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1z747w | why do i get billed a much higher amount for medical services/prescriptions than my insurance company? | If I buy my prescription outright, it costs me $450. Through insurance, they bill $221. It's the same medication in the same exact quantity. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z747w/eli5_why_do_i_get_billed_a_much_higher_amount_for/ | {
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"Because people tend to go to medical facilities that accept their insurance provider (so they can actually *use* their insurance). The insurance companies negotiate discounts on services in exchange for allowing the facility to accept their insurance. It's in their best interest to make the deals with the insurance companies so they don't lose out on the business of all of the people who use that provider."
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1xs3j5 | why are carbs the largest part of the food pyramid when popular diets & new research says to cut them out? | I first learned of the keto diet after joining Reddit which is a diet that cuts out majority of your daily carbohydrates (consuming approx 20 a day). Since then not only have I discovered more benefits to Keto but also the Mediterranean and Paleo diets have seem to become more popular because they cater to the body's basic needs instead of cravings. I also started reading the "Story of the Human Body" by Daniel Lieberman (haven't finished yet though) and it explains how our bodies haven't adapted as high of a tolerance for carbs as society likes us to believe. Just curious if all of this research is proving that carbs are so bad and cause large weight gains amongst people, why are they still supposed to be the largest part of our diet? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xs3j5/eli5_why_are_carbs_the_largest_part_of_the_food/ | {
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"I've read that the food pyramid was created in the Department of Agriculture by people who hadn't studied nutrition.\n\nPeople in government who make policies are often ignorant, misguided, or cynical."
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d3iuyc | what happens in the body that causes a physical reaction to a funny joke? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d3iuyc/eli5_what_happens_in_the_body_that_causes_a/ | {
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"Not an expert but id assume our brains processes something we find truly funny and cause involuntary movement in our face to express happiness and form a smile. Id also assume laughter was first used as communication when speaking wasn’t an option."
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cjeizq | how are animals like felines able to jump and leap insane distances? what makes humans unable to do the same? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cjeizq/eli5_how_are_animals_like_felines_able_to_jump/ | {
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"A cats body is better suited for being lean and agile, it was just created like that by evolution to behave so, humans legs aren't like cats, were much more stuff and strudy because of our evolution. When we were cave men we weren't jumping around trees or trying to pounce on our prey. TLDR: evolution and our genetics are just too different to behave like cats.",
"Keyword: Hind legs/limbs\n\nCats and Dogs for example have a common back-leg feature called hind legs. Hind legs allow an animal to experience a greater range of motion in the leg, and therefore power when the legs become fully stretched during a jump.\n\nHumans would actually be able to jump higher if given hind legs, but usually four-legged animals have these.",
"The design of the hind legs has a lot to do with it. \n\n\nAnimals like cats and deer walk on their rear toes. The \"heel\" is quite high off of the ground. So their rear legs have three major segments instead of two, giving them more power and range of motion. This leads to bigger jumps. \n\n\nAnd you also have to be able to land safely. Humans have to land on the same legs that they jumped with. Four legged animals jump with their rear legs, and land with their front. The front legs and their joints have evolved to be great shock absorbers. For example, the shoulder joint of a deer has an incredible range of motion, because there's no direct connection from the leg bone to the bones of the torso. It's all just connected by soft tissue.",
"[Square/Cube law.](_URL_0_)\n\nSimplest way I can say it: as something gets bigger on the outside (taller, longer, etc), it gets significantly **more** bigger on the inside (weight). It's the same reason that much larger animals (elephants, rhinos) can barely jump at all. \n\nYou can see the square-cube law at work in normal humans. An average 2-3 year old human will weigh about 30 pounds, and be roughly 3 feet tall. A full grown adult male will be around 6 feet tall, and roughly 180-200 pounds. Though these numbers will obviously vary from person to person, you can see the distinct trend. At double the height, a human weighs 6 times as much. \n\nBut to your point, you can see a similar trend the jumping capabilities of cats. An average house cat is 9 inches tall at the shoulder and weighs 10 pounds. They can jump 6 feet vertical. A average tiger is roughly 3 feet tall at the shoulder and weigh 500 pounds (though it varies a lot by gender and subspecies). They can jump 12 feet vertical.\n\nAt 4x the height, a tiger can only jump 2x the distance, because of the square cube law (and 500x the weight)"
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1uwq23 | how does a car measure it's speed to show up in the speedometer? what happens if the car is replaced with wheels of different diameters? does it matter? | Title. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uwq23/eli5_how_does_a_car_measure_its_speed_to_show_up/ | {
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"It is tuned with a factor of the output RPM from the transmission. If you use larger tires, the speed displayed is less than your actual speed.\n\nSource: I used to own a car with 70R14 tires whereas it came from the factory with 65R14 tires.",
"It measures its speed by sensing each time a wheel makes a full rotation. So yes changing to a wheel with a different diameter then stock will throw the measurement off. This can usually be fixed by a reprogramming tool (for newer vehicles)\n\nSome vehicles use GPS based speedometers. But I don't believe this is a very common thing. In this case wheel size has no effect. ",
"There are three possible methods a car could use.\n\nI've heard of GPS speedometers which constantly determine your position on the Earth then divide the distance between two coordinates found by the time between when each coordinate was found. I've never seen one of these, only heard rumors they exist in vehicles. The main problems with this method are remaining connected to the GPS satellites and getting precise data. Many GPSs have a poor spatial resolution, meaning they will know your location to within a fairly large distance of possibly thirty feet or more. In addition, because the signals used for communication are so weak when they arrive, (satellites are really far away), if you are in a tunnel, under a bridge, in a city with a lot of tall towers, or experiencing bad weather, you could lose the signal. These problems make me doubt these systems are actually used in vehicles. This method does not rely on the wheels' radius.\n\nAnother method is to have one or more magnets attached to a shaft somewhere in the powertrain. When these magnets rotate, they induce electric currents in a coil of wire as they pass by it. Each time a magnet passes by this coil, a pulse of electricity is generated. The frequency of these pulses can be measured, and if the gear ratio between the shaft and the wheels is known, and if the radius of the wheels is known, the rotational speed of the wheels can be determined mathematically.\n\nThe third method involves more magnets and a larger coil of wire. When the magnets on a shaft are rotating, they induce an electric current in a coil of wire, (this time, the current is continuous, not pulsed.) This electric current is amplified and used to heat a strip of metal. This metal strip actually consists of two different types of metal sandwiched together. When the strip heats up, the metals expand, but each of the two metals expands by a different amount causing the strip to bend. The strip is connected mechanically to the speedometer, so when the strip bends, the indicator moves. The amount it moves is ultimately dependent on the speed of the shaft containing the magnets, as is the speed of the vehicle. This method also relies on having a known wheel radius.\n\nEDIT: If the wheel diameter is changed, the vehicle's firmware can be modified to accommodate for this."
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2yxv05 | why is the water colder in the water bottle than the outside of the water bottle temperature | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yxv05/eli5_why_is_the_water_colder_in_the_water_bottle/ | {
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"It isn't. It just *feels* that way.\n\nWhen you feel something as hot or cold, you're not actually feeling temperature. You're feeling heat flowing either into or out of your body. Some materials conduct heat better than others, so heat will flow into you or out of you faster. This is why room temperature metal feels cold, but room temperature wood doesn't - metal pulls the heat out of your skin faster than wood does. Water is the same way. Water conducts heat better than air. So if water and air are at the same temperature, the water will feel colder.",
"You might be *feeling* a different temperature but they are actually the same. Veritasium explains this well. Basically it's because heat moves out of your hand into some things faster (into water faster than air, for example) so those things feel to us like they are colder. This is also why metal feels colder than paper, even if they're in the same room (and are actually the same temperature). \n\nHere's a good video on it. \n_URL_0_"
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98jybr | why can my aches and pains "reset" by doing more exercise? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/98jybr/eli5_why_can_my_aches_and_pains_reset_by_doing/ | {
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"By reset, I assume you mean a brief yet acute dulling of pain. This is due to something known as exercise-induced hypoalgesia. As the muscles start aching, they activate the pain related nerves in the body, known as A-delta and C fibres. This pain is alleviated by two main mechanisms, Gate Control Theory and Descending Inhibition. According to the former, if other touch receptors are activated, it activates inhibitory neurons, which will in turn inhibit the pain. This explains why rubbing the injured area might lessen the pain. But our focus here is on the latter. So there exist in the brain certain areas, PAG and RVM, which have high levels of natural opioids i.e. endorphins. These opioids, using serotonin as a transmitter, are projected into the spinal cord, alleviating your pain for at least 20-30 minutes after exercise. So when muscles start paining during exercise, these endorphins are activated. \n\n\nThis exercise-induced hypoalgesia is characterized by an increase in pain tolerance, and reduction in pain intensity during and after exercise. In effect, it resets the aches and pains. \n\n\nHope this answers it, if it is what you meant and were looking for."
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2oqca8 | why (chemically/psychologically) does some music make me feel like an unstoppable badass? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2oqca8/eli5_why_chemicallypsychologically_does_some/ | {
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"It's to do with association, this is why different music evokes different emotions for people, you begin to associate yourself to a suspension of your own disbelief in a subconscious manner, thereby making you actually feel like you're about to take on a whole army just because you're listening to The Lord of the rings soundtrack as you walk your dog or something.\nIt's the same with how sad emotional music can make you reflective or calm, it's just your own experiences and memories telling you how you're \"supposed\" to feel, and it's a key difference and also the same thing in the way popular music and film scores are composed\nIf anyone wants to reword all that feel free\n",
"These are all bullshit answers. Try askscience.",
"It has to do with association, but it probably also has to do with a dopamine response in a region of the brain called the ventral striatum--a region whose primary job is to inform you when stimuli is rewarding. It's the same region that makes one feel unstsoppable after sniffing a fat line of cocaine. Of course, other regions are too working in unison, as no one region works alone in these dealings, but the ventral striatum is quite active when that amazing song comes on. Word.",
"When it comes to live gigs, depending where you live..... Australia has limits on SPL, but US bands that tour here will often push these.\n\nAt 125db+ SPL your body is having an adrenalin fear response. Basically screaming in panic about the permanent hearing damaging you're doing to yourself. The rush is your body telling you to get out of the hazardous environment, misinterpreted as \"fun\"....\n\nToo many bands abuse this, killing their fans hearing just to get generate a euphoric response in audience.\n\nIf you listen to ear-buds/headphones this loud, there is little that can be done to save you."
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2hbs83 | if food takes longer than 24 hours to digest, then why do i take a massive fiery dump within an hour or two every time i eat spicy asian food? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hbs83/eli5_if_food_takes_longer_than_24_hours_to_digest/ | {
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"The spicy food can irritate your stomach and make your bowels react by clearing what ever is in the pipeline, so to speak. ",
"Food typically takes 12 hours to digest. If the food is irritating to your stomach or intestines, the body will speed up the process as best it can, though. If there's enough oil in the food, the \"fiery\" part (capsaicin) will be carried particularly fast as it is dissolved and carried in the liquid portion of the goo flying through your gut.",
"Your body thinks that it's something harmful so it dumps it as fast as possible. "
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2zlhfm | why denying the holocaust is not protected under the freedom of expression? and why denying other genocides/mass killings is not criminalized in any countries? | I'm not a denier, but this dilemma has always baffled me.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zlhfm/eli5_why_denying_the_holocaust_is_not_protected/ | {
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"Not all countries have the same level of freedom of speech as the US. Many qualify hate speech as being illegal and some of those classify denying the Holocaust as being hate speech. ",
"If you are in America you are very much allowed to deny the holocaust all you want. ",
"becouse you are asuming other countrys are like america, laws are diffrent and freedom of speach is diffrent in other countrys in most first world countrys hate speach is illegal.",
"In the US, denying the Holocaust IS protected under freedom of expression. In some other countries, even those with fairly liberal free speech policies, there is not the same blanket free speech protections as in the US, and specific forms of expression (like hate speech) can still be forbidden.",
"It's been legally accepted as fact that the holocaust did happen, there is too much proof to deny it. \n\nIt is criminalized in other countries.\n\nAustria covers that under \"hate speech and racial vilification\"\nBelgium covers it under a 1995 law specifically pertaining to the holocaust.\nCzech Republic enacted a similar law in 2001.\nFrance enacted the Gayssot act in 1990, which prohibits denial of crimes against humanity as defined by the London Charter of 1945.\n\nI could continue for quite a while, many developed countries have laws against denying crimes against humanity.",
"Denying other genocides is also punishable in some European countries (see Armenian Genocide). Denying the Holocaust is a crime in some European countries because it basically amounts to hate speech.",
"Holocaust denial is a crime in European countries as the Holocaust was a modern genocide carried out by Europeans. They wish to avoid a repeat. \n\nMany of the laws prohibit denying any genocide but the Holocaust is singled out for valid reasons. The idea, in part, is to stop another genocide from occurring and to stop another nazi party from forming. ",
"I think the simplest reason is that in Europe we have more of a 'feeling' for the Holocaust than most Americans, as well as not having the same tradition of \"free speech at all costs\".\n\nI believe the argument in the UK is that one is free to say what one wants regarding racism, etc. so long as it isn't inciting violence, and that denying the Holocaust is intrinsically an act of violence.\n\nAlso, most other genocides aren't as denied/ weren't as... brutal, as the Holocaust (not to suggest that x genocide is more worthy of attention than y genocide).",
"It is protected. But that doesn't mean no one can criticize you for saying that.",
"In the US, rights around speech or expression have less to do about certain categories of things but about who has the right to punish someone. It might be more accurate to say that the government lacks the right to punish someone for being a Holocaust denier. Someone might have the right to deny the Holocaust or not, but the US doesn't grant any government the right to decide that question."
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1x2c1p | why do cold sores sting? | Well, first of all, my original thought was why do they sting when I rub my tongue over them, but after taking a drink of water just now I realized pretty much anything that touches it stings.
Why is that?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x2c1p/eli5why_do_cold_sores_sting/ | {
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"Herpes actually infects the nerves themselves, so it's a combination of direct stimulation of the pain nerves and stimulation by swelling."
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e05rlm | what causes the full body twitches during climax? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e05rlm/eli5_what_causes_the_full_body_twitches_during/ | {
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"Are you guys getting full body twitches?",
"[Article](_URL_0_) about the hormones released and the brain activity during orgasm.\n\nThe answer is that almost the entire brain \"lights up\" with activity and neurons triggering, and your blood is flooded with dopamine (feel good hormone) and oxytocin (hormone of attraction to the other person). This \"increased activity\" effect includes the motor cortex (area of the brain that controls muscles)."
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2y7aaw | why is the underlying algorithm used to calculate credit scores not in the public domain? | I realize that there are plenty of high-tier explanations for what factors influence one's credit (e.g., 35% comes from payment history, 15% length of credit history...) but the actual algorithm is protected IP for reporting agencies. Wouldn't a more transparent system work better and encourage clear **actionable** improvements for a borrower's habits? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2y7aaw/eli5_why_is_the_underlying_algorithm_used_to/ | {
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"The United States has the rule of law, more or less. \n\nWe don't just arbitrarily confiscate people's property, including intellectual property, because some guy on the internet thinks that that would be more fair.",
"ex credit report resale IT guy here... I can attest that at least part of the reason is the complexity, not only of each bureau's calculation, but of the interaction among the main 3 (equifax, experian, and transunion) as well as resellers and agrigators of the output from the big three\n\neven as partners and clients of the bureaus, the best the company I worked for had was a photo copy of a photo copy of a 20-year-old spec document from one of the bureaus that I don't think we were even supposed to have and even that was barely legible and had annotations made along the way \n\nI suspect they're not actually able to provide a 100% accurate formula if they wanted to... not that they shouldn't, but it's decided by a ton of old code written by people who don't work at the companies anymore and that no one touches for fear of bringing the whole thing crumbling down... "
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8oshns | why do you have to fast before getting certain blood tests? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8oshns/eli5_why_do_you_have_to_fast_before_getting/ | {
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"The Fasting Blood Glucose Test is the primary test for diabetes. It's the routine bloodwork test that is most likely the cause of your instructions to fast. There are others, but usually that's a function of something specific the doctor is investigating.",
"it depends on the blood tests, however, its typically to get rid of all the fats and sugars that are suspended in your blood following a meal.\n\nIf you fast, then your body will process those fats and sugars from your blood. Whats left over are the risiduals which are produced by your body (ie, chloresteral, insulin etc...). By fasting they can get a somewhat accurate snapshot of the levels in your blood to know if you have high chloresteral due to your liver producing too much or insulin levels due to diabetes etc...",
"To make sure it’s JUST your blood and your body, not your food.\n\n\n\nFor example, I am not diabetic, if I eat something sugary, my blood sugar will spike THEN my insulin will bring it down.\n\n\n\nIf u/viccsilver, who is diabetic, eats something sugary, their blood sugar will spike and will not be brought down.\n\n\n\n\n\nIf we had both just eaten, the spike wouldn’t tell the doctors anything. They need to see how the body reacts.",
"Blood tests are a snapshot in time. If you slam three donuts and get blood-work done thats not a real accurate picture of whats going on in your body all the time. ",
"Meals disrupt things in variable ways (depending on how long ago you ate and how much it was). It's like if you were trying to measure how deep a pool is at a water park - you'd want to make sure the waves were turned off and the water was still before taking your measurement. ",
"All I know is I'm tired of having to go through the same process my mother tends to go through getting a fasting blood draw. Namely getting stuck multiple times because of rolling veins, and having to regularly use a 'butterfly' needle to draw the blood. I am diabetic, never on insulin but I have always taken pills to control my blood sugars. For some strange reason I also have issues with only being able to sleep six hours at most, and that is pushing it.",
"I once was going to get tested for my blood sugar. Didn't even think of it and had an iced cappuccino on my way. \n\nGet a call from my doctor in distress about my blood sugar levels... explained myself and had to go again but this time I wasn't allowed any of those.\n\nThat is why you need to fast for certain blood work testing."
