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13yqkq | this obama drone warfare deal | I only heard it mentioned, I really have no clue what it's about | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13yqkq/eli5_this_obama_drone_warfare_deal/ | {
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"text": [
"Drones are used to kill people instead of having planes with pilots in them killing people.\n\nIt's not new to Obama but he has been using it quite a bit."
]
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[]
] |
|
da74cj | how do bluetooth things work, more specifically bluetooth earphones? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/da74cj/eli5_how_do_bluetooth_things_work_more/ | {
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"Wireless devices (basically everything, these days) communicate by sending electromagnetic waves over the air that get picked up by other devices and interpreted as data. But in order for two devices to talk, they need to be speaking the same language, like maybe the waves should all be a certain length. Bluetooth is simply a standard, or a set of guidelines, for what type of waves two devices should use to communicate. If your device follows the Bluetooth wave rules, your device can talk to other devices that follow the Bluetooth wave rules.",
"Bluetooth is a language that works over air at small distances like mom talking to her child in the other room.\n\nBluetooth actually uses the same frequency as WiFI, but uses a different \"dialect\" to avoid interference.\n\nMom is a phone, tablet, laptop etc. The child is any bluetooth device (including headphones).\n\nUsing the same language analogy, the amount of \"words per minute\" BT devices can use to talk to one another is limited, so to send a song, they must speak in simpler words. \n\nSo instead of saying \"this part of this marvelous musical creation enthralls my soul and lifts my spirit\" (14 words), BT can only use 7 words at a time and would have to say it like \"this part of this song is neat\".\n\nThis translation from complex music to simpler music is done by interpretors named \"codecs\". Both the device and the BT headphones must have the same codec.\n\nSome codecs are better than others at transmitting the music via BT.\n\nThe better codecs that would make the least loss in audible quality are aPtix (HD), LDAC and AAC (especially if you have an iPhone), so you may want to look for those in specs when choosing a pair of BT headphones."
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62xb8c | the reason our mouths constantly produce saliva. | I know we produce more saliva when getting ready to eat as a first step to break down the food, but what is the reason it never stops? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62xb8c/eli5_the_reason_our_mouths_constantly_produce/ | {
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"Have you ever had a dry mouth? It's a pretty bad time. Without the constant flow of saliva, our mouth and throat would desiccate (dry out) and crack. It would be painful. We need the flow of mucous in order to swallow. ",
"In part it performs the same function as the mucus lining the nasal cavity and throat: it captures dust particles during breathing. Also, the acidity helps to prevent bacteria from growing on food particles left in the teeth after eating (granted, quite a lot of bacteria still manage to grow there, as evidenced by my dental bills)."
]
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31smfx | - what happens to all the championship merchandise they have ready for the team that doesn't win? why don't we see it anywhere? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31smfx/eli5_what_happens_to_all_the_championship/ | {
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"text": [
"They give it away to poor people in other countries. _URL_0_"
]
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[
"http://mentalfloss.com/article/29884/what-happens-losing-teams-championship-shirts"
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||
8xivw3 | besides aerodynamics, what factors influence the changing styles of cars and other automobiles throughout the years? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8xivw3/eli5_besides_aerodynamics_what_factors_influence/ | {
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"text": [
"Government crash test safety regulations have had a massive effect on the design of cars, far more so than aerodynamics.\n\nThe tall doors, narrow windows, thick pillars, blunt front ends, and high rears that define virtually every sedan these days are largely to pass crash tests.\n\n"
]
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3snec4 | what does it mean when someone tells you to "ping" them? | I've heard this a lot over the past couple of weeks, and I'm a bit confused whether it means text, email, or just a general word for both.
Edit: Thanks! That was bugging me | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3snec4/eli5_what_does_it_mean_when_someone_tells_you_to/ | {
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"Pinging someone usually needs context. It depends on the most frequent medium of instant communication involved and therefore can be sending a message on any one (or more) of the following:\n\n* text based SMS\n* whatsapp\n* google chat ping\n\nYou get the drift.",
"I would think it meant use an instant messenger to contact them.\nBBM has pinging, if you still live in the dark ages using that. ",
"\"Send me a quick message using a communication medium for which you should already have my contact data.\""
]
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6dvwg9 | why aren't resolutions like 8k (and even higher) more available. comparing a 1080p phone screen size to something like a 60" tv gives me the impression a higher pixel density should be easily achievable. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6dvwg9/eli5_why_arent_resolutions_like_8k_and_even/ | {
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"Denser concentrations of electronic components employ vastly more expensive manufacturing processes. The display accounts for a significant portion of the cost of producing your phone. So, even assuming price and size scale linearly (which they don't), if your 15- square-inch phone display costs $250 to produce, the cost of a 65\" panel at 500+ dpi would be somewhere north of thirty grand.\n\nThat, coupled with the fact that there's no content that could be displayed at that resolution, makes the sale of such a device practically impossible.",
"People won't pay for them. People won't pay for them because there's no content for them (and as ninja said they'd cost 30,000$). There's no content for them because it's impossible to transmit that much detail on anything short of fiber-optic wire(as zei said).\n\nAnd frankly you can't tell the difference. pixils/inch suffers from a diminishing utility curve just like frames per second. Most people can't tell the difference between 100 FPS and 250 FPS and 1080p is fine for the current size of most TVs.\n\nIn movie theaters they could produce much higher resolutions (for more money) but they don't because they get a bigger bang for the buck by going full 3d or serving beer."
]
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4i6h6o | why do they land the falcon 9 on a ship instead of on land? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4i6h6o/eli5_why_do_they_land_the_falcon_9_on_a_ship/ | {
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"Sure, but barges are safer because you can easily put them away from anything valuable. And if the rocket misses it just lands in water rather than smashing on land. You can also move your pad anywhere, including the most fuel efficient locations on the equator of the Earth's spin, or international waters so you don't need to worry about governments telling you what you can launch. "
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353538 | if haribo sugarless gummy bears are as bad as most people say, why are they still in production, and who buys them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/353538/eli5_if_haribo_sugarless_gummy_bears_are_as_bad/ | {
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"I'm a type 1 diabetic (Jonas Brothers or Jay Cutler, not Paula Deen) and try and avoid candy. I buy the Haribo sugarless gummies because they won't screw up my glucose levels like regular kinds do. I only eat like a handful at a time. ",
"I haven't heard about what's supposed to be wrong with them, so I suppose they're still selling to people like me."
]
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27htkp | how are fake languages in movies, television, and literature constructed and what sorts of professionals are responsible?? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27htkp/eli5_how_are_fake_languages_in_movies_television/ | {
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"There is a [Language Creation Society](_URL_0_) devoted to creating conlangs (constructed languages) -- they were responsible for Dothraki in Game of Thrones. also, check out /r/conlangs",
"I know that Tolkien, for one, was fascinated by languages and created all of the languages of Middle Earth himself. I seem to recall hearing once that Lord of the Rings was actually just a history he wrote to give more life to the languages he was inventing, but I'm too lazy to try to validate a source for that.",
"The field of study called linguistics studies language, not just learning to speak one, but analyzing them. \n\nYou know how young kids learn in school about nouns, predicates, prefixes and root words, and so on? Basically linguists are experts in that field, and they are the ones who are often hired to construct (usually only some of) a language.\n\nFor example, Marc Okrand was hired to develop the Klingon language for Star Trek, and the Atlantean language in Atlantis: The Lost Empire. The Atlantean language is interesting because in the movie it's supposedly the root language of all or most later languages, so he incorporated different aspects of many different languages and language families (e.g. the Romance languages).",
"There are probably many different approaches -- as many approaches as there are people doing this sort of thing. The people involved are linguists, for the really convincing languages; and if they're being paid well, they're doing the most fun job any linguist can have.\n\nSo, depending on exactly what language you want, you might alter an existing language, create a new language based on an existing language, or create a completely new language from scratch.\n\nAn example of a language adapted from -- actually many -- existing languages is Cityspeak from the movie *Blade Runner*. The idea is that the story is set in a cosmopolitan city of the future, where many different cultures have mingled and have to communicate with each other; so Cityspeak, the language of the streets, is a mish-mash of English, Spanish, Japanese, Hungarian and many others. This would be a type of communication called a \"pidgin\" or possibly, if people are using it in their homes, a \"creole\"; and although I haven't studied it, I would expect the grammar to be very simplistic -- like baby talk.\n\nAt the other end of the scale, you have something like Klingon. Originally, the Klingons of *Star Trek* spoke English, but in the first movie they spoke their own language. At first, it was just some random words that were invented for the purpose, but in the third movie it was felt it needed to be more convincing than that. They enlisted the help of Marc Okrand, who took the improvised Klingon dialogue from the first movie, added lots more words and figured out a grammar for this new language. It couldn't be based on any real language because all the real languages we know are human languages, and Klingons are, well, not human.\n\nThere are three things that need to be created: the phonology (what sounds will be in the language and how they can be combined), the vocabulary (all the words you need to use) and the grammar (how the words are organised to make sense).\n\nI don't know how Okrand did it, but I'd personally start with the phonology. The challenge with Klingon is that it must sound alien, but it has to be spoken by human actors, so it must be possible to actually pronounce all the sounds. Consonants were very important here: linguists use a table that can show different types of consonants, and different languages use different sounds from that table. What Okrand did was to concentrate on sounds that were harsh and gutteral (at the request of Paramount), but also picked some sounds from the table that qualified, but not all of them. For example, he deliberately (and rather ironically, given that he'd been asked to create Klingon) left out the sounds of \"k\" and \"g\", instead substituting sounds that may seem similar, but come from different places in the table. The result is that although the sounds used are all present in human languages, there is no human language that has that particular combination of sounds, and so it literally sounds \"out of this world\", exactly what Okrand was being paid to do.\n\nGrammar is also important. And this post is getting very long, but you get the general idea: take grammatical concepts from various different languages. Most human languages are constructed either in the order subject-verb-object, or object-verb-subject. English is S-V-O, so Okrand went with O-V-S: the result is that the words in a Klingon sentence are often in the reverse order of what they are in English (but in a similar order to, for example, Turkish). He also made Klingon agglutinative, meaning that smaller words can be smushed together into longer words, so most of a sentence can be said in a single word. And then, having done that, he decided that Klingons often ignore grammar, or ignore large parts of it, so it's essentially a free-for-all."
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411uia | is it possible for 2 sets of people to have offspring with the exact same dna? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/411uia/eli5_is_it_possible_for_2_sets_of_people_to_have/ | {
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"It's possible, but it's astonishingly unlikely. Even if you have the same two people have two kids and they end up with all the same chromosomes, there will generally be around 100-200 mutations. Getting zero mutations is possible, but it's not as likely as winning the Powerball only to be crushed by a bale of falling cocaine."
]
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8xupij | why is it when you watch tv shows 90s/80s there are strange lighting effects created by moving lights on screen but not prior to this time or after? | Example of this: _URL_0_ as seen at 12:35 created by the tray being held
I think the answer might lie in something to do with the refresh rate of the camera but I just can’t understand why there was no issue prior or after... broadcast frames have always been roughly the same so it just didn’t make sense.
Possible I have this whole thing backwards but it just interested me to know | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8xupij/eli5_why_is_it_when_you_watch_tv_shows_90s80s/ | {
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"An educated guess on my part, is that prior to the 80s, most TV shows were shot on film. Starting in the 80s, they started shooting shows on videotape. The tubes in the video cameras did not deal well with lights in the shots. There was a lot of streaking and burn in from the lights. You can also see this effect on some 70s shows like All in the Family, which were shot on videotape.",
"It has to do with the cameras they are recorded with. At the time bright lighting would \"burn\" into the photosensitive sensors leaving a streak or flicker on the film."
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d0fi0h | how do some hand soaps leave you "squeaky clean" (non slippery) and others don't | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d0fi0h/eli5_how_do_some_hand_soaps_leave_you_squeaky/ | {
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"text": [
"A soap with a stronger binding affinity to oil will leave your hands less slippery. This is due to more oil being bound by the soap, and subsequently washed away by water."
]
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||
g2re4r | how far could a diesel tanker travel while consuming its own cargo? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g2re4r/eli5_how_far_could_a_diesel_tanker_travel_while/ | {
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"text": [
"From a trucking website - \n\n“Empty I get 5.7 - 6.78 mpg. Loaded can be anywhere from mid 4's in the mountains up to 6.23 mpg. Over all average loaded has been 5.5 - 5.8 mpg.”\n\nAnd \n\n“I have an 09 International Prostar with 07 MaxxForce 475hp that pulls flatbed. When at gross averaging 6.8mpg, @ 68 mph and empty 10.0mpg - 10.5 depending on my right foot.”\n\nSo, if we average a full tanker at 6.8mpg. And empty it’s about 9. Depending on terrain, and which truck, etc. \n\nWe can take an overall load mpg as 7.9mpg. \n\nAlso from Google - “A fuel tanker can hold 8000-16000 gallons. (Depends on fuel tanker specifications.)”\n\nWe’ll average this too, at 12000 gallons. \n\n12000x7.9 = 94,800 miles. \n\nIt’s FAR."
]
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7u7z3w | why does a bachelor's in math say it's one of arts? isn't math a science? | I was curious about this as my friend's degree is a BA in Mathematics. What's the reason? Are there other contradictory examples? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7u7z3w/eli5_why_does_a_bachelors_in_math_say_its_one_of/ | {
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"Unlike the US, internationally, most countries recognize Mathematics as science with college degrees as BS or MS instead BA or MA. ",
"There's no real difference between a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science. Some schools only award one or the other, some award both but their criteria for who gets which aren't universal. I have a BA in physics, and an acquaintance of mine has a BS in creative writing.",
"The \"arts\" referenced in the \"Bachelor of the Arts\" (BA) are the \"liberal arts\", defined as:\n\n > academic subjects such as literature, philosophy, mathematics, and social and physical sciences as distinct from professional and technical subjects\n\nBasically, all of your academic disciplines, other than business & engineering, fall under the \"liberal arts\". Many universities have a college of \"arts & sciences\" that covers them. When talking about \"art\" (music, painting, etc.), you're looking at a \"Bachelor of the **Fine** Arts\" (BFA).\n\n",
"The choice of a BA/BS or MA/MS is often a result of which college the major is in. College of Math & Science = BS. College of Arts and Sciences might be BA. This is especially common with psychology, which is either in many schools, or even both in one university with 2 different emphasis areas. In most cases it doesn't matter.\n\nIn some cases, a BA *is* a lesser degree, usually in the sciences where its a survey degree and requires fewer credits to complete.",
"Usually, it makes no difference, it is just how a university organizes its degrees. Note that in education \"arts\" means \"liberal arts\", fields of study rather than preparation for a career, which can include math and science. What most people think of as the arts is referred to as \"fine arts\".\n\nBut sometimes it can make a difference. Often a university will have a more general curriculum for BA students and a more focused on for BS students. BA in math would take more history and philosophy classes, whereas a BS would take extra math electives instead.\n\n",
"Something not addressed by the other answers: No, maths is not a science.\n\nScience is characterised by its methodology, literally called the scientific method. Science is what you're doing when you make observations, construct a model, make predictions, do an experiment, and evaluate your model in light of the results.\n\nMathematics doesn't do that at all, so it isn't scientific. Mathematics makes progress through proof. People ask questions, others make conjectures about the answer, but ultimately progress happens when somebody comes up with a proof that their conjectured answer is correct. Mathematics follows the axiomatic method. ",
"You asked for counterexamples. [Mine](_URL_0_) is a Bachelor of Science."
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451rwv | how do those tablets work that the dentists gives kids to make the plaque show up red in their mouth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/451rwv/eli5_how_do_those_tablets_work_that_the_dentists/ | {
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"Plaque is a film on teeth that's very porous. When you pour dye-filled water over it, it'll run off of a bare tooth surface but get sucked into any plaque and so show up with an intense colour.\n\nIt's the same as if you have a white vinyl table cloth, and put a piece of newspaper on it, and then toss a bucket of dyed water over the whole thing. The newspaper will really stand out."
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eqf3m8 | where does the feeling of a sore throat come from when you have a cold? why does it feel rough? and why do warm beverages help? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eqf3m8/eli5_where_does_the_feeling_of_a_sore_throat_come/ | {
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"A sore throat happens when the mucous membranes lining your throat become inflamed. This is a common symptom of a cold or other infection. Your body sends a lot of extra white blood cells to the area of the infection to kill the bacteria or virus that's present, and that's what causes the inflammation. Hot beverages can help loosen and thin mucous, which relieves some discomfort. In addition, gargling warm salt water can relieve the discomfort",
"Post-nasal drip (the boogers running down the back of your nose and throat) can cause irritation which makes your throat feel sore."
]
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40gg60 | how does a smartphone secretly waste data? | I am reading this lifehack article, but still do not understand: _URL_0_. Is this happening even when cellular data is turned off? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40gg60/eli5_how_does_a_smartphone_secretly_waste_data/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"No. \"In the background\" just means \"When you're not looking at it.\"\n\nIf you go into your settings and disconnect from your mobile data connection, it will terminate and will prevent any app from pulling data across it."
]
} | [] | [
"http://lifehacker.com/5957947/how-to-figure-out-which-apps-are-using-your-smartphones-cellular-data-without-your-knowledge"
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1xw627 | why 12 (a dozen) is the typical quantity for many things | Just sort of popped in my head yesterday when I saw people picking up their dozen roses for V-Day, while my grocery bags had a dozen eggs. Why was 12 ever chosen to be the "right" quantity for these things?
Also list any other examples of typical quantities and their reason for being that size!
Edit: Good answers! The divisibility of 12 seems to be everyone's main reason. Easy to divide by 2, 3, 4, 6. But at the same time, any recipe I've ever seen calls for a specific number of eggs, not a fraction of a carton, so why stick to what seems like an arbitrary packaging of 12? And to use my other example, what makes 12 roses significant instead of 10 roses? Other than the fact that there's more of them. Is it just that it's a unique number that we're used to seeing in other places? (clocks, months, etc) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xw627/eli5_why_12_a_dozen_is_the_typical_quantity_for/ | {
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"12 is easily divided evenly into smaller amounts. You can divide 12 evenly by 2, 3, 4, and 6. If it was 10 then you could divide it by 2 and 5.",
"Twelve is a convenient unit to use because it has more divisors than other small numbers: 12 = 2 × 6 = 3 × 4 = 1 × 12. So maybe that's why",
"It doesn't matter, it's just useful. 12 is a useful number (it divides and multiplies well) but it is useful to have a measurement of STUFF. like a mole- whether it's a mole of roses or a mole of Carbon atoms it is the same number of items in a mole, which is very helpful to chemists. Most systems of measurement are arbitrary. How long is a foot? somebody made that up. How much does a Kilo or Stone weigh? Someone made that up too. Measurement systems are useful but unless it is time we are measuring, how we measure things is just based on convention.",
"For your question added in your edit: A dozen eggs makes it easy to get a whole number of servings from a carton because of the divisibility of 12. If you use 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, or 12 eggs in whatever you're making, you can get an integer number of that from a carton.\n\nA dozen roses apparently has its significance in Victorian flower language, meaning \"thinking of you 12 months a year\" (i.e. all the time).",
"Someone told me the following story:\n\nEach of our fingers has three sub-parts (called phalanx, at least the bone).\n\nIf you use your thumb as a \"counter\", touching the respective phalanx, \nyou have a simple counting mechanism, literally \"at hand\", that goes up to 12.\n\nLike, start at the lower phalanx of your index finger (1) and work your way to the tip (which would be 3). Then start with your middle finger (4) and so on ... the tip of your pinkie denotes 12.\n\nWith some practice, you can do it blindly.\n\nIf you use your other hand as well, you even got the next digit within the base-12 number system, which might explain why there's another old measure called \"gross\", which is twelve dozens.\n",
"All measurements are inherently arbitrary, and the historical \"why\" of their origin rarely sheds much light on the subject. \n\nWhy do we keep doing it? Because the system's working fine for just about everyone, and there's no real value in switching over to a 10-egg system. There *is*, however, a large risk involved. If you want to start selling eggs in new 10-egg packages, you can't just buy your cartons, shipping containers, and packing machines from a supplier- you have to custom build all of it. Because you had to spend all that money to open your 10-eggs-per-carton factory, you now have to charge *more* for your eggs, to the point where you might have to charge as much for your 10 eggs as someone else might have to charge for 12.\n\nSecondly, if I'm a consumer, unless I'm *very* disciplined with my meal planning, and *very* disciplined in my kitchen skills, I'm not *exactly* sure how many eggs I'm going to need in a week; I'm not very interested in buying a slightly-tweaked quantity of eggs. Imagine if Coke started selling 13oz cans and 11oz cans and 14oz cans- does it make *that much* of a difference to people?\n\nOn items like eggs and roses, 12 just hits some sort of psychological Goldilocks spot of not-too-few, not-too-many.",
"The answers here make sense. So, explain to me why there are 10 hot dogs per package, but only 8 hot dog buns per package?"
