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3yedq4 | is the recent outbreak of deadly tornadoes a result of climate change? if so, can we expect to see a higher volume of them this spring when tornadoes are more prevalent? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yedq4/eli5_is_the_recent_outbreak_of_deadly_tornadoes_a/ | {
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"I think it would be disingenuous to say yes because of one or two weird years of anecdotal observations, but science predicts this is the kind of weather we will see more as the climate supports more extreme weather and the shift from what youre used to to weather that only ever happens other places.\n\nEdited because autocorrect.\n",
"I think the first thing to do is figure out if the number of tornadoes is significantly different than other similar time periods; by significantly, I am am talking about a number so far out of the normal range of storms for the last N decades that an additional cause should be suspected. \n\nIf the answer to that is yes, then someone is certain to ascribe them to climate change, and they might be right. Of course, someone is sure to ascribe them to climate change anyway, and they still might be right.\n\nEDIT: I suppose another way there might be an external reason to search for is if the number of such storms has increased to some extent over some period of time.",
"Perhaps indirectly. The exceptionally strong El Nino this year is helping to create conditions that can cause tornadoes. Tornadoes form when warm air from the Gulf of Mexico flows North and meets colder air in the Great Plains. Usually, that pattern forms in the spring, but if the conditions are met, tornadoes can form, regardless of the season. It doesn't necessarily mean that this Spring's tornado season will be exceptionally bad. It could just mean that an aberration in weather patterns caused tornadoes out of season.\n\nI don't think it would be too off base to speculate that Climate Change is driving a stronger El Nino, which is in turn creating tornado conditions in the Great Plains. It's also creating 60 degree days in December in the Northeast.",
"No.\n\nThe cause is related to El Nino, a lot of warm water in the pacific. This happens every 5-10 years. Nothing unusual. There aren't more severe weather events. Climate change is quite mild so far, though expect some more significant effects in the coming decades (but nothing apocalyptic don't worry). ",
"You can't say global warming causes any one extreme weather event, only that it makes such events more likely.\n\nWarming of the environment means adding energy to it. This makes it more active and extreme. Weather has natural variation to it. Some years have more tornadoes than others, and some tornadoes are stronger than others just because of normal variation. But global warming makes these extremes more likely. So you can't say \"these additional, stronger tornadoes this year are caused by climate change.\" But you can say that \"because of climate change, tornadoes are more likely and are more likely to be stronger on any given year than they would otherwise.\"\n\nConsider a die. With a fair die, you have one chance in 6 of getting a 1. If you weight the die on the side of the six, you can increase the odds of getting a 1, lets say, to once chance in 4. Now any one time that you get a 1, can you be sure it was because the die was loaded? No, there was always a chance you would get a 1 even with the unloaded die. But it is more likely with the loaded die."
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7n1cpe | why do celebrities do random photoshoots that are not a collaboration with a large brand? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7n1cpe/eli5_why_do_celebrities_do_random_photoshoots/ | {
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"They get paid enough to make it worthwhile. It's a job.\n\nA job where everyone kisses their ass and pretends to care about them, but it is just a job. Unless they have some particular reason to refuse good money, they do jobs that offer it. \n\n\n"
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e80m4d | why would a video of a still image take up less space than a video with moving frames? | I figured that the lines still have to be drawn every frame anyway regardless if they are the same or not | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e80m4d/eli5_why_would_a_video_of_a_still_image_take_up/ | {
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"Videos use something called [inter-frame compression](_URL_0_) to shrink the videos. Instead of storing each frame in full, they store only some frames in full, and between them they store inter frames which only contain the difference from the last frame. Since a lot of videos have shots where the next frame is very similar to the previous one, this allows many inter frames which just have information about how to move and re-color a few chunks of pixels.\n\nFor a video that's a still image, you could have a single frame, and the remaining video just be interframes that say \"do nothing\"."
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3kg0w4 | electrocution and circuits - if a electric circuit needs to be complete for current to flow, why do you get electrocuted (or shocked, if you don't die) when you touch a wire and then touch ground? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kg0w4/eli5_electrocution_and_circuits_if_a_electric/ | {
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"you are completing the circuit... the ground is always a ground, the earth is a big place and will accept all the voltage you offer it.\n\nSo if your holding something hot and offer it a path to the earth, you will get zapped.",
"When a circuit is open (not connected) no current flows. When you close (complete) the circuit, current will flow. A light switch is a perfect example of this; when it is off, the circuit is open. However, as soon as you flip the switch \"ON\", a small metal contact closes and completes the circuit. Presto, the light turns on (current flows).\n\nElectrocution happens when someone accidentally completes an electrical circuit with THEMSELVES. For example: If you opened that same light switch and put your fingers on the hot wire and another finger on ground, you would be electrocuted. Instead of needing the little metal contact, it now has you to travel through and thus complete the circuit(Fair warning, you may die if you do this, please don't do this.)."
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37jkjq | how does _url_0_ direct me to the correct domain every time even though they change so frequently? | Every time I type _URL_0_ into my browser it always brings me to the correct domain. How are they able to do this considering they keep getting their servers and stuff seized? It seems obvious to stop this from directing properly for easy access no? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37jkjq/eli5_how_does_thepiratebayorg_direct_me_to_the/ | {
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"DNS lookups make the world go round. I could change my physical server and location every day, as long as I keep a DNS server updated with the correct information traffic will get there"
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2if0y4 | why do players in the nfl get penalized for doing a touchdown celebration? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2if0y4/eli5_why_do_players_in_the_nfl_get_penalized_for/ | {
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"It's like saying \"neener neener I got a td. You suck.\" And apparently that upsets some people. \n\nPersonally I think they should be able to. It's a good feeling getting a td. "
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arm4rv | how do our bodies break down over time? | In high school biology we're taught that our cells are programmed to replace old and damaged tissue, to the point where our organs are fully replaced after a certain time. If that's the case then why do our bodies slowly break down over time? Shouldn't living forever just be a matter of supplying the body with everything it needs to create new cells forever? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/arm4rv/eli5_how_do_our_bodies_break_down_over_time/ | {
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"Your cell's DNA is like a paper manual for what it needs to do. Every time that cell divides, it photocopies the manual and gives a copy to the new cell.\n\nHowever, every photocopy can only be as good as the original copy and may also result in a lower quality. The original copy may also get some wear as you flip through it to copy every page.\n\nAfter the cells divide, there is a manual check for each cell. If the manual is too damaged, the cell is told to go through apoptosis, programmed cell death. This prevents cells from using bad manuals to build wrong things like cancer cells.\n\nAs we get older, our cells get more and more worn manuals. Every division has a higher chance that the new cells undergo apoptosis. This is why older people have reduced healing abilities as their cells are not as good at replacing themselves. Cancer risk is also linked with older age due to more bad manuals being made and the reduced ability for our body to check for bad manuals.",
"There are sequences of DNA at either 'end' of genes called telomeres. These telomeres protect the genes from degradation. Copying errors tend to occur at the ends of genes, so the telomeres 'take the hit'. Because of this they get shorter and shorter the older we get. So the genes start getting damaged themselves. This means the body gets worse at making new cells and generally doing stuff, hence ageing.",
"Are you trying to see how long the bodies in your backyard will last? If so, I’d recommend using some sort of acid. It’ll break down the organic material much faster "
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5bgdu8 | how does ad revenue keep so many websites alive when so few people actually respond to ads? | So today, almost every digital station uses ad revenue to make money, from Reddit to YouTube to 9GAG but why do they rely so much on just that? So many people have ad blockers these days and NOBODY EVEN CLICKS THOSE ADS. NOBODY CARES ABOUT SOME STUPID AMAZON PRODUCT. Everyone researches before buying something and even if they do buy on impulse, it's a very small portion of website-goers.
IN NO WAY should Ad Revenue make so much money... at least for me. I just don't get it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5bgdu8/eli5_how_does_ad_revenue_keep_so_many_websites/ | {
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"Imagine if we had tens or hundreds of thousands of people click on ads all over the Internet to cost companies money with no return. ",
"Just because you don't does not mean everyone does not click on them. If you use chrome or search using Google, the ads you see relate to your searches. So if you are interested in buying product X, the ad will show product X and similar products. Website also don't need every person to click the ad, for every certain number of people who see the ad, a smaller percentage clicks the ad, which a smaller number of people buy the product. It's just like commercials, you don't go out and buy every product on tv you see, but you are exposed to it and thats what companies want. ",
"You don't care about the stupid Amazon product. But you remember the stupid Amazon product. That's what 2/3 of ads are about. Just remembering the product.",
"What confuses me is that *after* I have made a purchase, I'll get dozens of ads for that same item, or very similar items. I already own it, morons, why would I want another one??",
"Brand salience, branding, brand awareness and direct response. Those are the reasons why companies pay for ads.\n\nWhat companies come to mind the quickest? that's brand salience\nEXAMPLE: \"what are the best jean brands?\" \"levis, lee, Calvin Klein\"\nthose 3 brands come to my mind the quickest, its different for everyone, but companies kill to be at the top of your list\n\nBranding: When a new brand arises, nobody knows what it is. They then pay for ads so people become familiar with it\n\nBrand Awareness: Once you're branded, you pay for ads to get your brand out-there more\n\nDirect Response: If someone does decided to click on an ad (RARE) then the company who payed for it knows about it immediately \n\n\n\n\n\n"
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4ud01z | what is "nofap" and why do people do it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ud01z/eli5_what_is_nofap_and_why_do_people_do_it/ | {
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"It is when people stop masturbating because they think it will give them more sex drive, more confidence, (more ability to lie to themselves...) It's a complete placebo and continuing to masturbate is a lot more healthy and helpful than stopping it altogether. ",
"Participating in NoFap is when an individual, usually a man, decides to go cold turkey on not masturbating. It can be helpful for them psychologically if they depend too much on porn or masturbating and can serve as a test of self-control.",
"As others have said, it's where guys stop masturbating. The effects are debated.\n\nOne of the issues with trying to tell what the effects are is that many people who mention their success don't also state where they started from.\n\nConsider someone who talks about how great giving up alcohol is. He tells you he lost 30lbs, got a girlfriend, his friendships are better, got a promotion at work, and is even completing a graduate degree in the evenings now. Wow! Giving up alcohol is amazing!\n\nYour mileage may vary though, especially since that guy didn't mention that he was a severe alcoholic, regularly drinking a pint of whiskey for breakfast, all his money went into booze, couldn't hold down a steady job, etc... If you, a person who just drinks socially and rarely gets drunk also gives up alcohol, you probably won't see any real benefit.\n\nSame goes for NoFap. People who are addicted to porn and masturbating get wonderful results when they give it up. But, people who don't have that problem can't expect much change."
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20c7im | why do governments require private corporations for natural resource extraction? can't they extract it all by themselves? | It seems that governments unnecessarily share much of their natural resources with private companies.
This is particularly true for developing countries. The government enlists the help of private sector companies in extracting natural resources like Oil, Gas, Diamond, Copper etc and in turn they give away 30-40 percentage of the extracted resources.
* Whats the problem with extracting it all by themselves? Cost constraints? Skill shortages or what?
* Isn't the government of even the poorest country supposed to have more money, then Exxon?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20c7im/eli5_why_do_governments_require_private/ | {
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"this is actually a good question :) yay reddit",
"Extracting material out of the ground in an efficient way isn't quite as simple as just grabbing some shovels and digging. Much of the oil is located in hard to reach places, and significant technology and infrastructure is needed in order to effectively get at it. \n\nI guess you could just give guys pickaxes and have them go dig up copper ore, but that's a pretty slow way of doing things. Sure, you get to keep 100% of what you earn, but you're only digging up a couple million bucks worth of copper per year. Or you can hire a private company that has a lot of infrastructure and technology already available, and in a couple years they've got a serious industry going and are digging up 200 million bucks worth of copper per year. You only get 60% of that, but 60% of 200 million is a lot more than 100% of 2 million. ",
"There are many countries with GDPs smaller than the world's largest corporations. I count at least 24 countries with a GDP of under $1 billion. At the same time, I count 65 companies with annual revenues of over $100 billion - in fact, only 26 countries in the world have a higher GDP than either Walmart or Royal Dutch Shell have annual revenue.\n\nPrivate industry also tends to do things cheaper and more efficiently than government, and has more uses for those raw materials. The government itself rarely has use for raw materials and stands to gain more from letting private companies extract, refine and build goods with those materials than if it did it itself.",
"One word: *specialization*, the key invention behind the efficiency of the modern era."