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33pw54 | why can we not consciously feel organs working in our body if they are continuously at work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33pw54/eli5why_can_we_not_consciously_feel_organs/ | {
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"Very few nerves in your internal organs, except for when they need to tell you that something hurts. Theres also very little movement, so you wouldnt feel it that way. But you do feel your stomach rumble or growl right? That would be one example.",
"Because they aren't innervated in the same way that, for example, your skin is. There are many types of innervation - for example, if you get bloated, you can feel that, but it's not the same type of feeling as if you scratch your skin. If you have gallstones, and the bile duct gets blocked/irritated, it can be a very immediate, different type of pain. If you have to urinate very badly, obviously that feels quite different as well.\n\nThere is no real reason for us to be able to feel our organs working, so we don't have that innervation."
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3wsnqc | why is there alot more hype and excitement for star wars episode vii than there was for episode i? | I remember when Episode I came out and there didn't seem to be even half the hype there is for Episode VII. Is the marketing different? Online environment and connectivity? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wsnqc/eli5_why_is_there_alot_more_hype_and_excitement/ | {
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"I think you are vastly mis-remembering the hype. Go look up some videos of lines for Phantom Menace. The toy thing was the same too, I remember getting Lego sets before the movie even came out.",
"I don't think you're remembering the hype as it was. Disney owning Lucas films and their marking style isn't any different from when Lucas owned it. I remember, especially for episode 2 but for all the prequels that if it was sold in a store it the star wars label was slapped on it. Nothing really had changed imo.",
"There was a ton of hype surrounding Episode I... but the big difference is that there was no social media, no podcasts back then! So a lot of the discussions about were what the mainstream media wanted to cover and there weren't the outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, podcasts, etc. to discuss it, there was no online release of previews to get people hyped up, etc.",
"There was a lot of hype for Episode I, but... it didn't have the Disney Machine behind it. Disney is squeezing every last penny out of this thing right now. There were always advertisements and cross-promotions, but not to this degree. \n\nThere's also a much greater sense of hope for redemption, after the last trilogy...",
"Episode I hype was an order of magnitude greater than this.\n\n > Employment consultant firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimated that 2.2 million full-time employees missed work to attend the film, resulting in a US$293 million loss of productivity. According to The Wall Street Journal, many workers announced plans to view the premiere that many companies closed on the opening day. Queue areas formed outside cinema theaters over a month before ticket sales began.\n\n_URL_0_"
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9868bj | why do americans have 5k races when we use miles? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9868bj/eli5_why_do_americans_have_5k_races_when_we_use/ | {
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"Running is an international sport, and the standard distances are in meters or kilometers.\n\nOther sports, like tennis, traditionally have Imperial measurements, and those are used even in countries that use the metric system.",
"Americans mostly use imperial measurements but do use metric as well.\n\nMetric is taught in schools alongside Imperial and most Americans have at least a basic understanding of it."
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2vqih9 | why do restaurants' food taste so much better when the ingredients are relatively inexpensive? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vqih9/eli5_why_do_restaurants_food_taste_so_much_better/ | {
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"More butter, more salt, better equipment. There isn't much more to say, restaurant food is intense, also lots of prepared ingredients that home cooks don't take the time to do (like sauces) ",
"Fat, sugar, salt, and MSG. Those are things that your body craves, and so eating anything loaded with those things, even something gross, tastes awesome.\n\nYour body will make something that has stuff it craves taste good. People who are starving or lacking a specific nutrient will often crave, and enjoy the taste of, things that are really gross. This is noted a lot in people stranded at sea who develop a love of fish eyes and livers. This is also way many cultures have foods that are really gross but still popular.",
"Proper seasoning (salt) when cooking.\n\nYour food should be salted when cooking *not at the table*. Unfortunately most home cooks just don't know how to do this correctly."
]
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31g4id | is there a reason why people like to "get sun"? | Beyond getting a tan | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31g4id/eli5_is_there_a_reason_why_people_like_to_get_sun/ | {
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"text": [
"Your body requires sunlight to synthesize vitamin D IIRC.",
"There are several studies which links sun exposure to production of \"feel-good\" endorphins. Also, Vit D."
]
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[],
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|
aj7o3h | mold spores affect on the human respiratory system. | ELI5: how do mold spores affect the human respiratory system, and how do the different types of mold affect it differently | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aj7o3h/eli5_mold_spores_affect_on_the_human_respiratory/ | {
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"Mold likes to grow in cool, wet areas. The danger of mold spores depends on their ability to tolerate the heat inside your body as well as their ability to avoid detection by your immune system.\n\nThere are fungal spores everywhere and it would be an unusual breath in which we inhaled none of them. These are generally opportunistic infections that take advantage of people with compromised immune systems. In a healthy person, your white blood cells simply migrate out of the blood across the thin membranes of the lungs and eat the fungus to death. "
]
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5u7d3a | why is it preferable to ask for someone's resignation rather than just fire them with cause? | Recent National Security Advisor resignation got me thinking about this.
Also the US president's penchant for firing people before he took office would lead me to assume he would rather fire people | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5u7d3a/eli5_why_is_it_preferable_to_ask_for_someones/ | {
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"My police friends tell me it's common to ask for resignation rather than get fired because you \"choose\" to leave and look for employment elsewhere whereas being fired is a career ender. I'm sure a lot of this applies elsewhere, even in politics. Beyond that, I dunno.",
"Resignation just looks better than being fired. I'm sure the ones resigning are being told \"Resign, or you're fired.\"\n\nGiving them the option to save face.",
"It's less of a hassle, less paperwork, and less conflict. A person who *signs* a resignation letter even under pressure is less likely to stir up a shitstorm afterwards, because the administration / company could always say that *they* resigned and deny any pressure if necessary (arguably not in the Flint case, but in general).\n\nIt's also supposed to be a good practice because it allows both sides to keep face. The resignee does not get the stigma of being fired, and the employer does not get to field questions on why that person was fired. ",
"For the person who resigns it is them leaving on their own terms, technically, which helps them on their next job search. Nobody wants a with cause termination on their employment record.\n\nFor the employer it saves them a lot of legal headache. When you fire someone you generally have to go through a lot of legal hurdles to ensure that everything is by the book in case the employee sues for their job back. But, if they resign you have much less fear of a legal battle and you can have them leave immediately rather than checking all the boxes from your legal/HR department to protect the company from an unlawful termination lawsuit.\n\nI work for a large company, when we fire people we generally have to put them on a performance improvement plan, then document the hell out of everything, then have counseling sessions, training sessions, etc etc etc. All because we're afraid of getting sued. It usually takes us 2-4 months of headaches, training and documentation to terminate someone \"the right way.\" This is also why if the person was simply a bad hire you'll often hear companies giving a compensation package. This is done so the employee is enticed to resign rather than try to stick it out during the process to terminate them. They'll get a lump sum of 3-6 months pay (usually) and can say they weren't terminated on their next job opportunity, they can simply claim to be the victim of \"downsizing\" or whatever it is they want to claim.",
"IF they resign they don't get to fill out a unemployment claim which is beneficial to the company.",
"A lot of answers here are correct. But there is another angle to this. \n\nAt Wendy's it was far better for an employee to quit then to fire them. Because if they got fired they had access to unemployment benefits. Especially if the reasons for termination were not properly documented (they typically had to have 3 write ups on the same offense unless it was something like stealing). If the employee quit however they would not have access to unemployment benefits. Whenever an employee successfully got unemployment it would cost Wendy's $ through raised premiums. "
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6qexw5 | why are advertisers suddenly demonetizing so many popular youtube creators' content? | It seems like this just happened in the last several months. Many popular you tubers are no longer getting ad revenue. Why wasn't this a problem for the advertisers in the last several years, and why is it suddenly a problem now? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qexw5/eli5why_are_advertisers_suddenly_demonetizing_so/ | {
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"My Hypothesis: Most likely because a lot of Youtubers will suddenly open up about their political views. \n\nThink of it like this, Joey is a youtuber. Company A endorses Joey but at the same time Company A says that they are not involved in politics. \n\nJoey suddenly releases a video stating how much he hates America and the world is flat.\n\nPeople look at company A and go \"Oh that company must agree with him\". Company A looks bad.\n\n\nLoose ends.",
"They were more or less ignoring the Youtubers political/racist/sexist/controversial views until it became a national story and they were 'forced' to pay more attention and demand Google stop putting their ads on (insert politically incorrect flavor of the month) videos.\n\nMore generally you can no longer speak to different audiences differently *once you get caught*. Microsoft got flack for white-washing a black actor for advertisements to Norway, which is 98% white. It wasn't 'hidden' very long. Now they just air different ads in different countries, but this costs more.\n\nSome companies like to advertise on off-color sites so long as it doesn't cause a problem with them with the population at large, but once it is they are always *SHOCKED gambling was happening in this establishment, we'll fix the problem right away.*. And a lot of companies were content to advertise 'everywhere' until a technological means was provided to easily blacklist certain kinds of content.\n\nAt it's heart this is a story of technology. Prior to a couple of years ago the kind of deep-learning AI that can watch a video and decide if it's racist or violent or adult or underage simply didn't exist, at least not without a lot of human intervention. The recent hub-ub about racist Youtubers forced Google's hand and they rolled out the AIs they had that understand racism better than most liberals. And cussing, and adult videos, and everything else a wholesome family-friendly multi-national mega-corp might not want to be associated with."
]
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1m547z | if december 21st is called the winter solstice, then is it called the summer solstice in australia? | Because in Australia it is summer... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m547z/eli5_if_december_21st_is_called_the_winter/ | {
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"text": [
"Yes. June 21 is our Winter Solstice."
]
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22bgx3 | what does it mean to be a psychopath? how can i spot one, and are they always dangerous? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22bgx3/eli5_what_does_it_mean_to_be_a_psychopath_how_can/ | {
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"Psychopath is a very broad and misused term nowadays, however as I'm not a specialist I won't try and pretend I know more than I do. But yeah people use that term for a bunch of things now.",
"Psychopaths and sociopaths don't \"emote\" normally. They don't show fear in situations that would typically necessitate sweating or worrying. That's not to say that someone who is not scared easily is a psycho. People in the military or in dangerous careers have to have nerves of steel and function while in dangerous situations. People who are psychopaths and sociopaths have a slew of other behavioral issues as well in conjunction with their response to pain and pleasure, from not sleeping normally to deriving joy out of hurting others. They basically don't process emotions correctly or in a healthy way and they don't recognize other people as being significant. ",
"Here is a humorous TED talk from an author who spent some time studying psychopathy. \n\n_URL_0_"
]
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4z6e3j | how do bugs like flies survive a drop from terminal velocity | If a fly falls from 6ft and reaches terminal velocity, how does it survive? To them, the ratio of that height is very high. Humans can barely survive a drop from 2 floors depending on how you land. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4z6e3j/eli5_how_do_bugs_like_flies_survive_a_drop_from/ | {
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"In the same way as a human with a parachute survives falling from 10,000 feet at terminal velocity - their terminal velocity is much slower, so the landing is safer. If you scale an object up to double all its dimensions, its surface area is multiplied by four but its mass is multiplied by eight. This increases its terminal velocity because the force from gravity trying to speed it up (linked to mass) increases faster than the drag trying to slow it down (linked to surface area).",
"Small things tend to be less breakable than large things, because the tension and compression forces caused by bending them scale up out of proportion to their size. This was observed and explained by none other than Galileo in Day One of his \"Two New Sciences\":\n\n_URL_0_\n\n > Who does not know that a horse falling from a height of three or four cubits will break his bones, while a dog falling from the same height or a cat from a height of eight or ten cubits will suffer no injury? Equally harmless would be the fall of a grasshopper from a tower or the fall of an ant from the distance of the moon. Do not children fall with impunity from heights which would cost their elders a broken leg or perhaps a fractured skull? \n\nAlso -- and contrary to what /u/Darkchyylde said -- small things tend to reach terminal velocity very quickly, and that terminal velocity is slower. This is because the air drag force is proportional to the cross-sectional *area* of an object, while the gravity force is proportional to its mass and thus its *volume*. The area goes up like the length squared, but the volume goes like the length cubed, so at a given velocity, the gravity force is bigger than the drag force for big objects, and vice versa for small ones.\n\n(If you liked that math argument without any actual math, you should go ahead and read Galileo, that's his jam.)"
]
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3538on | why does a simple app such as iheartradio need access to my photos and call information? | I figured I'd get the app in case I ever wanted to listen to proper radio on my phone but it says it needs access to so many different things. I'd understand needing wifi info, maybe even location info, but why does it need to access my photos and my call info? My photos have nothing to do with them. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3538on/eli5_why_does_a_simple_app_such_as_iheartradio/ | {
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"Lots of apps ask for access to call info because that allows them to stop playing media when you receive a call. I'm not sure about photos. Does the app have profiles that let you set a profile picture? That would allow the app to let you choose one from your camera roll or gallery app.",
"I'll assume you are talking about Android.\n\n\"Photos\" just means they get access to your external storage. They could be storing all kinds of things on there. I know that iHeartRadio lets you create your own stations; perhaps those use photos from your gallery for the icons?\n\n\"Device ID & call information\" is necessary for apps like these. This permission allows the app to know when someone is calling, or you are in a call. They need this to pause the stream, lower/mute the volume, etc during calls.",
"We have a detailed explanation of the Android permissions we need and why we need them on our help site which you can find here: _URL_0_. (Mods, hope linking to the answer is okay).",
"This come directly from the [iHeartRadio website](_URL_0_). (linked by /u/iHeartRadioHelp below)\n\niHeartRadio permissions on Android\nThe Google Play Store recently changed the way they display required permissions from applications. iHeartRadio is an app with many features which requires extra permissions, these permissions are listed below along with an explanation of what they do and why we need them.\n\n**Identity** - Uses one or more of: accounts on the device, profile data. \nReason for permission: \n\nWe need this permission to create an iHeartRadio account and integrate with Google+.\n\n**Location** - Uses the device's location. \nReason for permission: \n\nWe need this permission to check your current location for a list of local Radio Stations.\n\n**Photos/Media/Files** - Uses one or more of: files on the device such as images, videos, or audio, the device's external storage. \nReason for permission: \n\nWe need the permission to store album art on your Android phone to reduce network communication and to improve performance. This permission does not give us access to your photos or videos.\n\n**Wi-Fi connection information** - Allows the app to view information about Wi-Fi networking, such as whether Wi-Fi is enabled and names of connected Wi-Fi devices. \nReason for permission: \n\nWe need this permission to get the Wi-Fi status of your device to determine whether you have an active connection. \n\n**Device ID & call information** - Allows the app to determine the phone number and device IDs, whether a call is active, and the remote number connected by a call. \nReason for permission: \n\nWe need the permission to read phone status to know when you have received or end a phone call. This prevents our app from interrupting your call and allows us to resume playing when your call ends.\n\n**Edit:** If you suspect that there is privacy concerns about an app that you are using (Due to the permissions it needs or something else), you should check the App / developer's privacy policy. It should detail everything that they collect and how they use it. If the developer doesn't have a privacy policy, proceed with caution. But realize that not every app out there is not trying to sell your information.\n"
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57slgt | why are apples grown from seed bitter, and only sweet if grown from a graft? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57slgt/eli5_why_are_apples_grown_from_seed_bitter_and/ | {
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"Apple genetics is really complex. A good fruit has to have exactly the right mix of genes...anything else just results in bad taste. \n\nEvery time you grow a fruit from seed you are getting a totally new mix of genes, and that means you are pretty unlikely to hit on a winner. Apple breeders grow thousands and thousands of trees from seed to find the one that is good.\n\nBut if you grow from a graft, you aren't reshuffling the genetics at all. The apples will be the same as the tree you grafted from, so presumably pretty good (unless you graft from a bad tasting tree, but that would be dumb).",
"/u/atomfullerene gave a good answer, but it can be even worse than he said. There is a good chance that an apple seed is not a mix of genes from the same variety.\n\nIn the wild an apple only makes a small fruit to attract animals to scatter the seeds inside. (People have bred for larger, sweeter fruit.) The tree only \"wants\" to produce fruit after the flower is pollinated to produce seeds.\n\nBut the tree is producing masses of flowers at the same time. Odds are most of the flowers would be pollinating each other on the same tree. That would tend towards inbreeding. The tree doesn't \"want\" that. So it has mechanisms (don't know what they are) to inhibit flowers from accepting similar pollen.\n\nSo the flowers \"want\" to be pollinated by a different variety of apple. Farmers grow fields of the same variety of apple. If you go back in time, they all came from the same original tree. As far as the flower can tell, they are still on the same tree.\n\nTo get yields up, farmers have to use different apples as pollen donors. It can be any variety that produces lots of pollen at the same time as the desired apple is flowering. It doesn't matter if the donor has low quality fruit. I've read that they even use crabapples as a donor. Good luck getting good fruit from those seeds."
