inexpensive school for a graduate degree. I paid my living expenses and much of my tuition directly. I maintained high grades and received both grants and scholarships. When I was finished, I had about $8000 in student loan debt that I was able to pay back quite easily.\n\nI have met and talked with people who are too financially illiterate to attend school. They complain about having signed for over a hundred thousand dollars in student debt. They made foolish decisions, often attending school for 3 years, or 4 years or 5 years before being dumped from the program. Occasionally there are protesters who hang signs on their necks to show their enormous student debts; I see those signs and interpret them as saying \"I'm too stupid to get a university education.\"\n"
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31i5n4 | when does string become rope? | Not just that rope is made up of strings, but at what size does rope occur? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31i5n4/eli5_when_does_string_become_rope/ | {
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"around the same size that a bucket becomes a barrel",
"If I remember correctly it's something like this. \n\nString cannot be separated smaller \nStrings wound/braided together is yarn \nYarn wound/braided together is twine \nTwine wound/braided together is rope \nRope wound/braided together is cable "
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5bky47 | what exactly is happening when you "request desktop version" for a website and why do some websites still load the mobile version? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5bky47/eli5_what_exactly_is_happening_when_you_request/ | {
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"When you request a web page, your browser sends a bit of information about what it is- what browser you're running and what operating system you're running on. When you \"Request Desktop Version\", it sends information claiming to be a desktop browser. \n\nIf the website uses that bit of text to determine what page to send you, you get the desktop site. If instead it figures out which page to give you based on screen size and touch capability, it will still show you the mobile version.",
"Any time you load a web page, your browser sends a \"request\" to the web server, and then the server sends back the relevant page.\n\nThis request can contain a fair bit of information. One of the key things is the \"User-agent\", which is a description of the browser being used. It's up to the server whether it pays any attention to that or not, but it can use it to work out whether the user is using a desktop or a mobile browser, and send a different web page depending on that.\n\n\"Request desktop site\" simply changes the user-agent so that the server thinks the request is coming from a desktop browser.",
"Like others have mentioned, requesting desktop version could be that you're changing the user agent to say you're a desktop instead of a mobile phone.\n\nBut you also asked why some websites still load mobile version despite you requesting the desktop version: the website is likely responsive, which means it has been designed with certain breakpoints. Essentially, when designing websites you can certain style rules, one being \"if the browser width is smaller than 480px, do this instead of that\".\n\nIn other words, a website can have multiple designs that trigger at certain browser sizes. This is probably what you're seeing when you request desktop version but still see a mobile version...your user agent has changed but your browser is still small enough to trigger the responsive designs.\n\nThe only way to properly force a full desktop version at that stage is to have the \"full desktop\" button also remove all breakpoints, or alternatively trick the site that your browser is wider than it actually is.",
"So, some people have explained user agent strings, other have explained responsive web design, but there is another reason why a mobile web page might be loaded. You probably go to a site first, get the mobile version of the webpage, then check the 'request desktop version' button, but at that point the site might already have redirected you to a mobile-only subdomain of the form of '_URL_0_' instead of just '_URL_1_'. The page on the mobile-only subdomain doesn't check the user agent string for desktop browsers so it doesn't redirect you back to the desktop site after you've enabled 'request desktop version' so you'll be stuck with the mobile version until you manually edit the URL to remove the 'm.' part."
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7v83ha | some genes, increase the likelihood of getting certain diseases (like cancer) why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7v83ha/eli5_some_genes_increase_the_likelihood_of/ | {
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"It's kind of misleading to think of the gene as being exclusively for cancer-causing purposes. Typically the \"cancer genes\" people talk about are variations on a gene that codes for sometime useful. \n\nLike when people say they have the BRCA1 gene (the gene most commonly associated with genetic breast cancers), they don't actually mean they have a genetic sequence in a place where everyone else has nothing. Everyone has a BRCA1 gene, it's just that normally it codes for tumor-suppressing proteins. In people with certain mutations in that region, however, the proteins that it codes for are not produced correctly and thus do not properly suppress the uncontrolled growth of cells. ",
"You've just opened a can of worms I've avoided all my life.\n\nSo, \"cancer genes\" are usually involved in the replication process of DNA. Simply put, the proteins they produce can promote replication, inhibit it or stop mitosis to fix errors that occured in the process. Alterations in these genes can cause uncontrolled replication which makes it VERY prune to errors and increases the chances of it becoming dysplastic and eventually becoming anaplastic (cancerous)."
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7pso9e | why does milk in the us taste different than milk in canada? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7pso9e/eli5_why_does_milk_in_the_us_taste_different_than/ | {
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"It's all in the cows diet. I've had milk from a cow that got into an onion patch... It definitely tasted like onion and was disgusting.",
"The taste of milk will vary based on the breed of cow used, what the cow eats, specifics of how it has been processed. Milk from two different dairies will rarely taste the same, even within the same country. ",
"Its processed differently. In Germany you can either buy unrefrigerated milk that sits on a shelf or unpasteurized milk with solid fat chunks floating on the top. Both taste gross to me. Different preferences for different countries."
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1ztqec | how would a crimean declaration of independence or union with russia differ from kosovo declaring itself independent from serbia in 2008? | President Obama has stated any vote on the future of Crimea, such as that proposed by its autonomous parliament with the aim of union with Russia, must involve all Ukrainian's and would otherwise be invalid.
Why then has the US and other western nations recognized Kosovo, who's parliament voted to split the region from Serbia in 2008?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ztqec/eli5_how_would_a_crimean_declaration_of/ | {
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" Kosovo's self-proclaimed independence has been recognised by 108 UN countries, and one non-UN country, the Republic of China (Taiwan). The remaining Serbs from North Kosovo want to remain in the Republic of Serbia, but Serbian majority towns are now rare in the Albanian-dominated, partially recognised Republic of Kosovo.\n\nIt boils down to being internationally recognized. Crimea will not, at least in the near future, be recognized as its own state, let alone will it become part of another country."
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9qzw5o | why does meat shrink when cooked? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9qzw5o/eli5_why_does_meat_shrink_when_cooked/ | {
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"When the meat heats up the a lot of the fit in it liquidates (or renders). This loss of fat causes the meat to shrink and is responsible for the additional oil on the bottom of the pan",
"When you cook something, you also end up boiling away some of the water in the meat. It also has a lot to do with how much fat is in the meat, as more fat will mean more shrinkage. If you cook something passed rare, the fat will start to melt and run into the pan or drip off. This is why on grills there are sometimes a flare up. That's a bit of fat catching on fire. So all of that volume the water and fat have taken up now leaves the meat, you're left with less stuff, and the meat shrinks. ",
"People are trying to answer you but they are a bit off-course. The meat lose water, but you are not boiling it away from inside and the loss is a consequence, not the reason why meat shrinks. The meat also lose some fat but there is not much of it inside to start with. Not enough to justify shrinkage.\n\nMeat is made of muscle. Muscle is made of long filaments called \"fibers\", that are actually bundles of cords made of cells. There is fluid between the cords, containing a red substance called \"myoglobin\" that ensures oxygen gets to the cells and CO2 is carried away (much like what haemoglobin does in the blood). This is what gives meat its red color. To keep the cords together, the fibers are wrapped with a tight blanket of proteins called \"collagen\" or \"connective tissue\". Mind you, there are many kinds of collagen in the body, this is just one kind.\n\nWhen you cook the meat a lot of things happen, but one thing is relevant to your question: those collagen wrappings works like some of those plastics, the ones that shrink a lot when heated. You know the kind I'm talking of? This is precisely what happens: you heat the meat, collagen shrinks, the meat visibly shrinks and most of the reddish water get squeezed out.\n\nIncidentally, to cook a good steak you'll want to avoid this shrinkage as much as possible, because of course it will make the meat dry, hard and somewhat flavorless. But it's not the meat's fault as many believe... it's the cook's (and/or the butcher's). \n\nThis collagen wrappings can also be made in to a gelatin that will make meat moist and flavorful, but it takes a long time to do properly and can be tricky (it's what you do when cooking pulled pork, for example). It is not something you'll want to do with the cuts of meat that are used to make steaks.\n\nThere is a lot more going on inside meat when cooking it. Feel free to ask if you want to know more."
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2h81w1 | - why do we eat cows and pigs abd not horses and dogs in the western world? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h81w1/eli5_why_do_we_eat_cows_and_pigs_abd_not_horses/ | {
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"Horse meat isn't rare at all. You can get it in many parts of europe. Tastes ok too. \n\nAnyway, that's culture. The same reason we think that bacon and eggs is a breakfast food, and don't eat grasshoppers. ",
"When you work on a farm each animal is used for several things. Pigs will eat almost anything, but they won't herd like dogs or work like horses so they mostly serve as waste management. Cow manure is useful on a farm and their meat has a high market value. Also, the horse and dog lobby doesn't really support the idea of eating \"man's best friend\", ha! It may interest you to know that in 1910 President Roosevelt supported a huge plan to bring Louisiana hippos into the US food market, and it might of worked if Anton Feuchtwange of Louisiana hadn't invented the hot-dog bun... \n_URL_0_"
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z8xqh | why my throat tickles/itches after i cough while i'm sick | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/z8xqh/eli5_why_my_throat_ticklesitches_after_i_cough/ | {
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"Hi, speech-language pathologist here (which means I work closely with the anatomy/function of the mouth, throat and vocal cords). \n\nAt the back of your mouth there are two tubes. One is your esophagus- and that's how food goes down to your stomach. The other tube is your airway. At the top of the airway is your larynx- that's where your vocal cords are. Beneath them, the airway continues down to your lungs as a tube called the trachea. The trachea splits off into two smaller tubes called bronchi. One goes to your right lung and one goes to your left lung.\n\nYour lungs, and the airway above them can be affected by infections, allergic reactions, etc. The lining of the airway is very sensitive and responds to infection/irritation by producing extra mucus. A little mucus is fine: it helps keep the tube moist and working normally. But too much mucus is bad. If the mucus falls down the airway, it could get into the lungs themselves and cause an even worse infection (e.g., pneumonia). Coughing is a way to clear this mucus up away from the airway. When you cough, air from the lungs is pushed quickly and forcefully up the airway, clearing extra mucus/other irritants up and out of the way, towards the mouth where you can spit it out or swallow it.\n\nIn order for a cough to be efficient, it has to be forceful. The way to build this force is by creating pressure in the airway. The body has a great mechanism for this: the vocal cords close together tightly (like 2 French doors) so all the air in the lungs is now under pressure, since the only way out is closed. The vocal cords open quickly, allowing the pressurized air out, and then slam back closed afterwards.\n\nWhile this coughing mechanism is great, it puts a lot of strain on the vocal cords. Vocal cords aren't used to hitting together so hard. Imagine if you hit yourself on the arm in the same place over and over- you'd get a bruise and some swelling. The same thing happens to the vocal cords. After repeated coughing, the vocal cords swell and as protection start producing extra mucus. This explains the itching/tickling you feel in your throat. The swelling also explains why your voice gets hoarse. Vocal cord mucus again irritates the airway and provokes more coughing! An unfortunate cycle. The way to break it is to stay hydrated (promotes good vocal cord health), avoid anything that will irritate/dry out your throat (alcohol, cigarettes, minty throat drops- anything that dries out the vocal cords will result in the production of more mucus, which makes everything worse all over again). \n\nI know it's hard to visualize. Here is an image:\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.virtualmedicalcentre.com/anatomy/respiratory-system/18"
]
] |
||
1ma2du | cities like new york city have skyscrapers and subways. how does the ground not cave in? | With vast subways and underground tunnels, big cities have many holes underground. How do the large massive cities not just sink? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ma2du/eli5_cities_like_new_york_city_have_skyscrapers/ | {
"a_id": [
"cc76y0l"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Advanced engineering and good old fashioned sturdy bedrock. You have to have the right kind of rock under the city, or no subways/tunnels in vast networks are possible. The earth's crust is pretty darn strong, provided your tunnel routing and excavation is done with the proper care and reinforcement."
