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8gsdr4 | do any other animals use a “baby voice” when interacting with their young? | EDIT: Thanks for your comments everyone, makes total sense! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8gsdr4/eli5_do_any_other_animals_use_a_baby_voice_when/ | {
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"cats do kind of a 'rrrroo' sound to their kitties. more like a purr mixed with a soft meow ",
"of a sort. animals don't have language the way we do, but they do have whole sets of behaviors around dealing with their young and this includes vocalizations. ",
"Humans actually do the baby voice (high pitched, slow and exagerated) because it allows the baby to learn language. They won't learn if you just talk to them normally. I don't know much about how animals learn communication though, except that it's a mixture of already knowing how to makes sounds and learning from others.",
"Mares nicker to their foals. It's that very deep, gentle \"wub wub wub\", llike a super cuddly quiet dubstep sound.\n\nAdult horses still do this if they're really happy or in the presence of someone ~~they love~~ who has snacks."
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62i1jp | what does the patriots act really do? | I get that it allows for the government to wiretap and monitor suspected terrorists. Why so much uproar about it, does it allow the government to monitor the common people? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62i1jp/eli5_what_does_the_patriots_act_really_do/ | {
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"How do you suppose the government tells \"suspected terrorists\" from \"common people\"? They can't, unless they monitor everybody and see which people talk to ISIS Headquarters. If you talk to ISIS-HQ, then everybody you talk to are \"suspected terrorists\".",
"The Patriot act was enacted because the various intelligence agencies are limited in their power to monitor, detain and interrogate suspected terrorists. First it, this act first defines Terrorism and its actors , it also define their rights ( or should I say their lack of rights) and give the power to the president and a few people to declare an individual enemy of the state (which means hello Drone, goodbye life).\nIt was voted on and signed as a result of the 9/11 shock. Most senator and congressman that voted for it didn't read it nor figure out that some extremely large loopholes were left open to facilitate intelligence (like the massive surveillance of the NSA on every telecommunications that are happening within the USA and abroad). \nBasically, This act is a law that enables to the government to bypass the constitution against foreign individuals and US citizens that have their communication crossing any borders."
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2ff56d | why do most islamic terrorist groups target the u.s. when there are countries that discriminate much more on their muslim populations? ex thailand or arguably france | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ff56d/eli5_why_do_most_islamic_terrorist_groups_target/ | {
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"have you enumerated \"most\" ?\n\nspain, indonesia, phillipines, china, egypt, india, sweden, uk. \n\nUS attacks are: first WTC bombing, USS Cole, 9/11, Boston marathon. that's 4 out of 25. hardly \"most\" "
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1xcvvo | why do we sometimes wake up with curvy lines randomly pressed into our body? | Anytime I have them, I usually get them on the arm I sleep on, my back, or my stomach. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xcvvo/eli5_why_do_we_sometimes_wake_up_with_curvy_lines/ | {
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"They're imprints in your skin from wrinkles in your sheets, or the way your skin is pressed against your bed. "
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39x149 | with all of the proof of torture and other terrible things going on in north korea, why don't we band together and demolish them and save the citizens? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39x149/eli5_with_all_of_the_proof_of_torture_and_other/ | {
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"Will you enlist? Will you make your kids enlist? Then why should anyone else?\n\nA pentagon war game predicted 500,000 US deaths with the note \"it'll get worse the longer we wait\" that report is several years old now. NK doesn't have new technology, they don't have new toys and tools but they have man power, a shit ton of man power. NK would lose, there's no question about that but now you have Seoul peppered with artillery fire, some number of nuclear detonations during the war either in SK or NK and the rebuilding of Berlin on crack. It'll cost a lot of lives on both sides and a SHIT TON of money afterwards. There's a rule in world politics, as long as you only kill your own people nobody cares."
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20f48r | . after a boil water order has been lifted, why don't you need to flush your pipes? | My city just lifted a boil water order and there was nothing stating we needed to let our pipes run, for example, to flush out the "dirty" water. How can this be? Thanks in advance! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20f48r/eli5_after_a_boil_water_order_has_been_lifted_why/ | {
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"because they probably assume that you have been using water, just boiling it first. The order doesn't get lifted the moment the source is safe, they wait until they think all of the bad water is out of the system. "
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26vxhu | why is it so difficult to go from flying altitude to space? why can't we reinforce a strong cargoplane, jam a big rocket in the rear and fly it of into space? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26vxhu/eli5_why_is_it_so_difficult_to_go_from_flying/ | {
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"Does [this](_URL_0_) answer your question?"
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21bf5h | hobby lobby supreme court case. | What should we know about this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21bf5h/eli5_hobby_lobby_supreme_court_case/ | {
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"Hobby Lobby's owners, who are religious conservatives, do not want their company to provide contraception as part of its health insurance plan. They are opposed to it, and feel that since they are paying the bill, they should be able to choose to select a plan that doesn't include contraception. Many people agree with this position.\n\nThe government, however, has mandated the inclusion of contraception in health care plans as part of the Affordable Care Act. The idea is that the religious beliefs of the owners of a company shouldn't impact an employee's access to legitimate medical services or prescriptions. Many people agree with this position.",
" > the religious beliefs of the owners of a company shouldn't impact an employee's access to legitimate medical services or prescriptions\n\nThere are 20 forms of birth control approved by the FDA. Hobby Lobby is fine with paying for 16 of them. The 4 they do not want to cover are the 4 that the FDA says can destroy an embryo thereby causing an abortion. So contrary to what is reported in the news Hobby Lobby does not want to refuse women contraception, they do not want to pay for drug-induced abortions. Women can walk into any drug store and buy the morning after pill over the counter. I've seen it at CVS. Hobby Lobby is not limiting access to anything."
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137lq6 | why do some tv shows like tbbt and homeland make it over to prime time british tv, but parks and recreation and breaking bad don't? | Parks and Recreation has never actually been broadcast in the UK, and Breaking Bad was on an obscure channel for a bit.
However Homeland is on prime time on Channel 4 and The Big Bang Theory is played to death, is there a reason for this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/137lq6/eli5_why_do_some_tv_shows_like_tbbt_and_homeland/ | {
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"Either the networks there believe that they will not be popular enough to justify acquiring the rights to, or the rights holders in the US are asking for more money than the British networks are willing to pay. ",
"Remember that Breaking Bad is relatively niche despite its critical acclaim and internet fame, and AMC is not a major channel, nor is it part of a big conglomerate like Showtime and HBO. The fact that it aired for a bit makes me think that not enough people watched to make it worthwhile. Or AMC is asking for so much money for the rights that no UK broadcaster can make money on it.\n\nParks and Rec is a satire of American municipal politics (which are generally terrible in real life, the show is not that far from reality). It doesn't have much appeal outside the US.\n\nOTOH Homeland is a action/political thriller and Big Bang Theory is a sitcom, both genres with much broader international appeal.\n\n\n\n"
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3lhcf9 | why do people make their beds? | The title is clear enough. The greatest trick devil ever pulled was to convince humanity to make their beds. I have wondered this my whole life. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lhcf9/eli5_why_do_people_make_their_beds/ | {
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"It looks nicer and looks cleaner. Humans like organized things, we like order and simple style. While it really is bounded by the person doing the bed-making in general people like their beds made because it looks clean, organized and much better than the messy pile of pillows and duvets otherwise lying in an unorganized pile.",
"“It was a simple task—mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle hardened SEALs—but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over. If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right. And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made—that you made—and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.”\n\n―UT Graduation Speech 2014\n",
"Just so you know, there was a study done recently that suggests that it is actually healthier for you to not make your bed, because making your bed in the morning traps moisture in the sheets that allow dust mites to thrive under there. Leaving your bed unmade allows the moisture to dry out more, causing many of the dust mites to die."
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42ae6h | why does paper money have serial numbers but coins do not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42ae6h/eli5_why_does_paper_money_have_serial_numbers_but/ | {
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"Serial numbers are an anti-counterfeiting measure.\n\nThe US government is not seriously concerned about people counterfeiting coins because of the difficulty and extremely low reward for the risk.",
"printing individual serials on paper is way easier than stamping them into a piece of metal"
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2jo3gk | if the pope is infallible and supports broader gay rights in the catholic church, how can he be defeated by a vote? | I have no catholic (or even particularly religious) background. I can't understand why voting is necessary on something the pope has such a clear view on and if it is, how anyone can vote against him given he is supposedly god's representative. Surely that is like saying that they know better than god?
Any insight would be fantastic as the whole system confuses me greatly. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jo3gk/eli5_if_the_pope_is_infallible_and_supports/ | {
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"The Pope doesn't always speak for God - ex cathedra (\"from the chair\") statements wherein the Pope declares that \"this is the indisputable word of God\" are actually pretty rare. The Pope is also the Bishop of Rome and is a representative of the Church like any other member of the priesthood so he can give his opinions on Church teachings but he's not the dictator of the church. ",
"I was a Catholic for a significant period of my life.\n\nContrary to popular belief, the Pope is not infallible in all aspects of everything at all times in the eyes of Catholicism.\n\nThe pope is only infallible in the areas of ***doctrine and morals,*** and also only when he \"invokes\" papal infallibility. This has actually happened only 7 times in history, and the last time this was used was in 1950 when the Assumption of Mary was declared."
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21j0wf | how did people cook rice and beans before they had metal pots? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21j0wf/eli5_how_did_people_cook_rice_and_beans_before/ | {
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"_URL_0_\n\nClay pots and the like can hold material and withstand heat."
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13aui5 | how do we use our legs to walk? | More specifically, how do our muscles, bones, tendons and ligaments work together to make walking possible? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13aui5/how_do_we_use_our_legs_to_walk/ | {
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"[Here's an episode of the Magic School Bus which may answer your question.](_URL_0_)",
"Falling with Style.\n\nWith much practice, our eyes and inner-ears work together to provide the brain with information. We aren't aware that this is going on, but fun house spinning tunnels mess with our eyes and spinning around really fast messes with our inner ears, both making walking difficult.\n\nWe don't \"think about walking\" the same way you don't think to remove your hand from something hot. You just react. When your inner-ear (very tiny hairs in a fluid which sway like trees in the wind) says \"I am falling left\" your brain reacts by shifting to the right. You are almost always falling, but the brain reacts so smoothly and consistently that you can hardly notice it. Try this. Spin around 10 times, then stop, stand on one foot, and close your eyes. Standing up becomes very, very challenging. \n\nWalking is just falling forwards and catching yourself over and over again."
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2m6u1d | how come we can land probes on comets and send satellites around the galaxy, but we can't put a high resolution color camera on these devices? | Just saw the Comet pictures and it made me wonder. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m6u1d/eli5_how_come_we_can_land_probes_on_comets_and/ | {
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"We could now. But this probe was launched 10 years ago, and was designed and built mostly during the 90s.",
"To put it simply, more megapixels = higher resolution = larger filesize = more 1s/0s. I'm not sure about the data transfer rate between the probe and Earth, but I'm assuming that it's not a quick process. The lower resolution image probably took a little while to send, therefore a higher resolution image will take a significantly longer time to send.",
"1) we don't send probes around the galaxy\n\n2) I don't see the point for a colour camera to shoot an object that it's mostly black/dark grey\n\n3) space exploration is not for pretty youtube videos, it's for acquiring valuable scientific data. This includes high quality images at the wavelengths needed for research. CCDs with RGB filters would be just a way to waste precious weight.",
"I'm quoting the answer I gave to [this similar question](_URL_0_).\n\n > /u/Falcon9857 is pretty close to being correct.\n\n > The 28 minute delay isn't so much a problem as it is signal strength/quality. Rosetta and Philae are over 500 million km away from Earth - at those distances it's very very hard to transmit a clear signal that can be picked out from background noise.\n\n > One of the ways we combat this is by setting the transmission rate very very slowly. Iiiiidffff yyyyyooofouuuuu ssssstttttrrrrreeenetttttccccchhhhh ooooobuuuuttttt the signal it makes it a lot easier to ignore the noise and not have bad data. Note that even though I introduced the occasional wrong letter in that sequence you still had enough information to read what I was saying.\n\n > The problem is that for deep space missions like Rosetta they have to slow the data transmission way way WAAAYYYY down... like slower than a dial-up modem if you're old enough to remember those. That helps makes the data crystal clear when we receive it, but comes at the expense of not being able to do high-bandwidth things like send video feeds.\n\nThe point is, sending data at interplanetary distances is really really hard and often extremely slow. This means we have to make tough decisions about what data we want from the probe. Things like color and video and ultra high-def images don't have that much scientific value (on a lot of probes the only reason there's cameras at all is to aid navigation and for PR). Space agencies would much rather save their limited bandwidth for things like sensor data and experiment results. ",
"As others have said, transmission of the data back to Earth is really slow and error-prone so you're not going to send back a 2GB video file. So, you might as well save the weight since every ounce counts. \n\nOn the other hand, if the spaceship or satellite is going to eventually come back around to orbit the Earth then you could have a hi-res camera and take a ton of hi-resolution video. Then, when you get back to Earth you can broadcast it back easily enough. The problem is that Rosetta took 10 years to get to the comet so a round trip is another decade. It's possible that's the plan but I doubt it."
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28fw99 | why do people value privacy so much? | Like not just the NSA like why do people care if everyone knows everything about them why good why bad for us all to be connected ELI5 PLEASE | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28fw99/eli5_why_do_people_value_privacy_so_much/ | {
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"It's all about principle. Like others, I'm \"not interesting\" either, but I don't like the idea of being spied on at all.",
"OP, tell me all about yourself. Everything. Full name, Social Security Number, Bank Account Numbers, Credit Card Numbers, passwords to everything. Who if anyone do you have a crush on? What was the last lie you told? Why? How big is your penis? What time do you leave for work in the morning, and where exactly do you live? What have you done in your life that you were embarrassed by, but no one knows about? Details please.\n \n \nCan you see how this might be problematic for you if you were to start sharing all of this? Now imagine you were sharing it without even knowing that you were sharing it...",
"Not gonna tell you!"
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5ypqnt | did tipping exist in the past in europe and if so why did they stop? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ypqnt/eli5_did_tipping_exist_in_the_past_in_europe_and/ | {
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"It is normal in several countries ([Wikipedia has a list](_URL_0_)). It is a common misconception in the US that tipping wouldn't exist elsewhere.\n\nCountries where tips are uncommon often have a service charge that replaced the tips, or tips were never usual there.\n",
"German, austrian and swiss do tip, if the service was good (waiters / waitresses do have wages here, altough they suck)"
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b2i89h | why some causes of death can only be found with an autopsy ? | Why some causes of death can only be found or confirmed by an autopsy and not with a biopsy per example or other test results ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b2i89h/eli5_why_some_causes_of_death_can_only_be_found/ | {
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"There are certain illnesses that have no conclusively visible signs that can be verified while someone is still alive. For example, mad cow disease, or more accurately the human variation, can only be conclusively diagnosed after death. In order to conclusively diagnose the illness, you must look at the actual brain material. What you're looking for is confirmation of excessive prions and actual \"holes\" in the tissues."
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d8lyjp | how to scammers who request money into a bank account get away with it? | To open a bank account you need some documentation to verify who you are, therefore I don't understand how scammers like Ransomware attackers can withdraw money from an account but we can't identify/prosecute these people?
We have had situations at work where phishing emails have been used to have the payroll system updated with scammers bank details - we've been catching them but if we didn't catch them I don't understand how they can get away with it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d8lyjp/eli5_how_to_scammers_who_request_money_into_a/ | {
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"These kinds of monetary transfers are usually done using some not so mainstream services, like instead of using bank accounts, mobile wallets, cryptocurrency wallets, etc are used.",
"If money transfers into bank accounts is being used then they have either created a bank account under a fake or stolen identity, use a bank which as a policy does not give out the identity of their customers even to authorities or in most cases they hire or trick people as strawmen who can take the blame when they get found out.\n\nFor example you may trick person A into thinking they won the lotery but need to pay $2000 tax before you can send the money. You then hire person B as a personal assistant to help with the travels of a wealthy individual. You then have person A send the money to the bank account of person B and then tell person B to send you $1500 in cash. Since you have used a fake name the only thing the investigation will ucover is the names of person A and B in addition to the missing $1500 in cash that was sent to an anonymous post box in another country.",
"They sometimes offer \"jobs from home\". \nLike your \"job\" is to give your account for some money. \nThey use your account for incoming money.. then they instruct you to withdraw the money except for a small percentage as your share of the transaction. \nThe rest should be send via western union or other services like this. \n\n\nso you have an \"easy job\".. until the police knocks on your door.",
"Short answer: because the bank system is a mess, and part of it are highly outdated.\n\nLong answer:\n\nBefore answer, I will start with an anecdote: When I want to buy a train ticket trough the French official website, I get a very complex procedure where they not only need my card number and name, but also send a SMS to my phone with a code I have to enter, phone number that was registered at my bank and inaccessible from the website I'm using. No way someone will be buying a train ticket in France with my card without me being aware of it. On the other hand, there are countless other way online to use my card number to spend money without me getting any news about it. Why is this SMS security system only used on some website? Why is my bank asking for official websites to use this advanced security system, while allowing shady website to take money without anything more than just a card number? Shouldn't that be the contrary (trusted websites get less mandatory security because you expect them to have their own security protection)?\n\nThe reason is quite simple: those security systems are new (a decade, roughly), and most of the world is outdated from a security point of view. And you cannot force everyone to get security upgrade without breaking the economy (too much things to rework, too many incompetents with responsibilities that would be unable to apply the protocols correctly, and a significant slow down of everything because security takes time). As a consequences, security upgrades are usually let to the initiative of individual companies, and only those who care enough to suffer the cost of security take the time to upgrade.\n\nNow answering your question, scammers can do that stuff because they know the weaknesses, for example knowing which company actually do check in dept for fake identities before creating an account, and which don't. And they can get away with it because most of the time, it is less expensive to let the scammer scam your clients, and payback your clients from their loss (if they ask to), than actually trying to prevent the scammers to scam."
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brtanv | how come kids can be preoccupied with one simple thing endlessly and adults seemingly don’t have those kinds of similar fascinations | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/brtanv/eli5_how_come_kids_can_be_preoccupied_with_one/ | {
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"Adults certainly can be fascinated with one thing for countless hours, that's what our scientists and researchers are doing essentially. We think it's simple because we as adults already understand what is going on but think about all the stuff that even adults don't fully comprehend.",
"Because the instinct to be stimulated is part of our evolutionary survival strategy. And learning fulfils that instinct. \n\nKind of like when you someone tells you a joke for the first time and you laugh, you laugh because you learnt something. Say that same joke again maybe a giggle, as you hear keep hearing the same joke it's no longer funny anymore because you have already \"learnt\" it. If they're playing with a stick for hours it's not stimulating for you because it's more like a been there done that kind of thing.\n\nKids and babys can play and laugh at the same things for an extended period of time because everything is still new to them - they're still in the process of learning how things work, how social interactions are made and we have the mental capacity/intelligence of figuring things out fairly quickly and being done with it. \n\nKind of like how when people go into a sensory deprivation environment their brains are trying to create stimulation by themselves and they end up going crazy."
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4uuvzb | why do stressful (difficult) experiences, often help to reduce stress? | I went to my first Bikram Yoga class last night. I found it really hard, even the part where you're supposed to relax was somewhat strenuous. However I came out of it feeling great. Sorry if this question seems obvious but it made me wonder why this ironic occurrence takes place. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4uuvzb/eli5why_do_stressful_difficult_experiences_often/ | {
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"I wouldn't necessarily say that stressful experiences often help to reduce stress, but there are clear benefits to exercises such as Yoga on stress levels. Exercise has been shown to decrease overall levels of tension and anxiety, produce endorphins, elevate and stabilize mood, as well as improve sleep, focus, and self-esteem.\n\nThus your experience may not have been as mentally stressful as physically strenuous. We of course know that stress and anxiety associated with a deadline won't be alleviated by a car accident. Nor will the stress of poor posture relieve back pain."
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31rdau | what is the postmodernist dilemma? | Any help is appreciated, Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31rdau/eli5_what_is_the_postmodernist_dilemma/ | {
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"The short answer is that it is the search for meaning. This is not really a new problem for philosophy, but in the context of postmodernism. \n\nThis perspective is cynical of \"modern ideas\" like science (not that science is wrong or bad, but that as a source of meaning - philosophical meaning - it isn't going to deliver). It cynical that the nation-state with progressive legislation about human rights and equality will actually result in equality and it has realized that being \"right\" or \"good\" doesn't always result in equal or fair treatment, or that debunking myths and religions will result in a better world, etc. etc. \n\nThe dilemma has then been said by some to be \"what good is this new enlightened cycnism since it just kills hope and makes us aware of our misery\" (thats a little heavy handed, but...i'm far away from my days of writing long winded philosophy papers!)"
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el7hpt | why can't we control wild fires/forest fires before they get out of control, given all the firefighting means that we have? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/el7hpt/eli5_why_cant_we_control_wild_firesforest_fires/ | {
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"We did that for decades. It is a major part of what is causing our problems now. If you do not allow the natural fires to clear out the dead brush then it will eventually accumulate to a degree that fires spread and grow too quickly to get under control. They literally grow to the point of not being able to be contained before they are noticed by humans and before firefighters can respond."
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3uk9qf | why people think freedom of speech is about being able to say anything you like without consequence | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uk9qf/eli5_why_people_think_freedom_of_speech_is_about/ | {
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"Because the constitution is no longer taught in detail in schools. People also think they have freedom of speech on the internet. While it is not popular reddit and other sites hold no obligation to give anyone freedom of speech. The owners of the sites have every legal right to determine what speech is allowed. People get mad and then think of the first catchy thing they remember from the constitution; 'freedom of speech' and take no time to understand it and or put it in context.\n\n",
"There are two concepts that often get confused.\n\nIn a formal sense 'freedom of speech' is actually 'freedom from government restriction of speech'. These are the rights that are enshrined in constitutional or human rights documents like the 1st amendment. They don't apply at all to private organizations who are free to tell you not to say something they don't like within a sphere that belongs to them. They also don't prohibit any social censure from other people.\n\nThere's also a broader, more ambiguous sense of the concept. We protect free speech formally because in liberal democracies we *value* having freedom of speech. It means *more* to us than merely protection against the government. As a society we want people, generally, to be free to speak their mind, but even more than the right to speak, we want the right to *listen*. We want an open, permissive environment where people don't have to fear unwarranted censure or perhaps for their physical safety just for speaking an unpopular opinion. And this is where it gets tricky. Since these are societal values and cultural norms, there are necessarily reasonable disagreements about where to draw the line. There are disagreements about what an appropriate response might look like. There are disagreements about whether *any* speech deserves some kind of tolerance from the wider community at all.\n\nIn different situations these two concepts of free speech might be more or less prominent. Sometimes the relation to government action is critical. Should neo-nazis be permitted to march peacefully through a Jewish neighbourhood? The core of this question is the government's regulation of an activity. The answer is yes. But the residents don't have to visit that area of town or pay any attention to the parade. Their choice to ignore it doesn't undermine the underlying free speech values in that situation - they can choose not to listen.\n\nSimilarly, the WBC is routinely ignored while they protest, that does not harm the WBC's right to speak, and it does not harm the passer-by's right to listen for he *chose* to ignore them. But sometimes counter-protests also block the WBC from an audience altogether. Now that's starting to slip down a slope isn't it?\n\nLet's take it further. What if a significant portion of society decides that not only do they want to ignore an opinion, they also want to prevent that opinion from being voiced in the first place? So they direct immediate and visceral responses to anybody who dares utter those words that they've deemed offensive, they stage disruptive protests, and they attempt to drown out that voice on a grand scale.This has next to nothing to do with government, so the social *value* of free speech takes center stage. Not only are they depriving the speakers the opportunity to communicate, they are depriving the rest of society the opportunity to hear what the speaker has to say and decide for themselves. Do we want to create an environment where unpopular opinions are immediately shut down, not by government, but by your peers? Or do we respond to unpopular opinions with argument and debate - perhaps even critically examining our own beliefs in the process?\n\nFreedom of speech clearly does *not* mean freedom from any and all consequences of speech. But there are also clearly cases where the private reaction and censure of speech is such that it does undermine the values of free speech. Where does a particular situation fall? It depends.",
"Eli5: what is a loaded question?"