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5d1o59 | what did foucault mean by "power is everywhere"? | I've heard it through out my education, but haven't really grasped it. I've read something like "power is everywhere, it's in every fabric of our existence". Please, explain me like I'm five, what does this mean? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d1o59/eli5_what_did_foucault_mean_by_power_is_everywhere/ | {
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"It's a different way of looking at society. This philosophy believes that power rests in every part of society, that groups that we normally look at as the most powerful are also subject to the power that everyone else has. Its a very meta thing to talk about, it's basically saying that society has gotten to the point that the peoples wants is powerful enough to influence what we normally consider to be our leaders. It recognizes the responsibility everyone has to shaping what is considered to be acceptable and how that creates boundaries that even the most powerful people dare not cross. ",
"When it comes to Foucault, power is always in relation to knowledge. Let's say that you, as a five year old, knows that a nice old lady who lives near the playground would always give you treats if you go and meet her. So you go and meet her and give the treats to your friends at the playground. But you don't tell them where the treats come from. You have the power there. You might be sharing your haul with everyone but the fact that they don't know where it came from and how to get it means that the power structure is skewed to your side. There's more to it than that but this is as simple as I can make it.",
"Lots of other good answers here. But, what I'm seeing missing from a lot of these answers is Foucault's idea of the panopticon. \n\nA brief historical digression - the panopticon Bentham's design for a prison - where one guard could control hundreds on inmates through the use of mirrors which would allow the guard to see anywhere in the prison at any time, and would not allow the prisoners to know fi they were being watched or not. In theory, this would force them to always behave as if watched, as they could be observed at any time.\n\nFoucault says society is like the panopticon - we internalize the rules in early childhood, largely by a process of getting caught doing things we are not supposed to or seeing others caught at the same. Think of the kid at your school who got caught picking his nose, and the same and humiliation heaped upon him. Now think how you processed it. In part you learned that you don't pick your nose in public or when others are anywhere around because you might be subjected to the same. You internalize the social punishment used to stop that behavior. And as a result even when no one is around, society is still controlling your actions because it has managed to make you its agent. You observe yourself for compliance with social norms, becoming an agent of society exercising power over yourself on society's behalf. \n\nWhile a person is aware, that person knows society could be observing them, and so brings their action into line with social expectations (to one degree or another). And so, society controls that person, exerts power over them, by virtue of the space society controls in that person's own head. Space that is a part of you that is a part of your very being is co-opted to exert power over you."
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96erc1 | how does medication like imodium stop diarrhea? | I’ve always wondered about this. Does it somehow dry out the waste in your colon or does it make your colon chill out for a minute? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/96erc1/eli5_how_does_medication_like_imodium_stop/ | {
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"The intestines have a special nervous system called the 'enteric nervous system' which is made up of two parts called the submucosal plexus and the myenteric plexus. The word \"myenteric\" means that it is situated between two groups of muscles in the intestines. What this all means is that when the enteric nervous system is stimulated it causes the muscles of the intestines to contract through the myenteric plexus. That's what helps food to continue its journey.\n\nNow loperamide (like morphine) acts on the myenteric plexus and reduces the strength of these muscles. This makes food to stay longer in the intestines. One of the functions of the large intestine is to reabsorb water from food. Because the food stays longer, more water is reabsorbed and the stool becomes bulkier. Plus the frequency of stooling is reduced because food stays longer. That's basically how Imodium (loperamide) works. "
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2b6hqd | how is depression "cured"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b6hqd/eli5_how_is_depression_cured/ | {
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"It is not cured, it is \"managed''. ",
"It often isn't. Depression in essence is an imbalance of neurochemicals, if you can restore this balance through drugs, therapy etc. you can cure depression (at least temporarily).",
"As someone that dealt with both Anger issues and depression as a kid, I just embraced it. I realized that I just view the world differently and changed my baseline. Instead of feeling \"low\" all the time, I just felt normal. Yeah, that may mean I look miserable or angry to everyone else while in my resting state, but internally I feel fine. It is just the life I've always lived and the way I've always seen things.\n\nI'm lucky and not bipolar. If you are bipolar you can't do what I did because your mood is fluctuating, so you can't feel normal a lot of the times. ",
"When you find out please let me know",
"Are we talking about true, clinical depression or the \"depression\" we all experience in life?",
"Mindfulness meditation and exercise were the best things I've done to get rid of depression. Check out these books they helped me a shit ton. It comes back every once in a while, but just 5 - 10 mins of medication really REALLY helps. I never believed meditation really did anything till I tried it.\n\n* [The Mindful Way Through Depression](_URL_0_)\n* [Conquering Depression and Anxiety Through Exercise](_URL_1_) ",
"You can't cure it.\nDrugs can help by sort of neutralizing your mood.\nI took drugs for about 2 years and then waded off them, and it helped tremendously.\nI still get some bad times, but they are definitely fewer. \n\nWhy you can't cure it is that it's just how you are, and an 'imbalance' of chemicals in your brain.",
"It's managed, not cured.\n\nI use drugs and it's working well.\n\nI take MDMA every 6 months or so, with spots of 2c-b or DXM here and there.\n\nNy life is great now as I no longer have crippling depression. My brain just needs like... a release, or a break once in a while to set myself straight. :)",
"For myself I found that there is no one way to cure it but multiple ways to manage it. I took drugs to lessen the effects, got counselling to learn how to deal and found faith. I'm talking about finding faith in anything, something to hold on to in those dark moments. I found mine after a failed suicide attempt. There's no quick fix that's for sure. To this day I have moments where I fall back into the anxiety and depression. The goal isn't to be cured but to learn to walk around the dark holes of depression. Hope this helps. ",
"Evidently the defeatist myth that depression can't be cured is still alive and well. I'm not going to say that all depression no matter how severe can be cured, it's right to say that, especially for the more severely depressed, it's more of a management thing.\n\nReally with the question you're asking you're attempting to boil it down to 'what exactly is wrong with the brain when someone is depressed, and how can we get it back to normal?' which suffers from two major problems:\n\n* Depression is not a catch-all problem. It features as a symptom for [more disorders than i can list](_URL_2_), the understanding of which vary depending on which you're talking about - for example, there's (generally) a better knowledge of how [bipolar disorder](_URL_3_) works than, for example, [Recurrent brief depression](_URL_5_). There can also be other causes, such as a symptom of a physical disease, as a side effect of some medications, or even just stuff like being bored or suffering a traumatic event, like a family member dying. Not to equate severe depression with being bored, obviously, but suffering is suffering; my point is that 'depression' is a very vague term. Which leads onto the other major problem:\n\n* It's not really obvious what 'causes' depression. To the layperson you can generalise it as a 'chemical imbalance', but that could mean literally anything; whereas for something like schizophrenia it has been proven to have close links to dopamine release, depression is so vague and complex you can't (generally) pin it down to any one area of the brain, not to mention the aforementioned problem of 'depression' being any one of many things.\n\nSo the question was flawed, but that's not what you wanted to hear. And it doesn't add up to what i said right at the beginning about depression being cureable, insofar as you can define 'cureable' anyway\n\nA lot of psychiatric disorders involving depression (and often anxiety too, since they usually appear hand in hand) involve a problem with a thought process leading to [rumination](_URL_6_), [intrusive thoughts](_URL_0_), [catastrophising/magnification](_URL_4_), amongst other unhealthy mental practises. Treatments like [Cognitive Behavioural Therapy](_URL_1_) (currently the most successful treament) aim to address these problematic thought processes directly, using a handful of tactics aimed at developing a sort of mental toolbox you can use to eliminate distressing thoughts. \n\nFor example (anecdotally), the technique to eliminate intrusive thoughts is centered around the idea that intrusive thoughts are the result of a hyper-alert mindset of the body making you aware of your own unconscious thought process in a distressing way. To a 'normal' person, when they stand at a train station, their mind relays 'walking in front of the train would kill you' in various forms subconsciously, making sure that you don't walk in front of the train. To the person suffering from intrusive thoughts, the thoughts of/urge to jump in front of the train cause revulsion and unhappiness, since they believe it to be genuinely suicidal thoughts - however, this urge to jump in front of the train and the persons subsequent revulsion is demonstrating how you -don't- want to jump, since if you did, you wouldn't be distressed by the idea - this is a classic example of a hyper-aware state. The therapist would then have you practice several exercises which would eliminate or otherwise reduce the thoughts to an ignorable level, which depends on your preferred learning style. For me, a mental exercise of 'allowing the thoughts to fade into the mind's background noise' totally eliminated all intrusive thoughts within a short period of time.\n\nCBT is considered very effective, with success rates ranging from between 90-50% (depending on who you ask); as with everything, it's considered more potent if a treatable disorder is caught early, but it still has merit even after many years of suffering. Anti-depressants, for mild to moderate depression/anxiety, tend to be prescribed alongside CBT - while the anti-depressants don't outright cure the problem, they allow the symptoms to have less of a hold on the sufferer, allowing them to take and be more open to therapy which they wouldn't otherwise have managed. Generally they aren't considered a long term treatment, since the body grows a tolerance for them over time, and the side effects can mount up. For more severe cases, anti-depressants are considered in the long term, which would be a different prescription than that prescribed for the mild-moderate sufferer.\n\nA note on 'cureable' - the problem with 'cureable' is that it implies that there is a 'normal' state of being, when the truth is regardless of who you are, you will have good days, and you will have days where you feel down for no discernable reason, but that doesn't mean you have depression. Similarly, people worry, but that doesn't mean they have anxiety. The reason most people say depression/anxiety are only manageable is because no treatment will ever totally eliminate grey days, or worrying - that's just human nature; hence i have a problem with people calling it 'manageable' because it implies that it's a problem you're forever saddled with, and you just have to work your life around the problem. However, nobody thinks they have a serious problem if they have a grey day once in a while, or worries a little. Hell, even 'normal' people have intrusive thoughts, but they're just better equipped to deal with it by chance. Treatment can bring the sufferer to the point where they don't worry about their symptoms, leaving them to have as full a life as any other person, to the point when they might consider themselves 'cured', despite still having grey days or worrying a little.\n\nFinally, i'd like to reiterate my original point - *depression and anxiety can be dealt with very easily*, but it's very important that it gets sorted out as quick as possible. The biggest step for depression and anxiety sufferers is going to the doctor and getting diagnosed and prescribed treatment, as they can (naively) think that it'll go away on its own, or they'll grow out of it, or that they fear being told that it's incureable - all of those attitudes are completely unfounded. It also doesn't help that western society tends to stigmatise the depressed or anxious as people with disabilities. If you suffer from depression or anxiety, go to your doctor, explain precisely how you feel. If you get the motivation, explain the situation to a friend or family member, and ask them to force you to attend doctors appointments, therapy sessions, and the like. Like I said, the first step is by far the hardest, but it gets much easier from there.",
"They are looking into how current SSRI's (the most common type of anti-depressant medication) may actually modify brain chemistry permanently. I do not have a direct link to a peer-reviewed journal to prove this, but it is a hypothesis that is gaining traction and being reserached heavily. \n\n I carry genetic markers for Depression and have suffered severe depression for 10+ years, and between therapy and medication I now no longer take my meds, and see my therapist one time a month, and am living a life I never though would be possible, I can actually feel more than two emotions (sad and apathetic) and enjoy the world daily not just on rare occasions. I am fairly confident these two treatments used together caused some physical and chemical changes in my brain allowing me to have a more typical life.",
"If you are talking about pharmacological treatments, then the most prevalent type of medication would be SSRI's, Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that is mostly associated with depression. SSRI's hold the neurotransmitter longer in the cleft (the place of signaling between two neurons) and in doing so increase chemical signaling between neurons that secrete Serotonin.\n\nNow, you have no evidence to say that the depression you treat by increasing serotonin was created by a decrease in Serotonin in the first place. That said, increasing Serotonin has been known to decrease symptoms of depression in a fair percentage of the patients. I would like to remind you that you are treating the symptoms of depression with SSRI and not the cause of the problem. This is a pharmocological approach and is the most popular because it is the least time demanding and most cost efficent solution.\n\nA psychoanalytic approach is a more humanistic approach. This approach is built on the premise that self-knowledge is power (and this statement has its flaws and is debatable as well). With the guidance of an analyst, you try to deconstruct your personhood and understand your problems as an unconscious redirection of your unfulfilled infantile wishes. Your unfilfilled infantile wishes would have roots in your childhood and through therapy that is likely to take years, you would slowly but surely change how your ego(conscious, organized part of your mind) deals with the id(your instinctual, impulsive drives) and super-ego(the cultural norms that you have internalized). Needless to say, this approach is way more financially demanding and time-consuming (usually takes years). If successful, you overcome your depression by both improving your understanding of what is causing the depression and changing the self that experiences the depression.\n\nThe treatment with the highest success rate is Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). In this treatment, they put in electrodes in your brain and perform electroshocks with small currents. I am not knowledgable on the specifics but this process is extremely time-consuming and financially demanding as well. The procedure itself is not necessarily time consuming. However, you would have to take multiple days off of your responsibilities, go to the hospital, find someone to take care of you (because you won't be allowed to drive or do anything on the day of your ECT). This means the person taking care of you will have to clear his/her day as well. Also, the ECT treatment will most likely need to be repeated in order maintain its impact. So, this routine off clearing schedules would have to be periodical. It is also said to cause memory loss.\n\nA really interesting and unsuccessful case of dealing with depression is performing lobotomies. Popular in the 1940's, this approach literally cut the nerve fibers between your prefrontal cortex and your other cortices. This approach usually improved the depression symptoms but created a whole set of different problems.\n\nSources: Stuff I've read over the years, I'm by no means an expert. Sorry if anything on here happens to be incorrect\n"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophisation#Everyday_and_psycho-pathological_contexts",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_brief_depression",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumination_%28psychology%29"
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ax3ji8 | how do 2 factor authentication apps or rsa tokens work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ax3ji8/eli5_how_do_2_factor_authentication_apps_or_rsa/ | {
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"They have a clock, and a secret encryption key inside. They encrypt the time, using the key. You type the answer in, and the computer at the other end (which also has the key {remember that QR code you scanned}) does the same thing. If the answers are right, you're approved.",
"In the simplest case, you round off time to the nearest 30-second window and `encrypt(key, time)`, and on the other side the sever computes `encrypt(key, time - 1), encrypt(key, time), encrypt(key, time+1), ...` for some number of 30-second windows. This lets you have some fudge-factor on the time you open the app, type the code, and it finally reaches the server. Assuming it matches one window, the sever sets the minimum time window forward (so people can't replay old codes), and allows you access."