]
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||
1khrps | why do some animals evolve for slow movement (snails, sloths, ect.)? | It seems like fast movement would be an adaptation most animals would have. Granted many faster animals are still nowhere near the fastest on the planet, but those faster animals are adapted to escape from predators. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1khrps/eli5_why_do_some_animals_evolve_for_slow_movement/ | {
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"Well, there are costs to every 'upgrade' to an organism. When you buy a car, a bigger engine and better stereo cost you money. The same is true of animals - better defenses, faster movement, and things like that, tend to cost more \"money\". This \"money\" is usually the energy requirements of the animal.\n\nSo, you could imagine a super-fast slug, but it would require a ton more energy. And since slugs normally just crawl around eating leaves, your speedy slug would need to eat a lot more leaves to pay for that once in a lifetime dash from a predator.\n\nIt's all tradeoffs.",
"First of all, it's important to remember that evolution doesn't select for what's best, it selects for what *works*. \"Survival of the fittest\" is misleading, it really should be \"survival of the fit.\" Snails and other slow-moving animals seem to be doing perfectly fine the way they are, so there's no need to change.\n\nSecond, it's not necessarily always a good thing to be fast. Moving slowly takes a lot less energy. A sloth doesn't need to find as much food as, say, a monkey, because it's not burning up all those calories by swinging around in the trees and all that. Predators also don't notice them very well, because it's hard to pick out something that's just sitting still compared to a monkey that's running all over the place.",
"Everything in evolution is a trade off. Furthermore, while \"survival of the fittest\" makes people think about evolution as some sort of force always pushing animals towards some idealized perfect form, in reality it's much closer to \"survival of the barely fit enough\". As long as it's possible for a creature to survive in a niche, some form of life will eventually adapt to that niche. It's not like penguins sat down one day and thought \"the frigid wasteland of antarctica sounds like a great place to live\".\n\nSloths feed mostly on tree leaves. Leaves (like a lot of plant matter) have very little nutritional value, and take a long time to extract what is present. Grazing animals have adapted to eating grass by staying active and eating nearly continuously, and moving over large areas to gather enough food. That puts them out in the open the majority of the day, which makes them a prime target for predators. Sloths have gone the opposite direction, they react to the low nutritional value of tree leaves by having extremely slow metabolisms. That massively reduces the amount of calories they need to consume in a day, which allows them to survive on smaller diets. Furthermore they sit unmoving in trees for the majority of their life, which means they are harder for predators to reach or to notice, which is it's own survival strategy."
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1t5als | how can journalist legally interview wanted criminals without having to disclose their location? | I'm just wondering because i just came across an interview where a Mexican journalist interviews one of Mexico's most wanted. How is this possible? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1t5als/how_can_journalist_legally_interview_wanted/ | {
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"They most likely come to an agreement or there is some law. Kind of like how a lawyer can know all of the crimes you've commited but by law cannot tell anyone.",
"Well, you're not legally required to report it if you meet wanted criminal. However, journalism is a very risky field, if you interview a criminal and don't report him then he goes out and commits another crime, you could be seen as allowing the crime to take place."
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5dovdc | while eating, humming or anything to create a vibration in your head, why do digital clocks create a wave like pattern when looking at them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5dovdc/eli5while_eating_humming_or_anything_to_create_a/ | {
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"The digital displays don't update instantly. There's motion in the display. Just so fast you don't normally see it. But if you're moving your eyes in sync, it shows up. Electric toothbrush does this best."
]
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||
rrr9p | every time someone brings up a major political issues (war, rising gas prices, housing market, medical costs, etc), people almost always point the finger at the president and blame him for everything. but really, which issues are out of his hands and which can he really take action on? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rrr9p/eli5_every_time_someone_brings_up_a_major/ | {
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" > war\n\nThe president has complete control over the US military. That's assuming you mean \"war\" in the contexts of the recent wars, even though technically they haven't really been wars - war can only be declared by Congress, and it hasn't done so since WWII.\n\n > rising gas prices\n\nNot a damn thing he can do about those. They're controlled by OPEC and, to some extent, US refineries.\n\n > housing market\n\nNothing at all to do with the President. Point fingers at Bernanke (Chairman of the Federal Reserve) or the S & P for that, if anyone. Then again, Obama was the one who nominated Bernanke for another term in that position, so in that way you could shift the blame to him, albeit indirectly.\n\n > medical costs\n\nThis is a tricky one. The president can't formally introduce legislation, but he can suggest it, and in most cases he has the final say as to which bills pass and which don't. And in that regard, he's somewhat responsible for health-related legislation, like all other legislation. Having said that, his power in that area is hugely mitigated by the fact that Congress are the ones who need to suggest, approve, and pass a bill before the president can sign or veto it. "
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68ekfu | how can everybody's internet go through the same fiber optic cable at the same time? | I get that bits of data are transferred through fiber optic cables as pulses of light. How can the bits of a certain person not mix with another's?
--------------------------------------
edit:
Thanks for the great replies everyone. I can summarize what everyone said as follows:
1- Data are sent as packets of bits, each having the sender and receiver address included. These packets are a predetermined length of digital signals or predetermined format. That's how different packets not mix with each other.
2- Packets take turns going through the same channel, not being transmitted at the same time. It is just so fast that we perceive it to do so.
3- Fiber optic cables have numerous fibers in them, each single fiber can have different communications channels with each being a different frequency of light (thousands).
4- This means that an optic fiber is a very very large highway containing thousands of lanes (wave lengths), in each lane data of different people can travel sequentially as very fast cars (discreet packets of data). One optic fiber cable contains many of these super massive highways. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68ekfu/eli5_how_can_everybodys_internet_go_through_the/ | {
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"Modern fiber cables can contain up to a thousand fibers in a single cable. And often times we have many cables packed together into a larger cable, though those are mostly underground.",
"Whether it's fibre optic or copper doesn't really matter.\n\nWhenever you visit a web page, for instance, the data you send and receive is cut up into little pieces (packets). Each packet, much like a letter, has a destination address. These packets are sent from your computer to the nearest router. The router inspects the address and figures out where to send the packet to. The next router along the path does the same thing, and the next one, until the packet reaches its destination.\n\nAlong that route, the packet will sometimes travel across a copper wire, a fibre optic cable, or maybe even some kind of wireless link. The point here is that it doesn't batter how the packet is sent. What matters is that the internet is reliable enough that most of these packets arrive at their destination in a timely manner.\n\nFor the most part, these packets are sent and moved one after another. Just like on a highway, there are many packets in a row all going roughly the same direction. Some might take a turn and get off that highway to go elsewhere. Some highways have mutiple lanes, meaning that several packets (or cars) can be roughly in the same place at the same time. This is accomplished, for instance, by transmitting different \"lanes\" in different colours. This too is pretty much technology independent. You can send multiple signals along a copper wire, or a fibre optic cable or through the ether.\n\nIf you think that's magical, then try to think about cable TV: you have many channels on cable TV, but only one cable. It's the same thing as \"everybody's internet\" going through one fibre optic cable. This is called *multiplexing*.\n",
"How do all the letters in the mailman's bag don't get mixed up?\n\nThey are each in an envelope with a sender and recipient address.\n",
"Current technology allows about two terabytes/second transmission speed. Couple this with multi-frequency piggy-backing, and you can have over 40 different freqs on the same fiber, all carrying a two-terabyte package.\n\n\n_URL_0_",
"Because all the data is not sent at truly the same time. They are sent in chunks (packets) one after the other. Each packet has a header which contains the length, destination address, source address and so on.\n\nSo the router knows “the next 50 bytes should go to the address 123.123.123.13” and sends it there."
]
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|
803rsi | how does vsync prevent screen tearing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/803rsi/eli5_how_does_vsync_prevent_screen_tearing/ | {
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"Vsync is basically vertical synchronization. When ever you play a game without vsync and move your mouse, you can see tearing where there is a lot of movement because your computer screen displays the image in in horizontal lines, which is too fast for the eye to see, so we see it as a whole image. Since your video card works through countless amounts of equations, it might have a hard time keeping those lines on synch, depending in which game you're playing, your settings, and hardware. \nHere's a video that demonstrates the workings of a variety of screens: _URL_0_",
"Screen tearing happens when your video card starts drawing a new frame while you're in the middle of refreshing the screen. Vsync forces the image on the screen to only refresh in sync with a new screen."
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1fbo8g | how is it theoretically possible in the future to clone mammoths? | I was looking at this here [thread](_URL_0_) and there was a comment saying something about cloning it being possible. I was hoping to get a basic idea as to why this is the case. Wasn't sure if I should've posted it on /r/askscience as it would have been a more complex answer that my little brain might not be able to handle | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1fbo8g/eli5_how_is_it_theoretically_possible_in_the/ | {
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"I'm not a scientist, but I can parrot Terry Pratchett's \"Science of Discworld\".\n\nThe idea is that a mammal's genome is like an incomplete recipy. It tells you what to put together to make the cake mix. But it already assumes that you know at what temperature you need to preheat your oven and how long to bake it.\n\nUntil we figure that out we can't clone mammoths. Since we've got no mammoths to gestate these clones in.",
"I'm not an expert, but there are a couple of reasons. The first is that DNA lasts longer than we used to think - under the right circumstances. And in the case of the wooly mammoth it is not unusual to find frozen remains. Why do we find frozen mammoth remains so often? Well, that's related to the second reason:\n\nMammoths are closely related to modern elephants. They were wooly because they lived in northern, snowy climates. Sometimes they died in places that have remained frozen until today.\n\nBecause they are related to elephants, in theory we can take their DNA and place it inside an elephant embryonic cell, an egg. We could then place this egg inside a mother elephant. It should grow normally. The mother might wonder why her baby was so hairy, but it would look like an elephant to her.\n\nDinosaurs lived much farther in the past. But if by some miracle we did get a complete set of DNA for some dinosaur, what could we get to hatch it? Much harder all around."
]
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1fa9hb/mammoth_blood/"
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8atuhw | why are there so many blondes in sweden? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8atuhw/eli5_why_are_there_so_many_blondes_in_sweden/ | {
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"Having less melanin allows your body to take in more sunlight which can be used to create vitamin D which the human body needs. In warm places like Africa sunlight is abundant and you are far more likely to get skin cancer from exposure to sunlight unless your skin has some protection like melanin. In the far north like Sweden cancer from exposure to the sun is far less likely to be an issue while there is a need to allow more sunlight into the skin. Blonde hair is the lack of pigment in the hair just like blue eyes come from a lack of pigment in the eyes. A long time ago someone was born with blond hair and pale skin and this proved over time to be beneficial in environments in the far north so their descendants kept these mutations. The Swedes are some of their decendants."
]
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[]
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4mpbd0 | how do animals (with bullying type personality) instinctively change their personality to protect their puppies, cubs, etc when they become parents? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mpbd0/eli5how_do_animals_with_bullying_type_personality/ | {
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"What exactly do you mean by an animal with a bullying personality type? Do you have any examples?\n\nBut generally speaking you don't have to do anything to trigger the maternal instinct, that's what makes it an instinct.",
"Well view it in terms of evolutionary success. If an aggressive animal kept it's same demeanor and killed it's cubs/puppies out of aggression or simply pushed them out of its area due to territorial defense then that gene pool wouldn't be reproductively successful. Therefore those whom have the demeanor to protect their young will be way more successful in terms of having offspring that mature and reproduce. The animals whom have the genetic disposition to protect and nuture their young while being able to maintain a bullish stance to predators or intruders will always be more successful in terms of survival of their gene pool so they exist today because their ancestors were successful in protecting their young and they are the living product of their ancestors. (This applies to mainly mammals, plenty of other animals go with the plan of mass producing young and abandoning them knowing some will still survive i.e. reptiles, fish)\n\nSo in short it's very possible individual mothers(in terms of animals such as bears, wolves, dogs) exist that are aggressive to their young but they will never be the majority because their young are more likely to perish before passing on that gene pool.",
"Just like new human mothers release hormones to keep them from killing their children for waking them up 10 times a night (I'm serious, that's pretty much why) animals do too. The hormones are what initially creates such a strong bond between mother and child and thus creating a strong protector instinct. It is pure genetics for a mother to literally lay her life on line for her child (this ensures the continuation of the species if you want to get all sciency about it). But basically just hormones. "
]
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3h4nia | if you move can you take your homing pigeons with you, or do they always return to your old house? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h4nia/eli5_if_you_move_can_you_take_your_homing_pigeons/ | {
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"text": [
"If you don't let your homing pigeons out, they eventually identify where they currently are as their 'home'."
]
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[]
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3vbl7m | with apple making everything proprietary anyway, wouldn't they profit from adding a smaller headphone port, and sell proprietary headphones? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vbl7m/eli5_with_apple_making_everything_proprietary/ | {
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"Sure. Except they already have that with the lighting connector. Why should they invent a second thing that does the exact same function as a thing they have already invented. Headphone makers can simply add a lighting connector to their headphones. \n\nIt does pose a challenge of charging while listening, but that can be solved by a simple splitter. ",
"Well, no, because there's a universal standard for headphones that predates their entry into the market, so it would be a significant impediment to adoption of their hardware."
]
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5jmyu5 | why do we hate killers and thieves but we love killing and stealing in videogames? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jmyu5/eli5_why_do_we_hate_killers_and_thieves_but_we/ | {
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"Bad things are more fun when we do them than when other people do them. And in a videogame, these actions are victimless so it removes the moral issues which makes it enjoyable for those of us that don't actually want to hurt other people.",
"We're not doing them in real life - we blow off steam when we do this in video games so it's socially acceptable",
"Tragedy is when something bad happens to me, comedy when it happens to you.\n\nFortunately, in video games, there is no \"you\" to suffer from the thieving and murdering gamers of the world. Pixels feel no pain.",
"Generally in most of the video games you are in the control of everything and stealing, killing etc. doesnt effect you that much because there is **nothing to lose**.If you die you can simply reload. \n\nThink about this way; i remember how carefull people was when playing diablo 3 in hardest mode because there was no respawn, if you die its game over. No reload or something else. Even when it was not \"gg wp\" situation because you can simply create new acc and now compare to that real life + education you had. The sense of righteousness.\n\nThanks for reading. (Not native speaker sorry if i made mistake[s])",
"People love to have a sense of control, but they *hate* when others have more control than them.\n\nIf you stole a dollar from me, you'd have control in that situation. But you'd be taking away my control of the dollar. It's unfair since you have more control than I do, so it's considered bad to steal.\n\nVideo games generally give you lots of control—we love to steal in video games because we *can*. The more you're able to do something the way you want, the more you'll enjoy the game. And there's no real person losing any control when you do. (In PvP games the loser still controls how well he plays.)\n\nEven when the game introduces consequences for stealing, it's usually something the player can control. You can control how stealthily you steal to avoid getting caught, or you can control how well you fight off the guards or cops that come after you. You wouldn't try to steal as freely in real life because you probably couldn't keep the consequences under control."