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d26l0r | how do individually addressable led strips work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d26l0r/eli5_how_do_individually_addressable_led_strips/ | {
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"These strips contain power traces, LEDs, control trace(s), and controllers. Most modern strips have the controller embedded inside the same case as the LEDs, DNS I'll refer to the combination of the LED emitters, and controller as the LED. \n\nDepending on which specific control chip is being used, a computer would put out a control signal on the control trace or traces that specified how each LED is supposed to light up its various emitters. The most common case is to use a single control trace, which goes to the DATA_IN pin on an LED, the controller grabs the data it needs (generally some control bits and the next 3 bytes) , and sends the remaining stream out the DATA_OUT pin, where the cycle continues until you run out of LEDs or the computer stops putting out a signal. \n\nSince only one signal is used, the timing is fixed to a certain frequency which requires fairly tight constraints to get the LED controllers to recognize a valid control signal.",
"Gonna assume you're talking about WS2812 (\"NeoPixel\") type. \n\nYou send data down the data line to the first LED. Short pulse for 0 or long pulse for 1. And by pulsing like that you communicate color data in binary to the first LED. During all this, the first LED is not talking to the others. Once the LED has received a full set of color data, THEN it starts forwarding all pulses over to the next LED who does the same thing. Reads in a color, then forwards the extra to the next LED.\n\nOnce you're done sending color data, you wait a little bit of extra reset time for the LEDs to notice that the data stopped. Then the first LED will start intercepting everything again and you're back to the beginning.\n\nSome LEDs have a separate clock pin, so they don't need strict timings on the pulses. They're also generally less flicker-y. But WS2812-type LEDs are very cheap so very popular."
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bbyq27 | why did ecuador terminate assange diplomatic asylum? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bbyq27/eli5_why_did_ecuador_terminate_assange_diplomatic/ | {
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"He was a poor house guest and they got enough political cover in assurances that he would not be extradited to any country with the death penalty.",
"Ecuador’s president, Lenin Moreno, has issued a video explaining his decision to withdraw Julian Assange’s asylum status after seven years. Moreno complained about Assange’s behaviour and accused him of being involved in “interfering in internal affairs of other states” while in the embassy.\n\nHe said the asylum of Assange “is unsustainable and no longer viable” because he had repeatedly violated “clear cut provisions of the conventions of diplomatic asylum”, citing the recent leak of Vatican documents by Wikileaks.\n\nThe statement continued:\n\nThe patience of Ecuador has reached its limit on the behaviour of Mr Assange. He installed electronic and distortion equipment not allowed. He blocked the security cameras of the Ecuadorian mission in London. He has confronted and mistreated guards. He had accessed the security files of our embassy without permission. He claimed to be isolated and rejected the internet connection offered by the embassy, and yet he had a mobile phone with which he communicated with the outside world.\n\nWhile Ecuador upheld the generous conditions of his asylum, Mr Assange legally challenged in three difference instances the legality of the protocol. In all cases, the relevant judicial authorities have validated Ecuador’s position.\n\nIn line with our strong commitment to human rights and international law, I requested Great Britain to guarantee that Mr Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could face torture or the death penalty. The British government has confirmed it in writing, in accordance with its own rules.\n\nFinally, two days ago, WikiLeaks, Mr Assange’s allied organisation, threatened the government of Ecuador. My government has nothing to fear and does not act under threats. Ecuador is guided by the principles of law, complies with international law and protects the interests of Ecuadorians.\n\n_URL_0_",
"WikiLeaks recently released a leak that was highly embarrassing to the Ecuadorean government. Ecuador is also looking to improve relations with the USA, who would very much like to get hold of Assange.",
"Why did the embassy agree to take him in orginally?",
"There are official reasons and explanations. They may or may not be the true reasons.\n\nAssange is involved in high stakes international dramas and intrigues, on a level where things are not usually visible to the public. So we don’t know.",
"We talked about this in my political science class! The short version is that he's an absolute slop and didn't respect the embassy. The workers and cleaning crew at the embassy lodged multiple complaints and just *didn't want to work anywhere near that mess of a human*",
" > citing the recent leak of Vatican documents by Wikileaks.\n\n\nWhat where in those leaks is the question we should ask, though.",
"It's sad that 1 country rules the world and everyone has to abide by it. No country in the world can say no to U.S. economic sanctions is enough threat"
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"https://www.theguardian.com/media/live/2019/apr/11/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-arrested-at-the-ecuadorean-embassy-live-updates?page=with:block-5caf0edb8f08bc7376aeb130#block-5caf0edb8f08bc7376aeb130"
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46f4xf | the articles of confederation vs the u.s constitution? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/46f4xf/eli5_the_articles_of_confederation_vs_the_us/ | {
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"The articles were the first form of government in the US in place from 1776 to 1789.\n\nThe federal government barely existed under the articles. It consisted of a single legislature with 1 rep. per state. Most important decisions require unanimity.\n\nIt's important to remember that the colonies were basically a bunch of different small countries that banded together to fight Britain, so a weak central government was really all they could agree on. Also, they were fighting a war against a tyrannical central government, so they weren't eager to put another one in place.\n\nUnfortunately for the Articles, it went terribly. The only two things the articles government did successfully were win the war (which had a lot to do with Washington often acting in opposition to congress) and lay out the methodology for how the territories in the Ohio river valley would eventually be settled and become states.\n\nMany leaders in the country felt the articles sucked even during the war, and when a convention was held to revise the articles, they ended up scrapping them and forming a new charter of government, the constitution.\n\nWhen compared to the articles, the constitution has a much stronger federal government including a federal court system and a federal executive. The government has much more power relative to the states when compared with the articles. Overall, it functions much better (it's lasted 227 years which beats the Articles' 13 pretty handily). \n\nIt took a lot of convincing to get people on board with a stronger federal government, and a lot of the framers who favored a stronger government (principally John Jay and Alexander Hamilton) wrote a bunch of essays as to why they thought it was a good idea called the federalist papers. They're a good read if you want to learn more about the debate going on at the time."
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8awlxz | whats the difference between 60hz, 120hz, and 144hz on gaming monitors? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8awlxz/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_60hz_120hz_and/ | {
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"The number of hz is how many times the screen will refresh per second. It isn't technically frames per second, but it is directly linked to it. If your screen can only refresh 60 times per second (60hz), it can only show 60 different frames in a second, so you would appear limited to 60fps. ",
"Our eyes don't actually see individual frames, since they're not quick enough for that. What they see is the sum of all the light hitting our eyes over a short period of time, which makes fast moving objects become blurry like a photograph with long exposure. So when a ball moves through our field of vision, it looks like a blurred line rather than a ball.\n\nBut games have a very hard time with that, since each frame is an instantaneous moment of time. So when the ball moves through the field of vision, it will be at a different position at each frame, and our eyes lay those frames on top of each other - so the ball appears to be at multiple locations at the same time. This can be smoothed out somewhat with post processing motion blur effects, but it's very difficult to actually get it to look naturally. And that is where 120 and 144 Hz screens come in: The more frames per second the game can reproduce, the smoother the movement of rapidly moving objects will become.\n\nYou can test this effect very easily if you start a game with first person camera and make some rapid camera movements while looking at objects with high contrast. You'll easily notice that there are multiple copies of the object on screen if there's no motion blur effect."
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5m8cl4 | why after a perfect nights sleep why do some people find it so hard to get out of bed and are still tired while other people would be full of energy and find it easier to get up | I always do be tired after a nights sleep and Find it so hard to get up just wondering a few reasons as to why I'm like that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5m8cl4/eli5_why_after_a_perfect_nights_sleep_why_do_some/ | {
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"Because there are other factors like the persons' physical and mental health. You might also want to be checked for Sleep Apnea, especially if you wake up with a sore throat or partners complain you snore. ",
"Circadian rhythm could be part of it. \n\nSome people fall asleep and wake naturally at different times than our jobs / commitments make us wake up. \n\nNaturally, i'll fall asleep about 4am, wake about 11/12. That's my body clock. \n\nAny sleep that doesn't mesh with those times is always less productive. \n\nHow long are you actually asleep for? \nDo you have any other medical issues?\n\nEither way, speaking to a doc isn't a bad idea, as there could be many reasons, and sleep is very important. You could be sleep walking, having trouble getting into deep sleep, or have sleep apnea. \n\n"
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3c4d0k | what's preventing someone from listening in on my cell phone traffic when i'm speaking on my mobile phone? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3c4d0k/eli5_whats_preventing_someone_from_listening_in/ | {
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"In theory: your connection is encrypted in some way.\n\nIn practice: that encryption sucks and is somewhere between easy and trivial to break with the right equip\n\n[Further reading](_URL_0_)",
"It's slightly complicated to do it. \n\nIn the Olden Days cellphones used analogue signals, and if you knew the right frequency you could easily listen in to cellphone calls. \n\nNowadays they're all digital, so even if you know the frequency you're just going to get \"noise\" as the voice data is digitally encoded. \n\nIn theory this data is also encrypted, so you can't just listen in and decode the digital code. \n\nIn practice, as /u/YMK1234 points out, this encryption is not super strong. \n\nThe bottom line here is that if someone *really* wants to listen to your conversations, they can. Might be easier for them to just plant a microphone on you, though. ",
"In all probability you aren't exciting enough to bother to bug. If you believe this isn't the case then you probably have got someone listening to your conversations.",
"What's preventing someone from listening the cell phone traffic? Primarly the law and secondly the complexity of the technologies involved in wireless communications. \n\nLegally, carriers are required to provide means of lawful intercept for authorites (e.g. via CALEA equipment in the core network switch, that works like plugging a headset or recording device to the pair of wires your call goes through) when a warrant is provided.\n\nAir intercept is much more complicated but the level of complexity depends of the technology. For example the defunct European NMT analogue sytem was easily intercepted w/ a scanner while the digital technologies such as GSM, CDMA, EV-DO, UMTS or LTE are more end more coplex and harder to intercept. \n\nOn top of the fact that the information over the air - either voice or data - is highly processed, (digitized, channel protection coded, scrambled and modulated) and as mentioned by other people here, most of these technologies encrypt it as well. As usual, decription is more or less solid depending of the algorithm used for this and will vary from one technology to the other. \n\nThis is why intercepting over the air is very hard. Still there are ways to attempt this either by using fake wireless cells (i.e. the Stingray equipment used by some police departments and not 100% lawful) and trying to trick the mobile attach to them or by eavesdropping on the air signals directly. "
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5k6q9v | why does nostalgia make me feel sick? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5k6q9v/eli5_why_does_nostalgia_make_me_feel_sick/ | {
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"Thoughts and memories can trigger hormone releases in your body, they trigger physical responses like feeling flutters or queasiness in your stomach. There's a very strong link between your brain and your gastrointestinal system, since it has the most noticeable impact from hormone release."
]
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6uw779 | what function, if any, does that indent/crease thing between our nose and lips serve? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6uw779/eli5_what_function_if_any_does_that_indentcrease/ | {
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"I saw a documentary in biology once years ago. From what I remember, when the in the womb, the first feature of the foetus that is formed is that very indent/crease and from that the rest of the face is formed. I don't know how accurate that is or if even at all. Seems pretty important though. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'd love to learn. ",
"In humans it doesn't have a function (as others said). In animals like dogs (the \"split\" in their nose pad is their equivalent of this), it traps odorant (particles), and this allows those particles to make their way down into the mouth, where they have additional scent organs that can detect smells that aren't volatile (smellable out of the air itself).\n\nIt forms because when an embryo is developing, facial tissue (skin) starts growing from five \"lobes\": one around your forehead which grows down to your upper lip, two around your cheeks, which grow towards the center and also help form the upper lip, and two around your jaws which grow towards the center and constitute the lower lip.\n\nThe ridge is basically the leftover of the \"seam\" when your face skin grew together as a baby in your mom's womb. How exactly they grow together is responsible for conditions like cleft lip/palate, but also everyday variation like a widows peak (because the two sides didn't overlap enough to make a straight hairline), or a cleft chin (same reason but with those bottom two \"lobes\"), or a unibrow."
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2u76w9 | rather than make it a separation of parent(s) from children, why aren’t children deported with illegal-immigrant parents? | It seems like this would remove the heart-string statements (used for political statements/bills usually) people use.
Specifically they say things like their children are born here in the US, how can you separate them from one another just because the parent(s) are here illegally?
----
See [PBS documentary](_URL_0_) on this as well. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2u76w9/eli5_rather_than_make_it_a_separation_of_parents/ | {
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"Legally, children born in the US are citizens. They are born with the inalienable rights afforded to all citizens. We don't exile our citizen just because they're inconvenient. ",
"Because the child has not broken any laws. We generally try to avoid punishing the innocents for crimes of their parents.\n\nAs far as I know (IANAL, please correct me if I'm wrong), the parents are allowed to take their child with them. That is, if they go through all the required legal procedures. Or they can take them with them illegally."
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f52vg9 | what are analog cameras and how are they different from other types of cameras? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f52vg9/eli5_what_are_analog_cameras_and_how_are_they/ | {
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"Analogue cameras is what film cameras became named when digital cameras came out.\n\nFilm instead of sensor and memory cards.",
"So analogue Cameras tend to be what the mass see as \"old\" cameras, they write the light information to a 35mm (or other size) film, this is called a negative, which is then used to transfer onto photo paper.\n\nInteresting stuff really, if you're a student or any local photoclubs, definitely go and check out a printing session, lots of fun!",
"Anything analogue means that there are direct mechanisms at work and there is usually no electronic processing. Most analogue cameras can operate entirely without electricity as the electricity is usually only needed for the flash.\n\nOlder film cameras were \"analogue\" since they not only functioned in a mostly mechanical manner, but because the data was transferred and stored on a physical medium. That is, the image was directly transposed onto the film rather than encoded as a series of zeroes and ones in a system.\n\nThe main difference between anything analog or digital, then, is that an analog device depends upon a physical change in state while a digital item can rely on purely electronic changes.\n\nFor instance, a digital camera encoding an image directly to flash storage as data rather than light physically hitting and changing a strip of film!"
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5lrz55 | why are products "for gamers" always red and black? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5lrz55/eli5_why_are_products_for_gamers_always_red_and/ | {
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"I guess because it makes such a badass, futuristic combination on one hand, just like the black and green (also a very popular colour scheme for gaming products). And possibly because they don't hurt your eyes in the darnkness since they're darker yet softer colours, maybe? That'd would be my guess.",
"Probably to appeal to the younger generation.\n Red is usually associated with performance (power) spec equipment. Even the bad guys in tv or movies usually wear red, or have some association with the color. Bad guys are powerful, and usually takes team work to take that single guy down. Now that im a bit older, I care a lot less what my pc looks like.\n\nAlso want to point out - anything \"gaming\" related cost more than other performance items. Even if its half the product, it will still cost more. Sometimes its worth the price tag, most the time its not though."
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erhwjj | how do subway tunnels handle rain water and flooding? | Edit: answered | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/erhwjj/eli5_how_do_subway_tunnels_handle_rain_water_and/ | {
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"If they're lucky the subway tunnels are above the water level, so natural drainage can happen. But most subways and underpasses are not. So these drain into cisterns at the bottom-most part and are pumped from there into the normal storm drain/sewer system. \n\n_Wait, if there's a flood won't there likely be power outages?_ Yep. Most will have a backup system in place, likely more than one, but sometimes your tunnels just fill up. In any case, if the power is out and a subway tunnel pump stops, you're not going to be running electric trains anyway."
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2h8w4u | how did extreme sports create the current energy drink "culture"? | I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this. I'm wondering how they become so common place in extreme sports, but not in mainstream sports? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h8w4u/eli5_how_did_extreme_sports_create_the_current/ | {
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"I'm not sure I understood the question correctly but the way I'm seeing it is that the energy drink companies (mainly Red Bull) have simply targeted the extreme sports market in their advertising. By doing this for a long time the two have sort of grown together.",
"Extreme sports used to be on the sidelines. Energy drink companies, starting with Red Bull, sponsored these guys early on, which they loved since nobody else was throwing money at them for travel, equipment, etc. So, for relatively minimal investment, Red Bull and others became closely identified with their chosen sports. It costs astronomically more to get less prominent exposure in a mainstream sport - Bose just paid well over $50mm / yr just to have NFL coaches wear their headsets.\n\n\n"
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eeff3q | is there truth in eating bread to soak up the alcohol to prevent alcohol poisoning? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eeff3q/eli5_is_there_truth_in_eating_bread_to_soak_up/ | {
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"Not really. More bulk material in your stomach/intestines might be able to slightly slow down the absorption of alcohol from the GI tract into your blood stream resulting in a lower peak concentration, but all the booze you drink needs to be metabolized eventually.",
"Having other things in your stomach will slow down the rate at which your body absorbs the alcohol, but it will still absorbs the same amount. So you may feel less drunk and the alcohol poisoning may take longer to take effect, but it will still happen. And it probably won't make that much difference anyway.\n\nAnd I don't think it matter much whether you eat bread specifically. Just something else the stomach has to also digest.",
"No, it’s not true. If you have alcohol poisoning, they’ll probably pump your stomach or induce vomiting to get as much alcohol out of your body as possible. Any alcohol in the bread you ate would still be in your body and get into your blood eventually \n\nThere’s a related myth that eating bread before you start drinking will soak up the alcohol and keep you from getting drunk as fast. It’s also not true. However, eating a large meal high in protein before drinking will slow down how quickly your stomach can process alcohol. Not a lot, but some. Don’t drink on an empty stomach unless you want to get drunk fast."
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1fslcn | the differences between gas and electric fires | And any other types of fires there are. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1fslcn/eli5_the_differences_between_gas_and_electric/ | {
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"The differences between fires are really based on what the fire is actually burning. A fire in a fireplace or a fire in a car really are the same fire, but the fuel used is different.\n\nA fire needs three things to occur:\n\n- Oxygen\n\n- Fuel\n\n- Source of Ignition\n\nTake any one of these out, and the fire goes away. This is how fire extinguishers work, depending on the type. Some, like CO2, remove oxygen from the area which extinguishes the flame. Water, on the other hand, affects the fuel and heat - wet stuff doesn't burn as easily, and cold water cools the fuel to below it's burning temperature.\n\nIn a 'gas fire', the primary source of fuel, at least in the beginning is gasoline (i assume you meant gasoline), but once that starts to burn, anything surrounding it heats up and can potentially become fuel as well. This is similar to how lighter fluid is used on charcoal. The lighter fluid catches fire easily and while it's burning, heats the charcoal enough to be able to itself catch fire. The flame of the lighter fluid is also the source of ignition for the charcoal.\n\nIn an 'electrical fire', the electrical component is only used to create a source of heat and/or ignition. Electricity itself doesn't burn, but often the insulation on wires (usually a type of plastic) can burn. So in this case, the source of ignition is the spark or heat generated by a constant electrical arc, and the fuel is the wire insulation or anything near the wire heated up by the electricity. Since wires in a house are usually inside walls, the fire from the burning insulation heats up anything inside the wall - wood, drywall, insulation, dust, etc) which can then burn, causing a chain reaction.\n\nOil fires, such as in kitchens, use the oil itself as the fuel. Once the oil reaches a certain temperature (the 'flash point'), the vapors from the heated oil can react with oxygen and ignite, being both the fuel and source of ignition. Even before it reaches that flash point, you could throw a match in the vapors, assuming the oil is hot enough (its 'smoke point') and the oil would catch fire. That type of fire should never be put out with water, EVER. Oil and Water don't mix. If you throw water on an oil fire, you're going to have a bad time (Mythbusters did a great episode on this, and there's likely bunches of youtube videos out there if you're curious)."
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1jdgw4 | how does communication with satellites, astronauts, rovers and space probes like discovery or voyager work? what type of tx/rx signal is used? | My understanding was that for radio waves (radio communication) to propagate you need an atmosphere. I also understand that, for satellites to communicate with earth, they need a direct line of sight with no solid obstructions (dense trees, in a tunnel, inside a building, etc).
I imagine that communication with astronauts, rovers and space probes must be similar or the same as with satellites, and therefore a direct line of sight is also required, is this true?
If not radio waves, what forms of communication are typically used to maintain communication in these cases? Why is a direct line of sight required? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jdgw4/how_does_communication_with_satellites_astronauts/ | {
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" > for radio waves (radio communication) to propagate you need an atmosphere\n\nNope, electromagnetic waves actually travel best in a vacuum. Adding particles in the way only causes interference. Are you thinking of sound waves?\n\n",
"A direct line of sight is most efficient, but not required. Radio waves can pass through matter, but (for certain types of radio waves) matter reduces the detectable power. Radio waves pass best through vacuum. Radio tends to act like most matter is a fog; slows it down but takes a lot to stop it. "
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fwmmwz | why are there so many different types of glue? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fwmmwz/eli5_why_are_there_so_many_different_types_of_glue/ | {
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"There are a lot of different types of surfaces you might want to bond together, and a lot of different conditions you may want that bond to survive.\n\nThe kind of glue you'll want to hold your posterboard project together is a lot different than the kind of glue you're using to seal windows on the space station.",
"There is [a whole website](_URL_0_) dedicated to recommending what kind of glue is the best application for what you're trying to stick to what.\n\nEach one has different properties that make it adhere better to some surfaces, less well to others, and some may be corrosive to certain materials (ex: super glue tends to partially dissolve/melt some plastics, which can make it super useful and a strong bond if you stick them together, but can mar fine detail work, so it's best used in places that won't be noticed); some glues may leave stains in fabrics and should be avoided when working with textiles, some glues may cause warping in certain materials, some glues contain water which is not necessarily great when you're working with paper, many glues give off noxious fumes when used and shouldn't be used for indoor crafts projects, etc."