]
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[]
] |
|
2ikisy | why does the lunar eclipse happen and when can i see it? | I'm 21, I feel pretty dumb for needing to ask, but I really can't figure out when I'll be able to see it in Indianapolis. Hopefully this thread helps other people too. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ikisy/eli5_why_does_the_lunar_eclipse_happen_and_when/ | {
"a_id": [
"cl2x07h",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"A lunar eclipse happens when the light going from the sun is blocked from reaching the moon by the earth. There is a partial eclipse visible from Indianapolis on the 23rd of this month. _URL_0_",
"Technically, I think an eclipse is when one thing gets in front of another thing, blocking your view of the thing in back. For example, in a solar eclipse, the Moon gets in front of the Sun, blocking your view of the Sun.\n\nAn \"eclipse\" of the moon isn't really an eclipse. Instead, the Earth gets between the Moon and the Sun, casting the Moon into shadow. The Moon is small enough that it fits entirely inside the Earth's shadow (the \"[umbra](_URL_0_)\" part of the shadow to be precise), and so the Moon goes dark, seeming to completely disappear from the sky. Visually, it looks like something big passed in front of the Moon, but that's not what happened.\n\nIn fact, enough sunlight gets bent going through the Earth's atmosphere, that the Moon still has some light shining on it. The Moon will be a dark red color as if it were sunset. Which in a way, it is.\n\nYou can see the lunar eclipse anywhere you can see the Moon.\n\nIt's worth noting that if anybody were living on the Moon, they would be calling it a solar eclipse since the Earth is blocking their view of the Sun.\n\nFinally, an eclipse of the Earth occurs when you put your hands in front of your face."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/2014-october-23"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbra,_penumbra_and_antumbra"
]
] |
|
3pqr6i | why does it hurt so much when you accidentally inhale water through your nose (when swimming for example) but you can sniff gallons of snot back through the same nasal passage with no pain at all? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pqr6i/eli5_why_does_it_hurt_so_much_when_you/ | {
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"text": [
"snot is at body temp and also is slightly salty. Your body likes warm slightly salty things. \n\nWater in you nose is colder and isn't salty. ",
"Cells in the nose have salt in them. Inhale plain water and they swell, which hurts.\n\nIt doesn't hurt if you mix a 1 m-% salt solution. Neti pots work like this: you can pour as much of that salty water through your nose as you like. Mix in some xylitol (about equal amounts) and it doesn't even taste that bad.",
"Its mainly due to the salinity of the snot, and the osmosis that occurs when you breathe water.\n\n5 year old version - Your nose is thirsty so it drinks the water, but it doesn't like the snot so much so it doesn't drink that. Your nose drinks too much water so it gets very fat, which hurts it.",
"Wait, you can't drink water through your nose?"
]
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[],
[],
[],
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] |
||
68190g | why can't cars go reverse full speed ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68190g/eli5_why_cant_cars_go_reverse_full_speed/ | {
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"text": [
"Adding multiple reverse gears would add a lot of parts (and weight and cost). And there are very few usage cases where going fast in reverse could be justified.",
"To go full speed cars have gears, first, second, third, fourth and often a fifth for economy on motorway driving. There is little point in having gears for going backwards because most people would feel uncomfortable reversing at 120 miles per hour. So it only has one reverse gear which is the equivalent of first gear. Most cars in europe would struggle to go 30 miles per hour in first gear (normal cars) so that would be the same limit on reverse speed for the same reason.\n\n",
"They can. It is often unsafe. If \"top speed\" is defined by how fast a car can go before the engine breaks, etc. However, you only have one gear for reverse, so \"top speed\" is around 25 miles per hour. If you are going forward, you will at least have 2 gears, maybe even 8 gears. \"Top Speed\" goes up because of multiplication of the gear ratios.",
"Some vehicles can. It is all a question of what gears you have.\n\nSince with normal cars you usually don't ever have a good reason to drive backwards at anything other than slow speed, most car-makers don't built them with more than one reverse gear.\n\nSome vehicles like Mercedes' Unimog have multiple backward gears 8 forward and 6 backward gears is something I have seen. This is usually not to drive backwards very fast but to give you different option of driving backwards slowly and very slowly because you are moving something incredibly heavy like a couple of train cars.",
"They used to.\n\nIt used to be that you had two shifters. One for speed, a second for direction.\n\nThis allowed cars to go full speed in reverse.\n\nThe problem is that it is very hard to control your vehicle when using mirrors or looking over your shoulder. This lead to accidents.",
"Related question: Since electric cars don't have transmissions can they go same speed in reverse as forwards?",
"Because they have a separate gear for reverse. In terms of speed it's usually between first and second gear. If reverse gear was set to allow a high top speed it would be very difficult to reverse at low speed without stalling the engine, and reversing is mostly done at low speed.\n\nA secondary factor is that the steering of a car is set up so when driving forwards, if you let go of the wheel it tends to go straight. When reversing the effect is the opposite, let go of the wheel and the car will swerve to one side or other. This makes high-speed reversing difficult and dangerous.\n\nA few vehicles have had designs that let them reverse at full speed, for example because the engine can actually turn either way."
]
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||
3202kn | i just read the brian banks story; why are women who falsley accuse men of rape hardly ever if at all sent to prison? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3202kn/eli5i_just_read_the_brian_banks_story_why_are/ | {
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"cq6jw7n",
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"text": [
"If they were proved, in a court of law, beyond a reasonable doubt, to have knowingly and falsely accused someone, they do get sent to prison.",
"There is a difference between a false accusation, an accused raper being found not-guilty, and being criminally liable. It is possible that someone gave false witness that they reasonably thought was true. Alternatively, there may have simply not been enough evidence to prove it was rape, but it also does not mean the person was lying (ex.: person claims rape because they had sex when heavily intoxicated, however, the other person was also extremely drunk and had nothing to do with the other person's state. It may still legally be considered rape, but who raped who and establishing criminal intent could be difficult). Finally there is the case where one party intentionally lies to try and get the other in trouble (or get attention, or some other reason). In this case it would be criminal liable and the accuser could get criminally prosecuted.\n\n ",
"It's because the courts don't want to tewwify the pwetty wittle scared girlies with the idea that their actions could have consequences for them.\n\n Admittedly, courtrooms are terrifying and rape is traumatic, but it *is* still a huge flaw in the system that women (not rape victims, but *women*) are coddled this much."
]
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[],
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||
61rltx | are revolutions still possible today? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61rltx/eli5are_revolutions_still_possible_today/ | {
"a_id": [
"dfgpdyr",
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"score": [
2,
2
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"text": [
"Yeah, of course they are:\n\n* 2011 Egyptian revolution. Egypt is \"technically\" third world (using the political definition) but I would consider it a \"modern\" country.\n* 2014 Ukrainian revolution",
"Iceland. Protests and riots in 2009, in the wake of the financial crisis that hit Iceland hard, led to the government resigning and new elections. The new government then led a plan to change the constitution, although despite the plans being approved in a referendum in 2013 they were then seemingly abandoned.\n\nUkraine too, if you consider it modern and developed enough. Revolution in 2014 overthrew the pro-Russia government, followed by Russia-backed counter-revolution that occupied Crimea and continues to make eastern Ukraine a warzone.\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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] |
||
oguj4 | why it's not good to leave chicken or beef on the counter for too long because bacteria grows, but hungarian sausage and other sausages are left out on purpose to dry out. why doesn't that meat spoil as well? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/oguj4/eli5_why_its_not_good_to_leave_chicken_or_beef_on/ | {
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"text": [
"It's salted. There is a term called \"curing\" for meat, which involves adding salt or sometimes smoking it to partially cook it. Both of these will decrease the rate at which food spoils at room temperature.",
"Dried and fermented sausages contain salt and sodium/potassium nitrate, and are also inoculated with \"good\" bacteria. Then they are dried and/or smoked. \n\nThe salt, lack of moisture and competition from the \"good\" bacteria all make it **very** slow to go bad.",
"Here's the [Wikipedia article on Curing (food preservation)](_URL_0_), it summarises it perfectly in the first paragraph:\n\n > Curing refers to various food preservation and flavoring processes, especially of meat or fish, by the addition of a combination of salt, nitrates, nitrite or sugar. Many curing processes also involve smoking, the process of flavoring, or cooking. The use of food dehydration was the earliest form of food curing."
]
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[],
[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curing_%28food_preservation%29"
]
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||
2p1rac | why do some people you see have money but do not seem like hard workers, while others who do seem like hard workers live in poverty? | So, I'm just looking for a alternate take on this. I have always been intriegued by the fact that people from different classes sometimes cross paths, like at gas stations. I was born lower class and have always been that, and have never concieveably never found a way to change classes. Some people I know in my class are the hardest workers I've ever met, yet they still struggle to get by. But I run into people of higher classes, and they strike me as pretentious and lazy. I don't see them ever surviving in my world. Yet how are they more successful? How do they have these high paying jobs that people of my status cannot get? Is it from birth advantage, or were they once hard workers and then got lazy once they were set? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p1rac/eli5_why_do_some_people_you_see_have_money_but_do/ | {
"a_id": [
"cmsjnt3"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"The metaphor \"The Rich get Richer and the Poor get Poorer\" is quite true. I'm sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but money makes money. People that are successful probably had money to get them to the point where they're aloud to be lazy. It seems like thats how society works nowadays. :s"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
1ubvwq | if i make money buying a currency when it has low value and selling when it is high, has someone 'lost' that money? who? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ubvwq/eli5_if_i_make_money_buying_a_currency_when_it/ | {
"a_id": [
"ceghg8l"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Anyone that buys the currency at the higher price is paying more for it than you did. You're just swapping it with someone else, pretty much. If you could buy a loaf of bread at the low value, sold it at high value and couldn't buy a loaf of bread with it now...then you've lost the money.\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
1shj2o | what exactly happens in my car when i press the sport or snow button | It's a Scion FR-S but I've seen similar buttons in several cars. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1shj2o/eli5_what_exactly_happens_in_my_car_when_i_press/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Sport button usually disables some sort of traction control I'll use my car for example\n\n2013 Ford Mustang GT\n\nA regular car with all the nannies on it will either engage the brake or cut throttle if it detects a number of \"unsafe\" hazards. Most of these nannies work very well and should be on at all times because sometimes you don't know if you're tire is spinning out of control or not. Here's some of those things it governs.\n\nLoss of tire traction, Wheel hop, Sideways slide sometimes referred to as \"yaw\" like an aircraft. There's more but these are the basic ones I'll talk about\n\nSo in regular mode your vehicle has very stringent limitations on what the car is allowed to do before these things turn on. Which is good for almost all drivers. Some people believe they can react faster than the electronics in the car, but that's just a fallacy and the nannies should be on always unless you're doing something other than daily driving, like drifting, or racing.\n\nSo it will brake/speed up a wheel if it detects your wheel or wheels slipping on any sort of dirt, ice, anything of the sort almost immediately, but not enough for you to even notice it most of the time. The only time you may notice this is if you try to do a burnout with the nannies on, or accelerate hard on wet pavement, as compared to dry you will notice an acceleration difference. It will also brake if it notices a wheel coming off the ground or hoping around too much, very similar in function to regular traction loss. It will also engage brakes, speed up the tire, or cut throttle if it \"thinks\" I'm under conditions that will cause me to slide, like too much body roll for an example. It does this before I start to slide, sometimes an annoyance to enthusiasts who know they aren't going to slide. Certain things can trigger it and it isn't always right but still, doesn't effect daily driving.\n\nNow to sport mode, on my vehicle it does the same thing as regular mode, but the limitations are widened to allow more freedom without compromising too much safety. This mode allows my to spin my tires to a certain extent, and allows me to slide out to a certain degree. The actual degrees of the slide or RPM I spin the tires until it will turn on I'm not sure. But the wheel also gets tighter and I feel more of the road, it's more of a spirited driving mode as opposed to a race mode. I can slide a little going around corners without my throttle or brakes being cut or engaging, and burn some rubber if I so choose, I obviously don't, race tires are expensive.\n\nI can then turn off all nannies by holding down the TC (traction control) button and the brake at the same time for about 5-7 seconds. This turns EVERY nanny off and I then gain free reign of my horsey. I can now make her gitty up all I want without anything engaging. This is considered dangerous for daily driving especially in the rain, and I agree with it completely. Some rules are meant to be broken, but this is a safety feature that shouldn't really be messed with. Will you be able to make it to your destination 99% of the time? I would bet so, but I rather not take the risk.\nSometimes I like to have fun and I will turn the nannies off and use the track timer to see how fast I can get 0-60 which is 4.7s for me on my stock GT. rated at 4.5, dang professionals! And have raced a few ricers because I can stomp almost all v6s unless they're turbo'd, and a lot of V8s even with mods.\n\nSnow button will engage AWD if your car has it, puts even more stringent limitations on your car to not lose traction or slide, and may even disable cruise control, which you should never use in the snow. I've never had a car with a winter button so I don't know exactly what it does, but that's the basics of it I imagine, hope I was able to explain it effectively.\n\nEDIT: words should make sense and stuff"
]
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[]
] |
|
21eog3 | why doesn't drinking water quench my thirst? | As wierd as it may sound, it sometimes even makes my mouth drier. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21eog3/eli5_why_doesnt_drinking_water_quench_my_thirst/ | {
"a_id": [
"cgcaj2o",
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"score": [
5,
2,
2
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"text": [
"no offense but maybe you have a problem.",
"Some medications can cause dry mouth as a side effect.",
"try full cream milk"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
42idyf | why is the male:female ratio so skewed qatar and the uae? | _URL_0_
2.74 men for every female aged 15-64 in UAE, 2.46 for Qatar
Is it the migrant workers? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42idyf/eli5_why_is_the_malefemale_ratio_so_skewed_qatar/ | {
"a_id": [
"czan2g5",
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21,
41
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"text": [
"Pretty much. Qatar and the UAE both have enormous migrant worker populations that make up more than 80% of their populations. Many of those migrant workers are also in roles that are male-dominated (such as construction). ",
"Yes its the migrant workers and there are more male than female migrant workers. From Qatars wiki page:\n\n > In 2013, Qatar's total population was 1.8 million: 278,000 Qatari citizens and 1.5 million expatriates.\n\n"
]
} | [] | [
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio"
] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
94uunf | why does stress sometimes manifest itself physically through mouth ulcers and/or styes in the eyes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/94uunf/eli5_why_does_stress_sometimes_manifest_itself/ | {
"a_id": [
"e3o8rf9"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"Stress is natural response to a threat, so our body releases hormones to make us more alert.\nOne of the hormones is cortisol.\nIt's hormone found naturally in the blood at reasonnable levels, in case of stress the level rises and can be responsible in the long term for ulcers, blood hypertension, weight gain, muscle loss, hyperglycemia (diabetes)\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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||
1u01q4 | how does siphoning gas work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1u01q4/eli5_how_does_siphoning_gas_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"ced7c9g"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Was it really easier to post this question on a forum, compared to say, googling it?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
2y9rrs | the yellow liquid/puss from a blister | A decent sized blister just formed on my face and it keeps oozing out yellow liquid. What is it. Please ELI5 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2y9rrs/eli5_the_yellow_liquidpuss_from_a_blister/ | {
"a_id": [
"cp7ipnl"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Blood Plasma. It is the component of your blood that carries platelets, white blood cells, red cells and everything else around. See a doctor if there is any pungent odor, green colors, or excessive pain,swelling or redness. If the pus is opaque that just means the plasma has a high proportion of platelets in it and it is just going to turn into a scab."