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784tpp | why are benzos the go-to for a lot of mental issues? | I've heard (forgive me if I'm wrong) that for many mental conditions a paramedic, ambulance, or hospital may be called for, benzodiazepines (and benzothiazepine?) are one of the main methods of treatment.
Why is this the case? I'd assume given how complex the human brain is that anything which can shut down so many processes at once would be unhealthy. What makes these particular receptors unique to their role in medicating individuals?
Thank you for any help and information! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/784tpp/eli5why_are_benzos_the_goto_for_a_lot_of_mental/ | {
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"They're a tranquilizer. So in any case where there's too much brain activity, or a patient is too agitated, you give them benzo. Quick fix for seizures, panic attacks, anxiety, etc. It's like turning down the volume on the brain.",
"They work quickly and like you said basically shut down the brain for a while. I'm not sure how they do with long term treatment but when you have someone who is agitated and violent, it's safer to go ahead and basically turn them off for a few hours before they hurt themselves or someone else. From there you can formulate a more reasonable treatment plan but the immediate goal is to keep everyone safe. That's why they are used by EMS/hospital staff quite often from what I can tell. \n\nBasically a dose of \"calm the hell down for a minute\"\n\n",
"Also, when a person is acting “crazy”, the doctors cannot always tell if it’s actual psychosis, street drugs, or delirium. After a good nap the street drugs will have worn off. When they wake up they will no longer be “crazy”, and that will help with the diagnosis. Plus, lack of sleep truly can make you a crazy fucking asshole. I think that is the ICD-9 medical diagnosis. I might be wrong, but I’m not. "
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8tl78k | how come a wi-fi repeater uses the same channel as the router? | How does a WiFi repeater uses the same channel (same frequency, to my understanding) as the source of it's signal (the router, probably), especially in cases where both the repeater transmitter and the router transimitter are both in reception range?
Wouldn't it cause interferences? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8tl78k/eli5_how_come_a_wifi_repeater_uses_the_same/ | {
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"A WiFi repeater does exactly what it says in the name, it repeats. A repeater listens to every message and then rebroadcasts the exact same message with the exact same parameters. It has no smarts to it and just tries to pass the message. A basic repeater will cause message collisions and cut your effective WiFi bandwidth by at least 50% because half the time is spent just repeating messages.\n\nA WiFi range extender is generally smarter and will setup a network on a different channel with the same SSID. It will take any messages it hears from the main router and rebroadcast them on its channel. This is much better as it doesn't clog up the main channel with redundant messages",
"The range of channels for 802.11b/g/n in the U.S. is 1 through 11. People typically use 1, 6, and 11 for minimal interference.\n\nSuppose your main router uses channel 1.\n\nYour repeater uses channel 1 to talk to your main router, and it often uses another channel, like channel 11, to talk to devices closer to the repeater.\n\nDoes that make sense? If you take your laptop near the main router, you're connecting to it using channel 1. Then if you walk closer to the repeater, now you're connecting to the repeater using channel 11 and the repeater is connecting to the main router using channel 1.\n\nDoes that generate interference? Yes, but it's no difference from the interference you get when you have 3 laptops, a gaming computer, an Echo, a Chromecast, a smart fridge, and 17 other wireless devices all sharing the same channel too.\n\nKeep in mind that there's \\*always\\* interference. Wi-fi is always working around it. It's only a question of how much.",
"Personally I would never use a wireless extender because they are not very reliable. What I would use is a wired extender. One that connects to the first router via ethernet cable and works as a second wifi connection point. This is known as bridging. In this case you can change the bandwidth and even SSID and it will work just fine. Or you can even use the same bandwidth and same SSID and keep it far enough from the first wifi so the signals do not interfere.\n\nIn this form you can get any cheapo regular router and turn it into an extender based on the first router. You can even extend from the second extender to a third extender and to a fourth and so on. And since they already have ports built into them you can also connect other devices to them through ethernet wire. I've done a six routers deep bridge and my connection was as fast as if it was connected directly to the first router.\n\nSetting up the routers into extenders can be something that is not for the faint of heart specially if you want the dhcp server to be configured by the first router. This is preferred otherwise each router can be considered its own private LAN that cannot connect to the computers on the other extenders/lans.\n\nAlthough, there are some newer routers with a built in configuration option to set them as slave extenders. I'm no expert on any of this. It's just stuff I learned on my own. So if I made any mistakes on any of this jargon and information, please correct it."
]
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6txwdl | why can't we see satellites from the iss? | I was watching the live feed from the ISS and people are asking why can't we see satellites ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6txwdl/eli5_why_cant_we_see_satellites_from_the_iss/ | {
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"Space is big. Why would you think satellites would be visible from hundreds of miles away?",
"The orbital path of satellites is a sphere significantly larger than *the entire Earth*. While there are thousands up there, most of them are the size of a car basically. You aren't going to just randomly see *anything* in space. It's SO huge, if you're not trying *really really hard* to find something, you never will. \n\nIt's like if you're in the Sahara ATVing. You might wonder \"I can't be the only one ATVing in the Sahara, where is everyone\". Well, the Sahara is 3.5 million square miles. It's like finding a needle in a haystack, when the haystack is the size of 7 countries. It doesn't matter if there's 2000 needles, or 5 million. You probably won't see another one even if you search for the rest of your life.",
"Most satellites are in what's known as \"Geo-Stationary Orbit\" which is about 22,236 miles up. You're not gonna see something the size of a car from that distance. Space is BIG."
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1wt6dq | tax returns | How does electing for 0 or 1 or whatever work? Why do they do it that way? What determines how much I get back/pay in? How accurate is the system? What is the best possible way to ensure that I benefit as much as possible in the long run? Do my questions even make sense? I don't know, I'm 5. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wt6dq/eli5_tax_returns/ | {
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"I can explain tax returns like you're 5, but I can't explain to a 5 year old how to file taxes. So, \"taxes are a small part of your earnings that government takes in order to run itself. That's how we pay for roads, school, police, firefighters, armed forces and a lot more. Every month the government makes a guess about how much you should pay and takes that from your pay check. At the end of the year, you do the math and figure out if you payed more that you should have, or less than you should have, or just right. If you payed more, you should write a check and pay the remaining. If you payed more, which is very common, you tell the government and they send you a check.\n\nNow, for advice on how to file your taxes and which decisions to make, I strongly recommend you go to an expert - H & R Block will do unless your taxes are really complicated. What they charge you is worth it in that they can either find you more return or save you an audit by correcting some mistake you'd make. What I really like is that they guarantee their work: if you later find out they made a mistake, they pay you back whatever their mistake costs you.\n\nEDIT: typo"
]
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2le4pg | why can't jerusalem be made into an independant city-state, similar to the holy see & vatican city? | All the fighting seems so senseless. If it is a holy site for multiple groups, just make it independant. Not Israel's, not Palestine's, not anyones. I don't understand why this sort of thing can't be implimented more frequently. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2le4pg/eli5_why_cant_jerusalem_be_made_into_an/ | {
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"Because compromise requires everyone to give something up - Israel would have to give up their current possession of the territory, and other groups would have to give up their hopes for future possession of the territory. Not to mention the legal, economic, and security hassles that would come of ceding a big chunk of high-value territory in the middle of one's land.",
"The long and the short of it is that that is not what anyone wants. Both sides want the city for themselves and are working to that end. Giving the city up would be perceived as a loss, and so far no one has offered any convincing reason why it wouldn't be. \n\nAs for the Vatican, it made its deal with Italy in exchange for limiting and controling the influence of the Church in Italy. Here, there was something to gain by both sides.\n\n",
"That was the original plan. Under the UN resolution that created the state of Israel, Jerusalem was to be placed under international control (basically a special government organised by the UN) for 10 years, after which the citizens would vote on the future arrangements. \n\nHowever, in the war that followed the creation of Israel the city was occupied by Jordan and Israel, and actually declared the capital of both countries. Since the Six Day War the whole of Jerusalem has been occupied by Israel.",
"I know this will be voted down to nothingness but what would happen if Jerusalem just disappeared one night? Like North Korea says fuck this shit and nukes it just to see the worlds reaction? \n\nI know this is super hypothetical but what do you think would happen? ",
"Because people are greedy and feel the need to own the land claiming it's their holy divine right and will surpass all government laws. You're basically trying to separate a polar bear and a tiger from their only source of food. Both groups will literally continue to tear each other apart until one is gone."
]
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1ibb40 | why is a rainbow's colors the way they are now? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ibb40/eli5_why_is_a_rainbows_colors_the_way_they_are_now/ | {
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"rainbows are caused by refracting light (bending) in water drops, the different colors bend by different amounts causing them to spread out in a predictable order based on their frequency (their energy) from a low of red to the higher frequencies of the blues and violets. "
]
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5ht9ig | "millenials" | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ht9ig/eli5_millenials/ | {
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"What u/homeboi808 said for the literal definition. There's also several underlying characteristics that people are usually referring to when talking about millenials (at least in the US) such as:\n\n- tech-savvy\n\n- socially liberal, but not necessarily registered Democrats or very politically active\n\n- urban non-homeowners\n\n- college-educated\n\nThis is me editorializing here but what I've noticed is that usually when the media talks about millenials they're talking about those traits -- a particular subgroup of the generation(s) that grew up with the dot-com bubble and/or the financial crisis. People like rural young adults without a college degree don't seem to be the focal point of such discussions."
]
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8r9ne2 | how does stuff from in the ground become oil in sunflowers and other plants? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8r9ne2/eli5_how_does_stuff_from_in_the_ground_become_oil/ | {
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"Oils are made of big molecules that contain three atoms: carbon (C), oxygen (O) and hydrogen (H). These atoms are present all around us in the form of smaller molecules. Two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen can make a water molecule (H2O). Water is present in the ground where the plant grows. One carbon and two oxygen atoms can make carbon dioxide (CO2), which is part of the air that the plant breathes. \n\nThe cells of the plant are able to perform complicated chemistry that shuffles the atoms of water and carbon dioxide around and recombines them into bigger molecules like sugars and oils. For example, one of the oil molecules that makes up sunflower oil is called 'oleic acid', and it contains 18 carbon, 34 hydrogen, and 2 oxygen atoms. This process, of building big molecules out of smaller ones, requires energy that the plants get from sunlight. \n\nThe plant makes these molecules as a way of storing energy for later. It uses the energy from the sunlight to make the bonds that are necessary to hold these big molecules together. Later, the plant can destroy these bonds again, releasing the energy and making it available to do things with (e.g. to build materials to allow the plant to grow). Or, we can eat the plant instead, and then we get to use the energy in its sugars and oils.\n\nSo plants make oil by rearranging the atoms of water and carbon dioxide into larger molecules. And note that the carbon dioxide doesn't actually come from the ground, it comes from the air. So if you see a bottle of sunflower oil, it's interesting to think that a lot of that stuff actually came out of the air, just like the air that you breathe."
]
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||
86xol2 | why do shoes with no support hurt my feet, but walking barefoot doesn’t? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/86xol2/eli5_why_do_shoes_with_no_support_hurt_my_feet/ | {
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"text": [
"Because walking barefoot is normal. Wearing shoes is putting an artificial arch, or no arch on your foot. ",
"Shoes can be at a weird angle or position that your foot doesn’t like. Being barefoot always puts you in a natural and healthy position"
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5m8ruu | why do some people die days or even weeks after their injury happened? | How come sometimes people will get shot or beat up pretty bad, they survive but then die in the hospital say a week later. I know sometimes the injuries are so bad that you have to expect it but sometimes they're recovering well & everything looks good then they pass | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5m8ruu/eli5_why_do_some_people_die_days_or_even_weeks/ | {
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"Could be a whole host of things but the common culprits I see are\n\n-ARDS: And inflammatory condition that a major insult to the body can cause which makes the lungs stiff and basically at least partially unusable\n-Sepsis: Another inflammatory response but this time to an infection. People who are that injured have more problems staving off infections. \n-Blood clot: These patients are immobile (which is a risk for clots) and injury can cause various coagulopathies. A blood clot that travels to the brain can cause a catastrophic stroke. One that travels to the lungs can cause a deadly pulmonary embolism."
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5r3nqm | why is the super bowl played on sunday night rather than saturday night? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5r3nqm/eli5_why_is_the_super_bowl_played_on_sunday_night/ | {
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"The NFL plays on Sunday, college football plays on Saturday, high school football is played on Friday. ",
"NFL Spokesman Brian McCarthy:\n\n\"The concept of playing the Super Bowl on a Sunday has worked well for 44 years and we don't anticipate moving away from this tradition. Fans expect to see the Super Bowl on a Sunday, the day on which 89.2 percent of NFL games are played.\""
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arfvxl | how come acts like killing civilians and war prisoners, using flamethrowers, biological weapons, etc are considered a war crime, but the act of starting a war in of itself is not considered a crime? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/arfvxl/eli5_how_come_acts_like_killing_civilians_and_war/ | {
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"The idea of war being some sort of abhorrent thing to be avoided is a relatively new way of thinking. Historically, war has considered to have been a normal tool for used by nations for a variety of things. It is pretty much a concession that sovereign nations retain the option to go to war. However, there are acts so heinous that just about everyone will agree that they are inherently wrong and those that commit them should be punished.\n\nAs for why we don't \"ban war.\" Well, who would enforce that rule and how? Obviously no party to the war is going to enforce it. So you'd need some third party willing and able. Able? How? Well, we already deter and punish warlike actions through censures and economic sanctions. We use political pressure and diplomatic measures to avoid conflict. But what happens when that doesn't work? Well, unless you're willing to go to war to enforce the ban on wars, then the ban is ultimately toothless. And if you are willing, then I guess you aren't really for banning wars.\n\nYes, you can go to war without declaring that you are doing so. The last war the US formally declared was against the Axis powers in WWII."
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2jqslb | what are the differences in computer programming languages like html, css, javascript, etc. how do people know the different commands and syntax, is there a list of all possible commands and syntaxes somewhere? why not just have one universal language? | How are they different and how does a computer differentiate between them? Can you code one website using multiple languages simultaneously and the computer has some way of knowing which is which? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? How is it that there isn't one language that is just so much better than the others, it seems by now that through collaboration that they would have created something universal and user friendly? Any ELI5 type explanation about anything computer programming related to help understand all of this would be greatly appreciated (For someone who literally knows nothing about programming or coding, it seems hard to find good basic explanations in layman's terms- they always seem to be directed at audiences that have prior programming experience and fail to make sense at a very basic level) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jqslb/eli5_what_are_the_differences_in_computer/ | {
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"First point: HTML and CSS aren't programming languages. HTML is a markup language to describe content, and CSS is a language to describe the styling of HTML. Neither has any meaningful programming constructs.\n\n > How are they different\n\nThe use different paradigms, different implementation details and focus on different things.\n\n > and how does a computer differentiate between them?\n\nIf it's compiled it doesn't need to - it's just a binary after compilation. Interpreted languages are described as needing to be input to another program. (The interpreter). The OS is told that, say, PHP files need to be feed to the PHP interpreter.\n\n > Can you code one website using multiple languages simultaneously and the computer has some way of knowing which is which?\n\nSure. Like any other file a server can figure out how to use a file based on its extension - Apache for example knows that .php files are PHP and runs them as such.\n\nYou can also explicitly describe how to handle it. In Nginx, for example, you commonly say that any file ending in .php is to be sent to the PHP interpreter first. \n\n > What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?\n\nThere's a huge collection of languages. Can't really go over each.\n\n > How is it that there isn't one language that is just so much better than the others, it seems by now that through collaboration that they would have created something universal and user friendly?\n\nWhy don't we have just one best car? Because what's great for someone commuting into a big city isn't the best thing for someone doing cross-country road-trips isn't the best for someone that needs to move couches and other large loads regularly isn't the best for someone who needs to win at a racetrack.\n\n > Any ELI5 type explanation about anything computer programming related to help understand all of this would be greatly appreciated (For someone who literally knows nothing about programming or coding, it seems hard to find good basic explanations in layman's terms- they always seem to be directed at audiences that have prior programming experience and fail to make sense at a very basic level)\n\nProgramming is just telling the computer to do things. It's up to you to decide what the ultimate goal is and how to accomplish it. Programming languages exist to make it easier to tell the computer to do things you want it to do. \n\n\n > How do people know the different commands and syntax,\n\nNobody knows it all. You get familiar with tools you often use, though.\n\n > is there a list of all possible commands and syntaxes somewhere? \n\nOf course. The documentation. Most programming languages today have an official website or at least a few unofficial ones with extensive documentation on various things. ",
"Different programing languages were developed for different purposes, and they're all good at different things. It's not really a matter of universal vs. user friendly, different languages interact with computer memory differently, and can perform the same task in very different ways. Because of this, depending on the program you want to write, one language will be better for the job than another. You can think of it as a toolbox where each programing language is a different tool. Once you know the job, you pick what tool will best accomplish it. Can you hammer in a nail using a wrench, probably if you try hard enough, but you can save yourself time and headache by picking the hammer."