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3ipzmn | what happens when money is digitally transfered from one bank to another? is the money later picked up to be stored there? or is there some sort or digital i.o.u. involved? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ipzmn/eli5_what_happens_when_money_is_digitally/ | {
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"I think you'll find that 90% of the world economy operates on 'digital IOUs' these days. That's literally all there is. ",
"Most of it probably isn't physical cash, Something like 90% of the money in the world isn't even physical to begin with, its jsut 1s and 0s . Then add on top of that that a bank only needs to keep a small percentage of the amount they loan out in actual money on hand, there is probably no physical money changing hands. ",
"Basically all banks have an account with the central bank. So, if one bank transfers money to the other they are going to the central bank and say transfer $100 from my account to the other banks account. And the other bank also receives information who exactly gets the money. The numbers are usually a bit larger, but that's about it in the ELI5 version.\n\n",
"Take a step back from there...\n\n\nEvery dollar a bank takes as a deposit from someone, it can turn around and legally loan out another 10 dollars.\n\nThat's right, banks are allowed to 'create money out of thin air'. It is called the [Fractal Reserve System](_URL_0_). \n\nIt is run by the Federal Reserve, but there is nothing government about it, it is as \"federal\" as Fed Ex. They are a private bank that loans money to the US gov, which then turns around and prints greenbacks (dollars). \n\nThe whole economy is run on debt, borrowing from the Reserve, so every $ printed also has debt associated to it.\n\nThere is not enough printed US dollars in the world to pay off all the existing debt, and if it did, it would crash the global economy.\n\nWe need some level of debt to keep the machine running, today even with our $20T figure, it is still a low percentage of GDP. \n\nSo to answer your question, no. Money is only sent to bank locations like stocking OJ or Milk, to have enough cash on hand to complete daily banking activity given that location. They just get a delivery of cash to keep the draws filled to get through the day. Most money lives its whole existence as digital bits in banking systems and is never actually printed.\n\nwe live in a strange world.\n\nedit: If you don't believe me, here is a video of Khan Academy explaining how it works:[_URL_1_](_URL_1_)",
"You aren't transferring money.\n\nYou are transferring your right to withdraw that amount of money from you to the bank that receives \"the money\".",
"Just to be clear, money itself is just an IOU for goods & services, or more deeply, an IOU for the labour to produce goods and services.\n\nIf a plumber comes to fix your toilet and you give them cash, cheque, credit card, or just transfer money digitally, you aren't giving them anything with inherent value. You're just saying, \"I owe you the equivalent goods/services/labour to the work you just did for me.\"\n\nIf you were a farmer, perhaps you'd pay them in food because that is something they'd want, but typically the type of work you do isn't something the plumber would want.\n\nMoney is simply a transferable IOU, and the currency used is the agreed upon means of exchange. That is, the plumber can take the IOU you give him to the grocery store to buy food, which the store can give to their employees and suppliers, which they can all exchange for things they need, including to the company you work for who then gives you back the IOU you gave the plumber as part of your pay for labour you did for your employer. At that point it's come full circle.\n\nDebt is then just having more IOUs outstanding *from* you than are owed *to* you. \n\nDigital money is just an electronic recording of IOUs instead of paper (or other proxy). So shifting money between banks really just means decreasing a number in one bank's records, and logging *why* and to whom that IOU was transferred, and an increase at the other bank. The logs should, of course, match on the amount and reason for the shift.\n",
"There seems to be a lot of misinformation going around here, so I'll try my best to explain some of it.\n\nIn accounting terms, every entity uses what is called the 'accounting equation,' which is 'Assets = Liabilities + Equity.' There always needs to be balance in the equation. So if you increase an asset, you either need to decrease an other asset or increase a liability or equity by the same amount.\n\nAn asset is something of value that you own or (and here's what people don't always understand) can claim ownership of. A liability is something of value that an entity owes to another entity, and the equity is the value of the entity.\n\nSo what happens when you give $1,000 to the bank, is that they record the $1,000 as an asset in cash, but they also record $1,000 as a liability. Opening and putting money into a checking account with a bank has absolutely no impact on their equity. they gain equity by using that $1,000 to gain revenue from interest.\n\nSo what happens when you transfer your $1,000 bank account to another bank, is that the first bank reduces their asset account by $1,000 and also reduces their liability account by $1,000, while the new bank increases both accounts by $1,000. The old bank no longer has your cash, but they no longer owe you that cash. The new bank now has your cash, and they now owe that cash to you. Nowadays this is all done electronically. On a regular basis banks will reconcile their physical cash reserves based on a percentage of their depositor's funds that they are legally required to hold. If they have more, they'll transfer the excess to other banks. If they have less, they'll request money from other banks.\n\nMoving on to the issue of how banks \"create money,\" when an entity lends money to another entity, they reduce their cash account, but they also increase their 'accounts receivable' account by the same amount. That account is an asset account listing the money that is owed *to* them. Remember how I said an asset can also be something that you don't have but can claim ownership of? That's what the 'accounts receivable' account is. The receiving bank, on the other hand, records the cash they received as an asset in their cash account, but they also offset that by increasing their liability account by the same amount. Say the loan amount was for $1,000. Now both banks have an asset account with $1,000, thus the illusion of creating money. However, one bank has a $1,000 liability to offset their $1,000 asset, so in actuality there still is only $1,000 cash.\n\nAddressing the topic of how there can be more debt than physical money, liabilities only disappear when the debt amount is returned to the debt holder. If I lent you $1 and you returned that $1 to me, the liability goes away. However, if when I lend you that $1, you turn around and lend it to someone else, you now have a $1 liability and the guy you lent the $1 to has one as well. That's $2 of debt but there is only $1 physical dollar. If he returns the dollar to you, and then you return the dollar to me, the $2 of debt is now gone, with only $1 physical dollar. So the $18.3 trillion US national debt does not need to be 100% backed by cash, because there is a large network of entities that owe money across the board but are also lending that money they borrowed to other entities down the chain.",
"The short answer is neither bank actually has the physical money in the first place.\n\nBank 1 and Bank 2 each hold accounts with a common Mega Bank. They have bank accounts at that bank in the same way that you have a bank account with your personal bank. When they started as a bank, they opened up an account with Mega Bank and provided them with all of their physical money.\n\nWhen Bank 1 sends money to Bank 2, Mega Bank decreases Bank 1's account balance and increases Bank 2's balance."
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5vgvvp | why shaking cold water makes it freeze | By this I mean if you put water in the freezer and take it out, assuming it's been in long enough to reach 32F/0C, why is it sometimes still liquid until it moves or you shake it, then it turns to dense slush? Also, this happens with beer but I always assumed that was the from the beer foaming. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vgvvp/eli5_why_shaking_cold_water_makes_it_freeze/ | {
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"Water molecules are polar, which means the 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen atoms within don't share electrons equally. In other words, each water molecule is slightly magnetic with the hydrogen molecules being slightly positive while the oxygen molecule is slightly negative (it hogs the electrons from the little hydrogens). Now imagine all of these molecules getting closer together and moving less and less as the temperature drops (temperature is actually just the amount of kinetic energy a molecule has, as determined by how much it's vibrating. The less temperature, the less vibrating, the closer they get together. Think of people in a mosh pit as having high energy: they take up more space the more they move around). When you agitate that cold water by shaking it, those almost-stationary water molecules all move around a little bit and the negative ends of one water molecule \"stick\" to the positive ends of another and you end up with a hexagonal pattern.\n\n[See here for an image water as a solid, liquid, and gas](_URL_0_)"
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fnliu4 | why does acetone evaporate off the skin almost instantly? | I was recently using acetone to take off nail polish and I noticed as soon as it goes onto my skin it dries almost instantly. Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fnliu4/eli5_why_does_acetone_evaporate_off_the_skin/ | {
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"Acetone has a very low boiling point (temperature where a liquid transitions into gas). For water, it’s 100C, for ethanol (100%) it’s 78C, for acetone it’s only 56C, so even at the temperature of your body (36-37C), it’s really easy for the molecules to detach and evaporate.",
"For anyone using actual acetone, don't assume it evaporates. Wash with alcohol or water after exposure to skin.\n\nIf it is high enough in concentration it will dissolve the fats in your cells. It is VERY painful."
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1jn74r | what harm does having a large debt do? | People always talk about how large our national debt is and how people are trying to fix it? But why is it so important? Like people still buy American stuff, we still keep spending what harms are occuring from a large debt? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jn74r/eli5_what_harm_does_having_a_large_debt_do/ | {
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"We have to pay interest on our debt. So having a huge debt means we have to pay a lot of interest, which means we either have less money to spend on things we want/need or have to borrow even more money.",
"Basically, interest. That, and increasing dependence on the lending party.\nIf you have a mortgage or other similar long-running loan, you'll notice that a very large part of the total sum you end up paying back is actually interest. What a lot of people don't realise is that interest percentages are *yearly* and accumulate to vast amounts when viewed over the total duration of the loan.\n\nWhen a country (or a person, the difference is not that important for this example) is structurally over-spending, this eventually leads to snowballing debt, because paying back interest on past loans is taking out an ever larger part of your budget. And the money you pay in interest payments is lost, you can't use it for more useful spending.\n\nThen there is the issue of becoming more dependent on one or more lending parties. For the US, this isn't really the major issue. A popular banker's saying is \"If you owe €1000 to the bank, the bank controls you, if you owe €10.000.000 to the bank, you control the bank.\" Which is more or less the US-China situation at the moment.\n\nI don't know about the US, but there are many countries around the world with large debts, which are mostly made up of money they borrowed from their own populations via government bonds. This is arguably a more interesting proposition.\n\nDebt in and of itself is not a bad thing per se. Keeping large amounts of readily accessible cash around 'just in case' is expensive because of the low interest it gains, so the flexibility offered by loans is very convenient to keep a government (or a family, the analogy holds) running efficiently. Governments write out bonds all the time to fund large infrastructure projects and even wars. The problems start when borrowing money is a structural necessity to make ends meet. Without reduced spending or increased (recurring) income this inevitably leads to a downward spiral where more and more of the government budget is eaten up by interest payments, up until and beyond the point where the country can no longer be run effectively.",
"basically, it comes down to consumer confidence. The US will never pay back all its debt, but it will gladly pay out interest on its debt. US treasury backed bonds pay a low interest rate because they are considered secure. The real problem comes with the deficit (the amount we take in vs the amount we spend). How long will people continue to buy more and more US debt and thinking the US is good for it?\n\nLets say i make 1000 dollars a year, and I spend 1100. I am running a deficit of 100 dollars at the end of the year that i pay 10 percent on every year. I'll have to pay that interest of 10 bucks. Not bad. Next year, i make 1000, but i spend 1110 dollars (1100+$10 interest). Now I have to borrow another 110 dollars at 10%. At this point, my debt is 210 dollars. The following year, i make 1000 dolalrs, spend 1100 + 21 in interest, so now i have to borrow 121. The following year, I have to borrow 133.1. By year 4 I have to borrow $146. I'm not sure about my math, but do notice how my deficit keeps rising? \n\nEventually, one of two things happen, the interest i pay on borrowed money will exceed my income, (I will spend more money on interest than I make in a year) or investors see what is happening, and they won't buy my debt at 10% anymore because they see its a higher risk. Now they need 15% or 20%, so i'll have to pay more money for what i borrow."
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3qtni4 | why does it cost over $2 million to make a single family guy or the simpsons episode? | Seth MacFarlane has stated on multiple occasions it costs upwards of $2 million per episode of Family Guy. The Simpsons episodes costs around $2.5 as well. What has changed over the years these animated shows have aired that their budgets have skyrocketed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qtni4/eli5why_does_it_cost_over_2_million_to_make_a/ | {
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"The six main voice actors on the show make $300,000 per episode each. I wonder if that's included in that $2.5 million figure.",
"On top of the actors costs there are other things. The animation while done with assistance of computers is much more in depth. While most likely easier to make still is going to take more time to lay out and come up with. Added to that I'm sure shows like these in order to stay fresh and relevant and on air most likely give the writing staff a good chunk of coin. These shows need to be funny consistently or they'd be boo'd. Because of this I'm assuming they spend a substantial amount on writers and time spent in the room coming up with stuff.",
"If I can recall, the Friends cast originally got somewhere around 100-200k per episode and ended up getting 800k-1mill per episode, or atleast that's when the show ended. The more a show makes, the more the actors demand. This drives the cost of the production up. For extremely successful shows like Family Guy and Simpsons, this is probably the case. Voice actors are taking more of the production cost. You can start a cartoon by paying a voice actor $20 per hour. But if you end up making $50 million a year, you have to pay that voice actor more or risk losing them. At this point actors have some leverage because the show could possible fail if they were to leave. Can you image a different voice for Homer? \n\nEDIT: I just threw out the Homer example off the top of my head. I was not aware of the actual details of the Simpsons cast's history. Same with friends, they we're the rough figures I remember reading about. But the \"Homer\" voice is somewhat iconic, and even though the actor has changed in the past, they replaced it with a similar voice. They didn't reintroduce his voice and a different one. But thanks for all the details reddit!",
"(For Family Guy) I'd the animation costs ~$350,000/ep, the rest is the salaries. I believe the 4 main cast members get $300,000/ep, equaling $1,200,000, the rest is other salaries and whatnot. \n \nAvatar: The Legend of Korra had a $1 million/ep budget, and that was primarily animation, and it shows. A:TLoK and other shows like Young Justice had the best animation of any American cartoon, primarily because they outsourced animation to South Korea. \n \nI'm always amazed by how brand new and not very popular anime has animation which blows American cartoons out of the water.",
"I'd just like to add that for an episode of the new 'top gear', it costs $4.5m per episode, for reference.",
"Another answer is because they can.\n\nOnce a Show starts pulling in serious money, you'd be amazed at how they find ways to justify spending it. Similar to Parkinson's law of time resources - People will take as much time as they have - People will spend as much as they can if afforded the opportunity.",
"Family Guy has a full orchestra, and unique music is written for each episode. That is extremely expensive. The amount of time to produce an animated episode is much, much longer than for a live action show. Time = money.",
"Didn't The Simpson use to be way more expensive to make?\n\nBut then they started outsourcing the animation among other things...",
"The 6 main members of the cast of the Simpsons each get a little more than $300,000 per episode. That's 1.8 million right there. The other $700,000 pays everyone else; the show runners, the animators, the writing team, the rest of the voice talent, all the non-payroll costs, etc.",
"Making an episode is a complicated process involving a lot of people. Here is a very good article describing how a Simpsons episode is made:\n_URL_0_\n",
"Some people are saying that a large portion of the costs go to the voice actors, I would venture a guess to say they might get paid well but most of the costs come from how many people it takes to make a tv show/cartoon. If you look at South Park nearly everything they do is in house, and because of this they have a giant staff, that stretches from writers & sound engineers, to janitors & maintenance men, and everyone in between. They also have to pay for equipment, rent, utilities, etc. All of these overhead costs have to be distributed to cost of each episode.\n\nSo 2 million dollars might sound like a lot, but lets say a staff members salary averages to about $ 100,000 and they make 24 episodes a year. That means about $ 4,200 of his salary has to be distributed to each episode. Now let's also say that they have a staff of 200 people we are already at over $800,000 dollars just in salary for each episode. Though I am sure that some cartoons hold a smaller staff, but that just means that they have to outsource other things like animation or sound recording to other companies who are not cheap.\n\nJust a quick google search says that some writers for the simpsons make $ 250,000 dollars a year. ",
"Once a show gets popular, voice actors want more cash. If you try to get different voice actors for cheaper, they might not sound similar so they would lose some of the viewers.",
"One reason I know of is because Family Guy uses a full 40 to 60 piece orchestra for each episode.",
"The shows take a year to storyboard, draw, animate, render, etc. You're paying a production company a year's worth of work for employee's wages, labor, etc. They'll also take all the voice actors and power through a whole season of recording in about 2 weeks to minimize studio time and labor. This is why voice actors can do voices for multiple shows at the same time. Not only because they can, but because they have to since they are only being paid for 2 weeks of work at a time.",
"\"What has changed\" is a leading question and comes from a false premise. Animation has *always* been expensive -- nothing has changed. The average nine minute Bugs Bunny cartoon from the early days of movie theaters cost in the ballpark of a million dollars in today's money.\n\nKeep in mind that for anything resembling traditional animation, a very talented human being has to hand draw every single frame. And not just one person, but dozens. Animation just takes a really, really long time, and you have to pay a huge staff.\n\nThat's why CG and Flash- and other computer-assisted forms of animation have become so popular in recent years -- they're incredibly cheap, because you can do it all in a computer program with a much smaller staff.",
"Because animation takes time and money. Voice actors get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars (depending on how much they say) and having things set on a schedule means they have to make sure the episode is ready.\ntl;dr everyone gets paid for all the work they have to do",
"Family guy has a FULL orchestra for EVERY episode. I think writers also spend more time with it because friends is an on going story but family guy, Simpson's, south park, etc... Has to incorporate current events with their running gags.\n\n",
"This is going to be buried but, here's my perspective: \nI run my own animation business and have collaborated on a Major Lazer episode for FXX.\n\nIn short: it's a lot of fucking work.\n\nAnd, when it's not a lot of work, it's not making up your mind. A lot of these shows are writer first which means the board artists often have to stick exactly to what's being delivered. There's obviously wiggle room, but for the most part, showrunner and writer first. This isn't so bad, until they come up with an idea at the last minute. Often it's better, and it makes a lot of us struggle to turn the ship around on a dime and adjust. Imagine rotating an aircraft carrier, full of planes, because someone found a new direction. And you have to listen to that direction :) Figure it out! It's often expensive.\n\nPeople also cost money. LA is a union town, so, we have to cover things from pension to healthcare. Rates are high because the talent is amazing and doesn't come cheap. As shows continue to prosper that talent, rightfully, asks for more. And I'm not talking about a voice artist, I'm talking about just regular story artists, writers, timing directors and the army of people involved.\n\nNot making decisions until the last minute is also painful. Any animation studio will tell you how difficult it is to get approvals and be forced to wait until the very last minute. Screwing up pre-production and not knowing the direction you want to go in are major pitfalls. An ounce of prevention is a pound of cure is very true here.\n\nHey, shameless plug, I made a video about this too (_URL_0_) It's mostly geared towards CG animation but at the end of the day, it is still a flat image that moves.\n\n:)",
"They also have a large production line of animators. My friend was an animator for the first 9 seasons on The Simpsons and King of the Hill. Matt Groening (sic) didn't actually do the animations he was there just occasionally to guide the process. They get treated like assembly line people pretty much, it's much more corporate than you could possibly imagine. The animators themselves don't get paid a lot, the voice actors do, and that's where the majority of the budget goes, until computer rendered speech gets so good we can't tell the difference. And at that point I'm sure they'd switch over to save a buck. ",
"Usually 12-15 frames per second (unless it's Disney or Studio Ghibli, you're not getting a full 24/30/60 frames per second, not a fucking chance) for standard TV frame rates. For a 22 minute broadcast time, you're looking at 22 x 60 = 1320 seconds, which is 1320 x [12 to 15] = 15840-19800 images for a single episode. That's a lot of images. Most of which is outsourced to the tune of $200,000-$800,000 per episode (I don't know the stats on The Simpsons specifically though), depending on quality (The Simpsons probably demanding the upper end) and time. And that's just animation. Think about the music and sound direction being used in every episode. The Simpsons uses a full orchestra and produces music for each episode (for the most part). That shit is *expensive.* And then standard administrative nonsense and the costs of having directors, writers, IT personnel... The list goes on.\n\nAdd in the main voice actor cast basically being *required* for the show to function (Dan Castellaneta, Homer plus pretty much every other adult male side character, leaving The Simpsons would basically end the show) and you can easily cover the remainder of the $2.5 million on actor salaries.\n\nFamily Guy is almost certainly within the same boat.",
"Animation requires a lot more time and work than most people think. It takes around an entire month for an animation team to finish ONE EPISODE! This doesn't even include the voice acting, marketing, etc. So when a show gets to be really big, the company is in more demand for episodes, and therefore needs to pay the animators more to keep up with the new workload. \n\nIt may also be worth mentioning that Seth MacFarlane loves to use original music for his episodes. To hire an entire orchestra and have the studio record, it costs around $20,000 per minute! If in the middle of a song one of the musicians messes up a note, they need to start the song all over again! And considering it costs $20,000 per minute, you could imagine it's pretty easy for those people to get fired. ",
"Music cost a lot of money. I was listening to a Community commentary and Dan Harmon would spend 40,000 out of his pocket sometimes for one song. And creating your own music? That is really expensive. Animation is actually not cheap, at least good animation isnt. Paying every single person working on each individual episode. Pop culture references, guest stars, and oh so much more.",