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awd2qn | how does a fly have so much energy to use it's wings for as long as it does? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/awd2qn/eli5_how_does_a_fly_have_so_much_energy_to_use/ | {
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"Super adapted muscles/metabolism for flight. The flight muscles in insects can be up to 1/5th of their body mass. But it's really all about efficiency. Your cells can use aerobic or anaerobic metabolism to produce ATP from glucose (and sometimes lipids and other stuff). During aerobic metabolism - when oxygen is available to the cell - breaking down one glucose molecule yields something like 30 ATP. When cells can't get enough oxygen, they instead use other molecules in its place, but the process is way less efficient - you get 3 molecules of ATP per glucose. In mammals, oxygen is carried through our blood by proteins called hemoglobins. The eli5 version of this is that it means if your muscles are working really hard, eg you're sprinting, they will use more oxygen than can be released from the hemoglobin and your cells will have to use anaerobic respiration for energy. Flying insects, on the other hand, don't have hemoglobin at all. Oxygen travels through their bodies as a gas, and they have a network of tubes designed to provide it directly to their muscle cells, so their muscle cells have virtually infinite oxygen and never use anaerobic metabolism for energy. They also have by far the largest aerobic scope in the animal kingdom. That means they can generate energy by breaking down glucose around 75 times faster when working hard then when resting, and they are able to switch between these rates nearly instantaneously by very tight regulation of the enzymes involved. By comparison, we can at best increase respiration rates by about 20 times, and it takes a long time for our cells to slow down respiration so a lot of \"fuel\" is wasted."
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541i78 | why did unlimited data for cellphones/etc.. stop being a thing and data caps are now enforced? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/541i78/eli5_why_did_unlimited_data_for_cellphonesetc/ | {
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"Most people use like 1-2GB of data/month. Hardcore users might us 5-10GB/month. This is all good and carriers are fine with that.\n\nHowever, when they offer totally unlimited plans, so A-hole decides he's going to cancel his home internet and do EVERYTHING over his mobile connection. So he's torrenting 100GB of porn a day by tethering his phone to his PC, and using the equivalent of 5000 normal people worth of data, creating congestion for everyone and slowing everyone down. NOW the carriers care. \n\nSome carriers are now offering unlimited plans, but they throttle anything over 26GB/month (which is still way more than even heavy phone users would use).",
"Look at speed of the network.\n\n2G EDGE data is typically [500 kbit/s](_URL_0_), so assuming you had something to saturate that network, you would be pulling no more than [1.3Tb of data](_URL_1_) which is a lot, but that is litterally downloading as fast as possible 24/7, which would never happen. Your phone would run out of batteries in an hour or two, your storage would fill up, and there was nothing that large to download.\n\nPlus, in 2G days, phones couldn't really process data that fast, so the practical limit was much lower.\n\nPlus, in 2G days, there wasn't as much streaming content. Netflix didn't come online until sometime around 2010, and most music at that time was downloaded rather than streamed.\n\nPlus, in 2G days, not many people were using the internet on their phones. Smart phones sucked a lot more, and were fairly rare. And mobile internet pages were total shit.\n\nSo realistically, the average person used very little phone data. So carriers were safe offering unlimited data, because not many people would use more than a gig or two a month, and the worst case was so rare that it was essentially a non-issue.",
"Because people aren't flocking to third party carriers. They often cost much less, offer more GB, and run off the expensive 4 carriers national networks."
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86n97z | why do parts of the world use cdma and others use gma | Is there a reason that there isn't widespread adoption of one and not the other?
edit: I meant GSM | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/86n97z/eli5why_do_parts_of_the_world_use_cdma_and_others/ | {
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"I assume GMA should be GSM, GSM is a TDMA system. CDMA and TDMA is whay to share a radio channel between multiple uses\n\n\nThe simple explanation is that when digital 2G mobile phone system development started in the 1980 different companies had indifferent ideas how it should be done. The Europén GSM become dominant and all 4G system today are descendentens of it. Some handset are compatible with CDMA2000 system because there are large deployment of them primary in the USA and it is expensive and take time to replace the the towers. So to get good coverage som phones can still use CDMA2000\n\nIn the US Qalacom developed a CSMA system IS-95 or cdmaOne\n\nDigital AMPS was another north american system the was developed it was a TMDA system like GSM buy Bell Labs\n\nSo the US and Canadian government did not intervene to try to have a common system. The lest the markes solve the problem is the US way. The areas was also dominated by a few large companies\n\nIn Europe in 1983 the development started as a by the coordinating body of telekommunikation and in 1987 countries signed a agreement that GSM should be the system used for next generation mobile phone system. Europe are multiple small market with the existing cable base phone system operated by governmental agency. There existed private owned cell phone operators. The system also resulted in a system where hand sets was compatible so you could change operators. That is important for a consumer but not what a large telecom company like.\n\nSo enforce a single standard resulted in a system developer per county. It is also more important to have compatibility between countries in Europe compared to North America where the countries as the size of states.\n\nSouth Korea and Japan also had their own standards. \n\nSo the North American companies primary started to deploys the locally developed system. The fact that hand set was locked to network was a advantage to the so they could keep customers. The disadvantage is that is a was property system by one developer.\n\n\nThe result is that GSM become the system the the rest of the world primary adapted as there was multiple vendors and you don't get locked in to a single vendor. That was not the same problem for large North American telecom companies as there size resulted in good bargaining position \n\nIf you look at _URL_0_ that have a graph of system 2003-2007 you will notice that GSM is the international defacto standard with 80% in 2007 and 2014 is was \n\nWhen 3G system started to be developed whare was the old GMS that become the 3GPP collaboration was the dominate one wit US, Japanese, Chinese joining. The UMTS standard that was the result used CDMA as one way to share a frequency.\n\nFor 4G and later it start to become one system. 4G LTE is the market names that is a global standard\n\nThere are still some system that use the cdmaOne base 3G system called CDMA2000 but there is no new incompatible 4G variant and 4G LTE is used. \n\nSo phones for the network that started to use CDMA2000 still have compatible cellphones so the legacy part of the network can be used. The operators done have the same coverage with 4G.\n\n\nAnother factor is not only the system but what frequency is used. Different countries give different frequency band to mobile phones. So a cell phone might only be able to use some bands. So a cellphone might not work even if it is the same system.\n\n"
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3b50e8 | why does tricare not follow with the affordable health care act rule of being under parent's insurance until your 26? | I tried searching for this so I'm pretty sure it hasn't been answered. Why is it that with TriCare, once you are out of school, you can no longer be under your parent's plan? In my case, I'll be 22 when I graduate but will have to get off of the insurance and pay for my own plan. You have to enroll in some other, shittier, more expensive plan - TriCare Young Adult - which includes no dental BTW and costs more than the majority of other insurances and isn't great from what I've heard. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b50e8/eli5_why_does_tricare_not_follow_with_the/ | {
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"Because TriCare is not health insurance, and the ACA applies only to health insurance plans.\n\nFrom this [page](_URL_0_):\n\n > TRICARE is not health insurance; it is a federal health care entitlement program only for eligible uniformed service members, retirees and their families.\n"
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1m20p6 | if a black hole is a singular, super-dense, zero-dimensional point in space, then how do they possess mass and diameter? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m20p6/eli5_if_a_black_hole_is_a_singular_superdense/ | {
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"Well, the diameter you're referring to isn't really the diameter of the super dense point, it's the diameter of the sphere within which things can't escape. It's more like the ring around a chained up dog. The dog might not be 30 feet across but we consider anything within that circle to be \"dangerous\" and part of the dogs control.\n\nIt has mass because mass fell into the hole, and the mass + energy cannot be destroyed. It also has mass because it has a gravitational pull, which requires mass.",
"The singularity at the center of a non-rotating black hole is possibly an infinitely dense zero-dimensional point (that's what some of the math shows, but nobody's really sure because the physics equations that we currently use to describe the universe get all wonky in those sorts of extreme situations.) Some of that same math applied to a rotating black hole actually shows the singularity as an infinitely dense 2 dimensional ring.\n\nBut whatever's going on down there, the singularity is not all that there is to a black hole. There's also the event horizon, which can be a long way from the singularity. The more massive the black hole, the further out the event horizon is. And then in between the boundary of the event horizon and the singularity is a giant spherical-ish area of highly warped spacetime that is the interior of the black hole. \n\nOddly enough, some of the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies have such a large volume enclosed by the event horizon, that even though they can have a mass of billions of suns compacted at their singularity, their overall density can be less than the density of water.\n\nEven though we're not really sure what's going on inside black holes, we're pretty sure that whatever it is, it's weird."
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3t9bal | what causes you to wake up when you (make yourself) fall in a dream? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3t9bal/eli5_what_causes_you_to_wake_up_when_you_make/ | {
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"The jolt you experience is called a hypnic jerk. It is an involuntary twitch your body makes. We're still not sure what causes it, but scientists think it is a leftover from when we slept in trees. The jerk wakes us up if we're about to fall. Other animals experience this."
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1dmjrr | why do we need to install a program/videogame on our computer instead of just opening it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dmjrr/eli5why_do_we_need_to_install_a_programvideogame/ | {
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"Modern software is very complex and has many components. While it's possible to design a program that comes in a single file and can just be opened/run, it's not very efficient or manageable to do so. \n\nWhen something goes wrong and you have one huge file, it's very difficult to find out what the problem is. So programs are broken down into components, and those components are organized in the context of the entire computer, and not like they exist independently. Some components are even shared by multiple programs, so there is one copy in a known place that each program utilizes.",
"In order to use a piece of software, you may need any or all of the following:\n\n- The actual executable program itself.\n- Program updates.\n- Drivers or other OS extensions.\n- Images, sounds, or other resources.\n- Saved data.\n- Preference and configuration files.\n- Records in system files.\n- Manuals, tutorials, or demo files.\n\nSome of this may be copied straight from the install medium, and some may be created during installation (e.g. a default preference file). Even if the installer only copies files, it is easier for the installer to make sure they are moved to the correct locations than to rely on the user to do it.\n\nNote, however, that installers are more characteristic of Windows than other OSs. In Mac OS X, much software (perhaps even most) can simply be copied to your Applications directory (or another directory of your choice). How is this accomplished? In Mac OS X, applications are actually a special kind of directory called a \"package\" with a special structure inside that keeps track of the executable, resource files, and some other stuff within itself. By convention, preference files are created by the program itself if they don't already exist. There may also be an \"Application Support\" directory created by the program to hold updates, downloaded content, user data, etc. This puts the onus on the program itself to make sure that its auxiliary files are in order.",
"It's a couple of things, and it's all in the name of efficiency.\n\nFirst, to make programs take up less space on the CD or be easier to download, a lot of them are compressed. This is good for space, but it's very slow to uncompress something, so they can't run like that. The installer has to uncompress everything to get it ready for use.\n\nNext, the program needs to tell Windows what it can do. That way, when you install a new sound program, you can click on your MP3 music files, and Windows will know that the new program can play those songs, and will use it to do what you're asking.\n\nOnce that's taken care of, the program needs a way to store settings. You can't really store settings inside a program file like an .EXE, because these files are very complicated and require special software to modify. So when you install it, the program makes a special file to store all its settings and temporary information. Since it's not an EXE and it's not actually *running* in the computer, it's very easy to make changes to.\n\nOn the same note, the program needs a way to update. Since you can't change the EXE file, you can't really update it without replacing the whole thing. If the program is broken down into a bunch of smaller files, an update can just replace one or two of these little files to make everything work better. With a single file, the update would have to replace the whole thing, even the parts that hadn't changed. That would take extra time and be harder to download, so programmers like to avoid it.\n\nFinally, a lot of the really basic things a program does, like making a window or a dialog box, or certain types of calculations, all require special computer code. But a lot of this code is the same for every program, so instead of making every program come up with its own method for doing these things, the simple tasks are made into what's called a \"library.\" This is sort of weird naming, because they're more like books *in* a library. Each book tells the computer how to do one simple task. So, when Microsoft Word wants to make a dialog box so you can set the font size, the Word programmers don't have to write their own font picker. They just tell Word to go use the library to find out how to do that task. The limitation with this is that not every computer has the same libraries, and even if they're present, the program needs to know where to find them. So when you install a program, it searches through your computer, makes sure it can find all the libraries it might need, and if any are missing it'll add a copy of that library so it can run properly, and so future programs can also use that library.\n\nDespite all this, there *are* programs which run from a single file. They're usually simple programs that only do one or two tasks, where they can be all self-contained and still run efficiently. The more complicated the program is, the more likely one of the above situations will come up. So the complicated programs have to spend some time preparing everything so they can do all the different tasks they're designed to do.",
"Imagine you want to play with this awesome toy. It has tons of self assembling parts and pieces, but why can't it come already fully built? Well, it would be hard to fit it all in a reasonably sized box. If we put the full toy in the box it comes in, we would have to take off a whole bunch of parts for it to fit. But, if we take it apart and squeeze it into a normal sized box, we can make it better, it will just take time to assemble. Programs are like that."
