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3idxzz | if caught. what would the ashley madison hacker(s) likely be charged with? | I know they probably won't be since they appear to have taken most precautions but everyone is so accepting of the hack as in "f all cheaters" I wonder if courts would likely go easy on them? Also would they take into account things such as the guys who killed themselves or whatever millions it cost Ashley Madison. I know everyone hated the business but I'm not sure if arguing the morality if a business would get you any leniency. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3idxzz/eli5_if_caught_what_would_the_ashley_madison/ | {
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" > I wonder if courts would likely go easy on them?\n\nNot likely. The courts are designed to take all emotional aspects out of a trial. In practice, sometimes it's shady. But generally the defendant's attorneys would emphasize the jury to focus on the strict legal definitions of the charges without moral issues.\n\n---\n\nRegarding the charges, I could see theft of property & blackmail as being two large ones. I don't think there could be any manslaughter charges for the suicides. I'm not a lawyer.",
"Not a lawyer, but my guess is they'll be able to charge them under at least one of the provisions of [18 U.S. Code § 1030](_URL_0_), probably either (a)(6) or (a)(7), or both. And it looks like both of those will put them in jail for up to 5 years (assuming you can argue that the value of Ashley Madison's database was greater than $5k, which shouldn't be too hard).",
"Some states have enacted statutes that criminalize the mere act of hacking a network, for example Colorado:\n\n > (1) A person commits computer crime if the person knowingly:\n(a) Accesses a computer, computer network, or computer system or any part thereof without authorization; exceeds authorized access to a computer, computer network, or computer system or any part thereof; or uses a computer, computer network, or computer system or any part thereof without authorization or in excess of authorized access; or ... \n(d) Accesses any computer, computer network, or computer system, or any part thereof to commit theft\n\nC.R.S. 18-5.5-102\n\nThe severity of the offense is based on the value/damage the hacker was attempting to steal/cause ($1 million or more being a class 2 felony). If nothing of value is taken or no damage is caused to the network, it's still a class 2 misdemeanor just for unauthorized access. \n\nI believe there is a similar federal statute but I am not in a position to quickly locate it at the moment."
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28q311 | why do we have self esteem? | Is self esteem just made up or is it actually a part of our brain, do we NEED to have self esteem?
Do animals have self esteem? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28q311/eli5_why_do_we_have_self_esteem/ | {
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"Everyone has thoughts and feelings about themselves, and \"self esteem\" is really just a fancy term for this. If you look at different people, you will see that people who feel pretty good about themselves, and feel like they can do well at some things, are generally more successful and less likely to suffer from depression than those who think they're failures and can't do anything right. If you grow up with your parents telling you that you never do anything right, you're bad at school, you're dumb, and so on, you are very likely to \"internalize\" those feelings and start to believe them yourself. Once this happens, it's very tough to shake it, even when you're an adult. It can affect your relationships, your motivation and ambitions, mental health, and pretty much every aspect of your life, so self-esteem is very important.\n\nAs for animals, it's tough to get into their heads and see what they think and feel. But animals can act very differently depending on if they are rewarded and given treats or if they are kicked and abused. They may have something similar to self-esteem, even though they may not really have a concept of \"self\"."
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3ii5x8 | why do cats always seem to run away from dogs instead of the other way around? | I have a cocker spaniel and I noticed that whenever she meets a cat, no matter whether it's bigger or smaller than her (and usually it's either the same size or smaller than the cat, she's only a puppy yet), the cat always seems ready to flee first, whereas my dog automatically assumes a threatening position and is ready to chase the cat, even though she's not very aggressive at all and is actually quite timid in most situations, and she's too slow. I also notice the same dynamic whenever I see a random cat and dog encounter one another. Why is it like that? I always thought cats and dogs were roughly on equal level on the food chain - they're both predators, after all. Do cats have some inherent "flight rather than fight" instinct that dogs lack? If so, how and why did it develop? Are dogs physically stronger than cats and more capable of hurting them than the other way arond even when they're the same size and that's why the cats are the ones to run away? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ii5x8/eli5_why_do_cats_always_seem_to_run_away_from/ | {
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"Cats are suited to ambushing; the attack pattern universal to most cats involves pouncing from behind and biting the back of the neck, and their physiology favors this with a body streamlined for speed and light footing. \n\nDespite the fact that cats hone their claws for maximum effect (even housecats are capable of killing a person with a slash to the neck if they were trying to kill), they aren't as good in a straight fight against a more robust animal because they can't take as much punishment. \n\nDogs are stronger and able to take more punishment, but they aren't as fast, so they prefer to tackle prey head-on. \n\nCats, realizing that they won't do as well in a head-on confrontation, tend to flee with their superior speed. ",
"On thing to consider is language. Butt high, head low mean opposite things to cats and dogs.\n\nFor a cat that is an attack position, for a dog play.\n\nBasic communication may be a factor as the dog is saying \"I will fuck you up\" in cat speak without knowing it"
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cnk6ee | why is losing your job called being "fired"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cnk6ee/eli5_why_is_losing_your_job_called_being_fired/ | {
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"According to [etymology online](_URL_0_) it has its roots in the concept of firing a gun. Being fired (from a job) is called being discharged, which again is another word for firing a gun. I guess \"discharged\" colloquially became \"fired\" over time. Also, you can drive something out by fire, which definitely seems connected.",
"In sSpanish you say Despedir, which means to give someone their fairwells, but that literally translates as to “unask” someone.",
"i wonder if canned meant put in a barrel and then thrown overboard... old england was brutal",
"Its a phrase from the middle nineteenth century. Fired out used be many any sort of forceful ejection from a place. so you used to \"Fire out\" belligerent drunks from a bar, \"Fire out\" non-paying tenants, and \" fire out\" terrible employees from a job. It was synonymous with throw out but with a more angry connotation.",
"There are 2 theories going around:\n\nIt comes from people's stuff getting set on fire after they get dismissed from a job when they did really badly. An example for this would be the laws of the mendip miners against thieves:\n\n > that if any man of that occupacõn doe pick or steale any Lead or Lead oare to the value of xiiid. ob. the Lord or his officer may arrest all his Lead and oare house or hearths wth all his Grooves and workes and keepe them as a forfeit to his owne use And shall take the person that soe hath offended and bring him where his house or worke and all his tooles and Instruments belonging to the same occupacõn bee and put him into his house or worke and set fire in all together about him and banish him from that occupacõn before all the Myneders for ever. [Source](_URL_0_)\n\nThe other one is about it not being taken in the literal sense, but more metaphor of firing a bullet being fired/discharged.",
"The Danes in the 1920’s used to shoot people in the groin who’s employment they had recently terminated, hence the expression ‘to be fired’.",
"It may have already been stated, and I'm not sure if it's a folk etymology, but it supposedly relates to travelling tradesmen that carried their tools around from job to job.\n\nIf you were 'sacked' you were able to leave the job with your tools in your sack.\n\nIf you were 'fired' your failing was so egregious that your tools would be burned (I.e. Fired) making it much more difficult for you to get a job anywhere else.\n\nEdit: removal of the extra 'a job'.",
"In spanish you dont get fired when you loose your job you get fired when you fail grade its called quemarse (being fired)",
"I once heard it had colonial roots. When a town or colony wanted someone to leave they would burn the person's house down. \n\n\"That person got fired\" aka we burned his house down so he would leave."
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141657 | what is a "non-member observer state", and what does this mean for palestinians? | Reference? _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/141657/eli5_what_is_a_nonmember_observer_state_and_what/ | {
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"Its a half-way step to becoming a full-blown member of the UN. It is recognized as an official country (State), which means they get to send a representative to sit in and listen to the goings-on in the UN (Observer), but not cast any votes (Non-Member)."
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2nyan3 | what happens to the particles we smell? | Are they absorbed in our nose? Do we breathe them in or digest them or what? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nyan3/eli5_what_happens_to_the_particles_we_smell/ | {
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"After they interact with the receptors in your olfactory nerves they are washed out through mucus secretions and you either sneeze them out and pick at them with your finger when you're bored.",
"After they hit your smell receptors, they either come out as snot, or enter your blood stream directly, at low concentrations. Once they're in your blood stream, they'd eventually be filtered out by either your liver or your kidneys."
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2zp12d | why do you smell burnt toast before having a stroke? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zp12d/eli5_why_do_you_smell_burnt_toast_before_having_a/ | {
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"Generally speaking, you don't. It's from a Canadian Heritage Minute commercial about the first brain surgery for epilepsy. ",
"Didn't know this was a thing...\n\nIt would be highly dependent on where in the brain the stroke occurred. One could have any number of strange sensations relating to that particular area of the brain. \n\nRight before my grandmother had a deadly brain bleed in her brain stem she complained of being nauseous and having a massive headache. This only lasted long enough for my mother to grab a bowl and some aspirin from a few feet away and she was nonresponsive.",
"This was faked by a company. They made a commerical.",
"This is not really true. Sometimes before a major event like a stroke or a seizure the individual might smell a characteristic smell or experience other odd sensations, but it varies from person to person (if it happens at all).\n\nSource: Red Cross first responder trained for the past 6 years."
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duq1l9 | why do some song with spoken segments have them edited out on the radio? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/duq1l9/eli5why_do_some_song_with_spoken_segments_have/ | {
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"I’m not 100% certain, but I think it has to do with length. If a song is too long, the least necessary parts will be edited out. \n\nThat’s my general understanding but I could definitely be wrong.",
"In some cases, spoken sections are removed due to licensing. But more frequently, it's due to a desire to not confuse the consumer.\n\nSomeone could hear that DJ bit and believe that it was a real traffic report, no matter how silly that may seem.",
"Songs released as singles often are mixed differently or re-edited so that it’s supposedly more palatable to the average listener and is therefore more likely to get played again or become a hit. Long intros or outros getting trimmed are probably the most common thing; sometimes they’ll cut out verses if the song itself is too long, sometimes they’ll add or take out or adjust the volumes of certain instruments or vocal tracks. \n\nIn this case, the record company might have thought that a spoken-word section in the middle of an anthemic pop song would sound “weird” or something, so what they sent out to radio stations has it mixed out. \n\nSometimes though, the radio stations just play the songs off the albums so we hear the “normal” version.\n\nETA: ok so according to Wikipedia, radio stations sometimes wanted to add their own announcers into that part of the song, so I guess you heard a version of the song sent out for that purpose: _URL_0_"
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7q9u87 | pressure cooking | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7q9u87/eli5_pressure_cooking/ | {
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"one of the things that affects how fast something cooks is the temperature. if cooking in water, without a pressure cooker, the highest temperature you can attain in 100 degrees C (or 212 degrees F). If you want to cook something in water at a higher temperature, you can raise the pressure, which allows the water to stay liquid at higher temperatures. As the water starts boiling off in a pressure cooker, it will expand a lot, and since it's contained, it will increase the pressure. If the pressure gets to double atmospheric pressure, which is normal, temperatures can go to 250 degrees F, and cook faster. The cooker will also have a pressure relief valve that opens at a set pressure, to keep pressures from becoming dangerous.",
"At normal atmospheric pressure, water turns to steam at 100C. This means a pot of water can't go over 100C, regardless of how much heat you put in it.\n\nIf you boil that water in a closed vessel, the steam builds up & increases the pressure on the water, allowing it to hit higher temperatures",
"Ahoy, fellow redditor. Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: How does a pressure cooker work and what goes on inside of it? Is it possible to put a camera inside to see? ](_URL_0_) ^(_5 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: How does a pressure cooker work? ](_URL_2_) ^(_6 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: how do pressure cookers work and who still uses them? ](_URL_1_) ^(_9 comments_)\n1. [Is low temperature pressure cooking useful at all? ](_URL_3_) ^(_1 comment_)\n"
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3ua9g1 | how did a single cell, that replicates it's dna and is supposed to be the exact same, evolve into all the life we now have on earth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ua9g1/eli5_how_did_a_single_cell_that_replicates_its/ | {
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"Cells don't copy their DNA perfectly. Mistakes are made, either because the machinery that makes more DNA isn't flawless or because something in the environment causes damage to the cell. Some of the copies of that theoretical first cell likely got mutations that benefited them and started outcompeting the other cells. These pressures and pressures from the environment selected for competitive mutations and different cell lines emerged. ",
"DNA replication is *not* perfect, errors can and do happen during the replication process. \n\nThat's the whole concept around random mutations... DNA replication can result in random errors that produce feature/behavior changes that may be beneficial, harmful, or neutral to the organism.\n\nOne causal factor that contributes to DNA damage and the development of mutations is ionizing radiation. There are many other reasons, however, why DNA may be damaged or why the replication process may be subject to copying errors.",
"In short: because the DNA is **supposed** to be the exact same, but it isn't. \n\nEvery time DNA replicates itself, there are literally billions of opportunities for error (\"typos\" if you will), and quite a few of these mutations sneak by, ranging from negligible to noticeable. This means that pretty much no offspring cell is exactly like its parent. \n\nFor example: [studies have shown](_URL_0_) that each newborn human has 100-200 new mutations not present in their parent. \n\nSo that one first cell gives rise to two slightly different cells, which become four slightly different cells, and so on. \n\nTiny changes over a looooooooooooong period of time lead to pretty big changes. "
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d496ns | why is radiation most commonly associated with the color green when in reality it is just invisible energy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d496ns/eli5_why_is_radiation_most_commonly_associated/ | {
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"Early \"glow in the dark\" materials used radioactive materials mixed with phosphorus to provide that glow effect. It happened to be green. Since there's no real color associated with radiation, it just kinda stuck.\n\n[_URL_2_](_URL_2_)\n\n & #x200B;\n\nedit: Correction - Thanks Baud! Mixed with [a phosphor](_URL_1_). Not [phosphorus](_URL_0_).",
"Gadolinium Oxysulfide screen with a terbium activator emission = green light output\n\nBarium Strontium sulfide screen with a europium activator emission = Blue / UV output",
"The first atomic bomb test (Trinity) left a glassy residue called ‘trinitite’ on the desert flood. Trinitite is often green. \n\n_URL_0_",
"Fun fact, radiation CAN be seen under the right circumstances due to the [Cherenkov effect](_URL_0_).\n\nBut it is blue, not green.",
"Here's a mundane, non-scientific explanation... Many years ago (50's) when you went into the shoe store there was a \"fluoroscope\" (near as I can remember) where the shoe salesman would have you stand and look down into the viewer. You saw the image of your feet inside the shoes you were about to buy on a bright green screen allowing you to see how they fit. You could even see the bones inside your feet. These were very popular for awhile and I think the bright green of that image became associated with radioactivity in the public's mind. At least it did in mine! :-)",
"One possibility is because uranium oxide fluoresces green under a black light. It has nothing to do with the radioactivity, but it does glow bright green. [Vaseline glass](_URL_0_) is made with uranium oxide to give it its color, and [it glows quite beautifully](_URL_1_). Note that it is entirely safe.",
"After uranium was first discovered, one of the first things people used it for was adding it to glass to create a green-ish color. The glass also glows green under UV light - without the use of phosphor which has been mentioned in other answers. So the color green has been associated with uranium before humanity really understood what radiation was or that uranium was radioactive\n\n [_URL_1_](_URL_0_)",
"It's because of Glow in the Dark paint.\n\nIn 1908 a scientist named Sabin Arnold von Sochocky invented radioluminescent paint. Ie, paint that glows in the dark due to low-level radiation. That paint consists of two components.\n\n1. Something slightly radioactive. von Sochocky used Radium 226, but today we use tritium (in those cases where we use radioluminescent paint)\n2. Something that glows when exposed to such radiation. The cheapest such paint (and therefor the most common) was Zinc Sulfide with just a tiny bit of copper in it. That paint glows green. Radioactive green. Other slightly more expensive versions can glow blue-green or orange.\n\nSo when people needed to show that \"This is radioactive!\" they automaticly went \"Well, it should probably glow like this radioactive paint. Green!\"",
"The green idea may come from a type of depression era glass that had a radioactive component. This glass had a violently green color that really glows under a black light. In real life straight radiation actually glows blue. \n\nSource: One of my old 4H club moms is a nuclear engineer in charge of decommissioning an outdated nuclear power plant.",
"If you look into the Radium girls you will find a scary history where they all got radiation poisoning from working with glow in the dark paint.",
"Even today you can buy watches with radioactive illumination (it's based on tritium to release energy and phosphor to turn the energy into visible light). The brightest version is green because that's how the physics lines up.\n\nHere's an example: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)",
"It's blue to me but that's because i've worked at a nuclear power plant and the fuel glows blue",
"The same reason acid is shown as a slimy, corrosive liquid when in reality it looks like water and burns a bit.\n\nBecause it looks cooler.",
"Radium based paint was used on watch faces and hands, especially during WW II. Hundreds of thousands of troops, flyers, and sailors relied on them for accurate timing. The advantage of Radium paint vs Phosphor paint is the Radium paint did not need to be charged with sunlight like the Phosphor. It emitted the same steady green glow all day and all night. And it was fairly bright as well, depending on how much was used on the dial and hands. Not enough to read by, but enough to get you shot at in darkness. \n\nWhen the radioactivity issues associated with atomic power and nuclear weapons came into common experience and discussion, these Radium watches were revealed as a threat, and no doubt their green glow in part became the \"face\" of radioactivity.",
"In visual fiction, green is the color for every kind of dangerous toxic matter: poison, acid, viruses, and radiation.",
" A friend of mine is a nuclear engineer and literally builds and maintains the core of nuclear power plants. He was showing me all kinds of pictures the other day of stuff that’s way over my head. One of the pictures was a bunch of rods and the core in a huge pool, glowing blue. He said that’s normal and just how it is. It was at a party and we didn’t talk very long, plus I’m nowhere near qualified to talk about the stuff at all, but it was definitely glowing blue. \n\nI’d love to hear from someone more qualified to elaborate a bit.",
"Marvel comics had a lot to do with the public perception of radiation . A lot of people associate radiation with green simply because of the Incredible Hulk. Ironically the hulk was originally supposed to be gray but at the time (1962) there were technical problems with inking a gray character so he was changed to be green.",
"You know how some toys and decorations glow green in the dark? This is due to a phosphor chemical that is painted onto or mixed into the plastic. The glow in the dark items you get nowadays stop glowing after a few minutes in the dark when they run out of stored energy. \n\nBack a long time ago (100 years or so), people figured out that you could make the phosphor glow for years by mixing in a bit of radioactive material. The radiation is invisible, but it \"feeds\" the phosphor and allows it to keep glowing green. \n\nIt turns out that adding radioactive materials to everyday items was a bad idea, especially for the people who worked in the factory, who were surrounded by lots of radiation every day. Laws were passed, and you can't get radioactive phosphor items anymore except in antique stores. \n\nPeople culturally learned to associate these glowing phosphor paints with radiation, since for quite a long time they were frequently combined. This is probably the source of the \"green glow\" myth. \n\nAnother source of glowing light related to radiation comes from the \"Cherenkov effect\", which is caused by the super fast radiation particles moving through water, which creates a blue glow. \n_URL_0_\n\nBoth the green phosphor glow and the blue cherenkov glow aren't actually the high energy radiation, which is invisible. They are caused by a reaction between the radiation and the material nearby (phosphor or water). In most cases, ionizing radiation is invisible.",
"Glow in the dark material (called something like tritumite?) is the most common type of visible radiation that people experience (ignoring the sun and stuff like that). It's greenish, so that's why probably",
"I've always associated yellow more with radiation than green, but Uranium glass glows green under the black light though too.",
"Why is hulk not invisible then?",
"MARVEL \n\nIncredible HULK = Green Human = Anger = incredible strength ???",
"Uranium and uranium glass often has a vivid yellow/green colour and uranium glass glows bright neon under uv leds",
"I dont know if this is the reason, but green is generally a color related with poison.( food, water etc)",
"Radiation and radioactivity are two different things firstly. \n\nRadiation= For example- x- Ray's are produced inside a vacuum tube using electrons generated by a tungsten filament on a negatively charged cathode and then shot at a positively charged anode with a tiny tungsten plate on it called a target. When the electrons hit the target they are destroyed but their energy remains. The energy that remains is x-radiation used for xrays. One of xrays qualities is it causes fluorescence in some materials ( glow green). X Ray's were discovered by a guy messing with a vacuum tube and then noticing something glowing green across the room. Radiation has no mass. _URL_0_\n\nRadioactivity- unstable molecules degrade releasing subatomic particles and massive amounts of energy, often heat. Can glow, but not necessarily green. Has mass."