"How much of that goes directly to Seth?",
"Simpsons episodes cost $2.50 to make? Gotta start making me a TV show.",
"Voice actors getting massive pay checks, then the animation is higher quality then when they frist started and the cast didn't have any reason to be paid alot.",
"...because FOX is willing to spend 2 million? \n\nIt's not like they'll tell FOX \"no thanks, we can do it for much cheaper!\"",
"Because the team is not gonna say hey we can do it for a lot less to save the network some money.",
"Easy.\nTo make an episode of animation, you need:\n-Writers\n-Producers\n-Voice actors\n-Editors\n-Concept artists for new assets/ideas\n-Model team to build assets\n-Layout team to compose the shots\n-Riggers to give the characters joints to be animated\n-Animators to animate the world\n-Fx team for the special effects, aka anything particle based\n-Matte painters to build the backgrounds\n-Lighters to make everything look like it lives in the same world\n-Compositors to merge it all together\n-IT team to keep all the machines running\n-Many computers to make the work\n-More computers to render the work\n-Production staff to make sure everything is on time and budget\n-Music supe/ composer and musicians to make the soundtrack\n-Sound team to make/ add the sound effects\n-Marketing team\n-A studio space to put everyone\n\nTL:DR, it's a lot of people being paid Union rates doing a lot of work quickly. \n\n\n\n",
"How much did an episode of Futurama cost? I'm wondering still why Simpsons has been going on for 26 years but 10 years is too much for Futurama?",
"I work on another big Fox animated show. I can say that on top of talent salary, you're also paying a large house of animators, board artists, directors, writers, coordinators, checkers, producers, editors, and a post team for the 10+ months it takes to make a single episode. Sure, they layer the episodes into a pipeline, but there's always a different team making progress on a single ep for that whole 10 months.",
"Huhh. Probably going to be buried with so many people commenting, but currently employed in a mid/big-ish named studio in north america.\n\nTakes about 2 weeks to do backgrounds for a 22-24minute episode.\nThen another 2 weeks to paint those backgrounds\nanother month to animate, and another month to composite/do assets/finalizing.\n\nYou're looking at paying essentially a team of 40-50 people a months worth of wages.\n\nThat's JUST counting the actual pre-post production line. theres storyboarding, design, script and conception.\n\nSo if everyone gets paid said 50k a year, lets not worry about the supervisors and leads, you're looking at 4k per person...\n\nso say, half a million to just make an episode on schedule.\n\nThat's why everyone outsources to Korea or India. They cost 1/2 to 1/4 of what north American's cost.",
"Not to derail more, but there's a great documentary called \"I Know That Voice\" starring Jon DiMaggio if people are interested in learning more about voice actors. It's on Canadian Netflix, at least.",
"What does an episode of South Park cost? Being that it's done in 6 days? ",
"When the top 6 voice actors make something like a quarter million per episode, it adds up fast.",
"Over paying the voices is the main issue. Plus all the people that go into making an episode. ",
"Pre/Post production costs, voice talent, outsourcing the animation.\n\n3D animation also still costs quite a bit and I have been seeing it more and more in mainstream cartoons.",
"Because it takes hours of labour. More than you can imagine.\n\nAnd.\n\nBecause we expect to be paid like princes for what we do. No less is acceptable in Western society. \n\nAnything less than a $25 hour less overhead is considered lower middle class in Western society.\n\nAnimation is one of the most laborious tasks you could imagine. A single still image takes an artist hours to create. It takes twenty four of those images to make one second of video.\n\nImagine if you hired a professorial painter to paint you a picture for every second of your free time. Now imagine that you hired him to paint twenty four pictures for every second of your free time.",
"Because Seth MacFarlane and the actors get paid a shit ton of money and their contracts negotiate for additional shit tons each year.",
"[Nancy Cartwright](_URL_0_) has to pay Scientology somehow.\n",
"Because there are a lot of people involved and those people have to get paid... and pay rises over time.\n\nIm sure someone has already said this. ",
"I run an animation company.\n\nWe mainly make commercials for online businesses. We charge about $5000 per 60 seconds and this is considered low in our industry.\n\nThere's the person who deals with the client, someone has to create a script and storyboard, then we have to decide on a style, find a voice actor, create all the artwork/assets, create the animation itself, sound design, music license, and revisions. It takes anywhere from 2-6 weeks for a video. That's multiple people working for an entire month all of which need to earn a livable wage.\n\nAnd we're a really small company.\n\nCreating something like Family Guy involves a *lot* of people all who need to earn a livable wage. $2 million actually sounds fairly inexpensive.",
"Costs to make one episode of the Simpsons include the salaries of the writers, the directors, producers, the voice actors, the animators...the list of people who create one episode is incredibly long.\n\n***It takes six to nine months to create one episode, from start to finish.***\n\n\n\nAn episode starts with the writers. This process is a collaboration between about 16 writers. \n\nThe process continues with storyboard artists, and preliminary animation, which is done domestically, by Film Roman. The script has a run-through, with the actors and writers all sitting around a big table. The voices are recorded for further review, but this first reading is for the writers and producers to hear which jokes get laughs, and which jokes need more work, or changing. A second reading occurs after a script rewrite.\n\nWhen the script is perfected, it is then performed and recorded by the actors. Then it is sent off to animation studio Akom, in South Korea. That's right, South Korea. \n\nIt is an incredibly time consuming process, and it takes people with highly specialized skills to create animation. \n\nAnd because Fox has renewed the series to include up to a 28th season, the actors were able to negotiate better salaries. ***11 voice actors play over 100 Simpson characters***.\n\nEach time the contract is renewed, the actors, writers, producers, directors, musicians, EVERYBODY will negotiate a better deal. \n\nTL;DR _URL_0_ _URL_1_"
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19sbh8 | how did the tv industry become nothing but reality shows? | History Channel, Syfy, TLC, ad similar channels used to show shows and movies based on what the channel was about. History channel used to talk about history while syfy used to show movies and shows that are Sci-fi based. What happened that made all these companies that used to show good quality, and a lot of times educational, shows to showing constant reality shows? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19sbh8/eli5_how_did_the_tv_industry_become_nothing_but/ | {
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"Those channels are breaking viewership records thanks to their reality shows. As many people as there are who say they like the high quality, educational shows, it turns out more people actually want the cheaply produced reality stuff, which is a win-win for the channels.",
"Because it's cheaper to make them.\n\nGood, engaging programming (either scripted dramas and comedies or intelligent informational shows) are expensive to make. Stupid bland shows are easier to write, and reality TV means you don't need re-shoots when someone screws up their lines.\n",
"Reality TV has hit a \"Sweet Spot\". Despite the quality being \"shit\" it's very cheep to produce. You can almost always get away with paying the entire cast what it would normally cost to get one or two popular actors at the height of their careers. You don't have to pay writers to churn out 22 scripts a year either.\n\nSomehow, Reality TV taps into the voyeuristic tendencies of our society. People love living life vicariously through others. Even if the quality is crap the ratings are relatively high. People tune in week after week because they are able to relate to the contestants in a way they could never do so for characters on a tv show.\n\nSo long as Reality TV generates ratings that create massive profit compared to how little production companies have to invest...."
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39zsf8 | why is it bad that rachel dolezal identifies as black even though she's apparently white? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39zsf8/eli5_why_is_it_bad_that_rachel_dolezal_identifies/ | {
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"Offense is something that is determined by other people. She may not have intended to offend anyone, but that's not her choice to make. It's all about whether other people are offended.\n\nNow, she can choose not to care that other people are offended (no one has the civil right to be not-offended).\n\nBasically, it's bad if you (or others) think it's bad. ",
"She doesn't \"identify\" as black, she's white. You can't change your race. And it's offensive that other people have to live with the consequences of being black (dealing with racism), while she can just jump in and out of being black as she pleases, making a career for herself by pretending to be black. ",
"The thing about race is that there's virtually no difference in brain chemistry or anything like that between races. Identifying as a different gender, for instance, is different, where actual physiological differences might come into play. Race identification is a very superficial thing, genetically, and plays more into culture and society - the genetic differences are often greater between two people of the same race than two people of different races.\n\nThe way society views you as being part of a particular race is mostly external. Rachel Dolezal spent most of her life as clearly a white person, so she didn't get the societal impact of being black. Now, there's no reason an NAACP officer can't be a white person, but lying about it is different, and there's no indication she genuinely identified as black (and she even took steps to cloud her history to make people think she had a black father, for instance). A white person can fight for racial equality, but intentionally obfuscating her life experiences is something else."
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dh3meg | can causality be measured with probability? | Suppose that for reasons unknown a five year old child wants you to teach him/her everything you know about probability. Perhaps this child is considering to become a statistician when they get older or something similar.
Of course they have to start with the fundamentals before anything. Now suppose that amidst their learning they randomly ask if what you’re teaching them is applicable to causality. In order words is there a way they can measure what is possible vs what is probable using variables? If so how can they forecast low chance events? If not how would you explain that answer to them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dh3meg/eli5_can_causality_be_measured_with_probability/ | {
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"Depends on what your goal is, I suppose. Probability can't definitively establish causality, but if you can use it to demonstrate a very high correlation than that makes a strong (but not conclusive) case that causality probably exists.\n\nIf you just want to know if there's an ice cream truck nearby, it's probably sufficient to use probability to correlate its presence with hearing \"Pop Goes the Weasel.\" But if you're trying to do actual science, you'd need something more conclusive than probability to establish that one causes the other.",
"Kind of.\n\nIf you're looking for something free of assumptions that allows you to deduce causality directly from observation, this is very much impossible.\n\nHowever, if you're ready to accept models of potential causality, there are various methods (generally called [causal inference](_URL_0_)) that can help you tease out causality from correlation.\n\nIf this is actually for a five year old, these are probably much too mathematically involved, and you should instead explore the intuition of how to separate causality from correlation. Come up with scenarios where a causal link apparently exists, and figure out a way for a scientist to intervene to expose that link as false, and potentially find the real one. This is inherently going to take intuition, because that's really the only way to do science.\n\nThe questions you ask are separate. You don't have to have causal models to forecast events, you just need statistical data and assumptions about the applicability of that data. If I see the butterflies flying south I know winter is coming with high probability, even though the causal link is completely backwards. If someone is wearing a dress I can predict they have a higher chance of breast cancer even though there is no causal link at all - both are related to them being a woman."
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57msek | how come the british colonization of ireland was able to spread the english language but not religion? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57msek/eli5_how_come_the_british_colonization_of_ireland/ | {
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"It did spread religion. England was originally Catholic, and they spread that Catholicism to Ireland. Then, during the rule of Henry the 8th, England split from the Catholic church, so that Henry could get divorced and remarried. That's how you get the Church of England. ",
"A couple of the answers here aren't correct - the religion did not spread as a result of colonization and the almost complete adoption of Catholicism occurred a couple hundred years prior to the English conquest of most of Ireland. The introduction of Catholicism and the beginnings of it in Ireland occurred before England existed. \n\nThe colonization by protestants I think you're referring to happened in the 16th and 17th centuries. The spread of the English language happened over a long period of time and with some back and forth as Ireland resisted the changes. To trade, though, people needed to be able to speak English, and though a lot of the Englishry in Ireland learned Gaelic (even Queen Elizabeth at one point expressed a desire to learn) eventually economy told. \n\nReligion is a bit different, as by that point Ireland had been Catholic for hundreds of years and the Protestants were decidedly not Irish. The religion was associated with the conflict between colonist and native Irish and that was made worse by extensive discrimination by the English against Roman Catholics. "
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3hzj2s | why would a landlord rent control an apartment? | If a landlord owns an apartment in say New York, why would they offer rent control when they could just raise the price of rent year over year and make more money? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hzj2s/eli5_why_would_a_landlord_rent_control_an/ | {
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"Rent control is a state mandated option for people who are qualified under welfare care laws and regulations to ensure that people can afford housing. \n\nRent control and EHO homes are reserved pricing structures for what the tenant can afford to pay under what the laws deem appropriate."
]
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bg1qd8 | why is a gold karat a measure of purity but a diamond carat is a measure of weight? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bg1qd8/eli5_why_is_a_gold_karat_a_measure_of_purity_but/ | {
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"They are two different words that are homonyms.\n\nOther examples are rest and wrest, way and weigh, dye and die, knows and nose, etc.\n\nA Karat is a measure of purity in increments of 1/24th. Therefore 24 Karat gold is 100% gold, but 10 Karat gold is alloyed with almost 60% of another metal.\n\nA Carat is a measure of weight. One Carat equals 200 milligrams. This is how diamonds are measured - by weight - as the issue of purity is not the same. Other factors are colour and cut.",
"They are two different terms that sound similar simply by coincidence.\n\nA carat is the measure of the weight of a diamond. Back in the day they used carob seeds to measure the weight on a scale, so that’s where the name “carat” comes from. Many people believe the carat means the size, but you can have two 2 carat diamonds and one can look larger than the other. That’s because it can hold its weight differently (just like people). \n\nKarat measures the amount of pure gold in a metal. Pure gold is too soft to be made into anything, like jewelry. 18k gold, for example, is 18 out of 24 parts gold. To be strong enough to make into jewelry and hold stones, it is plated with trace amounts of other metals like zinc, nickel, rhodium (for white gold), and copper (for rose gold). The lower the karat the less pure gold is in the metal."
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409s05 | why are playstation 1 discs black while every other cd i have seen is mirrored | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/409s05/eli5_why_are_playstation_1_discs_black_while/ | {
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"They just chose a cool-looking media for their games. I had a package of black CD-Rs that I used in the late 90s.",
"Real answer:\n\nSony thought that coating the discs in a black film would make piracy more difficult. There was a twofold (one of which an erroneous assumption) reason for this: One, that coating discs after burning them in a black transparent film was very difficult to nearly impossible to do outside of a manufacturer/factory and this would let a buyer know immediately if a disc was counterfeit or not. Black; made in the factory, silver; a burned disc.\n\nThe geniuses at Sony also thought that it would make CD ripping more difficult and that the black coating would somehow interfere with the ripping process... Which was stupidly never the case and obviously did not prevent ripping of any kind. I've read online that back in the day *some* CD drives had issues ripping a PS1 disc, but nothing I can verify or say with surety.\n\n/r/retrogaming may be of more help and give more accurate information, but I know I'm pretty on with the reasoning. Long time gamer and PS1 collector and this was pretty common knowledge upon the original Playstation's release. The explanation for the black coating was covered by gaming magazines of the time.",
"The color of the cd had little effect on the compatibility of which cd drive could read it. If was for identification purposes. A Black cd was a Sony original and Silver cd was not. \n\nThe Copy protection mechanism for the playstation 1 was rather simple. The beginning of the cd had shorter 1's and 0's (aka bad blocks of data) that only the Playstation could identify/read. The data actually translated to \"SCEA\" or the region code for the appropriate disk. (I.E. Sony Computer Entertainment America)\n\nPeople used \"Mod Chips\" which were programmed chips that after a brief delay/ Timer would essentially spam/shout \"SCEA SCEA\" over the same data line that the optical laser use for reading the disk. This would trick the console into believing every disk was an authentic Sony Playstation disc. \n\nThis was thwarted by an attempt by sony to have the game check multiple times for the SCEA indicator at multiple points during gameplay. \n\nAdditional \"Stealth Mod Chips\" were released that could provide the SCEA identifier on demand. \n\nAlso, some tech-savey individual at the time were modifying their HP 2X cd burner drives to make burned copies with the SCEA or proper region coding on standard disks. \n\nA standard cd drive would \"correct\" the bad blocks / region coding into garbage data, since it wasn't compatible to read it in the first place. "
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1gfsa4 | why is butt slapping so prevalent in major league baseball? | It happens a lot. Any baseball historians or sociologists that can explain this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gfsa4/why_is_butt_slapping_so_prevalent_in_major_league/ | {
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"I think it's just an appreciative gesture. You know, I guess you get bored in the dug out too much with men. Not only baseball do it, American \"football\", bball as well"
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600x2z | people are told not to overspent past their needs, but why is it ok that the us borrows so much money to overspent? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/600x2z/eli5_people_are_told_not_to_overspent_past_their/ | {
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"Personal finances are vastly different than a government's and certainly a country's. \n\nMany firmly believe that the level to which the U.S. is in debt is getting close to the unmanageable (or past) level. That being said the idea of borrowing money to invest in the future is very appealing, it allows you to advance as a society significantly faster than if you disallowed borrowing. It allows the government to take actions when the country as whole falls on bad times to kickstart the economy.\n\n"
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12xp4l | why (many) unreleased cars always look like this car? | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/12xp4l/eli5_why_many_unreleased_cars_always_look_like/ | {
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"Car manufacturers use the funky (camouflaged) paint schemes to break up the body lines and make it harder to get a sense of what the car is going to look like, when they need to do real-world testing.\n\nThey want the big reveal to happen at a fancy car show, not in some random field or street corner.",
"That's what I call \"New Car Disguise\". All prototype cars eventually ahve to be given a test drive on the road. Problem is they typically don't want car paparazzi to see it, so they'll disguise the car, often with those stylings and \"facelifts\", so that people think they're just ordinary cars.\n\nSome things people do to make a prototype car look ordinary would be to affix a fake logo, use complicated designs to obscure the body surfaces, and apply foil and foam to change the car's contours.",
"It's called [dazzle camoflage](_URL_0_). It makes it hard to see the shape of the car. Navies used to use it so that it was hard for the enemy to see what kind of ship they were looking at."
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92l1k2 | why do people argue that it is important to invest in space travel while we could spend the time and money in improving conditions on earth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/92l1k2/eli5_why_do_people_argue_that_it_is_important_to/ | {
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"A lot of scientific and medical discoveries made in space have had a huge impact down on Earth. Totally worth it.",
"Some folks believe we need to colonize a second planet in order to secure the human race in the universe. Right now, as far as we know, we only exist here, so there are many number of things that could end us even though the chances are low. \n\nSome folks believe we will not reverse our effects on the planet and this place will become unsustainable. Things like coral bleaching are probably signs that we are dangerously close if not past the point completely squandering our world.\n\nOne thought of mine is that we are dreamers. We imagine stuff and we make that reality become true. For millenia man has looked up at the stars in wonder. Maybe the humans could have peace on their planet if there was more land for all the nations to expand. The planet is full as fuck, there is no outcome other than more war. I think people pushing for the stars do it because they see how close we are to annihilation but also to vast opportunity. ",
"I important part that is easy to forget is that rockets and all other things we use in space is built on earth so you don't launch money into space but the money go to the companies that build stuff, there employees and the companies that deliver part and material to them.\n\n\nWhat is developed for space use is the bleeding edge so it is new thing that often have other used on earth that we don't expect. \n\nA estimation is that $1 invested in NASA return $7-14 to the US economy. Space programes get small part of the economy but can have huge effect. NASA have a budget of 0.5% of the federal budget. \n\n\n For example whether prediction and warning of hurricanes etc is a lot better because of whether satellite. GPS system that we use all the time is a satellite system. One of the huge driving factors of integrated circuit development in the 1960s was NASA and military missile systems that was huge customers of them and demanded improvements. A $1000 IC in 1960 had dropped to $25 in 1963 is large part because of the space programs. So the electronic revolutions we see today might have been delayed for a long time if it was not for the space program.\n\nWhat is developed for future programs? The answer is we don't know today.\n",
"Somwhere in the world, hundred thousands years ago, there was dude building small wooden raft and wanted to swim further from shore to the endless ocean. Everybody around him laughed, saying things like “why do you want to swim to ocean? there is nothing there, everything we need is here, on land. Be realistic.” But he didn’t listen to them. He built small boat and followed his dream, which many people considered useless.\n\nNow look at scale of present day maritime transport, does it seems useless too?\n\nFuture generations will judge us by how we approached space research now, because we are building foundation for colonisation of earth like planets in far future and mining operations on asteroids...\n\nTrue waste of resources are wars: Department of defense of USA had higher budget in 2017 than NASA during all years of it’s existence combined together. Now this doesn’t bother you?"