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ewe9aw | how are roundabouts safer? | I drive on roundabouts every day to and from work and in my experience about 10% of people do them correctly. I look at the statistics and it's amazing how much safer roundabouts are. I just can't reconcile my anecdotal experience with the actual statistics. I understand my issue could be regional, but I just can't see how they can be so much safer despite the fact the vast majority doesn't know how to use them. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ewe9aw/eli5_how_are_roundabouts_safer/ | {
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"Car accidents cause damage based on relative velocity. Two cars going 30 mph head on hit with a force of 30 mph. Two cars going 30 mph in roughly the same direction in a roundabout hit with a force of 5-10 mph.",
"So, probably not going to convince you but the reason they are safer is the completely eliminate left turn interactions.\n\nYour personal observation are not sufficient for making large scale judgements and you clearly know the difference.\n\nSample bias, you notice the 10% of people who do not use the roundabout correctly and they stay with you but the other people who do do not make an impression.\n\nThe 10% would probably be people who make poor left-hand turns too.",
"You can't run a roundabout. You can run a red light. \n\nOr\n\nThe thruput of cars in a traffic light intersection is intermittent. The thruput of cars in a roundabout intersection is constant. The constant movement of cars through an intersection is safer because of physics (the force of impact is greater when the difference in speed between the two cars is higher).\n\nEdit: and stuff like moving in opposite directions vs more parallel.",
"Nobody is travelling perpendicular to the flow of traffic, at full speed, on a roundabout.\n\nEntering a roundabout, You might cut somebody off, and maybe even cause a collision; but the vehicle traveling *around* the roundabout is going at a lower speed, and the vehicle entering the roundabout will be travelling at a lower speed (since they can't go straight like you can at an intersection) everyone is moving slower. \n\nAt a regular intersection people are traveling at high speed in a straight line, and if they fail to stop at a red light you easily can have two vehicles going at full speed collide. Due to the speeds involved they may not even have seen each other, and the vehicle with the right of way had no reason to slow down through the intersection",
"Entry to a roundabout is slower so no full speed collisions by someone having a green light going the full speed limit as they cross the other traffic and due to the curved nature of entry collisions are side to side rather than the t-bone impact of a standard junction which is the most dangerous form of impact.",
"They reduce the number of conflict points.\n\nThey reduce the possibility of the deadlier types of crashes, specifically, the head-on and T-bone crashes.\n\nSo even though people don't know how to use them, it is safer. And the accidents that would result from not knowing how to use it, are low speed and at a less damaging angle."
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12l3vt | ; what exactly is snot? | What exactly is it? I'm coming down with a cold so I'm curious as to what is clogging my nasal cavity. Is it just a way the body disposes of another kind of waste? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/12l3vt/eli5_what_exactly_is_snot/ | {
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"So, what is \"snot\"? Snot is a euphemism for mucus and mucus itself is made up of mucin (a protein), skin cells, water and inorganic salts and during illness it will also contain bacteria and/or viruses and dead white cells. It provides a protective lubricating layer. It moisturizes the air we breathe, it prevents tissue from drying out. Another purpose of mucus is to trap debris, bacteria, viruses, etc. and expel them. ",
"Yep. Normally, your nose drippings are just your respiratory system filtering the dust and pollen out of the air you breathe.\n\n\nWhen you're sick, your body goes into overdrive trying to not only filter the air you breathe, but also expel the bacteria or viruses that are making you sick.\n\n\nIt's kind of like the lint trap in a dryer, only it's liquidy and it cleans itself out automatically.",
"As above, and also, I'm pretty sure the main reason you get stuffy and blocked noses is due to the inflammation of all the blood vessels in the nose, as opposed to 'snot'. \n\n(fun fact)\n\nA natural remedy in males is sexual stimulation, when we have sex or masturbate, it (without all the scientific jargon) synthesises a natural antihistamine in our body, which, for a time clears the nose! \n\nThere is of course a lot of sciene behind it, but that's the short version of it for you. "
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3c8co5 | why does cheap ice-tea have this weird dry feeling after you drink it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3c8co5/eli5_why_does_cheap_icetea_have_this_weird_dry/ | {
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"Green tea and some other preparation methods tend to result in an [astringent](_URL_0_) brew. Sounds like those astringent tannins reacting with your saliva is what you actually dislike. "
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astringent"
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68yjqn | why is pizza so universally liked? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68yjqn/eli5_why_is_pizza_so_universally_liked/ | {
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"Probably because Pizza is a very versatile dish. It's flat bread with some kind of sauce and more often then not cheese, everything else is optional in the grand scheme of things. (Im a deep dish pepperoni with BBQ sauce guy) "
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1ip1m0 | how anxiety and stress cause physical symptoms (specifically tinnitus, dizziness, headaches, numbness) | I have been having these symptoms for over year as well as have been diagnosed with health anxiety. The doctors have not done extensive investigation for these symptoms, saying it is probably due to stress. I am willing to accept this but would like a better understanding about what physically happens in the body to cause this and why the body has evolved to react this way.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ip1m0/eli5_how_anxiety_and_stress_cause_physical/ | {
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"Stress causes your blood pressure to rise and this causes the headache and numbness. Higher blood pressure also makes it easier for your blood to transfer oxygen therefore increasing your stamina. This helps if you are being chased by a lion but is bad for your health if you are always stressed out. Check with your doctor if you have high blood pressure, maybe he will give some high blood pressure med's or an anti-anxiety drug like Valium. "
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2bb9sr | how do surgeons control bleeding once they cut a person open? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bb9sr/eli5_how_do_surgeons_control_bleeding_once_they/ | {
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"During anesthesia your blood pressure and heart rate is really low, so you will naturally pump less blood. If it is a major artery they have to cut or accidentally cut, they have a cauterizing tool that will burn the bleed closed. They will also clamp off areas they are working on to restrict blood flow.",
"Tying off, clamps, electrocautery, chemical coagulates, to name a few. ",
"I shadowed a gastric surgeon for a while, and all surgeons would use an electric scalpel that cuts and immediately cauterizes (burns) as it cuts, so that bleeding does not occur. ",
"Follow up. So lets say you cauter the open blood vessels, once you are done, do you have to reconnect them or something?",
"Firstly, general anaesthetic reduces the blood pressure and there by reduces the rate are bleeding occurs.\n\nSecondly, bleeding only occurs in great amounts when a large vessel is cut. This is mostly avoided, any large vessels needed to be cut with be tied off.\n\nThirdly, modern surgery often uses diathermy instead of a scalpel blade for incisions, the heat cauterises the smallest blood vessels instantly and for larger ones is applied for a few seconds.\n\nFourthly, just deal with it, mop it up with gauze, suctions it away. Surgery can be very bloodly. Though often, using these techniques, it can appear almost bloodless.",
"The major method is cauterization. Plan scalpels are not commonly used to initiate surgery anymore. Instead, rf powered cautery wands are used which simultaneously cut and cauterize the small vessels in the skin and hypodermis. Larger arterioles can be clipped with surgical hemostatic clips or cauterization. After the surgery is complete, the body heals itself and reestablishes damaged vascular pathways. ",
"It depends, but I'll try and be as clear as I can.\n\nFor traumas, especially the \"bleeding out\" traumas with liver lacerations the blood pressure will be so low any superficial bleeding will be insignificant and you'll just wing it.\n\nAnd for the rest, well it depends on when, why and where.\n\nUsually you don't have that much problems with the subcutaneous vessels, but if you do you can either clamp them, ligate them or cauterize them. If you cauterize them the patient may be a bit upset because it won't look as good as it could.\n\nFor liver lacerations the patient may bleed out (and all surgeons probably has a story of a \"friend\" who has had this happen to them). What you have to remember is that most blood flow trough something to get where it is going, which is something you can clamp (for the liver you have vena porta which provide the liver with most of the blood, and it can be clamped for at least 40 min). Blood push out, so you can apply pressure over any openings and have it stay put (and for the liver sutures has the same effect as you usually can't ligate the vessels). And you can use a cooler cauterisation method but pretty much the idea is the same with electricity and forcing the blood to coagulate.\n\nFor a large bleeding from the spleen (and in some cases one kidney) you simply remove it and ligate the arteries.\n\nDuring a hysterectomy you first clamp all vessels and then ligate them one by one using sutures to compress the arteries.",
"There is surprisingly a little amount of bleeding during surgeries, even invasive abdominal surgeries where surgeons have to make huge cuts into someones abdominal cavity. It was surprising to see during nursing school, I expected so much more blood. The bleeding only really gets heavy when vessels like an artery or major vein get nicked.",
"It's a combination of electric cautery (using electricity to burn the wound) and not cutting big vessels. You would be surprised how little people actually bleed during most surgery. In something like a c-section where blood loss is unavoidable you work quickly and efficiently then uses stitches and pressure to control bleeding! ",
"I haven't cut open any people, but I've worked on animals. I'm sure that the science can't be too different. Given no one has tried to ELI5 yet, I'll give it a go.\n\nYou'd be amazed how little blood there is when cutting through skin, it's mainly served by capillaries (the smallest blood vessels in the body) which carry only small amounts of blood. The become easily blocked by platelets following on from the initial incision.\n\nFollowing that, you don't have copious amounts of blood just filling you up, it's contained in arteries and veins, both of which you can easily avoid cutting anything major and releasing large quantities of blood into the body when operating. In fact a situation in which blood is released during surgery is something of an emergency.\n\nIf needing to harvest an artery, or cut it for any reason, it can be tied above the incision and blood supply stopped promptly. As described below, the majority of the time you don't have an issue taking out a blood vessel, because there are enough others around to compensate.\n\nI imagine it's better done in humans, however that should hopefully give a decent overview.\n\ntl;dr: you are not a balloon filled with blood",
"When I cut you open, I have a good idea of where important structures are. Say I need to take your gallbladder out, I make a very superficial cut with a scalpel, skin bleeds just little bit, I use what as known as a bovie (electrocautery) to burn small vessels on my way down into your abdomen. When I get my instruments in, we then go after the target organ, since I'm taking your gallbladder out, I know that most people only have one main artery that perfuses that organ (I always check for collateral circulation though, so we ligate it by using clamps, I put a series of these clamps down, usually three or four, then cut in between them. It's that simple! The whole idea behind surgery is to not have the pt bleed. If it's trauma, then I still do the above, but I make one big cut and open the abdomen.I clamp then tie off anything I see that is bleeding, \"bleeders.\" Hope this helps! ",
"I can only speak from my father's 3 surgeries for a couple tumors, but for general surgeries they give you drugs to control your blood thickness/coagulation and are just kinda ready for you to loose a lot of blood for long surgeries. That is why they keep blood on standby. The cutting instruments they use are also designed to minimize blood loss. Also, for tumors they can do an emoblization (sp?) where they try and embolize the veins that are supplying blood to the tumor. ",
"My dad had aortic dissection surgery a few months ago, and to stop his bleeding in they aorta they drained his blood and cooled his body so his organs stayed okay.",
"\"Clamp, Clamp, Cut, Tie, Tie. Clamp, Clamp, Cut, Tie, Tie. Clamp, Clamp, Cut, Tie, Tie. Clamp, Clamp, Cut, Tie, Tie. Clamp, Clamp, Cut, Tie, Tie.\" -Old Surgeon",
"A lot of the time there is a lot less blood than you thinking. There is a commonly used tool they have, not sure what's it's called but it cauterizes (burns) as it cuts to prevent bleeding. You can also clamp vessels and what not. ",
"Former surgical tech here. For surgery on Limbs, they work in a bloodless field. What they do is once you are under, is wrap a tight ace bandage around the limb starting at the toes/fingers working back toward the body and apply a pneumatic tournequet to it which keeps the blood from flowing back in. This procedure is called exsanguination. You can go a number of HOURS without blood in the limb, believe it or not. IIRC, 2 hours is pretty common.\n\nA ORT and surgeon can keep up with and take care of bleeders when working in the body where exsanguination is not possible. The surgeon would be cutting along with a scalpel in one hand and a pickup (a metal tweezer with little teeth on the end) in the other. He would grab the end of a bleeders with the pickup and I would bovie the pickup which would then travel through the pickup and cauterize the tissue it was grabbing at the other end. It's automatic: bleed, grab, buzz, keep cutting. Maybe 1-2 seconds per bleeder. \n\nAlso on the subject of surgical bleeding, my very first solo assist was a tonsilectomy on a 9 year old. The metal snares used to rip them out was quite common at the time. In this case, somehow when the snare pulled a tonsil out, it pulled and tore the kid's carotid artery. He died within 90 seconds and it was quite possibly the most awful bloody panic-stricken mess I have ever seen in surgery. So, ya. "
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6jxnp7 | why do we often struggle to recall which letters are before or after other letters, without going through the alphabet in our heads, but don't have this problem with numbers, even though we learn the letters in order & off by heart as children, just like the numbers? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jxnp7/eli5_why_do_we_often_struggle_to_recall_which/ | {
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"I would say because basically there are only 10 numbers. 0 to 9. From there it is simple logic to how we formulate them.\n\nThere are 26 letters, it's much harder to think about them logically.\n\nNumbers are logic. ",
"My guess is that you have to only know the order of nine numbers (1 to 9), all the other numbers are combination of these and is easy to know/understand the order of them.",
"1) You don't practice it nearly enough for it to become second nature. Librarians can do it because they do it every day many times for years. You probably use basic number sense every day of your life - how many gallons of gas do you need, how much should that gallon of milk cost versus a half gallon of milk, every time you log in you type in a number. \n\nFor example I still have to sing the song in my head to determine the *order* of the letters but my fingers 'know' where they all are on a keyboard. I typed this entire message without looking down at the keyboard, and you probably can too. And that's why we can't have a faster keyboard layout like DVORAK....and why I hunt and peck when on a smaller keyboard.\n\n\n2) Because your IQ isn't high enough. Seriously, people with stupid-high IQs can do it, most people can't. But most people can do 9 numbers in their head, that's within average human ability, so it's 'normal'. (and 26 is a lot larger than 9 when it comes to memorization ability....for every time you double the number you cut out 90% of mankind)\n\n",
" > What's the letter *before* L?\n\n > > H, I, J, K, L... K!\n\n > What's *after* the letter L?\n\n > > M, because L-M-N-O-P!\n\nSo, letters are remembered by grouping small clusters together\n\nABCD-EFG-HIJK-LMNOP-QRS-TUV-WXYZ, because we're taught primarily through the ABC song. In psychology that's part of pattern recognition. \n\nHowever, in numbers, we're taught AND exercised ordinance of numbers through math. 5 is greater than 2, but 2 is greater than 1. \n\nWe are taught numbers to a greater detail than the alphabet. So we have numbers learned backwards and forwards. Counting down is exciting and counting up is tedious and helps us fall asleep.\n\nHowever, it's difficult to calculate complex equations - the same way it's difficult for elementary school children to comprehend words at a college level. \n\nFor example take the word: Anesthesiology; \n\nImmediately, we know -ology is the root word for \"*the science of*\" because we are exposed to words like Geology, Biology, and Psychology when we're in high school & sometimes in middle school. However, in elementary school, we instead used terms like \"Earth Science\" or \"Life Science\" instead, \"Human Behavior Studies\" or \"Social Studies (without History)\" if psychology was offered at your elite school for gifted children.\n\nBut some adults don't know the Anesthe- part of the word. So, we created the dictionary.\n\nFor numbers, we don't necessarily need a dictionary, rather we need equations. Some numbers like 69 end up in the dictionary for reasons other than math.",
"Part of it is the whole \"only remembering 10 digits\", but moreso it is because number order means something and alphabetical order is completely arbitrary. O comes before P because... well.... because someone once said so. P minus 1 letter doesnt means anything. So all you have is your rote memorization to go on.\n\nOn the other hand, 25 minus 1 does mean something. 24 comes before 25 because it represents 1 fewer thing. There is a logic, and our brains love logic. There is a pattern in the digits, and our brain loves patterns. There is nothing but a line to memorize in the alphabet, and our brains don't love randome dosjointed things, even if it is repeated often.\n\nThat said, even though alphabetical order is used very very often, rarely are we drilled over and over on the order in a scenario that doesn't give us time to doublecheck in our head."