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agkwz9 | why does peta use extreme marketing tactics that make them look like they're crazy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/agkwz9/eli5_why_does_peta_use_extreme_marketing_tactics/ | {
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"Because PETA is crazy. They've got nothing to do with anything they pretend to stand for. They're just crazy and kind of money hungry. ",
"I think it is for publicity. \"PETA gives whoever a stern talking to for wearing fur.\" won't get people looking at them as much as \"PETA throws a bucket of blood on someone.\" ",
"If you truly believe that a non-human animal has value approaching that if another human being, then \"crazy\" actions make sense. You see a guy having a burger, some of them see it as being morally the same as biting into a burger made of a child killed for the purpose of providing a pleasant experience to someone else. Naturally, their reaction to that is going to seem extreme to the majority of us that don't see it that way.",
"Part of it is publicity, part of it is an effort to shift the [Overton window](_URL_0_). This is the idea that the public has a narrow range of ideas they consider acceptable, but if you deliberately push extreme ideas outside that range, you can shift it in your direction, as people try to pick a middle ground.\n\n\"Meat sure is tasty, but PETA says milk is genocide and owning pets is slavery. That's going too far, of course, but I did decide to go vegetarian at least.\""
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2vvwi4 | why did soldiers in the past conduct war in 'marching band' manner? | I watched documentaries about British War and early American War.
Their weapons were cannons and primitive riffles with bayonet.
But the thing I don't understand is that opposing troops began a battle in some open space/field (not garrison or cities), as if the commanders agreed to a location before hand. Both parties marched toward each other in 'marching band' manner and waited for instruction before firing their weapon, while they supposed to just stand there to take each other bullets.
Why use such tactics? Isn't this the stupidest military strategy ever?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vvwi4/eli5_why_did_soldiers_in_the_past_conduct_war_in/ | {
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"/r/AskHistorians will give you a better answer.",
"It has to do with the military weapons that were in use at the time and its effectiveness.\n\nThe musket replaced the matchstick firearms that were used previously, which meant that infantry could fire much faster (albeit still relatively slow compared to today) but the firearms were only effective to a certain range.\n\nTo provide maximum damage, it was necessary for a large amount of infantry to be in formation and close range with the enemy so as to be sure that the target was hit.\n\nThough, with any battlefield, there's a fog of war. During this time, there was really actually a \"fog of war\" because of all the smoke from firing the muskets and cannons that were produced. To ensure some type of discipline, it was necessary to keep infantry in formation so as to not be firing on each other as well.",
"\nYou don't want to fire until you're close enough to the enemy to have a reasonable chance of hitting them, in order to preserve ammunition.\n\nYou want your infantry troops to remain in close formation because Revolutionary era guns are very slow to reload compared to 20th century firearms. Enemy troops (especially cavalry) are easily able to get close enough to kill you before you can reload. Infantry armed with pikes (and later bayonets) can break a cavalry charge, but only if they're in tight formation.\n"
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2o0dve | how a group like lizard squad could take down such a large money filled network | Lizard squad took down Xbox live. Wouldn't the Xbox live be more secure and harder to hack? I do not much about this, but it seems such a large company would have better security.
Edit: Ok, so DDos. My bad. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2o0dve/eli5_how_a_group_like_lizard_squad_could_take/ | {
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"They didn't hack it. They DDosed it. A 5 year old can DDos. ",
"They can't really defend from massive amounts of information flooding their servers. There is always going to be a point where they would shut down because many people sending all those packets of info to Xbox Live at once, combined with all the people online, the servers wouldn't be able to handle it."
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aiht67 | it seems like the sun and moon dont move too much in the sky day to day. why arent there several days of slightly different eclipses in a row? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aiht67/eli5_it_seems_like_the_sun_and_moon_dont_move_too/ | {
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" The moon's orbit is roughly 1.5 million miles around. (C = 244000 x 2 x pi) So it's moving almost 56000 miles a day. So it takes about an hour to move the distance of its own diameter.",
"A lunar eclipse can only happen when the moon is full because that’s when the moon is exactly opposite the sun. Full moons only happen every 29.53 days. The night after an eclipse, the moon is no longer full. It is no longer exactly opposite the sun."
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9f6cgx | what is smooth motion capture on tv? | [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)
There is recent petition by top directors to remove smooth motion capture on TV. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9f6cgx/eli5_what_is_smooth_motion_capture_on_tv/ | {
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"Footage that were shot for TV are usually 30 FPS (not sure, but I think it is?) and movies are usually 24 fps. It will look slightly stuttered to human eyes but we will still perceive it as motion. Modern smart TVs has a feature that analyze the input and put extra frames in between those real frames to smooth it out so that motions look, well, smoother. Some people like it, many don't. Personally i feel that it makes everything look like soap opera and feels cheap. I definitely don't want motion smoothing to change the feel of a movie and that's probably their point.",
"i thought smooth motion capture worked to eliminate motion blur as well as depth of field. ",
"Movies are usually shot in 24Hz, that means 24 images each second. This is a convention that goes back to old film projectors, and is still used in spite of digital technology making it possible to use a much higher frame rate.\n\nEven though our eyes can't distinguish individual frames at a frame rate of 24 Hz, we would still notice a flickering when watching the raw footage. Between frames, when the shutter of a film camera is closed, objects in the scene continue to move, and will appear to jump through the image rather than moving in a smooth line like we would perceive the real object with our eyes. So in post production, they apply a motion blur effect, which connects the movements happening between two frames and makes it look very natural.\n\nSo there's no need to apply any further blur effect. All it'll do is to reduce the image quality - it's already blurred enough, by professionals and not by a computer.",
"It's generally called Smooth Motion. No capture in it's title. That sounds more like a feature of a camcorder.\n\nVideo is made of frames, a bit like a flip book of still images. The frame rate used by movies and most modern TV captures images around 24 to 30 times a second.\n\nSmooth Motion uses maths to calculate what the frames between the ones the cameras captured would look like.\nIt then displays these calculated frames along with the camera's captured frames in sequence and bamm! Now the frame rate is higher.\n\nIt's good for sports as the fast moving objects become clearer.\n\nFor movies though, it can make things look \"wrong\". Often it breaks the dreamy illusion of characters in a story and it can instead look too much like actors on a film set.\n\nSo these Hollywood people want TV makers to provide a straight forward way to bypass their wizzy magic processing and let people watch the film as it was intended to be seen.\n\nAs it currently stands, each manufacturer has their own name for smooth motion. Intelligent Frame Creation is one I've seen.\n\nThe concept is comparable to having a bypass button for the tone controls/EQ on an audio amplifier.\n\nA lot of these processing systems are initially impressive but are fatiguing or generally worse in the long term."
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7w113b | what an api-key is and how to use it | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7w113b/eli5_what_an_apikey_is_and_how_to_use_it/ | {
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"API key is a key (just like a key to your front door) that identifies you.\n\nwithout API key, the system will either not respond or not give you full access to its capabilities.\n\njust like if you didn't have the key to the apt building, you can still get in the first front door, but not into any apt. "
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5rhtov | why do our mouths tolerate temperature (hot or cold) much more than our skin. | For instance we can tolerate several ice cubes or hot soup in our mouth but it would hurt or even burn our hands. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rhtov/eli5_why_do_our_mouths_tolerate_temperature_hot/ | {
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"I can hold hot soup in a bowel in my hand which will burn my mouth. If I am careful I can spoon the soup to my mouth, cooling it on the way and cooling it with my tongue. I can hold a block of ice in my hands. I really think I can tolerate hot and cold things in my hands better than in my mouth. Small parts can go in my mouth. But not too much.",
"I believe your premise is false. The same temperature of soup that would burn your skin, would burn your mouth. And you can hold about the same amount of ice in either your hands or your mouth.\n\nHowever, your mouth has glands that put out saliva at body temperature, which dilutes any hot or cold thing you put in your mouth."
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5zfv89 | what makes a substance nutritious? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zfv89/eli5_what_makes_a_substance_nutritious/ | {
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"A subtstance is nutricious when we can extract energy from it. That substance can be carbohydrates (sugars), fats, and amino acids from proteins. The body modifies these substances into one of the products that can be used in the so-called Krebs cycle. The Krebs cycle is a series of chemical reactions that releases stored energy from those substances in the cells. The end product is CO2 (a waste product that you exhale) and adenosine *triphoshate* (ATP), an adenosine molecule with three phosphate groups attached to it. ATP is the transporter of energy in the human body. When ATP breaks down in an adenosine molecule with two phosphate groups (ADP) and a free phosphate group, energy is released which can be used for metabolic processes in the body such as muscle contraction."
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3xx7lr | how do people sing in tonal languages? if the melody is falling but the tone of the word is rising, how does that work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xx7lr/eli5_how_do_people_sing_in_tonal_languages_if_the/ | {
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"At least in Chinese the tone of the word is ignored. You just follow the melody. The context will take care of identifying the correct meaning of the word. Also, most of the time the text is displayed in subtitles (on TV, DVD etc.).",
"Elaine Lau has a [good explanation](_URL_0_) for the relationship between the tone and the melody in Cantonese, a tonal language.\n\nThe singer will have to sing exactly the note that is assigned to the word. The composer will have to be careful when assigning the note to the word. In Cantonese, a wrong note used for a non-vulgar word can cause it to sound like a vulgar word. And so, if the original sound of the word is low and making sound it high turns it into a vulgar word, it is therefore better to assign a low sounding note to it. For example, in Cantonese, there is a word when said in a low voice it means throw but when it is said in a high voice it becomes the F word.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nNowadays, A Cantonese song can have a Western tune with Western rhythm, traditional tune with Western rhythm, Western tune with traditional rhythm or traditional tune with traditional rhythm. I suggest you look into iTunes for Cantonese songs to have a feel of how they sounded like.",
"Well in Mandarin Chinese, tones that don't fit the melody are substituted with the more neutral \"1st tone\" or in some cases the 3rd tone that dips then rises, in particular the 4th tone that is a strong down tone (like the word \"No!\") that is hard to sing. \n\nYou can tell the word is the 4th tone by the fact that the melody of the song lowers in pitch (despite the word itself being an neutral tone), or the word is said for a shorter time compared to the words before and after it. Or if all else fails by context in the song.\n\nAlso I have noticed that the \"down beats\" in music (the ones you count) often tend to have words with the 4th tone in them (not always though)\n\nCantonese Chinese on the other hand has more tones, but are less sharp, abrupt and clean like Mandarin (look up videos for Mandarin vs Cantonese) that flows better, so for the most part, tones in songs are not changed as much, as it is pretty clear what word is being said from the tone, regardless of melody or pitch of the song.\n\nIn general, the tones are less pronounced compared to when the words are spoken normally, though hints of the tone are still there. For tones that would break up the rhythm or melody of the songs, neutral tones are substituted and the length of the beat or the notes before and after help for the word to sound like it is the \"correct tone\"\n\nIt also might just be second nature to native speakers, since before I saw this question, I never really though about it yet what happens to tones when songs are sung.\n\nThis is all from personal observation, feel free to comment on anything I might have gotten wrong. "
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9dppbt | does our digestive system digest stuff in the order we eat? eg, will caffeine work slower if it is taken after food? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9dppbt/eli5_does_our_digestive_system_digest_stuff_in/ | {
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"It’s more that everything gets thrown together into a big pot in whatever order you eat it, but once it’s in there it dissolves fairly simultaneously.\n\nYou might get a small change if you take it simultaneously with a big meal or other drinks, because that dilutes it down and means it takes longer for everything to be digested, but your stomach is definitely not some sort of conveyor belt that digests things one at a time.",
"To add what others are saying, if you drink something, it can often go straight through the stomach, and alcohol and caffeine are both absorbed faster in the intestines, and with greater efficiency. That's part of why drinking on an empty stomach will get you drunk faster, or coffee with no food will hit you quicker. ",
"If you eat something on a full stomach it does take longer to reach your bloodstream.\n\nAnd if you get something on an empty stomach it is noticeably quicker to reach your bloodstream. ",
"Think of your stomach more like your mouth. You can put it one big bite, a few little bites, and then you salivate and chew. Then you start swallowing smaller chunks of your mouth load.\n\n \n\n\nThis is what your stomach does. You can put it all in at once, or in segments, and it'll release the stomach acid and enzymes and churn a bit - and then when ready it will start taking chunks into your intestines. It's not like a toilet you fill up and flush it all into your intestines in one go.\n\n \n\n\n \n",
"Things digest together. It's more of a matter of drinking coffee with a meal, or drinking separately, that influences how fast caffeine goes into your system.\n\nIt's also why you are advised to take some medications together or right before/after meal, so that the pill is dissolved in a more controlled rate.",
"Yes and no. \n\nCaffeine as a liquid will be absorbed as soon as it gets to the intestines. \n\nBut the order that you eat does affect some absorption. It depends on the frequency. If you eat everything at once, it all ends up in the stomach, and it becomes mixed together as its digested.\n\nIf you don't, and take some time between what you eat, it will digest in that order.\n\nAnother way to look at it is how your poop looks. Eat something red like red beets and then dont eat anything for an hour. Then eat some carbs and drink clam chowder, and your poop will be white.\n\nThen you'll poop out red poop and then white poop. So the order does matter.\n\nBut for things that are liquid, the order doesn't really matter because the absorption rates are different for things like that.",
"My doctor told me, because I’m diabetic, that I should eat protein every meal since it takes longer to absorb and will slow down absorption of carbs I eat at the same time. Not sure if true. ",
"Think about it this way: When you hit the gas pedal on a car you hear the engine rev up, but when you let you foot off the gas the noise doesn’t just go away, it winds down. The digestive system kind of works the same way in a sense. \n\nYour body is a massive homeostatic system, meaning that it’s main goal is maintain a comfortable environment in which to survive; I.e shivering when cold, sweating when hot. However it does all this in the most energy efficient way it can (sometimes). \n\nBack to the car analogy: Once you eat the engine is rev’d up so to speak, and it will stay that way for as long as you have your foot on the gas (eating) and slowly wind down as you stop eating. Much like it isn’t good for your car to constantly turn it on then off your body doesn’t want to waste the energy of starting the digestive system over and over again. So the closer to the time you eat after the initial consumption the faster that food or drink will be processed, decreasing as time passes.\n\nThen again I’m an internet stranger and could be completely full or crap. ",
"So, digestion = breaking stuff down, absorption = taking it into your body. \n\nLogistically speaking, once you put something in your mouth your body starts digesting it. You have enzymes in your saliva that break down carbs and fats. Once it enters your stomach, more enzymes and the acidic environment continue to break the food stuffs down. Once it enters your small intestine, pancreatic enzymes and bile (from gall bladder & liver) continue to breakdown the foods. In your small intestine is where absorption occurs too, however different types of molecules are absorbed in different parts of your small intestine. Things like amino acids (from proteins), lipids (fat), vitamins, carbs/sugars are all taken into the blood steam at varying sites of your small intestine. Some are absorbed at the beginning of the small intestine (the duodenum), some at the middle segment (jejunum) and some at the distal segment (ileum). I believe water freely absorbs throughout the entire intestine. Your food is digested/broken down as much as possible (down to the molecular level) and then it is absorbed at its respective site. This is because most molecules require a specific type of transporter to bring it into the blood stream. The stuff your body can’t absorb combines with the waste products in your bile to form the poop nugget. It goes through phases of water secretion/absorption in your large intestine, and then u sit down and flush it away 💩\n\nCaffeine is a different type of compound than the food you regularly eat, as it can absorb into your body pretty much anywhere (it can easily pass into cells without the need for transporters). It is 99% absorbed into your blood stream within 45 minutes. Here is the full breakdown of caffeine (yes, pun intended) \n\n_URL_0_"
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6nxib6 | how do ac thermostats work - how do they know what the temp is in the whole room? | I've looked this up and only found articles about how the AC itself works, and how it *uses* a thermostat to regulate the temperature, but I've always wondered how it is that my wall AC unit can be set to a temperature, then figure out what that temp is in the whole room. Because if the thermostat is just right in the AC unit itself, wouldn't the unit and the area around it get cool way faster than the room, thus the compressor would shut off sooner than it should? And if they do account for this gap, how do they know what the size of the room is? If I put an AC in a room too small for its size, will it actually get even cooler than 70 if I set it to 70? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6nxib6/eli5_how_do_ac_thermostats_work_how_do_they_know/ | {
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"They simply do not know. They only measure the temperature at the exact location of the thermostat, which has a little sensor inside."