]
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[]
] |
|
230b1h | the fermi paradox and the drake equation | How can we make an estimation about the likelihood of intelligent species existing elsewhere in the universe when we only have a single example from a single planet? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/230b1h/eli5_the_fermi_paradox_and_the_drake_equation/ | {
"a_id": [
"cgs4gxs",
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"score": [
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2
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"text": [
"The Drake Equation just gives the framework for determining life, but we don't know the correct values to input. For example, the equation says that you need to multiple the number of planets by the percentage that are habitable, however neither of those values are truly known.\n\nThe Fermi Paradox occurs, because even some very pessimistic values for the Drake Equation (so if you assume that only 1 in a billion stars have a system of planets) would still lead to a very high number of intelligent worlds, yet we don't know of any intelligent civilizations.",
"The first question you need to ask is of the Fermi Paradox which asks if intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe why haven't we found any evidence of it yet. The Drake equation attempts to answer this by calculating the probability of intelligent life evolving on a planet other than Earth. This equation is based on a few things, including but not limited to: number of stars in the galaxy, number of those stars that have planets, number of those planets that are in the \"goldilocks zone\" is not too hot and not too cold, of those planets how many support single celled life, how many have evolved multicellular life, how many have evolved complex life, how many have evolved intelligent life, how many have gone onto develop rudimentary civilisation, how many have gone onto industrial then digital then space faring and a few others such as how likely that civilisation is to survive past the nuclear age. The final number is unknown but is believed by some scientists to be as low as one, ie us."
]
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[],
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|
6hirn0 | why do people fully except euthanizing a pet like a dog who might not have the ability to fully understand or want it, but be totally against assisted suicide in people who know full and well what they're doing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6hirn0/eli5_why_do_people_fully_except_euthanizing_a_pet/ | {
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"text": [
"For most of society animals, while being emotionally valuable and important to humans are lesser beings than humans. Ultimately it is not wrong for us to kill them because of that. We have decided that killing someone else's pet is illegal because of the loss of property, and we have decided that causing undue pain is illegal, but killing the animal itself is not. ",
"In the US - religion mainly. I like to think our for profit hospitals enjoy squeezing every penny they can out of a life, especially in states where families inherit medical debt of the deceased (wtf is that even a thing?)",
"Because humans are supposed to control their fate, and animals aren't. And we just don't care about animals as much.\n\nSame reason we don't spay/neuter our children, despite all the same drawbacks and benefits applying.",
"Can you change your 'except'? It makes it hard to read your question."
]
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||
59we4m | why do large stadium headlights make a loud bang when they are turned on? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/59we4m/eli5_why_do_large_stadium_headlights_make_a_loud/ | {
"a_id": [
"d9bvnyj"
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"score": [
11
],
"text": [
"That's the sound of a bigass switch, called a relay flipping on. \n\nThose stadium lights (and other things, like concert speaker amplifiers, big RF transmitters, etc) are extremely high power devices that need to be supplied a lot of current. \n\nLots of current is also generally hazardous to your health (it likes to kill people). \n\nSo if you wanted to switch something on that is going to draw a bunch of current, the last thing you want to do is stand next to the switch that's connected to the whole thing. Let alone physically flip it. \n\nThe solution is to use a relay, which is a big electromechanical switch. You send it a relatively tiny current which induces a magnetic field, causing the switching element to flip open or closed. \n\nIn other words, the switching mechanism is physically connected to this massive current drawing device, but the little electro magnet that physically causes it to switch is not. \n\nNow relays aren't like transistors or other electrical switches. They physically move, just like a light switch. But in order to last a long time, handle the heat of big current draws and be used outside they have to be pretty hefty. So unlike a tiny lightswitch, these delays are pretty big and flip pretty fast. The noise you hear is that big switching element being pushed by the little control current, slamming shut to close the circuit. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
5pg9ep | why do ice blocks in liquid produce different sound pitches in a glass? | Say you've put 2 or 3 blocks of ice in a glass that's about 6 inches tall. You put 2 inches of water in and twirl it a bit to hear the sound the ice makes when it hits the glass walls. That sound different to what I hear if I pour in more water and do the same thing. The pitch is lower when the water level is high. Curious here, can someone explain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pg9ep/eli5_why_do_ice_blocks_in_liquid_produce/ | {
"a_id": [
"dcr3w98"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"It's similar to a drum, or another percussion instrument. The larger the medium the deeper the note."
]
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[]
] |
|
7w0fgr | why does skin turn blue/purple when you get hurt | So I had a motorbike accident recently which wasn't at all bad, but I hurt my knee and it had me wondering why skin actually does turn blue/purple when you get hurt. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7w0fgr/eli5_why_does_skin_turn_bluepurple_when_you_get/ | {
"a_id": [
"dtwj5zl",
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"text": [
"It's a bruise. Basically you bled a little into your skin. It originally looks blue for the same reason your veins do, interference of light through the skin. As your body breaks down the blood, it will turn purple, then green as it fades",
"Bruising. Your tissue is filled with blood from broken vessels. If you look at someone with pale skin, they should have some blush, reddish hue in certain places, or even blue streaks where their larger blood vessels are. Bruising causes that blood to leak into the surrounding tissue, which shows through your skin. The same thing happens when you break a blood vessel in your eye, but it's much more red as it's close to the surface. Bruising may also turn yellow as the body breaks down the clotted blood and clears it out from the surrounding tissue."
]
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[],
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75uwq2 | when companies/academics do drug research for say an anti-viral drug, where do they start? do they simply throw a million different chemical compounds at pirti dishes hoping one of them will show dead viruses? how do they narrow down where to start? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/75uwq2/eli5_when_companiesacademics_do_drug_research_for/ | {
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"Literature review. For any scientific process the very first step is researching if anyone else did anything similar, and learning as much as you can about those processes. There are entire fields of study dedicated to pharmacology, so no one is really starting from nothing.\n\nBut the answer is a lot of research.",
"You start by studying the virus, and learning exactly how every aspect of it works. How it binds to human cells, how it enters them, and how it duplicates. You figure this stuff out all the way down to the molecular level.\n\nOnce you've done this, you'll have a bunch of possible ways to kill the virus. The problem is, a lot of them won't be viable. A specific protein might look like a good idea, but it's equally important in human cells, so we can't make a drug to mess it up. You narrow it down to aspects of the virus that are extremely unique, but also crucial for its function.\n\nAfter that, you start using your knowledge of chemistry to create a molecule that can attack the target you've picked. Most commonly you're trying to make something that selectively attaches to the target, doesn't let go, and stops it from working.\n\nBut **then**, you're faced with another big hurdle. Your drug might do exactly what you want in a petri dish, but that's not the end. Can the human body absorb the drug? Does it interfere with human cells, too? Does it get stuck in the liver and slowly destroy it?\n\nLots of random stuff you gotta figure out and anticipate.",
" > Do they simply throw a million different chemical compounds at pirti dishes hoping one of them will show dead viruses? How do they narrow down where to start? \n\nTo some extent you may do that, but they wouldn't be random compounds, they'd be very qualified guesses based on related research. You might for example look at how the virus is shaped, and how it functions first, and based on that you might suspect that some molecules of a certain shape or a certain function may have a negative effect on the virus. Then you can try some variations based on your theories in petri dishes."
]
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2j70sj | how does diet soda mixers make you drunker than regular soda mixers? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j70sj/eli5how_does_diet_soda_mixers_make_you_drunker/ | {
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"It probably doesn't\n\nThere was one study done which only used squirt and diet squirt as the soda.\n\nAnd then they didn't actually measure the blood alcohol content, instead they used the less accurate breathalyser testing.\n\nLastly, there was no mention made of how accurate the breathalyser being used was.\n\nThe full scientific paper can be found here: \n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23216417"
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||
csn0nq | why is fresh water in such a small supply? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/csn0nq/eli5_why_is_fresh_water_in_such_a_small_supply/ | {
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"You're wasting water by keeping the tap running because that water has been treated and there is a cost associated with that plus local resevoirs that supply you with water can be affected by seasonal droughts that make the need to conserve water necessary during those times. Desalination isnt just evaporation and is much more costly than treating fresh water.",
"| Why is fresh water in such a small supply?\n\n\nShort answer, It's not. \n\n\nCheap fresh water is in short supply."
]
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[],
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||
3nxwiw | why do we go hot and cold when we're sick? is it better to fight the temperature changes, leave it to run its course or encourage it by wrapping up or cooling yourself down? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nxwiw/eli5_why_do_we_go_hot_and_cold_when_were_sick_is/ | {
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"I think the general consensus is to keep your body temperature as regulated as you can. With that being said, too hot and bad things happen, too cold and also bad things happen. So....that's the reason people do it. It's about protecting your brain and your organs from suffering damage."
]
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[]
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||
f53qr3 | what's the difference between interest rate and apr? and when does the difference matter? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f53qr3/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_interest_rate/ | {
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"text": [
"Interest is a part of and factors into the APR of an account - alongside service fees, yield, etc. \n\nBasically, don’t count on the interest rate being all you’ll accrue/gain. Always look at the APR for the big picture",
"They’re similar. APR is just the sum total of everything (interest, fees, etc) rolled into one “rate” per year that summarizes the cost of the loan. \n\nFor example, a loan with a high initiation fee may have a higher APR than one with a low fee, even if it’s interest rate is lower, if that fee, averaged over the life of the loan, is bigger than the rate savings from the lower fee."