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ev31sf | why is there so many boxing world champions in the same divisions? | As the title suggests Boxing seems to have a confusing amount of world champions, you hear about different federations etc how and why is Boxing setup this way? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ev31sf/eli5_why_is_there_so_many_boxing_world_champions/ | {
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"Money is the main reason, more champions equals more fights more money, then when they box each other even more money, plus they have to pay the federations also so more federations equal more money.",
"Who says there should just be one? In the early days of most sports, there were multiple leagues. In the NFL, the NFC and the AFC used to be the NFL and the AFL until they merged. In boxing you'll have slightly different rules, such as whether there's a standing eight count. Then you get more excitement when someone tries to unify the titles to become the undisputed champion."
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wgee0 | how does dandruff form? why does it itch? and how do you prevent from ever getting it if possible? | I take a shower at the end of every day but i still get it some times. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wgee0/eli5_how_does_dandruff_form_why_does_it_itch_and/ | {
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"dead skin flakes\n\nirritates the skin\n\n[head and shoulders](_URL_0_), bitch"
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"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TZDqRM96lM8/S84S85f8MVI/AAAAAAAAD98/ChCVvR4y87A/s400/shampoo_004.jpg"
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7la2e1 | scientists know what the human body and immune system do to fight off colds and flus. why can’t they create a medicine that does that, only faster? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7la2e1/eli5_scientists_know_what_the_human_body_and/ | {
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"the issue with flu is that there are so many causes of it that it's nigh impossible to create one medicine that helps fighting flu\n\nwhy is this? because the body reacts to diseases in a very specific way. The reason we can have medicine for other diseases is because the body reacts to them in roughly similar ways, with flu the body reacts differently based on what exactly caused that specific case of flu, and there are so many causes, it's just impractical to make one for everything and administer them to people",
"That would require the equivalent of nanites capable of locating and destroying infected cells and viruses - There's only so much you can do with chemicals, proteins, etc etc etc. \n\nAlso, it would likely be colossally expensive. The human body fights off these viruses perfectly fine on its own in people who aren't immune-compromized - Why spend a bunch of money to maybe get better a day or two sooner? Plus possible side effects."
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1po98q | if tigers and lions are big cats, would their roaring sound like meows if we were giants? | Why or why not? I don't understand acoustics well enough to know the answer to this question. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1po98q/eli5_if_tigers_and_lions_are_big_cats_would_their/ | {
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"Sound from a cat/human/lion or anything else with a 'voice' is produced from vocal cords, literally bands of flesh that when tightened by your throat muscles, vibrate when your breath blows over them proportional to the tension and weight of the cords. Hearing is different, while it would be true that the ear canal and subsequent parts of the ear are larger in big creatures (I won't get too into the anatomy here) the sound you hear is a certain hertz, that vibrates your inner ear which generates a nerve signal proportional to that frequency, no matter how big or small the actual ear parts are. So no, if people were the size of Paul Bunyan, a tigers roar is still a tigers roar, but YOUR voice would likely be lower in pitch due to a larger throat. \n\nTL/DR: Elephants can still hear mice, they just cant talk back."
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1pmyn6 | how are 3d graphics rendered and translated to a video signal? | Is there an agreed upon hardware architecture or language that we use, or is the process more analog - and by that I mean there's only one way it can be coded, translated and rendered. I also doubt any of these terms I'm using are relevant! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pmyn6/eli5_how_are_3d_graphics_rendered_and_translated/ | {
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"To try and be simple:\n\nWhen a game loads a graphic, it's loaded from the HDD to RAM. Then, through DirectX or OpenGL (or whatever else methods are available), a request to render the graphic, along with a slew of parameters (x, y, z coordinates, color filters, rotations, veiwports, etc). The Graphics Card stores all this data until a Draw is issued, and then the Framebuffer is filled with all that information. This creates a completed image that is then sent along the video cables to your Monitor.\n\nVGA, DVI, HDMI, etc have decoders that allow you to encode and decode data to send along the cable. They are their own standards, and there are standards committees that protect said standards. Since there is one official standard (I'm not actually sure if there are multiple VGA/DVI/HDMI standards, or even if there were attempts at multiple standards), everyone that uses these ports is required to encode and decode as per their specifications."
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fh2ram | the difference between feelings and emotions. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fh2ram/eli5_the_difference_between_feelings_and_emotions/ | {
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"Are we certain there is a difference? I believe the terms are sufficiently synonymous to be used interchangably."
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1ytvz8 | why does it feel good to tilt back and balance on a chair? | Everyone likes it, it's a fun feeling, but why do we like to do this?
e: should have said "in a chair", not "on a chair" | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ytvz8/eli5why_does_it_feel_good_to_tilt_back_and/ | {
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"A combination of fun, comfort, and exhilaration. Who could resist?",
"You know, some things are the way they are just because. This fits under the section of stuff that's feels nice to do. Lots of things feel nice. You could ask the question as \"why are there things that feel nice?\" and I'll be the same. \nThat being said. Movement is relaxing. We are rocked as kids while getting calmed. I guess that's why the majority like it. ",
"As someone mentioned, we tend to like certain cyclic motions, like how babies like to be rocked. I believe it has something to do with the tempo though, particularly that it matches your heartrate and this has a calming effect (one theory being because babies grew up in the womb always hearing their mother's heartbeat).",
"Maybe this is related to gravity and the angle you're in.\n\nThink, would you prefer to be sitting on a chair or laying on a bed ? IMO tho."
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64r9tr | how do we see the "oldest light in the universe"? | Light that is "the oldest in the universe" that we are able to see now - this has always bothered me, logically.
If we are at point "A" in the universe, and the light source is 14 billion light years away at point "B", then that light is 14 billion years old. I understand this.
But, the source of that light should be much older than 14 billion years, unless when the universe was created our point "A" and that point "B" was instantaneously pushed to that location 14 billion light years away? Additionally, given that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, wouldn't this put point "B" at a much older place in the universe?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/64r9tr/eli5how_do_we_see_the_oldest_light_in_the_universe/ | {
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"The farthest confirmed galaxy we can see today is GN-Z11. The light from that galaxy took 13.4 billions years to reach us, so right now we see this galaxy as 13.4 billions light years away from us. But that's not true. The reality is that the light from that galaxy took 13.4 billions light years to reach each, that's all.\n\n13,4 billions years ago, that galaxy was closer to us than 13.4 billions light year. The light it emitted at that point travelled toward us. During that time, both the galaxy and our galaxy move away from each other. The distance that the light had to travel increased as it travel toward us. The initial distance between us and that galaxy + the expansion of space between us and the galaxy = the light travelled 13.4 billions years to reach us. And we perceive that as the galaxy is 13, 4 billions light years away from us.\n\nDuring that same 13,4 billions years period, that galaxy continued to move away from us. So right now, it's actually at 32 billions light years from us. "
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8keez6 | why does exercise such as running or cycling feel much more strenuous during the first couple of minutes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8keez6/eli5_why_does_exercise_such_as_running_or_cycling/ | {
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"Blood is constantly pumped all around our body to supply oxygen to all our muscles. In the case of running and cycling, we predominantly use our legs, but seeing as though we still have a regular blood circulation, our muscles find it difficult to work comfortably due to the lack of oxygen for the task they are performing. So, our body makes the decision to divert more blood towards those specific working muscles through the contraction and dilation of the blood vessels.\n\nThis is why people tend to do a \"warm up\" before going on a run or cycle as it helps raise the heart rate to a level where your body would be comfortable performing strenuous tasks"
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57qlgz | female- and male reproductive organs and it's development. | I saw a graphic explanation not too long ago on the progression of the reproductive organs while in the womb, and how the difference between the two is insignificant, even after fully developed.
I lost the link, sadly, but can anyone confirm/debunk this, and maybe explain to me how this works? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57qlgz/eli5_female_and_male_reproductive_organs_and_its/ | {
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"It's not exactly correct no. There is a significant difference in the reproductive organs as far as individual functions and physiology go.\n\nBut they're analogous to each other. Meaning, you have cells within each organ that perform similar function.\n\nThe first thing you need to know is that when developing in the womb, both male and females start out common. Meaning the origin of the gonads and genitals are exactly the same.\n\nThe thing that makes the difference is the Y chromosome. It has a special gene called SRY, or Sex Determining Region on Y, as it's also known. This gene is responsible for producing products that tell the growing fetus to grow into a boy.\n\nIn the presence of this gene, two things happen :\nFirst, the gonads get the go ahead to secrete more testosterone, which will cause specific changes in the brain and genitals to form a penis.\n\nThe second thing that happens is a special substance called MIF is released. That prevents the development of the female reproductive organs and causes them to degenerate.\n\nIn the absence of MIF (Müllerian Inhibiting Factor), the female uterus and tubes can form.\n\nNow. Sex determination has a lot of problems.\n\nSay you have a Y chromosome, but for some reason, testosterone doesn't work or get secreted enough. You'll look exactly like a girl because your tissues never differentiated under the effect of testosterone.\n\nOr say you've looked like a girl till 13, and then puberty kicks in and you start to secrete testosterone because of your Y chromosome, then your genitals grow out and become more male like. The phenomenon is so common that they have a name for it - Guevedoces.\n\nBut coming back to the nitty gritty.\n\nIn the tiny fetus, there are small ridges on either side of the spine that are responsible for forming the gonads and reproductive tract.\n\nOne is called the Müllerian duct and forms the uterus. The other is called the Wolffian duct and forms the vas deferens, epididymis and other things that go in men.\n\nIn a girl, the Müllerian duct will grow normally, but the wolffian duct degenerates because of a lack of testosterone.\n\nIn a boy, the Wolffian duct will grow, and the Müllerian (Female) duct will only degenerate if MIF is present. Otherwise the boy will have both male and female parts, and will be what's called a true hermaphrodite.\n\nThe testicles and ovary both come from a common predecessor, called the indifferent gonad. \n\nThere are other permutations too, like girls looking like boys because of too much testosterone from other cells other than the gonads. But that gets confusing.\n\nTL;DR\nThe testes and ovaries start out the same, but change structure and function based on the genetic code and the influence of hormones.\n\nThough there are similarities, under the influence of sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen, the two grow differently and change."