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2x6uca | if i secretly burned $1,000,000,000, what would be the effect on the us economy? world economy. would this same effect be the same if i lost change in my couch? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2x6uca/eli5_if_i_secretly_burned_1000000000_what_would/ | {
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"If it is your money, nothing happens. You could also put the money on an account and never spend a cent of it.",
"If you're the Pentagon you can be missing trillions and it won't affect anyone\n\n_URL_0_",
"The effect of burning 1 billion dollars would actually have a relatively small impact on the US economy and an even smaller one on the World economy. The effect of course would be some amount of deflation (an increase in the relative value of the currency). Take for instance the inflationary effect of printing 1 billion dollars (which the US does quite frequently in the form of selling treasury debt to the federal reserve). For years following the financial crisis in 2008, the Federal Reserve injected billions of dollars a month into the economy and the effect was barely enough to combat the deflation in the US dollar that was occurring from other sources. Furthermore the Federal Reserve measures the level of inflation and deflation in the economy and adjusts their monetary policy accordingly. Provided the amount of money that you burned was large enough to be measured by the Fed, they would adjust for it by either lowering the reserve ratio or purchasing additional treasury debt.\n \ntl;dr: A very very small amount of deflation which would be virtually unnoticeable to the economy as a whole."
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3cjh6w | what is about aids that actually kills you? | Is it that the AIDS attacks your body until you are unable to function or that it leaves your body in such a weakened state that even the common cold could kill? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cjh6w/eli5what_is_about_aids_that_actually_kills_you/ | {
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"Yes. It essentially attacks your immune system until you are literally incapable of handling any sickness at all. It's not aids that kills you, it's everything after aids that kills you.",
"From what I understand which isn't much mind you. It weakens your immune system to the point that your body can't fight off diseases. Most people don't die from AIDS even though that is the main reason for their failing health. It is usually brought on by say something like pneumonia that your body just doesn't have the strength to fight off. I hope this helps. ",
"You are right, the AIDS virus attack CD4 cells in your body, which are the white blood cells that defend you against bacteria and other viruses. With lower CD4 cells you are more likely to get sick and unable to overcome things such as the common cold as you state.",
"Basically it breaks down your immune system and eventually something simple like a cold or very mild pneumonia kills you as you just have no way of fighting it. So you don't technically die of AIDS but you die of AIDS induced 'insert illness here'",
"HIV uses your body's CD4 helper T cells to replicate. Each newly replicated HIV particle pinches at the cell's membrane as it buds out of the cell before the cell eventually loses enough membrane, shrivels up, and dies. A normal CD4 cell count in an average person can be anywhere from 900-1200 (per ml of blood iirc). As the HIV progresses, it can mutate over millions of times per day. this battle between your CD4+ helper T cells and HIV can go on undetected for over 10 years. Within those ten years you may see a gradual decrease of CD4 cell concentration. AIDS is defined by two things: a CD4 cell count below 200, or the presence of one of the many opportunistic infections (e.g. Karposis sarcoma). After somebody is officially diagnosed with AIDS, they generally have around 2-3 years before they die from the opportunistic infections. Remember that AIDS is not a virus, it is a syndrome as a result of HIV. ",
"HIV impairs your immune system leaving you vulnerable to opportunistic diseases. I watched Kaposi's sarcoma eat a childhood friend back in the late 70's. Fucking horrible.",
"Good answers. The HIV virus kills your helper T cells, which are an important part of your immune system. There's a host of diseases that crop up in AIDS patients that we almost never see in other people because our immune system usually handles them so easily.\n\nThe classic example is Kaposi's sarcoma, which is a cancer caused by a virus. Specifically Human Herpesvirus-8 (HHV-8). This is so rare in people with functional immune systems that having Kaposi's sarcoma - all by itself - is considered diagnostic of AIDS. That is, if you show up to the doctor with it, he will immediately conclude that you have AIDS and begin treatment.",
"It doesn't leave \"your body\" in a weakened state, it kills an important type of immune system cell.\n\nIf you had HIV but could avoid 100% of infections it wouldn't be an issue, but it's impossible to live your life safe from common viruses, fungal spores, bacteria, etc.",
"AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) kills immune cells, especially T-Helper (CD4) cells. These cells are responsible for the mobilization of the immune system, they recognize bacteria and viruses and target them for destruction.\n\nWhen HIV infects T-helper cells, they die. With the CD4 count drops below a threshold, the immune system can't keep up and bacteria that are otherwise harmless become dangerous. Serious infections such as tuberculosis become a major problem, and bacteria that normally live on our skin, such as Staphylococcus Aureus (known for MRSA) cause infections.\n\nHowever, even if you lived in a bubble away from bacteria and viruses, if your CD4 count was low enough to have AIDS then you would have lots of other problems. T-helper cells also mark cancerous cells for death. Cancers such as Karposi's Sarcoma are basically diagnostic for aids.\n\nFurthermore, eventually the HIV infection reaches the brain, causing HIV related dementia. While this isn't deadly it causes a major loss of quality of life.\n\ntl:dr: Other infections will probably kill a person with AIDS, but if they don't, then the person is likely to die of cancer or end up with dementia.",
"AIDS is not the \"thing\" that attacks your body, HIV is the \"thing\" - a virus. \n\nThis HIV virus attacks your body's immune system, leaving you systemically prone to all sorts of illnesses that others can naturally defend against. This syndrome - of being systemically prone to illness - is what we call AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). \n\nI think it is very important to understand every word in the AIDS acronym, as the acronym is pretty good ELI5 in and of itself. \n\nSo, the HIV virus causes a deficient immune system. All sorts of other complications are what actually kill you, as your immune system is deficient.",
"Supposedly Magic Johnson has a rare mutation that does not permit the HIV from completing a total infection of his body, this limiting him only to a carrier.",
"Think of your body as a fortress. Your immune system is the security staff that guards the fortress. AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) is the result of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) taking out your security team like a spy in a movie. \n\nExcept, the spy in a movie just wants to get in. HIV would be a bloodthirsty psychopath spy that seeks out every member of the security team and takes them out. They don't care about the fortress, they just want to kill your security team. \n\nEverything else that wanted in the fortress (your body) now has free reign, with your security team dead. This is what kills you.",
"Top answer is good. AIDS allows other things to kill you.\n\nIt's worth clearing the terminology up though.\n\n**HIV = Human Immunodeficiency Virus** An actual pathogen (biological agent which causes a disease) that infects the body through contact with fluids etc that contain the virus. The viruses enter your body and multiply. If you have \"got HIV\" it means the HIV virus is in your body.\n\nIf HIV is detected in a person, they are given antiretroviral drugs to stop the multiplication of the virus so that the symptoms of infection (damaged immune system) are slowed right down.\n\nAfter the virus has multiplied a lot and the symptoms start showing, it is described as... \n\n**AIDS - Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome** You have **acquired** (through being infected by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus) a **syndrome** (a set of medical signs and symptoms that are correlated with each other and may indicate the presence of a disease) which has made your **immune system deficient**.\n\nAIDS *describes* the state of having a severely compromised immune system as a result of something that has happened to you (such as infection with HIV.)\n\nThe meanings of these acronyms are important when you consider questions like \"why has person A got **HIV** but not **AIDS**?\" what do people mean when they say \"full blown AIDS?\" (they mean that your HIV infection has progressed to the point that you exhibit the symptoms of the syndrome.)\n\nThe most accurate way to describe somebody who is unwell because of all this is that they have, or are suffering from, \"HIVAIDS\" (pronounced H.I.V. aids)",
"HIV attacks your immune system until you get aids. Aids is \"auto immuno deficiency syndrome.\" It's a syndrome. Aids is just the name for when HIV reaches its final stages.\n\nPeople don't die from aids, its just the name for the syndrome they're facing due to hiv. People don't die from hiv either, its a virus that weakens peoples immune system so that rare diseases are able to take hold of them and kill them",
"People are still dying of AIDS but its just a few thousand a year now--1995 was the worst year, 50,000 died in that year alone in the USA",
"It basically strips you of your shields and armor and leaves you open for attack by any kind of harmful bacteria.",
"There are people who are naturally immune to the HIV virus as they have no receptors on their \"T\" cells. Many of Irish Decent have this trait, but this is not an excuse for Gingers to go out and start buggering each other... It is still not worth the risk",
"My dissertation centered around HIV mutations but to really understand what happens here.\n\nImagine your a dodgy guy with a windows PC. Getting HIV is like turning off your antivirus/antimalware. Now imagine what happens to that PC overtime as you keep going to all your dodgy porn sites.\n\nWithout your immune system (antivirus) eventually all the other things out there combine to brick your performance. ",
"Nothing. Aids doesn't kill you, but what it does to your immune system is the catalyst to everything else killing you. You are left defenseless, all those things that are trying to grow inside you, use you as food, have free reign. ",
"In the early days of AIDS most gay men died of Kaposi's sarcoma and initially AIDS was called gay cancer because this was the \"symptom\" the medical field could identify. Pneumocystis pneumonia was another frequent killer. \n\nBacteria that we all carry and is normally kept in check by our immune system can go wild if unchecked by a weakened immune system. While the current cocktails keep HIV in check those who are on these drugs for long periods of time develop other problems.\n",
"AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.\n\n\"Immune Deficiency\" is the main point. It means that your immune system stops working properly. This happens because HIV attacks it and severely weakens it and wipes it out. \n\n\"Syndrome\" means AIDS itself is not a disease, it is a bunch of stuff that happens to people after their immune systems have been weakened and destroyed by HIV (human immuno-deficiency virus). \n\nPeople who die of \"AIDS\" typically in fact die of some other disease, like pneumonia, which would not kill a healthly person. AIDS victims die from these sorts of ordinarily non-fatal diseases because their immune systems have been so badly damaged.",
"Remember in Star Trek when the Enterprise was under attack (PEW PEW) but they were ok because of their deflector shields? Well, AIDS lowers your body's deflector shield (immune system) and lets bad things (like, germs or a fungus) come in and kill you. ",
"Think of it this way. You are being invaded by a army made up of one man. Generally it would be easy to stop with hundreds of soldiers but a plague sickened your nation and killed all of your soliders. \n\nYour body basically has nothing left to defend itself from disease. ",
"3rd year MD student working in a city with a fucking ridiculously high number of non compliant to medication AIDS patients.\n\nThe same way a virus may specifically go after the cells in the back of your throat and give you a sore throat or a virus may be attracted to the cells in your lungs and give you pneumonia, the HIV/AIDS virus targets cells of your immune system, gets inside of them, replicates, and kills them. The metric we use to monitor \"how someone is doing\" with their health after infection is a measurement of their CD4+ T lymphocytes/helper T cells/CD4 cells. These are the specific cells that get infected. As the virus gets out of control, it kills more and more of these cells such that they are no longer able to coordinate the rest of your immune system to deal with normal, common infections that everybody and their mother has, but is too healthy to need to worry about. \n\nThe result is that HIV/AIDS patients become immunosuppressed, in that their immune system can no longer deal with shit that wouldn't bother you or me. When the CD4+ count gets low enough you become susceptible to specific bugs we call \"opportunistic infection\", called this because they take the opportunity to attack you when you are vulnerable/immunosuppressed. Some of these are annoying things like [candida albicans aka \"thrush\"](_URL_2_), other things that you become susceptible to are a bit more nasty, like tuburculosis. You also become likely to develop certain kinds of cancer like [kaposi's sarcoma](_URL_0_) which was extremely common back in the 80s and 90s; one of my current patients has something called [plasmablastic lymphoma](_URL_1_), that photo is pussy shit compared to what he came in with, massive lesions everywhere on his body compressing nerves and making him unable to use one of his legs, open his mouth or eye, one of which is on his back and is at least 7x4x2.5 inches large (we're giving him chemotherapy now and they're just melting away before our eyes). HIV patients disproportionately present with Hepatitis C, which can kill you on its own by destroying your liver and sending all sorts of toxins through your body. Other fungi and viruses and bacteria and crap can attack essentially anything in your body, especially your brain. \n\nWhen you become suppressed a lot of the infections can set up shop in your brain and cause encephalitis (inflammation of your brain), meningitis (inflammation of your spinal cord), or meningoencephalitis (inflammation of both). These can cause mental status changes, brain tissue destruction, screw with important regulatory functions in your brain (ex. if the part of your brain stem gets infected that deals with respiration, you may just stop being able to breath).\n\nThe thing to also keep in mind though, is that while these opportunistic infections are often what kills people, the virus itself can ruin your shit as well. The HIV/AIDS virus can cause fever, it can cause brain infections all by itself, it suppresses appetite and jacks up your metabolism so you lose a shit ton of weight and become malnourished, it causes muscle break down (one of the reasons that in the male gay community it is so glorified to be in increadible physical shape is because in the 80s/90s, before there was effective antiviral therapy, doctors would give patients anabolic steroids to build muscle mass, essentially saying that the virus was going to waste away their bodies, so give yourself a buffer zone and get jacked now, so people were working out literally to \"save\" their lives). \n\nSo, yes, even the common cold can kill you (immunosuppressed patients have to be careful of which vaccines they take because some vaccines have samples of the disease they help to prevent, kinda a little \"alive\" in them, though super weakened, normally your body sees that, learns what it is, kills it, and can kill it in the future, making you immune. Immunosuppressed patients might not be able to handle that tiny tiny little vaccine opponent though, and thus the vaccines can be a threat to them if they get the wrong type) and so seasonal flu is a big concern for AIDS patients. That being said, even just the HIV virus alone can kill you, although usually something else gets you first.\n\nTherapy for HIV/AIDS is called HAART, Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy and is aimed at preventing the virus from successfully replicating in those CD4+ cells and killing them in the process. The drugs we have now are incredible at controlling the infection. I read somewhere that in ideal situations HIV patients can live just about as long as non infected individuals, I'm remember 5 years less, but I'm not 110% sure about that. The medications have side effects, for sure, but if you take them you can live a pretty normal life, even to the point where the virus isn't identifiable in your system anymore and you legally wouldn't even need to disclose to a sexual partner that you have it, because your risk of transmitting the infection to someone new is so profoundly low."
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2i2ad6 | if sex with someone under 18 is a punishable crime, why do most states have an age of consent under 18 and how do they affect one another? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i2ad6/eli5_if_sex_with_someone_under_18_is_a_punishable/ | {
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"Sex with someone under 18 isn't always illegal.\n\nSome states have age of consent laws that are pretty weird.\n\nNew Jersey for example, you can have sex with someone under the age of 18 if you are within 4 years (to the birth date) of age to each other. So a 20 and a 17 year old, no problem. A 18 and a 14 year old, and you need to check your birthdays.\n\nIn Georgia, a person over 18 can have sex with anyone over 16, anyone under 16 can only only have sex with those under 18, between 16 and 18 you can consent to sex with anyone.",
"Your question doesn't really make sense because this is not a universally accepted ethic. You might as well ask \"if drinking alcohol under 21 is illegal in some states or countries, how come it is legal in others?\". It's up to individual states and countries to set their own age limits for various activities, and not all of them agree on what is the appropriate age."
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574lcu | why does lighting have such a massive affect on how we see ourselves in the mirror/in a picture? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/574lcu/eli5_why_does_lighting_have_such_a_massive_affect/ | {
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"Because the only thing you can actually see is light. \n\nEverything you see comes as the result of how light reflects off other objects, so changing the nature of those reflections changes what you are seeing, too. ",
"Different types of lightbulbs give off a different band of colour. The old incandescent bulbs gave off a lot of infra-red light, by way of example. \n\nSince different colours on your body reflect different colours of light, the light reflected is the light that you see. And if the light that is given off is restricted, the reflection that you see is going to be equally restricted. \n\nThis is the reason why so many different forms of media and advertising have very specialised lighting - so that they can manipulate how the object in question is actually viewed by other people, and captured on camera. \n\nAnd if you are wondering, the light from standard LED bulbs is the closest type of lightbulb to natural sunlight"
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1a49av | state of the middle east: why have the taliban been able to operate so easily? who do they receive their resources from? why is the government so corrupt? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1a49av/eli5_state_of_the_middle_east_why_have_the/ | {
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"the Taliban are in Afghanistan and Pakistan, neither of which are in the Middle East. Those are both Asian countries. "
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4xcg3h | in history we always learn about the jewish extermination in the holocaust, how come nobody ever talks about the other millions who perished? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xcg3h/eli5_in_history_we_always_learn_about_the_jewish/ | {
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"People do [talk about them](_URL_0_) and there's a lot of other sites dedicated to them. The Jewish persecution was simply a core element of the Nazi rise to power and their central ideology, and it was the biggest of the extermination targets, so it gets the most attention.\n\nIt looks like the next biggest in the victim count are [Soviet POWs](_URL_1_), followed by ethnic Poles.\n\nAs an aside, I think Jews also count as 'regular people' :P",
"People are *constantly* talking about all the non-Jews that were killed in the Holocaust. More attention is paid to the Jews because they were the primary target of the Nazi's propaganda & they account for roughly half of the victims.",
"Turkey officially deny that the [Armenian Genocide] (_URL_0_) ever happened, but they are an important NATO ally in the region. So some countries including the USA are cautious when talking about it, for diplomatic reasons, but this is changing. Israel's Knesset recently gave it formal recognition. The state of California is expanding its school curriculum to include more about this and other genocides, including Native Americans. However, President Obama recently [passed] (_URL_1_) on an opportunity to use the G word, presumably after pressure from the State Department. ",
"Since nobody said it so far, the Holocaust itself refers only to the killings of the Jews. \n\nIn Germany we learn about all the other victims like gays, christians, political opposition, disabled and Roma, but the word Holocaust is normally used for the Jews.",
"Jews aren't regular people?\n\nSpeaking as a Jew, I certainly heard about the Holocaust as something that happened to Jews as a child, but when we studied it the queers, Roma, and political prisoners were also included in the discussion. ",
"I believe that we talk about the holocaust more because the jews are more influential in the united states. Think about all the jewish holidays we have that let the children off school. Compared to Lunar new year (Chinese new year), where NYC just started to recognize as a holiday for asians. Think about all the things we do for the jewish community in united states to accommodate them, like the day where they cannot touch electronical things with a finger or w/e. The biggest hospital mount sinai hospital in new york has the elevators to run every floor for them automatically all day. There are obviously more people killed in different situations like the atomic bombs we dropped on japan. We never really explore into what happened to japan afterwards, only that we dropped two bombs and that japan attacked pearl harbour that \"instigated\" that.",
"In rural Tennessee circa 1977 public school I was taught about the 6 million Jews exterminated during WWII. It wasn't until many years later when I heard a radio talk show talking about politically correct history books calling the black victims African Americans that I even knew there were non-Jewish victims.",
"Several reasons including textbooks that overlook these facts so children don't learn it in school, human bias that empathizes more with some ethnic groups than others, and hollywood. Look at how many movies there are about the Jewish perspective on the holocaust and then look at how many movies there are about the gypsy perspective for instance. \n\nThere are actual laws in Europe now to prevent hate speech against Jewish people yet Gypsies are still treated like street trash. There are many places in Europe even today where Gypsy ghettos are walled off by city officials to separate them from the rest of the city. \n\nSince it's not the celebrity cause of the moment, people don't know and people don't care. \n\n\nFinally there is something like a public consciousness. Think of it as common sense, all those little things we pick up from each other that collectively everybody knows. Everybody knows Nazi's were bad. Everybody knows about the holocaust. But other than the occasional insightful question on ELI5, or talking to somebody who was affected by the holocaust as a non Jewish person, how would you know? \n\n\nIf you want to see an example of unintentional bias, look at the USA, Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, and all of the countries of the new world. Do you associate them with Nazi's? What about genocide? Probably not. Yet massive genocide was committed in the new world against native peoples and they were also enslaved. But if you think about slavery do you think about Indians being given the choice of converting to Catholicism or being enslaved? Or do you think about Africans in Georgia? \n\nIt's the same reason that when you hear genocide you think about WW2 or Bosnia, but not about Cuba, or California or Ontario. \n"
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rtpyx | how most animals get older even though cells "reproduce"? | To be honest, I am not that far through education and I will probably learn it in a year or something, but I am really wondering why it is that we get wrinkles, weaker, grey hair etc. even though cells "change" themselves. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rtpyx/eli5_how_most_animals_get_older_even_though_cells/ | {
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"We get old because we are programmed to. From an evolutionary perspective, a species can only adapt to its environment over time if the old generation dies and makes way for the new generation after reproducing.\n\nA species in which the older generation never aged and died wouldn't be able to evolve; the environment would reach its carrying capacity relatively quickly and there wouldn't be any room for new individuals.",
"[Strands of DNA molecules called DNA](_URL_0_)\n\nTL;DR version: The telomeres are like the cannon fodder in a time of war. They are the ones that get killed and killed so that the Lieutenants and Majors and Colonels don't have to get killed. As the cannon fodder gets killed and killed more, there are less and less of them. Once they all go out, then only higher-ups are left. This is the part where the higher-ups lose.\n\nScience version: The telomeres are repetitions of the same code of DNA at the end of our entire genetic mapping. Whenever cells reproduce, evolutionary constraints force the tip of our DNA to be lost. The telomeres, whose DNA is expendable, takes the full force of this. So, as the telomeres shorten, we can't reproduce as fast, and when they are finished, we start the dying process, which is headed by the aging process.\n\nHope this isn't too much.",
"A teacher back in high school explained it beautifully. She said, you know how when you make a copy of a document or picture using a copy machine, it looks fine, but then, when you go to make a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of the original, over time, it just starts to looks awful and you can barely make out what it even is? That's kind of like the aging process in cells."
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2sgnmc | is the sperm that creates offspring the most dominant or does it rely more on chance? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sgnmc/eli5_is_the_sperm_that_creates_offspring_the_most/ | {
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"Dominant isn't necessarily a useful concept here.\n\nThe sperm that fertilizes the egg is generally longer and slower than average. Arriving sperm fight the already present sperm, so the slower sperm arrives later and does less fighting, and is longer so it's more successful. \n\nHowever, other long sperm can arrive later and miss fertilization, or arrive earlier but be overcome by other combative sperm. So it's probably best to say it's largely left to chance."