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2420sm | why do birds and squirrels walk away from you when you approach them? | Why do most animals do this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2420sm/eli5_why_do_birds_and_squirrels_walk_away_from/ | {
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"They aren't curious about you like you are about them. To you, they're interesting. To them, you're huge and very likely murderous.\n\nHumans have the ability to ignore fear. Humans also have the mind-bendingly stupid habit of ignoring fear, but then again it hasn't driven us to extinction yet, so there's that.\n\nAnimals without what humans would call \"higher brain functions\" and what animals would call \"noise\" just rank self-preservation as top priority, and anything they don't understand or at least find familiar could potentially end their little lives. Things like \"wonder\" and \"curiosity\" don't apply when you're a food source."
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665t17 | valves in engine | When car manuf. say things like hey look my gt500 has a 32 valve engine, what does that mean? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/665t17/eli5_valves_in_engine/ | {
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"Engines have intake valves and exhaust valves. The intake valves open as the piston is traveling down during the \"Intake stroke\" to allow air (and fuel in some cases) to enter the combustion chamber, then the valves close. The piston then travels back up and compresses the air (and fuel in some cases) during the \"Compression stroke\". The fuel is added at this point (if it hasn't been already) and it either ignites (diesel) or is ignited by a spark plug (gasoline) and the resulting explosion forces the piston back down during the \"Power stroke\". Finally, the exhaust valves open and the piston travels up to expel the spent combustion byproducts during the \"Exhaust stroke\". This process is repeated thousands of times per minute and produces the rotational force to the transmission or transaxle and moves the vehicle. \n\nSomeone discovered along the way that more valves is usually better to an extent. Two smaller valves will flow better than one larger valve, and things usually fit better that way as well. So when you hear about a 32-valve engine, it means that each of the eight cylinders has two intake and two exhaust valves. There is a lot more to this, but this is the best simplified answer I could come up with. Also, the four stages of a four stroke engine are sometimes referred to as suck, squeeze, bang, blow.",
"Are you sure you own a car?"
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6h1fue | why is chicken the most common and usually the only kind of bird people eat? | Why aren't other kind of birds, like pigeons or crows, popular on the market for food? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6h1fue/eli5_why_is_chicken_the_most_common_and_usually/ | {
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"Chickens are domesticated and compare one chicken compared to one crow or something. Which one has more meat? The only other birds with enough meat are not domesticated and a lot of them are predators.\n\n\nI don't know why farmers of the past decided to domesticate chickens over other birds. It was probably just the first flightless birds that worked.",
"They grow fast, are reasonably large, are very poor flyers, and live well in large groups.\n\nThat makes them an easy bird to farm in large numbers.\n\nTurkeys, ducks, and geese are also farmed, but they're not as easy to handle and the meat is more expensive as a result.\n\nPigeons and crows don't have any meat on them, it's all bones and feathers.",
"Most people eat turkey as well. \n\nChickens grow fast, and are used for their eggs as well. Their meat is inexpensive so it has made its way into lots of types of cuisine. ",
"Chickens are also some of the best egg layers in the bird world, given proper access to food they will just crank eggs out like an assembly line. This makes farming them awesome because you get easy access to protein without having to kill your farmed animal. Other common farm birds (Turkeys, ducks, geese) just don't crank out eggs as fast, or the eggs are much smaller.",
"Turkeys are eaten nearly as often as chicken, and duck, swan, geese, pigeon (called squab wh cooking), and quail are all fairly regularly eaten. \n\nBut the biggest reason that chickens are eaten is that they are domesticated in such a way that they lay eggs nearly continuously so have a lot of chickens for eggs, which means we have a lot of chicken for meat when they are no longer able to lay eggs. "
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2uz4f2 | why do jewish people make up just 2% of the us population, yet they are very dominant in many industries (i.e. banking, hollywood, corporate, etc.)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2uz4f2/eli5_why_do_jewish_people_make_up_just_2_of_the/ | {
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"Connections, hard work and a cultural importance of a good education. ",
"A big part of it is that all of these things were at one point considered fairly disreputable and not something that good WASP type people would be involved in. As people who faced quite a lot of discrimination historically but who are also generally smart and hard working, Jews ended up being very successful in the handful of industries that were open to them.\n\nEdit: Also, fields where you see a lot of Jews tend to be ones where you succeed by being well educated rather than by having a bunch of capital built up. A big part of what happened to Jews historically was that a wave of anti-semitism would sweep through an area and the local powers would seize all their assets and force them to move. If you're a farmer having your land taken away is a huge fucking problem, but if you're a doctor or a banker most of what makes you valuable economically is between your ears and can't really be stolen from you.",
"Arab imigrants are pretty wealthy in my country, too, though being an even smaller minority. It has a lot to do with how immigrants/outsiders behave in a society. They generally work harder.",
"It was originally prohibited for Christians to earn interest from credits and Jews also weren't allowed to join craftsmen guilds (Which was a huge deal back then. Think of getting excluded from Amazon). So that's kinda driven them into the banking sector.",
"Many Jewish families, less so as time goes on, give their children very few options about their future. It was(is?) common practice for the children to be told they can be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or other high paying jobs with no real alternative. Similar reasons are why many doctors are first or second generation immigrants. They or their families saw them here for a reason, and it was to get ahead in life financially, likely to support the family, so that's what they did.\n\nMy best friends father is Jewish and was told he could be a Dentist, Doctor, or Lawyer. He's a Dentist and his sister is a Pharmaceutical Engineer. Similarly a friend from High School is now an ophthalmologist because he is a 2nd generation immigrant and saw it as his way to support his parents.",
"Hard Work, Education, Motivation, and Ambition. ",
"I spent my childhood working and socializing at a Jewish Community Center. It was very clear that Jewish kids were expected to work hard and succeed in school and focus on getting a job with both power and a high income. Parents expected their kids to go to law school or medical school and there was very little room for negotiating from the child. \n\nIf your whole life you are brought up to get a \"good job\" and work hard naturally you'll find an area in which you can be successful. It really isn't different from non-Jewish kids in the same situation. The difference is there are a lot more non-achieving non-Jewish kids so it doesn't seem as obvious.",
"In terms of hollywood, many Jewish immigrants in the early 1900's brought vaudeville and other performing arts to the area and it jews have been part of the industry since then.",
"Most Jewish cultures and societies never created a negative connotation around many professions that a good, socially established Christian wouldn't think of. Banking, Lawyering, Doctoring, Trading, Merchantilism, all of these were considered middle/lower class (relative to High Christian Society) and since Jews were never nobles in pre-20th century Europe, they never had the aspiration to that sort of lifestyle, which was leisurely, only superficially educated and basically devoid of actual work.\n \nAlso, for centuries, Jews were discriminated against in terms of trading, and would occasionally have all their worldly posessions taken from them, and many of their community murdered (in Eastern Europe they were called Pogroms, but these events happened wherever there were Jews in Europe). Because of this, the Jews of various regions developed networks among themselves that they could rely on when the community was attacked from without. This is also why you found many Jewish communities in trading centers like Amsterdam.\n \nDue to the serf status and strict settling regulations of the Russian Empire, most Eastern European Jews were less able to avail themselves of living in Trading/Multi-cultural centers, however many that could settled in places like Odessa and Prague, among other places.",
"Jewish people in the US (and any other country besides Israel, pretty much) have been, for centuries, predominately urban-dwelling. The largest Jewish population in the US is in New York, where they are far more common than they would be with a random distribution. So they are disproportionately represented in industries that are centered in New York (finance), and other industries which are located in cities with major jewish populations (film industry started in new york but moved to LA along with a lot of Jewish Yankees.) You notice how the car, agriculture, or steel industries for comparison are not particularly known for having a lot of Jews? \n\nI think there are also some cultural reasons why Jewish Americans are driven to achieve highly- the Jewish faith is very academic in its approach to scripture (at least compared to many other religions) leading to a high crossover into academics and law. However I would not say that is a more important factor than the fact that there are a disproportionate number of Jews in New York and other major US cities. ",
"a teacher of mine back in high school, said it was because Hitler almost killed them off, so they agreed to never let anything like that happen again, and now they own/control or have influence over major industries. Ensuring nothing major happens without jewish consent.\n\ni dont agree with this i just remember him saying it. LOL i thought he was a little off in the head 1/2 the time. ",
"From what I understand, hundreds/thousands of years ago, many areas has physical laws on the books that said Jews could ONLY work as bankers, jewelers, and certain other trades. When you lock an entire race into certain career paths, this is why you see swimlanes of prosperity today.\n\nNow I know you are thinking, \"But those laws don't apply today\", but they sort of do....\n\n1. Jews are a loyal culture like other cultures and would rather visit \"Sam the Baker\" than any other baker so they perpetuate the roles.\n2. Like ANY family, \"nepotism\" tends to dominate. It's not a Jewish thing per se as we all know 2nd/3rd/4th generation firefighters, police, soldiers, dentists, etc. It's super common for use to mimic our parents.\n\nThis question isn't so much about Jews in the big picture as it is about why *.people are stereotypically in X line of work. Sure there are a lot of Jewish dentists, but there are a lot of black rappers, Irish firefighters, Hispanics in the US Marine Corps, women in the nursing field, and pale bearded white dudes pounding out code on keyboards.",
"In the Middle Ages, Jews weren't allowed to own property, so they couldn't farm. So they went into professions such as banking, which happened to be lucrative. Racial discrimination backfired sort of in their favour - besides being discriminated against and the targets of violence.",
"A LOT of it is cultural.\n\nGrowing up in a Jewish household, even a reformed, mostly secular one like I grew up in, education & work ethic is paramount over all else, including the religion itself. Almost to an obsessive degree. In the vast majority of Jewish households that I know, not going to college was not an option. Not doing well in school was not an option. Not getting a good job was not an option.\n\nAt my school at least, most of the Jewish kids were in the advanced classes. Their parents would closely follow their school work, and if the kid ever fell behind, they would make them do whatever it takes to get back on track. ",
"First of all I have to say its somewhat unsavory to phrase this question. Jews are not \"dominant\" in any of the industries you listed per se, \"overrepresented\" would more accurate. \n\nBut besides that... jewish culture, even amongst the millions of atheist jews who still feel connected to the jewish community, places a high emphasis on education, hard work, living up to your potential, *and not being an idiot*. It wasn't until I got out into the wider world outside the 50% jewish community that I grew up in that I understood the significance of that last part, or even that other people behaved differently in that respect. Within jewish culture it is extremely embarrassing to not be prepared for a conceivable problem or to get taken advantage of. Basically if bad things happen to you and they were forecastable or preventable, it is perceived as your fault and you are perceived as an idiot. ",
"Let's not forget good positioning after and during alcohol prohibition.",
"I was told by Jewish friends that giving someone a job was the [highest mitzvah](_URL_0_)\n\nIt comes from here:\n\nListed below are Maimonides' eight levels of giving from lowest to highest: \n\n\n1. A person gives but is not happy when s/he digs into his/her pocket in order to give. \n\n\n2. A person gives cheerfully, but gives less than s/he should. \n\n\n3. A person gives, but only when asked by a poor person. \n\n\n4. A person gives without having to be asked, but gives directly to the poor. The poor person knows who gave the help, and the giver knows who was benefited\n \n \n5. A person gives a donation in a certain place, but walks away so that the giver does not know who received the benefit. However, the poor person knows the giver. \n \n\n6. A person makes a donation to a poor person secretly. The giver knows who was benefited, but the poor person does not know who the giver was. \n\n7. A person contributes anonymously to the tzedakah fund, which is then distributed to the poor. \n\n8. The highest level of charity is to give money and help to prevent another person from becoming poor. For example, teaching a person a trade, finding them a job, lending money, teaching them to fish.\n\n\nI can't obviously say this is entirely why but I think it plays a role.\n",
"In SE Asia, a similar situation also arose. Chinese are a minority in most SE Asian countries but are dominant in many industries and professionals.",
"Because that percentage is much higher in cities like New York and Los Angeles."
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b4gz9o | the difference between exponential growth and sequential growth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b4gz9o/eli5_the_difference_between_exponential_growth/ | {
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"AFAIK this would just be called a linear growth. It always grows the same amount with every step (+1 action done for every +1 loop). ",
"Using the mathematics terms, one is called an arithmetic progression (or arithmetic sequence), another one is a geometric progression or geometric sequence.",
"Exponential growth is when the increments of growth increase as the growth proceeds. Think a snowball rolling down a hill, the surface area is what captures more snow, so as the snowball gets bigger it has a greater surface area capable of capturing more snow and... it snowballs! Exponentially - because it grows more and more the further it goes\n\nSequential growth is rather different as this is a term often used to address the growth of business between one point of measure and another. Usually, you'll see this used when discussing growth from Q1 to Q2 etc. I think you may have meant to refer to linear growth?\n\nDefining just 'sequential' and 'exponential' may be an easier way to break down the differences;\n____________________________\nsequential\n/sɪˈkwɛnʃ(ə)l/Submit\nadjective\nforming or following in a logical order or sequence.\n\"a series of sequential steps\"\nCOMPUTING\nperformed or used in sequence.\n\"sequential processing of data files\"\n\n____________________________\nexponential\n/ˌɛkspəˈnɛnʃ(ə)l/Submit\nadjective\n1.\n(of an increase) becoming more and more rapid.\n\"the social security budget was rising at an exponential rate\"\n2.\nMATHEMATICS\nof or expressed by a mathematical exponent.\n\"an exponential curve\"\n"
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169t5b | why couldn't sauron simply create another ring? | After all, didn't he create it in the first place? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/169t5b/why_couldnt_sauron_simply_create_another_ring/ | {
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"Sauron put his soul into the ring when making it or whatever and got killed when it melted.",
"Well, as evidenced by the end of the story, Sauron seemed to tie some of his life force to the Ring. In his weakened state he didn't have enough strength left to create another one.",
"In LotR there are no deities. Instead there are beings of great, but finite, power. By placing his power into the One Ring, Sauron could basically game the system and net himself more power (this is the gist of it). Once this power is expended, it is gone. There is no recharge.\n\n**tl;dr** Sauron could not make a second ring since all of his power was in the first."
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4gl47y | why are metal shavings flammable? | im just curious how Metal shavings of something like Steel can be flammable even though the metal itself ( and most others) do not combust like that. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gl47y/eli5_why_are_metal_shavings_flammable/ | {
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"Many metals are flammable but most are not *very* flammable. Shaving the metal into tiny thin bits greatly increases their surface area, exposing them to much more oxygen and also making it easier to get one portion heated up without the next portion conducting the heat away.",
"Metals can oxidize- this is what happens when they rust or otherwise react with oxygen. Usually this happens slowly, since only the surface is exposed to air and rust/oxides on the surface actually block the air from touching fresh metal underneath. \n\nRusting/oxidizing produces heat. A rusty nail is rusting very slowly so the heat is easily dissipated and not noticed.\n\nIf you shave the metal super-thin, thee is more surface area that can react with oxygen, and if it's thin enough it will react *very quickly*, and the small amount of heat will help feed the reaction even more.\n\nRusting is just burning *really slowly*.",
"Things which can burn, only burn when there is oxygen. The only oxygen available to fuel a burning block of iron is the bit of air on the surface. Metal shaving has a bigger surface, so there's more oxygen to fuel the flame.\n\nYou can also see this with wood. A massive log of wood takes longer to catch fire than sawdust, which can even be explosive, because the sawdust has a much higher surface area compared to its volume."
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3b56rj | what was the point of the cold war | why did the US and the USSR begin to hate eachother? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b56rj/eli5_what_was_the_point_of_the_cold_war/ | {
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"The main issue at play was sphere of influence in the world. From the side of the West (US, Canada, UK, and many other nations), it felt that communism was a threat to the way things are done here. That if it allowed the USSR to expand, the influence will expand into their own nations. For the East, it had the fear that the West would interfere with its plans.\n\nTo understand the idea of the \"Cold War\" you have to understand that there was no large scale direct conflict between the USSR and Western nations. It first started in Europe, and first around Germany. After World War II, US, UK, France and the USSR split up German and the city of Berlin into equal portions. This resulted in future disagreements. Then the West developed pacts over many Western European nations, while the USSR did it around many Eastern European nations.\n\nThe two superpowers kept trying to spread their influence, and at the same time, build tremendous military and nuclear arsenals. All of the fear of losing influence and power. \n\nThey also had proxy wars, with combat missions in Afghanistan, Vietnam and Korea. "
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1ry3il | why we get lights in front of our eyes when we stand up too quickly, please. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ry3il/eli5_why_we_get_lights_in_front_of_our_eyes_when/ | {
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"I'm not entirely sure that the lights that you are referring to is what I refer to as \"temporary blindness\", but I'll explain what I mean, and then we'll see.\nWhen I stand up to quickly, I often get dark spots or blindness, where my vision will completely go, with very sudden throbbing headaches, along with dizziness and a light-headed feeling. I had these symptoms for a few years, and finally decided to go to the doctor about it. \n\nI was officially diagnosed with Orthostatic Hypotension. This is a massively common thing for people to have. It's simply a light-headed feeling that happens when you stand up to quickly. The reason it happens is because your body isn't able to pump blood quick enough from your legs up to your brain. \n\nThe way to fix this? Drink lots of water and exercise more. Also, stand up slower, which may sound silly, but it helps!\n"
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3fekb1 | would farm animals (cows, pigs etc) be able to survive in their current state without human interaction? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fekb1/eli5_would_farm_animals_cows_pigs_etc_be_able_to/ | {
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"no. Few at least. They might survive the summer but come winter they will most likely starve or fall pray to predators or animals better suited for their environment. Domesticated animals are really dependent on us. ",
"Sure. Many pigs that escape go feral and do very well. Pigeons are often raised for food, but are essentially self-sufficient and given free range. I've personally released rabbits that were born in captivity and raised for food that did well on my land for at least a year (I moved away after that time). Sheep might have a problem; sheep left unshorn will die eventually."