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2hfdyv | how do movie editors duplicate the same person in a shot at the same time? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hfdyv/eli5_how_do_movie_editors_duplicate_the_same/ | {
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"The most common way is to shoot the scene twice using the same camera location and movements. Then you can overlay the two shots in editing and make the actors appear to be there simultaneously.",
"Depending on the editing program, you could for instance leave the camera in the exact position it was in and reshoot the scene with the actor in a different position. Then, in the editor, you overlap the takes and cut one portion from each scene to make a full image but with the actor in different positions. This method is rather basic though. I couldn't explain the more advanced ones as I'm still learning as well.\n\nSource: I'm an amateur video editor.",
"Also, don't overlook the fact that, especially in older movies and TV shows, they just use identical twins for these kinds of scenes. This is still the easiest way to do it, whenever it is possible.",
"It depends greatly on the budget, the production, and the context. For the more basic setups, say you have /u/sega20 talking to /u/sega20 in the same room at the same time, what they would do first is choose an angle and *lock* the camera. Once the camera is on lock, the entire crew is very careful not to touch it so as not to move it, otherwise our shots won't line up. \n\nSo they'll do a first take, where /u/sega20 is talking to a *stand-in*, or a *body-double*. This is someone who will literally stand-in for /u/sega20 in this case, so that /u/sega20 has somebody to talk to, and to use as an eyeline. As /u/antiproton pointed out, it's difficult and unnatural for an actor to have a conversation with thin air. \n\nThey'll shoot the first take, beginning to end, then cut, switch roles between /u/sega20 and the body double, and shoot again. Now they have both halves of the take to be stitched together. \n\nOne cool on-set tool allows you to see both shots overlayed in real time, so you can see how they line up, and whether /u/sega20 overlaps him/herself in the other shot. Usually, productions will try to avoid an instance where an actor would overlap himself in a superimposed shot, because this would require extensive *rotoscoping* in post - basically, lots of tedious frame-by-frame drawing to make it look like one object is overlapping another, when in reality they never existed at the same time. \n\nPractical effects for this are far more reliable and inexpensive, and will be used whenever possible. As /u/Vox_Imperatoris pointed out, in the rare instance that an actor has a twin that is willing to work, they will use that twin as a body double for that actor, creating two versions of that actor without any post production work. This is rare, though, and most often they will hunt for a body double that resembles the actor to be duplicated, and they'll dress that body double up to look like that actor as much as possible. Then they have someone to use in over-the-shoulder, out of focus, or quick action shots, where you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. \n\nAll of that, plus of course a little movie magic. "
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2nosu0 | why do i have a lisp when i speak my native language but not when i speak english? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nosu0/eli5_why_do_i_have_a_lisp_when_i_speak_my_native/ | {
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"You started learning your native language before your motor skills and body were fully developed. When you learn a new language (I'm assuming at an age older than that) you were trained in how to speak. Even if learning by immersion you are more developed: mentally you have the capacity to compare the sounds you're making to what you hear and make corrections, physically you have more control over your speech process. Our native language is more of a habit, where it takes more thought to speak in another language. Of course these are all just contributing factors. I'm not familiar with Gujarati to be able to say whether the language has more sounds that lend themselves to a lisp.",
"Some pronunciations vary depending on the language. In Spanish for example both the \"b\" and the \"v\" sound are the same, a sort of mixture of the two. Having grown up speaking both English and Spanish, I've been told that I over pronounce either of those letters.\n\nMaybe the influence of another language modified how you speak your native tongue? or you learned said language from someone with a lisp?",
"I am not certain how strongly this applies, but many people who stutter can sing or chant (look up Howard Cosell) without stuttering. It may use or include a slightly different part of your brain due to being a second language, deliberately learned instead of naturally acquired in childhood.",
"It's important to separate dialect from speech impediments. If the dialect you learned contained elements of a lisp ... _looking at you Castilian Spaniards_... you may just be repeating the dialect. A true speech impediment will exhibit in each language spoken in some form.",
"Alaa Totda ;) \nGujarati ma bau problem pade che to aapde kaayam English maj bolo ne!\n\n\n\n\n\n",
"I have a related question:\n\nIn high school, I had a (straight) Syrian Friend who spoke English (his second language) with a very effeminate high pitch and a \"gay lisp\". However, he spoke his native Arabic with a significantly lower and gruffer voice than any other Arabic speaker I have ever met. \n\nHis younger brother did not have either of these vocal distinctions and ha no idea why my friend did. When we were teasing my friend about talking silly in both languages, as high school kids do, he insisted that he had no idea that he was doing anything out of the ordinary. We figured he was just being a silly guy doing it intentionally and lying about being aware of it, but pressing him on it he seemed to be truly unaware.\n\nSo my question is: Was he subconsciously making a linguistic social commentary of the effeminate nature of Americans in the eyes of the Syrian people?"
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43jkdx | if i don't shower for 3 days i smell so bad. why can animals go for forever without washing and not smell when humans get nasty so quick and also require wiping? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43jkdx/eli5_if_i_dont_shower_for_3_days_i_smell_so_bad/ | {
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"You wear clothes. Clothes is what traps, and attracts bacteria. If you were naked all day long, you would not smell as much.",
"*For most of my life, if I’ve thought at all about the bacteria living on my skin, it has been while trying to scrub them away. But recently I spent four weeks rubbing them in. I was Subject 26 in testing a living bacterial skin tonic, developed by AOBiome, a biotech start-up in Cambridge, Mass. The tonic looks, feels and tastes like water, but each spray bottle of AO+ Refreshing Cosmetic Mist contains billions of cultivated Nitrosomonas eutropha, an ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) that is most commonly found in dirt and untreated water. AOBiome scientists hypothesize that it once lived happily on us too — before we started washing it away with soap and shampoo — acting as a built-in cleanser, deodorant, anti-inflammatory and immune booster by feeding on the ammonia in our sweat and converting it into nitrite and nitric oxide.*\n\n[_URL_0_]",
"One reason could be that dogs do not have sweat glands, but humans have them everywhere. And we all know that sweat can cause you to smell pretty bad ",
"Not to directly answer your question, but have you ever seen any animal ever? They are nasty and they smell, some of them like literal shit.",
"1. Lots of animals do smell. \n2. Lots of animals have figured out their own way of bathing.\n3. Society has decided that \"normal human muskiness\" is a bad smell and that lavendar and irish springs is what a human is supposed to smell like.",
"To add what others said, animals do smell but they also move around more than humans. Since humans tend to sleep in the same place every night or hang out on the same sofa, we wallow in our grease and filth. I do a lot of outdoors stuff and 3 days no showering in the wilderness never seems as bad as 3 days no shower in my apartment.",
"Every animal smells. My dog literally rolls in shit. One time we were at the lake and he rolled around on a dead rotting fish and you could literally not be in the same room as him even after like 2 baths.",
"In regards to the wiping aspect, I was wondering this as a \"before bed thought\" and came to the conclusion that animals like cats and dogs have their butts exposed, so that the waste can dry, and flake off, where as humans stand up right most of the time which presses out butt checks together creating a somewhat moist environment so the waste doesnt dry, as well as we wear clothes whoch further prevent drying. It seems to make sense to me, so maybe it will for you too",
"I've gone two months without showering but did clean my nether regions with wet naps. It seemed after the first two weeks my natural funk kind of dissipated. I would ask my coworkers and friends if i stunk and to my surprise they told me i didn't. One of whom had the all powerful pregnant nose.\n\nIt was strange. My skin stopped being itchy and my Eczema dissipated. ",
"Humans have the most bacteria around their sweat glands. Ergo, more smell. Animals only smell bad if they don't have a diet that suits their needs."
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8t3wel | how come every so often, one of your ears will randomly start ringing for 10 seconds and then dissipate? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8t3wel/eli5_how_come_every_so_often_one_of_your_ears/ | {
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"While I'm no expert at this (as in I'm not a medical practitioner), I am familiar with how we hear the world around us. The \"magic\" behind how we hear is actually located in the inner ear in what is called the cochlea. It looks somewhat like a shell when viewed from a two-dimensional perspective; however, it is more like a spiral-like structure. Within the cochlea you have tiny, TINY, hair cells that literally [vibrate](_URL_0_), which connect to the auditory nerve that sends those signals to your brain. You have inner hair cells and outer hair cells. The outer hair cells help reduce the energy from the sound entering your ears so that your brain isn't overwhelmed with the amount of audible stimulation. This actually helps the ears to pick up higher frequencies much better and to hear softer noises.\n\nSometimes, the outer hair cells function improperly in that they continue to vibrate (I believe this is correct although I'm not 100% certain) when it doesn't need to do so. This causes the temporary audible sensation of that high-pitched ringing in your ears. When you notice that your hearing temporarily decreases, it is actually your hair cells reorganizing and reverting themselves back to their normal state. After a few moments, your hearing should be back to normal. ",
"My understanding was that this noise is caused by specific sensory hair cells in the cochlea (the inner ear) dying.\n\nBasically, as I understood it, the cells are constantly transmitting nerve impulses to the brain, and they only stop for a bit when the hair vibrates due to sound, so what you hear is actually gaps where these cells are not firing.\n\nEach hair given it's position on the cochlea will respond to a particular frequency, so when the cell stops firing at first the brain cannot tell if the cell has died or if there is a tone at that specific frequency that corresponded to that sensory cell.\n\nAfter a certain point the brain would have heard from the cell if it was still alive so then the brain tunes it out.\n\nGiven that we lose the ability to hear high pitches as we age I though this made sense.\n\nIf somebody knows more about this process and has some corrections I would be happy to see it.",
"What I learned in psychology is:\n\nWithin the inner ear there is this thing called the Cochlea which basically looks like the shell of a snail. Lining the walls of the Cochlea are thousands of tiny little hair follicles that detect the pitch of sounds and relay them to the brain via “electrical” impulses through the auditory nerve. Near the opening of he Cochlea (the part closest to your outer ear) the hair follicles detect high pitched sounds. As you continue inward the hair follicles detect lower pitched sounds. The hair follicles nearest the Cochlea’s entrance are obviously the most vulnerable to damage as they are closest to the outer ear. When a hair follicle dies, whether due to damage or natural causes (they do have a life span), it will emit one final signal to the brain. This call correlates to the pitch that particular hair follicle is in charge of detecting. This is very common after exposure to loud noises such as loud music or explosives, but it can also just happen at random for no particular reason. \n\nTLDR; That sound is one or more of your hair follicles dying. As it slowly fades into darkness it lets out one final plea, an attempt to grab your attention so you may finally notice all the work it has done for you over the years. Alas, the plea often lands on deaf ears as we simply regard this sound as “annoying”, unaware that we will never hear it again. \nRest easy, little hair follicle, I will cherish your final call for the rest of eternity. Thank you for your service. ",
"I guess I have whatever this condition is, randomly every few weeks or so one ear (I can't remember which, probably my left) will lose hearing and I just hear like a long beep. More like a BEEEEEEEEEEEEE type of sound. \n",
"Not sure if this is true but it's what was told to me whilst I trained to be an audio engineer.\nInside our ears are millions of tiny \"hairs\" I guess not hairs but bare with me.\nThese hairs act as sensors for varying frequencies and when they get knocked down they short circuit and then fade away.\nI was taught that this means you have just experienced a physical loss in the ability to detect a frequency and that it is permanent, or, the \"hairs\" do not stand up again and start working.\nMay be wrong but I'm not lying :)",
"There is a current theory that everyone experiences this ringing sound or tinnitus all the time but the brain can just tune it out. If you cause some change or damage to your hearing system (i.e. noise damage, prescription drugs, something that effects the blood flow to the ear) this brings attention to the fact there is this constant noise (the electrical impulses in your brain/sound of blood flow). If this change is temporary it goes away pretty quickly, but if you do permanent damage and your brain latches onto this and concentrates on it, consciously or subconsciously, this causes tinnitus. Then how you are psychologically towards it determines how much of a detriment it is to your life. \n\nThere is no known cure for tinnitus at the moment, but the best way to treat it is to change the way you think about it. If you think/believe its the worst thing in the world it can affect you really badly, but if you can find a way to ignore/embrace it it's not too bad.",
"This is known as \"burst\" tinnitus. We're not entirely sure of the causes but we know it's of central nervous system origin (somewhere in the brain or brainstem) rather than the ear as the problem still happens to people who have had their auditory nerves totally severed. It can be caused following noise exposure, can be an aura warning of an oncoming migraine or seizure, or can just be random for no apparent reason. Part of the fun of being sentient meat. ",
"Audiologist here!!! That's one of your hair cells signing off! Good thing you have 12000 of them. Taught by the famous dr Ted venema",
"Every time you here this it means your losing the ability to hear that high of a frequency! Basically it’s like a real life timer for getting old haha",
"You mean when you hear a single, whining noise in one of your ears (but not the other)? These have a complicated name: [Spontaneous otoacoustic emissions](_URL_0_), and a pretty interesting history.\n\nAs I understand it, for a long time everyone assumed that these \"noises\" were 'in your head': that is, that your brain was \"imagining\" hearing a sound. Then one day a woman went to her doctor with a complaint that she could actually *hear sounds coming from her husbands ears at night while he was sleeping*! So researchers put a sensitive microphone in his ear, and lo and behold they managed to record the sounds his ears were making.\n\nSo the sounds was real. But where were they coming from? The most obvious place was the little muscle that is attached to the ear drum. The muscle's main job is to tighten up the ear drum when you are in a noisy environment; that prevents it from moving as much, and helps protects the inner ear from damage. It was plausible enough that this muscle might start spasming and cause this sound.\n\nBut eventually scientists discovered that the source of these sounds is even weirder: they come from the cochlea, which is the part of the inner ear that converts sound waves into electrical signals. It turns out that—just like some kinds of speakers can be used as microphones, and some kinds of electric motors as generators—the cochlea can also run in reverse, converting electrical signals into sound.\n\nSo, where do the electrical signals come from?\n\nWe don't know, exactly. But an important part of the puzzle is that it turns out that *our ears make sounds all the time, in response to the sounds that we are hearing*! These are called \"evoked otoacoustic emissions\", and we think they have something to do with how our ears amplify quiet sounds. So it could be that the spontaneous sounds are a kind of feedback in this amplification system, just like a microphone, amplifier and loudspeaker can cause feedback.",
"Sometimes, you hear something too loud or scary, which can hurt your ear hairs. The ringing sound is your ear hearing that frequency for the last time. "
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53gxt5 | how do rocket scientist, when dealing with a failed rocket, determine what failed? | I've built a few performance engines, nothing spectactular but I have a full understand of their internal components. I think of when an internal cumbustion engine fails, the worst that happens, normally, is a windowded block or melt a piston. In which case, the engine can be removed, disassembled and inspected. That is far different than what happens when a rocket engine fails. They're usually a few miles above the launch pad moving a hundreds, if not thousands, MPH when there is a catastrophic failure resulting in debris scattering for miles and sometimes in deep water.
How do they figure out what exactly needs improving on? Do they just determin and area that failed and upgrade everything? Or do they just upgrade whatever they deemed statistically, most likely to fail? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53gxt5/eli5_how_do_rocket_scientist_when_dealing_with_a/ | {
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"There are two elements first find as much of the pieces, second review all the video tapes and sensor data giving detailed information on what was happening at the time of the failure. These two combined give you the most likely cause of a failure when combined with the knowledge of the likely failure points.",
"When a rocket fails it often blows up, an occurrence that some in the industry refer to as \"rapid unplanned/spontaneous disassembly\". When the smoke clears and the debris has stopped falling, the engineers look at video evidence, logs from the different sensors and of course the smoldering remains of what once used to be a rocket in order to piece together what caused the bloody thing to go all firecracker on them.\n\nIn the cases of the Challenger and Columbia space shuttles, for instance, sensor technology pointed the researchers to what had happened. This was then confirmed using video footage: the Challenger showed a flame from the side of the SRB impinging on the main fuel tank, while the videos from the Colombia's launch showed a piece of foam impacting the wing and damaging the reinforced carbon-carbon matrix. These indeed turned out to be the causes for these disasters.\n\nSo, the answer is \"sensors\", including video. A rocket is chock-full of all sorts of sensors, which send their data to the ground base in a process called \"telemetry\". If something goes wrong, the sensors give the engineers a pretty good idea of where to look.\n\nEDIT: Damn, hit enter too soon",
"My grandfather was an electrical engineer for Honeywell, and at one point in his career he did some work for NASA.\n\nYears later, he told me that he was there when the Challenger exploded, and he knew that something was wrong just before liftoff because the nozzles were swiveling around as if they were compensating for some turbulence which shouldn't have been there (because the shuttle was on the pad, and not hurtling through the atmosphere).\n\nI asked him, \"Well, how did you know that they weren't just calibrating themselves before the launch?\"\n\nHe looked at me with one of Those Looks, and said, \"Because I designed the circuits that controlled them.\"\n\n---\n\n(This discussion happened half of a lifetime ago, and my grandfather has since passed away. I might have remembered some of the details wrong, but the gist of it is true.)"
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3jo0a8 | how do companies get short numbers instead of full phone numbers to text to (i.e., "text savebig to 8998 for a 15% coupon to steve's superstore") | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jo0a8/eli5how_do_companies_get_short_numbers_instead_of/ | {
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"They are full phone numbers, it's just that 'phone numbers' is a really broad category.\n\nYou get them by paying. [Twilio rents them at 1k/mo](_URL_0_) for the USA. They're not handed out like regular numbers because they're very desirable, but in a technical sense they're pretty much just a normal phone number that happens to be shorter. ",
"They are special codes set up specifically on cell phone networks. Because cell networks have always been fully computerized, it is easier to insert special numbers like this into the network. Your landline phone only transmits one digit at a time. The landline system counts how many digits you're dialing and knows you're done dialing when you hit seven digits. Or ten in metropolitan areas. If you start with a 1 in the US, it knows to wait for ten more digits for a lomg distance call.\n\nBut cell phones have a kind of punctuation mark: the Send button. Your cell phone transmits those numbers as a single packet after you hit Send. If the network only gets five digits, it knows that's all you intended to dial because you hit the Send button and told it, \"That's all I'm dialing. That's the end of the number.\" So that way the network knows to look that number up in its list of special content providers instead of trying to send your message to a regular cell phone."
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1qfxr5 | how do studios earn their money? | Ive read that distributors charge cinemas to show their films. If that's true how do they get the gross figure, for example Enders Game may have grossed 15mil on its opening weekend (just a random figure).
Is this just from distribution charges? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qfxr5/how_do_studios_earn_their_money/ | {
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"For brand new movies, there's a flat fee for the theater to show the film. Then the theater and the distributor split the ticket revenue, which varies week by week (it's higher earlier in the run). \n\nIn general, the theater isn't making a ton of profit on the film, they make most of their money on concessions. ",
"The movie studio doesn't announce the actual money they make from their arrangements with the cinemas. They just ask the cinemas for a count of tickets sold, multiply then announce that."