]
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3s0xgv | can imaginary numbers be represented visually? | If they can, what is that representation and how does it work? If they can't, why not? Bonus followup: How are imaginary numbers applicable to the real world? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s0xgv/eli5_can_imaginary_numbers_be_represented_visually/ | {
"a_id": [
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"One very helpful concept that helped me understand complex numbers is [this](_URL_0_).\n\nIt makes a lot more sense when you think about it in the way described above. Real numbers lie on a real number line, going forward for positive numbers and going backward for negative numbers. \n\nBut imaginary numbers force you to deviate off the real number line by rotating about the origin and going off in that direction. ",
"Every time you start with a number and multiple it by sqrt(-1) four times, you end up back where you started, but first you pass through the opposite of where you started. Right? This behavior is a lot like the circular motion you see from, say, the minutes-hand on a clock... ever four quarters of an hour it is back where it started, but after two quarters of an hour it is on the opposite side of the clock. So imaginary numbers are useful for tracking circular motion."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://betterexplained.com/articles/a-visual-intuitive-guide-to-imaginary-numbers/"
],
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3ntpsb | why is it so much harder to gain muscle than lose it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ntpsb/eli5_why_is_it_so_much_harder_to_gain_muscle_than/ | {
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"Because muscle is gained by causing tiny little tears in the muscle and then letting them heal thus you will eventually build up muscle tissue and the process for something to heal is much longer than the breakdown process in the body.",
"Because muscle is expensive for your body. Muscle needs fuel-it needs calories/energy to function, and it needs a lot of it. But your body only needs a set amount of muscle, and anything beyond that point is waste. Your body still thinks food is scarce and every day is a fight for survival. Why would it keep on extra muscle when muscle is both expensive and unneeded? Fat on the other hand, serves as protection/backup and spends a lot les energy than muscle, thus why your body wants to keep it/keep making it. That's why you need to 'trick' your body into thinking it 'needs' that extra muscle, by engaging in resistance training and feeding it adequate supply of energy. ",
"Your body always wants to be as efficient as possible, and that means expending the least amount of energy possible while still maintaining the functionality it needs to survive. \n\nThis is why, in the absence of resistance training, your body will quickly lose muscle mass: it essentially thinks to itself, \"Ok, I'm not performing any actions that require the amount of muscle I currently have, and maintaining that muscle is costing me energy that I could be storing or using elsewhere. Because I no longer have any need for this much muscle mass, I'll get rid of the excess until I have just enough left to perform my daily functions.\"\n\nAs for gaining muscle, your body goes through basically the same thought process: \"I'm regularly required to perform these demanding activities, and the muscle mass I currently possess isn't enough to safely/reliably do so. If I'm given more energy than I currently need right now to maintain everyday functions, I'll put some of that extra energy towards building more muscle.\"\n\nThe reason you lose it faster than you gain it is a consequence of what I mentioned at the start of this post: your body wants to use the least amount of energy necessary to support your daily functioning. Because of this, your body is more than willing to throw out all the energy-consuming muscle you've gained at the first chance it gets, namely whenever you stop exercising (and thereby stop showing your body that it *needs* that extra muscle). On the flip side, even whenever you're working out regularly and showing your body that it needs more muscle mass, your body is very reluctant to create any. It creates it very slowly, and only whenever you've provided it more calories than it can use. Even then, your body will only dedicate a portion of the excess calories to creating muscle, and turn the rest into fat.\n\nAll of this is a direct consequence of the fact that our bodies still work like they did back when food was scarce, and starvation was a very real threat for any person. Back then, the energy saved over the course of days and weeks from maintaining minimal muscle mass could very well be the difference between life and death. Starvation is no longer a real threat for most of us in modern civilization, but our bodies haven't had time to catch up to that change since evolution occurs over a much longer timespan than the time it has taken for us to reach the point we're at now, where food supply is virtually unlimited.",
"Should add in that once you have gained muscle once (and then lose it) it is easier to gain back because the muscle fascia remains stretched, allowing more room for the fibers to grow next time around.\n\nAs far as your body is concerned, you may have had all that muscle to fight bears. What if you need to fight bears again? It's just another way your body remembers it's past experiences for survival.\n",
"Imagine you work out once each day and you spend, say, 20-30 minutes on muscle-building exercises for your... whatever, arms, I guess... You spent 20 minutes working on them, and then you spend another 1420 minutes before you work on them again. If you miss a couple of days...."
]
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a8oc8i | why are so many experiments aboard the iss not conducted on at labs on earth? | I saw a post earlier about biological and biotech experiments done on the ISS that contributed to cancer research back on Earth. Are those experiments only done on the ISS for a particular reason (i.e. conditions that are only found in space or aboard the ISS)? Or, is it just that scientists have undistracted time aboard the ISS to further their own research? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a8oc8i/eli5_why_are_so_many_experiments_aboard_the_iss/ | {
"a_id": [
"eccbneq",
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"text": [
"ISS is only place where humans can conduct long-time experiments in zero gravity (well, technically it isn't zero gravity but free fall, but effects are the same). This environment is essential for those experiments. Some experiments are also carried out on outside platforms exposed to open space, with vacuum and more radiation etc... Some experiments use the fact that astronauts are isolated in such small and remote space, and give insight what those conditions do to human body and psychology. Yes, even astronauts themselves are part of experiment. ",
"They are doing experiments that require microgravity (close to zero gravity), or that involve the kinds of radiation that things are exposed to when in space. So it really is conditions that only exist in Space or in orbit that cannot be done here on earth due to gravity or due to the magnetosphere and atmosphere reducing radiation exposure. "
]
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[],
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|
1pz0q7 | why doesn't the queen have a last name? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pz0q7/eli5_why_doesnt_the_queen_have_a_last_name/ | {
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"They do, it's usually very long and combines all the lineages of incest. Lets take Queen Elizabeth II.\nIn 1917 they have changed their surname from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor. so her full name is Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor",
"She does. Elizabeth II is from the House of Windsor (fun fact: the name of the royal house was changed from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha by Goerge V in 1917 to remove ties with Germany), and Wiki informs me her full name is Elizabeth Alexandra Mary [Windsor]",
"She does. Her name isn't The Queen, it's Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor (or something)."
]
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||
2wjsij | why are modern-day cars not designed with panorama windows (no pillars in the sides) to eliminate the blind spot? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wjsij/eli5_why_are_modernday_cars_not_designed_with/ | {
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"text": [
"The pillars add significant strength in the event of a roll over accident. Also glass becomes much more expensive the larger it gets.",
"The simplest answer is crash protection. The damage of a roof cave in is horrendous. Strong pillars is one of the fundamentals of good chassis design.",
"It was my understanding that the \"Blind spot\" is the area not covered by either the rear-view mirror or the side mirror. That's why an over-the-shoulder check is required.\n\nThe door pillars don't enter into this. (They are not large enough to obscure another car.)\n\nSee - _URL_0_\nThere's an area on each side not covered by the mirrors that you cannot see by looking ahead.\n"
]
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"http://teendriving.statefarm.com/system/article_images/TDS_Image_17.JPG"
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boixok | how can a person digest after having the stomach completely removed because of cancer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/boixok/eli5_how_can_a_person_digest_after_having_the/ | {
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"engtow2"
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"text": [
"The intestines do most of the digesting,the stomach just stores the amount of food a body can hold. So a person would have to alter their diet somewhat, and eat several small meals instead of 3 big ones, but they'd be fine"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
4iua2u | why are there different honorific's given to a female based on marital status but not the male version. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4iua2u/eli5_why_are_there_different_honorifics_given_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"d314q3s"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"TL;DR: We're a historical patriarchy where guys didn't rely on having a wife as much as women relied on having a husband. \n\nThis differs from culture to culture, but in many to most cultures, the male was traditionally the more \"powerful\" of the two sexes and had the most influence on how that society was run. The females raised the kids and weren't as evident in the power structure or financial handling of countries or businesses or society decisions, and weren't the \"breadwinners\". Usually the males selected and approached them for marriage, not the other way around. \n\nSo it was important in those society structures to differentiate between an unmarried and available \"Miss\" and a married and unavailable \"Mrs.\", particularly in the upper class structures. It really influenced how the woman was perceived and treated and how she functioned in society much more than the males, who were just separated by age into Master versus Mister, because the Misters made more of the rules. "
]
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||
6ivdp7 | where does gold derive its value from? is it an entirely human construct? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ivdp7/eli5_where_does_gold_derive_its_value_from_is_it/ | {
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"text": [
"All value is a human construct, unless you want to include the supernatural (like God valuing love). In this plane of existence, nothing has any value except because people say so.",
"For the most part, people pay money for it because they think other people will pay money for it, based on the historical fact that people have paid money for it in the past. The commodity of the metal has intrinsic value, because of corrosion resistance and electrical conductivity, and some uses as a chemical catalyst. However, its value as a financial asset at this point is fairly divorced from the value of the underlying asset.\n\nThat said...\n\nThere are very good reasons why gold, and not something else, was used as a financial instrument. Your goals with a financial instrument are to *store value long-term*, and to *perform transactions*. Gold has several physical attributes that make it well-suited for these tasks:\n\n* It's rare enough that small amounts have high value, making it convenient to store, transport, and handle.\n* The total amount of gold in circulation does not increase very quickly (digging it out of the ground is difficult), so its value will remain stable for a long time.\n* It resists corrosion and other forms of wear, so it will keep its value without maintenance. You can lock it in a damp basement for decades, and it won't rot or rust, even despite earthquakes, fires, or floods.\n* Its shininess makes it easy to distinguish for other materials, making counterfeiting more difficult.\n* It's soft and malleable, and even meltable, so you can use it in arbitrary-size increments.\n* It occurs in many places across the world, and other cultures would have noticed these same properties and their use. Even without prior contact, odds are you could bargain gold with some rando on the other side of an ocean.\n\nYou'll note that many of these attributes don't matter now that we use electronics for everything.\n\nBias warning: I wish that gold *wasn't* used for finance, because it has industrial applications but those are made unnecessarily expensive."
]
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[],
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||
2c7ok2 | why does dragging multiple files onto a usb drive *individually* write much slower than if i moved all those files at once? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c7ok2/eli5_why_does_dragging_multiple_files_onto_a_usb/ | {
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"There are maintenance actions that need to be done before files start transferring. The hard drive needs to be spun up to read/write speed, and that takes time. Available space needs to be checked, permissions need to be checked, etc.\n\nIf you are copying multiple files at once, the operating system knows that it only needs to warm up the drive motor once, and to check for free space once. Security checks (can you actually access the files) can be done once. Only the actual copying needs to be done individually, while the housekeeping can be done in bulk.",
"When you drag them all at once the computer copies them over one at a time to your target destination (external hard drive). When you copy them individually, the computer ends up copying them all at the same time. With traditional mechanical hard drive, the read/write heads end up spending a bunch of time moving around finding each area on the platters it decides to write your data, over and over again, and just a little bit at a time.\n\nWith SSDs this isn't an issue since there is no down time from physical parts to move around."
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7ufm68 | what is mononucleosis and if you get it will you have a dormant virus in you for the rest of your life? | Hey reddit, I've been searching around the interwebs for a simple explanation but I've only been getting explanations like: "don't kiss random people, don't share drinks" and things like that. I've heard that if you get mono once you'll have the virus in you for the rest of your life and the next person you smooch or something might get the virus? (confused af and slightly worried cause girl behind said she had mono until a week ago and I don't wanna get destroyed)
Oh and I did use the search bar but the explanations didn't really give me too much info.
Edit: The reason why I'm asking is I don't know if mono fully gets out of your system or it's still there but just doesn't display any symptoms | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ufm68/eli5_what_is_mononucleosis_and_if_you_get_it_will/ | {
"a_id": [
"dtjyhm7",
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"text": [
"Yes, once you contract the virus it is with you for life, lying dormant in your lymphocytes. However 95% of adults have been infected at some point, so really it's almost inevitable that you will get it sooner or later, so you may as well get it over with now.\n\nYour friend is likely still infectious: estimates of how long for seem to vary between 6 weeks and 18 months.",
"I mean I wouldn't proactively share drinks, but I went at least month with full on symptoms without knowing what it was. My girlfriend at the time didn't get sick, so I don't think it's guaranteed. You're definitely playing with fire though I'm sure."
]
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[],
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|
4kw3dz | what determines the directions roads take during construction? | Hey all,
The wording of my question might be a bit vague, so please take a look at these two Canadian cities:
[Mississauga](_URL_1_)
[Vancouver](_URL_0_)
In Mississauga, the direction everyone refers to as "north" is literally northwest, and "south" is "southeast".
In Vancouver, with the notable exception of the downtown area (which is coincidentally located uptown), "north" is actually north, and "south" is south. I included Vancouver as an example, since it has a bit of both worlds.
I have long wondered how they decide which direction roads take during construction. Is it the general topography of the area? The layout of the land?
Perhaps in Mississauga, with Lake Ontario to the southeast of the city, it seemed more natural to construct the city that way?
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kw3dz/eli5_what_determines_the_directions_roads_take/ | {
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"I think the first part of your question is more regarding road naming. That's purely down to the local government and I don't really know much about that. But as an employee of a roads and bridges infrastructure design firm I can help with the second part...\n\nThere are a huge amount of subtle factors that play into a road's geographical design. \n\nTopography as you mentioned is an obvious one - it's sometimes cheaper to go around something than over it, under it or through it. \n\nGeology also comes into play, the natural materials on which you are building influence cost greatly, and cost in turn influences layout. \n\nRight-of-Way is the next huge factor. Almost all land is a complex patchwork of government owned and private owned areas. In order to build a road through private areas you need to obtain Right-of-way - buying up the land, or you have no choice but to divert around. \n\nNext up is utility placements. When contractors are digging out road foundations they need to take into account the locations of electrical line, gas line, sewer lines, below ground tanks, communications systems etc. etc. Often it might be more affordable to divert a road a little to make use of an existing electrical infrastructure than to go straight. \n\nEnvironmental permitting also influence the route. There are certain areas that may be protected due to an Environmental Impact Statement having found a protected species or the like. \n\nThe same goes for historical areas.\n\nStakeholders may have a big influence on how a road goes. Businesses and local agencies and organizations that are affected usually fight a tug of war years before the road is actually built, pulling the design this way and that. A civil rights organization might desire it to go through a low income area to open up economically desirable options. A business owner may want it to bring traffic his way etc. These sort of cases are numerous.\n\nTraffic maintenance during construction is another factor. If there's a hospital or emergency services nearby, the design may be altered to maintain easy access to and from the facilities. The last thing you want, for example, is an ambulance stuck in roadwork while trying to get a heart attack victim to the emergency unit.\n\nThere's many more factors, but I think these at least should give you a good idea of how complex the design of an apparently simple road can be. Millions of dollars and years of engineering work can be invested even before the contractor first breaks ground.\n",
"Who owns the land that got bought for the road. Basically you get a scumbag legislator like Denny Hastert who doesn't have any money of his own so a 'friend' buys him some land along with a bunch of land for himself. Denny then writes a law that will build a road. He writes it so that the land that he and his 'friend' bought get used for the road. Free money!"