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1nkxlh | what are the laws regarding salary change of us congressmen? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nkxlh/eli5_what_are_the_laws_regarding_salary_change_of/ | {
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"Because your post isn't asking a simplified conceptual explanation, but rather for an answer, its been removed. \n\nYou should try /r/answers, /r/askreddit or even one of the more specialized answers subreddits like /r/askhistorians, /r/askscience or others too numerous and varied to mention. \n\nRest assured this doesn't make your question *bad*, it just makes it more appropriate for another subreddit. Good luck! "
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4z1j1f | what are the origins of male obsession/competition with/over penis size? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4z1j1f/eli5_what_are_the_origins_of_male/ | {
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"I have a reason to believe that this originated in antiquity, far beyond the invention of written language so no records were kept.\n\nPenis cults have arisen independently several times in many cultures around the world. The phallus is seen as a symbol of male fertility, an area where men find themselves in competition against one another, so it's natural for men to obsess over it and compare theirs against another's.\n\nCuriously, in the classic tradition, large penises were undesirable from an artistic standpoint, since they were seen as the mark of someone unrefined and crude. Perhaps the de-emphasis of sex for reproduction in ancient Greece or Rome made the worship of large penises fall out of fashion, due to their association with the base function of fertility.",
"I don't fully agree with the \"biological\" explanations. Obsession over penis size is largely cultural. Take the Greeks during the ancient times, for instance. For them, the ideal male body had a small penis, while large genitals were used to depict Satyrs, which spent their time masturbating. A manly man was a good lover, regardless of the size of their penis. Even in XVIIIth century Europe, penis size was not a big deal, or it doesn't seem to be, when looking at the artistic representations of the male body at the time. In libertine literature, it was not about the size of the penis of the lover, but as his capacity to seduce women, his passion (there are some exceptions, such as Sade's description of enormous cocks in The 120 Days of Sodom).\n\nSo where does the origins of the current obsession with penis size? It maybe originated in the post-industrial society, when pop culture and the pornographic industry became prevalent and the ideas of sexual performance (as in productivity) and athletic male bodies (but with big penises, contrary to the classic Greek male beauty standard) were ingrained into the collective psyche. According to Baudrillard, we live in the society of spectacle, so a \"spectacular\" penis is the most appropriate for the current times.\n\nPS: the biological theories can explain why the human penis is so large compared to other primate's penises (it has been suggested that human females prefer larger penises, so it has become a physical trait selected through evolution), but it doesn't explain why it's such an important matter in contemporary culture.\n\nTl; dr: culture, not nature."
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24bw6z | is it feasible for homes to be fitted with bicycle powered generators to save on energy costs? | I've wondered this for a while. If each member of a family allotted an hour of time a day to produce energy, could that time spent pedaling equate to as much energy (in dollar value) as a person making a minimum hourly wage? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24bw6z/eli5_is_it_feasible_for_homes_to_be_fitted_with/ | {
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"Pedalling continuously produces about 80 Watts of energy at any given time, you might be able to keep a lightbulb on.",
"The problem may be that your nutritional costs would increase more than your power costs would decrease. \n\nTo give a good comparison, you should consider how many calories are burned producing how much energy. "
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1jpe20 | fight club | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jpe20/eli5_fight_club/ | {
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"Poor guy will never get an answer from anyone who's seen it.",
"If you really want to know, watch the DVD commentary. It's a satire that is critical of modern society, with a focus on consumerism, and also critical of complete rebellion against of the modern lifestyle.",
" There's this guy, we'll call him Jack. Jack isn't the happiest of men. Jack is quiet, Jack is weak, and Jack feels as though he isn't a real man. Jack feels like his life is empty and has these dark clouds over him. This depression goes so deep that it affects his mind and just when things are getting out of control, Jack meets Tyler. Tyler is very different from Jack, in all the ways he wishes he could be. Oh how Jack looks up to Tyler! This robust, dynamic, critically thinking, pinnacle of a man is everything Jack wants to be, (but not all that he seems to be). So as the two spend more time together (and even live together!), Tyler's 'words of wisdom' begin to resonate with Jack. They both feel as though people today are sheep. They buy, eat, fuck, and sleep. They adhere to lifestyle choices that mean nothing. They spend their time and money on things they don't need to appease people they don't know or care about. This angers our dynamic duo so they decide to make a change. To 'hit bottom', as Tyler would say. They begin to fight. Not to kill, not to maim, but to vent. These boys would take their frustrations and the worries and vent it out on each other in the form of frenzied fighting, bonding the members in such an intimate way that it became a life style. They breathe, eat, and sleep fight club. It becomes a religion to these men. Fuck social norms. Fuck being 'pretty'. The only time they truly felt alive was when they were beating each other to a pulp. As time progresses, the ego of Tyler swells to almost 0.5 Kanyes, and he decides that just fighting isn't enough. He wants to flip the script and make everyone wake up from this daze he believes we are all slumbering in. \n\n\n\nSo he turns Fight Club into Project Mayhem, and does this alone. Jack is devastated when he finds out he is not in on Project Mayhem. Why would Tyler do this without him? Wasn't it the two of them that started this thing? Weren't they brothers? Tyler claims that Jack isn't letting go enough and that he's not hitting bottom, and this places a wedge between the two for the first time in their relationship. Eventually, the mounted frustration between the two explodes and Tyler disappears completely. Jack then chases after him, only to find that no matter how hard he tries, he can't catch up. \n\nThis brings us to the climax of the film. Tyler finally confesses to Jack that he and Tyler are in fact the same person. Tyler manifested from the unmet desires in Jack's heart, and has begun his takeover. The ego that is Tyler starts to take control of the consciousness that is Jack, and the two clash in one final conflict to determine the dominant personality, with Jack coming out on top. He gets the girl, wins, etc. \n\nAlso alongside this is a love story between Jack and Tyler and Marla, but I'm too high and I've already written a lot and it didn't seem as pertinent to the plot. I hope this all made sense.",
"OP, can you expand what about the movie you don't understand? I'm technically am supposed to remove this thread, but it is a complex movie. What aspects of Fight Club are you confused about? Thanks."
]
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6wtf7c | how to 'happy tears' come about, and do they differ from 'sad tears'? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6wtf7c/eli5_how_to_happy_tears_come_about_and_do_they/ | {
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"I was hoping there would be an answer on here, but there wasn't so I became curious and looked it up. Supposedly it has to do with different molecules that are in the tears. Happy and sad tears also look different under a microscope which I found very interesting. \n\nHere is the site I used incase anyone else wants to read and see the difference. :)\n_URL_0_"
]
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"https://www.google.com/amp/sploid.gizmodo.com/tears-of-joy-and-tears-of-sadness-look-different-under-1468602557/amp"
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||
1xupv9 | why do we allow north korea to have internment camps similar to nazi germany? | I've seen a post with a man that escaped a North Korean prisoner camp and it was horrendous, he said things that made me honestly question whether or not these camps are WORSE than the Nazi camps- and we liberated them as fast as we could. Everyone on the planet knows the USA along with the EU could liberate the people, so why don't we? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xupv9/eli5_why_do_we_allow_north_korea_to_have/ | {
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"Nazi Germany invaded other countries\n\nChina does not want the US invading North Korea, because the refugee crisis will hit them directly and the US would gain North Korea as a base.\n\nNorth Korea has no desirable or strategic resources the US requires.\n\n",
"For the same reasons that we never went in and liberated the [Gulags of Soviet russia](_URL_0_) (\"Some estimates for total number deaths in the Gulag go beyond 10 million.\"): Because it would require a major war, costly in money and lives, including the lives of many of the people in the camps.\n\nThere are many people who think that \"we\" should go in and end the North Korean Regime. You're welcome to believe that it would be wise policy, but the ELI5 version of why we don't is because of the cost. ",
"I know it's a common myth that the US joined the Second World War to end the mistreatment of various peoples in Europe but the fact of the matter is that the US joined the Second World War against Germany because Germany declared war on the US.",
"North Korea has thousands of artillery pieces permanently trained on Seoul and loaded at all times.\nWith a travel time in the seconds they could kill hundreds of thousands of South Koreans within seconds of the beginning of any hostilities.",
"Keep in mind that we entered WW2 as a result of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Unless I am mistaken, the U.S. had no intention of entering Nazi-occupied Europe before the attack. It is also my understanding that we (or at least the public) were not even aware of the concentration camps before entering the war. \n\nI believe the primary reason we aren't doing anything about North Korea is because it would piss off China and possibly Russia. Plus, as others have commented, they have no resources of interest to us. The latter is the same reason the U.S. does nothing about other heinous atrocities happening in other countries throughout the world. Also, realize that a government is not a person. It has no conscience. It is made up of people, the vast majority of which have little to do with decisions about N. Korea at all and of those that do, well...it's real easy to to tell one's self that any inaction on their part alone is inconsequential and does not directly contribute to the situation at hand. \n\nFinally, consider what would happen if the U.S. just said \"Fuck it, we're taking these mofo's down\" and invaded. China and Russia would likely not tolerate U.S. forces invading a country (and thus gaining more territory) that is right next to them. Also consider how \"good\" of a job we did with Iraq...once we invaded and removed the North Korean government, we would be morally obliged to replace that government. We've all seen how well that has worked with Iraq. Consider the danger to South Korea. They would have to be on board with the plan and even if they were, they would stand to sustain heavy civilian casualties. North Korea may not have missiles that can reach the U.S., but they sure as hell can rain down on South Korea and possibly Japan. Finally, keep in mind that the vast majority of N. Korean citizens are innocent of the crimes committed by a few people in powerful government positions. I can even sympathize with camp guards...to disobey orders would mean their own incarceration as well as the incarceration (and possible execution of) their families. I would like to think that if given the choice between torturing people and losing my own freedom (and being subject to torture) that I would have the fortitude to choose the latter...but if my family were at risk because of my actions, I don't think I could trade their lives for another. The U.S. would inevitably have to kill a lot of innocent people...and people who for decades have been brainwashed to believe we are already evil. Many would likely not view our invading forces as a liberating force. \n"
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3x50vy | how are borders that overlap with rivers determined? | How do you know which side of the border are you on if you, say, are on a boat? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3x50vy/eli5_how_are_borders_that_overlap_with_rivers/ | {
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"I have seen three definitions in place.\n\n(1): the mean high tide line on one side or the other. (that is, the average location of the daily high tide on one side).\n\n(2): halfway between the two mean high tide lines.\n\n(3) the line directly above the deepest point in the channel. ",
"1 down the center of th channel. So, if you are in a boat, basically whichever shore you are closer to\n\nor\n\n2 The bordering states share responsibility for the water, from shore to shore, so you are technically in both. The ST Croix River between Minnesota and Wisconsin is this way\n\nor very rarely\n\n3 Nothing except emergency enforcement is done on the water, and the agencies just wait until you reach land to act"
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2bqzx1 | why is there an assumption that if two nuclear powers go to war with each other they would necessarily use nuclear weapons? | Given the concept of mutually assured destruction, it doesn't make any rational sense to me for either side to conduct a nuclear first strike. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bqzx1/eli5_why_is_there_an_assumption_that_if_two/ | {
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"The very act of war, I believe, belies the rationality of the actors. There is nothing that could not otherwise be accomplished without war, yet we have typically raced into it with abandon. And we've used those weapons before.\n\nBesides, MAD is not necessarily a rational strategy. It is a threat, not a necessary outcome. If we see bombs in the air, we know that we will die. At that point, we might decide that is better for the Evil Enemy to survive than for _everybody_ to die.",
"I think the worry is more about the possibility of the escalation to that level. The concept of winning war is closely tied to being able to make a bigger bang than your enemies, so it seems like a natural assumption that a country might use them out of desperation, perhaps. Though, mostly I believe it is an \"if\" factor. People like to think of worst-case scenarios, and this is an easy way to do so.",
"the reasoning is because with nuclear weapons, there may not be an opportunity to strike second. MAD is a deterrent, but it isn't a guarantee. war like that is ultimately about survival, and if a nation is at war, they have absolutely no reason to trust their enemy."
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2qzkaf | the usa has a huge spanish-speaking population and a tiny french-speaking population. why do so many products have labels in english and french, instead of english and spanish? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qzkaf/eli5_the_usa_has_a_huge_spanishspeaking/ | {
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"Many products are sold in Canada where it's required by law in some provinces to have French on the label.",
"Where are you from? Maybe the NE, near French-speaking Quebec, possibly? There, many products there are labeled in both French and English because Quebec is French speaking. \n\nIn my experience of living on the west coast, the midwest, the southwest, and in the mountain states, that I have rarely encountered products that are dual labeled with English and French.",
"In Canada all products have to be labelled in both French and English by law. Maybe its cheaper for some companies who sell goods in both the US and Canada to just print all the labels in French and English so they can distribute to both markets. Even though lots of Americans speak Spanish, there's no legal requirement to put Spanish on labels in the USA."
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41bar7 | why do tightrope walkers balance better carrying a long dowel or with arms outstretched to the sides? | I just finished watching Man on Wire, and the whole time it just seemed like carrying that thing should throw him off instead of helping him, which was obviously not the case. How does this work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41bar7/eli5_why_do_tightrope_walkers_balance_better/ | {
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"TLDR; It allows them to fine tune their balancing needs. Longer pole allows more subtle changes to their balance. ",
"The wider an object is, the more energy it takes to change its equilibrium—assuming it starts off balanced.\n\nIf you balance a chopstick or a pencil on your finger, a small push on either end can unbalance it. Now try again with a broomstick or a six-foot plank. Obviously it takes more energy. And don't forget that the rope-walker is positioned at the centre where they have a lot of leverage."
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6vjjwq | why do chains like eddie bauer and jos a banks open stores in airports? how do they possibly make any money? | Many other chains too that I know don't move enough product to afford the high rent of an airports space - especially behind security. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6vjjwq/eli5_why_do_chains_like_eddie_bauer_and_jos_a/ | {
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"The great thing about a retail store at an airport, for a retailer, is they have a pretty consistent number of people who will show up and need to be at the airport for a certain amount of time. For many retailers, high rents are normal (prime retail spaces downtown or in a thriving mall or other high traffic area is always expensive) but most spaces can't guarantee a captive audience the way an airport can. \n\n[This article](_URL_0_) cites specialty retailers (which covers most of the retail spaces) in airports as generating nearly $1300/square foot in annual sales, a close to triple the $400 revenue per square foot of mall retailers. Granted it's a few years old, but given the struggles of shopping malls since then it's unlikely that airports are doing worse than other shopping areas. ",
"It's a pretty simple formula. People in airports are wealthier than average, and they have time to kill. A captive audience with disposable income retail gold. \n\nAlso, the higher cost of rent and labor is easier to absorb with a high end high markup product. You might grumble at paying $12 bucks for a burrito instead of $7, but paying $300 in stead of $250 for an outfit doesn't feel so bad.\n\nFinally, luggage gets lost, and people forget to pack things. Being able to fix those mistakes at the airport is worth paying a little bit more.",
"In addition to crowds, people often needing to kill time, and being wealthier than general population there are also times people urgently need new clothes--they spill coffee on their tie on way to meeting/interview, or kid pukes on the only pants they packed, or realize they forgot to pack something, etc."
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32og5x | why is it so common for europeans to speak english as a second language? | As opposed to french or spanish or mandarin? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32og5x/eli5_why_is_it_so_common_for_europeans_to_speak/ | {
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"It's just so incredibly useful in business, science, etc, that many countries mandate English classes in primary and/or secondary education. It's required in the the Netherlands and Sweden, for instance, as well as a bunch of other countries.\n\nIn other times, one might have preferred to study French or German, as they'd be the most useful languages to know in addition to the local one(s). Today it happens to be English. For all we know, in a century it will be Hindi or something.",
"Basically, because first Britain and then the USA became huge superpowers and trading partners, so they want to communicate. \n\nFrench used to be the common language of European high life and politics. Not anymore. \n\nMandarin is less relevant, and hard for most Europeans to learn. ",
"English got spread around the world through British colonisation. In many former British colonies English is still an important language, or even an official language.\n\nOne former British colony went on to be hugely influential in world politics and trade: the United States of America.\n\nThe USA were major players setting up the UN, with the result that the UN's primary language is English.\n\nAmerican brands moved across the world, bringing an English speaking culture with them. This caused some interesting situations: a Volkswagen factory in India ended up adopting English as its main language, because none of the German managers knew Hindi, and none of the Indian workers knew German, but they did all know English as a second language. This kind of thing further reinforces English's position.\n\nAmerican music crossed the Atlantic, bringing this hip, popular new sound with lyrics in English. It became cool to understand and speak English. American TV made the transition as well. (Many German people I know speak excellent English thanks to watching *Friends* and other popular shows in English with subtitles.)\n\nI wouldn't say that any one of these made English the global lingua franca, but the combination certainly did.\n\nEnglish has a few more things going for it: it is very easy to learn English well enough to be understood. ~~It's~~^1 Its grammar is simple, similar to several European languages already, and flexible. (In English: \"the dog bites the man\", \"the dog is biting the man\" and \"the man is bitten by the dog\" are all valid constructions. We have very permissive grammar rules in that way, which makes the language easier to learn.) We also have very simple verb conjugations (to run; I run; you run; he/she/it runs; we run; you run (or \"you all run\"); they run. Compare to Spanish: correr; corro; corres; corre; corremos; corréis; corren.)\n\nEnglish also has, I think, fewer idioms than any other languages I know. (Compare it to Japanese, which can feel like nothing but idiomatic imagery sometimes.) This probably isn't a big deal, since most people will avoid idioms when they're talking to non-native speakers anyway.\n\nAs for the specific languages you mention:\n\n- French: used to be the lingua franca, until it fell out of favour. It's still commonly taught in England, and the rest of Western Europe, though.\n\n- Spanish: Still widely spoken in former Spanish colonies. Maybe if Mexico became the world power than the USA is everyone would know Spanish.\n\n- Mandarin: The most commonly spoken language in the world, perhaps, but not widely spoken. It's only spoken in China, and is not - therefore - a global language.\n\n.1. Oooooops.\n\nEDIT: Some of this I knew already, the rest came from here: _URL_0_\n\nEDIT 2: Fixing my grammar. :-/",
"The British have invaded all but like 2 countries in the world. They brought their language with them, and taught it to the locals. \n\nIt's popularity also helps itself. You live in spain, speak spanish, and you want to learn a second language. You could learn Portuguese, which will really only help in Portugal and Brazil. You could learn French which will really only help in France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Quebec, ETC\n\nOr you could learn english, Spoken in all of Canada, All of the U.S., All of the U.K., All of Australia, All of New Zealand, All or most of South Africa, All or most of India, All or most of pakistan, largely in Continental Europe, largely in South America, largely in Africa, largely in Asia.\n\nYour chances of finding someone who also speaks English is much higher around the world than other languages, which is why you learn it, which is why you'll be able to find someone who speaks it and so on. \n\nEdit: 22, not 2, Still an impressive number, about 90% of all the countries in the world have been invaded by Britain. ",
"You probably would have had English as a second or third language in high school. Which gives you the basics. After that, you are (by far) far more exposed to English then any other langauge (movies, video games, the internet). Hence, you practice that skill more. Once it became the most common one (and it had been other ones before the second world war: French, German in large parts of Europe), it has become the default language between europeans from different countries.\n\nIt used to be a joke that only the small countries would speak English, because they wouldn't dub their movies. Nowadays though, almost everyone under a certain age does to a certain degree. You used to have to go out of your way to come into contact with English, nowadays you would have to actively avoid it.",
"I always feel ignorant that I only speak English (I am English), but what other language is as widespread and useful? When I travel I'm embarrassed I can't speak the local language but they often speak perfect English as well as their native tongue. Even in Hungary I hung out with two Austrian guys, an Indian guy, a Mexican and a Portugese woman on a bar crawl and we all just spoke English, they all ordered their drinks in English from Hungarian bartenders who didn't speak Austrian/Hindi/Spanish/Portugese but spoke English. ",
"Several Reasons:\n1. English is required in most European schools.\n2. English is the universal language. It is the language of commerce, science, diplomacy (the French are still miffed at this), medicine, and even air traffic control.\n3. Europeans can switch to English first if they do not speak the same language rather than try German then French then Spanish then Italian then Greek then etc.",
"What would they speak?\n\nMandarin is difficult and far away. And China was not so cool even 15 years ago.\n\nIn many countries though (especially Spanish-speaking) French is more popular as a second language though.",
"So many different languages are spoken in Europe that they had to settle on one. (Legend has it that members of the Belgian Parliament, after endless sniping over whether French or Dutch should be given prominence, finally threw up their hands and made everything English.)",
"it's common for Europeans to speak German, French, Italian, or Russian as a second language too. Just like it's common for Americans to spanish. Most High schools in Europe require several years of foreign language classes to graduate. In the US this isn't a requirement which explains why bilingualism is a lot less common.",
"One of the most important reasons: internet. Europe is Western culture, and Western internet is 99% in English. So are movies, TV shows from the USA (which is the majority of films, tv shows). French, Spanish, Mandarin, while learned by a lot of Europeans, is just not as useful in everyday life.",
"Because we also want to watch Breaking Bad, and play GTA V."