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4br7t9 | how clothing/shoes ends up on the side of the highway | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4br7t9/eli5_how_clothingshoes_ends_up_on_the_side_of_the/ | {
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"Kids. It's always kids. If a one of the plausible answers is kids, then it's always kids.\n (Unless the question is whom to have sex with next...)",
"Probably because \n\n- They are tossed out of cars during fights among kids.\n- A pair is abandoned, but one of the shoe rolls away.\n- They are thrown out of school buses, during fights or as a practical joke.\n- They've fallen out of garbage trucks.\n\nBtw, there is a whole wikipedia page dedicated to this.\n_URL_0_"
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5zooot | how do crime scene investigators differentiate between relevant and irrelevant evidence? | I know that the tv shows might not be the most accurate, but it seems like they photograph every little thing and dust every fingerprint and document every crumb in the area. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zooot/eli5_how_do_crime_scene_investigators/ | {
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"Cop here:\n\nEvery crime scene is different, but for the most part, it's common sense.\n\nThe impression you probably get from crime scene shows is that a lot of cases hinge on tiny pieces of forensic evidence.\n\nIn reality, most cases are obvious and solved quickly. The investigator usually has a decent idea on what happened, so they know where to look. \n\nForensic evidence is mostly used to solidify cases, not bust them open.\n\nIn cases where there is nothing obvious, then they usually will just collect and document absolutely everything.",
"Basically they can't. They will routinely miss relevant evidence but scrutinize irrelevant stuff.\n\nBut a lot of crime scenes will look the same over and over again, so they know what things to look at that *typically* can provide evidence. So like in a violent crime, they will look under the victim's fingernails, because if the victim struggled with an attacker, there could be flakes of the attacker's skin under the victim's fingernails. And they'll take samples of any blood spatters, because the attacker might have bled too, in addition to the victim.\n\nBut sometimes they have no idea what evidence will turn out to be relevant. One time I saw on forensic files they found DNA from saliva on cigarette butts outside the house of a murder victim. The murderer had stalked around outside the house for a while and smoked several cigarettes, and threw them on the ground when he was done. Cigarette butts are everywhere, especially at the home of a smoker, I doubt detectives often look for that kind of thing, but this one time, it was crucial. "
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1445uu | hey elif what the heck is a cissexual? | Was offered this to read: _URL_0_
but it didn't help at all
Edit: Solved! Thanks to darkfrost47. For laying it out in a manner even I can comprehend. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1445uu/hey_elif_what_the_heck_is_a_cissexual/ | {
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"Someone who is not trans or genderqueer. ",
"Basically it is a normal person.",
"This is a joke and pokes fun at some of the more ridiculous activists in the LGBT community who want to define themselves by obscure academic terms so they feel special.",
"So cis-male just means male and cis-female just means female. \n\nI have a background in science and linguistics. \n\nTrying to add 'cis' as a prefix to an existing word, whose current usage is its traditional meaning and the traditional meaning is exactly the same as its prefixed meaning, is an unneeded and unwanted complication. Its not going to catch on. Why not? because in language usage, people typically take the shortest unique label. For example, people call the combination of GNU user commands and the Linux Operating system \"Linux\" even though \"GNU-Linux\" is more technically correct.\n\nIts an excellent idea to add words or prefixes to correctly identify the less common sexual identities. We need those in the language because they are missing. Having specific words for them forces people who want to ignore these ideas, to acknowledge that the ideas, and the people they represent, are real. And therefore they must be given their proper and fair support. \n\nI understand and absolutely support that people with non-traditional sexual identities have the same rights as everyone else. Frankly, IMHO, thinking otherwise reveals a distinct lack of either education or the lack of ability to reason. If civil rights don't apply to all civillians, they're not civil rights, right? If something is a civil right, ALL civilians must get the protections of that right. Otherwise; its a privilege and not a right.\n\nBut trying to rename the traditional gender identities will cause added friction and add a lot more resistance to acceptance of non-traditional gender identities. \n\nAttempting to artificially change this language usage will generate active resistance in places and people where there would be no resistance at all. Remember, people resist change unless they see a specific advantage for themselves in the change. Let people keep using the traditional names for the traditional identities and only add new labels for the less traditional identities. This minimizes the changes and makes them easier to accept. \n\nRemember Thomas Jefferson's words: \"It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg\", when he was trying to show people that what other people do that is different, had no affect on anyone but themselves.\n\nThat is the same position we are in. Having equal rights for all identities doesn't disrupt anything. It simply insures that everyone has the same rights. So everyone has freedom and liberty. 'Cause those rights are for 'all' :-) "
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4htryh | what is the impact of lowering interest rates? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4htryh/eli5_what_is_the_impact_of_lowering_interest_rates/ | {
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"It's a big dynamic system, but the basic idea is that since borrowing money is cheaper, more people will borrow money to invest in other things thus boosting the economy. So typically it's houses. If a mortgage is cheap you will be more likely to buy a house and this increased demand will cause more houses to be built, thus increasing employment.\n\nAlso the people you paid for your house will then have their capital freed up (they converted their house into money) and will be able to invest in other things themselves.",
"Very simply, it makes borrowing money cheaper and more attractive than raising money by other means. E.g. selling stock or bonds.",
"Lowering interest encourages spending. If you aren't making any interest on money in the bank, why don't do something else with? If it is cheap to borrow money, why not buy a house or start a business?\n\nThe drawback is with less savings and more debt, people and businesses become more vulnerable to failure."
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15ihat | video compression | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15ihat/eli5_video_compression/ | {
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"The next time you watch a movie or TV show look at how little changes from one frame to the next. For example, if you have two people talking to each other the background isn't going to change much. So, instead of storing a picture of the background twice they simply include the pieces that changed. Then they can throw out the rest of the data.\n\nNext, imagine a really chaotic action scene with multiple, fast cuts. No image is on screen long enough for your eyes to really focus well. So, you can throw out a lot of the data and use lower quality images since it's all moving too fast to notice.\n\nThese are just two examples of how they compress video. There are numerous other tricks they use to remove non-critical information.",
"If there are pixels that are repeated in the same frame. I.e colours or very similar shades then instead of having all the date for that pixels colour etc, it just points to a location where that colour is already used thus using less bits. The higher the compression the further away the colour can be from it's true colour."
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3e2gsz | how can donald trump, with most of the republican party damning him, still lead in the straw polls? | I've seen candidates say tamer things with worse consequences. What the Hell?
Edit: wrong word | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e2gsz/eli5how_can_donald_trump_with_most_of_the/ | {
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"Because Trumps candidacy is either taking advantage of or designed to expose a massive cultural difference between the rank and file membership and senior leadership of the Republican party. Both parties are very broad coalitions of groups that sometimes have pretty different interests, but agree on a few key topics (the Republican glue has long been unified opposition to communism). \n\nThe wing of the party that Trump's statements are designed to appeal, is made up of people who mostly don't feel like they've gotten many benefits from the coalition recently. ",
"Because he's saying what a lot of the base thinks. The people objecting to him aren't voters, they're legacy/establishment/organization figures. Sort of like how Sanders is massively popular, but establishment Dems consider Hillary the frontrunner.",
"When last I heard, there were more than a dozen serious contenders for the nomination, and then about a dozen more people who are only halfheartedly running. \n\nTrump has a small, but very vocal number of supporters who will vote for him and no one else. The rest of the candidates have all of their votes split.\n\nFinally, it's worth pointing out that he's not really in first place by very much, and he's basically within the margin of error. The dude is in first with what, a 15% showing with a 3% margin of error? It's not a particularly relevant accomplishment. Once the weaker candidates eventually jump ship, their votes are going to be going to the actual candidates, and Trump is going to just bleed out votes.\n\n"
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18dc74 | why did pirates bury their treasure? or were depicted to bury their treasure? | . | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18dc74/eli5_why_did_pirates_bury_their_treasure_or_were/ | {
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"Obviously, someone might steal it from you if you carried it around with you. And if you steal something, you can't just put it in the bank now, can you? Especially if you're an outlawed pirate. ",
"If they just left it on the ground, people would just take it, see.",
"Because they didn't have banks like Wachovia [that would money launder](_URL_0_) their ill-gotten profits.",
"*copied from \"The Second Book of General Ignorace\" by John Lloyd and John Mitchison of Quite Interesting -- page 270; please excuse typos*\n\n\"**On a pirate's treasure map, what does *X* mark?**\n\nThere are no documented cases of a real pirate ever drawing up a treasure map, let alone putting an *X* on it to mark where the treasure is buried. Only one pirate, William Kidd (about 1645 - 1701), is ever recorded as having buried any treasure at all.\n\nThere is even some doubt as to whether Kidd was a pirate. Protected by a \"letter of marque\" from King William III, he was privately employed by the British governers of New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire to protect their coastline from genuine pirates or from the French. Legally, this meant he was not a pirate but a \"privateer\" (like Sire Francis Drake). His enemies didn't agree; they vilified him as a ruthless, disrespectful, and violent brigand. For example, Kidd's sailors once showed their backsides to a Rotal Navy yacht instead on saluting it, and Kidd himself killed a disobedient member of his crew in cold blood. He became a plotical embarrassment, and when he was eventually arrested, the wealthy Englishmen who financed his voyages chose to hand him over to the authorities rather than be accused of piracy alongside him.\n\nIt is known that Kidd buried some of his wealth on Gardiners Island, off the coast of Long Island. He had hoped to use it as a bargaining tool to clear his name. However, he'd given the details to one of his backers, who then dug it up and sent it on to London to be used in evidence against him. Kidd was tried and found guilty of piracy and murder. He was hanged on May 23, 1701, at \"Execution Dock\" at Wapping, in London. His body was hung in a steel-hooped cage over the Thames and remained there for twenty years.\n\nThe first treasure map with an *X* marking the spot appears in the novel *Treasure Island* (1883) by Robert Louis Stevenson. Stevenson also introduced the Black Spot (the pirate's curse) and several piratical expression including \"avast,\" \"yo-ho-ho,\" and \"matey\" -though \"Shiver my timbers!\" came from the pen of another Victorian novelist, Captain Frederick Marryat (1792 - 1848). It seems that \"walking the plank\" was also a literary invention: the only recorded real-life case happened in 1829, well after most piracyy had ceased.\n\nHardly any pirate booty was \"treasure.\" The majority was food, water, alcohol, weapons, clothing, ship's fittings, or whatever commodity was in the hold. The victim's ship itself might be sold or taken over if it was wetter than the pirate's own, and the crew and passengers were also valuable -either for ransom or to be sold as slaves. During the seventeenth century, more than a million Europeans were captured and sold into slavery by Barbay pirates from Algiers.\n\nFew oirates (or privateers) sailed in galleons. Most used galleys (with backs of oars rather than sails). Unlike the sailing ships that were their prey, these coould be rowed against the wind and in any direction, even on a windless day.\n\nTwo privateers (though no pirates) are known to have had wooden legs: the sixteenth-century Frenchman François Le Clerc, known as Jambe de Bois, and Cornelis Cornelizoon Jol (1597 - 1641), nicknamed Houte-been (\"Pegleg\").\n\nThere is no historical evidence for any pirate ever owning a pet parrot.\n\n**Stephen:** Why would a pirate want to bury treasure?\n\n**Phil Juptis:** Well, they can hardly go to the Bradford & Bingley, can they? \"Hello, we've got a chest full of doubloons and booty.\" \"Yes, would like fixed term or extended interest?\"\"\n\n**TL;DR:** Everything you think you know about pirates is wrong.",
"TIL everything we know about pirates is actually just made up",
"It wasn't really treasure, it was just food that they were hoarding. But worms moles always got to it, so by the time the pirates got back to it, it was pieces of ate."
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c1bfh9 | why is it difficult for internet to be beamed through satellite unlike tv? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c1bfh9/eli5_why_is_it_difficult_for_internet_to_be/ | {
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"Internet is a two-way conversation. You ask for a specific website, or type in a post to ELI5, which requires you to upload information. Satellites are good at sending information down (like Television channels) but not so good at listening.\n\nTo put it another way... imagine one person has a loudspeaker on one end of the football field and another person is at the other end. The person without the loudspeaker can listen to instructions just fine, but they can't have a conversation.",
"Tv is broadcast. You send it out and everyone receives it, but nobody has to send back. \n\nInternet is different, everyone with an internet connection needs to send data back. You can’t have everyone screaming back at the satellite at the same time, so there’s lots of synchronization that needs to happen. \n\nThere’s also the fact that the satellite is so far away, it takes 1/4 of a second for the signal to go up and 1/4 second to come back. That kind of delay irritates a lot of things you do over the internet."
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2voigr | what is community college and how does it work? | I've started watching the TV show 'Community'.. I sorta get what community colleges are but I mean.. on this show they take so many random classes. What actually are they for and what do you do at them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2voigr/eli5_what_is_community_college_and_how_does_it/ | {
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"Community colleges are like small universities. Most typically have two-year associates degree programs, as well as certifications and GED courses. A lot of students finish their general education classes (english, math, sociology, etc.) at a community college and finish their last two years at a university, taking the core classes for their selected field of study. Alternatively, some community colleges can certify a student in fields like massage therapy, CDL driving, and nursing. ",
"They are typically small, local colleges for continuing education after high school. Most offer two-year programs, either geared to be a training in a technical field or a stepping stone into a four-year program elsewhere. They usually have a much lower tuition than four-year universities, so they are a good alternative for students who either can't afford to attend a four-year university or simply choose to save some money before transferring.",
"In addition to what's been said, community college typically gets funding both from state and local government, so it's significantly cheaper than a university. For instance, I just transferred from a community college where I was paying about $2500 per full time semester, to a state university where I'm paying $7000.",
"Please note that Community is a comedy. It does not represent what people actually do when they go to a community college."
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3pqxzx | so i was browsing r/trashy and saw something, and now i'm curious. what causes the area around some people's butt hole to be darker than others? sadly, i'm being serious. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pqxzx/eli5_so_i_was_browsing_rtrashy_and_saw_something/ | {
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"Some porn stars/sex workers bleach their assholes to make them look \"better\" for the camera.\n\nBut, this would be for the same reasons that people have different skin colours. Eg pigmentation.",
"Sometimes people have extra keratin in certain areas of the body that makes their skin appear darker. You've probably seen (or maybe even have) darker underarms, elbows or thighs than the other surrounding skin. It's the same thing that's happening around the anus."
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1o0qqn | what's the point of chilling a battery? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1o0qqn/eli5_whats_the_point_of_chilling_a_battery/ | {
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"So you can have a nice cold one. (sorry, the punth is strong in me. :-) )\n\nChilling the battery extends the shelf life and if charged while cold can cause it to hold a little more power."
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7pqev7 | so today i learned that the last b-52 was produced in 1962 but how are they still operational? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7pqev7/eli5_so_today_i_learned_that_the_last_b52_was/ | {
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"Would you be surprised if you saw a car from the 60's still operational? The U.S. spent a LOT of money on these aircraft, and they're surprisingly well built. Routine maintenance on them can keep them working for a long time. Not only that, but more modern stuff has come out since then to limit their functional use a bit.",
"two words: preventive maintenance.\n\nyou run through a series of checks on a regular basis and if something seems off or on the verge of breaking, you repair/replace it. \n",
"In terms of the frame, the most vulnerable part of the B-52 is the upper wing. As you can imagine, the wing is stressed by the weight of the engines as well as the lift generated from the wing itself. \n\nEngineers have determined that the useful life of that part of the plane is about 35,000 flight hours. That means that after those 35,000 flight hours, the metal in the upper wing surface will have been stressed so much that it would no longer would be safe to continue operations with the aircraft. \n\nIn reality, the plane could likely fly many thousands of hours past that point, but the risk and cost of continued operation exceeds the levels determined to be safe by the Air Force. \n\nGoing back to the B-52s still being operated, we're only putting about 300-400 flight hours on our operational B-52s each year. That's a big difference from some of our older B-52 inventory which put up much more flight hours annually. \n\nIt's important to remember that the B-52 was designed to fly extremely long missions, with bomber fleets providing 24/7 missions ready to drop bombs on the USSR. We knew it was going to log a serious number of flight hours, so it was built to last a while. \n\nAs we developed ICBMS and other nuclear delivery systems, the need for large numbers of B-52s to be in the air decreased. When the USSR collapsed and the Cold War tensions died down, we needed the B-52 to fly even less. So we had a plane designed to be flown for a long time that ended up not getting used as much. When nuclear treaties were signed that required us to reduce our nuclear-capable bomber inventory, we were able to select aircraft that had the longest usable life left. \n\nSo now we have an inventory of B-52s that have between 2/3rds and 3/4ths of their expected life used, with limited expectations for how much we'll use them. \n\nIf, for some reason, the mission demands on the B-52 increased, their life (at least in terms of years of projected service) would be cut shorter. Our estimate that they'll operate until 2040 is based on the idea that we'll use them at our current rate, so a large engagement that involves heavy bombing by the B-52 could quickly eat up the remaining flight hours. ",
"It really isn't that unusual. Look at any site that lists used aircraft for sale, you will see plenty of functioning aircraft made in [the 1950s, 60s, and 70s](_URL_0_).\n\nAircraft get much better maintenance that automobiles, because it is literally a matter of life and death. This is particularly true with preventative maintenance, when an engine has a certain number of hours on it, it gets rebuilt, whether it needs it or not.\n\nAnd because airplanes are so expensive, it is economical to repair and refit old airplanes long after you would have sent a car to the junkyard. There are plenty 50-year-old planes out there with brand new engines and the latest glass cockpits.",
"I used to work at Kelly AFB where they overhauled the B-52s. They would strip each plane down to its component parts, test everything, rebuild as needed, replace anything out of tolerance, inspect the airframe for cracks, and install upgrades. When it went back together, it was better than new. "
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1g9khb | why people cover their mouth with hand in scary, shock situations | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1g9khb/eli5_why_people_cover_their_mouth_with_hand_in/ | {
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"When I was watching a scary movie with my family in Eastern Europe, no one, literally no one does so i'm inclined to believe that this may be a western thing. ",
"Pressure and touch can be very calming. In fact it's often used to help people with autism, especially children. It's a short wiki page, but check out the entry for [\"hug machine\"](_URL_0_). It was realised that pressure could be calming after the inventor saw cattle become subdued after being squeezed.\n\nOr maybe it's an automatic reaction to restrict air flow preventing you from hyperventilating, which would also serve to keep you calm. In treatment for panic attacks often breathing patterns or exercises are taught. ",
"There's probably no evolutionary reason for this. However, it may exist as a form of cultural meme that has spread easily due to mirror neurons. This would explain the behavior's widespread occurrence.",
"Generally, people will cover their mouths immediately *after* a shock, right as they figure out everything's okay. It may have developed as a way to avoid spreading undue panic.",
"I think the mouth-gape is a natural reaction, however, covering it with your hands is a cultural thing. It is considered not polite to leave your mouth open wide, so people cover it out of habit, just like when you're yawning or coughing.",
"When you get really scared, really quickly - (Remember that summer thunderstorm? Right?) - your brain goes into super good, super fast, super powerful mode. One of the ways it does this is by turning off stuff you don't NEED right that very second. That worked really good for the old days when you had to run from a lion, because you were faster and quicker, and all the power went to your muscles and your lungs and your super \"lizard brain\" \n\nI don't know why people cover their mouths, but maybe some of the cool grownups can help us here. Worst-case, we'll go to the library and ask that cool Librarian to help us find out. She probably has books and databases, and can find out if someone wrote a report on it. \n\n\n\n**Explain Like I Can Read Wiki** version: \n\nWhen we're stripped down to the bare survival brain ( which is apparently called an \"[ amygdala hijack](_URL_0_)\" ) we're way below social niceties. Apparently it literally turns off a the thinking brain. That thin smear of brain tissue that makes us not-apes, containing all the logic and higher functions.\n\n\nMy initial thought was \"Chimps cover their mouths to mask fear\" - but honestly, in a sudden fear situation, I don't think social niceties register on an animal level for most people. \n\nThis is fascinating. I hope someone has a good answer, even if it's not quite like a 5 year old? ",
"As far as I can tell, You open your mouth out of instinct to sound an alarm (Shouting / Screaming). However in most social situations (watching a movie at the cinema) you know you're not supposed to Shout and warn someone.\n\nHowever, when this happens in real-life ( e.g. you see someone get hit by somebody else ), you put your hand to your mouth out of habit.",
"You know how when you get scared you sometimes make an unexpected sound? Like a scream or an audible inhalation? Well, you have a natural reaction to stop that sound from happening. It's your own hand on your own mouth. That way you don't scare other people, too. And they don't scare other people who then scare even MORE people...",
"Watch [Red Wedding Reactions](_URL_0_) if you want to see this in action",
"From this link:_URL_0_\n\n\"When you’re truly shocked, you don’t cover your mouth; you just scream. Covering your mouth seems to be a secondary reaction, when you’re trying to moderate your initial response. That might be because you have realized there’s no danger or because you don’t want to alarm those around you. It probably evolved to avoid spreading unnecessary panic in groups.\"",
"Slightly buried but I think I know the reason:\n\nI think it probably has Darwinian roots - it's not a cultural thing as near as I can see it. People gape, step back, and cover their mouth. This was probably developed over incredible lengths of time as are other random traits that are no longer applicable.\n\nI see it like this: You're wandering around a wilderness where there very well could be a saber-tooth tiger and other very angry, very large animals that would like to eat you. You turn a corner and see one sleeping. People that scream in fear immediately would have woken up the beast and been killed as a result. Someone who could gasp, even if it was loudly, but cover their mouth to stop the scream would have a survival rate many magnitudes higher than the first person we spoke about. This is all just a guess of course but it makes sense on an evolutionary scale. \n\n**TL;DR In evolutionary terms if you could stop yourself from screaming by covering your mouth your chances of living through potentially dangerous situations is many orders of magnitude greater than someone who walks around the jungle / desert / wilderness screaming every time they get scared by a predator who may / may not know they're there**",
"I'm sure someone can explain it better, but I was reading a book on reading body language by Joe Navarro that explained this phenomenon. \n\nBasically, he says it has to do with the limbic system of our brain (the part of the brain that deals with instincts, emotions, reactions as opposed to thought). What we refer to as our \"fight or flight\" instinct is really freeze- > flight- > fight. \n\nWhen faced with danger or surprise, our first instinct is to freeze. This is because when faced with a predator, the best defense is for it not to notice you- thus you freeze and go silent. The example he used is people sitting on the first row of a tiger show in Vegas- they all sit very still and don't move much. Even though there is no danger (or not much), there is a predatory feline (historically our biggest predators) meters away. Our instincts tell to stay still and be quiet, and hopefully it won't notice us.\n\nThis also gives us a second to decide if we can get away (flight) from the danger, or if we have to stand and fight.",
"It may also stem from an ancient belief that demons will possess you and take your soul, (which is what supposedly scared you) which is related to the same reason people say \"bless you\" when you sneeze. (though this has also been attributed to someone contracting the plague, and as a sign of administering a last rites)",
"the gaping mouth is actually surprise and it's universal. in fear the lips are pulled wide and tight, maybe open, bit not in an o shape. the covering of the mouth is a defense response to mask strong emotion also in many cultures expressing emotion may not be acceptable, it also most likely universal (there is some debate on that). people will cover their mouth when sad, or even happy or surprised and frequently when lying (not always a sign of lying! becauase as i said above it could just be an emotional response)",
"Vocalization in chimpanzees is involuntary, like human laughter or sobbing. Jane Goodall reported that she once gave a stash of fruits to a chimpanzee when it was a short distance away from the group. When it found the fruits, it shrieked with excitement, buy the hastily covered its own mouth, not wanting others to come and share the find.",
"So listen here kid: When you're scared you have two options 1. fight or 2. flight. To help with a fast decision your brain need more oxygen, hence the shocking inhaling of air. Since this is mostly a reflex, your body reacts in a defense mode and makes sure that only air is going in your mouth and not the scary thing (think of a jumping spider). BTW the same happens when you see something disgusting and you wrinkle your nose and almsot close your eyes. The body just don't want the disgusting thing in your body and wants to close every orfice."