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"https://goo.gl/maps/a1yXFmNng5v",
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6hws0c | why does background tv or music at a get together stimulate conversation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6hws0c/eli5_why_does_background_tv_or_music_at_a_get/ | {
"a_id": [
"dj22uqk"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"it lowers the barrier of entry to entering the sound/interaction space. like how people sometimes put money in their own tip jars. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
6m0ig3 | why do diuretics exist? why do they focus on eliminating hydration from the body? | I tried Googling it, but couldn't easily find an answer. Thank you to anyone who can help out :)
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6m0ig3/eli5_why_do_diuretics_exist_why_do_they_focus_on/ | {
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"Its important for many things. For example, in kidney disease/failure, it can be used to help remove excess fluid that would otherwise buildup as edema, which can cause significant complications. Similarly, they're used for this reason in heart failure. ",
"Diuretics have a lot of uses.\n\n1. Reduce chance of stones//crystalluria:\nBy keeping a lot of fluid flowing via the urinary tract, we can avoid stone formation in patients w/ a predisposition eg: those on certain drugs such as methotrexate. Some stones need an ideal ph to precipitate, by causing excess water to be present in urine, the solution is diluted and stones are avoided.\n\n2.Acute mountain sickness:\nPeople who climb mountains too quickly, without giving their bodies time to acclimatise, may get pulmonary and cerebral edema= too much fluid in their lungs and brain. Diuretics get rid of this excess fluid.\n\n3.Heart failure:\nIn heart failure, the kidneys have a bunch of chemicals known as the renin-angiotensin system which get released to increase \"filling systemic pressure\". So the heart doesnt pump ideally-- > kidneys retain fluid-- > more volume gets returned to the heart. This is good in the short-term but eventually the heart is so damaged that the amount of fluid returning to it is just extra burden. It overstretches the heart.\n\nWe give diuretics in heart failure patients to ease this workload on the heart.\n\n\n4.Glaucoma:\nThis is a condition in which the eye for various reasons has abnormally high occular pressure, which is bad for your eye. The P is controlled by the amt of aqueous humor present. A diuretic may be given to relieve the pressure.\n\n"
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3qxxnm | why is the expensive detergent better | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qxxnm/eli5why_is_the_expensive_detergent_better/ | {
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"Usually because it's got more of the active ingredient in it. And the active ingredient is the expensive part."
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2ssuuh | my 8gb flash drive isn't exactly 8gb | Why is it that it's like 7.9? And my SSD isn't exactly 256?
Edit: sorry for bad title formatting | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ssuuh/elif_my_8gb_flash_drive_isnt_exactly_8gb/ | {
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"Because vendors use real Gigabytes and software just call \"gigabyte\" to a gibibyte because of tradition.\n\nYou see, according to the International System of Units, a GB is 1000000000 bytes (10^9) and a GiB is 1073741824bytes (2^30).\n\nIf you are still confused, check out these links:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\n\nTL;DR:\nTwo different measurement units with the same name."
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte"
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dluvqq | since we're aimlessly floating in space with no real orientation, who first decided that the north pole is "up" and the south pole is "down" and not vice versa? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dluvqq/eli5_since_were_aimlessly_floating_in_space_with/ | {
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"88% of all humans live in the northern hemisphere, that would have an effect on perception of orientation.",
"Europeans.\n\nEurope is the source of the maps we are most familiar with today, because European mapmaking was carried along with European ships when they went colonizing. European mapmakers have known for thousands of years that the Earth was roughly spherical, and that they were closer to one side of it than the other, and they naturally drew themselves in the center of the map. They also knew a lot more about what was South than what was in the extreme North, so Europe just sort of ended up top-center on the globe as far as they were concerned.\n\nSeveral dozen centuries later and the great age of exploration has kicked off in Europe, at which point the British, in a massive excess of national pride, decided they were Longitude 0, dead center of the whole goddamn hemisphere, and then shot anyone who disagreed.\n\nSo here we are.",
"It has to do with orientation of Maps. At first East was up as the rising Sun was the marker for orientation when traveling and making maps. This means it was the top of a Map. (That is also why Asia was called the Orient). \n\nOnce magnetic compasses were invented magnetic north became the orientation on maps used by those in the Northern Hemisphere. Since most of the human populace, and specifically all of Europe lives in the Northern Hemisphere that is what most people view as up on a map. This opinion was carried by Europe to its colonies, even those in the Southern Hemisphere. \n\nSo once we started making globes it was logical that up on the map meant up in the room for the globe and so the globe was mounted such that the north pole was at the top. This then carried over to mapping the Solar system as a whole once science advanced enough to start doing that."
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a7h28c | why is it that the atomic mass of elements doesn't increase at a constant rate on the periodic table? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a7h28c/eli5_why_is_it_that_the_atomic_mass_of_elements/ | {
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"Because only few isotopes of an element are stable, and the ones the are do not increase linearly. This is because all the protons are pushing each other away, but the nucleus is held together by \"nuclear force\" which is stronger, but much shorter ranged. So the more protons there are, a slightly larger number of neutrons are required, and since the repulsive force of repulsion drops of exponentially (inverse square) the number of neutrons to make it stable increases at a slower rate.",
"The number of neutrons that a nuclear core need to have to remain stable/exist for a long time increase faster then the the number of protons.\nThe way the particles on the core interact result that you need more and more neutrons to keep the core stable."
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6tkno5 | who determines the value for vintage coins? | Let's say I go digging through an old shoebox owned by my great great grandfather and find a rare penny made in year xx, that has some kind of defect on it. It gets appraised at being worth x amount of dollars. How do coins/other currency get their value, and who makes that decision?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6tkno5/eli5_who_determines_the_value_for_vintage_coins/ | {
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"The monetary value of something is literally determined when someone buys it. When it comes to vintage items and collectibles, the \"experts\" make their best educated guess at what someone *might* pay for it. In this way they can certainly influence the price, but ultimately it's the buyer who determines the value. A seller might only offer it at a certain price, but if no one buys it at that price, you can't really say it has that \"value\".",
"Put the coin up for $100. No one buys it. \n\nPut the coin up for $80. No one buys it. \n\nPut the coin up for $65. No one buys it. \n\nPut the coin up for $55. No one buys it. \n\nPut the coin up for $42. Someone buys it. \n\nVoila - \"The market\" has determined the value of your vintage coin. \n\n"
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d6tjs8 | what is romanticism in music? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d6tjs8/eli5_what_is_romanticism_in_music/ | {
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"I'm assuming you mean what people refer to as romantic classical music. This was the period where what we think of as classical music became more dynamic in terms of having more of a range of loud and soft tones. A big contributor to this was the invention and popularity of the piano whereas before the piano, people tended to use the harpsicord. Harpsicords are similar to pianos but piano notes can be played softly, loudly or anywhere in between whereas harpsicords cannot.\n\nBach is an example of a more traditional composer using a lot of harpsicord. Beethoven is more the romantic period."
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1pwlto | why are longer passwords more secure if they are all hashed to a standard length? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pwlto/eli5_why_are_longer_passwords_more_secure_if_they/ | {
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"I'm not sure I know what you mean by hashed to a standard length, but with each letter the number of possible combinations grows exponentially. ",
"Hashing is just a secure way to store the password so it can not be reversed. The length of a password helps in two different methods. If the attacker is trying to brute force guess the password, the longer it is the hard it would be to just guess it. If they are using a precomputed attack, where hashes for every combination of letters, numbers and symbols in a certain character space is calculated before hand then the hash is just looked up on that table to find the password. The longer the character space becomes the harder it is to calculate those figures. It would take a large amount of computing power and also hard drive space to store such large tables.",
"That is because attackers don't try all possible hashes. There are way to many combinations (even the fastest systems would not be able to do that in a reasonable amount of time). So an attacker tries to guess your password in one of two ways:\n1. He uses a dictionary and tries combinations of words, because people are good at remembering words, so they use them as passwords. More sophisticated algorithms replace letters with numbers (e - > 3), like many people do.\n2. The brute-force way, they just try every possible combination of letters, numbers, etc. up to a certain length.\n\nBoth of these ways create lots of possible passwords that now have to be hashed and checked against the database. That takes a lot of time, so the attackes will have to stop at a certain complexity.\n\nAn example:\nLet's assume passwords consist of letters only, we have 26 possibilities for one-letter passwords. With 8 letters, there are 26 * 26 * 26 * 26 * 26 * 26 * 26 * 26 = 26^8 = 208827064576 possibilities that an attacker has to try.\n\nWhat does this mean for the real world?\nWith every character you add to your password, it will take more than 70 times (now counting capitals and symbols as well) longer to guess your password."
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5pwrbd | what makes musical genres sound alike? why does country music sound like country music? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pwrbd/eli5_what_makes_musical_genres_sound_alike_why/ | {
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"There are a lot of things that can go into what makes the \"sound\" of a genre. I'll start with Country and then give a few examples of elements that are shared by other genres and how they can differ.\n\nCountry is usually characterized by a few things: The instrumentation is typically acoustic instruments (fiddle, guitar, steel guitar [that is, a guitar with a steel body, rather than wood, and not just steel-strings], drums, and keys) or non-driven electrical counterparts, paired with vocals that keep the accent associated with the American South; this is unusual in singing, as singers usually lose their accent most of the time and tend towards singing in a more neutral voice (listen to Adele talking versus Adele singing). The chord progressions are *usually* pretty simple, something that you could pick up a steel-stringed acoustic and, in an afternoon, pick up without much trouble if you already know how to play your basic guitar chords.\n\nCountry shares the accented singing with Bluegrass, but Bluegrass favors the banjo and sometimes mandolin over steel guitar; The blues keep the steel guitar. Pop music shares the basic chord progressions and general structure of Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Refrain/bridge, Chorus for lyrics, but changes instrumentation.\n\nSome other fun examples: Surf guitar (think the pulp fiction theme) is played on (generally) single-coil guitars into non-driven amplifiers with spring reverb effects. Take that same style of guitar, put it through humbuckers, and crank on some distortion, and you basically have metal guitar.\n\nSome things that overall can determine a genre:\n\n* Instrumentation: What instruments you use to play the music.\n* Complexity: How much music theory and/or technical ability you need to play the song.\n* Tone: How the instrument's sound is shaped (for example: distorted or non-distorted guitar).\n* Vocal choices: Styles of singing or vocalization like keeping an accent, screaming, growling, rapping, harmonizing, having a backing chorus or just a solo singer. All of these can affect what genre a piece is considered.\n* Themes/Lyrics: An easy example of this is the idea that it's not a Blues song if your wife/girlfriend didn't leave you at some point during the song; This is a bit of an edge case, admittedly.\n\nAnd I'm sure I've left out a ton of things that can influence what genre a song belongs to; there are also a ton of temporal influences (simple example: folk music gave birth to bluegrass and country, country along with blues and rhythm and blues led to rock and roll, which directly led to modern pop, hard rock, metal, alternative, grunge, and many other styles of music) and cross-influences (nu metal was heavily influenced by rap and other genres of rock) to consider as you delve deeper into genres.",
"People have already talked mechanically why things sound alike -\n here's another angle. **TLDR:** Music styles throughout history have mostly been defined by two things: how people access it and how much money it can make. \n\nLet's do a quick jump through time! **cue wayne's world doodly-doo music**\n\nThe first musical 'genre' (at least in western civilization where most of my insights will focus on) was *religious music*. People were pretty poor, often uneducated and illiterate, so music had to be easy to remember and constantly repeated so folks could memorize and sing along once a week-ish. These hymns were passed down for centuries. Not exactly a great environment for experimentation and new sounds hence the 'sameyness'.\n\nNext - *Classical*. The first music for entertainment purposes alone. Could only be heard in palaces or performance halls and pretty much only if you were rich. Often they were funded by royalty so in an effort to please an extremely narrow audience the music tended to sound similar (hence a 'genre' - you may see a pattern emerging here). Also, it's worth nothing that certain instruments hadn't been invented yet or weren't widely available. Also folks just didn't have the luxury of learning an instrument unless they were well off or one of the very few who could make a career out of it. Trying to eek out enough to feed your family leaves precious little time to play tunes. Also you had to be taught. All of these factors (including things like apprenticing) lead to the sound we now recognize as 'classical' (although classical nerds like any fan of a particular genre would bristle at broad statements of 'sameness')\n\nLet's jump forward a bit and talk about the MAJOR breakthrough that took music from the live performance to your living room: **radio**\n\nIn the 20th century, almost all of the 'genres' as we know them today developed thanks to tandem amazing technologies. Recording and Radio allowed performances to not only be done outside of a live setting, it allowed people to access it in the comfort of their own home. For all the creativity related reasons this was cool, the main benefit was this: MONEY. Now what was an audience pool of thousands rocketed into millions. And you can bet your butt that folks found a way to make money off this. How? Simple - the same way radio is funded today. **Ads.**\n\nOk, you still with me? Radio was in millions of homes, radio stations popped up by the dozens funded with Ad dollars. At this point, advertisers ran the show (indirectly with their money). Advertisers want a safe investment, thus they want to advertise to a particular audience and not waste time on people that don't care about - say - Levi's Jeans. Suddenly, musical variety on a particular station becomes much less important than predictability. Sameness. It also helps that humans tend to gravitate toward 'liking what they like'. It's like comfort food for the ears.\n\nSo! For the majority of the 20th century, it's been a world of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' - stations stick to what's safe and 'what their audience wants' so the ad dollars keep pouring in. Any NEW genre that arose (Jazz, The Blues, Rock n' Roll, Country, Hip Hop, Hair Metal, Grunge) started with a musical act that was typically a) a variation/evolution of an existing genre (aka Blues to Rock N Roll) and b) was just popular enough with the locals that a radio station took a chance on them and played it. If it worked - like with the Beatles - naturally copy cats emerged, stations devoted more and more air time to that sound and a new 'genre' was born.\n\nNow there are geographical and cultural reasons genres appear when and wehre they do. One can argue why 'Country' would emerge and evolve (and thus remain strong) in the south or Hip Hop in Harlem. But how it ultimately goes from one or two artists with one or two 'new' songs to a full on Genre - you can thank radio (and their advertisers) for that.\n\nWhich is interesting that now that traditional radio has broken down, so have traditional genres. Experimentation is both easier to attempt and easier to find so now you get exciting blends like indie-afro-ska or bluegrass-rap. \n\nSo there you go. Why genres.\n"
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2htf6q | how is agriculture a sustainable process? wouldn't the land eventually run out of nutrients? | Where do the nutrients (vitamins, minerals, etc) in vegetables come from? I get that it comes from the dirt, but how do they appear in the plant? Wouldn’t the dirt eventually run out of minerals? If you used the same land year after year when does the land become barren?