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jg32w | how does facebook gets income if they offer their website and all of its contents for free? | I suck at economics | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jg32w/eli5_how_does_facebook_gets_income_if_they_offer/ | {
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"They have advertisements. ",
"Facebook users aren't their customers; the users are the product. Facebook's customers are advertising agencies and gaming companies.",
"Facebook has a three pronged approach to income: facebook credits, advertising, and deals. I come more from the advertising side so I understand that part a bit better. Facebook makes money the same way Google predominantly makes money: through targeted advertising. \n\nFacebook allows you to target their ads based off keywords found in user profiles. For example, I used to have to sell a Dexter costume for Halloween. I would obviously target if a person liked the show Dexter, but I also might target Showtime, CSI, and male ages 18-34. These are all sort of related to each other and roughly fit the demographic that watches Dexter. I might even include other Showtime shows like Weeds or Californication to capture as much of that market as possible. Facebook works on a CPC (Cost per click) basis so everytime someone clicks on one of our ads, we pay FB an amount of money that is based on what key words are present in the person's profile who clicked. \"Dexter\" specifically may cost less than \"Showtime\" which is a bit broader and thus covers more people. The more targeted and minute the term used, the less it generally costs. A term like TV, Food, or Sexy would be so broad that it covers a lot of people, but also costs more per click to use.\n\nOn the other side, FB also has created \"credits\" which people buy for real money. They can then use these credits to purchase tractors in Farmville, weapons in Mafia Wars, or a limitless other number of online knick knacks found in social games. Facebook takes a cut out of each credit purchased so this is an alternative income for them.\n\nThe third avenue that is very new for them is in local deal placement. This is essentially just like sites like Groupon or livingsocial.\n\nELI5:\nFacebook has three ways to make money.\n\nThey make money first by looking at what you like. They can then show you ads that are just like the things that you like. So if you say you like Nickelodeon, they may show you a way to go look at and buy posters of Spongebob. Every time you go and look at this other place that sells posters of Spongebob, facebook is being paid by the store owner of Spongebob posters.\n\nThey also make money whenever you are playing your online games like farmville. When you ask your mom or dad to buy you that super fast tractor or those plants that give you lots of food, your mom and dad have to spend real money to get that for you. They give some of this money to facebook.\n\nFacebook also makes money by helping you and all your friends find something fun to do. Sometimes they tell you about a really cool place you might want to try, but you have to get all your friends together first to go there. If you can get all your friends together and all buy a pass to go to this cool place, facebook makes a little money from being the person that told you about it from the place you are going to.\n\n\nTried my best, let me know if it is too complicated or not good enough.",
"Remember: If you're not paying for it, you're the product. \nAdvertisers pay facebook for access to YOUR web browser.",
"They have advertisements. ",
"Facebook users aren't their customers; the users are the product. Facebook's customers are advertising agencies and gaming companies.",
"Facebook has a three pronged approach to income: facebook credits, advertising, and deals. I come more from the advertising side so I understand that part a bit better. Facebook makes money the same way Google predominantly makes money: through targeted advertising. \n\nFacebook allows you to target their ads based off keywords found in user profiles. For example, I used to have to sell a Dexter costume for Halloween. I would obviously target if a person liked the show Dexter, but I also might target Showtime, CSI, and male ages 18-34. These are all sort of related to each other and roughly fit the demographic that watches Dexter. I might even include other Showtime shows like Weeds or Californication to capture as much of that market as possible. Facebook works on a CPC (Cost per click) basis so everytime someone clicks on one of our ads, we pay FB an amount of money that is based on what key words are present in the person's profile who clicked. \"Dexter\" specifically may cost less than \"Showtime\" which is a bit broader and thus covers more people. The more targeted and minute the term used, the less it generally costs. A term like TV, Food, or Sexy would be so broad that it covers a lot of people, but also costs more per click to use.\n\nOn the other side, FB also has created \"credits\" which people buy for real money. They can then use these credits to purchase tractors in Farmville, weapons in Mafia Wars, or a limitless other number of online knick knacks found in social games. Facebook takes a cut out of each credit purchased so this is an alternative income for them.\n\nThe third avenue that is very new for them is in local deal placement. This is essentially just like sites like Groupon or livingsocial.\n\nELI5:\nFacebook has three ways to make money.\n\nThey make money first by looking at what you like. They can then show you ads that are just like the things that you like. So if you say you like Nickelodeon, they may show you a way to go look at and buy posters of Spongebob. Every time you go and look at this other place that sells posters of Spongebob, facebook is being paid by the store owner of Spongebob posters.\n\nThey also make money whenever you are playing your online games like farmville. When you ask your mom or dad to buy you that super fast tractor or those plants that give you lots of food, your mom and dad have to spend real money to get that for you. They give some of this money to facebook.\n\nFacebook also makes money by helping you and all your friends find something fun to do. Sometimes they tell you about a really cool place you might want to try, but you have to get all your friends together first to go there. If you can get all your friends together and all buy a pass to go to this cool place, facebook makes a little money from being the person that told you about it from the place you are going to.\n\n\nTried my best, let me know if it is too complicated or not good enough.",
"Remember: If you're not paying for it, you're the product. \nAdvertisers pay facebook for access to YOUR web browser."
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9jtt09 | what is alcohol poisoning? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9jtt09/eli5_what_is_alcohol_poisoning/ | {
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"Alcohol is a poison in of itself. When you have enough of it in your body it affects your ability to think clearly or remember things. This is because it goes to the brain and disrupts it. If you continue to take in more alcohol, it starts to cause problems in other body functions automatically regulated by your brain like balance, and even breathing and the beating of your heart in extreme cases.\n\nTechnically alcohol poisoning starts when you feel that first warm buzz. That is your body going \"Hey! There is something funny going on inside me...\"\n But as you take in more, the effects become much more damaging. But it is short term, your body will eventually break down the poison and you will begin to return to normal. But only if you did not overwhelm your body all at once with more alcohol than it can process deal with.\n\nYour body will also try to forcibly remove the poison by forcing you to throw up if it detects a lot of alcohol in your blood. \n\nLong story short, alcohol is a poison, your body knows it, and when you have more of it than your body can deal with, then you have alcohol poisoning.",
"You can be poisoned by too much of any substance. The exact amount varies dramatically depending on the substance.\n\nToo much lead will give you lead poisoning, then you will be very very sick and you are likely to suffer organ failure and die if immediate help is not available.\n\nToo much alcohol will give you alcohol poisoning, then you will be very very sick and you are likely to suffer organ failure and die if medical help is not sought.",
"Alcohol poisoning occurs when the ethanol in recreational alcohol reaches a concentration that it starts to mess with your cell membranes.\n\nBecause of the structure of ethanol, it readily inserts itself into a cell membrane and disrupts the cellular chemistry. At lower concentrations when this happens to your nerve and brain cells it leads to intoxication. \n\nAt high enough concentrations ethanol (and other alcohols) can basically shut down both the voluntary (somatic) and eventually the involuntary nervous system, which leads to death via hypothermia and suffocation (along with a few other symptoms). ",
"Whenever you eat or drink something, it goes into the stomach, then liquids and nutrients go into the blood, relatively fast. Then it's the job of the liver to \"process\" all the nutrients and substances present in the blood, and convert to usable stuff (metabolize them). And it's the job of the kidneys to remove waste chemicals and excess water from the blood.\n\nSo, the liver takes some time, a few hours. The kidneys take time, at least a few minutes to an hour. If you drink too fast, the concentration of alcohol goes into your blood very fast, and before the liver has a chance to neutralize it, the blood spreads it everywhere, including to your brain, where it affects you. \n\nLow concentration of alcohol in the blood and in the brain: you're drunk. High concentration: you're poisoned. Super-high concentration (OD): you possibly die.\n\nThis can happen with anything, even water. There is such a thing as drinking too much water / water poisoning.",
"Our body doesn't like alcohol. So it makes friends to beat it up. The more you drink, the more friends it makes. If you don't drink often but then drink a lot, your body doesn't have enough friends and gets beat up instead."
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aaona2 | why do some shirts seem to shrink horizontally when washed and dried, whereas others seem to shrink vertically? | For example, I've bought a couple of the 'same' shirts in different colors in the past, and I've noticed one shirt getting tighter around the midsection (horizontal shrinking) while the other shirt seems to get shorter when dried (vertical shrinking). | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aaona2/eli5_why_do_some_shirts_seem_to_shrink/ | {
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"not entirely sure from this,\ncan't see the shirts, but have seen similar situations. some fabrics, especially knits but also others, have a direction to them, the fabric is made in a way that the way the fibers are put together is not identical in all directions, like vertical vs horizontal, these tend to also stretch and shrink in non symmetrical ways. it's possible that you're shirts are made with fabric like that,but cut in different directions."
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101wsw | how can porn companies legally make movie/tv show parodies (i.e. ironman, jersery shore, etc.)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/101wsw/eli5_how_can_porn_companies_legally_make_movietv/ | {
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"Copyright laws are explicitly written to allow parodies."
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1q4pwl | what happens to mercury once it enters the human body? | I've recently found a liking for tuna...only to realize I can't eat too much of it every week.... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q4pwl/eli5_what_happens_to_mercury_once_it_enters_the/ | {
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"It hangs around on the kidneys as the body tries (and fails) to break it down. ",
"Our bodies class of enzymes called selenoenzymes that have many functions. One of these functions that is incredibly important is their ability to counteract oxidative cellular damage. The explanation of how they do this is a whole other subject that I am going to omit in this explanation to make it less complicated. Selenoenzymes, as their name suggests, contain selenium. Mercury is is highly reactive with selenium. When mercury reacts with the selenoenzymes it irreversibly inactivates them. The inactivation of these enzymes results in oxidative brain and endocrine damage. \n\nSmall amounts of tuna are not going to cause any noticeable effects. The body has ways of dealing with mercury and will get rid of it, but its not a very fast process, which is why prolonged exposure to mercury can cause it to build up to dangerous levels. Just limit yourself to 2-3 servings of tuna per week and you will be fine.\nSince mercury poisoning is dependent on concentration in the body, your size will make a difference. There are websites that can calculate the safe amount of tuna to eat. For me, 170 pound male, I can have 2.5 cans of tuna per week. "
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2ozjq7 | how do plant-based organisms survive at the bottom of the oceans if light doesn't penetrate that deep? | Do they have some mechanism other than photosynthesis to produce food? Do they absorb water-borne minerals to survive? Are there simply no plants that deep? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ozjq7/eli5_how_do_plantbased_organisms_survive_at_the/ | {
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"Life at that depth doesn't use photosynthesis.\n\nCheck out this extremely interesting read on life that lives off of hydrothermal vents: \n\n_URL_0_",
"There are two basic categories of life, prokaryotes (bacteria and archea) and eukaryotes which we are. Basically eukaryotes have a cell nucleus and prokaryotes don't. The nucleus is a region that has a membrane(like a skin) that separates it from the rest of the cell. Eukaryotes are generally much larger and have a lot more DNA. Every eukaryotes has the same metabolism. All animals from sponges to humans, all plants, all fungi, all protists get energy by breaking down organic molecules and feeding them into the citric acid cycle. After this step, intermediate products are fed into something called the electron transport chain and at the end oxygen is used to accept a electron. The energy comes basically by lowering the energy of an electron. Plants get there energy this way as well, but they make the sugar first using a photo system that produces oxygen. So plants actually consume and produce oxygen.\n\nOkay, so while all eukaryotes are pretty much the same metabolically, prokaryotes have many different kinds of metabolism. There are prokaryotes that can utilize nitrogen out of the air, there are some that produce methane and others that can consume methane. They can utilize a wide range of terminal electron acceptors like iron, sulfate, nitrate, sulfur and more. Basically they have many different ways to get energy from the environment. They even have a photosynthesis that doesn't make oxygen. So when you see an ecosystem where there is very little or no light, the primary producer (the thing that makes the energy that everything in the ecosystem consumes) is a prokaryote that is using one of these other metabolisms or material is coming in from somewhere else.\n\nFor the deep ocean, some carbon does just kind of drift down. At the vents there are tubeworms that survive entirely on bacteria that live inside them. The bacteria utilize hydrogen sulfide. This might seem odd at first, but it is not unusual for a eukaryote. So plants are made mostly of cellulose and there is no eukaryote that can break cellulose, we don't have the enzyme that can break it down. Cows which eat primarily grass don't have the enzyme anymore than we do. A bacteria that lives in it gut does.\n\nIt's actually crazier than even that, because it turns out that eukaryotes are the result of a union between a bacteria and archea (or some combination). You might have heard of mitochondria in our cells and chloroplasts in plant cells? Well, they are both the result of endosymbiosis when a cell engulfed another cell and they synced up cell replication. \n\nLife in the deep ocean lives primarily on energy made by prokaryotes and it turns out (if you consider herbivores and endosymbiosis) that multicellular life often does.\n\n"
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afep62 | the gasoline shortages in mexico. what's causing this? what do both sides say? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/afep62/eli5_the_gasoline_shortages_in_mexico_whats/ | {
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"Here's what a little bird told me. There has been increasing fuel theft in Mexico from criminals tapping into the pipelines that normally transfer fuel. So to stop the theft, they shut down the pipelines and are using tankers to deliver the fuel. It's not enough to keep up with demand, so people waiting for hours at a chance to get fuel. "
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eu82g1 | why our immune system does not destroy cancer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eu82g1/eli5_why_our_immune_system_does_not_destroy_cancer/ | {
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"Because the immune system is designed to detect bacteria/viruses and in general things or cells that don't belong to your body. Cancer cells originate from cells in your very own body. The immune system is in most cases able to detect if cells mutate in a way that's bad for you. But sometimes, the cancer cells can basically disguise themselves as normal cells or inactivate the immune system's reaction against them. So, in most cases your immune system detects cancerous or pre-cancerous cells. When they don't, a tumor can grow and you get cancer.\n\nMy references, I'm a med student and have just completed my immunology course :)",
"It does. Cancer cells pop up all the time, and your immune system (specifically, the Killer T cells, which are specialized at destroying the body's own cells when they become unhealthy, infected, or dangerous) usually is able to destroy them. You get tumors when the cancer growth outpaces the body's ability to destroy it.",
"It does. In fact, you get cancer all the time, but your immune system destroys it before it can become much of a threat. It's the rare case when your immune system isn't able to do this that you end up in danger.",
"Good answers in here already. It's also interesting that immunotherapy is one of the more promising research areas for cancer treatment. We're learning how to get the body's immune system to treat cancer like a disease while still leaving healthy tissue alone. It's really, really difficult. Still, it holds some promise.",
"Just recently started watching “Cells at Work” in Netflix. It’s like the magic school bus meets anime. And there’s an episode about cancer cells. Really awesome show. Makes biology interesting to those of us who are not normally inclined!",
"It was my understanding, that most of the time, our immunesystem DOES detect and contain cancer cells, long before they grow enough to be detected or be problematic. \nWe constantly have mutating cells in our body that are detected and killed off.\nFull blown cancer is hence a failing of the immunesystem, which is my immunotherapy is such an effective treatment? \n\nOr did I get things all wrong?",
"To clarify, your immune system DOES destroy cancer cells. At least, the ones it can recognise. What we now know and are beginning to understand is that cancer cells are very sneaky and have methods of evading the immune system. It’s one of Hanahan and Weinberg’s ‘Hallmarks of Cancer’, which are set of properties cancers can use to take a grip within the body and ultimately result in cancer taking hold."
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7nmzqz | when and why did sleeping at night become the cultural norm? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7nmzqz/eli5_when_and_why_did_sleeping_at_night_become/ | {
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"Basically since forever.\n\nHumans are diurnal (active durring the day). Our anotomy supports diurnal, rather than nocturnal, activity, so nighttime is the best time to sleep, as it is when our anatomy is least effective."
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1vxyja | why don't riots like ukraine and other countries happen in america? | I mean the only things I can remember is Occupy but not near a big enough scale or maybe the LA riots. Is it that not enough people care? This is not about one particular issue. There just seems to be big enough groups that do care greatly about a belief that I am shocked that it doesn't happen. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vxyja/eli5_why_dont_riots_like_ukraine_and_other/ | {
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"American life, even with all we complain about, is still pretty good. Most of us have all of our necessities covered and many (if not all) of the luxuries we want. Our health care system might not be what we want, but we can still see a doctor if we needed to. Our government might not be giving us what we want, but we're still free to protest and complain about it, as well as vote out those we don't like.",
"If you look around and you only see a handful of people homeless and without food, it's really not that bad. Regardless of all the politics, discussions, news articles, conspiracy theorists, this is a pretty fair life so far compared to the rest of those countries. We have food, shelter, opportunity and knowledge everywhere. And just for good measure, here's some entertainment and a few distractions. \n\nCould it change tomorrow? Absolutely. ",
"In this particular case, it started with protests over one issue (the whole EU vs Russia thing basically that kicked this off), but the police got extremely heavy-handed and began using violence back in November at some student protests.\n\nThe mayor of Kiev was dragged out by the government over allegations he'd ordered the police to use violent tactics, but then last week the government rushed out a bunch of anti-protest laws restricting freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and put them into action *without* most of the legal procedures being followed. They've been heavily criticized and dubbed draconian, with a common view being that they've essentially turned the country into a dictatorship.\n\nIt'd be kind of comparable in the US to if the Occupy movement had been met by Obama suddenly passing a bunch of emergency anti-protest and anti-free speech laws without bothering with the house of representatives or the senate. Maybe then you'd see people take to violence against the US government and a situation similar to Kiev.",
"Because people in USA have pretty good life. They have stable well paying jobs and can easily find one (compared to other countries) witch leads to having good living standard. When people leave comfortably they find it much easier to overlook at some abuses. ",
"When Ukraine seceded from the USSR it didn't become a model democracy. It still has serious corruption problems, poverty, ethnical division, and they also see their western neighbours improvement while they started from similar position, just aligned with Russia instead of the Eu.",
"What are we rioting about?",
"I don't know if you count Canada in America, but here in Montréal, we had a pretty huge student strike over tuition hike called \"Le Printemps Érable\", Maple Spring. In two or three occasion, there were at least one hundred thousand people in the streets and hundreds of arrests.\n\nBut the worst, and the best of it, came out when the government passed a special law called Bill 78. On May 22, 2012, in response to the passage of Bill 78 and in commemoration of 100 days since the beginning of the student strike, another march took place, with tens of thousands of marchers and approximately 1,000 arrests. Also, because of the special law, tens of thousands of people, who were not affiliated with the student movement, filled down the streets making noise with their casserole as a sign of protest with the special law. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n\n",
"Because we have a good life here. ",
"Even if a lot of people want a specific side on the issue, in the United States citizens still have the right to protest about it, and can express their opinion and viewpoint and at least talk about it with their senator among others. You can have as stupid of an opinion as you want, but it won't be repressed unless you violate the rights of others, or other limitations that I don't know enough of.\n\nIn Ukraine, their ability to protest legally has been repressed severely. Aside from their government being elected officials, I don't know much about their society, but taking something like that away and replacing it with arrests and potential violence sounds like something to fight against. In the United States, that just doesn't tend to happen.\n\n",
"I think the main difference between US and Ukraine or Greece is that when you live in US i.e. NYC and suddenly you don't like what the government is doing so you will pack your crap and move to Texas or somewhere else. If you could remove all the borders and language barriers in Europe people would have less reasons to riot. \n",
"Because there's a thing in America called 'Free Benefits'. The US government keeps the majority of the population happy with these 'Free Benefits' so therefor they don't have enough of a reason to do so. Logically what is happening in the Ukraine needs to happen here because of the corrupt/tyrannical government we have, but what's happening in the Ukraine is about a completely different reason.",
"It's simple complacency. We have become very materialistic and are trading our rights and freedoms in the hopes of maintaining our comfort."
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1qywd8 | why does water make weird shapes when exposed to a really low and loud sound? | Or any other liquid for that matter?
[Here's an example](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qywd8/eli5_why_does_water_make_weird_shapes_when/ | {
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"The water doesn't look like that to someone standing there. [Here's the original video](_URL_0_) where you can see the mechanism a bit more. The hose is being bounced up and down by the speaker to make a wave pattern in the water stream. That wave is tuned to the camera's frequency so that every time the camera takes a picture, the water that was at the highest peak is now at the second highest peak, and so on down the line. So long as you're close to the spout, the water doesn't have time to separate much and it appears to the camera as though it's floating in the air. "
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3c58mk | how do websites that host tv shows for free not get taken down? | i.e: _URL_1_, _URL_2_, _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3c58mk/eli5_how_do_websites_that_host_tv_shows_for_free/ | {
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"Either they've bought a license to show it from the producer and are using ad money to support themselves, some of their ad money is going straight to the producer, or they are pirating the videos and just haven't been caught yet.",
"Why isn't every jay walker cited? Because law enforcement, and copyright investigators can't catch everyone all the time. \n\nEventually it will get shutdown. Especially now that you announced those sites in a public forum."
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1oxwqi | why was a city like new orleans built... | ...below sea level? Did city planners assume that the levys would always hold? Why put so many people in such danger? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1oxwqi/eli5_why_was_a_city_like_new_orleans_built/ | {
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"It wasn't really planned. It was just a bunch of French settlers, I believe, who chose the area because it looked legit. It ballooned in size, and suddenly city planners realized that the whole area wasn't such a great place to build a metropolis in after all. They built levies which could withstand crazy pressure and force. Just not, you know, a Category 5 hurricane's storm surge kind of force -- no one expected that it was going to be that strong.",
"Native New Orlenean here\n\nThe story they told us growing up was that France wanted to build a port at the mouth of the Mississippi to control shipping. Unfortunately, there are literally hundreds of miles of swamps in the Mississippi delta so they had trouble finding a place to build. As I recall, they basically sent two dudes named Iberville and Bienville upriver in a boat and they just got out every now and then to see if the ground was still squishy or not. Eventually, they came to a bend in the river with a natural levee that was high enough to be relatively safe for building. \n\nIt's always struck me as a funny story but it's not as totally stupid as it sounds once you start looking into the local geography. First off, the original settlement (otherwise known as the French Quarter) is actually about 3 feet above sea level and, while I think some parts of it went into the river in the early days, to my knowledge it's never been totally wiped out by a flood before. Now, that isn't to say there wasn't some engineering involved in keeping it from flooding but the French Quarter itself isn't that hard to keep dry compared to other parts of the city.\n\nFlooding only becomes a serious issue (relatively speaking) when you start moving into some of the outlying communities. As the population grew, they drained and filled swamps and built on land that is at or below sea level. Since those areas lie between the natural levees surrounding the river and Lake Ponchartrain, they're in a giant bowl that collects water every time it rains. The only way to get rid of that water is with a system of canals and giant honking pumps. Also, the soil has a really high organic content (dead stuff) which compacts very quickly and makes the ground sink even more. There are some neighborhoods where people have to fill in their yards and replace their driveways on a regular basis because the houses are on pilings, and thus do not move, but the yard and driveways keep sinking. (Real estate tip: If you're thinking of moving to New Orleans, do not buy one of those houses)\n\nAs for why people built on such obviously substandard land... You have to keep in mind that New Orleans is one of the oldest cities in the country. They didn't plan it out like a retirement community in Florida. They just did what they could to meet the demands of a growing population and tried to make it as safe as possible by installing pumps and canals to keep the low lying areas dry. People who live there, stay there because their families live there and, frankly, because it's an AWESOME place to live. If I ever move back, I'll definitely buy a house above sea level but the flooding risk is worth the cultural rewards in all but the most irresponsibly planned developments. \n\nEDIT: I also want to mention that many cities are built in inherently dangerous locations. In the US alone, New Orleans, Miami, New York, San Francisco, LA, Seattle, St. Louis, and Memphis are all built in vulnerable locations for one reason or another, and most of those have been constructed in ways that make them even more vulnerable to their particular Achilles heel. ",
"Cities are almost always built near water for 1) irrigation and 2) shipping."