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d65dob | how can speed sometimes cause cars to turn even though it’s on four table wheels | Does something have to happen in the wheels for that, or something really just speed can cause a car to flip. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d65dob/eli5_how_can_speed_sometimes_cause_cars_to_turn/ | {
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"i think you mean like when the car turns and then flips? in that case its because all the movement(called kinetic) energy is going in one direction (forward) so when the car suddenly turn sideways the energy doesn’t have time to convert to sidewards energy and continues being forward movement energy and so flips the car",
"Most cars are not designed to go to very high speeds. The air passing under the car causes a huge amount of pressure and can literally lift the car into the air.\n\nA race car has huge front and rear spoilers to push the car down and specially designed underside to suck the car onto the track.\n\nA Formula 1 car could theoretically drive upside down in a large enough tube due to its aerodynamics."
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er887p | how come on some food labels, one serving size is like 90 calories, but two serving sizes are 170? wouldn't they both add up to be 180, and the nutritional value be doubled? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/er887p/eli5_how_come_on_some_food_labels_one_serving/ | {
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"It's probably due to rounding. Say, for example, that the serving size is actually 87 calories, but they rounded to 90. Two serving sizes would be 174, which they could round to 170."
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13ni5u | how does wall street work? | I just don't understand anything about it. Please help. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13ni5u/eli5how_does_wall_street_work/ | {
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"Let's say my friend owns a bread factory and I really like his bread, and I think his business is going somewhere. I buy let's say 25% of his company and he gets my investment and uses it to further his bread making and make his bread even better. His bread is featured in the NY Times and his bread store is worth a lot more now. Now let's say I bought 25% of his company for $25,000, now his company is making a lot more money so I can sell this 25% of his company to someone else for $50,000 now. So I take that $50,000 and I invest in a company that's doing badly, if they do good then that $50,000 I invested will grow and I can re-sell it for even more. This is extremely rudimentary, but you get the general idea. ",
"imagine you are trading snacks with your class at school. you've been doing so since the start of school. when Halloween comes around suddenly your packet of M & Ms no longer trades for what it used to at the beginning of school. before you could have traded those M & M's for a juice box and a kit-kat bar, now a m & m pack is a worth 2 tootsie rolls. (this represents a drop in security prices because supply is dumped and demand stays the same). now you can't get the same amount of snacks back.\n\nbut you're a kid who loves M & M's, seeing the trading value of M & M's devalue isn't necessarily a bad thing, and your neighborhood was kinda crappy and you got more tootsie roll's then you thought you'd ever get. using those tootsie rolls you go you buy M & M's from you friend and you begin to stockpile it. but as time passes the supply drops and the trading value of M & M's increases. and guess who holds most of the remaining supply? suddenly you're trading 2 M & M packs for a bag of doritos and a juice box. (this represents a rising trend, of securities)\n\nbut everyone has juice boxes right? you're friend, asks to borrow your juicebox. you don't know for what for and he walks out the door. he comes back after five minutes and guess what, not only did he come out of the Class 2-A's room with a juice box. he came back with a small bag of sour patch kids as well. he hands you you're juice box back and it seems a bit different, it's much colder. turns out your friend sold your juice box and got 3 sour patch kids. but the kid who bought it suddenly regretted it as it turns out a kid brought out a 6 pack of orange juice and the value dropped. he sold 2 sour patch kids packets for the juice box. (this is an example of shorting a stock, and even using other trading markets like the TSX, or london stock exchange. where your class room is the NYSE).\n\n---\n\nbasically wallstreet is a giant open market, where people trade papers for money. the contents and value of said papers, all depends on what that paper represents, and the amount people are willing to spend for that paper."
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20xorv | why does every school bus have "carrying school children" written on it? | Of course it's carrying school children, it's a humungous yellow bus; we all know that it's carrying school children. What other kind of children are there, for that matter? Regular city buses aren't marked "carrying an assortment of humans."
It just seems redundant and silly to me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20xorv/eli5why_does_every_school_bus_have_carrying/ | {
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"I guess it's just a reminder to people to be careful. The last thing anyone wants is for a kid to get hurt."
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603q46 | why do races or groups of people get blamed for or associated with the actions of ancestors from 100+ years ago? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/603q46/eli5_why_do_races_or_groups_of_people_get_blamed/ | {
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"Simply put: because sometimes the actions of 100+ years ago are still felt because the fallout from those actions was poorly handled.\n\nIn the case of American slavery, there is a lot of bitterness between African and Anglo America due to African-American history starting with slavery, and continuing for such a long time that much of the country was built by slavery.\n\nAmerica fought it's most gruesome war over this, and slavery was abolished after tens of millions^^WRONG of *white* American lives were lost. At this point, fairly understandably, a lot of white America felt like the debt had been repaid. That may or may not be true, but the reality was that more needed to be done beyond simply making slavery illegal. \nSlaves had not been educated on how to live as free people because, sadly, slave owners would have been stupid to teach those skills. There was important work to be done after the abolition of slavery, but at that point America was weary from a brutal civil war and it just didn't happen.\n\nIt also doesn't help that racial issues are often capitalised by the elites to stop the poor recognising that the real problem is class, not race.\n\nEdit: 10s of millions, hundreds of thousands. What's the difference right? No but seriously, my bad.",
"Basically, because those actions still affect us today. The most obvious one is probably slavery in the US. If you're white in the US today, you probably (hopefully) don't own any slaves, but you still benefit from \"your\" people holding slaves generations ago. It created a lot of wealth for white people, who still benefit from that. It created a society which treats white people as better/more worthy. It created a legal system in which black people are inherently suspect. These effects still exist today, and they benefit some, and disadvantage others.\n\nIt is not about \"blame\", though, but rather about acknowledging these actions and the effects they've had. It is about recognizing that \"yes, my ancestors did something bad 100+ years ago, which has made life better for me, but worse for you. I recognize that this is unjust, and agree that we should work to correct it\".",
"It has more to do with privilege and systematic racism. While I, as a white American, may not be inherently racist, I still benefit from privilege associated with my race. I don't have to worry about representation from the media, police don't think I'm more dangerous because of my skin color, and generally the areas where Caucasian people live in America are nicer. As a child, I grew up in a primarily black area, and the school system is definitely different. The school I went to was underfunded, teachers gave up halfway through the year, and if something was broken it wasn't always fixed. When I started high school, my parents moved and we were in a primarily white area. The school I went to there had a lot of nicer facilities. Our campus was kept nicer, we had all new textbooks, we even had some of the latest technology in class (like interactive white boards).\nIt wasn't until I was older that I started to learn about how this happened. Housing discrimination, illogical school district set up (gerrymandering is the term in politics), and a focus on test scores to determine funding (ie, don't give money to schools when their students aren't performing well). Also racially biased questions on these standardized tests. \nWhile I personally didn't cause any of this, I still systematically benefit from the privilege that comes from it.\nAnd it's not just in America. I did a minor in Asian studies, where I learned a lot about Japanese and Chinese relations after WWII. I can't personally attest to the culture, but from what I studied there are similar issues in these countries (if anyone has a more personal insight I would love to know it).\nIn essence, nobody is blaming individual white people for slavery today. The focus is on realizing how certain actions lead to a culture where people are discriminated against, and opening privileged people to the fact they are privileged. Not so we can feel \"white guilt\", but so we can help shape the system to benefit non white people as well. ",
" > Why do races or groups of people get blamed for or associated with the actions of ancestors from 100+ years ago?\n\nBecause the ones applying the blame have been able to gain great political power through making those accusations. They resulted in massive amounts of money being taken from people the accusers don't like and given to those they do. Those accusations convince millions of people to vote for certain political candidates. Really, it comes down to power.\n\nThe big question is why do so many people *accept* the blame for the actions of their ancestors 100+ years ago. Or people 100+ years ago that looked vaguely like them?",
"Most of these answers discuss leftover privilege however I do not think it makes sense to blame someone for being born into privilege, for having said privilege? Trying to make people feel guilty will make most defensive as opposed to what you are trying to accomplish, further dividing everyone. I think everyone needs to stop assuming malintent and start focusing on the actual problems, instead of trying to find the people to blame for said problems. Maybe I'm just biased because I'm the one being blamed (but that sorta proves my point)",
"my views on stuff like slavery are simple i was not there, i did not do it ,i have not personally profited from it therefore i don't give a shit...\n\nanyone who says it was my fault can get fucked and jump into a wood chipper for being retards",
"It is mostly because the \"100+ years ago\" part is just the origin of a current problem. Right now, actions of our society are negatively affecting specific racial groups. The problem is that today it is not so obvious as slavery. It is hidden in the everyday. No one should be blamed for something that happened over a hundred years ago, but not acknowledging the problems of today is our problem today. \n \nELI15: If you're interested, off the top of my head, here is a list of racial issues that presently affect people (note: this list is largely of white/ black issues in the USA): \n* having to deal with micro aggressions on a daily basis (I'm not trying to blame the micro aggressors because we all have them and they're generally not intentional. Micro aggressions are small differences in how we treat others based on our subconscious assumptions about them. As such, they are hard to change or control.) \n* being treated with suspicion by store clerks (being followed around stores/ being watched/ not being treated like other customers) \n* being treated with suspicion by the police (who's duty is supposed to be to serve and protect you) \n* given harsher sentences in court for equivalent crimes \n* America has more people in jail than any other country on earth (so much for \"freedom\") and it's disproportionally minorities (in this stop-and-frisk world, many black people essentially live in a police state) \n* being told that bringing up any of these issues is you \"not being responsible with your life\" no matter how responsible you are with your life or where you are in life \n* that if you fight for your rights, you are a problem, while if you are white and you fight for your rights you are a patriotic American. * not being represented by your government (There has been a growing problem with voter suppression. I personally don't have a problem with voter ID laws as long as the government allows reasonable access to getting an ID for underserved areas. Also, if a voter ID law pops up right before an election it is pretty obvious what it's for. A legitimate voter ID law would give citizens enough time to get a state ID.) \n* not being treated like a \"normal\" person in a crowd of your peers * being told most hair styles you can do are not professional \n* that in tests identical resumes, one with a \"normal\" American name and one without, will most often result in the Anglo resume getting the call back (this is even before anyone has seen each other) \n* that in America, society can treat you as more of an outsider than when you move to another country \n* that it was just one generation (or two depending on how old you are) ago that \"colored\" bathrooms and restaurants and venues were a thing \n* that you can't even talk about these things with liberal, self proclaimed antiracist, white people without making them feel uncomfortable (they feel guilty even when you aren't blaming them or their parents or their parent's parents) \n* I think the very biggest problem is because plausible deniability of systematic prejudice is so simple (each individual isn't doing anything bad, but society as a whole most definitely is). It's the \"not my problem\" conundrum. Race can makes people feel awkward, guilty, or blamed. Minorities don't bring up these issues to blame white people (or at least that's not the main goal). They bring up these issues because they are issues that desperately need addressing. Every generation it gets better and the reason is because the inequalities of the day are brought up and fought against. Americans shouldn't stop bringing up issues of inequality just because it's better than it was."
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2ygnue | how does/did the us have the ability to contain ebola? | This goes for other diseases as well. Just would like to know how the US is prepared to handle those deadly epidemics. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ygnue/eli5_how_doesdid_the_us_have_the_ability_to/ | {
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"It isn't that hard and Ebola isn't a deadly epidemic at all. Ebola is similar to stuff like scurvy or dysentery where they have been problematic for people in the past and if you don't have the equipment or knowledge to handle it it can become an issue but Ebola itself is not that dangerous or deadly especially to a first world country like America. The reason they treated it so carefully when it was in America was just to prevent more people from being infected.",
"Ebola is very easy to contain. The people with ebola arent very contagious. We know exactly how the disease spreads so we can avoid that and contain it no problem. Ebola is scary because of the high death rate but its really really hard to catch.\n\nWe may not be prepared for other contagious diseases though. Like if Ebola went airborne we might be screwed."
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2t0zfy | why catholics so anti birth control | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2t0zfy/eli5_why_catholics_so_anti_birth_control/ | {
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"To Catholics, sex should only be about procreation. Not for \"having fun. \"",
"They want large families to further spread the reach of catholicism. Same with many other religions. Bigger families = more followers = more control = more power."
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1ps45v | why is the media considered liberal? when/how did this ideal begin? | I hear this all the time and I was wondering if it was true, or just something that is said. If true what are some examples. Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ps45v/eli5_why_is_the_media_considered_liberal_whenhow/ | {
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"The modern media is highly diverse, and there are both conservative and liberal outlets available to consumers. Research in the United States indicates that most Americans chose media outlets that will reinforce those Americans' beliefs -- conservatives watch conservative outlets like Fox News while liberals watch liberal outlets like MSNBC.\n\nFox News and many Republicans condemn the media as liberal for strategic reasons. Fox News condemns all other media outlets as liberal in order to convince its audience to only rely upon Fox News, thus ensuring the audience never goes away. Republican politicians tend to condemn the media as liberal whenever the media disagrees with them as it's a great way to avoid media scrutiny. Democratic politicians also attack media groups as conservative, but it's not as widespread because Democrats tend to focus on the argument not the provider (ie: NBC publishes a study indicating Obamacare is bad, Democrats attack the study, not NBC).\n\nA lot of people will disagree with me on this one, of course, I worked in media for several years, and I've spent a number of years studying politics and the media. There's no general bias in either direction."
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5nsbmj | ٌwhat is the most important factor someone's larynx have in order to make one have a "powerful voice"? | What I mean actually is, how different is the larynx of someone like Adele with other people that make her have a powerful voice? Another example would be Persian legend Mohammad Reza Shajarian.
_URL_0_
Luciano Pavarotti would be another example. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5nsbmj/eli5_what_is_the_most_important_factor_someones/ | {
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"a lot of things are involved, from the diaphragm below the lungs, to the shape of the mouth at the end of the process. a lot of things can be trained from nothing, but i guess genetics are also involved in the process..",
"A ton of factors contribute. In my opinion, the ability to project is what best determines a powerful voice. \n\nEver watch Sister Act? Whoopi puts her hand on the young soprano's diaphragm and the tremulous becomes clear and strong. \n\n"
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30w26i | why aren't we supposed to touch headlight bulbs with our bare hands? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30w26i/eli5_why_arent_we_supposed_to_touch_headlight/ | {
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"The grease from your fingers can overheat and cause the bulb to burst. It's significantly hotter than your average light bulb. \nSource: Was a drama kid, someone touched a stage light with their bare hand when installing it, bulb later burst and showered us in glass and sparks."
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djb8kq | if i were to travel the opposite direction the earth spins in a plane at the same speed it is turning would i see a time change? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/djb8kq/eli5_if_i_were_to_travel_the_opposite_direction/ | {
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"If you're thinking about time travel, no. This is currently impossible to achieve with modern technology, although theorized.\n\nThe time of day is based on how high up in the sky the sun is. When the sun is at its highest, it's noon, close to 12:00. Think of it this way. There is always a place on Earth where the sun is at its highest that day. In fact, it's a line that goes from pole to pole and moves across the Earth at around the speed of the rotation in the opposite direction. If you're in a place on that line and follow it as it moves across the Earth, you'll always be in a place where the sun is at it's highest.\n\nTime zones work a bit differently. When noon hits can change significantly if you travel a while either West or East, so communities agreed on a common clock that everyone followed no matter where in that community they were. This system was globalized and someone split the world into 24 timezones. Although there are exceptions with special rules, these are each 1 hour apart. So if you traveled for an hour across a timezone opposite to the Earth's rotation, the *local* time would be the same as the local time in the place you started, when you started. Basically, if you started from Utah at 12pm and traveled for 1 hour to the West, you'll end up in Nevada at 12pm.\n\nHope this clears things up! Time can be extremely confusing. If you want an ELI5 on time travel, all I can say is good luck."
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dhyjwp | if corporations are paying less taxes than they should by using known loopholes to circumvent the essence of the laws, why are those loopholes not immediately closed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dhyjwp/eli5_if_corporations_are_paying_less_taxes_than/ | {
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"Because the people who are elected to make the laws are running for office using campaign money that they get from those very corporations, and they want to be re-elected. The corporations save a lot of money by donating to politicians instead of paying those taxes."
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41q7uv | how does someone die from alzhimer's disease? | I always thought it was just loss of memory but I guess it's more complicated than that. I understand it is a very serious disease please don't think I'm trying to trivialize its severity. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41q7uv/eli5_how_does_someone_die_from_alzhimers_disease/ | {
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"The memory loss is occurring because the disease causes atrophy in the brain. The structures in your brain are actually degenerating. Death is usually something external however, as the victim becomes increasingly reliant on external support.",
"They eventually lose the ability to swallow. Most people who die of dementia actually die of secondary symptoms - muscle wasting, dehydration, and total loss of appetite. \n\nDifficulty swallowing leads to inhaled food/pneumonia. Inability to walk leads to bedsores, bedsores lead to blood infections. Incontinence leads to UTIs and bladder infections. \n\nIt usually presents in people who already have a bunch of other chronic/severe health problems which are exacerbated by the dementia. ",
"To add to the secondary effects other people are mentioning - my great uncle has Alzheimers and diabetes. He forgets what he's eaten and when. If he's not watched carefully, he'll go off and have a second pudding half an hour after dinner for example. He also has to be reminded that he needs to check his blood and take his medication and that he's allergic to certain foods.\n\nForgetting medication or an allergy can be fatal in some cases. ",
"Alzheimer's is almost literally a decay of the brain. The problems you can see are nothing compared to other important functions your brain will stop providing such as breathing. Alzheimer's patients are most likely to die from pneumonia. Their brains become unable to prevent inhaling saliva and other fluids which can lead to pneumonia. If they live with it long enough it will eventually damage the critical functions of the brain stem and they will simply stop breathing.",
"Having experienced it first hand let me tell you that it is heartbreaking but here are some of the close calls I have prevented: brewing coffee with bleach/cleaner, forgetting to eat/eating to much, walking into traffic, mixed up or missed medications, infections/illness not get proper treatment. \nWhat killed her was a heart attack as she was unable to express her situation and pain and many of the signs such as urinating ones self-are blurred as they tend to happen. Additionally abuse out of frustration and falls are sadly all too common for elderly and do not get reported due to forgetfulness. \n\nIf you are interested this picture shows the difference of a normal brain and one affected by the disease: _URL_0_ \n\nHope that helps"
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2pei95 | why is being good at singing a natural talent? | Why is it that you either have a really 'good' voice for singing or a 'bad' one? Is there any genetic reasons or anything else? Sorry if I worded this badly I am not really sure how to ask. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pei95/eli5_why_is_being_good_at_singing_a_natural_talent/ | {
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"It's not always a natural talent. Vocal lessons can do wonders if you're determined to improve and are consistent in your practice.",
"I think that is probably a myth. Most good/professional singers train for many years to be as good as they are.\n\nOf course, genetics will also be a factor. \n\nA good analogy might be sports. Genetics will determine that someone grows to be 6'-10\" tall but that doesn't mean that they automatically have the talent to play in the NBA. Basketball players train and practice for years and years, perfecting their talent, before becoming good enough to make the NBA.\nAnd when someone has both the talent (from training) and good genetics, then they have better potential to become a high level player.\n\nSo with singing, it's probably the combination of talent (gained from hard work) and genetics. \n\nIn some cases, the genetics might be good enough that they would be considered really good without much practice, but I would say that their potential could be much higher if they do practice & train. ",
"Every human is made with one speaker (vocal cords) and two microphones (ears).\n\nHowever, not all speakers or microphones are made the same. Some speakers have better sound reproduction at all sound ranges while others are only good in certain ranges. Same thing for recording sound ranges in the microphones.\n\nSome people have bad feedback between their speakers and their microphones so they have a hard time hearing how they're singing.\n\nHowever, with enough training, you can recognize the issues with your own body's equipment and improve and compensate for the issues.\n\nYou can be good at singing if you are naturally talented. But you can also sing well if you've spent the time tuning yourself.",
"It isn't. Range has a basis in physiolgy in that some people's larynx pharynx and syrinx are better constructed than others, just as some people have better soft twitch muscles.\n\nUltimately, though, *nobody* is a born singer. You get good through training and practice. The training tells you what to do, how, and why, the practice makes you comfortable and familiar with it and broadens it's use. Just like working out.\n\nAnyone who actually is a good singer, who claims to be a \"natural\" is lying to you and leaving out the years they spent in private lessons, church choir, or school band.\n\nThe myth of \"natural\" talent is utter destructive cop-out bullshit. "
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1ortuu | why do dogs love their bellies being rubbed? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ortuu/eli5_why_do_dogs_love_their_bellies_being_rubbed/ | {
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"Doesn't everyone love a belly rub? Dogs just usually aren't as selective about who rubs it",
"A dog rolling on its back for you while you're petting it is usually a submissive gesture. The dog has complete trust in you and is relaxed while you are probably scratching an itch that he/she can't get at. Like the top of your head, there are nerve endings that make being scratched/pet feel good. This is why cats love to be pet and scratched as well.",
"Well you are basically rubbing its nipples. Who doesn't like that?",
"My dog hates it. She is one alpha bitch. ",
"I was rubbing my roommate's cat's belly the other day, when I noticed his penis was becoming erect. I stopped touching the cat, who then started furiously licking its penis. It then spent the next several minutes rubbing against *everything*. \n \nI'm pretty sure rubbing an animal's belly is a lot like foreplay.",
"Anecdote here: the vagus nerve runs along the anterior abdomen. In theory dogs like it for the same reason people like hugs. "
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odkln | how come nobody has been talking about the ndaa or sopa on the news? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/odkln/how_come_nobody_has_been_talking_about_the_ndaa/ | {
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"While they might not be talking about them as much as many Redditors would like, the truth is that both have been reported on by numerous news agencies. There has been more coverage of the NDAA than SOPA, which is likely for good reason. The NDAA was already signed into law and is therefore much more relevant. SOPA on the other hand, is just a potential bill currently in committee that still would need to make it to the House, be passed there, be passed in the Senate, and be signed by the President before it can become a law. That is all still a long way off, so it isn't really an important news story for mainstream audiences."