Basically explain this to me like I’m five: How is agriculture a sustainable process? Wouldn't the land eventually run out of nutrients? For example, how does a lentil “create” protein from the dirt?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2htf6q/eli5_how_is_agriculture_a_sustainable_process/ | {
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"Vitamins and minerals can be restored to the soil. Imagine this: a banana tree sucks up some phosphorus through its roots. It puts that in a piece of fruit, I eat it, I urinate, and the phosphorus is along the whole way. If my urine can be returned to the field, the phosphorus comes right back. Legume plants take nitrogen from the atmosphere and fix it in the soil; all sorts of processes take things from the soil and put them back in. If the processes are balanced, it can go on (essentially) forever.",
"We use fertilizers to return nutrients to the soil. These can be something as simple as cow shit.\n\nWe also use certain types of plants, like legumes, because bacteria growing on their roots help return nitrogen (from the air) to the dirt.\n\nPlants only get a small number of trace elements from the dirt they're in. The vast majority of their structure comes from the carbon they pull from the air when they're breaking down CO2 and producing oxygen."
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49pci6 | why (in general) does car service cost more at the dealerships? | I've been calling around getting quotes for a tune-up on my truck and prices are all over the place
Why (in general) does car service cost more at the dealerships? Am I paying for a more specified service? A more highly trained mechanic?..and is it worth it?
Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49pci6/eli5_why_in_general_does_car_service_cost_more_at/ | {
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"The dealership use mechanics certified working on that car and have all the right tools and documentation for the job. They only use original parts made by the same factory that made the parts in your car.\n\nAn unlicensed mechanic might not have the right training or tools to do the job properly. He might damage some parts because of this. He might also use parts molded from the original which is almost an exact copy or he might use parts that is out of the design specifications. If you go to the dealership later on they might not want to give you warranty or even work on the car because they do not know if there might be something wrong that is not their fault and don't want it to come back to them.\n\nSome people are willing to put down more money to get the dealership to fix their car which means they can give a higher price and still get customers. The certifications and tools does cost a bit extra but does usually not explain the price gap. Original parts also costs just as much to produce as clones and might even be the same part made by the same factory, however people are willing to pay for the verification that the part will fit perfectly and be within specification so it is more expensive.",
"Honestly, dealers are more expensive because it's very expensive to be a dealer.\n\nIgnoring sales overhead, just having a shop is stupid expensive.\n\nYou have to have a large enough shop to meet the manufacturers requirements.\n\nYou have to have the proprietary scan tool from the manufacturers that costs sometime 10's of thousands of dollars.\n\nYou have to hire certified techs for most tech positions, and pay enough to keep them.\n\nYou have to pay techs for training time every time the manufacturers say they need it.\n\nInsurance costs a ton. Workers comp costs a ton. Electricity costs a ton.\n\nYou have to pay for all of that, and put profits in someone's pocket at the end of the day.\n\nDealers don't have a monopoly on skilled techs. Shitty techs get jobs at dealers too. And good techs can exsist at any auto shop. The idea that dealers are always better is easily proven false just by a little Google searching.\n\nIndependent shops often have lower overhead by not having to have the same customer satisfaction bs that dealers have to like a free coffee shop and a big screen TV and 10 lanes of instant oil changes. They do hard work for regular customers and make a small profit on most jobs, leading to a reasonable living. If they do things right they live well and can afford hobbies and all that American dream shit we all want.\n\nBad shops exsist in every segment of the industry.\n\nIf you want to find a good shop, ask everyone you know where they go and if they are happy and why. That's more useful than quotes.",
"There are lots of reasons, but the basic ones are:\n\n-they generally hire better trained, more skilled, and more expensive technicians\n\n-in many dealerships, the sales department makes very little profit. The service department makes most of the profit for the company\n\n-lastly, a big factor is because they can. people will pay a premium to know the job is being done right.",
"The \"official\" source is usually the highest priced. There are a few reasons for this. The mechanics will be more specialized, as they will only work on certain types of cars and have parts and stuff readily accessible. They also know that many people will look to them for repairs, so they can up their prices.... some people will pay the high prices, and some won't. This is done on purpose, otherwise they would have a huge list of work orders and take forever to get it done. So some people will go to other mechanics to get a cheaper quote. \n\nIs it worth it? If you ask me, no it is not. For most of the general car troubles, any skilled mechanic can do the work that needs to be done. If it is something very detailed, maybe, but for typical stuff I would shop around for a price that works for you and go there.... support your local mechanics. "
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37uh0y | talking on radio transmitter at 50% speed of light. | What would it sound like if I am traveling at 50-90% the speed of light and communicated to a stationary person via a radio transmitter? Would my voice be slow? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37uh0y/eli5_talking_on_radio_transmitter_at_50_speed_of/ | {
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"There are two things that are going to have an effect here.\n\n1) Doppler effect (which depends on the relative locations of you and the stationary observer)\n\n2) Relativistic effects (time dilation primarily)\n\nIn any case, the effects will likely result in the fact that the radio reciever won't even recognize your signals, unless it's designed to account for that.",
"It partly depends on how you're transmitting your voice over the radio waves; although the waves will still be traveling at the speed of light, they will be stretched due to doppler effect, like sound gets when you're moving away from it.\n\nRadio waves are essentially an encoded carrier wave -- the wave is based off a constant frequency, but modulated in some way.\n\nSo, if you're transmitting at 1500 Mhz using AM modulation, and travelling away from the receiver, the wave you're transmitting will be stretched and they will need to set their receiver to something like 1000 Mhz. \n\nAM radio changes the amplification of the wave according to the audio wave -- much lower frequency -- so if you're transmitting a 440hz signal, the AM carrier wave will cycle thousands of times during that audio wave. \n\nSo, for example, you're playing a constant 440hz tone, broadcasting via AM at 440Khz -- that means there's 1000 radio-carrier cycles in every audio cycle. Now, due to the doppler effect, the wave is stretched to 220khz -- there's still a thousand cycles in each audio wave, so a thousand cycles at 220Khz means the audio has been reduced down an octave to 220hz. You'll sound slower and lower.\n\n FM is a different method of modulation, but it also depends on the frequency of the carrier wave, so when the carrier changes frequency, the audio carried on it will also change. \n\nAnd, in both cases, if you're travelling toward the receiver, the carrier frequency will be shifted up due to the doppler effect and will sound higher and faster.\n\nIf you're transmitting digital signals, however, you might come in either perfectly clear, or not at all -- when you digitally encode, the bits are what count, not the frequency. You can encode digital on to a radio wave with something called pulse-position modulation (and a variety of other methods too) -- so if the receiver can detect the frequency and read the position of the pulses in the carrier wave, a bit is a bit is a bit -- just like streaming audio, it doesn't matter how fast your internet connection is, the sound sounds the same. As long as the bits come in fast enough to be decoded and played, the speed of the carrier wave won't matter."
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2hg61a | how do they do those trick videos you see online? | How do they do those trick videos you see online? Is there an app on their phone for stuff like that or do they know some fancy Hollywood stuff?
Here's the example I'm talking about: _URL_0_
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hg61a/eli5_how_do_they_do_those_trick_videos_you_see/ | {
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"Video editing software.\n\nHere's an explanation of how a knife trick video was done: _URL_0_",
"For the example you posted, what you would do is film two shots (ideally using a tripod so there isnt any camera shake). One shot will be where she turns to look at the camera and the other will be where she looks all spooky in the mirror. Now, you take both of those clips and put them into some editing software. You'd use the one where she turns to the camera as the base clip and have the secondary clip as a layer below it. On the main clip you would 'mask' out the mirror which would then show the mirror from the secondary clip. I hope that all made sense.\n\ntl;dr two clips, one spooky, cut a hole in the top one to show the other one = magic"
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f6jew9 | what is with the knee shaking?? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f6jew9/eli5_what_is_with_the_knee_shaking/ | {
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"I’m a woman. I do this. It’s compulsive. It’s a fidget/self soothing thing. Most times I’m not even aware I’m doing it, it’s that instinctual.",
" A man, last I checked, and I do it too. I have to move my legs somehow at times, especially after dinner. If I don't I feel anxious, and when I do it feels soooooo good. It seems to be a compulsive habit.",
"I wouldnt say it feels good or bad, its just something I do. I usually get bored unless I am doing multiple things at once. I think fidgeting with something or even just bouncing my leg (always only one at a time, usually right foot) helps me not get bored",
"Sometimes it's compulsive/fidgety, and sometimes it's actually the muscles in the knee doing them without prompt. Kind of interesting."
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2hbrx2 | how can the dead sea be 427 meters below sea level? | Can't seem to find anything on Google!
Thanks in advance.
Edit: I realize although called one, it is not a sea. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hbrx2/eli5_how_can_the_dead_sea_be_427_meters_below_sea/ | {
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"It's a lake. It is not connected to the ocean. It happens to be located at Earth's lowest point on land. ",
"The same way you can put an empty glass in a half-filled pot, drop a marble in the glass, and have it be below the water-line and still dry. Land separates the Dead Sea from the ocean. "
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8lat03 | do insects know when they're hungry and decide to hunt then or do they eat based on instinct? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8lat03/eli5_do_insects_know_when_theyre_hungry_and/ | {
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"Insects don't \"know\" things in the way we use that word. They're pretty much nothing *but* instinct.\n\nBut it's worth noting that humans wanting to eat when they're hungry is an instinct, too."