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87q17v | if babies get antibodies from mothers milk, why then do they get afflicted with diseases the mother has gone through like chicken pox | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/87q17v/eli5_if_babies_get_antibodies_from_mothers_milk/ | {
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"Babies grow and change so fast the immunuty wears off and needs to be replenished through immunisation programs. Thats why there are usually courses of vaccinations not just one.",
"Learned immunity, what we get from exposure to a pathogen and thus developing antibodies against it, is temporary. It can wear off in a matter of a year, or it can wear off in 30 but it is temporary. The immunities you get from breastfeeding are the kind that wear off quickly, and they are not even totally complete, they just make it harder for the infant to get sick. In the case of chickenpox you can get that again in old age (called shingles) it is just normally less severe of a reaction than you would have if you had chicken pox for the first time at that age. \n\nThis is different from genetic immunity such as those that make you a carrier for a disease (like Typhoid Mary) in which a disease does not effect you at all. ",
"The baby gets the mothers antibodies, but that doesn't give the baby the ability to make their own. Once the breastfeeding stops the supply if antibodies is cut off. ",
"The antibodies provided via the placenta are capable of helping fight infection in the newborn. However like all antibodies their presence is limited as they will be degraded or excreted within around 3 months.\n\nWhen you encounter a virus or bacteria, cells within your body (B cells) that have been randomly generated and happen to contain antibody that will fight those infections are told ‘hey Bro. You’re doing great, stick around and make me more of those’. As a result of this those cells continue to replicate and generate new antibody that will go on and fight those infections much longer.\n\nIf those cells disappear and stop making the antibody, the antibodies will degrade just like the ones you were born with. In addition the positive feedback that keeps those cells going fades over time and so your acquired immunity wanes as you age. This is variable depending on the pathogen involved.",
"IIRC, the antibodies in breastmilk are IgA antibodies. The ones that convey long-term immunity are IgG and IgM. "
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2udy80 | why are microtransactions considered bad in games? | This is usually pertains to free mobile and even some big games on PC and consoles. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2udy80/eli5why_are_microtransactions_considered_bad_in/ | {
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"First off, those free games are only free for a couple of levels then they tend to take weeks to progress unless you spend money. Also, whoever has more money to waste than you will always have the advantage over you. \n\nThen there's the quick and easy perk me ups for 99cents, $1.99 super cheap until you realize you've made a few micropurchases every day for the past three weeks and are out $60 for it and nothing to show with no refunds and the game is boring now because selling frivolous shit > interesting game content. It's just greedy and stupid and might even cause another big gaming crash if the practice ever takes over the majority.",
"One of my favourite channels on YouTube talked about this and the whole FTP model a while back, I'd suggest you check it out. Be forewarned though, they talk more about how it could be better rather than how it's wrong.\n\n[They have a video specifically about microtransactions] (_URL_0_)\n\n\n[And a whole playlist about they F2P model]\n(_URL_1_)\n\n\n[EDIT] Realizing that I didn't actually explain anything: \n\nPoor game design is the problem here. It actually has little to nothing to do with the model, just a terrible game using it as a crutch. Companies created a bunch of low quality games that threw things like a paywall (you MUST pay to play more) or a Pay2Win reality (mostly prevalent in competitive F2Ps). Think Zynga games.\n\nBecause of this, the whole model has a stigma attached to it and players tend to look poorly at it.\n\nOh, and also because players tend not to think too much of the $1 to $5 they spend at a time on microtransactions, but over time these things can add up considerably. Especially with multiplayer games that use this model.\n\n[Second Edit] \nThe even bigger and less known awfulness of the current F2P world is the way they make their money. In theory, income is essentially crowdsourced, with millions of players playing, many contributing a few dollars, some a little more, some nothing at all.\n\nReality is not that. Reality is that a great many players don't spend very much on these games, but there are small segments of the population that do. In industry, they are referred to as Whales. There was a south Park episode not long ago that actually covered this REALLY well. Basically they know that there are some people, typically people who are more biologically susceptible to addiction, who will unknowingly spend MASSIVE amounts of money in these games. \n\nThese whales are who the games are really all about, so developers cater to them,. The result is that the whales get overpowered in the game, because their gear or whatever it is that is purchased is just orders of magnitude better than what free users have access to. The result is that the individual whale will probably stick with his or her game, because they're a badass in that game. \n\nThe sideeffect of this tends to be that the players who aren't spending exorbitant amounts of money start to feel like they can't compete (Pay2Win) and move on to a different game because that other one was crap. With a dropping playerbase, the prize whales stop having as much fun (because in multiplayer games, the players ARE the content), and will either leave too or get even more ridiculously catered to (by which I actually mean taken advantage of) by the companies until they've been bled for every last penny the game can draw out of them."
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24eopj | why does cocaine and amphetamine makes you feel sober? | No matter how many drinks you had and how drunk you are, theese things seems to clear your mind... how is that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24eopj/eli5_why_does_cocaine_and_amphetamine_makes_you/ | {
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"Both of these drugs are strong stimulants. While they don't work on the same pathways, the stimulating effect of these drugs counteracts the depressant (slowing down, not necessarily 'sad') effects brought on by alcohol.\n\nBasically, if you've been slowing your brain down with drink after drink all night, any strong stimulant will make you feel RELATIVELY sober.\n\nThat being said, all of that alcohol is still very much in your system. Thus, you may just end up having more energy with which to execute your drunk ideas.\n\nGreat username."
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30csyc | will an electrical motor take damage from being overburdened? and if so, why? | For instance if a hill came up while dragging a person om a skateboard with an electrical bike and the bike could not pull anymore, would this "coming to a stop because of too much load" damage the engine internally, if so why? Or is the engine designed to handle coming to a stop like this. How would it be for a gas-engine? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30csyc/eli5_will_an_electrical_motor_take_damage_from/ | {
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"It depends on the motor.\n\nMost electrical motors cannot handle being stalled for too long (more than a few seconds in many cases). They'll over heat and burn the windings. Some motors can handle it, but it mostly depends on the controller driving the motor. \n\nGas engines can't run when stalled, they turn off. ",
"Most electric motors have \"thermal over-load\" protection circuits built-in, so that the electricity will be cut off before damage occurs to the motor components. Some thermal over-loads will reset themselves after sufficiently cooling down, while others need to be manually reset. Depends on the application.",
"When an electric motor is spinning it is actually similar to a generator in that it is also producing electricity (if you disconnected the motor from its supply and manually spun it you will create a voltage). However since it receives more than it produces under normal circumstances it will consume power rather than generate it. In the situation you described the motor will either stop spinning or spin very slowly (while still connected to a power supply), causing the generation portion of the motor to be very small while the incoming power is still there. This means it will draw several times more current than normal and heat up very quickly causing damage."
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1r9k1r | if you held a pair of prescription glasses in front of a camera and recorded something, how would it appear when playing it back? would some people see it blurry and others see it clear? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r9k1r/eli5_if_you_held_a_pair_of_prescription_glasses/ | {
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"No, because the camera sensor becomes the \"eye\", and the lens is the optic in front of it. If you put another optic in front of it, you're only changing the light hitting the sensor. You cannot change the optics in front of the eyes of the person watching the screen. Take a quick look at what [circles of confusion](_URL_0_) are. It should become clear how this would only affect the camera's image sensor."
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890fny | why do men snore more and louder as they age? | At Easter dinner, my wife made a comment about how I'm snoring more and louder now that I (well, we) are getting older. My mom, my aunts, and my grandmother all commented that their husbands' snoring got worse over the years as well. Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/890fny/eli5_why_do_men_snore_more_and_louder_as_they_age/ | {
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"Generally due to being heavier, and/or less muscle tone. Basically your airway is becoming obstructed. The heavier you are the more pressure you have pushing on your airway. And to compound matters muscle tone decreases with age, and now you have less muscles power trying to hold back more weight and voila, snoring. btw, if you have sleep apnea you need to get it looked at, it's no joke. You're basically depriving your brain of much needed oxygen. Also, the list of other complications is long and concerning."
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523frf | if i compress an audio file down to 128kbps and then convert it up to 320kbps we know the quality can't increase but the file size grows. what is this extra information that makes the file size grow and why does it do this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/523frf/eli5_if_i_compress_an_audio_file_down_to_128kbps/ | {
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"That is where variable bitrate comes into play. Variable bitrate gives a maximum bitrate it can use, but allows the compression to use less if than maximum is not necessary. The best case scenario in that case would be basically having the same file again with just very minor quality loss (compressing an already compressed file will make the quality worse), and about the same size.\n\nIf you instead convert it to 320kbps you essentially create a file which defines that there are 320 kilobits per second no matter what. And if there is nothing in the sourcefile that could used for those additional bit, you well, kinda make it up along the way. Your conversion program will try to make educated guesses about what could fill those empty spaces (just like upscaling pictures but for audiofiles). Best case scenario is again, that is sounds like the source 128kbps file. Chances are it will sound slightly worse as it ran through compression twice.",
"This is easier to visualize with photographs but works in much the same way.\n\nPhotographs at a very basic level use tons of small dots of different colors to build a picture. If I lower the resolution I reduce the number of dots used to draw the picture. So if I reduce the quality by a factor of 10 that means where I used to have 10 pixels to represent a given space I now have 1. So downsizing will average the color of all 10 pixels and save a single pixel. If I then up-scale the photo I'll again have 10 pixels to store the information but I have lost the original 10 values so the computer will just save the same color 10 times instead of the 10 different colors that were in the original photo. ",
"It's the same thing when you take a 150dpi image (let's say 1mb) and print it out and faxing it. Then the person who receives the fax uses a high resolution scanner to scan the faxed image at 300dpi, now the image is 4MB.\n\nThe MP3 compressor treats the 128kbps song as the original audio as if it was source quality and recompresses it.",
"Imagine the audio data as being like a sine curve plotted in a x-y plane. Digital audio data means that the curve is stored as a series of points at regular intervals, not the whole line. When you upsample it you just add twice as many points. If you have a bunch of points, adding one point in between each pair of points is not complicated. They probably get more sophisticated than this but they can simply add the new points directly between the old points."
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8mwqqq | what is the difference between the concepts "cause and effect" and "action & reaction"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8mwqqq/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_the_concepts/ | {
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"If you think about it a cause and effect is exactly that, pouring hot coffee on your lap is a cause for pain and burns as the effect, action would be the spilling of the coffee however your reaction would be to the pain and burns themselves.",
"The phrase \"action and reaction\" comes from the idea in physics that every action has an equal and opposite reaction; when you fire a gun, not only is there a force on the bullet, there is an equal force on the gun that causes recoil. Things are direct and opposite. \n\nCause and effect is very similar, but colloquially is used to track action and their subsequent actions down a path to much further downstream effects. ",
"In physics, at least, \"cause and effect\" implies a separation in time: A happens, *then* B happens because of A.\n\n\"Action and reaction\", on the other hand, means the two things always coexist. A and B always happen together simultaneously.\n\nI push on a car, the car pushes on me. Action and reaction. The car doesn't wait until it starts pushing on me. The two forces always coexist.\n\nI push on a car, it starts to roll down the street. Cause and effect. The car started moving *after and because* I pushed it."
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9tgeq1 | how do nonprofits not run out of money | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9tgeq1/eli5_how_do_nonprofits_not_run_out_of_money/ | {
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"Most non-profits earn revenue and even profits. Such organizations are not proscribed from earning money, they are simply required to reinvest it into their operations rather than dispersing it to owners (which they don't really have).",
"They still raise/make money. The difference is that all that they raise goes to operating cost, what cause they support, marketing, etc. They have to spend what money they have, so they don't make a profit. It's more complicated than that but that's the general idea.",
"Another way, used by most colleges and many museums, is called an \"Endowment\", where you set aside a large amount of money, and each year, you siphon off the interest of that money from wherever you have it invested, while refusing to touch the principal of the investment.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nFor example, if I put 100 million dollars in the bank, at 1% interest per year, that's 1 million dollars. Then I spend that 1 million to do everything I need to, but I always keep the balance at 100 million in savings. In theory, so long as I never touch the 100 million number, I will be able to operate forever as an organization.",
"Non-profit doesn't mean they don't make a profit, many can and do. It generally means, making a profit is not the primary goal. A business's goal is to make a profit for the owners/shareholders. \n\nA not for profit organization's goal is something else, like funding a social cause, funding training, providing aid, etc. So in theory, at the end of the year, any money not spent on those causes would not be given to the owners/shareholders as a dividend, but would be saved for further activity.\n\nI say in theory, because there are bonuses and stuff that can be given to management. And some non-profit organizations are actually political organizations, that skim the line between a political organization and a non-profit, depending on the laws of that area.\n",
"Being a non-profit does not mean you have no incomes. It means that you have no owner or shareholder taking a profit from said incomes. All income that the non-profit has goes toward operational costs, and toward expanding of the various things that the non-profit is doing. \n\nThese incomes can be from donations and often are, but they also can be from interest in investments (trust funds for example), and they can even make and sell products. ",
"Dont forget goverment grants. Depending on the nature of the non-profit, a substantial amount of revenue can be in the nature of annual or bi-annual grants.",
"Non-profits are NOT non-revenue. They raise money, pay salaries/benefits, spend money on operations (office rent, copy machines, holding events, mailings, etc) and what they raise minus expenses goes toward their cause. Any leftover money remains with the organization to fund future years or contribute more toward the cause, instead of being paid as profits to shareholders/owners like a for profit business."