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20scos | why different genders prefer different types of alcohol (men like whiskey and beer, women like vodka and wine). is this sociological or are there biological elements to it as well? | Couldn't find it in ELI5 and I couldn't find it on the internet anywhere. I have seen that different types of alcohol will typically not affect the same person differently, but what has made certain drinks associated with each gender? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20scos/eli5_why_different_genders_prefer_different_types/ | {
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"I don't think there are biological elements to why people prefer certain drinks, just as there are no biological elements to why someone prefers one food to another... it is something created by our society ",
"I imagine its a societal thing. If you go to Russia, I doubt you'll find that they treat vodka as a 'women only' drink. I doubt the French or the Italian look to wine as a drink associated with women.",
"I would say gender-specific alcohol preferences are almost entirely a result of advertising and social norms related to alcohol",
"Watch a beer commercial, there's your answer.",
"I'm a male and I like Vodka",
"Just to clarify, I think you mean *sex* instead of *gender*. Sex is your biological sex, typically male or female - which is determined by your sex chromosomes (XY, XX, XXX^1, XXY^2, XYY^3), your external genitalia (Penis/Vagina^4), and your internal genitalia (Ovaries/Testes^5). *Gender* is your own subjective experience of who you feel you are as a person and it is a continuum from \"masculine\" to \"feminine\". \n\nIn American culture we like to associate *Masculine = Male* and *Feminine = Female*. Just like you said: \n\n* (Gender) Masculine Drinks = Beer = Only for men (Sex). \n\n* (Gender) Feminine Drinks = Wine = Only for women (Sex). \n\nBut individual taste preferences, be they for food or drink, are very likely not linked to sex. If they are not linked to sex, and sex is not necessarily linked to gender (especially in other cultures) then we should conclude that it is very likely that drink preferences are influenced by cultural prescriptions (what you should do) and proscriptions (what you should not do). \n\nOur sex is tied to our gender in American culture, which is why we get these rigid marketing messages that only women can have \"girly drinks\" and men should only have \"manly drinks\". Deviations from this are not considered normal. But as others have pointed out, other cultures may not even consider such things deviations/abnormal. For example, there is no proscription in Russia that men cannot drink Vodka. For Russians, at least it would seem that what defines a \"masculine\" drink isn't the same as what defines a \"masculine\" drink in America. If two+ different cultures define what masculine drinks are differently, how can preferences be linked to biological sex?\n\n**Notes 1-5**: Some people are not born into our two sex categorization system. This means that one or more of the three determining factors (chromosomes, internal or external genitalia) of sex is \"misaligned\". For example, a person might have male chromosomes (XY) but because [the body can't recognize male androgens](_URL_0_), like testosterone, the person ends up developing like a female (Internal and External Female Genitalia). These cases often go unrecognized until puberty or if the female decides she wants to get pregnant and finds out she is sterile, this is because we classify sex at birth using external genitalia but this may not accurately reflect a persons chromosome or internal genitalia states. These people used to be called \"hermaphrodites\", but this is considered a very derogatory word and so \"intersex\" is preferred. ",
"Societal. As a transwoman I've seen and been on both sides of the coin and know from personal experience there are definitely plenty, *plenty* of men who like wines and women who like beers but would never drink them in public because of how they think they'd be perceived. I'd dare say it's almost a majority of friends I've been drinking with, and that's not factoring in the ones who may have had such tastes but not wanted to admit it.\n\nSo the guys go out and order weak bland lagers so they don't get called \"fag\" by their buddies, and the women get a plain and tasteless white wine (or at most a shandy) so they don't get called \"dyke\" by their buddies, and it ceases being about enjoying the drink and just about enjoying the intoxication."
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mueq3 | ip addresses | I think understand them at a basic level, but I don't understand how each device on a network has a different IP but that doesn't interfere with internet IP addresses.
Also, if possible, how this relates to DNS. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mueq3/eli5_ip_addresses/ | {
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"On a home/corportate network, all devices send a request to the DHCP server (usually part of the router) and say \"hey give me an ip\". They either pick from a range, or they use an existing table to give you an ip (perhaps based on your port, or mac address). Then they send it back and say \"from now on your ip is this\". \n\nAs for the interfering bit, the router sends out all outgoing requests to the internet under one IP address, then when the data goes back, it sends it to the person required.",
"The IPs you see in your home network are called \"private\" IPs. A router creates a VPN, or virtual private network, where it keeps track of your computer's physical addresses and gives them private IP adresses. The IP address you have on the internet is really just the IP of your router. Think of the router as a switchboard that directs internet traffic in your home network.",
"IP addresses are just numbers that designate a connection. You get one assigned by your service provider to your modem, into which you plug in your router. The reason Local Area Network (ie all the computers in your house) IP addresses don't conflict with the rest of the world is because they can't actually be reached by the rest of the world without a few tricks. As far as your service provider is concerned, they gave you only one ip address; that ip address happens to be tied to your router. The router polices traffic from all of your devices - when a particular device asks for, say, _URL_0_, it makes sure to remember that device, and then sends the request itself. When the reply comes back, it redirects it back to only that device. This way, you can have whatever IPs you want for all your devices connected to that router because they never actually communicate directly with anything but your router.\n\nDNS is the Domain Name Service. Because people don't really want to remember lists of semirandom numbers for what website they want to go to, DNS was born. Its a giant tree-like structure of servers that know a certain amount of information on each address. how it goes is mostly like this: you type in _URL_0_, and your computer has no idea what that means. It asks the closest DNS it knows of what the name is. The DNS passes that up the chain of DNS servers until finally one of them knows sort of where it's located. Sort of as in it knows a server that knows a server. The path is followed down until you finally get to a DNS server that knows the actual IP address of the domain, something your computer (and the internet) can understand how to reach. This reply comes back to your computer, and now your computer can request for the data from the IP address that corresponds to _URL_0_\n\nhope that helps",
"The devices on your network will have private ip addresses. These ip addresses are the exact same ones used on other private networks but they will NEVER be duplicates of the ones on the public internet. So there are rules, like anything starting with 10 is a private, there are no public ip addresses that start with 10.\n\nWhen a computer on a private network needs to send traffic over the internet, a router/firewall will do something called Network Address Translation, or NAT. When you send a packet to the internet, this router sort of \"wraps\" your packet inside its own packet and sends that out on the internet. The router only uses its 1 public ip address for this. When a packet comes back, the router \"unwraps\" it, sees that it was for your computer on the private network and sends it to you. \n\nIf you go to a website like _URL_0_ you can see if you're being NAT'ed, because that won't match your ipconfig address if you are. It will of course show the public facing ip of your router.\n\nNAT is not related to DNS, they are 2 different services.",
"If you need something to compare it too, you don't need to look any farther than the U.S. address system. You have a host address, which is like a zip code, and then you have a network address, which is like a street address. All DNS really does is convert a URL(like say, _URL_0_) into an IP address that a computer can easily read. sticking to our earlier analogy, say I ask you to deliver a package to my \"friend John's house.\" You might not know where my friend John lives(just like how a computer doesn't know how to find _URL_0_), but if I tell you to deliver a package to 1271 East 12th street, *insert town name here* then while you may not EXACTLY where that is, you at least know how to find it. You can pretty much think of DNS as google maps or google earth for computers. Does that help?",
"On a home/corportate network, all devices send a request to the DHCP server (usually part of the router) and say \"hey give me an ip\". They either pick from a range, or they use an existing table to give you an ip (perhaps based on your port, or mac address). Then they send it back and say \"from now on your ip is this\". \n\nAs for the interfering bit, the router sends out all outgoing requests to the internet under one IP address, then when the data goes back, it sends it to the person required.",
"The IPs you see in your home network are called \"private\" IPs. A router creates a VPN, or virtual private network, where it keeps track of your computer's physical addresses and gives them private IP adresses. The IP address you have on the internet is really just the IP of your router. Think of the router as a switchboard that directs internet traffic in your home network.",
"IP addresses are just numbers that designate a connection. You get one assigned by your service provider to your modem, into which you plug in your router. The reason Local Area Network (ie all the computers in your house) IP addresses don't conflict with the rest of the world is because they can't actually be reached by the rest of the world without a few tricks. As far as your service provider is concerned, they gave you only one ip address; that ip address happens to be tied to your router. The router polices traffic from all of your devices - when a particular device asks for, say, _URL_0_, it makes sure to remember that device, and then sends the request itself. When the reply comes back, it redirects it back to only that device. This way, you can have whatever IPs you want for all your devices connected to that router because they never actually communicate directly with anything but your router.\n\nDNS is the Domain Name Service. Because people don't really want to remember lists of semirandom numbers for what website they want to go to, DNS was born. Its a giant tree-like structure of servers that know a certain amount of information on each address. how it goes is mostly like this: you type in _URL_0_, and your computer has no idea what that means. It asks the closest DNS it knows of what the name is. The DNS passes that up the chain of DNS servers until finally one of them knows sort of where it's located. Sort of as in it knows a server that knows a server. The path is followed down until you finally get to a DNS server that knows the actual IP address of the domain, something your computer (and the internet) can understand how to reach. This reply comes back to your computer, and now your computer can request for the data from the IP address that corresponds to _URL_0_\n\nhope that helps",
"The devices on your network will have private ip addresses. These ip addresses are the exact same ones used on other private networks but they will NEVER be duplicates of the ones on the public internet. So there are rules, like anything starting with 10 is a private, there are no public ip addresses that start with 10.\n\nWhen a computer on a private network needs to send traffic over the internet, a router/firewall will do something called Network Address Translation, or NAT. When you send a packet to the internet, this router sort of \"wraps\" your packet inside its own packet and sends that out on the internet. The router only uses its 1 public ip address for this. When a packet comes back, the router \"unwraps\" it, sees that it was for your computer on the private network and sends it to you. \n\nIf you go to a website like _URL_0_ you can see if you're being NAT'ed, because that won't match your ipconfig address if you are. It will of course show the public facing ip of your router.\n\nNAT is not related to DNS, they are 2 different services.",
"If you need something to compare it too, you don't need to look any farther than the U.S. address system. You have a host address, which is like a zip code, and then you have a network address, which is like a street address. All DNS really does is convert a URL(like say, _URL_0_) into an IP address that a computer can easily read. sticking to our earlier analogy, say I ask you to deliver a package to my \"friend John's house.\" You might not know where my friend John lives(just like how a computer doesn't know how to find _URL_0_), but if I tell you to deliver a package to 1271 East 12th street, *insert town name here* then while you may not EXACTLY where that is, you at least know how to find it. You can pretty much think of DNS as google maps or google earth for computers. Does that help?"
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c14tdh | why aren't tv's correctly adjusted out of the box? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c14tdh/eli5_why_arent_tvs_correctly_adjusted_out_of_the/ | {
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"Because \"correctly adjusted\" TVs don't sell. Manufacturers have found that consumers prefer to buy TVs with very bright, contrasty, colour-saturated, sharp images so that's how they're configured out of the box. They can't trust the stores and sales staff to change the out-of-box settings to a special sales mode, so out-of-the-box *is* sales mode. Even having sales mode in people's homes helps sell the brand to people who see them.\n\nOften there is something like an accurate mode that can be accessed via a TV's menu for people who care. So the question is then: why isn't that mode calibrated? I suspect there are two reasons. Firstly and obviously, cost, especially when only a low percentage of people will ever use this mode. Secondly, the people that do care and who use an accurate mode actually want better calibration than the factory can provide."
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2rto6p | why is the 1st lady significant to the american people? why not give more credit to existing female politicians? (who have actually done something i.e. ran for election) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rto6p/eli5_why_is_the_1st_lady_significant_to_the/ | {
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"I don't fully understand your question. \n\nThe two aren't mutually exclusive. It's not like there's 80 Credit Points which have to be divided amongst female politicians.\n\nThe 1st Lady is a figurehead. To a large extent the President is too. She's significant because she has influence and because the the position of \"First Lady\" is treated with respect. ",
"The First Lady has no actual responsibilities; it's not a real office of the government.\n\nBeing married to the president give the First Lady the power of the bully pulpit; by living in the public eye they can direct public debate and call attention to specific issues that matter to them.",
"The whole nation rests in Michelle Obama's stunning arms",
"Looking at Hillary Clinton, she was totally hands on while in politics. Barbara Bush on the other hand, had seemingly no involvement in politics. They usually pick an issue and motivate the public on it. For Michelle it has been healthy eating/school lunches.\n\nThe first lady does have more power than a female congressmen/senator generally, she has influence over the President and more access than anyone else. You can bet Michelle has told Barack, \"I think x, y, z is important\" and he has to at least listen.\n\nElizabeth Warren receives a resounding amount of credit for her work. Michelle Obama's mere existence neither adds to or detracts from that.\n\nAlso, the President is head of government and head of state. He is the ultimate celebrity, like a King status for 4-8 years."
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5kk830 | when you're reading a paragraph, why do you occasionally read a word that isn't even actually in the paragraph? | I do, at least.
It's like a phantom word? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5kk830/eli5_when_youre_reading_a_paragraph_why_do_you/ | {
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"My friends call it \"nexting\". Basically your brain is constantly working to fill in gaps or correct errors in what we read. When it finds a missing word it inserts the most sensible word so that we can just keep going. Same with typos. We often miss typos because our brain corrects them before we really register the error. "
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55b819 | why do glasses not fog up in a hot bathroom until i pick them up? | Here's the scenario:
I wear glasses, and I take them off and place them on the sink counter before I take a shower. I take a hot shower, and when I step out of the shower, the mirror in front of the sink is covered in steam. Despite this, however, the lenses of my glasses are not covered in fog (I can see right through them), but I have not touched them at this point and they are still sitting on the sink. The second I pick up my glasses and bring them up to my face, the lenses become covered in steam immediately.
Why do the glasses not fog up until after I pick them up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55b819/eli5_why_do_glasses_not_fog_up_in_a_hot_bathroom/ | {
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"There are two factors that could be at play here. First is your body naturally expelling moisture after a hot shower. The moisture from your body causes condensation on the glasses once you put them on your face. Easy way to test this is to leave your glasses outside the bathroom and as soon as you get out of the shower, go put them on. If they fog up, than it is your body.\n\nThe other thing is that steam is hot water vapor. Just like hot air, hot water vapor raises. If you were to poke your head out of the shower and various times you will see condensation form at the top of your mirror first and slowly work down. Your glass are sitting on the sink so the steam would have to fill the air all the way down to the sink before it gets condensation on the glasses. "
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2pjm0h | why can journalists download the leaked sony files and it not be considered piracy or illegal? | Or the public for that matter I haven't read anything about prosecuting people who download this stolen information that is obviously Sony's sole property. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pjm0h/eli5_why_can_journalists_download_the_leaked_sony/ | {
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"It is piracy, it is illegal. It is unreleased copyrighted work. Sony is sending cease and desist letters, attempting to gather IP Addresses, and using DDoS attacks on servers who refuse to comply and continue distributing their content. It's not a prosecution yet, because it's not a criminal matter (until whoever is responsible is held liable.) It'd have to be a civil suit against those who are actively sharing the work. (Which, realistically, is not worth pursing. They can scare a few thousand people into paying a \"fine\" but going after those who downloaded isn't as worth it. They're looking for the distributors.) Even then, the hacks are more recent, if anything people who used BitTorrent to share the files may be getting a notification from their ISP (assuming their ISP is a participant of the Copyright Alert System) that they have a strike...and forward them the \"settlement\" agreement.\n\nEdit: Added Copyright Alert System sentence."
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1lpylt | how can movies shot in the 1980s and 1990s be released on hd platforms such as bluray? | Movies like The Terminator and other hits from the 1980s and 1990s are being released on Bluray in high definition, how is it possible? Have cameras always filmed in HD but have no way to display it at full resolution until recently? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lpylt/eli5_how_can_movies_shot_in_the_1980s_and_1990s/ | {
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"Yes, the original 35 mm film had much higher resolution than Blu-ray.\n\nRemember, they were meant to be shown on a huge cinema size screen... if you put up a Blu-ray movie on a 20 meter wide screen it wouldn't look nice.",
"Thoses movies were filmed on... film. 35mm film. This is a pretty good stuff in fact.\nWe you you realease a movie in VHS or DVD, you take the film and transfer it to the desired format. But you often lose quality in the process : its like encoding an audio CD to mp3.\n\nTo produce a good quality blue ray, they just take the original film and redo the whole transfer process. \n\n",
"Just to put this into perspective HD video on bluray is 1920x1080 pixels. That is just over 2 megapixels. 35mm film doesn't translate precisely to megapixels, but it has effective resolutions in the range of 25-100 mega pixels. And 70mm film (frequently used for blockbuster films) has about 4 times the resolution of 35mm film.\n\nSo if you have a good archival copy of a film, that has been properly stored, it will be somewhere between 10 times and 200 times as sharp as bluray. There is no problem making excellent bluray versions of these films."