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3hpqyw | why do satellites appear to be glowing like feint stars? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hpqyw/eli5why_do_satellites_appear_to_be_glowing_like/ | {
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"The sun shines on them, and they reflect some of that light back at us. Equally important, though, is the fact that Earth also reflects a lot of light from the sun back into space."
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2r7uao | what is with all the "am i being detained officer?" comments? | I've seen it in so many threads. What's up with this? Is this a bad thing to say to a cop? Is there some historical precedent to it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2r7uao/eli5_what_is_with_all_the_am_i_being_detained/ | {
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"It's an important question to ask. If you aren't under arrest, and you aren't being detained, you are free to leave.",
" > Is this a bad thing to say to a cop?\n\nNo; it's one of the few things one ought to say to a cop, ever. Others include:\n\nI do not consent to any searches.\n\nI am invoking my fifth amendment right to remain silent.\n\nI would like to speak to my attorney.",
"In most (all?) states, when a police officer asks your name, you're required to answer a name. If he asks any other question of you, you're not required to reply. If you are not being detained, you don't have to wait there for the officer and you can resume doing whatever you were doing before the encounter",
"From this site: _URL_0_\n\n > 4) Determine if You Can Leave\n\n > You have the right to terminate an encounter with a police officer unless you are being detained under police custody or have been arrested. The general rule is that you don't have to answer any questions that the police ask you. This rule comes from the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects you against self-incrimination. If you cannot tell if you are allowed to leave, say to the officer, \"I have to be on my way. Am I free to go?\"\nIf the officer says \"Yes,\" tell him to have a nice day, and leave immediately. If the officer's answer is ambiguous, or if he asks you another unrelated question, persist by asking \"Am I being detained, or can I go now?\" If the officer says \"No,\" you are being detained, and you may be placed under arrest. If this is the case, reassert your rights as outlined above, and follow Rules #5 and #6.\n\nIt's become a joke at this point to blurt out that statement whenever someone has any encounter with the police whatsoever, no matter how non-confrontational the situation actually is. \n\nIt's not a bad thing to say because you do have the right to leave if you aren't being detained, but it's a nice way to look like a dick to the cop and seem like you're trying to hide something by knowing your rights so thoroughly. That's not enough to detain you or anything, but it might be enough to convince the cop to try to find something to arrest you for. It's within your rights, though.",
"It comes from the fact that an officer could be asking you questions voluntarily as any regular citizen might, or he might be placing you under arrest because he has probable cause to believe you've committed a crime, or he might have merely stopped you under reasonable suspicion that you've committed a crime. In the first case, you ought be free to go. In the second case, you In the In the second case, the stop has to be [temporary](_URL_1_) and related to the crime. As Jay-Z explains in 99-problems, they can't hold you for 45 minutes on a routine traffic stop while they wait for a K-9 unit (a bitch) to arrive. \n\nFolk interested in the rules regarding search, seizure, and interrogation should also check out [The Illustrated Guide to the Law](_URL_9_), a webcomic drawn by a practicing defense attorney from NYC. It also has sections on: \n\n* [the exclusionary rule](_URL_0_)\n\n* [wiretapping warrants](_URL_6_)\n\n* [self-defense](_URL_2_)\n \n* [entrapment](_URL_5_)\n\n* [memory and eyewitness identification](_URL_4_)\n\n* [the history of interrogation in Common Law](_URL_7_)\n\nAnd flowcharts for [the 4th amendment](_URL_3_) and [the 5th amendment](_URL_8_)\n",
"All of you guys are right as to what it means, but it is from Breaking Bad in season 5. That's why so many comment it.",
"Am I being dethroned?",
"Every answer here has answered it as what it 'actually' means.\n\nOn Reddit, it is now being used to satirise the overreaction of Redditors when they are around police. Police on Reddit have a reputation of 'literally hitler' standards, and many posts are made about how to not cooperate under any circumstances.\n\nThe joke therefore is whenever a Redditor describes a neutral story which involves a cop, to squeal the line- as the 'stereotypical' Redditor would."
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"http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1585",
"http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1813",
"http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=864",
"http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2256",
"http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=3044",
"http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=633",
"http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1704",
"http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2314",
"http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2897",
"http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1859"
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6s6f7s | how did pixar create such amazing cgi (i.e. toy story, a bug's life) with early 90's technology? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6s6f7s/eli5_how_did_pixar_create_such_amazing_cgi_ie_toy/ | {
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"CGI movies are not bound by the need to be rendered in real time.\n\nVideo games need to be rendered at 30-60fps in real time in order to appear fluid and responsive. But with movies, you can quite literally render one frame every 12 hours, and then play back the final render at 24 fps.\n\nBasically, you can get terrific graphics with old tech, as long as you are willing to wait months for it to finish rendering.",
"Two observations.\n\nFirst, yes, the state of computer graphics in 1995 was not nearly so advanced as today. But it wasn't as bad as all that. Ray tracing had been around for more than a decade at that point. Pixar had actually used RenderMan--its proprietary software responsible for much of the heavy lifting in the *Toy Story* animation process--in films as early as 1991's *Beauty and the Beast* (Remember the ballroom scene? Yeah. That.). Then, as now, *cost* is as much an issue in the realism of computer graphics as technical ability. Sure, today's technology lets us achieve a higher degree of realism than we could in the 1990s for the same price. But even back in 1995, you would probably have been surprised at the degree of realism possible with CG given enough budget. Most people were.\n\nSecond, it's undeniable that Pixar significantly advanced the state of CG technology in the course of producing *Toy Story*. Motion blur and texture mapping in particular got a lot of attention. So the answer, in part, is that they simply made new technology as they went. ",
"Much of the software required had to be made from very elementary work into 3D modelling things that we now take for granted, like polygons and UV coordinates (systems for applying 2d textures to 3d objects). In the earliest days, like with the short Luxo Jr., polygon coordinates had to be manually plotted and programmed by calculating and then writing down the XYZ coordinates of each point for each polygon, before animation work could take place.\n\nPixar's software developed similar but different tech to the animation and modelling techniques used in early 3D video games, but with more sophisticated rendering and motion controls.\n\nYou can really see the level of detail increase over time when you watch their movies in chronological release date order.\n\n* Toy Story - ambitious tech demo with extremely well done plot and characters\n* A Bug's Life - Lighting and scene detail density improvements, with grass, plants, and large crowds\n* Toy Story 2 - Texture and rendering improvements for human characters\n* Monsters Inc. - Fur and environments\n* The Incredibles - Lots of everything, but most importantly clothes and cloth simulation\n* Cars - Lighting and rendering improvements\n* Ratatouille - Rendering improvements for human characters and organic matter like food\n* WALL-E - Lighting and procedural generation (like trash and robots\n* Up - Lighting and color effects\n\nand it goes on.",
"To add on: Earlier on, they also purposely picked objects with a focus on \"plastic-y\" textures that worked well in early CGI and minimized other objects. For example, their first two movies focused on toys (with some humans but screen time minimized) and bugs mostly with hard shells. And even the humans that do get screen time, things were focused on keeping them simple. E.g. Andy and Sid both have conveniently buzzcut hair.",
"Another point\n\nThe human animation in Toy Story left much to be desired, reflective of the technology at that time. By using toys and bugs, Pixar could get around that problem, because your brain isn't expecting realism from toys and bugs"
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4evc14 | what does post-modernism, and minamilism mean, in american literature? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4evc14/eli5_what_does_postmodernism_and_minamilism_mean/ | {
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"Literary minimalism is a little difficult to explain, and I'd suggest googling if I make no sense. \n\nIt has a lot to do with simply not being overly wordy and descriptive. The writing relies on context and other clues to help give weight to a scene or story, for instance. It might not give a ton of background information explicitly and instead paint the picture by providing context. A minimalist sci fi story might not explain any of the setting or the technology, but might give you the picture by having characters use tech or mention the setting casually. A story might be entirely dialog. \n\nPost-modernism is defined by being, well, after the modern period and not adhering to (or playing with or parodying) modernist tropes. It's not easy to pin down, but in a nutshell it is literature that is intentionally not straightforward, may be open to interpretation, and may not have \"standard\" things like a neatly tied up ending, it may have an unreliable narrator, etc. But the word is extremely broadly defined. "
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pijkg | maps split down the atlantic not the pacific | Most maps (Of the flat variety) are split down the Pacific. Since coming to Reddit I've seen an unusual quantity of maps split down the Atlantic.
Why is this? There's a much cleaner split down the Pacific. Do people just hate Greenland? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pijkg/elif_maps_split_down_the_atlantic_not_the_pacific/ | {
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"The reason maps have the edges cutting through the Pacific has nothing to do with the oceans. Maps (most of them, at least) are made with Europe at the center. The current setup of the world map was created during a period of European dominance, so it features Europe in the middle! It is just coinsidence that the opposite side of the globe convieniently runs down the middle of the Pacific."
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2nm9x1 | what does cracking a videogame usually involve and why is denuvo so much harder for pirates to crack? | While I'm at it: why was this solution so difficult to come up with? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nm9x1/eli5_what_does_cracking_a_videogame_usually/ | {
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"In the old days when the DRM was merely the program (exe) checking to see if the CDrom was good, you would use an assembly debugger to track to the point where it reports a success. You change it so the fail outcome also jumps to the success outcome. A more modern DRM scheme might have the program ask the developer's server if the customer's/pirate's program is valid, the cracker changes or provides a substitute answer of yes.\n\nA quick websearch says Denuvo is a modern style DRM which uses encryption (and probably a few other unreported methods too). This makes cracking really difficult because good encryption schemes are difficult to crack intellectually, take a lot of time and crackers are only doing it for fun.\n\nsource; I wasn't a successful debugger, I was only mucking around to remove CDrom-checks.",
"What is Denuvo? I googled it and still can't seem to figure it out."
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203qn8 | why did the hobbit frame rate matter and what does it mean for future movies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/203qn8/eli5_why_did_the_hobbit_frame_rate_matter_and/ | {
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"The frame rate used for the Hobbit is only realistically possible with digital projectors. Mechanical projectors are all built to run film at the slower rate and upgrading them would be prohibitively expensive. So while high frame rate might be possible with analog tech, nobody will pay to make that tech. Digital projectors don't have the limits of analog projectors - they could potentially display films at even higher frame rates than the rate used in the Hobbit, but the value starts to diminish rapidly and then ceases to matter.\n\nThe human eye does not see an image continuously. Instead, the retina \"fires\" neurotransmitters to the optic nerve about once every 1/30th of a second. So the eye \"sees\" 30 \"frames\" a second. Anything that happens in between those fractions of a second isn't detectable. This concept is called \"persistence of vision\".\n\nFor most people, most of the time, a movie projected at 30 frames a second is the limit of their ability to detect changes between frames. Traditional movies are actually projected a little bit slower than this rate, but still, for most people, the \"flicker\" this causes is undetectable.\n\nSo the first thing the Hobbit's frame rate increase does is get to the point where *no human* can detect the flicker. There are enough frames being shown that your brain literally can't detect any more data and cannot detect the brief \"black\" moments between frames.\n\nIt turns out this has some meaningful effects.\n\nFirst, you can move a camera faster than it can capture images, creating distortions in the frames. Instead of a crisp image, you get \"motion blur\". The faster the frame rate, the faster you can move the camera without getting these distortions. There are scenes in the Hobbit movies that could not be captured or played back with traditional frame rates without losing a lot of image quality. (You probably haven't seen what this looks like because Hollywood movie cinematographers know how fast they can move their cameras to avoid the problem, and you rarely if ever see it in a mainstream movie [and if you do, it's often essentially a \"special effect\" and you're not supposed to know it's a problem anyway].\n\nSecond and related to the first, when an object moves in front of another object that is called \"parallax\". Even when the camera is moving slowly enough to keep the foreground from distorting, the relative speed of the background will be faster - sometimes much faster. To account for this, the cinematographer will use a lens with a plane of focus that keeps the foreground subject in sharp focus, but allow the background to become slightly (or very) out of focus. This effect is called \"bokeh\", and it's considered very desirable as it keeps the viewer's eye on the foreground image which is usually the character the director wants you to be looking at. At the high frame rates used in the Hobbit, the cinematographers were able to use lenses with deeper depths of field, keeping more of the scene in focus without motion distorting the background.\n\nThe result of this effect, ironically, was that the film looks \"cheaper\" to some viewers. The flatter, more in-focus images, which look more like what you would see if you were standing on set watching the scene, have qualities which are similar to those that are achieved by home video recording equipment and old video cameras. Those pieces of equipment tended to have very deep fields so that everyone at the birthday party was in focus without asking Mom or Dad to know much about optics. They could do that because the resolution of those images was fairly low, much lower than film - and with the lower resolution they could record at higher frame rates without getting too much motion blur.\n\nSo when people see the Hobbit for the first time, they may have the odd sensation of feeling like they're seeing something from a home-shot camcorder, or an old BBC TV series (the Beeb used a lot of videocameras for a lot of their shows). They're so used to the tricks and techniques used by Hollywood cinematographers to turn problems with motion and depth of field into aesthetically pleasing images that their brains have trouble seeing the improved quality of the Hobbit.\n\n[This drives me personally nuts. I **know** the picture is \"better\", but my brain keeps seeing it as \"cheap\". It will take a lot more movies using the format before the brains reprogram themselves - although I noted much less of this feeling in Desolation of Smaug compared to Unexpected Journey.)\n\nFinally, the Hobbit is not just shot at a higher frame rate. It's also shot at a higher resolution. Film is an analog system of course and doesn't use \"pixels\". Film captures very fine changes in color and extremely fine details. However the lenses used with film cameras and the film itself have various technical features which affect how much fine detail is captured for display. Motion picture lenses and film are designed to cope with a lot of motion and a wide range of lighting conditions and they typically sacrifice some fine detail.\n\nThe tech used in the Hobbit captures more of the fine details than the film that would be traditionally used in many of the kinds of shots seen in the movie. As a result, details on costumes and props became more noticeable than they normally are. There are stray hairs on actor's faces that would be invisible with traditional film, and marks and blemishes on props that would similarly not be seen. \n\nFor Unexpected Journey, Jackson left a lot of these kinds of details in the movie and many viewers either found them distracting or thought they made the sets, props and costumes look \"cheap\". Even though, knowing that they'd be capturing a higher level of detail, everything was actually made much more fine-detailed than for traditional filming. This, combined with the effect I described above regarding depth of field, contributed to many viewers feeling like the film was a lower-quality production.\n\nFor Desolation of Smaug I could tell that they had intentionally backed off the resolution in some scenes to achieve a more \"film like\" quality. It was a very subtle thing - and there are certainly a lot of parts of the film where you see all sorts of very fine details, so the production team didn't try to back it off everywhere. I think this is one reason there was so much less backlash to the 2nd film than the 1st.\n\nThe question of what it means for the future of movies is a very open one. Some people feel like Jackson is doing pioneering work and that he's right in that many future movies will be shot with this technology. It blows up real good to IMAX, for example, and IMAX has become a big profit center for theaters. On the other hand there is 80+ years of history and experience in Hollywood about how to light, shoot, and process film to get really beautiful images. Set, prop and costume designers know what will and won't show up on film. Makeup and hair stylists do to. Getting all the \"crafts\" to change and upgrade to take advantage of the improved qualities high frame rate offers may take some time and along the way there will be missteps - movies that are so shockingly bad that people will think the *tech* is bad, not just the craftsmanship.\n\nIf I had to bet, I would bet Jackson is right. Digital is the future, no matter what. And once theaters go digital and filmmakers get comfortable with digital they'll start doing things on screen that simply couldn't be done with film. The barrels on the river scene in Desolation, for example, couldn't have been shot on film - the fast camera moves and swooping \"point of view\" effects would simply not work without the high frame rate process.",
"Faster frame rates (to a point) make the action in videos look more smooth. Since The Hobbit used a faster frame rate than the other movies you see in a theater, people notice how smooth it looks. The problem is that since we're all so used to slower frame rates, many people perceive the faster frame rate to look more 'fake', so they say that they prefer the slower frame rate. Frame rate can also affect how we perceive special effects.. a faster frame rate might make us notice subtle things about special effects that we might not otherwise notice, so the movie again seems more 'fake'.. when you notice the special effects, it breaks your 'suspension of reality' (meaning, you stop being engulfed in the movie, and instead suddenly realize that you're sitting in a theater, watching a movie). Breaking your suspension of reality can really wreck a movie.\n\nThe issue with a lot of people thinking that higher FPS = more 'fake' looking movies is that it will lead to slower adoption of what is actually a more realistic way to see a movie. The goal for movies should really be getting as close to reality as possible. So basically, resolution that's high enough for us not to notice any pixels, 3D with enough depth to seem like it's real life (without any headaches or glasses or anything else that makes you realize you're watching a movie), colors that appear completely life-like, and a screen that lets us see only the movie, and no edges (or anything else outside of the screen, for that matter).\n\nEvery time someone says, \"I don't like higher FPS movies\" or, \"I don't like 3D,\" it impedes our progress toward more realistic movies. Since most people ended up not liking the higher FPS in The Hobbit (mainly since they weren't used to higher FPS movies), that means that we're less likely to see other high-FPS movies in the near future, because studios aren't going to spend the money switching to higher-FPS movies if it doesn't help them make more money. Lame.",
"A shorter answer from a slightly different angle: \n\nWe're all used to constant improvements and developments in image quality - like megapixel cameras, or IMAX format film - that provide more detail and resolution due to the increased scale or pixel count. High Frame Rate (HFR) addresses the TEMPORAL quality of film - not just how our eye sees detail, but how it perceives motion. \n\nThe 24fps standard for film was originally an economic decision: Film stock is expensive, so how few frames of film can we use and get away with it? 24fps is on the low end of what's 'acceptable.' So the standard is just what we're accustomed to, which I believe (as a VFX artist) is where the majority of the resistance stems from.\n\nWhat it means for future movies, should it be widely adopted, is that other aspects of film-making will have to catch up. Prosthetics, make-up, props, and VFX have all adapted to the 24fps look, which is WAY more forgiving than 48fps in Hobbit (or potentially 60fps in the Avatar sequels). The 'fake' look people criticize is partially due to the novelty of the higher frame rate, but also comes from the additional detail people can now notice in the props, costumes, prosthetics, etc. - even at high motion. So background and make-up artists will have to up their game now that every blemish and seam can be picked up by the viewer, much more so than ever before.\n\nCinematically, it will also open up Directors to use new camera moves in 3D. A sideways dolly with extreme FG elements, for example, was considered unacceptable because the FG elements would 'strobe' too much to be considered acceptable in the camera move (travelling more distance than the 24fps would allow for persistence of motion). This sort of framing and motion now becomes available due to the increased frame rate.",
"Even SHORTER ELI5 answer.\n\nInstead of improving the quality of the picture through image size, high frame rate improves it by giving you more images over time. \n\nWhat it means for future movies: Other aspects of the film-making process - like make-up, VFX, and costumes - will now have to add more detail and precision on their side, since every blemish and seam can now be seen by the viewer, even at high motion.",