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6wi3gt | how does activated carbon work and why it's in every cleansing product now a days? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6wi3gt/eli5_how_does_activated_carbon_work_and_why_its/ | {
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"Activated carbon is just regular carbon, but with a very fine poreous structure which creates a huge surface area for adsorption of all kind. It's widely used as a filtering material in chemical processes or agriculture. \n\nThe sudden rise of its appearance in dermatological products is mainly a big marketing trend. Its eye-catching black appearance and its proven chemical applications make it an attractive feature in this era of cleanses and detox. It works, but so do regular soaps and facial products. "
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b8erv6 | why can peppers cause blisters without being temperature hot? | When we eat peppers with a high scoville scale they can cause blisters. This makes no sense to me, it's not like we are eating actual fire its just our body telling us that its "hot" without it actually being temperature hot. So why does this happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b8erv6/eli5_why_can_peppers_cause_blisters_without_being/ | {
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" > So why does this happen?\n\nThe \"heat\" in peppers is a chemical called capsaicin. Capsaicin is a chemical irritant (plants use it to deter mammals from eating their fruit) and it can cause contact dermatitis in some people which can present as small painful blisters.\n\nIt can also penetrate through the skin with prolonged handling of peppers and cause severe burning pain that lasts for a couple days. Ask me how I know.",
"Peppers are very acidic foods. They produce so much of their own natural acids that when your skin comes into contact with the acid, it burns you. It's sort of the same principle as caustic materials. They aren't actually hot, but they will burn you if you touch them, because they are acidic. \n\nThis also happens with citrus fruit. If you ever handle citrus fruit and don't wash your hands, and then go out in the hot sun, its possible to get nasty burns from the acid on your hands. "
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kthcz | the "pre-med"/med school process | MCAT? Interviews? Residencies? Applying to med schools "online only"? When to apply? When specialization occurs? Choosing the school? Does an undergraduate degree suffice prior to applying to medical school? Best undergraduate degree to have? Does a graduate degree in a specific science give you a better chance at getting into medical school?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kthcz/eli5_the_premedmed_school_process/ | {
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"The first step of the process is the post your \"Primary Application\". Typically this is done through a service known as AMCAS (American Medical College Application Service). This serves as a type of common application that many medical schools use as their first screen to filter out students. It entails filling out GPA, MCAT scores and extracurricular activities as well as personal information.\n\nAfter AMCAS verifies that the information you turned in is correct, they send out the primary application and if schools like what they see, the schools you applied to will send back a secondary application. The \"Secondary Applications\" are more tailored for specific schools. One school might ask you to write about experiences with diversity because that particular school places a heavy emphasis on diversity, while another school might ask you to write about something else. Secondaries vary from having multiple essays to none. \n\nAfter completing secondaries and turning them into the schools, the schools will evaluate what you have written and decide whether or not to offer you an interview. Typically on the interview day you will sit down with a medical faculty member during part of the day and a medical student for part of the day. Both of them will ask you questions pertaining to you loyalty to medicine, competence and other questions to see if you are suited for the field and for their particular school.\n\nAfter interviews you find out if you are accepted.\n\nYour particular questions: Primary can be turned in as early as June 1st. The due date for secondaries varies from mid-September to January. Specialization occurs after medical school and after residency. Choosing the school is based upon how competitive you are (GPA, MCAT scores, amount of good leadership extra curricular activities). There is no \"best\" undergrad degree, but a degree in any biological science will typically help prepare you for the MCAT and in that way will help you get into medical school. \n\nOn the other hand, some medical schools like to look diverse and enjoy accepting music, theatrical arts or other random majors because it shows they don't only take Biology majors..\n\nHope this helped!",
"The first step of the process is the post your \"Primary Application\". Typically this is done through a service known as AMCAS (American Medical College Application Service). This serves as a type of common application that many medical schools use as their first screen to filter out students. It entails filling out GPA, MCAT scores and extracurricular activities as well as personal information.\n\nAfter AMCAS verifies that the information you turned in is correct, they send out the primary application and if schools like what they see, the schools you applied to will send back a secondary application. The \"Secondary Applications\" are more tailored for specific schools. One school might ask you to write about experiences with diversity because that particular school places a heavy emphasis on diversity, while another school might ask you to write about something else. Secondaries vary from having multiple essays to none. \n\nAfter completing secondaries and turning them into the schools, the schools will evaluate what you have written and decide whether or not to offer you an interview. Typically on the interview day you will sit down with a medical faculty member during part of the day and a medical student for part of the day. Both of them will ask you questions pertaining to you loyalty to medicine, competence and other questions to see if you are suited for the field and for their particular school.\n\nAfter interviews you find out if you are accepted.\n\nYour particular questions: Primary can be turned in as early as June 1st. The due date for secondaries varies from mid-September to January. Specialization occurs after medical school and after residency. Choosing the school is based upon how competitive you are (GPA, MCAT scores, amount of good leadership extra curricular activities). There is no \"best\" undergrad degree, but a degree in any biological science will typically help prepare you for the MCAT and in that way will help you get into medical school. \n\nOn the other hand, some medical schools like to look diverse and enjoy accepting music, theatrical arts or other random majors because it shows they don't only take Biology majors..\n\nHope this helped!"
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22fc0a | what makes a pub different from other bars. | The Irish pub owner's AMA had an interesting comment "all pubs are bars, but not all bars are pubs". Being Canadian I love going to chill bars, and one of these that I go to is an irish free house...a pub...but others are just, bars...what exactly constitutes a pub?
*edit: It seems that historically speaking, there was a difference, but these days the difference is simply atmosphere. In pubs you feel comfortable, almost at home.
*EDIT 2: a couple of different people have asked now...is there a difference between a pub, a tavern and a saloon? or are they different words from different geographies basically meaning the same thing?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22fc0a/eli5_what_makes_a_pub_different_from_other_bars/ | {
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"\"Pub\" is short for \"Public House\". It used to mean a place where anyone could stop in for a pint. Pubs serve food, bars don't. Also, and this is a small detail, Irish Pubs tend to be named after people (McHale's, O'Conner's) where as English Pubs tend to be named a bit more creatively (The Dog and Duck, The King's Goiter, The Stag and Cock).\n\nThat's the main idea, pubs are bars with a family atmosphere. ",
"Pubs contain one or more bars from which the drinks are served from, and usually provide accommodation should you need it (in Australia at least).",
"In Scotland a pub is anywhere that sells alcohol that isn't a restaurant or nightclub. However, the term 'bar' is also used. There are no rules, but 'bar' is generally used to describe a new/shiny/posh 'pub' (with no guarantee of a seat!) usually in towns and cities, not country places. \n\nPubs are usually quieter and more comfortable places to drink, (in cities or villages) but i don't think you would be be corrected for calling a bar a pub, or vice versa. Pubs sometimes have a separate bar and lounge area, traditionally men stand at the bar and drink, and women and couples sit in the lounge and drink - you still find this in some local pubs.\n\nHowever, pub is the most commonly used term to describe any form of meeting mates and going to the pub for a few, regardless of what establishment you are going to. ",
"Englishman here. I don't think there is an official definition.\n\nThe bar is the actual place where the drinks are served. All pubs have at least one bar in them.\n\nYou can put a bar anywhere, for example in a restaurant or cinema. \n\nMost if not all of our pubs have been pubs for a very long time, i.e. they were at one point a proper old Public House and there is still a drinking establishment in that building to this day.\n\nNew drinking establishments which spring up tend to get called bars because they ain't in a building that has previously been a pub.\n\nSo all pubs are bars, but not all bars are pubs is pretty much spot on.\n\n\n",
"Also from that AMA: Pubs are an English tradition. It's not that other cultures do not have something vaguely similar, it's just that they come from a history unique to Britain. In the US, it's essentially just a branding idea. Pubs and bars are, for the most part, interchangeable (YMMV based on individual States). For example: in Indiana, where I currently live, all bars must be able to provide food. Even if they have no intention of offering it to guests. One of my favorite places in Indianapolis (White Rabbit Cabaret) has a stockpile of 5 year old Hot Pockets and boxes of Cheerios in the back room that will never get eaten. This is because the law in Indiana says you cannot sell alcohol exclusively -- you must be able to also serve patrons food.",
"A pub is somewhere you should feel comfortable to spend the whole day and even take children during earlier hours. It should be a cosy place, decorated in a friendly and welcoming manner, if a little naff. There should be games available such as pool, darts and a quiz machine. The better ones will even have dominoes, chess and backgammon sets behind the bar. There ought to be a jukebox around with the entire Led Zeppelin discography or at least get the lads to bring their guitars and fiddles and we'll kick up a tune ourselves.\n\nIf you're there at lunchtime hours expect pies, fish & chips and a half-decent tikka masala to be available, if your in during later hours than you'll have to make do with crisps, pickled onions and Scotch eggs. If you're good mates with the landlord, however, he may be willing to make you a sandwich when you're absolutely tanked at 1.30 am.\n\nIf the pub takes even the least amount of pride in what they do there will be a good choice of real ales such as Hobgoblin and Old Tom served at cellar temperature as these actually taste of something unlike near-frozen mass-produced lagers. The good ol' water-of-life should be in abundance be it Irish, Scotch, Bourbon or otherwise. In short, a pub is the very focal point of civilised society.\n\nA bar, on the other hand, is a truly dreadful place. Tastelessly decked out in chrome, pine and mood-lighting, this hell-hole is full of wankers from the City getting shitfaced on shite like Bud and Kronenburg whilst listening to god-awful repetitive pop music at near deafing volumes.",
"I think of a pub as a place where you can get a table and talk with your friends and drink. A bar, as I see it, is a place that's extremely loud and mainly for meeting new",
"There is little difference today but in 1830 a law passed which allowed anyone who paid for a license to sell beer and cider from their home, making their home a public house. \n\nJust FYI when you say the place you go is a \"free house\" this means it isn't owned by a brewery. If you were to visit the UK in London you might go to a Fuller's pub, in Manchester a Hyde's pub Birmingham a Mitchell and Butler's. But all over the country you'll find Wetherspoons Free Houses which serve beers from various brewerys depending on their current contracts.",
"Pubs tend to be sit-down, bars stand/dancing or full height bar stool tables, in my experience. Maybe some upper floor seating.",
"In the US a pub is a bar that someone decided to call a pub because they went with an Irish/English theme. ",
"Surely a pub has carpet and a bar has a wooden floor? Ok it's simple but at least half the time it works :) ",
"I pub is where you find cool people to talk about random and interesting shit while eating cheap edible food, a bar is where you meet douchebags with t-shirts that have metallic ink and gemstones, and drink over-priced alchohol. That's pretty much all you need to know. ",
"Quick question for my fellow Englishmen.\n\nAre the pubs near you named after the nearest Infantry Regiment? All pubs where I am seem to be named - The Prince/Princess of Wales.",
"A good pub has levels. Small rooms, open areas, multiple bars, upper areas, discreet nooks and crannies. Even modulating the elevation by a single step can make a world of difference in look and feel.",
"From all these responses, I'm getting the feeling that pubs > bars",
"The big giant french fries. Also the malt vinegar.",
"pubs in my home-town generally have an open fire. nothing better than stepping out of the rain to be welcomed by the sound and warmth of roasting hearth and a pint of cider.",
"Pubs - It's Community, you Relax, Chat, Eat, Get Bomb Drunk, play bar games.\n\nBars - You're there for dirty bitches",
"A good rule of thumb is if it has a dedicated dance floor it's a bar, if there's no real dance floor it's a pub. That's not to say people don't dance in pubs.",
"Where I come from:\n\nTavern = Beer + Wine\n\nPub = Beer + Wine + Food\n\nBar = Beer + Wine + Liquor + Food",
"Well historically a pub was a public house (or free-house) which defined it as open to all walks of society, but mainly working class. Upper class had Gentlemen clubs which made them exclusively for titled individuals or simply the wealthy. \n\nToday however a true pub will stand by its \"free-house\" tradition and not enforce conditions on patrons, therefore a true pub is considered welcoming to all (men, women, pets, children etc), and doesn't place emphasis on look\\attire, or charge an entrance fee.",
"Well I own a pub which has \"inn\" in its name but provides no accommodation, we serve very high quality food and yes it's been a pub for 150 years. It's nice inside though as we only refurbished 18 months ago. It's certainly what would be described as a quintessentially British community pub though.",
"For me, you can feel the difference in a pub and a bar.\n\nTo me, a pub is an inviting place. Very warm. Very friendly. Great cheerful atmosphere.\n\nA bar CAN be warm and inviting. but it doesn't have to be. ",
"So far, I'm noticing that the terminology seems more important in Europe, where as in the American Midwest, we seem to call drinking establishments whatever sounds good.",
"Bit late to the thread, however here is [my local pub](_URL_0_) and here is [the bar which I frequent the most often.](_URL_1_) \n\nThe pictures probably don't offer a lot of explanation, however I feel as though a pub is a more friendly, social environment which I would quite happily go to for a meal on a Sunday, whereas bars tend to be for more late night drinking. Also I find bars are generally more Americanised than a good old English pub. Hope this helped!",
"Here's an interesting article on exactly that (not my site or anything, I asked my mates the same question and this came up) \n_URL_0_",
"It is the difference between pornography and art. \n\nYou cannot quite explain it, but you know the difference when you see it.",
"Pub is short for Public House, it's where you would get your food and your drink.\n\n\n\nA Bar is just a bar, it's just for drinks, sometimes some nuts.\n\n\n\nLounges are often times watered down pubs as in they have food, but not usually full meals, just appetizers and what not.",
"Already answered in depth above but the TL;DR I like the most re: Pubs is that a good one should function as a neighborhood living room.\n\nRead a book, have a beer, enjoy a good conversation without having to scram over Pitbull & Lorde.",