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89470i | if you spin in an office chair, why do you spin faster if you move your legs in? similar to how figurine skaters hold themselves together. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/89470i/eli5_if_you_spin_in_an_office_chair_why_do_you/ | {
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"If you throw a ball, doesn't a lighter ball move faster than a heavier ball if you use the same amount of force? \n\nThere's a similar concept to mass in the angular world, angular momentum. But angular momentum is a big more complicated--distance away from the axis of rotation increases it.\n\nSo when you tuck in your legs, the mass of your spinning body is closer to the axis of rotation. This decreases your angular momentum, which makes you move faster."
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2gw4z5 | why is silence awkward? | Why when you're around some people, silence is the most uncomfortable thing in the world? And around others you are perfectly fine? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gw4z5/eli5_why_is_silence_awkward/ | {
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"It isn't actually necessarily awkward. Many folks are too worried about what others may be thinking, though, and so it creates anxiety. It needn't be that way. Sometimes silence simply means nothing need be said right then.",
"It's due to social expectations. Let's look at 3 common situations here:\n\n1. You're on the public train. It's unusual to talk to strangers on the train while commuting to school/work, and here the dynamic is the opposite: having to converse is usually awkward, while silence is the norm.\n\n2. You're with really good friends/family. They're people that you are comfortable with and used to having around. They know what you are like and you do not need to create any sort of impression anymore, and depending on the activity, little communication may be necessary to enjoy the mutual activity, and if there was communication, it is willful and not just to break radio silence.\n\n3. You're stuck in a situation where you hardly know the other person (e.g. through mutual friend; mutual friend temporarily gone to washroom). Silence is awkward because social norms dictate/suggest that you should make small talk with the other person. Not talking may make you feel like you are being rude or plain boring, but at the same time you do not know what to really say because you do not know what the other person enjoys talking about or what they may be offended by. \n\nTL;DR: Silence is awkward because it seemingly reflects badly upon yourself"
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3zr5ip | what does it mean when a company is said to be worth x amount? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zr5ip/eli5_what_does_it_mean_when_a_company_is_said_to/ | {
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"quantity of shares outstanding, multiplied by the market price per share. meaning if you bought every share, to own 100% of the company, this is how much you would need to spend."
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1yzane | centuries ago, how did they find the other planets in the solar system? also, is there a possibility that there are other planets in our solar system that we have not yet found? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yzane/eli5_centuries_ago_how_did_they_find_the_other/ | {
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"Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are visible to the naked eye and have been known about and studied since ancient times. Early astronomers noticed that these \"stars\" appeared to change position compared to other stars and so they started to track thier motion across the sky. The word planet actually means \"wandering star\".\n\nUranus had been observed but thought to be a star. It took the invention of the telescope to make accurate enough observations to track its movement. Eventually its orbit was calculated with such precision that astronomers noticed oddities that could only be explained by the presence of another planet - which turned out to be Neptune.\n\nAstronomers also thought they saw a similar disruption in Neptunes orbit and so predicted yet another planet. When Clyde Tombaugh pointed his telescope at the patch of sky he expected \"Planet X\" to be, he discovered Pluto.\n\nWe now know that this was a coincidence, and there is no Planet X. Pluto was found because the outer solar system is full of these small icy dwarf planets and Pluto was just in the right place at the right time.\n\n\n",
"Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter are pretty bright objects on the night sky. In addition, they move fairly quickly in relation to static stars and this can be observed without any specialist instruments within few weeks. Apparent movement of the planets on the night sky must have been very intriguing and mysterious to them (bare in mind that first astronomers didn't know anything about solar system construction, elliptical orbits, different nature of celestial bodies) - all these must have made them thinking that these traveling stars are somehow different than the others - that's why they called them \"planets\" (from Ancient Greek ἀστὴρ πλανήτης (astēr planētēs), meaning \"wandering star\")"
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g30lfi | i’m 35 years old and still don’t understand fractions. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g30lfi/eli5_im_35_years_old_and_still_dont_understand/ | {
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"The bottom number is the number of pieces of pie that are cut.\n\nThe top number is the number of pieces of pie that are left.\n\nExample. 5/7 Cut the pie into seven equal pieces. Then take five of them. (Discarding or eating the other two). What you have is 5/7 of a pie."
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2kh59f | why do sex dreams feel good? do you stimulate yourself while dreaming? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kh59f/eli5_why_do_sex_dreams_feel_good_do_you_stimulate/ | {
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"I don't think I stimulate mysel[F] in my sleep, but since coming into my mid 30s I frequently have sex dreams that result in orgasm and sometimes wake me up. I'd also like to know why this is, and why I can't seem to accomplish the same result simply by thinking about it while awake.",
"This has always been interesting to me too.\n\nI don't know, but I wonder if it's because with really vivid dreams like that the brain can't tell if you're asleep or awake and it stimulates and activates the corresponding areas of the brain (ie sex, pain) even without physical interaction because it feels like it should be there.\n\nThat's just my theory.",
"Dreams are recreations made by our brains of moments of our lives, one day you had experienced an orgasm. So your brain simulates the same feeling in his dream, it is just a psychological trick done by you for you.",
"Everything you feel is handled by the brain even when you have actual sex it feels good because of your brain. You don't actually stimulate yourself but if your having a dream your mind can basically be tricked into recreating some of the actual physical / mental changes that happen during real sex."
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1rcslu | why does the us army use 9mm instead of .40 or .45? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rcslu/eli5_why_does_the_us_army_use_9mm_instead_of_40/ | {
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"A 9mm round was chosen to be compatible with the rest of NATO. NATO has standardized a lot of their weapon system (All magazines need to work in all guns) in order to simplify the logistics of war. ",
"There have been lots of arguments about it. It boils down to Stopping Power vs Magazine Capacity. Modern studies support that Round Placement is more important than \"Stopping Power\" so the greater capacity and accuracy of the 9mm round is desired more than the punch of the larger .45 (they did use the 1911 .45 until the 80s, and some branches still issue them) \n\n.40 was developed as a compromise between .45 and 9mm. It has a lower recoil for faster target recovery, but has a higher energy than 9mm. However the difference between .40 and 9mm in terms of real world power was unnoticeable, and the .40 has been losing popularity. That coupled with the fact that 9mm is round used worldwide, is avaliable and cheap, .40 has mostly been phased out. ",
"While I agree with the use of 9mm, the Beretta 92 (M9) pistol is garbage. DoD really ought to switch to a better pistol.",
"The reason I was lead to believe was that during WW2, America much prefered .45 caliber weaponry, however, given Europe's propensity for desiring 9mm instead, America curtailed to 9mm for uniformity purposes with it's allies. "
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2ziqca | why do i get super excited for something good leading up to it happening, but my excitement fades just before the event? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ziqca/eli5why_do_i_get_super_excited_for_something_good/ | {
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"There's no one real answer to your question, so I'll give you the best answer I know. You seem to have trained yourself to be disappointed. The idea of something good happening might excite you, but as the event nears and shifts from idea to reality, your doubts begin to outweigh your excitement because you've been disappointed in the past."
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2so5qc | why musicians on youtube need to wear headphones while they record but live musicians don't | not specifically to youtube (but that's where I noticed it)
Is it to only focus on their sounds so they don't get distracted by the accompaniment? Or so they only listen to the accompaniment and don't focus on their own. How does it work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2so5qc/eli5_why_musicians_on_youtube_need_to_wear/ | {
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"Live musicians use stage or in-ear monitors which do basically the same thing - allow them to hear themselves.",
"Live musicians often also have ear monitors. They're just not as noticeable. ",
"Live musicians that use mics do tend to have earbuds that play back your sound just like headphones do. ",
"It's most important when recording using a microphone, because you want to hear the accompaniment, but you only want the microphone to record what you are playing. "
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5sna9u | why do people cling to false information that has been widely and thoroughly debunked? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5sna9u/eli5_why_do_people_cling_to_false_information/ | {
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"We have faith in our caregivers: Caregivers are looking out for our best interests\n\nWe have faith in our senses: Seeing is believing \n\nWe have faith in our memories: \"I remember when it happened\"\n\nAnd Faith is a virtue.\n\nWhen suddenly confronted with irrefutable evidence it is easier to reject the new information than it is to lose faith because losing faith makes me weak. And it means that either my caregivers were wrong, that my senses were wrong, or that my memory is flawed.\n\nIt is easier to me to go with what I know than to question my reality.",
"You have to start to question everything you know in order to figure out what you don't know. People do not do this because it is time consuming and basically ^ what he said. Things that are taught early on are based on faith and trust, not evidence. Your mom told you that cracking your knuckles causes arthritis? You are more likely to believe it and refute evidence that says other wise, because why would mommy lie? ",
"It all depends on how the contra info is presented. On the assumption you're asking this in the current political context, people are rejecting the delivery, not the fact itself. An awful lot of people like to scream and shout, call people names, or one of a thousand other things that will cause the target audience to tune out before the new information has a chance to be absorbed. \nIt's not what you say, it's how you say it that matters. ",
" > false on its face and easily provable as such.\n\nDo you have any examples for this? Most things in the world today require you to put your trust in someone else who is an expert, or require you to become an expert yourself.\n\nConsider the concept of the solar system. I absolutely believe that there are 8 planets (and Pluto), but I have only personally seen four of them. I'm choosing to trust astronomers and scientists and physicists who tell me that there are more, and I have no issue with that trust, but there's always a possibility that they are lying. \n\nThrow in 20 years of action/crime/drama movies where nothing is ever what it seems, and huge organizations all have agendas and manipulating the herd is how people get ahead, and then remove a great education that teaches you to think critically and you can end up with a natural distrust of everyone who isn't exactly like yourself. ",
"Because it's easier.\n\nI'm not being snarky. That's why. People's \"opinions\" are so wrapped up in their identities these days, admitting to backing the wrong idea is tantamount to calling your whole worldview into question. It's *way* simpler to just go \"*LALALALA*\".",
"Some things that are claimed to be debunked are just as ridden with bias as the original claim... It's almost impossible to find an unbiased source for anything these days.",
"People like to pick a team and stick with it because it makes them feel less isolated and more a part of something.",
"Despite having access to a LOT of information (or possibly because of it), we've all become acutely aware of how easily it is manipulated. Varying sources put up anything and call it the truth when a lot of the time the truth is probably not anywhere close to supporting their agenda. But that doesn't matter to them. \n\nWhat's really sad is when they use information that, repeatedly from multiple sources, has been proven false. The wage gap for example. People spend so much complaining about something that is accounted for by individual career choices that it distracts from real problems. ",
"Any information is always presented through the lens of the presenter's worldview. If we find that the information threatens our worldview, we can easily tell ourselves that the information is distorted or conjured up by the other's worldview. It's really very easy, you do it every day towards those you disagree with.",
"Because most people have created careers, professional reputations, relationships, on the basis of a belief (religion, atheism, climate change, capitalism, socialism, etc) to the point that should their beliefs be proven wrong, they would lose all of the framework that has made them who they are and why anyone would or should value their statements. Imagine, if tomorrow, the theory of relativity was proven completely wrong. The scientist and professors today would basically have to start over as they would have nothing of value to offer. A sixty year old professor would be on the same footing as a freshman in college. I think that is why most scientific discoveries are bristled at by the scientific community because it could threaten the existing status quo and cause many researchers to have to throw away years of research and opinion.",
"People are afraid to be wrong. \n\nBasically, egotism. If you're capable of admitting you're wrong, or uninformed, or just flat out willing to accept the possibility of something counter to your beliefs, especially with anything important...\n\nThat is when you are mature. That is wisdom. And that deserves a pizza. ",
"I've been grappling this and I wish I could give you an answer. I'll respond to it, but I've been hoping to understand this more myself. \n\nOpinions seem to be tied very closely to people's identities. So if you provide people with data that refutes their claims or beliefs, they would have to admit that the premise on which they've based their identity, their purpose, and their goals we're all a sham. I dont think people consciously have this thought. I believe it's an automatic psychological defense mechanism. \n\nThere is something called the 'Back fire effect.' Check it out here. _URL_0_\n\nIt basically states that when you present proof suggesting a person's opinion to be other than correct, they will grow more convicted in their views. Basically the opposite of science!\n\nWhat really boggles my mind is when I see this behavior in college educated people. Not because I believe non-college educated people are less intelligent. Far from it actually. But a college degree, more than anything, should confer upon a person proof to society that they know *how* to think. That is to say that I hold them to a higher level of responsibility, that their opinions should be backed by facts, with room to be flexible should new facts be presented to them. In practice, proof (however it is presented) should affect a person's conclusion. But unfortunately, that is applies to theory more than reality. \n\nI see this mostly happen mostly with political views.",
"Because if something backs up their beliefs they don't want it to be false. Usually in the form of politics and hot button issues. Someone sees a crazy headline and it verifies there thoughts so they believe it. Example: I saw a headline today that said Trump is illiterate, immediate people repost it to Facebook without a 2nd thought. I think its called confirmation bias. ",
"Cognitive bias is very difficult to overcome.\n\nWhen you believe in something so strongly and proof becomes known that challenges that belief, your brain will actively work to discredit the proof. You'll connect the dots to work around the proof.\n\nIf you were to get a connect the dot puzzle and it told you that it was a bird, but it LOOKS like it supposed to be a pig, you'll go against the progression of 1-2-3-4 and connect those dots to make a pig instead of a bird because it challenges your belief that it's not a pig.\n\nSome people associate this experience with being gullible, but it has to do with what you've learned previously. What you learn initially has a stronger impression than when you learn afterward that might conflict with it. \n\nThis is not to say that the individual isn't to blame, but there's a deep biological basis for the cognitive bias. Overcoming it means that you're stronger than your \"programming\". The good news is that the more you challenge this bias, the easier it becomes to overcome other bias. This is why scientists and researchers are more open to being wrong, as it leads to more discovery and information.",
"The problem comes when someone states a \"fact\" when it isn't true.\n\nWe lack the ability to check everything that people say so a lot of false shit gets adopted as fact.",
"I would argue it's a lack of interest in properly educating oneself. I had 2 conversations with a 20 year old delivery driver the other day. In the first he was absolutely DUMBFOUNDED that Hawaii was a state and not a continent/country.\n\nIn the second I had to explain that germs cause sickness, not cold weather. Cold weather will weaken your immune system to some extent but you need to get germs in your body to get sick. He basically just said he didn't believe me, then when he saw me wearing a light jacket the next time I went out for a cigarette he said \"cold huh?\" in a very snarky tone.\n\nThis is what you get when you combine the NYC public school system, a lack of interest, and an already \"not the sharpest razor in the cookie jar\" kinda person.\n\nOn the plus side, after explaining the germ thing further he did say \"learn something new every day!\" so I think he knew I wasn't looking down on him. I hope this doesn't come across as hubris or a holier than thou up on a high horse kind of mentality but I feel like it's partially on me to help get him interested in learning these basic sorts of things. It's up to you too, assuming you can do it without being condescending. I can't speak for anyone else but if someone explains something well to me that I previously didn't understand, or gives me evidence that disproves something I already believed, I always appreciate it. I think most people do as long as the other party isn't being a jerk about it.\n\nI guarantee that a large percentage of people who cling to these falsehoods do so because there's an animosity toward people who talk to them like they're stupid for believing it in the first place. I'd wager there's a ton of people reading this who still think urine is sterile. You're not stupid, you just never double checked. That's ok, cuz guess what? You learn something new every day!\n\nOr you don't...",
"put simply, people are stupid. ignorance is simply not knowing something. stupidity is choosing to remain ignorant when presented with fact. that's why you can't fix stupid, it's a choice."