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1qcve6 | what are the pros and cons of weekly vs. fortnightly pay periods? why do some businesses choose one and some the other? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qcve6/eli5_what_are_the_pros_and_cons_of_weekly_vs/ | {
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"my current workplace has over 500 employees. Half work in the office, the other half work on site. we get pad fortnightly. The office staff get paid one week, site staff the following week. \n\nProcessing pays is a timely process, if we all (at my workplace) got paid weekly then the payroll staff would do nothing but process pays.\n\nA smaller company like my old job that only had about 20 staff would pay weekly, as it would not take very long to process pays, and it is easier to keep track of the money.\n\nI hope I explained that well.",
"Financially it is in the best interest of the company to keep payables on as long a term as possible. If I pay every 2 weeks that means, if I already have enough cash to fund payroll I can collect interest on the payroll money for an extra week or if I don't have the cash on hand for payroll I have an extra weeks revenue to pay payrolls with so I don't have to borrow as much. \n\n"
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3d6p26 | why did greece accept a deal they seemed to reject at referendum only a few says prior? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d6p26/eli5_why_did_greece_accept_a_deal_they_seemed_to/ | {
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"They didn't have a choice. Their budget is in the negative which means they need to continue borrowing money. They can't force people to lend them money and their debt is so high they need assistance or it will overwhelm their economy. They can't stall much longer, their banks are on the brink of collapsing and they are on the verge of being forced to drop out of the Euro.\n\nThe deal gives them a conditional loan to keep their government funded and in return they have to start making cuts to their social welfare state and increase taxes. Greece tried to play hardball and set the terms for their economic bailout and the world leaders told them to go play with themselves.\n\nELI5: It was akin to siblings borrowing lunch money from their parents for years and blowing it on candy. When the parents finally said they are getting a decrease in allowance and must spend their money on healthy food the siblings got together and said \"we had a vote and decided we want you to continue giving us money so we can continue spending it on even more candy!\" The parents told them, \"We'll give you money only for a healthy lunch, no more snacks at lunch, and if you talk back again you'll go hungry forever.\" The siblings finally realized they meant business and accepted the offer. Now it means no more candy ;(",
"**It's because the referendum was a trick**. \n\nOn one hand it was used to show the Eurogroup that Greece's government has the backing of its people to push for harshest negotiating stance - so it was a negotiating tactic: \"*see, we have no choice the people said we don't want the deal and we have to obey the voice of the people since we are not such awful corrupt undemocratic cronies such as you*\"\"\n\nOn the other hand it was also a trick against the Greeks - the government (Syriza) wanted to move the responsibility for tough and unpopular decisions directly on the people. If the people voted \"yes\" then they'd say: \"*you wanted the deal so don't complain about the conditions because we gave you a choice*\". If the people voted no then they'd say \"*we only did what you wanted us to do*\" after they botched the negotiations and got a much harsher deal as they did now.\n\n----\n\nVaroufakis - the former finance minister (Valve guy) - said that Tsipras - the prime minister - and the other people in the cabinet wanted \"yes\" which is why he was ousted because he advocated \"no\" quite openly. He has proven to be just as dishonest as the rest of the people in this drama but that is one thing I am willing to believe.\n\nThe problem was that Tsipras really miscalculated. Tsipras is a populist demagogue and a career politician and not a radical intellectual and an academic like Varoufakis. Varoufakis is a theoretician convinced about the correct nature of his ideas so he was all behind Grexit. Tsipras really wants more free money to stay in power and to never have to claim responsibility for anything - like any other politician. For Tsipras the referendum, Grexit, default - all those were negotiating tools to prolong the situation he likes - the current position of Greece *within the EU and Eurozone* which is also where Tsipras is more comfortable because he understands the reality and holds all the power.\n\nFor Varoufakis only default and Grexit allow for realization of his ideas - which also means more power and influence for him because he would be one of the very few people understanding the new dangerous reality.\n\nPeople think it is all about money and debt and economic problems. Here's the reality check - it is not about any of those things for the politicians. Politicians will live well when the country is rich and they will live well even when it's nothig but rags and dust. It is only about power/influence/position/importance for both Tsipras and Varoufakis.\n\n----\n\nEurogroup is demanding - quite reasonably from their point of view - very harsh conditions because Greece proved to be totally untrustworthy with their behaviour (meaning election of Syriza and Syriza pretending to do what they promised - which spooked the markets) and it is a way to force Greece into submission.\n\nIt isn't some malicious retribution. For Eurozone Greece is like a constantly barking feral dog in a vet's clinic who might bite at any moment - so instead of trying to calm it they want to beat it into submission so it behaves predictably - preferably staying put until whatever it is the vet wants to do is done.\n\nThe Eurogroup says: \"*give up all the guns so we can lend you money without being afraid to come back and collect the payment*\". It's mean, harsh and ruthless but it's necessary from their perspective because there is *no* way to trust Greece anymore. Why? Probably - I might be wrong here but this is my guess - because Tsipras and Syriza were the same sort of calculating assholes the Eurogroup is and tried to screw them out. People think that Merkel, Shauble etc are greedy cronies - and they very much are - but why do you think Tsipras is any better? He isn't. The problem is that Greece is long past being able to do such thing and should instead fight for honest dealings and focus on the best solution (which would include part of the debt being forgiven). Instead they gambled - just like they did in Greece with the referendum - and thought they can continue because EU is afraid of Grexit. \n\n**Nothing** that is going on in Greece is anyone else's fault but *Greece*. I am sorry for the Greeks but they really asked for it.\n\n"
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2yk8x3 | what is a linear regression ? | Hello fellow redditors, I have to explain what a linear regression is to a bunch of my colleagues who have ZERO mathematical background. I would like to be able to explain it to a 5 years old. If you have any ideas, or illustrations, there are welcome ! Thank you !! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yk8x3/eli5what_is_a_linear_regression/ | {
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"Assume you're physically measuring two related quantities. Say, mass of a liquid vs. volume. In a perfect world, the graph would be a straight line, but due to whatever fluctuations, like errors in measurement, small density changes, etc. the line isn't perfectly straight, it has some \"noise.\" Linear regression is a method that takes overall trends into account, and creates an approximation of an accurate straight line from the points you put in.",
"This link has a great illustration along with some of the history behind the regression model: \n_URL_0_\n\nWhen I'm explaining the concept to undergraduates, I find a lot of them do better when I explain it geometrically. We have a bunch of data points in a scatter plot, and we want to draw a line through all of those points that best \"fits\" or summarizes that data. Once I know that, I can make predictions about the effects that changes in X will have on Y.\n\nAnother method is to show them the slope formula, and explain that regression is just a matter of finding a \"slope\" for a line that minimizes the number of errors we make in predicting our data. You can show them the estimate, and then show a spreadsheet that compares our predictions of the dependent variable to the observed value of the dependent variable -- it should be fairly obvious in most cases that the regression model does pretty good at predicting Y. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
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] |
|
3cwwvv | why can't people just run away from a wildfire? | For example, you're camping or hiking or whatever and you notice in the distance heavy smoke rising in the air. Can't you just drop everything and run like hell in the other direction?
I get that the fire is moving fast but you'd probably find out if the fire was coming closer by the heat, smell, smoke, e.t.c.
I also know that the fire can spread around and "flank" but that's why you should run into the other direction, right? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cwwvv/eli5_why_cant_people_just_run_away_from_a_wildfire/ | {
"a_id": [
"cszpdh7"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"\"Wildfires have a rapid forward rate of spread (FROS) when burning through dense, uninterrupted fuels. They can move as fast as 10.8 kilometres per hour (6.7 mph) in forests and 22 kilometres per hour (14 mph) in grasslands.\"\n\nThats too fast to maintain for any reasonable amount of time. The fire can simply catch up with you. Also it changes directions very quicly and could end up encircling you. Running the other direction might simply happen too late.\n\nYour basically underestimating how confusing a wildfire can be and how fast it moves. They are massive fires covering large areas of land, its not as easy as outrunning an oversized campfire."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
38f7ek | industrial dehumidifiers | Why doesn't a state like California or Texas just run industrial sized dehumidifiers to replenish their water supply. I know energy is probably the primary concern, but California already built a huge Aquapher that must've consumed quite a bit of resources already | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38f7ek/eli5_industrial_dehumidifiers/ | {
"a_id": [
"crukhdp"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Dehumidifiers take water out of moist air. There isn't any moist air in CA, that's their problem. It's raining in TX, but mechanically removing the water to stop the rain would be extremely expensive."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
68x4rx | how do street signs get their names? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68x4rx/eli5_how_do_street_signs_get_their_names/ | {
"a_id": [
"dh2f6hz"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"It varies, in some areas, particularly in planned towns and cities, streets are given numbers and named sequentially, so the west-most north-south street might be called 1st Street and the East-most north-south street might be named 10th street, and east-west roads would be named similarly, although they might be called 'avenue' in order to distinguish it.\n\nIn some cities, particularly those that weren't planned, the roads are named for significant people from the area, or notable places or whatever the local politicians want.\n\nSome cities have some other schema for naming their streets, in Washington D.C. East-West Roads are named with Letters, and many roads are named for states, while north south roads are named with numbers."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
17vbar | how i "don't hear" music when i'm falling asleep. | As someone that regularly goes to sleep with my iPod playing, I've found that I'll be lying there with my eyes closed, when I sorta "wake up" and realise I can't remember hearing any of the music that was playing in the past thirty seconds, no matter how much I try, despite the fact I am completely conscious of still being awake. How and why does this happen? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17vbar/eli5_how_i_dont_hear_music_when_im_falling_asleep/ | {
"a_id": [
"c895geh",
"c895ins",
"c896kzk",
"c89bnqj"
],
"score": [
62,
9,
3,
3
],
"text": [
"One of the first parts of your brain to \"turn off\" when you go to sleep is the part that makes new memories. It's called the hippocampus. You've been listening to the music, and hearing it and probably enjoying it, but the whole time, you haven't been making new memories of hearing it. When you have a mini wake-up, the hippocampus kicks in again, but you have no memory of the last few seconds/minutes, because you never made those memories in the first place.\n\nSame thing happens in the later stages of being drunk, by the way. You don't remember staggering around like an idiot and talking shit last night, because your brain had already stopped making new memories by that point. ",
"When you're going to sleep, your brain has to think less, so it gathers fewer pieces of data and shuts out functions it doesn't need. Same reason you can't feel a ring or a shirt after a bit. The brain says, \"this has happened for a bit, so I don't need to notice it anymore.\"",
"Could I somewhat add to this? \n\nIf you were to somehow fall asleep with potentially damaging music blaring, would the receptors in your ears actually become damaged?",
"In elementary school, I suppose as a form of meditation (I really don't know, I've never read up on meditation) while nodding off in class, I'd actually be able to shut off my ability to perceive sound.\n\nI lost the ability to control it a few years ago when I met my fiancee. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
bwdq86 | why does restricting blood flow to an area make your veins pop out even more in that area? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bwdq86/eli5_why_does_restricting_blood_flow_to_an_area/ | {
"a_id": [
"epwvbjm"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Pressure. Veins are \"drain pipes\" for the blood that has already been pumped through the body to get back to the heart. They are low pressure compared to the higher pressure in the arteries. By pinching them off and restricting this pressure, the veins dilate (expand and \"pop out\"). So you are not really restricting blood flow to the area unless you are putting pressure against an artery. You are actually restricting blood flow from moving away from the area below it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
2s8vdd | how does a cell phone benefit from a 64 bit memory bus? most of the flagship phones with this only feature 1 through 3 gigabytes of ram at most. | Does it make a difference? or is it a gimmick? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s8vdd/eli5_how_does_a_cell_phone_benefit_from_a_64_bit/ | {
"a_id": [
"cnn91pp",
"cnn9eck"
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text": [
"The processor operates on not only a 64bit memory bus, but it also has 64 bit instructions. This means that it can often perform longer operations in one cycle (such as a 32 bit to 32bit register move). This can gain a ton of speed over having to do two or more instructions to do the same thing.\n\nBut if it ONLY has a 64bit processor bus, it won't make much difference.",
"It can transfer twice as much data in one clock cycle. It's not just the addresses that are transferred over the bus - the data to read/write also needs to be transferred."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
4h11uq | why are some jalapeños (or other spicy foods) spicier than others? | Sometimes I can eat a slice of one with no issues, other times my eyes water. What's the deal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4h11uq/eli5why_are_some_jalapeños_or_other_spicy_foods/ | {
"a_id": [
"d2mghma",
"d2mik27"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"The spicy sensation is actually caused by a molecule called capsaicin. A higher concentration of this molecule in the food means that more nerves will be stimulated by it, therefore generating a stronger sensation.",
"Heat from spice is measured on the scoville scale and jalapenos are low on the scale but come in a range from around 1,000~10,000 units. This basically means that while considered a mild pepper the hottest jalapeno can be 10x hotter than the mildest. Its based heavily on the variety or cultivar of jalapeno along with growing conditions and how it has ripened. \n\nIf you are buying fresh jalapeno and want them hot look for the skin to have little white lines or creases and curvy stems. If you want more mild go for the brighter green ones with straighter stems."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
8fe4j1 | how is "fashion" a thing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8fe4j1/eli5_how_is_fashion_a_thing/ | {
"a_id": [
"dy2vud1"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"People are all around variable, just like all other aspects of life where there is variety comes preference. There's certain music, accents, speeches, habits etc that people love or don't. Fashion is just another one. There are some humans that will think a kimono is just the most elegant and practical thing ever. For others it'll be heels. Or a nicely tailored parka. All of the Slavic countries have settled on a tracksuit it seems. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
6xgawf | if i unplug my headphone jack partially, i'll only hear the beat of the song. how does that work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6xgawf/eli5_if_i_unplug_my_headphone_jack_partially_ill/ | {
"a_id": [
"dmfr0c7"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"It's possible to line up the contacts on the plug so that one signal is treated as the ground. Then you effectively hear the \"difference\" between the left and right signals. Since the vocals tend to be in the center of the stereo mix, they disappear and you just hear parts of the music that are on the left or right of the mix."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
1a1gjm | why is flouride added to water? | My mother swears that flouride in our water is giving children down's syndrome and causing a variety of diseases in children and adults. Some articles I have read say its for good reasons and others say that its some kind of government conspiracy. Why is flouride added to our water? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1a1gjm/eli5_why_is_flouride_added_to_water/ | {
"a_id": [
"c8t80p9",
"c8t82wn",
"c8tbvej"
],
"score": [
16,
5,
2
],
"text": [
"The goal of providing fluoridated water is to *prevent* tooth decay. By including it in the water supply, it ensures that *everybody* gets it, rather than only the wealthy, etc.\n\nTooth decay works by \"de-mineralising\" your teeth, and fluoride helps interrupt that process. It doesn't stop it completely, but it helps to prevent it.\n\nYou can read about the evidence [here](_URL_0_).\n\nWith all due respect to your mother, she doesn't know what she's talking about. Although there is always more testing that could be done, there is **zero** compelling evidence that it causes any mental diseases or anything like that. You can read more about the Down Syndrome accusations [here](_URL_1_).\n\nShe is probably a victim of \"Confirmation Bias\". That is: she *thinks* it causes ADHD (or whatever else), then *meets* someone with ADHD, and thinks \"aha! There's the proof!\"",
"Good god, I'm amazed fluoridated water conspiracy theorists even leave their house considering how terrified they are of eveything. \n\nBack in the mid 20th century it was noticed that children in certain geographic areas were developing brown spots on their teeth. These same children also showed a lower incidence of cavaties and tooth decay, and it was shown that both of these things were directly related to the amound of floride in their drinking water. Sometime later some municipalities decided to add floride to their water; enough to prevent tooth decay, but not enough to cause staining. \n\nThis happened around the time of the Red Scare, so some idiots tried to claim that fluoridated was some sort of communist plot. Since fewer people are scared of communists these days, the conspiracy theory had to be changed with the current fear-mongering.",
"Fluoride protects teeth due to remineralization. When teeth are inhabited by a large concentration of bacteria AND supplied with fuel(glucose) the mouth becomes more acidic due to the byproducts of glucose metabolism. Acid in the mouth causes the teeth to demineralize and release calcium and phosphate. This leads to decay. The fluoride in water and tooth paste can get incorporated back into the enamel and remineralize your teeth.\n\nIf you experience very little decay, the Fluoride in water and your toothpaste(provided it is ADA approved) will be enough to help prevent decay.\n\nIf you have a middle range of decay, look for ACT anticavity mouthwash that contains 0.05% NaF. This added amount will be helpful. \n\nIf you have rapid decay, consult your Dentist about Prevident 5000, at home gels, and varnishes. \n\nFinally, THE NEGATIVES. Fluoride ingested in young children can cause [dental fluorosis](_URL_0_). This can be avoided by ensuring your child does not swallow any toothpaste while brushing and in the case of bottle feeding a baby, try to avoid using too much tap water when making formula."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation#Evidence_basis",
"http://www.fluoridedebate.com/question27.html"
],
[],
[
"http://www.fluoridation.com/fluorosis.htm"
]
] |
|
2k93vi | how do stock options for employees at companies work? | This is something that has always escaped me when I'm reading about CEO compensation. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2k93vi/eli5_how_do_stock_options_for_employees_at/ | {
"a_id": [
"clj2gad"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"There many different ways they can be structured. Precisely how is something experienced lawyers are hired to do to remain within the regulations of the SEC. Very simply, it is the option to purchase a stock at a certain time for a certain price. For instance, the CEO of Acme, Inc., is offered as part of his incentive package to purchase 100,000 shares at $10 on December 1st, 2014. The market price of Acme on December 1st may be $50. Or it may be $5. Obviously, if it’s $50, the CEO will want to exercise the option. If it is below the offer price, he or she will not want to."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2tojii | how do people that can't spell still read fluently? | And how does spelling work? It just strikes me as odd that people that can read fluently, are intelligent, and have a large vocabulary can't spell at all. How do they know this word is the word they want if they can't reproduce it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tojii/eli5_how_do_people_that_cant_spell_still_read/ | {
"a_id": [
"co0w3ir"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"It is easier to be given and recognize the complete word than it is to spell the word without any visual prompt.\n\nI find the same trouble when I speak in my second language: I can understand what is said to me because it's given complete with context, but if I have to construct a sentence then I sometimes cannot recall a word."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
4kdr8p | how can processor speed up the charging of smartphone's battery? | I am talking about Qualcomm Quickcharge and some other variants from manufacturers that have their own, customized versions. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kdr8p/eli5_how_can_processor_speed_up_the_charging_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"d3e4ivf"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"It can't. The processor is not part of the charging circuit. The max speed of charge is determined by the battery chemistry and the pack itself and the charger."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
6795tg | why are rodents so cautious around traps? | Do they actually sense danger or are they smart enough to know what they are doing is a risk?
If you watch trapping footage, a rat will eat a crumb line really fast but as soon as it gets to the bait in the trap it acts very suspicious until it ends up trapped.
Very weird, no? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6795tg/eli5_why_are_rodents_so_cautious_around_traps/ | {
"a_id": [
"dgoo5b8"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"An animal can't just magically sense danger. But they CAN smell humans, they can observe something is *new* in their environment, and they can be cautious of anything either a) that smells like a human or b) is new and a potential threat.\n\nThe rodents that were less cautious are now less *alive*, and the cautious ones survive to pass on their cautious nature to their offspring."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2sowj9 | what would happen if i individually printed and released a huge amount of cash into a country's economy? | E.g If i printed and used $1 trillion USD in cash in secret, what would happen to the US dollar?
Edit: change 100mil to 1 tril | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sowj9/eli5_what_would_happen_if_i_individually_printed/ | {
"a_id": [
"cnripzm"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"$100m? Nothing. The GDP of the US is about $17 trillion. $100m is a drop in the bucket."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
5friys | why teenagers and young adults naturally want to stay up late and sleep in late? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5friys/eli5_why_teenagers_and_young_adults_naturally/ | {
"a_id": [
"damiitc"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"Melatonin, puberty, and maybe artificial light or sex!\n\nChildren generally respond to light exposure (sundown), but will also produce melatonin after being awake for 12-14 hours. The pubescent body is transitioning from 10-12 hours of sleep to 8 hours of sleep and from dependence on external controls (light) to dependence upon purely internal cycles. What impact artificial light has on teens is not fully understood, but studies have shown modern urban teens to begin melatonin production as late as 1am. \n\nSome anthropologists speculate that this may have been selected in our species as teens who stayed up after the tribe went to sleep produced more offspring. But we don't know enough about pubescent melatonin production to know if this occurred in pre-Industrial teenagers. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
8i2l3s | why are tooth fillings sensitive to cold stuff? | The title says it all | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8i2l3s/eli5_why_are_tooth_fillings_sensitive_to_cold/ | {
"a_id": [
"dyofkjm"
],
"score": [
10
],
"text": [
"The filling sits close to the pulp of the tooth where the nerves are. The filling is typically made of metal which conducts temperature better than tooth enamel. When the filling becomes cold it activates the cold sensation in your nerves."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
18vphr | the phrase "how long is a piece of string?" | ELI5: The Phrase "How long is a piece of string?"
And, how did this even began as a popular saying (its origin)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18vphr/eli5_the_phrase_how_long_is_a_piece_of_string/ | {
"a_id": [
"c8iedb4",
"c8if3wl",
"c8ik07r"
],
"score": [
10,
3,
5
],
"text": [
"Normally it's used as a retorical answer to a question that did not have it's terms specifically defined. \n\nAs string is a common item that can come in various lengths, the reply 'How long is a piece of string?' indicates that there are numerous potential answers but without narrowing of the terms of the original question appropriate response is not possible.",
"Often people ask questions where the answer is \"it depends\", like: \"how fast is a car?\".\n\nIf you ask back \"how long is a piece of string\" the other person maybe thinks \"well, thats a stupid question, because you can't really say that. *It depends*.\". And if they are smart, they then figure that their own question was similar to that.\n\ntl;dr: a complicated way to say \"it depends\".",
"Twice as long as half of it\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
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