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32bbgg | why is it that "jobs" are the resource that our economy so desperately needs? if there's nothing that needs doing, isn't that a good thing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32bbgg/eli5why_is_it_that_jobs_are_the_resource_that_our/ | {
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"The economy desperately needs more taxpayers, more people with some expendable income.",
"The capitalistic system can not cope with the fact that people would not be able to find a job. \n\nAfter all, in the case that people can't find a job, they can't get paid, they will have to cut consumption. This results in more people losing their jobs, resulting in a spiral which inevitably crashes the entire economy.",
"OK so take Billy. billy is a 24 year old who has various diffsdnst subscriptions to things and buys things locally. Now, poor billy loses his job. \n\nBilly has to save money, so he cuts his Netflix,, Spotify and Xbox subscription. He decided that he should start buying his grocerys online not realistic )\n\nThat mom and pop shop that supplied billy with his grocery's loses money, which means over time cutbacks are needed. This effects all chains of production from making the product to shipping",
"People who work are earning wages. They then spend those wages on goods and services produced by other people. Those other people take the money they earned from selling their goods and services and buy *other* goods and services.\n\nBusinesses get money from their sale of goods and services and what isn't used to cover their expenses (wages for their workers, materials, etc) can be spent to improve their goods or services or to develop new ones.\n\nSome of the money people earn is put into banks who use it to give out loans to businesses who want to grow, which typically involves hiring more people who earn wages that they can spend. The businesses then pay the bank back and the bank can give more loans and pay the people who saved money with them.\n\nThe government takes a slice of all money earned and spent and uses it on public services such as roads, schools etc, which require people to work on them so the government pays their wages which they use to buy goods and services.\n\nAnd so the money goes round and round and round. As long as people are earning money and spending it. The more people are earning, the more money there is to go around for everyone."
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59ffz8 | why do people buy/ live in "tiny houses"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/59ffz8/eli5_why_do_people_buy_live_in_tiny_houses/ | {
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"Maybe they don't like living in a big space like I would rather live in an apartment with one bedroom then a mansion. It's all personal presence.",
"It's about being as economical and efficient as possible. With our population spiraling out of control, we're eventually going to need to adjust by cutting down the amount of space each person expects in their living area, and in turn also cut down on unnecessary resource consumption (less area means it costs less to heat and cool, things like that). It's just a new-fangled sort of environmentalism. ",
"Land in big cities is cheap and accounts for most of the cost of buying a house. Smaller buildings use less land, assuming you can get a lot drawn up & zoned for them.\n\nA lot of what people are labeling \"tiny houses\" are really just \"trailer homes\" that are distanced from the poor white trash connotations of it.",
"Another factor in the attraction is forcing oneself to \"Live Simply.\" Less space means less clothes and generally less stuff. [George Carlin's take](_URL_0_) on the matter of \"stuff.\" Pair down to the essentials; just enough living space, belongings, expenses. Holy shit, before you know it, regular folks can afford to travel, or start a family, maybe pay off a mountain of student loan debt! \n\nNot to mention learning some construction which eventually translates to home maintenance/repair if they decide to do some or all of their own work.\nEdit: formatting"
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1pstcd | why don't i see more picture in a 1080p resolution vs 720p | I've spent the last hour reading up on resolutions and aspect ratios on ELI5 and I've pretty much wrapped my head around it but I can't seem to find an answer to one question.
When advertising HDTV, companies said you would see more of the picture with a higher resolution. For example a picture of a house at 720p would be a picture of a house with part of the next door house in the shot at 1080p. I also remember this being a thing for gaming as well. You'd gain more peripheral vision and see more. But I don't find that's the case. When I switch from 720p to 1080p on games, I still see the same amount of image. Sure the picture quality is better on 1080p, but since the measurement is higher, for video games anyway, should I see more of what's going on? I do have a full 1080p display for my PC and TV. On console gaming, there is no difference. Why? PC gaming, from what I can tell nowadays, no difference either however I only just got a new rig and haven't had a lot of experience. I THINK I recall some PC games offering more of the view, but games like COD when you see resolution comparisons, it's the same field of view, one just looking sharper. I just don't get WHY.
I assume for movies and tv that the size of the picture can only go as high as they filmed, so if they filmed 16:9, the image gets cut on 4:3 but if you go larger than 16:9, it can't magically make up the image if the camera only recorded at 16:9
EDIT: I guess what I mean is why isn't the field of view larger as you go from 7209 to 1080p? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pstcd/eli5_why_dont_i_see_more_picture_in_a_1080p/ | {
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" > why isn't the field of view larger as you go from 720p to 1080p?\n\nQuite simply, it's because the entire point of higher resolution is usually better quality, not a larger field of view. No one wants a better display just so they can see more of a scene at the same low quality. Instead, they want to see the same amount of \"stuff\" as before, but in *higher* quality.\n\n > since the measurement is higher, for video games anyway, should I see more of what's going on?\n\nHow much of the scene that you see is determined by the FOV (field of view) parameter. That value was purposefully selected to provide an optimal experience. More pixels just means that everything in your field of view is higher quality (and a lower resolution would display the same scene in lower quality).",
"To fit more on the same size(inches) screen everything will have to become smaller.\n\nThis has 2 disadvantages, FOV and the viewers sight.\n\nThe viewers sight is easy to explain, although you could fit more on a 1080 screen it will become smaller. Older people and people with poor sight wont be able to see the detail anymore.\n\nFOV or field of view is a bit harder. [FOV](_URL_0_) is basically the angle at which your eyes receive light.\nYour eyes have a FOV and the camera has an FOV. \n\nYou could set the FOV of the camera in game very wide so you see a lot but because your own FOV is so different you'd be disoriented and could get headaches."
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67ivwy | saudi arabia's un women's council appointment? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67ivwy/eli5_saudi_arabias_un_womens_council_appointment/ | {
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"The 'how' is pretty easy: the UN is broken up into unofficial voting blocks, of which the Middle East Arab nations are one. Of the seats up for appointment on the council, the Middle East coalition was able to assure that at least a couple delegates from their voting block could make it in. Saudi Arabia convinced the block to vote for them, and they got in.\n\nOr were you wondering why?"
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45tpzj | in america, if i am innocent until proven guilty, why did i go to jail for 3 days after my arrest? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45tpzj/eli5_in_america_if_i_am_innocent_until_proven/ | {
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"Same thing happened to me. In my experience, the law doesn't care about you, what you think, or how long you're kept. In their eyes, you were involved in a criminal act in some way, and you are essentially a criminal. \n\nI know it's stressful bud but hang in there. Take things one day at a time and before you know it your troubles will be behind you. ",
"R/askanamerican might be a good thread to ask as well. There is a lot of information missing from your story. Was it on the weekend? \n\nIn the eyes on the law, you are innocent until proven guilty and you have the right to a fair and expedient trial. If it is a non-violent crime, you were most likely released on your own recognizance without bail. If it was a serious felony, you may have been asked to post bond, meaning you post only a fraction of the entire amount and post bond for the rest.\n\nWhen the government denies your freedom, it should be on a temporary basis until you are afforded a fair trial. ",
"Some states allow officers to hold you up to 72 hours without even charging you for a crime. I do believe many states, like NY, are 48 hours though. So, they could have held you for the same time whether you were being charged or not.",
"It is up to the police to determine if the person is wanted for other crimes, and establish identity. It is then up to the judge to determine if a person charged with a crime is a threat to society or a flight risk during the bail hearing. \n\nIn an ideal world the bail hearing would happen the same day."
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6ct5jt | why do people like 4chan so much, seeing how toxic and immature the whole website is? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ct5jt/eli5_why_do_people_like_4chan_so_much_seeing_how/ | {
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"As it's all anonymous, you get some honesty on certain topics that people wouldn't say should their name be attached to it.\n\nYou could read interesting things without being worried who said it or what their other views are, I honestly think there's almost nothing in life that you can use to discuss with people without there being some kind of their personality in it.\n\nHaving a discussion with someone on Reddit? Check their post/comment history, are they a mod of r/thedonald (or whatever it's called)? Instantly any reason they may have for whatever you're discussing will just get voided for something that could be totally irrelevant.\n\nIt also kind of works like a hivemind and that's an interesting feat in itself.\n\nAs to the insults, it's hardly insulting for someone you don't know at all, to say something to someone they also do not know anything about. Yes it's immature and petty, but just skip reading it.\n\nI can't say much more about it as I stopped visiting it in around '15, but for the time I spent on it, I saw some of the funniest thing I've ever seen, seen interesting views and seen things I couldn't possibly understand why people would like or agree with. But on other websites these things would be instantly shut down without open discussion (not that that doesn't happen on 4chan, but it's like pissing in an ocean of piss, no one cares)."
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1xg483 | why do we knock three times? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xg483/eli5_why_do_we_knock_three_times/ | {
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"Because someone wants The Doctor to die.",
"So I'll know that you want me!lol Noone under 30 will get this.",
"Or, Twice on the pipe..",
"3 is the shortest number of repeated beats that you can put in succession to imply a consistent, and most importantly, *intentional* rhythm. Hearing two knocks could easily be misconstrued as a random noise, as things that fall tend to bounce a bit and smack again. Three knocks with consistent spacing between them is far less likely to happen naturally, and so catches our attention."
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3swiqj | how to build a bridge around the world. | What i mean is, if i wanted to build a bridge around the world, would i need to make the bridge round because the globe is round as well?
Or if i kept building it straight would it go out in space because Earth is round and i was building a bridge out of the Earth's diameter? What would happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3swiqj/eli5how_to_build_a_bridge_around_the_world/ | {
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" > if i wanted to build a bridge around the world, would i need to make the bridge round because the globe is round as well?\n\nYes, that's exactly what you would have to do.\n\n > if i kept building it straight would it go out in space because Earth is round and i was building a bridge out of the Earth's diameter?\n\nAside from the fact that there are no materials known to mankind that are strong enough to support such a structure, yes, if you started building horizontally and built in a straight line, eventually your bridge would go to space as the Earth curved away from it.",
"With very long bridges the curvature of the earth is taken into account. The Humber Bridge has a main span of 1410 metres and although both towers are vertical they are 34mm further apart at the top than the bottom. This is solely due to the curvature of the earth. \nA truly straight roadway, if long enough, would eventually leave the earth if it could actually be built. With present technology this is impossible."
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1o8j3a | why does the center of the pizza get warmer slower the rest? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1o8j3a/eli5why_does_the_center_of_the_pizza_get_warmer/ | {
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"The surface area for heating is greater around the edges of the pizza compared to the center of it, so the edges get warm first, which allows the heat from the edges to conduct to the material right next to the edges, which heats that up, slowly moving heat from the outside of the pizza to the inside. This is also why increasing the temperature of the oven will burn the edges while the center stays frozen."
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shntl | why does my eye lid keep twitching? | This has been happening off and on for 24hrs now. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/shntl/eli5_why_does_my_eye_lid_keep_twitching/ | {
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"It's just random muscle spasms. Can be an indicator of lack of sleep, but often just happens.\n\nIt can also happen to your leg, arm, etc, but you're much less likely to notice it. ",
"[This](_URL_0_) could be helpfull.",
"This was random - I'd planned on asking the exact same question. My left top eyelid, random twitches side to side. Coincided with me starting to work ~15 hour days, so there's my answer I guess.",
"Probably due to tiredness, dryness or eye strain from spending too much time on Reddit. \n\nEnvironmental factors such as dust/allergies/Air Conditioning (which makes the air dry) could also play a part.\n\nAccording to WebMD, however, you might have cancer.",
"My mom always told me it's caused by a potassium deficiency. Go eat a banana",
"You need more Zink in your diet, honestly used to happen to me! ",
"Had to finally make an account since I may actually be able to help! When I was around 14 I had a problem where one of my eye lids would twitch randomly and make it look like I was winking at people. The doctor told me I had a very mild case of [blepharitis](_URL_0_). It's caused by excess bacteria on your eyelid and around your eye. In the early stages apparently you'll get microscopic bits that fall into your eye, making you blink, thus the twitch.\n\nThe treatment was to use a warm wet washcloth with a very small dab of soap or baby shampoo and clean my eye lid a few times a day. It went away in about a week.\n\nedit: fixed my link",
"Thought I'd chime in to say I had this when I was working 70 hours a week and not getting much rest. It went away after about 2 weeks of catching up on my normal sleep schedule.",
"Potassium deficiency. Eat a banana and be amazed."
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6d20ec | why do most of the ads on tv sound/look like they are made for really really stupid people? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6d20ec/eli5_why_do_most_of_the_ads_on_tv_soundlook_like/ | {
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"Because the average person is dumber than a bag of hammers. And advertising firms are aiming to get their message across to the most people - this way smart people get it (and feel pandered to), normal intelligence people get it (and feel \"smart\" because they get it), and then you've got you're people that ate paint chips as children - even they get it (with a little mental gymnastics).",
"The but they do work! I bet you remember a lot of the stupid ones, and the product they were selling. That's \"mission accomplished\" as far as ads go. ",
"Simply, they are.\n\nMarketing has many goals, but the general desire is to make the most number of people feel good about a product.\n\nAs such, they're aiming at the lowest common denominator and trying to make people correlate the feelings of sexiness or intelligence or sophistication from the commercial towards the product.\n\nLet's take for example - Grey Poupon. Whole-grain mustard's difference from Yellow Mustard is that they use more than one seed, they grind coarsely, and they don't use Tumeric to make it bright yellow. \n\nDijon Mustard's difference from Yellow Mustard is again, no Tumeric, but adding in a bit of vinegar, white wine or other acidity (they used to use verjuice, but that's long gone). \n\nConsidering how expensive Tumeric can be and how cheap vinegars can be, it may actually be more expensive to produce yellow mustard than Dijon or Whole-Grain. It's usually not, but spice prices fluctuate.\n\nBut Grey Poupon is considered fancy - why? Good marketing....and really stupid people.",
"“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” \n\nGeorge Carlin",
"They're for disabled people. Simple as that. Those products are for the denomination of human beings that absolutely need help with all the mundane things in their lives, and have no other choice but to spend their money on things like this because hey, what else are they gonna spend it on? They might as well throw their money at all the things on tv that would make opening jars easier. \n\nAre they a stupid thing to spend one's money on? Maybe. Do they sell? Obviously.\n ",
"Because smart people understand a smart premise, but stupid people don't. But both smart *and* stupid people understand a stupid premise. \n\n\nAlso, advertisements are often not the focus of our attention. So they are more effective if people can understand it while not trying to. ",
"Because they are designed to stick in your head. So the next time you're thinking about buying insurance or tooth paste or a new TV or a new car what do you think of? The bull shit advertisements that you're bombarded with whenever you watch TV or use the internet.\n\nDo yourself a favour and ditch the TV and use adblock on your PC.",
"I spend about $3000/month in online advertising for my own business and worked making tv commercials for others for 20 years. I have some experience making the exact ads you are referencing.\n\nYou are a reddit user which is notoriously difficult to advertise to. Techniques that work on the vast majority of the population won't work on you and some of those techniques aren't even allowed to be used when advertising on Reddit because of the severe backlash it creates.\n\nThe best advice I was given is to create ads for a six year old audience. They have to be very easy to understand with clear calls to action. If it's an online ad it needs a huge bright CLICK ME FOR DEAL button or else I'll start getting comments from people asking how to claim the offer or the conversion rate will just be .1%. The best part of online advertising (Facebook specifically) vs TV is Facebook learns who my customer is very quickly and will start going out sniping customers for me without spending a lot on impressions or needing to use targeted keywords. I also get instant feedback when someone buys something using the Facebook \"Pixel\". So I know how much per conversion I am spending. With TV you can't really do that. I encourage anyone that wants to sell something worldwide or even local to just use Facebook.",
"Not all, but a lot of the \"dumb\" products are for people with disabilities. But the ad company can't target that disabled group specifically. Take the snuggie for example: it's very difficult to get a jacket onto someone in a wheelchair. But they wouldn't make much money targeting only that group, so now it looks like all Americans should use a snuggie. There's that equalizer spoon for people who just make a mess while using a spoon (geared towards Parkinsons). How about that spout for people who drop the milk and juice containers all the time? That one's for Parkinsons, Huntingtons, wrist disabilities... yes there are dumb things that have zero actual use, but you can usually come up with a disease/disorder/disability that could find that product to be useful. ",
"Just speculating but I'd guess that there is some amount of truth to it.\n\nIf you make an ad \"for stupid people\" then it likely works on stupid people. Anyone who would identify it as stupid would likely think to themselves \"this is stupid, who would fall for an ad like that?\"\n\nExcept now you've actually thought about the product, so their job is done either way.\n\nLong story short, you're more likely to buy a product you've heard of over one you haven't unless it's one of those super annoying ads that make you vow to never touch their product. Just dumb enough is fine.",
"Many posts here about *other* stupid people but part of you is stupid too. The part of you that gets hungry or needs some comfort and wants pleasure.\n\nThat's the part of you these ads are targeting and they can be more influential than the smart part of you realizes. That smart part of you dismisses the ad then you watch it but later when you get hungry or or bored or lonely that dumb part of you starts salivating and that's when the real magic happens.\n\nEDIT: Hear, Here and everywhear.",
"Well \"sound/look like are made for really really stupid people\" is not quite accurate to say. But there are 2 reasons they may seem dumb on constant review.\n\n1) Really good commercials are made to reach exactly who the business wants to reach. Their demo. \n\nOften times you may see an obnoxious loud commercial for a children's cereal that is extremely stupid to you. But kids of a certain age want it and crave it. Some of those marketing campaigns stick with us for our entire lives. Bet you still have a Trix or Cocopuffs that you get nostalgic for. \n\n2). Old school marketing wants to reach everyone even if everyone doesn't want their product. (This is usually far less effective but makes ad agencies lots of money for an easy production)\n\nThe commercials that strive to stretch their message to try and reach the largest group of people tend to be very simplistic. The commercial is also competing against people losing attention while they wait for the show to resume, distractions, anyone near a tv but not watching. So the simpler a message the more likely it will be communicated. If you can ensure that the commercial is understandable by anyone with a 5th grade reading level, can be understood in a busy bar, or even if the tv is on mute... then you reached the most people. They however may not be the people you want to reach.\n\nBonus: REALLY REALLY SMART marketers are scary \n\nWhy are they scary? They not only can pinpoint exactly the type of person they want to buy their product but can manipulate the viewer into doing so with emotion or attitude. They know getting its almost about making the customer feel good about their choice of your product. They associate what the customer wants to be or feel like with their product. \n\n\n\n\n",
"Many ads are aimed at people with real disabilities but they cant just show some guy with a third of a leg struggling to get things off a shelf so they show some nimwit who needs a grabber on a stick.",
"And is it just me or do they get so much louder than what I was originally watching?",
"A lot of them are made to market to the handicapped... for example, the snuggie was originally created for people in wheelchairs because it's hard to take a jacket off and on them because you'd have to get them up. \n\nHowever, for it to be profitable, they can't just market it to the handicapped. Furthermore, it's unlikely that the snuggie would have gotten so big if it was overtly marketed to people in wheelchairs, and therein, it would not have gotten to people that actually need it.",
"**An actual explanation given by another redditor**\n\nThis was addressed in another thread before that often people don't think about. A lot of those 'quality of life' products that seem to address a ridiculously simple problem are actually incredibly helpful for *people with disabilities.* The issue though is you don't want to *just* market it as *only* for people with disabilities as you limit your audience. You may think \"no one would ever drop X so easily like that\", but for a person with a disability, it is a very common problem.\n\nIf I can find the comment, I will link it in an edit.\n\n**TL:DR** A lot of seemingly 'stupid' problems actually are really helpful for solving difficulties for people with disabilities. ",
"Somebody posted a while ago that it costs extra money to design a product specifically for disabled people, so what the companies do is depict fully-functioning morons in their ads so that the disabled people see it and say \"Hey that looks great for my smart, not-fully-functioning self.\" ",
"Did you just watch a sonic commercial too? I truly don't understand how that could be funny to anyone, or how a group of people decided those ads were funny enough to be on tv. ",
"There are many variables at play here. I make ads for a living so I have a pretty good understanding of the whole process. And it's this process that is screwed up and spits out shitty ads. \n\nMore often than not it's a combination of fear, ignorance, incompetence in unholy matrimony with a lack of time and budget. \n\nThe ad making process starts with a copywriter/art director team at an agency coming up with an idea in response to a brief from their client. At this stage the idea is most often really good and shows promise. The concept is presented to the agency's accounts team who often have zero understanding of what makes a good commercial. And they are often not very ambitious people. They are in fear of the client/brand and spend the next 2-3 months arguing with the creative team until the idea is watered down enough for them to present it to a brand manager on the client side. But not before massacring the concept further by filling a conference room with unemployed and uneducated housewives and asking for their opinion about every single aspect of the idea. They pay them $50 and give them free soda and cookies. This is called \"research\" and only used as an alibi in order to not take blame for unsuccessful campaigns. \n\nAt this stage the idea is average at best. The brand manager is scared shitless of their boss (CEO or Marketing Director) and water the idea down further by second guessing what the boss may or may not want. A brand manager gets promoted for not fucking up, not by doing great work. No risks will be taken at this stage. \n\nBy the time the concept reaches the Boss it's a pile of steaming shit. And it's now only 6 weeks until they go on air. They argue back and fourth for a couple of weeks mostly about the size of the logo because let's face it, the creative is shit. \n\nEventually they head of marketing and CEO signs it off and the agency gets a production company involved to try to polish this turd into something digestible within a 30 second time slot. But it's almost impossible. The idea is gone and replaced with three new conflicting ideas that make no sense. And in the process of trying to offend no one and please everyone they achieve he exact opposite. \n\nThe initial budget of $2M has now been been mostly used up by the agency's time and the prod company is left with $200K. If they're lucky. But the client still expects it to look like $2M. What comes out on the other end is an abomination. The director and agency creatives hate the commercial and don't give a shit about the spot other than getting paid so they can spend their money on Coke and Booze to forget how they have prostituted their talents to sell vaginal deodorants to insecure high schoolers. \n\nThat's the process. \nThe few times you see a good ad the process has been eliminated or the creatives have been given blind trust. \n(Old Spice, Cadbury Gorilla etc)",
"In psychology, there are lots of models for persuasion, but most include two basic pathways to persuasion:\n\n* Central route: Persuade someone through logic, facts, examples, demonstration. Think: The ideal debate.\n* Peripheral route: Persuade someone by associating a stance, product, whatever with emotional states. Think: Political smear campaign videos.\n\nWhether the central route or peripheral route of persuasion is effective depends on the context and the person. Those with a high need for cognition who are motivated to understand the facts, reasoning, etc will be better approached with a central route.This requires time and cognitive effort.\n\nOn the other hand, commercials are usually for, what, 10-40 seconds? There's limited time to engage the central route, and people watching commercials usually aren't motivated to pick apart and reason about every argument made by a commercial. So, the peripheral route is typically chosen: Associate a product with smiles, positive outcomes, cool vibes, social acceptance, etc, and the goal is to slowly associate \"product\" with \"good\".\n\nDrive-by persuasion almost necessarily requires the peripheral route, so that's what advertisers do: Appeal to emotion and social motivations, don't appeal to logic or facts, because there's not enough people motivated to consider them (or the logic/facts are indeed bunk, so a keen observer would easily resist persuasion), and the ad will be gone far before a person can deliberate."
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t53nh | why do lights on tvs, game consoles etc, stay on even when the power is turned off? | I have my TV and PS3 plugged into an extension chord, which is then plugged into a powerpoint.
How come even when I turn off the powerpoint, the TV "standby" light remains lit for up to 5 minutes?
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/t53nh/eli5_why_do_lights_on_tvs_game_consoles_etc_stay/ | {
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"Most electronics have 'capacitors' in them. Capacitors are like batteries, but they're used for very short-term power storage, often for things like 'smoothing out' the incoming power to cope with peaks and dips.\n\nWhen the device is on, the capacitor is charged. When you take away the power, then the capacitor still has some charge and it is drained of whatever's left.\n\nIf the piece of electronics is on standby then it's using so little power that the energy left in the capacitor can keep lights and some basic circuitry turned on for a while after until its discharged."