"Wow, most upvoted would get a 5 year old bored in the first parragraph.\n\nWhat you see in a movie is a bunch of pictures moving really fast, around 24-30 per second. But our eyes can really notice that it isn't quite real (although we choose to not notice). The last hobbit movie had way more images per second, looking more realistic, which is great... but some people didn't like it because it didn't look \"like a movie\"; it looked like actors moving on a set.\n\nWhat does it mean for future movies? Well, as with everything, it means we have the ability to make things more realistic. That doesn't mean we WANT to though. Not every painter is a hyper-realist.",
"It's honestly all about motion blur. Wave you hand in front of you face you won't see individual fingers, you see the motion blur of your hand.\n\nWhen a camera records film at the native rate of 24fps (actually 23.976) it replicates what you eye sees naturally. \n\nWhen a camera records at 30fps or 60fps and played back at 30fps and 60fps you have more information, you will see less motion blur; therefore looking less natural. When you up the frame rate you also have to adjust the shutter, which also lowers motion blur intensity by exposing the film for less time. Think of a still picture of moving cars at night. Exposing at 1/24 of a second, the tail lights will have a streak. Exposing the same image at 1/60 of a second will have less of a light streak if not any. \n\nIf you record 60fps or 120fps and playback at 24fps you now have slow-motion. Doing the opposite recording 15fps and playing back at 24fps will have the fast \"Benny Hill\" motion. Or the Wonders Years intro 8mm look. 8mm typically being shot at 16fps. \n\nThe first motion photography movie came about due to a theory of rather or not when a horse ran all of its feet left the ground. _URL_0_\n\nReading the article you will see they used 24 cameras to capture a horse running. Which gave them 24 still pictures or frames. Essentially freezing motion they could look at each individual frame and see each foot. It was after this, that flipping through them like a flip book the illusion of motion was witnessed, thus giving birth to motion photography. If they had 60 cameras giving them 60 still frames, they would see almost double the amount of movement in the same amount of time. You would not only see the foot leave the grown but the muscle contract and lift, dirt getting kicked up etc. \n\nMore information sometimes could be good a good thing. Seeing ballistic characteristics of a bullet, how dummies in a car crash react, your favorite QB crumbling to ground as he is sacked. But squeezing all that info into the same 1 second could seem a little unnatural. \n\nThe decision for cinematographers to originally use 24fps is derived to replicate what your eyes sees naturally. The basic and most simplistic idea of the camera and film is to replica the human eye. You have a lens (eye) that has an aperture (iris) that opens and closes allowing light through to the film reacting with silver halide which acts like your cones and rods. \n\nAs to what this will do for the future of film...In my opinion, absolutely nothing. We've seen the rise and fall of 3d twice, we seen hits come from hand held VHS cam like Blair Witch, 28 days later, [REC], Paranormal Activity even cut scenes from Pulp Fiction make use of low quality looks. Digital, 35mm, 16mm, IMAX large format 70mm, VHS, it doesn't mater. It's just another paint brush, another medium. Some works are better oil on canvas, others water color...that is why cinematography and film making an art form. You pick the camera, film stock, lens, light, color, and of course frame rate that best push the story forward in achieving the directors vision. \n"
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ebn6sa | what do the numbers in the cpu stand for? like i7-9700 vs the i7-8700 vs the i5-8600/9600? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ebn6sa/eli5_what_do_the_numbers_in_the_cpu_stand_for/ | {
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"Whatever the manufacturer wants, really.\n\nFor Intel, the general idea is i3 = budget, i5 = good, i7 = high end, i9 = top of the line. The bigger the number after that, the more powerful.\n\nThey've been around for a long time so it's hard to deduce anything specific from the number, like the number of cores. and i7 will definitely have more than an i3, but now many exactly varies.\n\nAlso different uses have different trade-offs. Less cores in some cases might actually better. In other cases, the more cores, the better. If you're concerned about performance you should really find benchmarks of whatever you're interested in -- games, 3D rendering, etc, and deciding based on that.",
"It explains the generation and tier.\n\nSo i5 is the intermediary\n\n8600 means it's from the 8th generation, 600 means is the best from the i5s (you also have the i5 8400, same generation but a bit weaker). The 9600 is the next generation.\n\ni7 is high class (though there's also the i9), and the rest is the same, 9 is because is generation number 9, 700 because is the stronger.\n\nYou also have letters sometimes at the end. K means you can overclock, F it means that doesn't have integrated graphics (meaning you need a GPU for the PC to work).",
"They are Intel model numbers. Basically it means whatever the marketing department at Intel wants them to mean. Generally bigger numbers is better, or at least more expensive. It could be because the parts are newer, have more cores or cache, or better quality, but that may not always bet the case. In general i3 is the brand used for low end CPUs, i5 for normal desktop CPUs, i7 for businesses and high end consumers and i9 for top of the line CPUs. The rest of the numbers can mean anything the marketing department wants however the first digit is generally the generation number of the Intel Core architecture.",
"For both types of CPU, Intel and AMD, the modern cpu designations follow a trend.\n\nFor intel, i3-i5-i7-i9, are general grades of CPU, the total cores normally.\n\nthe first of the 4 digit number for both main brands, is generation, Intel's range of this number model have held for longer though, so where an intel i9-9900 would be ninth generation of intel core, an AMD ryzen 3900 is roughly the same age and quality, despite being the third generation of ryzen cpu.\n\nThe second digit number, which on the previous example is a 9 for both, means sub grade. Where for example: with intel a 9500 is the lowest model, and a 9900 would be the highest model of cpu in the ninth generation.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nTl;Dr: i number is budget, first number is generation, second number is strength of the model."
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2x4bxm | why is the keystone xl pipeline more controversial than other pipelines? i know that the oil is dirtier than other types if oil, but is there another reason? don't we have lots of other pipelines all over the u.s. carrying oil and natural gas. noone seems to be against those. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2x4bxm/eli5_why_is_the_keystone_xl_pipeline_more/ | {
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"Mostly just politics. This particular one has come into the public eye so Politicians on both sides have taken very public vocal sides. I honestly don't know if it is a good idea or a bad idea, and I bet the politicians arguing it don't either.",
"It crosses the border, and so needs a different type of government approval than other ones do.\n\nPlenty of people don't like other pipelines either, but if they already exist, or don't need presidential approval, there is less to publicly fight over.",
"The fact that a foreign company is trying to use eminent domain to force landowners to accept the pipeline crossing their land is one reason, another is that it is suspected that little to none of that oil would be used domestically in the United States when one of the arguments for is \"increased energy independence (ignoring that even if we used the oil, it's still foreign).\""
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7dxg5x | can you explain the genetic process behind height, and why a tall parent with a short partner is more likely to produce average or marginally shorter off spring? | I'm curious as my grand father on my dads side was 6'6 while his wife 5'2, and my grand father on my moms side was 6'4 while his wife 5'4. Resulting mostly in kids who were in the 5'10- 5'11 range, and my dad himself was 6'1 3/4 and my mom who is 5'8.
So, if you could provide a simplified explanation of the gene and processes that determine height, and explain why the height of their children tends to lean shorter not taller.
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7dxg5x/eli5_can_you_explain_the_genetic_process_behind/ | {
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"I believe there are many genes that influence your height. You get a combination from both parents, and sometimes you’ll get complimentary genes that produce children taller than their parents, and sometimes you’ll get a combination that produce children that do not grow as tall as the taller parent. These are genes that are involved in development, so they’re not simply about height but the length of time your bones grow and how early or late they start, and many other switches. \n\nAlso, your height isn’t simply defined by your genes, it also is affected by childhood nutrition and diseases. See the article which discusses the subject:\n\n_URL_0_\n“The short answer to this question is that about 60 to 80 percent of the difference in height between individuals is determined by genetic factors, whereas 20 to 40 percent can be attributed to environmental effects, mainly nutrition.”\n\n"
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9wdvf3 | what does it mean when the rule of thirds is intentionally being subverted? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9wdvf3/eli5_what_does_it_mean_when_the_rule_of_thirds_is/ | {
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"The \"rule\" is more of a convention but we are that used to it that it makes us feel uneasy when it's broken. So if it is being deliberately broken then the intention is to create feelings such as mystery, suspense, unease, tension etc."
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ehbaj9 | why are ‘highway kilometres’ better than ‘city kilometres’ for your car? | I’m buying my first car used and many people list that they have driven mostly on the highway etc... I’m so confused about how highway driving impacts a car differently in comparison to city driving!
Thanks in advance! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ehbaj9/eli5_why_are_highway_kilometres_better_than_city/ | {
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"City driving involves a lot of starting and stopping with short trips. Motors tend to suffer the most wear when they are cold, and wear more when revs are constantly changing than when they are steady. In the city you're also using the brakes, steering, and transmission a whole lot more.\n\nHighway driving is long trips, on (usually) smooth roads, where it's all pretty much a straight line with only light to moderate braking. It allows your motor to warm up and just sit at the rev range where it is most efficient for most of the drive.",
"Engine life is measured in mega revs. A mega rev is one million revolutions of an engine. When driving on city streets your revs are constantly changing. During acceleration your car is going to hit let's say 3500-4000 rpm before shifting it shifts, the revs drop and then rise again on the way to the next gear. Because you are doing this constantly during stop and go driving your engine will have done many more revolutions to cover one mile in the city than it would have on a highway in 5th or 6th gear at 1500ish revs. A city mile could mean as much as twice the amount of wear on an engine than a highway mile might. Then you have the added stress on other components that comes with all of the other usual nastiness that comes with driving on city streets."
]
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[],
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61kd5a | how the average person would benefit in no way, or support, repealing laws surrounding the sale of their data, yet it happens anyway? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61kd5a/eli5_how_the_average_person_would_benefit_in_no/ | {
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"You might need to edit that question so that it makes sense. I can only guess at what you are asking.",
"Most people don't know or don't care.\n\nA lot of very large, very rich corporations will benefit. Corporations fund political campaigns. So voting for something your funders want, and your voters don't care about, is a no-brainer."
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26svdo | the difference between a deduction and an inference. | Title. People always seem to give really complex answers when asked about the difference.
Edit: Thanks for the explanations! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26svdo/eli5_the_difference_between_a_deduction_and_an/ | {
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"A deduction is where you take several statements or facts and say, \"You said you went to medical school, work in a hospital, and you saw a person you referred to as a 'patient'. I deduce that you are a doctor.\" It is an educated guess, that is probably correct.\n\nAn inference is less concrete. \"You said you were a doctor, from that I infer that you are intelligent, care about people, and work in a hospital.\"\n\nThink of a deduction as taking a lot of information, and distilling it down to one fact, an inference is the opposite, take one fact, and extrapolate it out into several inferences.\n\nDeduction = Fact X + Fact Y + Fact Z = A\n\nInfrence = A (therefore I assume) Fact X, Fact Y, and Fact Z.",
"Deduction is something a mathematician does when she proves a thing, using strict rules and meanings of symbols. Correct deductions are always true.\n\nInference is something a statistician does when she inspects a set of data. It involves throwing many different kinds of simplification at a problem and identifying the patterns which are evidence of the system that generated the data in the first place.\n\nWhen Sherlock Holmes reasons about things, he is in fact inferring. He uses a vast storage of data (past cases, strange facts of the human condition, knowledge of tobacco ash) and combines it with the data at hand (the crime scene) and forms several possible patterns, or hypotheses, on what underlying process (crime) actually made this data.\n\nTo summarise: Any time there is large data sets and probabilities involved, any time you guess - even educated guesses - it is Inference. Any time there is strict rules of conduct and a very specific area of investigation, and only one right answer, it is Deduction.\n\nDon't let philosophers tell you otherwise.\n\nSource: self-study in AI, proof theory and statistics."
]
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[],
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2shjqt | why does comcast agree to broadcast commercials for competitors like dish? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2shjqt/eli5_why_does_comcast_agree_to_broadcast/ | {
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"It isn't Comcast that's broadcasting the commercials, it's the television networks. To demand that networks stop running ads for a competitor, Comcast risks losing that network from its channel line up, so it's not really worth the trouble (especially if it's a popular network)."
]
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||
z8358 | why oil and gold control world economy | Why is the world economy dependent on prices of oil and gold and not something else | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/z8358/eli5_why_oil_and_gold_control_world_economy/ | {
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"Transport is an important part of a country's economy. If all the oil were to suddenly disappear in your country, it would be a major problem.\n\n* Food, goods, materials - they wouldn't show up in the stores\n* Most people will be unable to get to work\n* The army would be reduced to foot soldiers, they are suddenly weakened\n* A lot of plastic products won't be made anymore\n\nSo you can see that a lot of aspects of your daily life depend on oil.\n\nAs for gold, it is a precious metal. There are many precious metals but traditionally, gold has been the main choice. It is seen as a way of protecting investments. If the price of gold is going up, it means investors are scared and are trying to protect their money by investing in gold. When it goes down, the economy is healthy and investors are happily spending elsewhere. \n\nCurrencies used to depend on the gold a country had, but I don't believe that is true any more.",
"The world economy is *not* dependent on the price of gold. It used to be, and people with certain agendas like to pretend it still is, but today the price of gold is no more relevant than the price of platinum or titanium or diamonds.\n\nThe world economy is dependent on oil for the reasons iamapizza stated."
]
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ci3sbf | what exactly happens when old elastic gets crusty and loose ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ci3sbf/eli5_what_exactly_happens_when_old_elastic_gets/ | {
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"This is a chemical process. To understand it you have to first understand a bit about the chemical structures that makes elastic stretchy.\n\nAll polymer plastics consist of long molecule chains. Think really really long pieces of string that get all tangled up with each other. The way they get tangled depends on the chain lengths and kind. (Think ropes with knots in them versus normal string). Elastics have a bunch of the chains loosely bound together most of the time, so when you pull they get bound together more tightly and resist.\n\nThere are two major pathways for polymer degradation: thermal and oxidative. (This is a gross simplification, but close enough for a reddit comment).\n\nIn thermal degradation, the elastic can crystalize and become more regular. Rather than being loosely bound together, the chains become tightly packed and get harder to stretch. They may break instead.\n\nIn oxidative degradation, exposure to oxygen, ozone (from fluorescent lights usually), or UV light causes the chains to chemically degrade. They may get shorter (and so not bind well with other chains), or they might “cross link” where they form chemical bonds to neighboring chains so they can’t slip past other chains. In both cases, the elastic properties will change and become more brittle and less springy.\n\nThis is very simplified, but I hope it makes sense."
]
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[]
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||
6bopoh | what does paying my tv licence actually pay for these days? (uk) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6bopoh/eli5what_does_paying_my_tv_licence_actually_pay/ | {
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"The TV licence fee is a tax collected by the BBC and primarily used to fund the radio, television and online services of the BBC itself."
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||
1z25y7 | making money on a falling stock market | I briefly heard of a strategy where people actually make money from a fall of prices in the stock market. What is that strategy is, and can you explain it? I think its called "under cutting" or "under selling".
Not really sure of the exact name. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z25y7/eli5making_money_on_a_falling_stock_market/ | {
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"Short selling.\n\nThe \"normal\" way of doing things is to buy a stock, wait for the price to go up, and sell it. Short selling involves selling stock, waiting for the price to go down, and then buying it back. You do this either by borrowing someone else's stock to sell, or you can actually just have negative stock for a while (called \"naked shorting\").",
"I believe you're referring to \"shorting\" or \"short selling\".\n\nLet's say that you think that a stock will drop in value. In that case, what you might do is *borrow* some stock from me, for a fee. But it's still just borrowing, and you have to give the equivalent number of shares back to me at the end of the loan period. See, I'm betting on the price not changing much, and so I'm just out to make a quick buck by lending my shares, but I ultimately want to keep them.\n\nSo back to you. You take these shares that I loaned you, and you turn around and sell them. You're anticipating that the price will drop, and you will then be able to buy the equivalent number of shares back for a lower price before the loan period is up. Your goal is to sell those shares at at a high price, and buy them back low enough to offset the fee I'm charging you and make some extra money in the process.\n\nSo if the stock falls in value, you make money. But f it *doesn't* fall in value, you're kind of screwed, because you still have to return the stock to me, and now you're out the fee *plus* the lost value from having to to-repurchase the stocks at a higher price.",
"It's called shorting the market. Let's say the stock price for a company is currently $50 per share. If you think that price is too high, you can \"short\" the stock by borrowing shares of that stock from someone else that currently owns the stock. As soon as you borrow the stock, you sell it for the $50 a share price. If your hunch is right, and the share price drops to $30 per share, you can then buy the stock at $30 a share, return that stock to the person that initially loaned it to you at $50 per share, and you will have made $20 in the process. Of course, if the price goes up you'll end up losing money because it'll end up costing more to buy replacement shares for the stock you borrowed. "
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2ltfn9 | would it be possible to knock an asteroid into our atmosphere, and lock it in like a satellite? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ltfn9/eli5_would_it_be_possible_to_knock_an_asteroid/ | {
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"If it were in our atmosphere, air resistance would decay its orbit pretty quickly and then it would just fall to Earth.\n\nBut capturing an asteroid and inserting it into an orbit outside the atmosphere seems plausible eventually, if not practical right now."
]
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3t9uwy | what could happen if a government stopped printing money? | Maybe just for a period of time, such as one year.
Hope this isn't too hypothetical, I'd just like to know the possible effects. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3t9uwy/eli5_what_could_happen_if_a_government_stopped/ | {
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"Rules say please don't speculate so what DEFINITELY would happen is that (I'll say U.S. currency since that's where I'm from) the dollar would become stronger over that period of time. Manufacturing costs would effect consumerism and things like taxes on imports/exports would drastically change as well. \n\nI'm 100% positive there are tons more ramifications due to banks insuring money and the wealthy not redistributing wealth and things like that...but I'm not an economist. ",
"Governments don't print money... In the US, the [FED](_URL_1_) (Federal Reserve) does. In the EU the [ECB](_URL_0_) (European Central Bank), the UK is special with it's own moneymachine [The Bank of England](_URL_2_).\n\nDon't know what not printing any more money would bring... I guess people would start to use their own solution if shit goes wrong..",
"The answer depends on what you're asking.\n\nIf you're asking, \"what happens if we don't add any money to the monetary base (the collective sum of currency in the market) for the period of year\", the answer depends on the current economic conditions. If the economy has been expanding, then this could lead to deflation. But if the economy is shrinking then this could lead to inflation. Central banks are constantly monitoring how much currency is in the system, and taking money out of it or putting money into it. Keeping the monetary base constant for a period of time is not unheard of, but it depends on the underlying conditions.\n\nBut if the question is if the government stopped printing physical money for a year, this would probably have very little effect in the long run. As mentioned by others, the main purpose of printing money - as opposed to monitoring how much should be in the economy - is to replace old money, which is increasingly getting replaced by electronic funds. Also, the amount of physical currency that people actually use on a daily basis is small compared to the total money in a system.\n\nFor clarification: in the US, the US Mint (under the US Treasury) prints money to make sure there is enough in circulation for the purposes of physical money. The Federal Reserve (the US Central bank) makes sure that there is the appropriate amount of money in the economy as a whole."