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cp1deu | how do atoms affect light? | Ok- So I learned that objects deflect light in a different color depending on their chemical property. They can also absorb or make it go a different direction. My question is how do atoms do this? Do the electrons cause this, is it the protons or neutrons? How??? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cp1deu/eli5_how_do_atoms_affect_light/ | {
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"I'm a bit rusty on this so bear with me as I try to give you a good explanation. This gets a LITTLE bit into quantum, so it might be kind of confusing.\n\nFirst of all, it must be understood that Light is a form of energy. (E = hv, c = v λ , h = planck's constant, v = frequency, λ = wavelength, c = speed of light). Those equations are important to know, but for now let's just keep it in the back of our minds.\n\nThis means that it is not \"light\" that is being absorbed or deflected, it is \"energy\". Now, the question why atoms absorb or deflect energy is a little complicated. Here, we need to know that it is not completely accurate to say that atoms themselves absorb or deflect energy. It is really the electrons.\n\n(This part is a bit quantum) The simple explanation is that electrons have energy levels. These energy levels are discrete, meaning that the energy levels are sort of like stairs - you can only climb one (or two, or three, or four) step(s) at a time -not half a step, or a third of a step. In terms of electrons and their energy levels, it means you can only jump from one energy level to the other. This means that there is a VERY SPECIFIC amount of energy that can make an electron go from one energy level to another (from one step to a different step of the staircase). This is how an electron absorbs energy, and therefore absorbs light. When that energy is not exactly what is needed to change energy levels, the energy is instead reflected. Since colour is just a measure of the wavelength of light, and wavelength and frequency are inversely related to each other, we can determine that each colour of light has a different amount of energy, using our set of equations at the top. Thus, we see how colour (and its associated different energy) is absorbed/reflected by atoms.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nHere is an excessively detailed rundown of what's going down: [_URL_1_](_URL_0_)"
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4d4jpg | definite and indefinite articles | I get the concept that the articles of the english language are "a" and "an", but what exactly is the difference between definite and indefinite? Is there no distinct difference in English? Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4d4jpg/eli5_definite_and_indefinite_articles/ | {
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"Actually, a and an are both indefinite articles. They're called that because they're not referring to any particular thing. A cat, a mouse, a day, a priest, an antelope, an escalator, an estimate.\n\nYou're actually missing one. *The* definite article (*the* only one we have in *the* English language) is *the*",
"The definite article is \"the\", and the indefinite articles are \"a\" and \"an\" (which are essentially the same thing, and the usage depends only on the sound of the subsequent word).\n\nThe definite article is used when you care about a *specific* thing. \"What time is **the** movie?\" is asking about a specific movie that has been previously discussed. \n\nThe indefinite article is when you don't care which specific thing it is. \"What time is **a** movie?\" is asking about *any* movie, and not a specific movie.",
"The definite article is \"the\". It indicates that you are talking about a *specific* noun, especially one that may have already been introduced.\n\nThe indefinite article is \"a\" which is used when referring to a newly-introduced noun since before it is introduced, it can't be referred to directly.\n\nFor example: **a** dog walks into a bar. **The** dog says, \"I'll have a beer.\"\n\nIn the example, you know it was *the* dog that walked into the bar that spoke, since the \"the\" indicates we are talking about that dog directly.\n\nIf we instead said: **a** dog walks into a bar. **A** dog days, \"I'll have a beer.\"\n\nNow it could be some other dog talking. In fact, most people would in fact assume it was a new dog talking, since we know that if you wanted to make it clear it was the same dog talking, you would have said \"the dog\" instead.\n\nSo, in a way, \"the dog\" kind of means \"this dog\" or \"that dog\" in that it refers to a specific dog that we already know about, without having to use this/that (which are typically used to indicate where something is in relation to the speaker).",
"A *definite* article is pointing to a specific thing. Not just **a** poison, but **the** poison. The poison for Kuzko, the poison chosen specially to kill Kuzko. [Kuzko's poison](_URL_0_). \"The\" is a definite article because the noun following it is a specific, *defined* noun.\n\nAn *indefinite* article is, therefore, the opposite. \"**A** poison\" could be any poison. Which poison it is has not been defined. I just need *a* poison, it doesn't have to be any one in particular."
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ancrtt | the rules of ice hockey. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ancrtt/eli5_the_rules_of_ice_hockey/ | {
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"Don’t be intimidated by all the lines and rules. Hockey is a great game. Watch and listen to commentary. They do a great job of explaining the game for newer viewers. \n\nWhen an official with orange on his sleeves (“referee”. As opposed to officials without orange on their sleeves who are called “linesmen”) calls a penalty on a player, that player has to sit in the penalty box for an amount of time based on the infraction. While he is in the penalty box, his team cannot replace his position on the ice and must play a man short in a 5 vs 4 scenario. If players on the same team take 4 different penalties at once, the game won’t be played 5 on 1. A team cannot have less than 3 players and a goalie out there. Even if both teams lose 4 players to penalties at once, the game will be played 3vs3. \n\nA little more info, in hockey, when there’s a power play you hear something like “it’s 5 on 4 now”. In hockey they don’t count the goalie when referencing the players on the field. Unlike soccer where they say 11v11. ",
"Hit the puck in the goal with your stick. You can't enter the opposition's zone before the puck. Penalties usually result in a short sending off of the fouling player. This gives a numerical advantage to the opposition who are then said to be on a power play."
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102rkh | if my cell phone has an 8mp camera, and shoots video in 1080p, why do cell phone pics and videos look so crap in comparison to an older dslr with the same resolution? | If I compare a picture taken on an older DSLR with an 8MP sensor to a picture taken with an iPhone, the "real" camera blows the phone's camera from here to kingdom come. The iPhone shot is grainy, noisy, blurry, etc. Yet they have the same specs in terms of resolution. What gives? Is it the quality of the lenses? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/102rkh/eli5_if_my_cell_phone_has_an_8mp_camera_and/ | {
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"yeah - lenses... i would say crappy optics coupled with cheap design.\n\nconsider the size of what is capturing that light to make the image. then consider all the electrical noise inside the tiny phone package.\n\nthere are also tricks that can be played where a smaller (lower resolution) sensor array can capture several images very quickly and make up the higher resolution with processing. i'm not sure if that is still done, but it was pretty popular years ago and if done correctly, can provide decent results.\n\nat the end of the day, camera resolution isn't very different from amplifier performance - where a $10 kracko from radio shack can promise 500W of listening enjoyment, and technically, in some context, this is true, but a nice alpine can blow that unit apart with an advertised 50W output.\n\nit's all advertising and legalise.",
"8MP means 8 million pixels. the sensor inside the camera has a [fixed size](_URL_1_), wich means that every dot that can \"see\" light has a certain size\n\nnow, older cameras has a lower resolution, meaning the \"pixels\" are larger. being larger, more information can come through and the picture is a lot clearer. think about seeing something through one large window versus a lot of tiny keyholes. this takes care of the grainy, noisy part\n\nfor the blurry problem: if you want a better picture on a camera with a higher resolution, more light must enter the sensor. it's just like filling a bucket with water from a tap. leave the tap open a little, you get a bit of water = bad image quality. leave it open more, you get more water = better picture. but.. on a camera, the more time the shutter is open, means more time your hand will shake, so a pixel that received the skin tone from a forehead now receives the black from hair. the colors are mixed, and you get a blurry picture. or a really cool effect, like [this](_URL_0_)\n\nclear pictures with a long exposure require a tripod, clear pictures with a loooooong exposure require motion-tracking equipment (nightsky photos)",
"It's a combination of the lens, the sensor, and the imaging circuitry. "
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g2doho | how do they bend wood for things like canoes? | Do they cut it out in that shape? Or do they make it flexible somehow? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g2doho/eli5_how_do_they_bend_wood_for_things_like_canoes/ | {
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"Wood has a certain amount of natural flex. For more substantial curves, the general practice is to steam or boil the wood and then bend it to shape and clamp, glue, screw, or otherwise restrain it; when it cools and dries, it retains its new shape.",
"In order to steam wood to make it bendable, you build a sealed box, place your pieces in it and attach a steam generating kettle or clothes steaming device. [This device sold by Lee Vally Tools](_URL_0_) is designed specifically for this purpose.\n\nCanadian Northwest Coast natives are known for [their beautiful ceremonial boxes](_URL_1_) which you might be interested in.",
"The thinner an object is, the more you can bend it without breaking it. So if you have very thin sheets of wood, they can easily be pressed into a curved shape. If you then glue several of these curved sheets together, the glue will ensure that they keep their shape. That is how most wooden boats are made today, since this material is much more durable and water tight compared to traditional wooden planking.\n\nFor traditional boats, they bent the planks into the desired shape using heat and water.",
"You can think of wood like thick paper. Paper is normally pretty rigid and firm, but get it wet and it folds in on itself. People in factories can do that with wood using steam to make the wood bendy. Then they can use molds to form the bendy wood into boat shapes.",
"My parents build a plywood boat in the 30's using clamps, a steam iron and brute force. A canoe would have even more bends, but the process is the same.",
"There's an interesting kids' book called \"Rascal\" by Sterling North. It's a story of his real life as a boy who was sort of allowed to go completely free range after his mother died... his father let him adopt a baby raccoon, which is mostly what the book is about, but there's also a subplot where he builds his own canoe (in the living room of his house.) Might be interesting to read about someone doing this in real life."
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odp2y | why is patient zero of such significance? | The wife and I yesterday watched "contagion" and we were wondering, why there is always such a hubbub about "patient zero". What's so special about the first person to catch a transmittable disease, that the second or third or four-hundredth person does not have? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/odp2y/eli5_why_is_patient_zero_of_such_significance/ | {
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"Viruses mutate as they travel to different hosts, so the first patient to get it has the most basic form of it that has the most in common with the daughter strains, which may evolve in completely different directions. Thus, if you find a cure based on the original patient, is has the highest likelihood of working on the daughter cases.",
"Patient zero matters to find out the pattern of how it spreads through the population, rather than anything special about them.\n\nSuppose we find a new flu somewhere, and the first sign of it we see is that a hundred people have it at the same time. We want to know, how transmissable is it? Did just one person have it, and then give it to all 100 other people? \n\nIf we interview everybody, and find they all probably got it from one common source one week ago, it might be very dangerous: that could mean that each sick person can give it to 100 other people. But if we find that some of them got it one week ago, and some of them got it two weeks ago, we might find that some people got it three weeks ago and got better already, and as we keep tracking it back, we might find it's been around for 16 weeks. \n\nThis would imply that each sick person only gives it to 1.3 other people, and most people get better anyway, so it's a lot less dangerous. This is what H1N1 ended up looking like, once they found patient zero. But if it is dangerous, you still have to be sure to find patient zero, to make sure they didn't give it to anybody that you don't know about.\n\nedit: paragraphs",
"Not sure how well this will answer your question but Radiolab had a brilliant episode on 'Patient Zero' you can find it [HERE](_URL_0_)",
"An interesting read on AIDS patient zero:\n\n_URL_0_",
"Say that little Jimmy gets a new form of chicken pox called rooster pox. He picks it up from a rooster on his farm. He doesn't know immediately that he is sick since symptoms don't appear right away, so he goes to school like normal. He unknowingly gives the rooster pox virus to his classmates, his teacher, everyone in the cafeteria, everyone at recess, etc. Because Jimmy begins to show symptoms before everyone else, they can deduce that he is patient zero. By examining what little Jimmy did, where he went, what he did, what he came into contact with, you can gain a wealth more information about the nature of the illness and its cause than by talking to the gym teacher or Billy on the playground who have no idea how they got sick or from whom. \n\nYes, the pathology of the disease between patient zero and patient 400 may be the exact same, but more information can be gained from patient zero because if you know the origin, you can investigate transmission and further track the disease's progress/spread. ",
"Patient Zero is the only one who got sick from something other than another infected person. In order to figure out the cause of the outbreak, we have to look a how the first case was contracted and then subsequently transmitted to others.",
"Do you remember playing a game in school where everyone stood in a line. Then someone at the start of the line (let's call him patient zero) would tell a phrase to the person next to him. That person would then say the same phrase to the person next to him and so on and so forth down the line till it reached the end of the line of students. \n\nNow by that time the phase will most likely have \"mutated\" and no longer be identical to the original phrase said by patient zero. So if you wanted to find the cause of the phrase that was said by the last person in line, you would need to find who said it to begin with (patient zero)."
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91rra2 | are insects animals? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/91rra2/eli5_are_insects_animals/ | {
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"Yes, insects are considered animals. They are members of the animal kingdom (Kingdom, Animalia), are considered anthropods, meaning they are invertebrates (no backbone) with an exoskeleton, and have their own class, insecta. ",
"Insects are animals. The five kingdoms of life are Animals, Plants, Fungi, Protista and Monera. The last two are microorganisms like bacteria. Since insects are neither plants nor mushrooms they logically are animals. \n\nFurthermore insects have their own class: Insecta, which is under the animalia kingdom.\n\n\nF.i the western honey bee's full classification is:\n\n*Animalia Euarthropoda Insecta Hymenoptera Apidae Apis A. mellifera*",
"Yes, insects are animals. There are a variety of different proposed classification systems but they tend to differ on things like distinguishing plants and fungi, or bacteria and archaea, not on animalia.\n\nIf they consume biological material, breath oxygen, are able to move, reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells then it is likely an animal.",
"Yes, insects are in the kingdom *animalia*, and are thus animals.\n\nScientifically, what is and isn't an animal is usually pretty easy. Apparently \"kingdom\" is kind of in dispute among taxonomists at the moment, but that doesn't really matter.\n\nThe most familiar kingdoms are: Animalia, Plantae, Fungi\n\nThen there are single celled organisms, divided into two or three kingdoms (Protista, Archaea/Archaebacteria, and Bacteria/Eubacteria or Protista and Monera).\n\nSo unless you're thinking about a plankton or a sponge or something like that, it's usually pretty easy to tell if something is an animal or not.\n\nIn fact, insects are animals in the standard [dictionary definition](_URL_0_). I don't know enough about the etymology of the word to know how/when/where its more limited meaning (\"mammals\") comes from."
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1tqh9p | what is chromcast and is it a viable option to replace tv? | So what is it and is it a possibility to somehow find tv sites online that you could still record your shows or simply download them?