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nuclt | why is acceleration used in f=ma and not velocity? | If something is accelerating quickly but moving slowly wouldn't that have less force than something that is accelerating slowly (or even decelerating) but moving quickly?
Am I just confusing terminology or is it something else? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nuclt/why_is_acceleration_used_in_fma_and_not_velocity/ | {
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"You're taking friction into account.\n\nImagine that you're in space. If you push something until it hits a velocity *v*, then it will continue at that velocity forever (until it runs into something).\n\nThus, it takes no force to keep an object at a constant velocity, no matter how high the velocity is. Instead, it takes effort to *change* a velocity, since otherwise it would continue at the same velocity.\n\nAcceleration is the change in velocity, so it takes a force to exert acceleration.\n\nOn Earth, there's always some friction, so you do have to exert a force to maintain a constant velocity, but that is due to the friction forces exerted on an object. The overall (net) force on an object of constant velocity is 0 N, because the friction force is equal to the force you're exerting to overcome it.",
"I think it's clearer if we talk about a=F/m.\n\nIf you apply a force to an object, it doesn't matter how fast it's moving, it will accelerate at the same rate.\n\nFor example, In your car, if you apply the brake pedal a constant amount, it will take the same amount of time to go from 30 to 20 as from 20 to 10 (this is ignoring wind resistance).\n\nWe can then use F=ma to calculate how much force the brakes were applying. If it took 2 seconds to go from 20 m/s to 10 m/s in a 1000 kg car, F=ma = (1000 kg) * (10 m/s / 2 s) = 5000 kg m/s^2 = 5000 Newtons\n\nEdit: derp, units",
"Objects don't \"have\" forces. Forces are things that act upon objects. F=ma, or more clearly, F/m=a, means that the total force on an object, divided by its mass, will equal the acceleration of the object.\n\nAlso: you may indeed be confusing terminology. You may be thinking of momentum, which **is** a property of objects, and which is defined as momentum = mass * velocity.",
"I think you are confusing force with momentum. Momentum is mass times velocity, so an object that is moving faster has more momentum than an object moving slower. Momentum is the thing that makes car crashes really bad, and is the reason why a big car causes a bigger crash than a small car. A big car moving at 60mph has more momentum than a small car since it has more mass, so the big car will create a bigger crash than the small car. \n\nForce, unlike momentum, isn't really something you \"have.\" Its something that you apply or is applied on you. To get some intuition on force, think about an airplane taking off. Initially, you are not moving at the beginning of the runway, so you have zero velocity. Then, the pilot turns up the engines, which applies a force to the airplane in the direction of the runway. This force causes the airplane to accelerate in the direction of the runway. The instant the pilot turns up the engines at the beginning of the runway, you feel your body press up against the seat, even though the plane is just starting to move and has little or no velocity. This is because the airplane is accelerating, due to the force of the engines apply to the plane. You have little or no velocity, but a lot of acceleration, which you can feel as your body being pressed against the seat. Once you are cruising in the air, you are at essentially constant velocity. Constant velocity means acceleration is zero, so no force is being applied on your body, which is why you don't feel pressed against your seat, despite moving at more than 500mph",
"You're taking friction into account.\n\nImagine that you're in space. If you push something until it hits a velocity *v*, then it will continue at that velocity forever (until it runs into something).\n\nThus, it takes no force to keep an object at a constant velocity, no matter how high the velocity is. Instead, it takes effort to *change* a velocity, since otherwise it would continue at the same velocity.\n\nAcceleration is the change in velocity, so it takes a force to exert acceleration.\n\nOn Earth, there's always some friction, so you do have to exert a force to maintain a constant velocity, but that is due to the friction forces exerted on an object. The overall (net) force on an object of constant velocity is 0 N, because the friction force is equal to the force you're exerting to overcome it.",
"I think it's clearer if we talk about a=F/m.\n\nIf you apply a force to an object, it doesn't matter how fast it's moving, it will accelerate at the same rate.\n\nFor example, In your car, if you apply the brake pedal a constant amount, it will take the same amount of time to go from 30 to 20 as from 20 to 10 (this is ignoring wind resistance).\n\nWe can then use F=ma to calculate how much force the brakes were applying. If it took 2 seconds to go from 20 m/s to 10 m/s in a 1000 kg car, F=ma = (1000 kg) * (10 m/s / 2 s) = 5000 kg m/s^2 = 5000 Newtons\n\nEdit: derp, units",
"Objects don't \"have\" forces. Forces are things that act upon objects. F=ma, or more clearly, F/m=a, means that the total force on an object, divided by its mass, will equal the acceleration of the object.\n\nAlso: you may indeed be confusing terminology. You may be thinking of momentum, which **is** a property of objects, and which is defined as momentum = mass * velocity.",
"I think you are confusing force with momentum. Momentum is mass times velocity, so an object that is moving faster has more momentum than an object moving slower. Momentum is the thing that makes car crashes really bad, and is the reason why a big car causes a bigger crash than a small car. A big car moving at 60mph has more momentum than a small car since it has more mass, so the big car will create a bigger crash than the small car. \n\nForce, unlike momentum, isn't really something you \"have.\" Its something that you apply or is applied on you. To get some intuition on force, think about an airplane taking off. Initially, you are not moving at the beginning of the runway, so you have zero velocity. Then, the pilot turns up the engines, which applies a force to the airplane in the direction of the runway. This force causes the airplane to accelerate in the direction of the runway. The instant the pilot turns up the engines at the beginning of the runway, you feel your body press up against the seat, even though the plane is just starting to move and has little or no velocity. This is because the airplane is accelerating, due to the force of the engines apply to the plane. You have little or no velocity, but a lot of acceleration, which you can feel as your body being pressed against the seat. Once you are cruising in the air, you are at essentially constant velocity. Constant velocity means acceleration is zero, so no force is being applied on your body, which is why you don't feel pressed against your seat, despite moving at more than 500mph"
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yy96f | how does a voice commentary for sports videogames (ex. nba 2k12) actually get recorded? how does it actually work? | Well, explain like I'm 8 would be adequate. My nephew is constantly amazed that the commentators seem to almost always be saying the right thing whenever he plays his NBA 2K12 on his Playstation. I notice that the comments may get a bit repetitive at times, but it also still quite blows my mind. So how do they do it? Do they record thousands of lines, each time saying every specific player's name? I just can't imagine what's happening behind the scenes.
Edit: I realized that I used the word "actually" twice. Lol. Anyway, thank you for all the replies! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yy96f/eli5_how_does_a_voice_commentary_for_sports/ | {
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"They don't record every line for every player. They'll record each player's name in a couple of tones of voice, and then plug the recording of the name into a longer line of commentary.\n\nHowever, some of the lines that are specific to a individual player are recorded with the player name in full.\n\nAs for how the game knows what to say and when to say it: any event in the game can trigger commentary, and the game will choose from a selection of lines that will fit the current situation.\n\nYou're right though, it is pretty incredible how far video game commentary has come over the years. Back in the early 2000s, things were even more repetitive, to the point where I'd play most sports games with the commentary off!",
"[Have a look at this video](_URL_0_)."
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2z5jpa | why has the human body not evolved so that we can drink seawater? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2z5jpa/eli5_why_has_the_human_body_not_evolved_so_that/ | {
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"Because we haven't had to. There's always been plenty of fresh water for most humans on the planet. Adapting to drink sea water would be a difficult feat so the path of least resistance with regards to natural selection has been nope.",
"Physiologically, it is impossible for humans to drink sea water. Ingesting salt ions raises the osmolarity of extracellular fluid, draws water outside of cells into circulation, raises GFR and results in polyuria (we pee the water out). Basically, salt water messes with our ability to retain water inside our cells, which is 100% necessary for cellular function. On a neurological level, extra salt outside of neurons decreases the ability of the neuron to push the salt back out after it's fired an action potential (an inward sodium and outward potassium exchange conducts nerve impulses). \n\nSo we can't evolve to tolerate high sodium concentrations without evolving a mechanism to protect our cells from excessive water loss. They go hand in hand. And if you can do that, then you're brain dead anyways, because extracellular Na concentration homeostasis is critical for proper neural function."
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1v8esk | would it ever be feasible for reddit to band together and fund a neutral and pro-competitive isp? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1v8esk/eli5_would_it_ever_be_feasible_for_reddit_to_band/ | {
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"In theory, yes. In practice, not likely. Any small company would need some serious money to build its own infrastructure, or have to pay into the larger corporations to use their established infrastructure, meaning they would have a hard time providing a comparable service for the same price."
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2caye4 | what happens to all the people who are arrested during protests? | So we keep seeing articles: X number of protesters arrested at Y location. Obviously there are different answers to this question depending on who's doing the arresting and the situation, but what generally happens to these people? How long do they stay in prison? Do they get anything on their record? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2caye4/eli5_what_happens_to_all_the_people_who_are/ | {
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"in US, you probably just get a slap and an overnight stay.\n\ndo the same in China, the iphone 10 will be out before you see the light of day."
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58b1t4 | why is it so difficult to tell if clothes are damp or just cold? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/58b1t4/eli5_why_is_it_so_difficult_to_tell_if_clothes/ | {
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"The body has no 'wet' sensors so it compensates by interpreting cold+pressure as wet. This is also why you think your raincoat is leaking if you're wearing short sleeves while it's raining outside - the cold pressure of the jacket on your arm makes you think your arm is wet when really it's dry.",
"Because you tell if it's wet or dry based mostly on texture and temperature (or more correctly, the rate it warms or cools your skin). For wet and dry stuff at the same temperature wet stuff cools you off faster, but so does cold stuff. If it's damp the texture isn't noticeably different either so they are difficult to tell apart.",
"It helps to first realize that there isn't really a \"cold.\" When you feel something, like a metal door knob, that appears cold, it's actually because your body is warmer than the knob, and what you feel is your hand actually heating the knob up! The knob robs heat from you. \n\nClothing can also be at a lower temperature than your hand (like if you've left it in your dryer in the basement overnight), and you'll feel that same feeling; your hand heating up the clothing. \n\nWater is really good at robbing heat from you. A warm pool will still feel cold when you first get in, and your sweat robs the heat from your skin when you're warm. We have deep memories that water having that \"chilly\" feeling. \n\nSometimes, your brain just gets confused whether clothing is cold or whether it has a small amount of water held in it that's robbing the heat from your hand.\n\nHope that helped.",
"Side-note... The best way to tell if it's damp or just cold is to place it on your upper lip. Not sure why it does, but it works for me.",
"Maybe have been something I've read on LPT sub but I can't remember. Regardless, it works for me. \n\nRead that the hands aren't particularly good at what you describe but the lips are. \n\nTouch the clothes to your lips and you'll know if its wet or just cold. ",
"Psychophysiologist here! \n\nHumans do not have skin cells for percieving moisture. Moisture cells do exist, they're called 'hygroreceptor cells'; commonly in insect antennae like cockroaches and stick bugs. Instead, moisture perception in humans is a learned response derived from the cells that measure cold, pressure, and grip. As a result, colder water feels wetter. Different people are better or worse at identifying moisture as well, based on experience.",
"I don't have this problem. Perhaps it's just you?"
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2pz4o8 | how has 50 shades of gray, a piece of pornography, become accepted and embraced by the very audience who would normally decry works with subjects like bdsm, to the point of having a movie made out of it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pz4o8/eli5_how_has_50_shades_of_gray_a_piece_of/ | {
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"It caters to women. And what women think is OK is plainly Ok . Even if it is the same thing the say is gross and destroy men when it's the male version ( porn ) it shows the duplicitous nature of society in general",
"Because what they *say* they like and what they *actually* like are often two very different things.",
"Because over the years, the dividing line between the genres of romance and straight-up porn has lowered considerably. In ye olde days, *Lady Chatterley's Lover* was considered obscene because of a few racy passages. But now that you can watch people bang daily on HBO, most people couldn't be worked up to give a (literal) fuck.",
"Men have porn, Women have romance novels. There are exceptions.",
"It's purely marketing imo.\n\nIt came out at a time where sexuality is defined by pop cultures. As soon as some people started buzing about it, everyone wants to read it or talk about it.\nRihanna did S & M, I'm sure lady gaga did similar stuff (in their videos).. people are now embracing the spotlight on sexuality and going all in on it.\n\nAnd marketing showers people with those products until they can't milk them anymore.\n\n\n",
"Lol pornography. The dirtiest word in the book is \"vagina\". 15 seconds of game of thrones has more sex and vulgarity than 50 shades.",
"The movie is going to be largely focusing on their relationship, even though *exactly zero* people read the book for the shitty relationship.",
"Because that group of people are the only ones who get outraged. They're the same people that find something new every week to protest. So they would be the people who would oppose a book like 50 shades. Outrage in the US pretty much goes one way. There's the people who were English/Finger painting majors in college and thinks the world owes them. These people jump from fad to fad, being bitter everday because the world isn't all kittens and puppies and they aren't as special as their parents told them while giving them 10th place trophies. Then there's us who work hard and want to be left alone. We want to read/watch/indulge in whatever we choose. We don't care what others do. Had we been the ones reading 50 shades, this would be a massive issue. I mean shit they have been trying to ban video games forever yet they can sit down and read about some chick getting tied to a bed and analed by 6 guys (I haven't read the book). It's the double standard in life made by the people who complain about double standards. ",
"I love too how the majority of the women who love this book would denounce rape which can be found in chapter 15",
"Because it fulfills a very common fantasy among readers... seducing a billionaire.",
"On a scale of 1 to 10 what it takes for an average man to consider something porn is (for arguments sake) an 8. For a woman the threshold is much lower, lets say a 4. This book may be racy for those that think 4 is porn and find themselves liking this new threshold of 5. Now you have 1/2 of the population thinking it's ok and the other 1/2 (men) not really seeing it as approaching porn. Standards raise (or lower depending on your perspective) when those with the tightest constraints ease up. ",
"Because people are hypocrites; welcome to life.",
"Nearly everyone likes porn, but that book successfully masquerades as soft core or romantic fantasy, so women, especially mature women like it. Plus the writing is purile and inane so it makes it easy to consume. \n\nMost men like things a little more hardcore.",
"Because if a man reads it, it's pornography. If a woman reads it, it's erotica.",
"ALL OF THESE ANSWERS ARE WRONG\n\nIf you want to know the REAL reason why FSOG became this cultural/financial juggernaut see this comment [here](_URL_0_) courtesy of /u/hurricangst (scroll past op's rant to the comment)\n\nTldr: a bnf saw an opportunity to exploit the twilight fandom, stole a bunch of fanfic ideas, and where she failed in writing skill, she made up for in shrewd marketing/business sense. See also: Cassandra Clare\n\nTo answer your second question-they can't and the movie will suck\n",
"How the hell are they going to make this movie work without being rated XXX?",
"For the same reason a Cinderella story about a street whore, Pretty Woman, became a favorite of women . And what that reason is I have no idea. :-)",
"Sexism, plain and simple.\n\nIt's \"Erotica\" and sophisticated if its made for women, but it's \"smut\" and filth if its made for men.\n\n",
"I think what people are missing is why it appeals to so many women. I have worked it out - it's because HE DOES ALL THE WORK. She doesn't have to work at attracting him, he chases after her. She doesn't even have to participate equally in the sex, sex is something he does TO her not WITH her.\n",
"Because a bunch of prude house wives who have been taught all their lives that sex is bad and a sin actually read something that made them feel and enjoy sex. They told their friends how it changed their lives.... and it spread through mainstream. ",
"What do you mean \"the very same\"? There are so many ELI5's like this: \"why do the same people who believe X also believe Y? What a bunch of hypocrites!\" Usually the answer is \"actually it's not the same exact people doing both things\"",
"While I read it, I couldn't stop thinking the guy wouldn't get away with being a domineering jerk if he wasn't wealthy. The heroine was just another form of prostitute.",
"When it comes to women, you shouldn't listen to what they say, but look at what they do. Also, if the guy is rich and handsome, it's alright.",
"It's fantasy wish fulfillment from the safety of the couch.\n\nTwilight touches on a lot of buttons that, to be *really sexist for a moment*, a lot of women have. Women are, in the US at least, made to feel like a thing to be *valued*. A *thing* to be valued. A *thing*. \n\nFor many, many women (and men) life is a series of obstacles where they feel that their true inner self is never realized or loved for what it is. How they see themselves doesn't reflect on how others see them. They feel they have the beautiful soul of an artist, but on the outside they can only manage drab.\n\nTwilight got this right. The main character is a tedious, boring as shit person. She just.. cries. She cries about her frustrations about being unseen. This resonates with a lot of people on a lot of levels. Good or bad writing, or whatever, it hit that nerve spot on. Then, someone SWOOPS IN and sees *past all their shit* and *loves them for what is on the inside* in such a perfect way. And then *she is fought over* because she is *so valued* as a commodity. \n\nIt's fucked up emotionally manipulative garbage. \n\n50 Shades is this on steroids. In 50 Shades of Grey, the woman is similarly weak, boring, stupid, whatever. She feels all the negative things about herself.\n\nThe handsome, rich, well endowed, dominant wonderful perfect man swoops in and *sees her perfection on the inside*. Because *many, many women* feel they are things that are more beautiful on the inside, this resonates. That man then takes her forcefully *but so gently* through all this sexy time. It is a disney dream where your pussy gets fucked. It's porn. Total, straight up, hyperfantasy porn. \n\nThankfully, most people realize this. Again, to be *very sexist* women *tend* to prefer their porn more mental and verbal than they do visual and visceral. There are of course many exceptions. \n\nBut, we have a long history of books-as-porn marketed almost entirely to women. Many romance movies are *exactly the same thing* except they don't go quite as far.\n\nEdit-\n\nI should also mention that fantasy is not necessarily the same thing as desire. We all have fantasies that we actually have no desire to act upon. It's just fun, and ultimately harmless. ",
"Yes, all middle-aged women are prudish housewives who abhor sex but secretly are into BDSM.\n\nBut now that we've figured out their hypocrisy, they'll have to admit they're flawed!\n\nThank god there are a bunch of young male adults on the Internet to keep these people thinking clearly. ",
"It's so light you can't even find the pornography.",
"We have no idea. I am in the fetish BDSM lifestyle and all of my friends and acquaintances all say the same thing. Its a horrible representation of our lifestyle. Its trash. The things he does to her without consent are a huge red flag! Consent is a huge part of our lifestyle and people are reading this thinking its normal. its not. Do your research!!",
"Because it's not porn. I manage a locally owned second-hand bookstore and have been asked similar questions on an almost daily basis about those books. \n\nIt's considered erotica. It's supposed to be scintillating, but not explicit. \n\nFor the sake of semantics it really comes down to descriptive jargon: 'cock' versus 'member' or 'pussy' versus 'sex' for instance. Also with how descriptive the sex scenes are and primarily what part of the act their describing. The sex in the 50 Shades books is pretty tame even by Erotica standards. \n\nFolks are mainly just interested in them (the books) because they've never been exposed to that particular brand of sexuality. \n\nTLDR: 50 Shades is 'erotic fiction', not 'pornography'. Yes they really are different things.",
"There are a lot of answers here about why the story in 50 Shades might be a thing readers want, but what I haven't seen discussed yet is the biggest, most important aspect of the series' success. If 50 Shades had launched as a print-only book, it would never have gained the market foothold it did. Being able to read a book about BDSM, however flawed that book may be, is not a thing most women would do (or more accurately, would have done at the time) in public. But on a Kindle, no one knows what you're reading. There are no covers to spot from across the bus or at the doctor's office. And that sort of anonymity in readership bolstered James' book sales until it was mainstream enough to take to print and film. ",
"Hey, bookstore employee here. Can't say that I can answer your question completely, but based on our customership and the other things they purchased, I'll give you what I came up with. A lot of ladies buy this book and a lot of couples buy this book; very few single (alone in the store) men seem to purchase the series. \n\n The most common, though I would hesitate at majority, denominator is the same customer has an interest in either Christianity or Christian fiction, which leads directly to my theory. There a lot of similarities in the Christian/Ana relationship to a traditional Christian monogamous marriage. The contract he is hounding her to sign is a stand-in for marriage, while the hard and soft limits thing really sounds like the highly ordered, structured existence prescribed by a lot of churches, especially with the definite roll of the man in charge.\n\n I think the whole concept feels familiar to person who is told throughout their religious life to submit to the lord, have faith in that person knowing what is good for them, etc. It's like church but with kinky sexual gratification.",
"Because its for women. If angled toward men, results would differ.",
"I got into an argument with a girl because she agreed with GTA V being pulled from shelves because it promotes violence towards women. Yet she can't wait for the 50 Shades of Grey movie, she just loves the books, eats that shit right up. But I'm a pig because I play GTA V. ",
"No idea. The \"motto\" of the BDSM community is \"Safe, Sane, and Consensual,\" and this is not an example of any of that.",
"If you came here expecting a real response, or really anything except misogyny, turn back now.",
"Since I haven't seen anyone mention this aspect of it yet:\r\rPart of its success is owed to the rise of the eBook. Yes, Twilight and other less supernatural romance novels were popular and had primed the audience; but the ability to read erotica without judgement lead to lots of women who who publicly oppose such literature actually reading it instead.",
"My sister is in love with the book and sighed over it and wanted her own Christian Gray, but when she found out I'm actually in a bdsm relationship she thought it was horrible and disgusting. So yeah most of them are hypocrites ",
"I don't call it porn, my boss who likes it gets mad when I say it's a story about rape. She says \"but he knew she could take it\". I said \"what'd happen if I said that in court, is that a defense?\"",
"If women like it, it becomes socially acceptable. If guys do, it's bad. Or at least it can seem that way. ",
"Personally, what bugs me is the attitude that it's \"not really porn\" simply because it uses flowery language to talk about sex. My opinion is, porn is porn - dress it up however you like, if you're getting off to it, it's all the same thing, it's all tapping into that same primal area of the brain. Now, I'm not judging, you wanna indulge yourself, have a good wank, whatever, not my business. I'm not decrying this book for being horrible and oh how it should be banned blah blah blah. What I am saying is I'm sick of this \"holier than thou\" attitude of acting like because it's not as explicit, that makes it not porn, that it somehow has real literary merit.\n\nIt's like Chex Quest to Doom. For those unaware, Chex Quest was basically a Doom mod released as a cereal promotion, a fun game where kids shot slime monster that were trying to make cereal soggy. The underlying game, however, was still Doom - it played exactly the same way, only difference was when the monsters were shot, they were vaporized (technically teleported to another dimension, but by all appearances, just vaporized) rather than splattering into a pile of guts. The guns all worked the same, the monsters all acted the same, for all practical purposes it really was just Doom with a new coat of paint - just no Satanic imagery, no gore, any of that stuff. And that's fine, Chex Quest was a fun little game, but to me it'd be absurd to try to claim that somehow Chex Quest was fundamentally different because the violence was (quite literally) sugar-coated. You were still using giant guns to blast monsters to Kingdom Come. \n\nAgain, I have no problem with that, Chex Quest was awesome - my only real point is I'd be incredibly pissed off if someone played Chex Quest and then turned around and claimed they were morally superior to someone who played Doom, because however you dress it up, it's the same damn game. Likewise, you wanna enjoy 50 Shades, fine, but for the love of God please don't try to pretend that it's not porn, that it's not just as base as any other form of wank-off material, just because it's less explicit and hides the dirty details in flowery language. If it's triggering the same responses in your brain, if it's serving the same purpose, it's still porn.",
"I rather they make a movie of The Poop that took a Pee",
"Because women make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Even when they're making sense, it still doesn't make sense. ",
"The BDSM community has been looked down upon for so long, it seems that when a book finally comes out, people jump on it.\n\nThat being said ,\nThis book is a *TRAVESTY*. I can't believe anyone actually enjoys it.\nCalling Fifty Shades of Grey BDSM is like calling McDonalds a high class meal.\nThose who are ignorant of the real thing will praise it, but those who actually have experience will turn up their nose or possibly even vomit.",
"Piggy-backing on the back of this. I'd like to know, because I've not ready it. Is the book really that sexual? I tried to read it, but I couldn't make it past the first few pages of *really* crappy writing. My wife read them all and she said that there was barely any sex in it and I was stupid for just believing the hype.",
"Privacy! More people read on devices like a kindle or tablet. No more book covers means you can read whatever trashy thing you want without anyone knowing or judging you.",
"Soccer moms are really horny and unfulfilled. ",
"Because middle-aged moms haven't discovered how to find better porn.",
"I always wonder if the people who have these opinions on what this book is about actually read the book(s) or just repeating what they heard from someone who heard from someone who read online a person who reviewed the book.\n\nI think we need to be careful about this, like did the majority of commenters who have such impassioned opinions read it first hand to inform their opinions?\n\n",
"One of humanity's favourite pastimes is denying our humanity.",
"because all women lie about what they really want because they're too embarassed to speak openly about such matters. Society has created a world where you're a whore/slut if you're a women who likes sex too much. Slut shaming ..if you will. ",
"Because it's badly written Twilight fanfic, but that connection is enough to make all the fans obsessed with it by association.",
"Because it's audience is a bunch of hypocrites. I have a friend who literally never finished a book in her life except for 50 shades of grey, because it was \"that good\". It was then that I promised myself I would never read it.",
"Mum porn and a lot of frustration. As a semi professionnal Dom , i've met a lot of women that are note satisfied sexually and mentaly. But they don't want to try things or admit they desire because they don't want to be / act as a whore. Our society is ill ... \n\nA woman who aknowledge having desire and a sexuality is a whore for our society so ...\n\nCatharsis time ...",
"I think the initial popularity of the 50 Shades series was made possible by [ebook readers](_URL_0_). That is, the initial fans could read without anybody knowing what they were reading. However, since most copies were legit, Amazon and B & N knew what everybody was buying. Hitting the top-selling ebook lists meant the content was suddenly somewhat acceptable (\"What? I'm just reading a current best-seller!\"), [driving sales of dead-tree books](_URL_1_). ",
"...Because people are hypocrites and should mind their own business. Srsly! ",
"Because women and feminists are largely full of sh*t.",
"Porn for women = art\n\nPorn for men = OMG how can you watch that! ",
"You're conflating two sets of people. The fact that many women read and enjoyed 50 Shades of Gray does not mean that many anti-porn feminists read and enjoyed it. In fact, I'd be surprised if any did.",
"You'd think femenists would be furious over this, but they embrace it instead. Go figure.",
"30+ year old mothers, probably divorced or with a very unattractive, not fun in bed, but providing husband, want to experience how getting dominated and used feels.\n\nThey crave the feeling of a strong and powerful man fucking them, but since they are older now and not as attractive, they can't get such man, so they want to experience it through another medium.",
"Because the target audience is female. There is a double standard about double standards.",
"E-readers like the Kindle allow readers to discretely read what could otherwise be embarrassing to be caught with. I think the interest isn't new but it is the first time a written format porn fantasy is accessible to women without it being obvious that she is reading something private. It became such a popular guilty pleasure through word of mouth that it slipped into the mainstream media, but really I think giving ladies discrete access to adult fantasy books is like giving a dude his own laptop with no-track browsing.",
"There's tons of fluff in the book. The main female character Mary Sues all over her self for the majority of the book, so in that respect, it's not that different from any other book with a lead female character who has a romantic relationship. Also the bdsm is shit and the descriptions of what's going on make you giggle, not horny.",
"Because /r/pussypass\n\nIf it was gender rolls reversed the series would be nothing more than a pipe dream or at best just be considered a smut novel\n",
"50 Shades of Gray is a much better book when you find/replace every instance of Christian Gray with Bruce Wayne. I'm not even joking, Gray's S & M dungeon is the Batcave.",
"Every 15 years or so, female submissiveness is rediscovered as a meme. Some bit of art-like substance washes up on the cultural beach, and the usual seagulls start to squawk and flap around.\n\nRemember _The Story Of O_? _9½ Weeks_? _Secretary_? Heck, every Harlequin romance every published.\n\n_50 Shades_ was the same.\n\nIf I were smart, I'd wait a decade or so, then publish some Beautiful Captive bullshit and retire rich.",
"Because of a little thing called preselection validation. Women want what other women want, so long as 90%+ are in agreement that it's fun and okay to like this. This is why women love celebrities, jocks and millionaires get the hottest girls, and nerds and ugly guys get zilch in the short term."