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"http://www.federalreserve.gov",
"http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/Pages/home.aspx"
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35mtb1 | how do countries with extensive maternity/paternity leave cover those individuals' job positions until they come back to work? | And how do companies/business owners feel about it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35mtb1/eli5_how_do_countries_with_extensive/ | {
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"They hire a temporary worker, or divide those tasks between existing employees.\n\nEmployers probably find it to be a chore, but there are lots of other chores, like vacations, benefits, and safe work environments, they there are accustomed to doing as a part of business."
]
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4a7ex8 | why do people on reddit put things like "edit: spelling mistakes" when they could have just corrected them and not told everyone about it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4a7ex8/eli5_why_do_people_on_reddit_put_things_like_edit/ | {
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"Comments that are edited after a certain period of time have an asterisk next to the posting time to indicate they are edited. Now, many times people do edit for spelling/grammar/content without noting it and it isn't a big deal. But it's useful to note for at least two reasons:\n\n1. I make a comment and one of the replies convinces me I was wrong, they provided additional useful information, or even I just wanted to make a blanket response to a large number of similar responses.\n\n2. It discourages people from making comments like \"I think kittens are the cutest!\" and then when 100 people reply with \"I agree\" the OP changes the comment to say \"I think Hitler did nothing wrong!\"\n\n\nBut it's primarily #1.",
"Sometimes people edit their post to say something different than before. For example, I could post \"Bernie Sanders is the best\" then get 100 upvotes and supportive comments, and then edit it to say \"Donald Trump is the best.\" Reddit indicates when a comment has been edited, so posters often write why they edited the comment. Edit: spelling mistakes means that they didn't edit it for some nefarious or misleading purpose.",
"[It's part of reddiquette](_URL_0_).\n > **State your reason for any editing of posts.** Edited submissions are marked by an asterisk (*) at the end of the timestamp after three minutes. For example: a simple \"Edit: spelling\" will help explain. This avoids confusion when a post is edited after a conversation breaks off from it. If you have another thing to add to your original comment, say \"Edit: And I also think...\" or something along those lines.",
"For me, it's an old habit from my forum days when after an edit a post would have a time stamp to show it was edited.\n\nSince people could see that a post was edited, it became customary to say why you edited.\n\n",
"1. Make a funny or witty comment.\n\n2. Wait until people upvote you (or even give you gold).\n\n3. Edit your comment to \"HITLER DID NOTHING WRONG\".\n\n4. ????\n\n5. Profit",
"if people have commented on the spelling mistake it can get confusing if you just directly edit it."
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1l4pqs | why is the united states considering getting involved in the syrian conflict? | Like, how would the USA benefit? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l4pqs/eli5_why_is_the_united_states_considering_getting/ | {
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"I'm not sure the US would directly benefit.\n\nBut we have a general motivation to restrict the use of chemical weapons and we have stated that we would take some sort of action if chemical weapons were used. It seems pretty clear that's happened and so we're at a point now where we either do **something** or we basically okay the use of chemical weapons against civilians, which we're not willing to do.",
"International law states that chemical and biological weapons should never be used. If Assad drops sarin on his own people and nothing is done, what precedent does that set for other countries?\n\nSome of the Syrian rebels have ties to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. No doubt the US is concerned that these chemical weapons could potentially wind up in the wrong hands.\n\nIn my opinion, I find it unlikely that we would invade Syria with an Army. If we were to get involved, we'd use drones and smart missiles like we did in Libya.",
"Lots of political questions on here lately. Hard to answer these without being too biased. This is one of those things where you'll have to sort through lots of information and figure out what you believe.\n\nI'll state for the record that I am against US involvement in Syria, but I think I also have a pretty good understanding of the reasons for becoming involved.\n\nThere is more than just a single reason the US wants to get involved in Syria, so I will try to break it down into pieces.\n\nStrategy (geopolitics):\n\n- The United States has been trying to keep the middle east under control for decades now. Part of this is because of its strategic alliance with Israel, part of this is because the US sees the middle east as the source of all of its problems with the 'war on terror' and partly because of economic interests in the area (oil mostly). \n\n- Syria is part of a much bigger 'game' being played by the major world powers. As part of this struggle, each power is trying to gain powerful countries within each major 'region' in order to try to influence that region's politics and economics. Assad and the government of Syria have been allies with Russia for a long time, and represent a big part of Russia's attempts to gain control of the middle east (Iran potentially being the other). Russia has ALWAYS been trying to gain control of the middle east, or at least parts of it. This goes back to the 9th century and probably even earlier. This could be a major opportunity to deprive Russia of influence in the region and gain a US ally (if things don't go horribly wrong, as they have in the past).\n\n- The US wants to prevent Syria from becoming a 'failed state'. If it looks as though Assad will lose, the US might support one of the 'better' rebel factions to prevent 'worse' rebel factions from winning the country and taking over. This is part of the US's strategy in the global war on terror.\n\n-Economics\n\n-Many people will say the US is going into Syria for oil. This seems like a compelling argument but probably isn't true. Syria has had a great deal of oil in the past but seems to be running out. Its oil production has been decreasing lately and Syria is now an oil importing nation. If this is the real reason, the US government can't do the basic math it would take to show that the oil in Syria won't be worth the money. However, if you make the argument that controlling Syria is part of a bigger effort to control the entire middle east and the oil in the region, the argument might make more sense.\n\nHuman Rights:\n\n- I honestly don't think the US' efforts in the Mid East are completely selfish. I think many in the US government see what is happening in Syria and want to help. There are many in the US government who still feel the US military can be used as a force for good in the world. \nBoth the Syrian government and the rebels have been proven to have committed horrible human rights abuses. The citizens of Syria are genuinely suffering and the situation is becoming a major human rights crisis. I imagine plenty of people in the US government feel they are obligated to do something to help, and part of this needs to involve the US military. The UN seems to be looking for a way to stop the violence in Syria, but simply does not have the kind of power that would be necessary to do anything. Also, because Russia has a permanent seat the on UN security council, the UN will be completely powerless to interfere.\n",
"Eh, I don't think it's so much the benefits right now as that the tragedy of it and now the chemical weapons. Maybe I'm just not cynical enough. That's not to say that there aren't possible benefits, but I don't think that's outweighs the fact that people (yes, even politicians) are seeing something horrible happening and want to resolve it. Granted, often you have to sell it by also pairing moral/ethical reasons with political/economic benefits but I don't think that invalidates the fact that most people who are for intervention probably have less selfish reasons foremost in mind.\n\nBut, eh, possible benefits? Making an example that chemical weapons will not be tolerated. We haven't had a great relationship with Assad. A chance to make a new ally in the middle-east. Weaken Russia's influence since Assad is once of Russia's few friends in the region."
]
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274336 | why do guitars often get out of tune in a higher pitch? wouldn't the strings tend to get looser? | I notice if I don't play my guitar for a few weeks the strings are all a half step higher. how can that happen without tighening the strings. I would expect the strings to loosen rather than tighten if left alone for s week ar two. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/274336/eli5_why_do_guitars_often_get_out_of_tune_in_a/ | {
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"text": [
"When strings stretch, they get thinner, which results in higher pitch. Be sure to properly stretch your strings after putting on a new set and you should have better pitch retention."
]
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6qgkk3 | why do we have to pee 'on' things? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qgkk3/eli5_why_do_we_have_to_pee_on_things/ | {
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"It's likely from old instincts of marking territory. Not only do you want others to know you're around but you want to them to know you're big and bad, that's why dogs raise their legs to pee (male dog's), it's to show off their size and how heigh they could pee. A flat surface doesn't let us show that. ",
"I actually have no problems peeing in the middle of the field, quite liberating actually, you can pee everywhere you want! ;-)\nI also never understood why people can't per when someone is standing next to them..",
"Ladies try not to pee on things. We try not to pee on our legs, our feet, our pants or underwear, and we lean forward to avoid the \"flow to the back\". ",
"I believe that having to pee on things is not a strong desire. For animals it is much more so, but only for territorial animals (for example: wolves). Way long long long ago we shared a common relative with these territorial animals, and as we have changed over millions of years to become humans today we still retain a minor desire to do so. \n\nThe desire to pee on things comes from the part of your brain that's referred to as \"primitive\", just meaning it hasn't changed much over many many generations. However, a big part of what made us humans is the part of the brain called the frontal cortex. If you grab your forehead that portion of your brain underneath your skull is the frontal cortex. The frontal cortex is what makes you able to problem solve, think about thinking, and do all the other smart things you do. \n\nThe frontal cortex is very powerful and can overide the primitive desires we get from the primitive part of the brain. So if you're not thinking about it you may feel the want to pee on an object, but if you think about peeing your frontal cortex can make you more creative about it. I like to pee of flat surfaces and make designs, pee off cliffs, and pee on the edge of the toilet bowl (to minimize noise). \n\ntldr: if you don't think about peeing you'll find yourself peeing on things, but if you think about peeing you'll be more creative with how you pee.",
"I see it as the same reason why people cant sit in a waiting room without a book or their phones in their face. If there is a chance to entertain yourself you're going to do it. When standing up and peeing outside, just standing there and peeing is boring. Doing some target practice is not. Why would I make peeing boring when I can make it fun."
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70pe2b | why does the military use mostly propellar aircrafts for cargo instead of jets? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70pe2b/eli5_why_does_the_military_use_mostly_propellar/ | {
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"Prop-driven aircraft are generally cheaper to produce and maintain. Jets give obvious advantages for smoothness, speed, and altitude. But for a cargo plane, ability to land/take off in a shorter distance, to fly slower and at a lower altitude efficiently, and ability to do all of this with heavy load is more important. ",
"Propeller planes, in a military sense, are designed to serve the battlefield in a tactical environment. Prop planes can take off from short, unimproved runways, delivering personnel and supplies closer to the front lines. Jets are more strategic in nature, carrying personnel and supplies over a longer distance. I will say that the C17, the most recent cargo jet, can serve both tactical and strategic missions. Jets also have a larger capacity, delivering cargo and personnel to larger logistic centers, where the payload is off loaded and put on the smaller prop planes for delivery closer to the front. The final delivery is often made by ground vehicles and helicopters."
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7nx99j | how does a split-brain work when the corpus callosum connecting the two brain halves has been removed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7nx99j/eli5_how_does_a_splitbrain_work_when_the_corpus/ | {
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"While the corpus callosum itself has been severed, both sides of the brain still have their connections to the rest of the body. As a result, activities originating in one side of the brain but not the other can't really interact, as demonstrated in [Sperry's experiments](_URL_0_), but those activities can still be carried out. ",
"The brain halves can still connect to each other, but only through secondary means. Basically, through the nervous system. Each half gets feedback from the nerves, and then they reconcile things with each other from the information they're getting instead of having a direct connection. It's not ideal, but in epileptic patients who had it severed for medical reasons or in people who suffer from a physical deformity it's better than no connection."
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||
2i20ou | if water pressure behind household taps is continuous, why doesn't the pressure build up and up until the taps are forced off? | I wondered this specifically because if a tap is removed while water to a house is on, there is usually a massive ongoing geyser of water until the water is turned off. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i20ou/eli5_if_water_pressure_behind_household_taps_is/ | {
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"Water is noncompressible. And it's not like there is a compressor or even a pump behind it. It's just gravity. Weight is causing the pressure. That's why you have water towers or water tanks up on a hill.",
"It's a constant pressure, but not a constantly *increasing* pressure.\n\nImagine that you're pushing on a locked door with some amount of force. When someone finally unlocks the door and turns the handle, it'll go flying open because of your push. But if the door is never opened, you won't cause it to burst into splinters just because you keep pushing on it with the same pressure."
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31cwr3 | i gave two pints of blood and saline was pumped back into me. how does my body know to make extra rbcs to replace them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31cwr3/eli5_i_gave_two_pints_of_blood_and_saline_was/ | {
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"When your kidneys notice that they aren't getting enough oxygen, as is the case when there aren't enough red blood cells, they produce a hormone called [erythropoetin](_URL_0_), or EPO. EPO tells your bone marrow to generate new red blood cells. When the kidneys start getting enough oxygen, they stop producing the EPO and the bone marrow, in turn, stops producing more red blood cells. (The EPO itself breaks down after a while, preventing a \"dose\" of it from perpetually causing new red blood cells to be created.)\n\nInjecting EPO is one of the ways that athletes dope their blood."
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88qoi0 | how did a rocket with the computing power of a calculator get people to and from the moon? | I can’t even get my WiFi to work, but we got to the moon with IT that had less computing power than some toasters today. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/88qoi0/eli5_how_did_a_rocket_with_the_computing_power_of/ | {
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"Because almost none of the mission was controlled by that computer. It had fairly simple tasks to do. Most of the mission was pre-computed, and further computing was done on the ground at Mission Control.",
"Same question will be asked in the future: how did people get to work when they didn't have self-driving cars?\n\nThe answer is: the rocket had a [control panel](_URL_0_) full of switches that allowed the astronauts to control every detail and performance of the rocket manually, and they piloted themselves to the moon and back. With the help of Houston Control, which basically had additional people monitor various aspects of the rocket, and provide brain power / calculations when necessary.\n\nIt's all brain power, math done by hand, physics calculations done by hand, and training, lots of training. Astronauts were/are usually Air Force or Navy pilots, and they had / go through extra training for things like navigating by the sun / moon (without instruments), or for the various controls that a space shuttle or rocket has, etc.",
"Because the computing power of a calculator is all they needed. \n\nAs a side note you would probably be surprised how \"ancient\" the computers in space and military vehicles are even compared to the old computer you threw out years ago. They are designed to do one thing well, and do it reliably for decades. The less complexities there are in the system, the less chances of something going wrong.",
"Because you didn't need a lot of computer power (by today's standards) to get to the moon. And most of what you needed could be precalculated, spending hours or even weeks to get the numbers you need.\n\nAlso, it is disingenuous to say the \"power of a calculator\". They aren't talking about simple 4-function calculators, they mean programmable calculators, like the venerable [HP 15C](_URL_0_), are sophisticated computers in their own right, and can perform a wide variety of advanced mathematical calculations. That's like saying a computer from the 1990s was less powerful than a telephone. Today's smartphones are advanced computers that just happen to have phones attached to them. "
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4ujuv9 | how come we can't send a spaceship to other planets and back? | With all the different types of advanced propulsion techniques that are available e.g. solar sails/ion blasters/etc
They're sending probes to other planets and i understand they just cant send someone there without knowing what to expect, but can't we just get *close*?... And then come back? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ujuv9/eli5how_come_we_cant_send_a_spaceship_to_other/ | {
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"We could. But: \n\nThere are still several unsolved problems, mostly involving a deadly buildup of radiation. Closely related to the problem of space being really REALLY big and it taking ages to get anywhere.\n\nIt would be expensive. Like crazy expensive. Super incredibly mega-expensive.\n\nWhen I say we \"could\" that still involves decades of R & D to fine-tune existing ideas and actually build them\n\nThere's basically no reason to do so whatsoever other than \"huzzah, humanity can fly this far out into space\".",
"A few reasons\n\n1. It's really expensive. Probes aren't nearly as heavy as capsules and life support etc\n\n2. It takes a really really long time. Like a mission to Mars just there and back would take much much longer than a year. \n\n3. You have to give the crew some way to relax and also a way to eat etc which means the ship will be super heavy so super big and expensive \n\n4. Radiation is a huge problem in inter solar space and we haven't really figured out exactly how to prevent it. I mean you could coat the entire ship in 10 inches of lead, but that would be super expensive and super heavy \n\n5. There isn't a lot of public desire to do so. This means NASA isn't getting the money they need to make these expensive ventures possible.",
"It's not just a matter of propulsion, it's also time, food, isolation and many other things. Also money.\n\nWe probably have the ability to send people to Mars, the problem is it would likely cost an extravagant amount of money to take a long time to send a bunch of people to their deaths. We still haven't quite figured out how to feed a bunch of astronauts along the journey -- packing all the food would increase the weight to the point where the mass of the spaceship would be prohibitive.\n\nThere's also the long term effects of microgravity on the human body - just recently we discovered that some astronauts have vision problems after being in orbit, but not others. We'll need to figure that one out before we try anything.\n\nAnd as I said at the beginning, propulsion is still getting there. We want something that will have very little mass, but can get us up to a good velocity to shorten the time. Solid-fuel rockets shave great acceleration, but are really fucking heavy. And expensive. Other forms of propulsion, like the solar sails, are very slow. I think our best bet is the EM drive, which is still being examined for suitability. There are a lot of different methods of propulsion, but they are nowhere near being ready for actual use. It takes a long time and a lot of money to get from the drawing board to orbit.\n\nLastly, there's the issue of putting 6 people in a tin can for 8 months. Humans aren't designed to do that, and we need to figure out ways around that, as well.\n\nAnd on top of all this, the political climate means the vast majority of people just don't care about space travel. It's hard to allocate fund\ns to research and development when most people are more interested in feeding their families, or going to war somewhere else.",
"The problems are many as others pointed out but also including propulsion. Most of your fuel is spent carrying the rest of your fuel out of the atmosphere into LEO. \n\nWhen flying to a planet you're going to build up speed which is cool but unless you want to do a few years extra of sling shotting around our solar system you need propulsion to slow back down so you can orbit or land. Then regardless of whether you land or orbit you still need fuel to get back home [and stop when you get here].\n\nRocketry cannot be the answer since the amount of fuel you need to carry is mindboggling at this point. Basically you'd be sitting on top of a bomb capable of taking out most of the east coast.\n\nBut things like sails/etc are not as good once you're far out from the Earth. A sail might get you to [say] Jupiter but then you need to stop. with what solar energy? Worse you need to get back ..."
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73hf8k | how do mathematicians figure out absurd odds? | How do mathematicians figure out absurd odds, such as the chances of being hit my lighting are 1 in x? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73hf8k/eli5_how_do_mathematicians_figure_out_absurd_odds/ | {
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"They don't really \"figure them\" out, instead they measure them. \n\nTaking your example: Around 300 people in the US tend to be struck by lightning on an annual basis (according to medical treatment data), putting any given individual's chance of being struck by lightning in a given year at 1 in 1.08 million. Your odds may vary based on line of work, geographic location, etc."
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euwcww | if we are constantly intaking more calories than we can use, why aren't we all obese? | Edit: Been asked for clarification. I often hear stuff like "that burger is 500 calories, it'll take an hour to work it off"! If this is true, shouldn't we all be slowly gaining weight over the course of our lives? I'd think that, on average, a normal person will eat more calories than they can work off. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/euwcww/eli5_if_we_are_constantly_intaking_more_calories/ | {
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"People that do this will eventual be, can I ask clarification on your question?",
"Because there are people who dont? If you take more than you put out then you 100% will gain weight. But I lost 3pounds in the past few weeks which means I had over a 9000 calorie deficit over the past few weeks.",
"It takes a lot to be morbidly obese. Obese is actually a pretty low threshold, comparatively.\n\nPeople that get that big consume 5-8 k calories a day. \n\nMost people are just a bit overweight.",
"we‘re not *always* taking in more than we can use. those who are, however, do gain weight eventually ... quickly or slowly, it adds up. Haven’t you seen the statistics on how heavy today’s people are? Practically everyone today is a size that, just 50 years ago, would have been “the fat guy”. Watch a movie from the 70s and be amazed.",
"Assuming you are very active, you need thousands of calories a day to stay active. Proathletes might consume more than 5000 calories a day. \n\nIf you live a sedentary lifestyle and eat 5000 calories a day, you will get superfat.",
"Because your body burns a significant number of calories just on keeping you alive. Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) represents the majority of the calories your body burns every day, spent on things like keeping your heart beating, your diaphragm moving air in and out of your lungs, and maintaining your body temperature. The precise rate varies from person to person but is usually in the range of 2,000 to 3,000 calories a day. Everything else you do is added calorie burn on top of that. \n\nSo yes if you eat a 500 calorie burger, and nothing else that day, you’re actually probably going to be at an energy deficit and your body will have to burn its energy stores to keep you alive. The issue with a lot of people is that we consume far more calories than we need, and if you do that excessively, then yes you *will* likely become overweight.",
"Because your premise is false. If you regularly consume more calories can you burn, you will gain weight. If you regularly burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. Every single person who consumes more calories than they burn will get fat. No person who is not fat consumes more calories than they burn. If you are not fat, you are not consuming more calories than you are burning. It's not any more complicated than that."