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akowmx | why are rupert's drops so strong? | They're just made of glass yet I've seen bullets literally shatter when they hit them, how come? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/akowmx/eli5_why_are_ruperts_drops_so_strong/ | {
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"Due to the way they're made, the heads of the drops have a surface compressive stress thats equal to nearly 7000 times atmospheric pressure. This gives the head of the drop an extremely high fracture point, making it difficult to break, even by a bullet.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSource if you want to read more: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)",
"**tl;dr;tl;dr** Watch this cool video: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\n & #x200B;\n\n**tl;dr** Rupert's Drops are just a crude method of manufacturing tempered glass. Rapidly cooling heated glass causes the outside of the material to solidify first, while the molten inside continues to pull in on itself as it cools. This causes huge tensile pressure, creating a very strong outer shell. Once the material fractures however, this broken tension causes a runaway fracture that destroys the drop. (The \"tails\" have nothing to do with the formation of tensile strength, and are simply a result of the gooey drop. However because they're nice and thin, they're the easiest parts to snap, causing a structural breakdown.)\n\n & #x200B;\n\n**ELI5**\n\nGlass is full of millions of little particles, all holding hands. When you heat a glob of glass, all the little particles relax and become nice and gooey. They're still holding hands, but in a super chilled-out way.\n\nIf you feel like being mean, you can drop this gooey glob into a freezing bucket of water.\n\nWhen you do this, the particles on the outside of the glob are the first ones to touch the water. This causes them a huge shock, and they immediately tense up. They pull really hard on their neighbours because they're so cold. This causes a shell of tensed-up particles to form on the outside of the glob.\n\nAll the particles on the inside of the glob take a bit longer to feel the cold water. When they do, they look around and are surprised to see their outside-neighbours have already stiffened up. They pull against their outside-neighbours anyway, and cause even **more** tension to build up.\n\nThis continues to happen, layer by layer, until all the glass particles have stiffened up, right down to the center.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nUsually, the harder the particles in a material hold onto each other, the stronger the material becomes. So if you hit our solidified glass glob with a hammer, it won't care, because the particles are holding onto each other so hard.\n\nBut our Rupert's Drop has a secret; all the glass particles are holding each other in a chain, and they're relying on each other to keep the pressure up.\n\nDiamonds don't have this problem, because the particles in a diamond have a bunch of arms, holding onto several neighbours at once.\n\nBut if you snap a particle in our Rupert's Drop, its neighbours will fall over, causing their neighbours to fall over too, and so on, and so on.\n\nThis causes the drop to explode.\n\nThe \"tails\" on a Rupert's Drop are the easiest bits to snap, because they're nice and thin.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nWe can make better Rupert's Drops with clever machines that carefully heat and cool different pieces of glass really evenly. You can find this special glass in phones, cars, buildings, and aeroplanes. It's called \"tempered\" glass."
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2gcbyf | since life has existed longer in the oceans than on dry land, why has nothing close to the equivalent to human intelligence ever evolved under water? | So millions of years ago life crawled from the oceans and in time evolved to the words I am typing now. Why did it take that step from water to dry land to make that advancement in intelligence possible? Why has the equivalent in intelligence never developed in an environment that has sustained life longer than dry land has?
Edit: Thanks for everyone's replies! It was very interesting for my first ELI5. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gcbyf/eli5_since_life_has_existed_longer_in_the_oceans/ | {
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"who said it hasn't. have you looked at the family structure and bond that exists in killer whales, as well as the social acceptance of outside killer whales inta preexisting group. also have you looked at dolphins. both these animals may not use words but communicate and are very intelligent. ",
"It seems the big problem is failing to make the distinction between intelligence and dexterous utilization of it. There are water bound creatures with who it is not immediately clear just how far their cognition is from a human. The primary issues seems to be that aqueous environments require fins for mobility, or otherwise fairly specialized task-specific utensils, and the construction of civilization requires dexterity.\n\nI can imagine dolphins whales, octopi, potentially being frustrated seeing human civilization, realizing \"we can do that too\" and then having their dreams shattered because they can't find one damn mutant in the ocean with five fingers who can hold a hammer.",
"After moving to land warm blooded animals evolved. A powerful brain is extremely energy costly and this requires warm blood. /u/armadilloeater mentioned dolphins, another warm blooded mammal. Mammals and birds are warm blooded and did not arise until the move to land, I would suggest warm blood is the difference.\n\nFrom this point, high intelligence has only evolved once and it was in humans. This shows us that this is an extremely rare adaptation and does not easily arise. It took a long time to appear in humans despite living on land and having warm blood.",
"I believe it's the sheer odds of it all. The things that have to occur for the development of intelligence like ours are so incredibly difficult to achieve makes me feel like we just got lucky.",
"It just seems logically to me that since water is such a drastically different environment than what humans developed in, evolution would have found an additional path to development that wouldn't require dry land. But I guess whales would definitely be an example of evolving. ",
"One theory is that cooking allowed us to to partly break down the food before it gets to our stomachs, this allowing us to absorb more calories. This obviously can't be done underwater, even if the animal had hands and suitable tools. ",
"Dry land is arguably a more hostile environment which requires greater adaptability. Many aquatic creatures have remained more or less unchanged for millions of years simply because there is no benefit in changing. How they are just plain works, period.\n\nIt isn't as if evolution is a conscious entity with a plan. Human intelligence works pretty well for humans. Other animals have qualities that work much better for them.",
"Another explanation is that evolution doesn't work toward intelligence. Evolution works toward survival. Whatever trait will help an organism survive is passed down the line to the next generation. Human level intelligence simply happened upon us and has worked well for us. Marine life is doing well with what it has. "
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awfukq | why does revenge feel so good? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/awfukq/eli5_why_does_revenge_feel_so_good/ | {
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"A sense of justice being served",
"Some interesting Buddhist-style imprecations on here, but I'll offer my own thinking that revenge is an adaptive behaviour. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nMany intelligent animals have a sense of justice, it's been shown time and again that animals including chimps, ravens, dolphins, and your humble *H. sapiens* have a sense of fairness. Not only that, but animals will punish or exclude individuals who cheat or are unfair with others. Perhaps the satisfaction of revenge stems from a desire to punish an injustice?",
"Because it can restore your ego a bit"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
5jl625 | why does everything feel so soft when you've just woken up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jl625/eli5_why_does_everything_feel_so_soft_when_youve/ | {
"a_id": [
"dbh42a0"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"Can you elaborate, OP? I've been waking up for years and have never noticed a difference in how things feel immediately after waking up. Whether it's my bed, the floor, my clothing, my breakfast, or whatever, it doesn't feel any different than it does later on in the day. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
7155xw | what is the difference between a ba in a science and a b.s. in a science? | I'm a Canadian and I've never seen a B.A. in science (such as chemistry) before and am curious what this means and how it compares to a B.S.. I think the BA is a more US Thing as I found it on a US schools website. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7155xw/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_a_ba_in_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"dn8eicw"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"This is 100% dependent on the whims of a given school, and there is no general answer to it.\n\nIn my experience, if both are offered in a natural science, the BA takes a bit more superficial look at the subject, and may avoid research methods, labs, etc. The credit hours required *may* be less.\n\nFor something like psychology, I note that BA and BS are basically interchangeable, and are usually based upon what college psych falls under. If it's part of the College of Liberal Arts, BA, or if College of Science, BS. When both are offered, it seems to be divided by topic - BA may be general psychology, while BS is more specific like Industrial/Organizational psychology. But you can't assume that the BS is more scientifically rigorous in this case."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
1utgsk | the difference between technocracy and meritocracy | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1utgsk/eli5_the_difference_between_technocracy_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"celht0b",
"celi0x8"
],
"score": [
3,
7
],
"text": [
"Technocracies are based on knowledge, so the smartest man rules, while a meritocracy is based on accomplishments.\n\nEdit:\n\nAs /u/Sibbour mentions, the two concepts are more than likely to overlap: the smartest man can only be determined demonstrably, which makes it a meritocracy.",
"They're quite similar. All Technocracies are Meritocracies, but not all Meritocracies are Technocracies. \n\nFor an ELI5 explanation, a Technocracy occurs when the HIGHEST offices are held by unelected individuals with special skills. [Italy from 2011-2013 is a good example.](_URL_1_) A Meritocracy is more so having a highly skilled and qualified bureaucracy. For example, having qualified scientists in the Department of Energy, qualified teachers in the Department of Education, etc. \n\nThe aesthesis of a Meritocracy would be filling bureaucratic positions with unqualified people, usually done as a political favor. [Andrew Jackson is infamous for the Spoils System, the aesthesis of a Meritocracy](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Monti"
]
] |
||
l8oqv | why acid doesn't burn the test tube but it will burn other things? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/l8oqv/eli5_why_acid_doesnt_burn_the_test_tube_but_it/ | {
"a_id": [
"c2qo5uo",
"c2qoeix",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"The pyrex glass used in test tubes is extremely non-reactive",
"To explain even further;\n\nThe reason acid seems to \"eat\" through things is because it doesn't have an even amount of electrons. the electrons REALLY want to bond with more electrons to become even. so when something with electrons that can be pulled off easily (reactive) is introduced it's broken up chemically. Pyrex and glass in general is extyremely non reactive.",
"The pyrex glass used in test tubes is extremely non-reactive",
"To explain even further;\n\nThe reason acid seems to \"eat\" through things is because it doesn't have an even amount of electrons. the electrons REALLY want to bond with more electrons to become even. so when something with electrons that can be pulled off easily (reactive) is introduced it's broken up chemically. Pyrex and glass in general is extyremely non reactive."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2ecbe7 | how do breast implants work? | So I've seen a couple of plastic surgery shows; the most popular surgery being breast augmentation. Although, I've seen it performed multiple times, I'm still confused as to what happens to all the "organic" tissue that resides in a breast when a cilicone inhancement is forced in? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ecbe7/eli5_how_do_breast_implants_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjy4fet"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"It's still there. The implant simply pushes the organic tissue outward, making the breasts larger."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
aebhxp | why do people read in a different voice than they would speak regularly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aebhxp/eli5_why_do_people_read_in_a_different_voice_than/ | {
"a_id": [
"edo25wm",
"edseipv"
],
"score": [
4,
2
],
"text": [
"Presentation.\n\nMost people reading out loud have an audience, and therefore try to make things more interesting to listen to.",
"People use their story-telling voices when they read out loud. If they don't use the same story-telling voice when telling a story, they're doing one of those things wrong.\n\nUnless it's a textbook. Then you're hearing the sounds of weariness and confusion."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
bwxwg7 | out of all the money raised for cancer why does pediatric cancer get less then 5 percent. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bwxwg7/elif_out_of_all_the_money_raised_for_cancer_why/ | {
"a_id": [
"eq1b4gv"
],
"score": [
9
],
"text": [
"I’m no expert on cancer funding, but keep in mind that less than 1% of new cancer diagnoses are in children. With this context, 5% of total funding (if that is the actual number) is already disproportionately high.\n\nSource: _URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-in-children/key-statistics.html"
]
] |
||
2b6r7v | why doesn't youtube comments have a voting system like reddit where the downvotes actually count? wouldn't this solve their current problem of having incredibly vile and insulting comments staying on top? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b6r7v/eli5_why_doesnt_youtube_comments_have_a_voting/ | {
"a_id": [
"cj2bsu9"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Youtube's comment system does take into consideration down-votes, but it also considers the number of replies when ranking comments. The idea is that comments which are more insightful and encourage discussion will garner more replies, so comments with lots of replies are usually ranked near the top. This, however, means that many controversial comments also get ranked higher because they are so provocative."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
1tapqj | how does one damage his/her eyesight when using electronics or reading small text? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tapqj/eli5how_does_one_damage_hisher_eyesight_when/ | {
"a_id": [
"ce644hh"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"Eyes are not damaged by reading small things. The worst you can do, really, is get eyestrain or a headache."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
67yna8 | what effect will the proposed tax cuts have on the economy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67yna8/eli5_what_effect_will_the_proposed_tax_cuts_have/ | {
"a_id": [
"dgu97u9",
"dguemca"
],
"score": [
2,
5
],
"text": [
"Free up money for those who made it to spend as they wish, accelerating demand, creating new taxpayers, and more money into the great sucking maw of the federal treasury, which has orders of magnitude more money than it needs. \n\nTalk of \"paying for tax cuts,\" \"tax giveaways,\" and \"the rich\" is nothing more than demagoguery for the economically illiterate. ",
"Short answer: We don't know.\n\nLong answer: seriously, we don't know. The only information given is changing the tax rate to 15%. Even if you assume this means the effective tax rate (as the tax rate is already 15% for low earning businesses), we have no idea how this would be structured.\n\nOn top of that, most companies don't even pay the effective tax rate. This is mostly due the countless number ways different companies benefit from various forms of deductions, tax deferral, etc. So in order to really say what will happen to the \"economy\", you'd have to know what it specifically entails, and even then, you'd be merely speculating.\n\nThe stated goal is to incentivize companies to remain in the US as opposed to moving their operations abroad. The US has the 2nd highest effective tax rate, at 35%, however we also have the largest consumer base with the US making up 29% of the worlds consumer spending. The next 5 countries combined only make up roughly 27-28%.\n\nThe changes from 35% to 15% are not actually that drastic if you remove the majority of deductions businesses taking advantage of. The average effective tax rate for all US business over the last 2 decades was roughly between 15-20%.\n\nAnd none of these comparisons are even fair because every country has different tax laws and depending on your business, you may have more or less benefit based on that country.\n\nFinally, everyone is affected different by \"changes\" in the economy. When people push rhetoric that something is good or bad for the economy, what they really mean is \"this is good or bad for me\"."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
656qc1 | if you stay in the air long enough will you see rotation of the earth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/656qc1/eli5_if_you_stay_in_the_air_long_enough_will_you/ | {
"a_id": [
"dg7upms"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"No. Just being airborne doesn't change the fact that you are rotating with the earth. You'd need some other force to decelerate you. \n\nHowever you can provide some of that force. If you were standing at the equator, rotating with the earth west to east at 1000 mph, and you leaped to the west at 2mph, your speed in the west to east direction would now be 998mph. You would see the Earth rotating beneath you at 2mph. \n\nTo see the earth rotating below you at 1000mph, you'd have to jump west at 1000mph, which means no skipping leg day. Also the headwinds would be pretty ferocious and inclined to push you back towards the rotational direction. Also you'd die.\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
5h3ab5 | li5] what is a cytokine storm? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5h3ab5/eli5_li5_what_is_a_cytokine_storm/ | {
"a_id": [
"dax87jr"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Say you have a swat team that needs to go kill a bad guy. They have signals that they use to talk to each other. Usually they are really calculated and in control when fighting bad guys. But say you go into a house expecting a basic drug raid, and it turns out there's a bunch of super powerful aliens everywhere. The aliens start killing everyone like it's nothing. The swat team might reasonably start freaking out. Instead of controlled, calculated hand signals, they might start screaming \"OPEN FIRE!!!\" They might start panicking and telling their teammates to panic too. Their teammates might start shooting everyone they see, friend or foe. They might start throwing grenades everywhere. It might turn out that the damage the swat team does is even greater than the scary aliens they are afraid of. The bigger the swat team that goes in, the more the damage.\n\nIn the same way, chemokines are signals that various cells use to talk to each other. They can't use hand or verbal signals, but they can dump these protein based chemical signals into the interstitial fluid, and those proteins might float around like a message in a bottle until another cell sees it and picks it up. If there are a bunch of signals, the white blood cells (swat team) might start freaking out and attacking everything, and they might start screaming themselves and dump more chemokines into the fluid to warn other white blood cells. The stronger the immune system, the more swat team members there are to panic, and the more friendly fire damage they can do.\n\n* So the cytokine storm is basically the white blood cells panicking and shouting to shoot everything, including your healthy cells.\n\n* The Flu Pandemic of 1918 is an example of this immune system overreaction. More healthy people died than young/old people with weak immune systems because most of the deaths were caused by an overreacting immune system causing friendly fire than any actual threat. The stronger their immune system (swat team) was, the more friendly fire damage it could do. The influenza virus that year looked really scary to people's immune system such that their panicked state caused more damage than the flu itself.\n\n* There aren't enough details about the encephalitis lethargica situation for anyone to know what really happened, but it's possible that it was the same cytokine storm situation.\n\nAutoimmune reactions (body mistakenly attacking itself) cause a lot of deaths from allergies to cytokine storm. Human are pretty great at staying alive, but it goes wrong every once in a while."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2dj0zy | considering they are related to wolves. when a dog is playing fetch, what does it think it is doing? | As in, what would be the point in the wild. Why do they seem to enjoy the game so much. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dj0zy/eli5_considering_they_are_related_to_wolves_when/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjpxfej"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"It simulates hunting prey. That's why dogs like squeaky toys, they sound like injured animals."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