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1nmvr7 | what is a bitcoin? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nmvr7/eli5_what_is_a_bitcoin/ | {
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" > What is it?\n\nBitcoin is, depending on your perspective, either a new form of money that doesn't tie itself to any country, or a payment processing option that is able to offer lower fees than credit cards (these fees are charged to merchants and passed on to customers in the form of higher prices).\n\nThe currency was born on the web and is not minted into physical form (there are people who make unofficial physical coins, but the value of the physical coin is that it is tied to a digital quantity of Bitcoin). Unlike some digital currencies (e.g. the in-game ISK in Eve Online or Frequent Flyer miles for an airline) there is no central authority. The computers in the network convene as peers to come to a consensus on how the currency is issued into circulation and making sure that it flows from owner to owner correctly (i.e. if I have 1 Bitcoin I can't give you 2 Bitcoins). \n\nTo use Bitcoin you have to have a wallet--a program that stores the information that allows you to spend your Bitcoins. There are several options here, from the default QT client to the Armory client (which offers advanced security features), to Electrum (which is lightweight and uses less memory and hard drive space), to online wallets like _URL_0_ (online wallets are inherently less secure, but Blockchain does a good job and is easy to set up).\n\nUltimately to a user Bitcoin is designed to be like digital cash, contrasting with credit cards. You don't have to give a lot of (or, really, any) identifying information to hold, accept, or send Bitcoin, although it is not perfectly Anonymous. It is also designed to be like digital gold, in that there is no way to arbitrarily inflate the currency--there will be a theoretical max of 21 million Bitcoins ever produced, and those 21 million coins will be produced at a predetermined rate; a little over half have been issued at this point (11.79 million). \n\n******\n\n > What can I buy with it?\n\nYou can buy a wide variety of things with Bitcoin, although not nearly as easily as with credit cards or Paypal (right now). [This](_URL_1_) website lists stores that accept Bitcoins as payment; it is quite an extensive list. Most of the places on the list are either small businesses whose owners have been turned on to Bitcoin or internet vendors for whom a fully digital currency is convenient. There are a lot of vendors for electronics and for Gold or Silver since Bitcoin attracts technology enthusiasts with its technical nature and Gold/Silver hoarders since Bitcoin has a lot of great properties that shine if your local government collapses. There are also quite a few people who sell illegal or otherwise unsavory goods for Bitcoin (e.g. Drugs, Guns, Porn) since it is, in many ways, like digital Cash.\n\nIn the end you can buy with Bitcoin anything that someone else is selling with Bitcoin.\n\n******\n\n > What is [it] worth?\n\nThat varies minute to minute or hour to hour, just as any currency varies against any other on foreign exchange markets. Right now 1 Bitcoin is about 110-120 US Dollars, which has been holding fairly steady (there was a substantial drop in the past 24 hours; I'll have to look into what caused that but I suspect the US Government shutting down had something to do with it). Since ~$115 is so large it is often more convenient to think of Bitcoin in terms of mBTC--1000 mBTC is 1 BTC, which puts 1 mBTC about on par with a dime. This isn't even close to the limit of divisibility of Bitcoin.\n\n******\n\nI've tried to hide as much of the behind-the-scenes technical workings of the currency for the sake of this comment, although I'm happy to go into that if you'd like. There is an ocean of information that can be thrown at a newcomer to the realm of \"cryptocurrencies\" and I don't want to overwhelm you.\n\nI will say that when I first heard of the idea of Bitcoin about 2 and a half years ago I was certain that it was either inherently flawed or just a straight up scam. However, I've done my homework and even read the source code for the default QT wallet (which the network is largely based on), and I really feel that Bitcoin has a lot of potential to push out conventional payment processors like Visa and PayPal. I think it has interesting prospects as a national currency, although it's not perfect for that role. \n\nIf you have questions about specific areas of Bitcoin feel free to ask. You can also check out /r/Bitcoin if you want to catch the ear of dozens of qualified people, although that's somewhat of an angry subreddit--people care a lot about their money and a lot of yelling takes place. "
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87m0yj | why is it so difficult to inflate a balloon inside of another balloon? | Long story short my friend got bored at work and had two balloons, so he put one inside of the other and was unable to inflate it. He took it to our helium tanks in the back and those struggled to inflate the balloons. What about the second layer of rubber (or whatever they're made of) makes it so difficult to inflate?
EDIT: Neither of the balloons were inflated. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/87m0yj/eli5_why_is_it_so_difficult_to_inflate_a_balloon/ | {
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"I'm guessing because the air pressure inside the already inflated balloon is higher than the deflated one, so it's hard to inflate the inner balloon because all the air pressure from the outer balloon isn't allowing the inner one to expand. Just a guess. Not a physicist. ",
"I would guess there's a lot of friction where the balloons are in contact. This is similar to why you shouldn't wear two condoms.\n\nIn the case of the balloons, the friction is essentially resisting the inner balloon's ability to expand",
"One balloon: fight against only the resistance of the balloon's single latex later.\n\nTwo balloons: fight against the resistances of the second balloon's latex + the air between the balloons pushing back + the second balloon's latex layer",
"In addition to the double thickness, if the two were totally deflated and expanding together you are probably fighting the friction of the balloons as well. They will inflate ever so slightly different rates (the extra thickness of the inside baloon) which might mean that it is trying to slip past the outer balloon a bit. And if you take two balloons and rub them together you'll see how much they can stick to one another."
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17fbxj | the fight for american independence | OK- first, I am Irish with only a 'popular' understanding of how America fought for its independence from Britain. I just presumed there was the big war in which you guys won and that was it. But apparently it is a lot more complicated than that (the British re-invaded???). When I tried to look it up on the internet I just got bogged down in over detailed explanations or heavy historical discussions.
Can someone ELI5 to me, just so I can have a a better understandin for this part of your history. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17fbxj/the_fight_for_american_independence/ | {
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"Why?\n\nCultural- By the 1770s, most people living in the British Colonies in America weren't British. Most were born in the colonies, their parents where born in the colonies. Few of these \"British Colonials\" would ever see Britain at all in their lives. So there were already differences between how each side viewed themselves in relation to the world. \n\nEconomic- The American Revolution can be traced back to the 7 year war (known over here as The French and Indian War). England spent A LOT of money to protect the colonies from the French and their Indian allies. Winning the war nearly bankrupted the crown. To make up for it, Parliament began passing more and more taxes on the Colonies. This causes some problems with the colonials. One, some of these taxes were kinda harsh (though I will go against the typical American grain and say that some of the taxes made sense) and two, the colonies didn't have representation in parliament (one of the mottos was \"NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION\"). These taxes, though most were repealed after massive protest and ineffective collection, pissed off much of the rich business class in the north.\n\nPhilosophical- This was during the late enlightenment, and many scholars, both in America and in Europe were talking about new ideas, like the rights of man, free market capitalism, governments without a supreme sovereign, and individuality. Though a minor role, many of the leaders of the Revolution, did believed in these new ideas and used them to guide why there were fighting for a separate future from the British Crown and Parliament.\n\nPolitical- So other colonists were pissed that they were called 'British citizens', were taxed like 'British citizens', but didn't get a seat in parliament to vote on laws like true British citizens. Also, remember those anti-tax protests, they got kinda violent. So Parliament sent over troops to the colonies. Guess what, people who are protesting a repressive government, don't respond well when you send troops in. Incidences like the Boston Massacre (which was probably not the British troops fault and they were acquitted, but the pro-colonial propaganda is what history remembers) just reinforced that the British parliament wouldn't give the colonies a say in their government and would try and use force to suppress the colonies. Read the Declaration of Independence, there is a LONG middle section no one read that is basically a list of all the things the colonial were pissed about (like troops shutting down newspapers, the parliament appointing Royal Governor to subvert colonial legislatures, the sometimes brutal acts by British Soldiers). \n\nSo by 1775, the economic and political insults, combined with the growing cultural divide between two groups who no longer shared a real common bond, reached a boiling point.\n\nIts important to note that only about 1/3 of the colonials wanted, and fought for Independence. A large number stayed loyal to the Crown and fought for the British. The most, were neutral. Farmers, merchants, and craftsmen who just wanted to go back to business as usual, as war is kinda bad for business. \n\nAnyway, from the American history perspective, the war began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Where the British were trying to raid and take a bunch of weapons that anti-British colonial militias were stockpiling outside of Boston. It was the first armed engagement between forces, and a minor American victory. \n\nThese early battles kinda galvanized the colonists, so much so that next year in 1776, a bunch of the colonial big wigs and leaders met, and decided to say \"Fuck you England, we're doing our own thing now\". Otherwise known as the Declaration of Independence.\n\nThe war would wage on for another decade or so. The British sending troops over to stop the colonials and keep the colonies under their control, and the colonials raising and training armies to fight the British. Eventually George Washington cornered and captured the main British army at a place called Yorktown, and made General Cornwallis, surrender and recognize American Independence.\n\nWe would continue to fight with the British, directly (war of 1812) and indirectly for decades after. America and Britain only really became friends around WWI. "
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81exv8 | why dont electrons lose charge while they spin around the nucleus? | Doesnt spinning and orbiting nucleus cost energy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/81exv8/eli5why_dont_electrons_lose_charge_while_they/ | {
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"First, spinning in this context does not describe a mechanic act, but rather is a label applied to a fundamental attribute of the particle itself. Simply put, if its spin changed, it wouldn't be an electron anymore.\n\nSecond, electrons don't really \"orbit\" the nucleus in the traditional sense. Rather they exist in a cloud of probability where their exact location is rather undefined. Gaining and losing energy does change this cloud, but in discrete ways.\n\nLastly, like spin, the particle's charge is a fundamental aspect of the particle. It cannot lose or gain charge without being a different particle. The loss or gain of energy (in the case of electrons) affects the electron's \"orbit\" around the nucleus. When it gains energy it moves to a higher energy state, then loses that energy by moving to a lower energy state (releasing a photon in the process).",
"They're not really \"orbiting\" like tiny planets, this is just a vastly simplified model to help explain their behavior. Their actual motion is erratic and somewhat inexplicable - they can move around (and outside of) their preferred orbitals somewhat randomly, and can travel from one lobe to another without really existing in the middle.\n\nTheir charge is an innate property of the particle. It does not change and cannot be changed without destroying the particle.\n\nThey store energy in the shape and size of their orbitals, more energetic electrons pull farther away from the nucleus and jump between orbitals more rapidly.",
"Also want to point out that even in gravity, orbiting doesn’t expend energy. Orbiting is just free fall. \n\nTo continue the analogy, the way your question is stated would be “why doesn’t the earth lose mass when it’s orbiting the sun?”",
"I don’t understand how an electron can have a charge of 1- and a proton 1+, since the proton is so much more massive. "
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rhzlr | why music sounds distorted on telephones while voices don't | Thought of this while sitting on hold earlier... never really understood why it is that way. Or why people pay verizon money so that I can hear crashing sounds when I call them | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rhzlr/eli5_why_music_sounds_distorted_on_telephones/ | {
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"Because music makes use of a far wider range of frequencies than our voice. It also includes bass and other things our voices don't use. Most of the technology of the phone is made for voice and not for music.\n\n\nELI5: Our voices are a lot easier for phones than music is.",
"Imagine you have a river that is like one of those traffic-light drinks, except it has 7 colours. So on one bank of the river, it is purple and it goes through the colours until it gets to the other bank of the river.\n\nNow you stick a pipe in the river, say in the green section of water. The pipe carries all the green water and it comes out green at the other end.\n\nBut if you want to put all the colours down the same sized pipe, then it's going to be a horrible, mixed up colour and it will be difficult to tell the individual colours.\n\nNow imagine the colours are the different sounds in music and the green section of the water is the range of human vocie.",
"Picture a footbridge spanning over a roadway. A footbridge is used by people, so the builders made the bridge just wide enough for a person. Any bigger and they would be wasting material. If you were in a car, you wouldn't fit because the bridge is not wide enough.\n\nIf you really needed to get the car across, you would need to trim the sides of the car off so it would fit. Once it's on the other side, you wouldn't have a whole car.\n\nIn this analogy, the bridge represents a telephone line, a person represents a human voice sound signal, and a car represents a music sound signal. Music signals are bigger (wider) than voice signals because they are much more detailed. Since telephones are designed for small, simple voice signals only, there isn't enough room to send wider, more detailed music signals across with out being trimmed down or clipped. \n\n Music: 20Hz - 20,000Hz \n Voice: 300Hz - 3,500Hz (16% the range of music) \n Phone: 300Hz - 3,000Hz, just enough for voice, too small for music. \n\nMusic through a telephone only transmits midrange audio; bass (20Hz-200Hz) and treble (4,000Hz and up) are clipped because they fall outside the telephone's transmission range. Fidelity is drastically reduced and the music on the other end sounds like crap.\n\nThose crashing sounds are called ringback tones. Pure useless vanity. As with all things vanity, the motivation to buy such a thing will never be understood.",
"In the oldest phone networks (like you see in old movies), every call went through an operator who connected your line to another. You had the entire wire to yourself. As phone networks grew, this became unfeasible. At some point in the growth, they needed to find a way to cram multiple calls onto a single \"trunk\" line. They realized that if they filtered the frequencies the system could transmit to a narrow band (that closely matched the human voice) & then shifted the pitch up or down, they could *multiplex* a number of conversations onto a single line (and then un-shift them at the other end).\n\nMusic sounds like crap when you start filtering out all the high frequencies. This is also why dial-up modems never went faster than 56k."
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brabkm | when you hurt your toe (for instance), why does holding the painful toe with your hands make the pain less? | Yes, I just hit my little to against the doorpost. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/brabkm/eli5_when_you_hurt_your_toe_for_instance_why_does/ | {
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"It’s due to what is called the “gate control theory.” Simply put, the “ouchie” signal and the “not-ouchie” signals meet in your spinal cord, and can only send one signal to the brain. The non-painful signal (holding or touching) always wins, dampening the pain signal."
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dwcvdu | how can surgeons skillfully perform a procedure they do only rarely? | Every surgical specialty has the procedures that are the bread and butter of its profession, and then the ones that are so rare that they only come up once or twice a year or may even only a handful of times in a career.
I'm wondering how surgeons know how to perform a procedure they do rarely? I'm thinking of it like working on my car. If it's changing the oil (frequenty), I can do that easily. If it's a brake job (less frequent), I have to refer to the manual and youtube. If it's changing sparkplugs (very infrequent) I'm letting youtube guide me every step of the way. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dwcvdu/eli5_how_can_surgeons_skillfully_perform_a/ | {
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"well...if it is a procedure that's documented...it's documented. just like the repair manual of your car. maybe you've never changed an axle bearing. but it's written down on the repair manual step by step. \n\nunless it's a new procedure that's never been documented. then you need a surgeon that's able to make the right problem analytic and risk assessment judgements and having those reviewed by peers.",
"A surgery is a series of individual techniques. The surgeon may not have done that exact surgery in a while, but they have probably practiced and performed the techniques required regularly and recently (and if not, then brushing up on those techniques are a necessary part of the surgery prep).",
"You went from an oil change, to brakes, then to spark plugs. That’s 3 completely different systems. To follow your comparison, that would be like a cardiac surgeon having to do a bypass surgery on the heart, then go brain, and lastly set compound fractures on the tibia. That’s not how medicine works.\n\nInstead, each surgeon has their specialties.\n\nTo return to your automotive analogy, it would be like bringing a Studebaker to a place who specializes in classic brake repair. They may have never seen one before (or, if so, very rarely), but it’s still within their expertise and abilities.\n\nFrom there, it’s just a matter of research, proper prep, and gettin the right tools before diving in.",
"In the same way that any rare or new endeavor is undertaken; Through meticulous planning and preparation.\n\nThink about your car. You might be an extremely skilled mechanic, but when you go to do a complete rebuild on an engine model that you've never done before you aren't just going to start pulling it apart willy-nilly. You're going to do some research, plan the steps from start to finish, maybe consult some other mechanics who have experience in that particular engine.\n\nIts the same with a specialist surgeon. A neurosurgeon may have performed many brain surgeries before, but a patient comes along with a rare brain tumor in a spot that's complex and difficult to operate on which they may not have attempted before, so they find out as much information as possible, contact other surgeons, put together a multi surgeon team if necessary then plan each step of the surgery from start to finish.",
"To use your analogy about the car - you know how to pop the hood, unscrew a bolt, strip a wire, weld two bits of metal, screw a screw, lubricate a component, etc... put all of these individual tasks in the correct order and you can do any job. \n\nSurgery is the same. You can make an incision, you can dissect a muscle layer, you can locate a blood vessel, you can identify a nerve, you can resect a tumour, you can cauterise a bleeding point, you can stitch a wound. Put all of these in the right order and you can perform any operation. \n\nTl;dr all operations are just made up of the same or similar simple steps as each other.",
"They can’t. At least, not quite as well as surgeons who do those procedures routinely. How often a surgeon and hospital performs a routine can be a big predictor of outcomes. \n\n_URL_0_"
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1rygup | what makes speakers/headphones eventually start crackling? how can it be prevented? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rygup/eli5_what_makes_speakersheadphones_eventually/ | {
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"Its the material that holds the cone. The cone is the what makes the noise. The cone is pushed by a magnet to produce the sound. Only way to prevent this is to not go over the peak power range of the speaker. The rms of the speaker is how loud it will be before it starts to distort. Distortion is when the speaker is to loud and the music is no longer clear. Once the rubber that holds the cone goes the speaker goes. ",
"There are a pair of wires that connect the coil of wire that drives the speaker cone to the external wiring. these wires are usually connected to a barrier strip and are made of a very resilient and flexible material. These wires eventually start to fail from all the flexing they have to do. This leads to an intermittent electrical connection and causes the 'crackling' that you hear. There are companies that will rebuild a speaker, but, the cost is much higher than the cost of a replacement and are usually reserved for antique or special application speakers."