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arukw7 | how does blood come back to the heart? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/arukw7/eli5_how_does_blood_come_back_to_the_heart/ | {
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"Put very simply.....Its a closed system. The heart pushes it in a huge loop back to itself. Valves in veins prevent it flowing backwards and or pooling.",
"Think of the heart as a pump, your veins are the intake lines and your arteries are the output, arteries carry blood rich in oxygen away from the heart and to the muscles where veins carry the oxygen deficient blood to the heart, becomes oxygenated again, and is carried away from the heart by the arteries once again ",
"Thank you, everyone, for the answers, I now know how blood gets back to the heart!"
]
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2tn8vk | why do my cats always seem required to use the litterbox immediately after i clean it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tn8vk/eli5_why_do_my_cats_always_seem_required_to_use/ | {
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"text": [
"They are marking their ownership of that box with their scent/pee/whatever. By cleaning it, you \"erased\" their scent from the box and therefore their ownership of that territory."
]
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||
2477qg | how are canals finished? | When a canal is dug how do they complete the canal without the canal quickly flooding and damaging/harming equipment and people? Do they use explosives? If so how would canals be finished pre-explosive. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2477qg/eli5_how_are_canals_finished/ | {
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"From what I've seen, they basically start in the middle and work towards each end. There will be water that accumulates in the canal as they dig it. This is managed by large pumps. Once they get to the end, they will take their equipment out of the canal and work across the \"dam\" that separates the lake or ocean from the canal. \n\nThen they will dig a small cut in the middle and let the water ease in to the canal. Then dig the rest of the dam out or dredge it. \n\nIf they used explosives to finish the canal then a torrent of water would rush through the canal, possibly damaging the canal. Anything with water is done slowly to prevent this. "
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39htzq | - what is happening when you can "feel" someone looking at you, and you get the heebie-jeebies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39htzq/eli5_what_is_happening_when_you_can_feel_someone/ | {
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"Looking at you.. like this?\n\n_URL_0_",
"Humans, like many mammals, are extremely good at noticing eyes that are looking at us. Eye contact is very important in communicating, so much so that we can impart a lot of information with only our eyes and no verbal communication. Infants even stare at their parents to get their attention. There is part of our brain that is so good at detecting someone staring right at us that those parts wont fire if the gaze is off by just a few degrees, like someone staring at a clock just behind us. Your brain is actually so good at seeing someone looking at you that it does it without your noticing it. So the psychic staring effect is really just your brain picking up on something you didn't yourself notice, it's usually someone just inside your peripheral vision. So something happens, like maybe you turn your head just slightly enough that the stare barely enters your peripheral vision for just a micro-second and your brain notices it, but not consciously. And the part of your brain that fires when someone is staring at you goes off, but you don't know why. And the feeling will linger so you get the sense that someone is staring at you, even though that person is somewhere outside your field of vision, even directly behind you. "
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4x5tem | why are there about a thousand species of spiders but only one human species? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4x5tem/eli5_why_are_there_about_a_thousand_species_of/ | {
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"I'm no expert, and maybe I am totally misunderstanding, but there are what I feel are \"species\" of humans, though I wouldn't use that term.\n\nAfrican, European, Asian, aboriginals, Native American, Hispanic, and I'm sure there are more..."
]
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72ou7r | how does the title of a classical music work? why are they so long? | For example:
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/72ou7r/eli5_how_does_the_title_of_a_classical_music_work/ | {
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"They're really long because they use a lot of descriptors so you can easily identify it. There's an opus number, the actual title, a subtitle or a nickname (like \"Eroica\" or \"Pastoral\"), and then a lot of descriptors, usually for the tempo. This is especially the case with movements of a symphony or concerto.",
"Many musical compositions made my famous composers are given first a number based upon what kind of composition it is. For example, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 was the ninth symphony he wrote. There are other concertos, rhapsodies, fugues and such he may have wrote, but symphonies are different just like movies are different from short films.\n\nOp. stands for Opus. It means which piece it is chronologically out of all the pieces that composer ever wrote. (This can vary as some composers wrote so much music they got their own dedicated numbering system, like Bach and Vivaldi.)\n\nThen the composition can have a name, which may or may not look sensical or fancy because it's probably not English. It may also indicate the key that the whole piece had been tuned to. For example, Fantasie in G-Major.\n\nThen there's the Movement. Movements are to music what scenes are to plays or movies. There's no limit to how short or long they are or how many there should be in a song, but many pieces have three or four movements about 10 minutes long. Along with the movement, they'll have a little description of the mood, speed or emotion of the movement (usually written in Italian). For example, Fuoco means \"passionately, like fire\", Scherzo means \"like a joke, laughing and silly\" and Fortissimo means \"strong and loud\".\n\nThe description may also include some special or interesting instruments being used in the performance. Orgel is German for organ.\n\nTl;Dr, the title includes technical information about the performance rather than just the name, as well as where it might be in the whole piece if the whole piece is very long."
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7wjfvs | why ships are shaped like a v and not square | Wouldn't a squared bottom displace more water with the same height allowing the ship to take more cargo/navigate shallower waters? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7wjfvs/eli5_why_ships_are_shaped_like_a_v_and_not_square/ | {
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"Yes. And many slow or towed floating platforms, like barges, have exactly that configuration. But if you want a vessel to be able to move through the water with any sort of speed, then a V shape is best for reducing drag. A ship with a square keel requires vastly more energy to push through the water than one with a V shape.",
"Yes but the v shape helps mitigate listing from side to side, which is really important for not capsizing in the open ocean. Some barges that operate in shallower waters use a much more rectangular bottom.",
"Yes. It would allow it doe go though shallower water. And ships designed for very shallow water sometimes do have flat bottoms. \n\nThe issue is they are less stable in rough water. They tend to travel on top of the water, instead of through the water. So everything is a trade off. "
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1vbauo | why do sometimes people not realize they have been shot until someones either tells them or they see the injury for themselves? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vbauo/eli5_why_do_sometimes_people_not_realize_they/ | {
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"Heard about it [here](_URL_0_).",
"The reason for it (yes it does happen) is a mixture of adrenaline and nerve damage. When a person has been firing a gun a lot the gun, barrel, and bullets will heat up. When this happens the bullet will cause slightly more damage upon entry than normal and can sometimes cause the nerve damage stated above. When this happens it can numb or completely deaden the pain felt in that area leading to why some people don't notice it until after it's pointed out to them.",
"I fell onto a lawnmower when I was young (hide n' seek in the garage with the lights off), the size adjuster on the mower didn't have a rubber cover on it. It put a fat gash in my knee, walked around my friends house for a good minute not feeling a thing. Until my friends mom pointed out I was bleeding. The *second* I look down; craaaaazy pain. ",
"The fight or flight response has been activated. During this people's threshold of pain goes up so that they can either fight or run away even with injury. Experiencing pain at this stage would lessen the ability to do either of those. Pain is there to stop you from causing more damage but when you're in that survival mode causing more damage to yourself could actually save your life."
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8yrz27 | how do smartphone fingerprint sensors work so quickly when sensors used for visas at embassies are back-lit and take longer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8yrz27/eli5_how_do_smartphone_fingerprint_sensors_work/ | {
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"Your smartphone is reading your print vs a small library of a couple of prints you gave it. Those other computers as reading your print and have to compare it to all of the prints it has access to. So it is just as fast to read it but the database size causes it to slow down more and more the bigger the db of the comparing entitity. ",
"So, the technology we have isn't actually comparing fingerprints per se. They take A few points on the fingerprint, and compare them. The more precise you need the comparison to be, the more points you analyze, the longer it takes.\n\nThe phone scanner couldn't reasonably keep everyone but you out, so they settled for speed over precision. If you took 20 people with the same fingerprint type as you (arch, whirl) and messed a bit with angle and pressure, you could probably get into at least one other phone. But, that's super impractical, so for most use that standard of security is perfectly fine.",
"Your smartphone checks one fingerprint against up to 10 stored inside the phone and it has been engineered to do this as quickly as possible. This engineering is affordable because the phone is mass produced.\n\nProfessional fingerprint systems check your fingerprint, usually with a database of millions which is stored somewhere else and shared by others. Even if the system already knows your identity (and is just checking that you are who you say you are) it hasn't been engineered for speed because it's just not needed by customers and just wouldn't be cost effective.\n\nELI5: because it's designed that way, because people wouldn't use it on their phones if it was slow"
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2w9x1l | why can't i use my turbo tax i bought last yeae, this year? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2w9x1l/eli5_why_cant_i_use_my_turbo_tax_i_bought_last/ | {
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"Tax laws change every year. Thus the values calculated from last year's software won't necessarily work for this year.",
"While Tax laws and the calculations do change year-by-year, the biggest reason that Turbo Tax has a shelf life is the need of the company that makes it and rewrites the code to match the tax laws to stay in business.\n\nIf it were a program you bought once and then never bought again, the company would have to charge hundreds or thousands of dollars for a single license, just to stay afloat year after year, as they updated their code. Rather, they can charge a small fee (or even allow basic calculations for free) so that they have revenue year-to-year.\n\nThink about it - you really only use the software once a year, and then don't buy or consider buying another license until the next year. They have to pay for their operation somehow!"
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20cpsd | why is ram hardly ever seen as 6gb,12gb or 24 etc? | Is there a specific reason as to why this is? I was guessing that it may be because its doubling every time (2GB, 4, 8, 16, 32 etc.) but why is this? Is there a disadvantage of using these? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20cpsd/eli5_why_is_ram_hardly_ever_seen_as_6gb12gb_or_24/ | {
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"text": [
"Because computers, being binary machines, do math in base 2. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32... are all powers of 2.",
"It's called dual channel memory architecture and it benefits from having two sticks of RAM which increases the speeds between the memory and the memory channel. This is by far the most common design these days and pretty much every single motherboard out there supports it.\n\nThere are some CPUs which also support triple channel RAM, mainly a couple of Intel i7 9xx CPUs and server Xeons, which is the same thing except that you have three sticks of RAM.\n\nYou can also use uneven numbers of RAM sticks on dual channel systems, there's a very small performance drop of only a couple of percents in the memory.",
"It's because computers are binary, but...i'll try to expand on that a bit.\n\nMemory is accessed through its \"address\". A block of memory will be addressed through 1 or more \"address lines\". This is how the computer says \"give me all the stuff in memory for a certain set of operations\" without knowing what the stuff is - it just knows its address\". Each piece of address information are (or were...back in my day!) called \"address lines\". Each \"address line\" for a block (let's use 256 byte blocks since those are (were!) the common block size) is represented by a binary value. The 256 byte block requires 8 address lines (1111 1111). If you were to add another address line now you'd be able to address 512 bytes ! (1 1111 1111 = 512 bytes). Adding yet another address line and you'd get 1024 and so on. What you don't ever get is a number between 512 and 1024 or a number between 1024 and 2048 etc. \n\nSo...if you were to build RAM that wasn't a good multiplier then you'd have unaddressable space...or...wasted space! That'd be a bummer :)"
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3de5xx | why is oskar groening a 94-year-old former bookkeeper & guard at auschwitz birkenau guilty of 300000 counts of accessory to murder in wwii but bush sr , bush jr bill clintion & obama are not prosecuted for iraq & afghanistan wars they ordered that killed millions of innocent people ? |
_URL_0_
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3de5xx/eli5why_is_oskar_groening_a_94yearold_former/ | {
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"the united states does not bow to any international court. they refused to do this because theoretically france could have claimed that george bush, as the governor of texas, was committing crimes against humanity by instilling the death penalty. because of this, it means our presidents, and former presidents can not be tried by an international court, the only conviction that would be credited is if the american court system made the conviction, in fact george bush was charged with crimes, by malayisia as depicted [here](_URL_0_)",
"The one is war and you got to have a quote for those \"millions of innocent people\", the other is unprovoked murder of civilians.",
"Wars are terrible things. Civilians get killed in wars as a sad byproduct of violent attempts to resolve political differences.\n\nBut while the atrocities that went on at Auschwitz happened during a war, they were not *part* of war. The killing of civilians there was not a byproduct of political struggles, it was a direct political objective.\n\nI guess what I am saying is that if Bush and Clinton and Bush and Obama could achieve their goals without killing any civilians, they would have. But the Nazis were *intentionally* murdering innocents.",
"One is collateral damage, the other was a designed system for herding and then eliminating a race",
"Premise incorrect, millions not killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by US.\n\nMany more Afghans and Iraqis have been killed by Islamists than any US action.",
"Guess I can give this a shot..\n\nIf you ever heard the saying \"History is wrote by the winners\" its because its true. The people who are the most powerful can get away with lots. Take Stalin for instance. He killed more of his own people that Hitler did. It is believed some odd 40+ million people were killed by his industrialization, changing the country, ww2, and other \"cullings\". When Russia and Germany took Poland together Russia killed a whole bunch of people as well. I believe recently they discovered one of the mass graves. Chairman Mao of Communist China by his \"reforms\" killed millions. Guess what I'm saying as the powerful countries can get away with a lot more than a weaker one can. Tbh the US is quickly losing its moral high ground. ",
"Simply put, dead civilians in war are collateral damage. Unfortunate, yes, but almost unavoidable. Nazi camps operated during war times but were not a byproduct of the war itself, it was a byproduct of Hitlers agenda. ",
"Perhaps the best explaination, is that in both cases, the US was the victor. Most of the 'Nazis being the embodiment of evil' sentiment comes from WWII era propaganda and the like. Former Nazis are still persecuted because of the German government being basically set up (by the occupiers) to be as anti-nazi as possible. Additionally, the Americans in question were heads of state in a surviving government, unlike the former Nazis, who are opposed, rather than protected by their government. Remember, losers are evil and winners are righteous.",
"This question is very charged, but it has to do with the Nuremberg trials. The ~~Allies~~ Axis lost the war, and trials were held to punish Nazis associated with the war effort. This guy happened to be tried, and was found guilty.\n\nAforementioned people, however, won (side-note: at least they didn't lose, not necessarily won), and no matter if they are guilty of aforementioned crimes, don't get tried.\n\nThe winner writes history.\n\nEDIT: Thank you /u/tlkshwhst for spotting that",
"Because we only have the power to punish those who, follow orders. Not those who give the orders..",
"Because one is largely a case of largely unintended collateral damage, and not people rounded up and killed indiscriminately or enslaved and *then* killed indiscriminately because of their beliefs, race, and sexual orientation in a systematic act of genocide.",
"I always ponder why only elderly German soldiers get in trouble and not the many Soviet soldiers who did equally bad things.\n\nBut I know that in reality, you can commit any war crime you want and kill as many civilians you want as long as you ultimately win the war, then you don't get in trouble.",
"Where are you seeing \"millions\" of civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan? A [Brown University](_URL_0_) article claims that, as of March, 2015, the number of civilians killed is 210,000 as a result of war in these countries."
]
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9ibyum | what causes an inflated balloon to rise? | *Inflated with helium, forgot to mention that in the title :) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ibyum/eli5_what_causes_an_inflated_balloon_to_rise/ | {
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"The helium inside it is less dense than air, and therefore rises. It's not because its inflated, it's because its filled with helium.",
"It has to be filled with a substance that is less dense than its surroundings. The volume of air in the balloon is then lighter than the surrounding air which makes it go up. ",
"Do you mean a balloon inflated with helium? Because a balloon inflated with air falls to earth in the absence of a wind to blow it around.",
"Standard hot air balloons use propane as a fuel, to heat the air inside the balloons envelope. The hot air is less dense than the air outside, which is cooler, thus creating lift! :)"
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63ofh3 | how is the so called "nuclear option" with respect to congressional approval of supreme court nominations constitutional? why is congress allowed to set its own rules for the approval process of supreme court nominees? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63ofh3/eli5_how_is_the_so_called_nuclear_option_with/ | {
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"Here's the relevant excerpt from the Constitution:\n\n > **He(the President)** shall have the Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur; and he **shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint** Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, **Judges of the supreme Court**, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.\n\nOr, with all the other stuff cut out:\n\n > He(the President)...shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint...Judges of the Supreme Court...\n\nIn other words, all the Constitution says is that the Senate shall give \"advice and consent\" regarding the appointee. It gives no clarification on what \"advice and consent\" actually means - that's for the Senate to decide for itself. The Senate can \"advise and consent\" however they choose.",
"That's how the checks & balances system is laid out. Congress gets to decide how they want to make their own decisions on the other branches. It's considered the \"nuclear option\" because it's a last resort for the majority party to get their way right now, but at great cost in the future when they're no longer the majority party. "
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5f3638 | why do women’s arms angle outward from the elbow, and men’s are straight? | after seeing [this picture](_URL_0_) I decided to finally come forward and ask this question. Women's arms and forearms seem to be misaligned. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5f3638/eli5_why_do_womens_arms_angle_outward_from_the/ | {
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"To fit around their hips. Otherwise they would constantly hit their arms on their hips as they walked.\n\nTheir hips are wider than the rest of their body for childbirth.\n",
"Mens aren't straight either. There is a small difference of about 5 degree's. The theory is hips are wider in females and it helps with walking. ",
"That phenomenon is called 'Waage' in Dutch. It's when at maximal extension of the elbow, the ulna moves distal compared to the radius.\n\nSome people have it more than others, since it's more common to those with hyper-mobility. Woman tend to have more mobility than men."