3lb12z | what is bandwith? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lb12z/eli5what_is_bandwith/ | {
"a_id": [
"cv4q48f"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Technically, it's the frequency width of a signal. On your radio for instance, you can tune into a radio station and still hear it slightly above and below the pinpoint frequency of the station. The full width of the signal is the bandwidth and is typically measured in Hertz.\n\nBandwidth has been colloquialized to mean 'data transmission rate.' The more bandwidth that an electrical signal has, the more data can be transmitted through that signal because the data can be sent at slightly different frequencies within the signal bandwidth. It's like the width of a road. A wide road can be split into more lanes so more cars can drive down it. Wide bandwidth can be split into lanes (or channels) to send more data. This is where the term television channels comes from. Each TV channel occupies a slightly different lane within the television signal bandwidth."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
5fg7mc | how is jill stein allowed to force states to hand recount ballots? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5fg7mc/eli5_how_is_jill_stein_allowed_to_force_states_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"dajzoo4",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Anyone can call for a recount. Anyone. They simply have to pay for it. The expense is why it does not happen more often. ",
"She doesn't force the state. They just needed to raise enough money to pay for it. There's been multiple reports of faulty voting machines. As a result several computer scientists and lawyers recommended Jill Stein mount a recount. Originally the Clinton campaign and the White House weren't gonna ask for one. But at the recommendation of those individuals decided to get on board since Stein was gonna pay for it anyways. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
6tct68 | before birth, do humans have a sense of direction, or is that not developed until birth? also, if all the blood rushes to our heads when we are upside down, how come this doesn't happen to a fetus when in the birthing position? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6tct68/eli5before_birth_do_humans_have_a_sense_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"dlm9vhw"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"For a sense of direction I'm going to assume you mean knowing left from right, up from down, forward from backward. \n\nThis is called [relative direction] (_URL_0_ direction) \n\nThat wiki article has a section called \"Cultures without relative direction\" and highlights some societies which don't use this system. \n\nThis would suggest that a sense of direction is not innate but a learned cultural phenomenon. \n\nThough it might be that the sense of one's place within an environment or of one's own body relative to itself ([Proprioception] (_URL_1_)) could be innate but it's expression is culturally learned. \n\nTl:dr .... Not sure.. No one is "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception"
]
] |
||
6mcdir | what are autoencoders and how do they work? | (I understand this is not 5-year-old content; more like ELI20) I've looked at so many sources but I can't seem to understand how they work. What is it that makes them different from other Neural Networks? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6mcdir/eli5_what_are_autoencoders_and_how_do_they_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"dk0ljzy"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"One thing NNs are good for are for finding a function that you don't already know, but have training data for. But there are other uses, too. It can also be interesting to ask it to find a function you *already* know, and then look at how it found it. \n\nAn autoencoder is a neural network that is trained to reconstruct its own input (that is, to find the identity function). You put in an input (say, (4.5,1.7,-2.3)) and penalize it if it outputs anything but (4.5,1.7,-2.3). As a way of *finding a function*, that'd be silly; you already know the identity function. \n\nSo you typically don't look at the output layer, you look at (one of) the hidden layer(s). Once the network can reliably reconstruct its input, the hidden layer must contain enough information to represent the output. If (as is typical) the hidden layer is smaller than the input/output layers, what it represents is the same information in a lower dimensionality. That can come in handy for a lot of things. (For example, for chucking 'em into another neural network as input, instead of the original representation. Or even measuring the distance between them to see how different two things are, when it's inefficient to compare the originals.)\n\nIt's important, however, that the network be \"frustrated\" in its attempt to just memorize the inputs. You have to limit the number of hidden nodes, add noise to the inputs, or otherwise make it difficult. Because otherwise it could just assign each possible input to a unique \"code\" and then associate each \"code\" with an output. That'd be of no more use than just using the input. You have to force it to utilize its hidden nodes to pick up *generalizations* that apply to more that one input. Fewer hidden nodes means it has to use its nodes to represent more than one input node's information; noise means that the hidden node can't necessarily \"trust\" any single input node.\n\nAlso, note that while the prototypical autoencoder has the classic \"hourglass\" shape (bigger input and output layers, slim hidden layer), lots of different network architectures can be autoencoders, or parts of more complicated networks can be autoencoders even if the whole thing isn't, or something can be an autoencoder or not during different stages of its training. The important thing is that you're training the network (or part of a network) so that it reconstructs its input."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
7gkwcr | what exactly happens in the stock exchange scene at the end of trading places (1983) to cause the dukes to lose everything? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7gkwcr/eli5_what_exactly_happens_in_the_stock_exchange/ | {
"a_id": [
"dqjtjiq",
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"text": [
"The Dukes have a forged report showing that the orange harvest will be poor, so they expect the price of orange juice to rise when that news becomes public. They buy all the orange juice they can get, expecting that they can immediately sell it for a profit when the price rises. Other traders notice that happening, assume the Dukes know something, and start to buy too. The price does start to rise because everyone wants to buy.\n\nMeanwhile, our heroes are selling orange juice to anyone that wants to buy it at this ever-increasing price. They don't actually have any yet, but they don't have to deliver until the end of trading.\n\nNow the news of the perfectly normal orange harvest is released, and the price crashes. The price was rising because people expected a poor harvest, and now everyone knows that's not true. Our heroes buy from everyone except the Dukes as the price drops and everyone tries to sell. They now have plenty of orange juice to cover what they sold earlier, and they're buying for less than they've already agreed to sell it for. They make a huge profit.\n\nBut no one will buy from the Dukes. They're left with a huge amount of orange juice that they paid too much for, and when trading ends everyone wants paying for that orange juice. The Dukes expected to be selling it all for a profit, so they don't actually have enough money to cover everything they bought.",
"The Dukes got a forged report telling them that the orange juice harvest was going to be very poor, so they expected the price of orange juice to rise in the future. They used this information to decide to buy futures contracts, basically an agreement to buy or sell something at a predetermined price in the future. Everyone else sees the Dukes are buying the futures and the price is inflated (goes up).\n\nValentine and Winthorpe sell futures at the high price. Once the real report comes out that the harvest is normal the price of futures plummets and Valentine and Winthorpe can close their futures position by buying futures at the lower price from everyone but the Dukes. They sell high and buy low, in so doing turning a profit. But because they don't buy from the Dukes the Dukes are left with a big debt, having bet poorly on the price being high."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
4bjpmn | why canada is the only other country to have an mlb team. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bjpmn/eli5_why_canada_is_the_only_other_country_to_have/ | {
"a_id": [
"d19q1ou",
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"text": [
"Because it would be very difficult for distant countries, even ones where baseball is very popular like Japan, to participate and play against MLB teams. There are 162 games in a season, sometimes multiple in the SAME DAY, and many in a single week. MLB players spend a lot of time on planes as is. A 14 hour flight to play any other MLB team would be totally unreasonable. So they have their own leagues.",
"There are many American sports leagues in which Canada has teams. It's just natural, since they border the United States, play many of the same sports, and generally have very free cultural and economic exchange.",
"The only other country close enough to feasibly participate in the MLB would be Mexico. The problem is that Mexico is a much poorer country than the U.S., meaning that a hypothetical Mexican club wouldn't make enough money to compete."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
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||
1yemfl | how do we recognize songs playing that we can't consciously hear? | At work, every day without fail the receptionist plays her radio, but I'm too far away to hear it. however, every day without fail I get random songs popping into my head, have no problem with knowing "how the song goes next" as I usually do and (what gets me is) whenever I walk past her office the song in my head is always the one her radio is playing at the time. This is for weeks now. Is there a point where hearing becomes conscious? I've made my office silent and just listened and I can't hear anything but the songs still come to my head? Any one know the psychology (or whatever field it belongs to) behind this?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yemfl/eli5_how_do_we_recognize_songs_playing_that_we/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfjtj0t"
],
"score": [
9
],
"text": [
"Your brain is recognizing the bass line from the song. At those lower frequencies, they'll be more likely to reach your brain at a distance, but you might not consciously tune in on it since you can't hear the melody, which are in higher frequency ranges."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
5t9450 | why isn't television open and free like the internet is? | By open and free, I mean how in television cable charges extra and puts channels into packages (Like could you imagine a social media bundle if net neutrality goes away???), and not just anybody can make their own tv show. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5t9450/eli5_why_isnt_television_open_and_free_like_the/ | {
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"ddl26tl",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"There is open air TV. I have open air TV and receive 44 channels and their associated digital offsprung. I think he last time we counted there were 101 channels, but there still isn't anything on.\n\nAlso, there are some rules about Public Access Television, where you could produce a show. But why pay for all the studio rental when there are video hosting sites that allow you to reach a much larger audience.\n\nIf you don't like cable charges, vote with your check books and cancel the cable.\n\nCable is dead, those noises it's making are just various gases escaping. Don't be a sucker and pay for those gases.\n\nIf anything, Cable providers should be PAYING a household for the privilege of putting so much advertising infront of their eyes. \n\n\nTL DR looks rant-y. If you all committed to NOT watching Game of Thrones, HBO would make it free to get eyes on those commercials so they can keep charging astronomical ad space fees.\n\n\n\n",
"Once upon a time, television was only available 'over the air' they broadcast it from a station and you picked it up with an antenna. There was no way to charge you for receiving it, so it was entirely ad supported. However since there were only about three networks ad money wasn't really spread out that much as well. But the thing about broadcasting a signal is there's only so much bandwidth, only so much range of frequencies you can send a tv signal in, and if two people try to use the same frequencies in the same region the signals will interfere and people won't be able to watch either. So the television band needs to be regulated so that people can reliably receive a broadcast. So people couldn't just start their own with a low power broadcasting antenna. There are however public-access channels, which have frequencies set aside for local public use, because the airwaves are held to be something that is not owned by anyone person but like a natural resource that should be used for the public good. (This is also the reason the FCC has the power to regulate content on them)\n\nNow cable sends the same types of signals (at least non-digital cable) as the over-the-air tv, but it does it within a well... cable. So there's no risk of interfering with other people's broadcasts, and they don't have to be regulated, you can also get better signal quality and fit more channels in. But you still have only a finite number of channels, and every channel is sent out to all the subscribers. There are points where the cable company controls the splitting of the signal to individual houses where they can turn on and off service, but in essence what they're sending to everyone is the same things. \n\nEarly pay per view movies were just a series of channels where a movie was playing continuously over and over, and you called the company and said, I want to watch this movie, and then they would provide the information to the cable box to de-scramble the signal. But the signal was always coming in. \n\nThe reason you paid for cable was the company owned the actual cable lines, and the company maintained them, and the company had the licenses with various stations to provide that content, and the high end satellite receivers to get the signal to distribute. \n\nThe internet however works differently, you're not providing the same content to every single person, a person sends out a packet of data that goes out through the network and gets to a server that sends data back. And it has to be routed to a specific person. Its much easier to send one signal to every house on the cable network, than to send a different signal to each one. The amount of data that cable tv transmits every second is vastly more than the internet speed you get because you want specific internet sites not just tuning into a channel that everyone gets. \n\nIts not worth the money or effort of the cable company to use their equipment to mix in some random likely low quality channel that most people probably won't care about. Sending that one signal to every subscriber, and considering how many internet streams there are out there, it would overwhelm the bandwidth pretty quickly. \n\nFor those specialty things, internet works better, if only a few people want to watch them then they can be sent to only a few people. ",
"Free TV is the broadcast channels -- NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, plus some local channels, PBS, etc. You can get those for free. The rest are cable broadcast channels that need to be provided by a cable provider. ",
"It is free in the u.s. ....put an antenna and it's free. If you want special channels then you have to pay."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1cblmp | why does heating a mirror stop it from steaming up while having a shower? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cblmp/eli5_why_does_heating_a_mirror_stop_it_from/ | {
"a_id": [
"c9exhk2"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"Because the \"steaming up\" is condensation of water vapour (water in it's gaseous state). Condensation is caused (or more specifically, vastly increased) because of changes in temperature. The water vapour cools quickly once it comes into contact with the cold surface of the mirror. Heating up the mirror diminishes this effect."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
5moo37 | what's going on in mexico right now with the raising of gas prices and other amenities? why are people looting stores and pissed off? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5moo37/eli5_whats_going_on_in_mexico_right_now_with_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"dc57l1r",
"dc5bso1"
],
"score": [
51,
36
],
"text": [
"Well basically Pemex raised the rate to rougly 16 pesos per litre. That's roughly $1.30 Canadian. But the minimum wage remains around 80 pesos/day. \n\nSo people are looting in rebellion, but also to get the stuff they need.\n\nBut there's been some speculation that the government is arranging the lootings",
"Some context is needed first.\n\nFor years, all energy products had to be purchased through a monolithic organization called Pemex which was the only entity in Mexico allowed to purchase the product from the producers. Pemex then sold this to distributors, sometimes using heavy government subsidies.\n\nIn 2013, however, the government passed an energy reform bill that was to remove power from Pemex in phases that kicked in at the beginning of the year. This was to make the market more competitive, and made Pemex go from having a government-sponsored monopoly to being a government-owned competing business.\n\nOver the past year, the Mexican Peso has devalued significantly from the last few years hovering around 13-15 pesos per US dollar to today's price of 22 pesos per dollar. Oil, being handled in US dollars, would thus be relatively more expensive as the peso has devalued. However, because Pemex still controlled gasoline they heavily subsidized the price of gasoline to remain relatively stable. The 2017 phase of the energy reform kicked in at the beginning of the year though, and has raised the price of gas to be more in line with what it should be. It should be noted that the government is STILL somewhat subsidizing gas, and that people's requests for the government to subsidize gasoline again would just add to income inequality by putting money hand over fist in the hands of the rich. The other request people have is to lower the amount the government taxes gasoline from the current 3.5 pesos per liter of gasoline, but this will put a heavy dent in the government's income.\n\nIt's a difficult situation all around"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
9m8gym | how come when you put ice cream on warm pie, the pie melts the ice cream, but the ice cream doesn’t freeze the pie? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9m8gym/eli5_how_come_when_you_put_ice_cream_on_warm_pie/ | {
"a_id": [
"e7cqm0n",
"e7cycm0"
],
"score": [
13,
2
],
"text": [
"The hot pie is way above freezing temperatures, but the ice cream is only slightly below freezing. Both object's temperatures will tend toward equilibrium, but that average temperature will still be well over freezing. ",
"Let's assume the pie *a la mode* is sitting on a plate in your dining room. \n\nThe whole system (pie + ice cream + plate + surrounding air in the dining room) tends toward equilibrium, the state where the whole system is a uniform temperature. A system reaches equilibrium by the hotter items (the pie, in this case) giving up some of their heat energy to the cooler items (the ice cream, plate, and surrounding air). \n\nGiven enough time, both ice cream, pie, and plate will converge on room temperature. Unfortunately for the ice cream, as it absorbs heat from the pie, it warms up and crosses the boundary where the liquid in it can remain frozen, so it turns into a milky puddle. \n\nThe ice cream and the plate and the surrounding air in the room will all cool the pie by receiving some of the energy of the very active (i.e. \"hot\") molecules. But before the pie ever reaches it's freezing point, the whole system (ice cream + pie + plate + surrounding air) will reach equilibrium at which point the heat transfer stops. \n\nBut if we change the scenario, the results will change. Put the pie, ice cream, and plate out on your back porch in North Dakota in the middle of January. Now the surrounding air is well below freezing, so that changes the balance of the system. Since there's so much cold, cold air around, it can absorb a *lot* of heat, so while the hot pie might be hot enough to still melt some or all of the ice cream before the pie itself can cool down, eventually the ice cream (perhaps now in puddle form) will re-freeze and the pie *will also freeze* as it gives up all of its heat to the sub-freezing air around it. \n\nTL;DR: Heat moves from the hotter region of a system to the cooler region, until the whole system has reached the same temperature -- a state called \"equilibrium.\" \n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
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