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eunbaw | how does the scissors-curling of a ribbon you use for a gift work? are there straight fibers that get broken up in fragments? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eunbaw/eli5_how_does_the_scissorscurling_of_a_ribbon_you/ | {
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"**TL;DR:** *Different amounts of force on the ribbon's outer versus inner edge as you stretch it over your scissor blades results in one surface of the ribbon being stretched out more than the other, and that forms a permanent slight bend that becomes a full curl if long enough.*\n\nA ribbon actually has a little thickness to it. So there's a tiny bit of distance between the side of the ribbon that's facing toward you, and the side of the ribbon that's facing away from you.\n\nWhen you fold that ribbon over the sharp edge of a pair of scissors and apply pressure, you are actually creating more stretching on the \"outside\" surface of the ribbon than the \"inside\" surface. So the outer part of that ribbon gets pulled and stretched more than the inner part, and that combination of a surface that IS stretched and a surface that IS NOT stretched creates a bend. If that bend is long enough, it becomes a curl.\n\nTo see this at a larger scale, grab an old paperback magazine and put it in front of you with the staples or seam to the left. Now fold it over right-to-left so the right edge is now touching the spine/seam/staples. Then, holding it in this position, pick it up and look at the U-shaped edge that's closest to you. You can see that the \"outer\" part of the bend (i.e. the back page) is longer than the inner part of the bend (the front page), and the pages themselves no longer line up squarely, fanning out a little bit thanks to the extra bendy distance. The outer pages are now under more force than the inner near that bend, and they'd stretch more if they could (like a ribbon's material will).\n\n If that magazine-bending force were strong enough (e.g. put it in a hydraulic press or something), the outer pages would tear before the inner pages. Same with a ribbon, except its fibres stretch instead of breaking, and you get a curl rather than a rip."
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1tx4t0 | why do people "cringe or shake" before taking a shot of alcohol or just after they have taken one? | LIQUOR is what I'm talking about the hard alcohol not beer | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tx4t0/why_do_people_cringe_or_shake_before_taking_a/ | {
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"Because most alcohols taste like a dog's butt especially if they're not mixed with something. They're either sour or bitter, or sour and bitter. The human palate prefers sweet. ",
"Because they are a pussy"
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frzm26 | what is the difference between proprioception and somatosensory? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/frzm26/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between/ | {
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"Proprioception is knowing where your body parts are in space. Somatosensation is simply feeling different kinds of touch on the skin."
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1s6258 | why do revolving doors exist? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1s6258/eli5_why_do_revolving_doors_exist/ | {
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"I believe it has something to do with energy costs.\n\nIt costs money to heat a building, or to provide air conditioning for a building, and I think the point of a revolving door is that it lets out less air or heat than a regular door.\n\nJust a guess though. I think I've seen signs that say \"please help save energy, use the revolving door\", so that's where I get these assumptions.",
"When you operate a revolving door the outside environment is always excluded. As it revolves, the outside chamber seals before the inside opens. Saves heating and air conditioning costs, and keeps dust and pollutants minimized.",
"They're also convenient for people with their hands full and can have people flow both ways through one portal with no chance of them running into each other. \n\nOh, and they're more fun to use than hinged doors. ",
"Because when you use a revolving door, only a little pocket of hot air leaves the building, and only a little pocket of cold air enters the building.\n\nRegular doors allow a lot more air to enter and leave the building when they open.\n\nRevolving doors reduce heating costs because less cold air has to be warmed to room temperature.",
"Thermal energies and tall buildings, heated air from the lowest levels of a building rise to the highest levels (through the elevator shafts mostly ) as such the suction of the air flow is so great that revolving doors had to be put it in tall buildings to keep the strong incoming winds from pushing people over , messing with the elevators and pushing open regular swinging doors.\nYou rarely if ever see revolving doors on any building that is less that 4 levels high.",
"my first time in NY i was going into a walgreens and went through the regular door instead of the revolving door like everyone else. it was super duper windy. everything in front of the store blew over on account of me, flyers went flying everywhere. so that's one reason. ",
"Here's one of my favourite podcast's answering that question _URL_0_"
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5mssue | what's a byte (gigabyte, megabyte) made of and how big is it? | I feel like this requires a lot of explaining but if anyone can explain basically just what any little byte is made of, how large it is, and how it can exist without changing the weight of a hard drive...or does it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mssue/eli5_whats_a_byte_gigabyte_megabyte_made_of_and/ | {
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"It's not \"made up\" anything in particular. It's just a concept. A byte is a string of eight bits, and a bit is just a binary digit. A number. And it doesn't make much sense to ask \"what is a number made of, and how big is it?\"\n\nIn computers, bits are stored in lots of different ways, depending on the device. HDDs store bits as the alignment of magnetic fields on a spinning metal platter. SSDs store bits as extra electrons being pumped into memory cells. Your CPU deals with bits as being different voltages across wires. A CD stores bits as raised and lowered regions of the surface that reflect light differently.\n\nIn short, a bit is just a number that can be either 1 or 0, on or off, yes or no. Any thing that you can think of that can store and represent two states can store a bit. The light switch on the wall in your home stores one bit of information. Up, and the light is on. Down, and the light is off.",
"A byte is just stored information made up of eight bits. Bits can store two states either a yes or a no represented by a 1 or a 0. They can be stored two ways depending on what type of storage you have. \n\nA SSD stores information inside transistors utilizing electrons. If there is voltage inside the transistor it is a 1 otherwise it is 0. Technically increasing the amount of data inside an SSD will increase its weight just by a completely useless to even mention amount. Each one of these transistors store one bit. \n\nA physical platter hard drive uses a metal disk that we can freely alter and read the magnetic fields at any given point inside the disk. If the magnetic field is facing one way it is a true if it is facing the opposite direction it is false. Each one of these domains that we can alter and read would be one bit.",
"It's basically just a bunch of 1s and 0s that make up binary code.\n\n1 byte = 8 bits, or a series of eight 1s and 0s. A gigabyte is 1 billion bytes.\n\nWhen you store these bits on something, you're just storing a representation of the bits. For example, with DVDs/Blu Rays, this bits are represented by a series of \"pits\" that the laser can read off the disc. The data is written in a track that goes around the entire disc like a record. As the laser passes along this track, it can detect when there's a pit, and when there isn't. These spaces of \"pits\" and \"not pits\" represent the 1s and 0s of binary.\n\nThere are many other ways to store this type of information, and people are always looking for faster, cheaper, more dense ways of storing bits.\n\nYou could, in theory, simply write a series of dots and dashes on a piece of paper and store binary information that way.",
"Alright.\n\nA byte is made up of 8 bits.\n\nA bit is a number that can only be 0 or 1. It can basically have two states - 1 or 0. It can be represented anywhere where there's two states - a light switch can be either on (1) or off (0), as an example. That's a bit.\n\nBits used to be represented as all sorts of things. For example, on a punch card, the presence of a hole means a 1, while the absence of it means a 0. The computer used a light sensor to determine whether there was a hole punched in or not. \n\nAnd a bit is as large as the device that's used to represent it. Or, a bit can be as small as you can make it. For example, on a modern hard drive, a bit occupies an area of 250x25 nanometers, or 6250 square nanometers. Or 0,000000000000000000625 square centimeters.\n\nAnd if you can change the state of something that represents a bit, you can write a bit. It's as simple as that.\n\nOn a hard drive, bits are represented by magnetic fields. It's basically like an old audio cassete, but stretched over a disc. The platter inside a hard drive is basically like a \"magnetic canvas\", and the read/write head can either sense the magnetic fields change as it spins, or overwrite the magnetic fields by using an electromagnet to \"paint new magnetic fields\" over the old ones. Certain patterns of magnetic fields represent a 0, and some other pattern represents a 1.\n\nAbout if it changes the weight of a hard drive... it doesn't, and it doesn't need to. Imagine a light switch - it weighs the same whether it's on or off. The only difference between it being on or off, is that the light will glow if the switch is on. But that's not always the case - on a thumb drive, for example, bits are stored as an electrostatic charge, which does have some weight - but it's so small it's basically undetectable.\n\nAnd about bytes, megabytes, gigabytes... A byte is basically an array of 8 bits. Together, they form a number that can range from 0 to 255. How is it so? Just like you can form numbers up to 99.999.999 by pairing together 8 digits, by pairing together 8 bits you can form numbers up to 1111 1111, which is the same as 255 in our decimal system.\n\nA kilobyte (KB) is a group of 1024* bytes.\n\nA megabyte (MB) is a group of 1024* kilobytes.\n\nA gigabyte (GB) is a group of 1024* megabytes.\n\nA terabyte (TB) is a group of 1024* gigabytes.\n\nAnd so on.\n\nYou might be wondering why computers represent numbers as bits instead of decimal numbers, for example. The reason is that bits are very easy to read and write, while numbers with more states can require some guesswork to decide which state it's at. A good way to understand this is to picture a volume knob that goes from 0 to 9, but just has the 0 and the 9 written on it. Can you accurately tell at a glance which number it's at? You can guess, but you won't be right 100% of the time.\n\n*1 KB is technically 1000 bytes. But if you use Windows, it considers 1KB as being 1024 bytes. The unit of measure that actually represents 1024 bytes is called kibibyte (KiB). This is also why when you buy a 16GB flash drive, Windows reports that it only has 14,9GB instead of the 16GB it's supposed to have."
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32b31c | why do (mostly us) hotels have showerheads mounted too low for an average height man | I'm 5'9", but the showerhead is often 3" below the top of my head, making my crouch. Were people shorter "back then" or is there some other reason? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32b31c/eli5_why_do_mostly_us_hotels_have_showerheads/ | {
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"Go to better hotels. I'm 6'2\" and I rarely have issues with the shower in any hotel I'm paying more than around $80 a night for. ",
"So you don't stay in there for long, costing them water rates.",
"Isn't 5'6 the average American male height? It's sort of like how kitchen cupboards are built for people taller then 5'7\" but when your short (I'm 5'3\"), I can't get to the top of the cupboards without a stool or chair. Which is bizarre because culturally speaking, women spend more time in the kitchen then men.",
"I'm 6'6\". \n\nThe shower heads even in normal houses are, at most, eye level. \nThough I was once at a casino hotel and the shower head was at chest level. \n\nThis is why I uses detachable shower head at home. Stock height be darned when I can just hold the shower head myself. ",
"More importantly, why are we setting the standard based off the average height? Won't that make it too short for half the population?",
"TIL they should make telescoping shower heads that you can adjust like a microphone.",
"Sometimes they install the shower head and plumbing before they install the tub. The tub will raise the \"floor\" by a couple of inches. This used to be a bigger problem 20 years ago. I'm not sure if builders are smarter or if I'm just staying in nicer hotels.",
"So that they don't have to waterproof the roof. Splashup is a real thing, and having water spots over the tub decreases value."
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2051gy | units like "pound feet of torque" | I understand things like MPH or Lightyears, etc, but the units in something like "lb-ft" has always been confusing to me. I've done a quick google search but I haven't found a decent explanation online. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2051gy/eli5_units_like_pound_feet_of_torque/ | {
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"In the case of this unit, it is simply the torque that would be produced by placing one pound 1 foot away on a lever. \n\nImagine if you held a 12\" ruler by the very end between your thumb and forefinger. If you add a 1 lb weight at the 6\" mark, it should take the same force to hold level as a weight half the size all the way at the 12\" mark (1 pounds * 1/2 foot = 1/2 pounds x 1 foot).",
"As far as why the unit looks weird, it's a quirk of the units in performing the calculations. When units get really crazy, they tend to get named after someone who did a lot of work in the field. For example, a Newton is a unit of force, but if you broke it out into the \"base\" units, it's kg m / s^2"
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1k23kk | the sun's magnetic field | So with all this hubbub about the Sun's magnetic field shifting, it occurred to me that I'm not entirely sure what a magnetic field is, let alone why or how it shifts.
So I guess my actual requests would be:
-What is the Sun's magnetic field?
-How different is it from Earth's aside from obvious things like size?
-Why does it shift?
-How does it shit?
(First time posting here, I tried to follow the guidelines as best I could. If something should be changed, please tell me!) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k23kk/eli5_the_suns_magnetic_field/ | {
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"First, a magnetic field is an in invisible \"field force\" simply meaning something applies force to something else. Another example of a field force is gravity. The difference being, magnetic fields apply force to charged particles and magnetic materials. Once every 11 or so years, the magnetic poles of the sun switch places, this is part of its normal life cycle. Interestingly, the earth's magnetic field does the same thing just not as often. \"Why\" it flips is a bit too complicated to explain like you're 5 other than to say the sun is built that way.",
"This explanation got a little out of hand, but I hope it isn't too confusing. :) I got a bit carried away\n\nA magnetic field is a \"field\", it's something that goes out through space and exerts a force on other objects in a certain way. Compare it to the concept of a gravitational field, which acts on mass. Magnetic fields exert forces on moving electrically-charged particles, and on \"magnets\" (what exactly constitutes a magnet is complicated though). Likewise, moving charged particles and other magnets also *create* magnetic fields (like how objects with mass *create* gravity, and gravity acts on mass).\n\nMoving charged particles are also called currents - a current of electricity in a wire is the movement of electrons. A current in a wire will create a magnetic field, and a magnetic field can also *induce* (or create) a current in a wire.\n\nThe sun's overall magnetic field is basically the same as the Earth's. They are both caused by electrical currents rotating around the core. In the Earth, that's the molten iron in the core. The molten iron rotates, and that creates currents (because iron conducts electricity), which give us our magnetic field. The sun is made of plasma, which is basically a gas which is so hot that the electrons have broken off from the atoms. Plasmas also conduct electricity for this reason, and the Sun generates its field as the plasma rotates around it, in exactly the same way as the Earth.\n\nIt's not as simple as just \"charged material rotates = magnetic field\" though. The currents that are created make a magnetic field, and that magnetic field then *induces currents* in the material, and these currents then create another magnetic field, and so on. The currents are actually self-sustaining in this way - the vast majority (if not all) of the magnetic field that is created, comes straight out of this feedback-loop. The rotation of the material, and the heat of the material causing convection, \"powers\" this process and keeps it going, but most of the magnetic field comes out of the feedback loop of currents making magnetic fields, magnetic fields making currents, e.t.c. That's where most of the field comes from.\n\nFor comparison: think of this like pushing a child on a swing. You need to give them a push every now and then, but for the most part, they will swing back and forth on their own. The rotation (and convection currents) of the material (such as the Earth's iron core) provide the \"push\", but once the whole system is going, it mostly keeps going on it's own.\n\nSo the magnetic fields are mostly self-sustaining, but the rotation that is \"powering\" it keeps the magnetic field vaguely pointing along the axis of rotation. That's what keeps our magnetic field pointing from the north pole to the south pole. It will wobble around a bit, but keep pointing in generally the same direction.\n\nBut because it is self-sustaining, and \"self-*propelling*\", every now and then, it will start to drift away from the poles, in such a way that the created currents push the magnetic field even further from the poles, and that the pushes it even further away, and so on. A feedback loop happens where the field is pushed further and further away from the poles. This feedback-loop can be strong enough to overcome the rotation of the material (such as the iron core) and the whole magnetic field (and associated currents) will end up reversing direction completely. The magnetic field will then point mostly in this opposite direction (for the same reasons), until the next flip. This is what geomagnetic reversal is.\n\nGeomagnetic reversal happens on the Earth as well as the Sun, but on the Sun is happens much more frequently. That is because the Sun's plasma is much less viscous, and is much hotter, so instabilities can grow much more easily because of this. The Earth's core is extremely viscous - the inner core only rotates once every thousand years or so, relative to the rest of the planet. The sun, on the other hand, has an equator that spins about 50% faster than its poles.",
" > -How does it shit? \n\npffff....BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA\n\n^^^^^^^^^^^^^sorry ^^^^^^^^^^^^^:(",
"Alright so I'm a current first year / second year physics & astrophysics student so I'll try to answer the first two questions. Not sure about the third one and the last one, I wanna laugh at :)\n\nWhat is a (the suns) magnetic field?\n\nA Magnetic field (as has been stated by /u/AlkylHalide) is a long acting force just like the gravitational field. That means that nothing has to physical touch you for you to feel the force exerted by the object.\nThe only way a magnetic field to be produced is to have a charged particle (such as an electron) move. That is to say, **If a charged particle is NOT moving, it produces no magnetic field. For a magnetic field to exist, the charged particle has to move (has to have a velocity).**\n\nHow different is the Suns magnetic field to that of the Earths?\n\nAside from size difference, like you stated, the composition and what goes inside both celestial objects is what causes that difference of magnetic field.\n\nThe Suns core consists of Hydrogen and Helium at the moment (the two most abundant elements in the entire Universe) while Earths core consists mainly of molten metals and rocks. The reason earth has a magnetic field is because it's core is very conductive, actually, the entire world is pretty conductive, hence we can use it to ground our circuits. Because metals tend to 'share' electrons in a sort of pool (meaning the electrons in metallic elements can freely move from one nucleus to another, a sort of 'pool of electrons'), the metal is able to conduct electricity, which is the movement of electrons. Now because the electrons in our core are free to move about, and it's so darn warm in there, the electrons literally produced a magnetic field inside our core. This is what gives our world its magnetic field, which protects us from solar winds.\n\nThe Sun, however, isn't made up of heavy elements, but by the lightest two elements, as has been previously stated. So although the electrons are not in 'pools' inside the suns core, unlike Earths, the temperature at the Suns core is so unbelievably hot that nuclear fusion occurs which only increases the Suns temperature. Because of the very strong gravity produced by the sun, the core of the Sun is incredibly dense and forms a fourth kind of state, plasma. Plasma allows protons and electrons to move around, which once again produce a magnetic field.\n\nSo there you have it, hope that was good enough! :)"
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2jyneo | why do i hear about violence in the islamic world but not in the hindu or buddhist world? | Hindus and Buddhists were colonized and exploited by western powers for centuries as well yet how come they don't hate the west enough to resort to terrorism like many Islamists? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jyneo/eli5_why_do_i_hear_about_violence_in_the_islamic/ | {
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"There are over a billion Muslims in the world, practically a 6th of the world's population. The vast majority don't \"hate the west\".\n\nHindu terrorism and violence\n_URL_0_\n\nBuddhist terrorism and violence\n_URL_2_\n\nWhy stop there?\nChristian terrorism and violence\n_URL_1_",
"Firstly, I would say part of it stems that Muslim violence likely gets a disproportionate amount of coverage in western media because it usually affects western interests. Secondly, the population of Muslims worldwide is higher than those other two religions by a large amount, so you may expect more violence simply from that. Thirdly, this may have to do with a focus on violence that occurs in insular, conservative cultures in certain areas of developing Muslim majority countries that resulted from a strict interpretation of old Sharia law and certain Quran passages which speak to perform violence against infidels. This is actually common in passages of scripture in the Abrahamic faiths, just most Christians and Jews and Muslims live in cultures that deem it unacceptable and the passages are handwaved away or reinterpreted, and there has been a long history of violence associated with them as well, simply likely not covered by media as much. Similarly, most Buddhists live in more developed countries (Japan, Korea, Thailand, China) and no Buddhist teachings (to my knowledge) endorse violence against other faiths. Some radical buddhist offshoots have been known to do some terrorist attacks in japan, such as the Aum Shinrikyo. I don't know much about Hinduism and violence, but I have heard about violent struggles between Muslims and Hindus in India, where Hinduism is mainly limited to as a religion. ",
"You haven't been looking in the right world news sources.",
"Because the Western media is actually fallible (imagine that!) and is susceptible to confirmation bias. People believe Islam is 'the' violent religion, and their reporting reflects that. However, what we see in the media is not a complete picture of the world. There is lots of Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian terrorism (as pointed out by Neuroplasm), and there's Jewish terrorism too. There's also terrorism in the name of ideologies that have nothing or little to do with religion (see Anders Brevik, who was rabidly anti-immigration).\n\nEDIT: I realize the statement that Anders Brevik's crime was not motivated by religion is potentially controversial. But hear me out: yes, he was Christian, but it was the anti-immigration, anti-Islam, far-right political ideology, and hatred for the Labour Party that made him do what he did...please remember that he cited Pat Condell, an outspoken atheist, as an influence. Watch Pat Condell's videos and you'll see the ideology that fueled Brevik's actions....the common ground between these men is surely not religion.",
"Entirely different political/economic enviroments.\n\nLook at Christianity in even 17/18th century US.\n\nLook at Islam where its people arent living in an economic shithole, like Iran."
]
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6ws6kq | how do we know north korea is "testing" a missile launch over japan, and not firing an actual warhead at them? | Do we know it's a test at the time of the launch? Can we calculate the target or so we have to wait and see where it goes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ws6kq/eli5_how_do_we_know_north_korea_is_testing_a/ | {
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"They don't until the missile lands. This is why North Korea's provocative tests are so provocative, since nobody can be 100% sure there is no warhead. The missile can be tracked and where it will go estimated, but missiles can change directions. Some missiles don't fly in a parabolic path, but can fly like a plane for long distances, making it impossible to be 100% sure of its target. "
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3znuxp | what does the north korea nuclear weapon testing mean for the rest of the world? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3znuxp/eli5_what_does_the_north_korea_nuclear_weapon/ | {
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"First problem is that NK having nuclear weapons combined with the fact that one dictator with no one to put him in check is in control of them means that he could lose it one day and hit SK or China with a nuke. Probably unlikely unless some nation tries to take him out and he gets pissed.\n\nThe more likely bad scenario is that NK could and probably would sell nuclear weapons and/or nuclear material. The world has yet to see a terrorist attack using a nuclear weapon. The more crazy, power hungry people in this world that have access to them, the more likely it will be to happen.",
"it shows a *possible* new development in their nuclear program. Until now, all their nuclear tests have been plutonium-based fission bombs, while this one was *supposedly* a plutonium-based fusion bomb. The difference is in how the bomb is designed, with a fusion bomb being far more complex, but yields a far larger explosive yield. \n\nHowever, this explosion resulted in a 5.1 on the Richter scale, which is the same as North Korea's 2013 fission bomb test. That would indicate that either this wasn't a fusion bomb, rather another fission bomb, *or* a fusion bomb test, with a smaller amount of nuclear material. \n\nRight now, it's too soon to tell which it was.\n\nEither way though, it'll result in a UNSC meeting, in which they'll condemn the North Korean government, place sanctions on them, etc. Eventually, North Korea will say it'll halt all further nuclear testing, if it receives food and medical aide, as is routine around this time of year. \n\nUS may move more PAC-3, THAAD, and AEGIS BMD (ballistic missile defense) batteries to the Korean peninsula to calm South Korean fears.\n\nOutside of that though? Likely nothing. Can't really *do* anything about it, other than go to war with North Korea, which China would adamantly oppose, since North Korea, as crazy as it may be, serves as a buffer for them from US allies. You'd risk a larger conflict by actively going against China's desires there.",
"Nothing much. China protects and supports North Korea to get buffer zone to US controlled South Korea, but China wouldn't want to get involved in nuclear war.\n\nWithout Chinas support, N. Korea would not last a day. And they know it. So N. Korea is extremely unlikely to do anything that would really anger China"
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