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7mns1g | how does siphoning gas from one car to another work? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7mns1g/eli5_how_does_siphoning_gas_from_one_car_to/ | {
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"You put a long tube into one tank, start sucking and once you've got the petrol coming you lower the top of the tube so that gravity takes care of the rest. \nPour into a can, pour the can into other car. Don't get any in your mouth (this is the hard part)",
"Once you get enough suction to make a gas bridge through the hose, gravity causes the gas to \"fall\" the rest of the way into the other car's tank. Usually people will use a canister instead of their car if their car's tank is higher than the victim's car tank.",
"\nTo begin with your sucking pulls the liquid down the pipe along with gravity as the destination container will be below the source container.\n\nWhen the liquid is moving through the pipe something must come in behind it to fill the vacuum. \n\nSo long as there is only the liquid to fill the vacuum then it will keep drawing the liquid down the pipe. ",
"These answers are correct but modern vehicles have an anti siphon device that won't allow a hose into the tank. You can get a mouthful of gas but it will not hold prime. I know this from personal experience.",
"Thanks for the answers! Really, I was just curious as to how the gas continues after you are done sucking. You start sucking it up and gravity pulls it down into the container, would you then have to keep going back and sucking more or does it pull up more gas on its own? \n\nSorry for the ignorance on this one. "
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1nzvze | if heat is simply molecules and atoms moving quickly and vibrating, why does shaking water not heat it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nzvze/eli5_if_heat_is_simply_molecules_and_atoms_moving/ | {
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"It does, you're just not shaking it enough to have a perceivable effect.\n\n[[Here]](_URL_0_) is an /r/askscience post about this topic.",
"Mechanical energy does not produce much in the way of heat energy, especially as friction between liquid molecules is low. It takes 4200 joules to raise 1kg of water 1 degree C. "
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1j06sf | why is it illegal to switch lanes in an intersection? | I get it's illegal but why is it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j06sf/eli5_why_is_it_illegal_to_switch_lanes_in_an/ | {
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"Because it's dangerous. Intersections are far more dangerous than non-intersections because people are crossing in front of each other. That's why we have so many accidents in intersections. So adding on lane changes you're just asking for trouble.",
"The lanes are not marked in the intersection in most cases, so if lane changes were allowed people would just be exiting into an area of unmarked asphalt and allowed to aim for whatever lane entrance they chose. It is an obvious recipe for disaster.",
"You would have to signal your lane change which is interpreted as a turning signal on intersections. Thus, it becomes ambiguous and leads to false assumptions. And furthermore, there is a higher risk of accidents in general as already mentioned by others. "
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3b2o4b | how is carbon fibre made? | Is it manually weaved together or does it naturally form a weave through its chemical bonding? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b2o4b/eli5_how_is_carbon_fibre_made/ | {
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"carbon fiber starts out as strands that is woven together into a fabric which is then shaped and is imbued with epoxy resin to harden it into a final product.\n\nhow its made video: _URL_0_"
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8q21pi | how did the human genome project sequence the dna? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8q21pi/eli5_how_did_the_human_genome_project_sequence/ | {
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"By stringing together lots and lots of short, overlapping snippets of DNA from many many copies of the genome. It's called \"shotgun sequencing.\" \n\nImagine that you have a bag containing all the pages from a novel, but they've all been shredded into pieces, and you have to put it together. Finding all the places where the pieces line up is going to be really hard.\n\nNow instead, imagine that you have a thousand bags containing the shredded pieces of a thousand copies of the same novel, and each one has been shredded in a slightly different pattern. If you scan all the pieces into a computer, you can find out where different pieces from different copies overlap and put the novel back together more easily. That's basically what they did with the genome: they took a bunch of copies of the DNA, broke them into pieces a couple hundred units long, sequenced each of those, and then a computer found the overlaps and put it all together. "
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7outvx | what exactly is a commercial pilot doing in the cockpit during a flight? so many buttons, pedals, paperwork etc? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7outvx/eli5_what_exactly_is_a_commercial_pilot_doing_in/ | {
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"Chilling most of the time really. Most of those buttons aren't particularly useful most of the time and aside from takeoff and landing, they don't do much. The plane basically flies itself, you don't touch any of the controls and the thing keeps moving forward in flight and especially with modern autopilot being able to change its trajectory, the pilot is mainly there to supervise and call the shots in case anything needs to be changed, say if turbulence requires the flight to elevate or descend. \n\nThis is actually a bit of a problem, pilots fall asleep during flight as a result, this is surprisingly normal on international flights as they tend to be long and that is partially why two pilots are there, but on occasion both fall asleep.",
"there's numerous points durign the takeoff and landing. \n\nduring the cruise legs, there's really nothing much going on. they're watching the front facing weather radar, keeping tabs on the radio, drinking coffee. and on international flights, taking naps.",
"Over twenty years experience, currently flying a 737. All the buttons and switches are basically used for lights, power, pumps and engine start up procedures. Take off and landing are basically the only time I'm controlling the aircraft by hand. There is paperwork sometimes I'm evaluating a first officer, other times just chatting. There is no sleeping on the flight deck, there has to be two pilots awake at all times. Long hauls have more than two pilots onboard so they can rotate sleep. ",
"56% admit to sleeping\n\n33% admit to sleeping and waking up to find the other pilot sleeping as well\n\n _URL_0_",
"I had a cousin who was a pilot of private passengers style jets for 30 years. He flew primarily for one rich guy only, who made deals and had business all over the US. The longer flights, and on the primary company plane he knew well, he said he slept a good bit. \n\nInterestingly enough, his last piloted flight was nearly his last. He was coming into Chicago flight control zone and awoke with a stinging headache. He couldn't identify where he was, or grasp what was going on for a few minutes. He apparently had blood vessel pop in his head, and couldn't reason for a few moments. He found he had turned off the Auto Pilot and was circling back when he finally got it together. He had the approach map out and finally put it together, and landed. I think he notified air traffic he needed a straight landing or such, and set it down. The doctors straightened up what happened in his brain over the following year, but he was close to retirement age and quit rather than go through all the requalification. "
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4yn7t9 | why do we have finger and toe nails? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4yn7t9/eli5_why_do_we_have_finger_and_toe_nails/ | {
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"They used to be claws which were useful for obvious reasons. These days they don't really serve that purpose although they can be useful tools for picking at things.",
"So it's really hard to say why a species doesn't evolve to get rid of something. We can kind of only guess if the thing I'd not immediately obviously useful. Maybe it's because scratching serves an important function to rid us of insects and things sticking to us. Maybe it's for finer motor control. There's just not a good way to know for sure",
"Your fingernails are important tools. Try peeling an orange without using them.\nToenails are mostly useless today. ",
"You have fingernails so you can pick your nose. \n\nYou have toenails so you can pick your friend's nose. ",
"Fingernails make your fingertips more sensitive by exerting counter-pressure on the pads of your finger. This makes it easier to do all kinds of fiddly little jobs.\n\nAlso, definitely for protection and they work well as tweezers as other folks have mentioned.",
"I believe that I read in a study somewhere that the nail helps to make fingers and toes grip onto surfaces better. They distribute the force that's applied in one point over your entire finger/toe kind of like how a snow shoe works. It's much better than just the tiny bone in the middle and the nail actually extends to the edge of the finger/toe as well, which is something that the bone couldn't do. It could have likely been some sort of derived claw a long way up the evolutionary tree, but the main differences are thickness, curvature, and width, in which nails are optimized more for the purposes which I described rather than those that would suit claws, and while they can still perform these functions, they do not do them nearly as well as claws do.",
"To provide a backing to your finger tips to help you grip better. Also everything everyone else mentioned.",
"[This search](_URL_0_) may help.",
"Wait, when did we start cutting our nails? Did they just wear down at the same rate they grew before that or did the romans have super long nails?",
"\"We\" used to have claws.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThey have evolved to an average size that provides more utility than the genetic resources required to produce them.\n\nIf they became costly to us to the point that people were dying of nail-related infections before reproduction and rearing, or people born without nails became preferred sexual partners, the adaptation could be extinguished.\n\nHair, feathers, hoofs, claws, horns, etc. are made of keratin. Could the human body survive without keratin, and the features provided by it? Yes and no. Ultimately, to not require hair and nails would save on the cost of reproduction and maintenance... but hair, in particular, serves many purposes that cannot be replaced by other means. The cilia in our ears, nose, and respiratory tract are absolutely essential for defense against infection. \n\nSo... we are going to produce keratin... and finger and toe nails are awfully handy, and not particularly expensive... I vote that we keep them... by not reproducing with anonychials.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n"
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3ijin5 | how is it that certain koi and other pond fish are so expensive? | Obviously healthier and bigger fish will be worth more, but what separates a $50 Koi from a $5000 Koi? Aren't they just pets? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ijin5/eli5_how_is_it_that_certain_koi_and_other_pond/ | {
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"The same difference between a $50 dog and a $5,000 dog. Pedigree, in addition the expensive Koi have been bred for specific patterns and colors. Its not like a breeder is just netting random fish out of a pond and assigning arbitrary prices. "
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4j69ko | what makes some sounds scary/ominous while others happy/uplifting? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4j69ko/eli5_what_makes_some_sounds_scaryominous_while/ | {
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"Consonance and Dissonance!\n\nSounds are waves. Sometimes, those waves stack up into nice sounds because all the waves run on frequencies that go together well. This is consonance. Sometimes, those waves will be running in different ways, not really lining up you see, and that makes the frequencies sound like they want to \"resolve\", or rest. This is dissonance.\n\nThere are lots and lots of chords, which are stacks of notes (three notes being a triad, for example) which run the gamut for this effect. \n\n[Tritone](_URL_0_)\n\n[Tonality](_URL_1_)\n\n[Consonance and Dissonance](_URL_2_)"
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1r3ebj | what does it mean for a song to be in major/minor key? | And if you could explain what something like "in the key of C" means too, go ahead.
I think I have some idea, but it'd be nice of you. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r3ebj/eli5_what_does_it_mean_for_a_song_to_be_in/ | {
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"There are 12 notes in western music (any higher or lower and the same notes repeat again, an octave higher or lower). If you played them all in a row, it would sound like a pretty boring linear progression. But if you only play 7 of them in selected intervals, you have a common western scale. A major scale hits these notes (marked by x) out of the 12: \nx-x-xx-x-x-x \n \nHere's a melodic minor scale: \nx-xx-x-xx-x- \n\nAs you can see, in some places, the notes played are right next to each other, and in other places, they skip over a note. The kind of scale (major, melodic minor, harmonic minor, pentatonic and others) is determined by what that pattern is. \n\nYou can start each pattern on any note. If you play the major pattern starting on the note C, you're playing a C major scale.",
"Just noting that the \"happy\" and \"sad\" feel others have described is something that's completely conditioned, not innate in the music.\n\nThere are happy songs in minor keys and sad songs in major keys, e.g. Bon Jovi \"Living on a Prayer\" is arguably in E-minor. ",
"\"In the key of C\" means, in the key of C major. The C major scale is defined as the notes C,D,E,F,G,A,B in that order. Other major scales have the same intervals between notes, but just starting at a different point.\n\nChords in the key of a scale means that the chords are made of notes from that scale, in this case:\n\nC-E-G\nD-F-A\nE-G-B\nF-A-C\nG-B-D\nA-C-E\nB-D-F\n\nThese chords are called \"C\", \"D\" etc. - the name of a chord is taken from the name of its root note. Some of them are major chords and some are minor chords - it depends on the interval between the notes.\n\nAs always in music, these chords can be 'decorated', for example G-B-D-F is common (this is called a \"seventh chord\" when the next note in the sequence is tacked on the end).\n\nSaying that a song is \"in a key\" means that the song primarily uses chords from that key, and further, its underlying structure follows the basic progression (C - > F - > G in this case).\n\nWithout going into too much detail, songs will play on this theme a lot, but it can always be found underneath. (In fact we could even say that C - > F - > G is a variation on C - > G which is the most elementary progression - a difference of 2:3 in frequency ratios between the notes).\n\nAlso, a song may temporarily change key, or use chords from related keys (i.e. chords where the notes are notes from a different scale). \n"
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[],
[],
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|
6c75w2 | why is it that when we feel sudden pain (like a sting) our hearing seems to amplify? | Sometimes when you're trying to pop a painful zit or get stung or otherwise feel sudden pain, your hearing seems to amplify and get a little distorted. What is happening in our body and why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c75w2/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_we_feel_sudden_pain_like/ | {
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"My guess, (not an expert) your body says \"hey someones attacking us, focus\" cuz adrenaline. Basically your whole body goes into defence/ready mode because it thinks it's in danger. I wpuldnt be surprised if your eyesight/smell/sense of balance get better immediately after that type of event\n"
]
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[]
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|
2cb07a | where do pharmacies get drugs from? | I personally use a CVS pharmacy, so let's use them as the example. The way I imagine it, there's two options for how I get my medications:
1) The corporation that runs the CVS Pharmacy chain contacts, negotiates, and purchases all the different drugs it needs from the pharmaceutical companies. Seems like a lot of overhead, negotiating, and logistics.
2) CVS Pharmacy contracts with a non-zero number of distributing companies that guarantee supply of specific drugs in their catalog due to their negotiated contracts with the pharmaceutical companies. Seems easier but probably a bit more expensive (the middleman's profit)
Am I anywhere on the right track with these thoughts? Can anyone offer any insight into this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cb07a/eli5_where_do_pharmacies_get_drugs_from/ | {
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"Actually the logistics and distribution are handled on the supply side - by the drug manufacturers themselves. Most companies will have some sort of warehouse/distrubution centre where orders from individual pharmacies are procesed and shipped directly (often through UPS/FedEx).\n\nsource: Worked in logistics for a major phamaceutical company",
"I'm a pharmacy tech at, and I do the ordering for, an independent pharmacy. There are wholesalers/suppliers. McKesson, Cardinal, Amerisource, Anda are just a few I can name off the top of my head. \n\nWe place an order every evening for the drugs we need for the next day or to have in stock on the shelves and we get them delivered by an employee of the distributor the next morning (Mon-Fri)\n\nThey can't guarantee a supply, manufacturer backorders happen all the time. I'm sure the distributor makes a nice profit, but they have to keep huge inventories of drugs in stock. Pharmacies don't want to do this because pills on the shelf not getting dispensed is money just tied up there. Pharmacies also don't want to deal with getting the drugs from the various manufacturers (many of which are outside the US).\n\nI haven't worked at a big chain pharmacy, but most of my coworkers have and it's worked the same way. The big chains usually get a better deal on a lot of their drugs because they buy a higher volume. \n\n"
]
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[],
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|
8bq8kw | if sony and microsoft are always competing for market with their games consoles, why do both consoles always have similar specifications,(why doesnt one company just use a better graphics card to win over the market) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8bq8kw/eli5if_sony_and_microsoft_are_always_competing/ | {
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"Same reason Toyota don't just make mid engine V12 supercar and sell it for peanuts...shits expensive. \n\nThey need to find a balance between power, and being able to sell it cheap enough that enough people purchase it to warrant third-party developers producing titles for the platform."
]
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[]
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||
33aqto | if obesity is medically proven to cause negative health effects, how are parents not charged with child abuse/child endangerment? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33aqto/eli5_if_obesity_is_medically_proven_to_cause/ | {
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"text": [
"Because people are very sensitive about their weight, and about the governments controlling their lives",
"There's also a matter of triaging - the child safety services are overloaded now. And a child getting physically abused, emotionally/mentally destroyed or molested is higher priority then something that is less immediately life and mental stability endangering.",
"Because it's a terrible idea and no politician who wanted to ever be re-elected would push for the Destory Families Because Your Kid Is Fat Act. I'm all for doing things to promote less fat kids (and adults), but what do you think is going to do more damage to a kid: being overweight, or being forcibly removed from their home and placed in the custody of the state?",
"Obesity is a symptom of any of a number of things. Yes there is over eating, under activity, and poor food choices without over eating but there are also genetic conditions, damage to organs, physical disability, and many other issues that can cause obesity. \n\nThe biggest factor in obesity is currently poverty. Lack of time to prepare nutritious home made meals (as nutritious foods tend to take longer to cook), lack of training and skill in making nutritious meals (as nutritious foods tend to take more effort and knowledge to cook), and lack of funds to buy nutritious foods (nutritious foods are more expensive). Arresting people or taking away their children because they are poor is absolutely abhorrent and immoral. \n\nEdit: Also child services are currently overloaded with cases that are of an immediate and more legitimate threat to the safety of children. You are wanting to destroy families and quadruple the load (if not more) an an over-taxed system. That is just foolish. ",
"It would likely end up targeting low income families as many families worry about putting ANY food on the table let alone a macro-nutrient balanced meal. \n\nAlso, the social services system is overwhelmed enough as it is, instead of factoring in lack of resources and knowledge about living a healthy lifestyle to the mix. \n\nThere's got to be a better solution to the growing epidemic of obesity in the western world, than simply tearing fat children from the arms of their mothers.",
"Let me guess, /u/jou13, you're not a parent? "
]
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||
5hwvie | why are mice the preferred "testing" subjects in scientific experiments? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hwvie/eli5_why_are_mice_the_preferred_testing_subjects/ | {
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"text": [
"They're similar enough to humans for most testing purposes. And they reproduce so fast that it's very easy to set up pure genetic blood lines according to the specifications the scientist needs.\n\nThat makes lab mice very predictable animals, which in turn is good for reliable testing.",
"They are the right combination of breeding quickly, maturing quickly, being easy to care for, being easy to handle, and being close enough to humans to get meaningful results.\n\nWe might get slightly more analogous results testing with gorillas, but a 400 pound animal that takes 15 years to mature, has one offspring a year, and that can rip you head off isn't worth it.",
"Little fun fact as people already answered the original question. \n\nMice reproduce quickly. But to have them reproduce, you need to keep the female in good shape (aka not risk to test anything on them). Therefore, there has been a bias in numerous studies because the only test subject were males, completely disregarding the differences between male and female! \n\n",
"They are pretty similar to humans. Semi-intelligent and can solve small problems. Also they are small, and easy to take care of. You can have a lab with 200 rats pretty easily. You can't have a lab with 200 monkeys. Also humanitarian concerns are almost non existent with rats. People don't care about them so you can work them and test them endlessly. And most importantly, they're extremely cheap.a fleet of rats couldn't buy you a monkey",
"In addition to the other reasons listed here, rodents and mammals are both [euarchontoglires](_URL_0_), AKA supraprimates. In other words, rodents (rodentia) are the closest living relatives to mammals (mammalia).\n\nThe implication is that the purpose of said experiments is to better our own human circumstances (re: [humanism](_URL_1_)). This means inferences made on rodents are more likely to apply to humans than if we were to experiment on carnivores, marsupials, whales, etc.\n\nAnd we choose mice instead of other rodents for the reasons listed in other comments (quick to reproduce, etc).",
"We started to work with mice because they were available and a decent option. There are more options now so some people are working to breed other research animals. For instance, fruit flies are used in some research fields."
]
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[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euarchontoglires",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism"
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||
a5eboc | how did i suddenly develop food allergies at 27 years old. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a5eboc/eli5_how_did_i_suddenly_develop_food_allergies_at/ | {
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"You may not like this, but the answer is: we don't know.\n\nPeople need to become sensitive to an allergen before any allergic reaction can take place, so that means they can't be allergic the very first time they are exposed. Since these people have been exposed numerous times to an allergen without reacting, and they suddenly begin to react allergically, a mystery has been introduced. We know very little about allergies so far and it is a big area of research.",
"Did you have hay fever as a child?\n\n_URL_0_"
]
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[],
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"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_allergy_syndrome"
]
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||
41vtt6 | why companies likes at & t, sprint, etc don't build more cell phone towers to compete with coverage? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41vtt6/eli5_why_companies_likes_att_sprint_etc_dont/ | {
"a_id": [
"cz5ivfu"
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"text": [
"They are constantly building new towers. Technology is improving at such a rate that you have to upgrade all your existing towers every few years. If you have so many towers, it can very difficult to upgrade every single one. They will usually prioritize upgrading their NYC towers so that 5 million customers get better service over constructing new towers or upgrading the old ones in Wyoming that cover 500 customers. They're constantly upgrading towers so not enough time or money to be building many new ones. They don't compete with Verizon on coverage. They compete with them based on cost, deals, speed, etc. which are a lot easier to beat.\n\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
9ip6bq | why do windshield wipers make the window streaky for the first few strokes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ip6bq/eli5_why_do_windshield_wipers_make_the_window/ | {
"a_id": [
"e6lepo5"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Because there are points on the blade with more pressure on them than others which is why there are streaks. After a few passes the parts with less pressure clean off as well as the parts with more pressure "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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