Edit: What is this 0-0 I simply go and ask because me and my family were wondering something and next thing I know this has happened. Thanks for all the feedback. Checking out the subreddit for finding out how to remove the cable bill. Thanks guys :D | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tqh9p/eli5what_is_chromcast_and_is_it_a_viable_option/ | {
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"Not at all. I just got one for christmas.\n\nYou can \"cast\" apps to your tv. The chromecast itself has no apps.\nNetflix, hulu, amazon, etc.\n\nTheres rather limited playback of local files, not a lot of file types are supported, and among the ones that are, you may run into issues. For example, it doesn't support ac3 audio which is very common.\n\nThe list of compatible apps is on their website, any of those can be cast onto your tv using the chromecast.\n\nIf you don't position it very close to the router, it will lose connection with your casting device all the time.\nYou can also push a chrome browser onto it.\n\nFor $35 its not bad at all. But its not even as capable as a roku, and far less capable then say, a home theater pc.",
"/r/cordcutters has a lot of resources. A Roku will probably be a little more capable of starting to replace cable.",
"* What is chromecast?\n\nChromecast is a dongle that plugs into your television. It connects to the internet and is controlled by apps on your phone or computer. Contrary to popular opinion you do not stream TO the device, but rather tell the device WHAT you want to stream. Chromecast then connects to the internet and plays that video. If you want to watch youtube videos, you send instructions to chromecast and it retrieves the stream and plays it on your tv. This works the same for HBO, Hulu, etc. To drive this point home: you can cast a movie from your phone, then turn your phone off. Chromecast will still work fine. You can then pick up your tablet and continue controlling chromecast.\n\nedit: chromecast will also be a protocol that will be incorporated into other devices. The above still applies, but if you have a google TV set top box or television, you already have chromecast.\n\nedit2: IMPORTANT, thanks /u/Dokibatt . You can mirror any tab from chrome on a computer to your chromecast. You can go to nonsupported video sites (i.e. firstrowsports, espn, etc.), make them fullscreen, then play on your TV. Additionally, you can \"Open...\" a video in your chrome browser and cast that tab to you chromecast as well. These are popular workarounds from getting unsupported content to you chromecast.\n\n* is is a viable option to replace tv?\n\nMaybe, but muct to my dismay I must answer a question with a question. Can you cut TV right now and completely consume media if your laptop were connected to your TV? Are you looking for free alternatives to cable? If the answer is YES and NO, respectively, then YES chromecast can replace TV.\n\nYoutube, Hulu Plus, Netflix, HBO Go (which requires cable), Plex (which will require extra hardware like a NAS) will become your primary content platforms. Plex will allow you to provide your own media and cast it from a NAS or the cloud to Chromecast.\n\nThis is a much different delivery system than cable. You need to like using tablets and phones. You need subscriptions to cloud based content services. You need to be ok with limited amounts of content for the time being until google opens their ecosystem to more developers.\n\n* My take:\n\nI have cable. I use netflix. I have chromecast. This works great in my life. When people are over, we can watch youtube music videos or funny stuff from reddit. I watch netflix in my room (dumb TV) at night time. I am actively setting up plex from my NAS to steam my ripped DVD movies and tv shows.\n\nfor $30, you cannot go wrong with this type of product. If you're looking to cut the cord, you need to evaluate IF, HOW, and WHY you are cutting the cord. Let me know if you have any other questions on capabilities, limitations, or general use questions.\n\nCheers!\n\nedit: see what is...\n\nedit2: forgot chrome mirroring.\n\nedit3: GOLD!!! thanks /u/wmurphy1975",
"Chromecast is a small HDMI dongle (think USB memory stick) that you plug in to an open port on your tv or receiver. It then connects to your wireless network in your house, which you can then communicate with via an Android or apple device. Once connected, you now have the option to find videos via a select number of video playing apps, (YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, plex, etc.) and select \"send to chromecast\" which will start playing the video on your connected tv. Your phone then becomes your remote control for that video, with play/pause buttons appearing on your screen.\r\rAlso as mentioned there is some support for playing local files, but not too much.\r\rSo not really replacing tv in the way you are thinking, but it would be possible to use just these video services as many people now do (cable cutters as they've been coined.)",
"I've had it for a couple months now. Its ok.\n\nMost of the time it works good. Netflix, youtube, just browsing the web in chrome or watching something on project free tv. However sometimes (5% of the time) it can't seem to keep sound and video synced up perfectly. My girlfriend doesn't notice as much as I do. \n\nSome cool things are that your phones become kind of like remotes. She can start casting a show on her iphone and completely shut it off; the show will continue to play on the tv. I can pause shows she started with my phone too. There is a nice sreensaver for while you're selecting a show or have fallen asleep. \n\nSometimes in chrome, a video site will display in some way that cannot be cast to your tv (rare). \n\nAll in all, its a pretty cool product for the price. At first I was so stoked on it I'd have paid 100$, but then the sound/video thing started happening and other little nuances pop up now and again, so I've kinda soured on it. \n\nIt is inferior to a roku or smart tv for sure, but a nice option for 35$",
"If you have Amazon student, here's a $5 off discount code for Chromecast: 7CGHXJ2C",
"I have had chromecast for about 2 weeks and I absolutely love it. Streaming Netflix and HBOGo through my phone works great and I can still use my phone at the same time. I would highly recommend chromecast as long as you have a good wi fi connection you should be fine. Its really cheap to, I only paid 35 dollars for it and its been worth every penny. ",
"Why is this in ELI5 and not in /r/answers or any other tech related sub? Isn't the point of this subreddit to simplify more complicated concepts and issues?\n\nThis can be answered by a web search or by submitting a query in another forum. ",
"It turns a basic TV into a web enabled smart TV",
"OK, dumb question. I've used an HDMI cable to connect my laptop to my flat screen tv, would Chromcast be doing basically the same thing?\n\nI've streamed NFL games and cycling vids this way. Works reasonable well. Also, we have an XBOX that was use for Netflix and a few other apps (youtube comes to mind). Would Chromcast offer anything that we aren't already able to achieve via the XBOX? For example, the ability to type on a cellphone or tablet would be cool. ",
"Right now, the Apple TV is the better choice for streaming internet content to your TV. ",
"I gave this a quick skim and didn't catch mention of Roku anywhere. IMHO Roku is where it's at. I've had a Roku for a while and recently got a second for upstairs, a whole house OTA antenna and turned off cable television.\n\nRoku is unique in it's ability to provide unique, and often indy content. There is certainly no shortage of mainstream content through the Roku channel store though. Many are free, some are paid and some are subscription based through the content provider like Netflix or Hulu. There is also a large collection of \"Private Channels\" that can be added but aren't endorsed by Roku. Private channels doesn't mean porn, but there are a couple. That's where the Roku beats the Apple TV hands down; the ability to customize what content you want. \n\ntl;dr buy a Roku",
"For $30 bucks, it's well worth it. Thought I could mirror my exact screen but no, needs a browser, seems to work best with the Chrome Browser. \n\nJust perfect for watching youtubes, netflex, or even doing quick presentations from Google Drive.\n\n",
"It's \"ok\" it's really just a poor mans Apple TV",
"I have Apple TV 3rd Gen and a Chromecast.\n\n- Apple TV doesn't need any other device to work - not even to set it up. You can connect to wifi or ethernet just by plugging it in and using the remote\n\n- Chromecast needs a phone or laptop to do some setup procedure, and then to play stuff. It doesn't have a remote control\n\n- Apple TV lets you mirror your desktop completely, or use it as a second monitor with an extended desktop. You can also mirror your iPhone/iPad/iPod which is useful if you're demoing apps on a big screen\n\n- Chromecast will only let you mirror a single chrome tab. No other browser is supported and you cannot mirror your desktop AFAIK\n\n- Apps are written for Chromecast for specific services and maybe games\n\n- Apple TV also allows apps to work specially with it so for example a game shows on the screen but your phone just shows the control pad.\n\nTL;DR: Just get both",
"Our Chromecast is great but it interacts very strangely with our sound system. We have a Pioneer SC-61 elite receiver and plug the Chromecast into the USB port. It works great but for whatever reason, TV and music played using the Chromecast don't engage the subwoofer. If we use Netflix (via the X-Box), we get a very different sound than if we use Netflix via Chromecast.\n\nI'm curious to hear if anyone else has gotten this problem.",
"I have Apple TV, which works nicely if you're already a heavy apple user. Mostly use it for Netflix, Hulu, movie trailers, music, etc. so as long as your favorite entertainment is available on one of those networks you're good. \none big gripe I do have is that a lot of music videos that are usually available on YouTube are not available through the Apple TV YouTube app. Not sure if the same applies to Chromecast. ",
"-get chromecast\n-download showbox.akp\n-download avia from the app store\n- and say bye bye to tv and netflix",
"Plex and Roku is probably the best/most cost effective setup right now, or Plex and Apple TV if you use itunes a lot or prefer Apple stuff.\n\nChromecast really doesn't compare to Plex + Roku as far as providing an easy to use setup than just about anyone can figure out. Chromecast is great if you want a dirt cheap way to get Hulu and Netflix on your TV. Roku and Plex are ideal if you want to download or rip movies and create a library as well as have access to some decent channels. Plex has a host of unofficial channels for streaming content if you feel like hunting for it, it's mostly not legal though.\n\nRoku also gives you access to amazon, hulu, netflix, redbox, blockbuster, HBO and many other so it does everything Chromecast does, but better. \n\nI guess the one upside of Chromecast I can think of is that you can use it with a free Hulu account, beyond that it's just a low quality pain in the ass compared to the more polished alternatives like Roku and Apple TV. For now Chomecast and your standard Android players are inferior to Apple TV and Roku, though hopefully that will change over time. ",
"So the big important question I'm watching youporn on my old ass iphone can I than transfer it to my tv??",
"I have an Apple TV device which can do the same... Right?",
"I lucked out when I bought my laptop. Best Buy sold me on the Intel WIDI. I paid the extra $75 for a wireless receiver that hooked up via HDMI to the back of my television. My computer connects wirelessly to the receiver, and my television becomes a large monitor. Apps like Netflix, Hulu, and HBOGO have replaced my cable subscription, and it saves me a bundle. Since delving deeper into using the Intel Widi feature, I have also discovered endless websites where I can watch all my favorite movies and television shows for free, thus eliminating the need to pay for my subscriptions. ",
"Is it worth it if I have a PS3? I use my PS# for netflix and gaming, but i can also plug in my External USB storage and watch movies.",
"Chromecast is AMAZING.\n\nI have it, and I got my best friend 1 for christmas.\n\nIt was like $30, and it's worth every penny"
]
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[],
[],
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|
s1n9k | the war statistic people talk about in baseball. | Any other advanced stat explanations would be nice too. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/s1n9k/eli5_the_war_statistic_people_talk_about_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"c4aehgp"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"WAR stands for Wins above replacement. It's basically the amount of wins a certain player is valued at above a player of the same position at the AAA level.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Wins_Above_Replacement_Player"
]
] |
|
2cq5cj | why can't i take the seeds from fruits i buy in the grocery story and grow them into plants? why do i have to buy seed separately? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cq5cj/eli5_why_cant_i_take_the_seeds_from_fruits_i_buy/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjhwsp2",
"cjhwsy8",
"cjhxawc"
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"score": [
3,
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"text": [
"You can certainly try.\n\nThe things working against you are that the fruit is usually picked when it's unripe, so the seeds may be under developed. The other problem is the plant may not survive your climate. A third thing *I'm told* is that the seed may not necessarily produce the fruit you're eating, which is to say your apple may be a hybrid between the flower of one variety and the pollen of another. So, as I'm told, when you plant that seed, and the tree grows up and flowers, and bees pollinate the different flowers on the same tree, we're talking a different flower and a different pollen than what made the original fruit.",
"Many fruits/vegetables that you buy in stores do have viable seeds inside of them.\n\nIt's just a pain in the butt to harvest them and prep them for efficient planting. Much easier to just buy seeds, and cheaper too if you put any sort of value to your time. Also, many commercial varieties of produce have been bred to be grown in large scale commercial farming operations, which likely use different farming methods than what you'd use in your backyard garden, so you probably won't get great results from the plants, even if the seeds do grow. \n\n\n",
"A lot of the varieties of fruit and veg you buy in the shops are first generation (F1) hybrids between two varieties of the plant. If you plant the seeds they might grow, but they probably won't be the same as the fruit you ate. This is because the genes get all muddled up via the sexual reproduction.\n\nImage you plant has genes P1/P2. P1 from one parent, P2 from the other.\nIf two hybrids reproduce you get a possible range of P1/P1, P1/P2 and P2/P2 repeated thousands of times and it's really a lucky dip as to what kind of plant you'll get.\n\nWe use store bought potatoes to plant out in the garden when they sprout before we eat them. Works fine. These are essentially clones of the potato variety and produce the correct strain."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
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