"You can go to the pub with your best buds to relax and have a pint. You can go to a pub with the missus for dinner. You can go to the pub at lunch for a pint and a bite.\n\n\"Bar\" at least to me means the part of the establishment that has the counter behind which employees serve drinks. A counter to rest your glass, a brass bar to rest your foot and god willing, a good bartender to rest your worries.\n\nIf you're going for the loud music, dancing, to hit on or get hit on, and not be able to hear yourself think, you're going clubbing. Watch your drink, bring your wallet, leave your credit.\n\nIf you're going for loud music that you can appreciate, you're going to a Jazz club :)",
"Pub vs. Bar - a visual guide.\n\n[Pub](_URL_0_)\n\n[Bar](_URL_1_)",
"In Australia a typical pub will serve food as well as alcoholic beverages. There are lots of tables/seating and usually pool tables and darts in the same general vicinity as the bar and the dining area. Music consists of live bands or soft playing music. Some pubs, depending on the time of day and day of week, have no music. It's more about the social interaction, not getting shitfaced and dancing/acting a fool. Also there's sometimes a sectioned off area or room with pokie machines (slots).",
"A pub is a public house, open to the public. Bars can be private.",
"A pub is somewhere you can go during the day to have lunch, and in the evening for a pint. The setting is casual and sociable; with the exception of occasional live music or a sporting event on a tv, the emphasis is on conversation. There will almost never be music playing over a stereo system. A pub's clientele is frequently defined by location; pubs are very often local establishments (though 'local' can be relative to your neighborhood, your workplace, your college, etc). Pubs are somewhere you spend the entire evening; you grab a table with your friends, send sorties to the bar for orders, and leave when the night is done. Pubs generally serve beer, wine, and various liquors, but cocktails are uncommon (though newer establishments will sometimes have a cocktail menu).\n\nBars are nighttime establishments focused primarily on getting drunk. They can range from casual to high-class; some will have dress codes, and some will have cover charges. There is often music being played on a stereo system in bars, and some will also have live music. Some bars cater to specific clientele, e.g. sports bars, gay bars, dance bars, etc., and/or can wax and wane in popularity as different establishments are considered more or less trendy than others. In cities, bar-hopping is common, and depending on the crowd you're with, on a night out you might visit several bars before going home. Bars tend to have a wider array of drinks on offer, and cocktails are commonly on offer.",
"in the UK a bar is generally a place to get drunk, a pub is a place to sit and chat as well...",
"Irish here. Used to work in a small town pub.\n\nMy take on what makes a pub a pub:\n\nSmall, homely and warm with an open turf fire and a dog in front of it, usually the owners dog or a regulars. \nThe landlord is present most of the time, it isn't managed.\nEvery regular knows your name and you know theirs ..... and what they drink.\nGenerally there will be 3/4 old guys sitting at the bar counter.\nNo TV, usually a small one in the corner on silent, only put on for big sporting events or if someone asks to watch something.\nGuinness, powers and hot whiskeys are the main drinks served, god help you if you make someone's hot half wrong.\nIf a fight breaks out (they are rare), regulars will help you sort it out.\nRegulars choose the music, it is background music only. \nA regular gets a free pint at Christmas.\nYou can leave the bar unattended, the regulars will keep an eye on it.\nIn my experience, English pubs sell food, Irish pubs don't.\nPool and darts are the only pub games really, there will usually be a card night but it will be the old guys playing 21 or bridge on a Tuesday night. You won't be invited to join in, if you do, they will take all your money.\nProper regulars know the edict at closing time and know the lock-in procedure.\n\n",
"Bars in England are reserved for those lads that think they are celebrities when in reality they pave driveways ",
"I think the best description I've heard is that a pub is \"The neighborhood's living room\".",
"Of course the English hijacked a thread about Irish pubs.",
"A pub is where you know everyone, and everyone knows you.",
"I am not any sort of authority, but I'd always heard it told that because in the 19th century, working class housing was abysmal (timeshare beds and the like), and you didn't have a \"home\" to go back to the way you or I might, you would instead spend your after work or free time in the public house. A place where they had food and drink (you wouldn't have your own kitchen) and amenities your building might not have, like a working heating system. Basically, a place for lower class unmarried laborers to do the equivalent of what we do when we kick back with a beer in our living room and order some takeout. \nIf you look at it in the context of providing a home vs. providing just a place to get drunk, I think it makes a lot more sense.",
"Pub's also a good place for the Zombie Apocalypse. \"Take car. Go to Mum's. Kill Phil - \"Sorry.\" - grab Liz, go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all of this to blow over. How's that for a slice of fried gold?\"",
"I know in the US here, they will call a pub just about anything. My girlfriend came from Ireland, and hates the fact that we can't bring our kid to a so called \"pub\" here without getting dirty looks. But being Irish, she just says \"feck it\".",
"[Passport to the Pub](_URL_0_) - a free e-book written from a social science perspective about the unique culture found in British pubs.",
"A little guide to the expected etiquette in UK (and to some extent Australian) pubs:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nA less little guide:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n\n\n",
"Quite simply, \"pub\" is short for \"public house\".\n\nThey are more intended as a general place that people can go to to gather and socialise and offer access for all members of a family (time depending) and all people, offering food, drinks and entertainment.\n\nA bar is somewhere that serves drinks and some form of entertainment be it a sports bar or just music, and it's aimed at specifically adults. It's a more specific and evening thing.",
"Proper Pubs are run by a Pub Landlord...Bars are run by Poncy Managers...And chain Pubs tend to be run by managers fresh from a hospitality course at college..barely old enough to drink but old enough to sell beer. They have their figures and graphs to show if the business is growing and attracting the right demographic; a proper pub Landlord uses his eyes to see if there is people enjoying a pint in his establishment. \nIf you've got a Buxom Barmaid, Good Banter, and a Dart Board then your a Proper Pub!!",
"The word pub is short for a public house; you should feel at home, so it should be cosy with comfortable seating and nooks and crannies so that privacy can be sought. A pub will usually but not always have a bar from which drinks are served. \n\nA bar is simply anywhere that sells drinks from behind a counter or bar. \n",
"The people in it. ",
"Midwestern American here, pub is short for public house, no?\n\nI always felt like a bar with British tones is a pub. Be it an Irish bar or an English bar. I would never feel like a Buffalo Wild Wings could be a pub... Way too big, loud and American. \n\nPub makes me feel like wood benches, coves, nooks like in a traditional Irish pub. Lots of places to post up and socialize. Hard to explain but I feel like I know one when I'm there. \n\nHaving said that, while at work and talking to coworkers about needing to get my drink on, I tend to say 'pub' rather than 'bar' as I feel like a pub is a more polite way of saying 'the place I plan to get shitfaced'. Also, to me pub sounds like a place where other 30 year olds like me go, whereas a bar is where I think college kids hang out. \n\nHow'd i do?",
"A pub is called something traditional like The Dog and Duck or The Red Lion.\n\nA bar is called something twattish like 'Blanc' or 'Label'",
"Food and quizzes. ",
"You go there with friends, it's dark and grimy, and you don't try to get laid.",
"Pubs don't have dubsteb raping your eardrums. ",
"I don't know how this post has been overrun by Brits, their pubs don't hold a candle to Ireland's. \n\nEdit: bollocksed it",
"I'm sure it varies by place, but in my experience (New England), a 'pub' or 'tavern' *must* serve *food* as well as drink. This is actually a law in some places. In Rhode Island, for example, the most common liquor license by far is the BV class, or Beverage & Victualling license -- there called a 'tavern' license. BVs must by law serve *some* kind of food, even it's just chips (crisps) or pickled eggs (surprisingly common); though many are full restaurants as well as full bars, and some are even famous for their food. In my own view, a 'saloon' would serve only booze, but it would have to include hard liquor among them. A 'tap bar' would have no bottled beers, and might have no hard liquor. The most traditional kind of pub was called a 'public(k) house,' and sometimes still is. A 'club' is structured for performances or dances, and a '*night*club' (also a distinct and separate class in Rhode Island) is large, dance-oriented, and has a full bar. Rhode Island also has a class for 'neighbourhood' bars (what hipsters like to call 'dives'), which are smaller than most other bars and have some restrictions, such as limits on hours, capacity, and external occupancy (not over 10%, I believe); the class exists mainly for fraternal organisations and the like, but also covers numerous small bars that only locals go to.\n",
"Bar is to pub as house is to home.",
"The volume of the music.\n\nIf you have to say \"WHAT?!\" you're at a bar. If not, then you're at a pub.\n\nAlso pubs have food. Therefore they are much much better than bars.",
"In Ireland, where I live, bars tend to be more modern, urban, chrome, loud, fancy. Pubs tend to be more rural (although you get urban pubs too), unpretentious, old-fashioned in style, comfortable. You can get cocktails in a bar but never in a pub. You can have a cup of tea or coffee made for you in a pub at night time, but not in a bar.\n\nIn my experience, food isn't a factor at all. Some pubs serve food; others don't. Some bars serve food; others don't.",
"In Calgary, nothing in particular.",
"Aussie checking in here, a Pub is a \"Public House\" there used to be certain laws that meant they couldnt refuse you lodging if you were a certain distance from home (think coach travel days where meals and beds along a roadtrip were essential) \n\nFast forward abit, and then for a while we had streange laws that meant you couldn't buy and consume alcohol at your local pub, so people woyld have to travel a bit to get there drink on (this was around WW2) \n\nNow neither of those lawd remain anymore and havent for a long time, but the legacy does. A Pub, especially a regional one, will have food, occasional lodging, and generally a very different atmosphere(ie more of a social hub where you could bring your family, even though that probably meant leaving them in a lounge while the men hid in the front bar)\n\nThere is a culture and legacy to Pubs, they were the center of social hubs, and it was safe (even a trafition) to take the wife and kids there for Sunday Lunch. (but you wouldnt take the kids to a bar)",
"Going to get buried because late, but this is a pub: _URL_1_ Heritage building, traditional food, ale in a handled glass. \n\nand this is a bar: _URL_0_ Bright lights, tenuous theme, poncy drinks. ",
"**Saloon:** Western U.S. cowboy era. Dusty wooden floors. Prostitutes. Poker tables. Piano player. Whiskey shots. \n \n**Pub:** England Ireland area. Finger food. Liquor barrels. Craft beers. \n \n**Tavern:** Lord of the Rings. Full meals. Stout glasses. Beds.\n \n",
"A pub is a place where you don't want to be found dead or alive before age 25. A bar is where you hate to go after 25.",
"Pubs are for men and women. Bars are for girls and douche bags.\n",
"There is usually a lot more wood in pubs"
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fxlfaz | does cold water reduce the effectiveness of soap? | Been noticing that my shampoo doesn't foam up as much whenever I am taking a cold shower compared to a hot one.
Does cold water have any effect on this? Or am I just trippin? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fxlfaz/eli5_does_cold_water_reduce_the_effectiveness_of/ | {
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"Heat reduces the viscosity (stiffness) or many fluids. Hot water will let the shampoo better flow and get mixed into your hair. It will also loosen up oils in your hair for the shampoo to bond with and foam.\n\nCold water won't loosen up the oils or your shampoo as much, so it won't foam as readily. Generally speaking that is.",
"The foam in soap and toothpaste doesn't have any relation to how well it cleans.\n\n\nAn additive is put in to make it foam, because consumers naturally equate foaming to mean its working"
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9sr574 | drinking water | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9sr574/eli5_drinking_water/ | {
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"The answer is simple. The main reason you feel water moving is because it is. You notice it more if the temp is allot different from your body."
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2lbvn6 | why does my pc installs the same usb device every time i plug it in? | Why does it also re-installs whenever I switch slots? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lbvn6/eli5why_does_my_pc_installs_the_same_usb_device/ | {
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"Does it happen with one particular device?"
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3vcut4 | what happens physically/chemically when a liquid like water is either absorbed by another substance, or rolls off something, but absorbed by something else? | E.g., Glass VS Dirt | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vcut4/eli5_what_happens_physicallychemically_when_a/ | {
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"I'm not sure, but it's probably about dissolving stuff, like dirt, and not being able to dissolve stuff like glass. Maybe more along the lines of if there are minute surface cracks for the water to get into. Glass is more or less a solid and dirt is a bunch of round pieces of worm poop an sand, which allows water into the spaces surrounding the poop.",
"In terms of a surface, like glass, it comes down to wetability. On a smooth surface like glass the water molecules are more attracted to themselves (hydrogen bonding) so they bunch up to form beads/droplets which will run off the surface under the force of gravity.\n\nIf the water is dissolving something (or more accurately, something is dissolving in the water) the water molecules are surrounding the little bits of the substance allowing them to 'disappear' into the liquid.\n\nDirt is not a smooth surface, its full of gaps and fissures. Water molecules can penetrate into the holes and be 'absorbed'. If the dirt was in a test tube and you shook the water/dirt mix up vigorously the dirt breaks up into tiny little bits that the water molecules can surround and dissolve (assuming that your dirt is soluble in water, which it probably isn't, in which case you would have a **mixture** where much of the dirt is still not 'surrounded', rather than a **solution**. \n\nIf your 'dirt' was table salt, the little bits of dirt would be individual constituents of salt, sodium and chloride, rather than salt. When the water molecules surround these individual pieces rather than chunks of it, you have a **solution**."
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4iccxy | is there any way to permanently grow taller after pubescence? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4iccxy/eli5is_there_any_way_to_permanently_grow_taller/ | {
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"Whoever else posted their comment here on this thread I wanted to let you know that you are likely shadow banned since your comment is not visible. ",
"Yes. They screw 8 bolts into a bone, 2 sets of 4. Connect them together and put a bunch of threaded rods together between the two sets.\n\nThen they break the bone between the two sets. \n\nEvery few days they turn a key to spread the break farther apart.\n\nThis process is generally used as corrective surgery for people with birth defects. One limb shorter than another. ",
"Grow? I don't think so. But there is cosmetic surgery available where they cut your femur, put it in a frame a few mm apart and let it re-grow longer, and repeat the process every few months until they've added 7+cm to the patients height. The whole process takes a year or two of having constantly broken and healing legs. They may have found ways to speed it up recently using some sort of implant, but I don't know about that.\n\nI don't think I'd recommend it.",
"When will they ever learn?",
"If you are being realistic. Growth hormone. There was a highly unethical study in Iran done with younger men with still open growth plates who got taller taking GH. It also makes perfect sense GH is literally just the synthetic form of the hormone that your pineal gland excretes. Taller guys just produced more of it growing up"
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4bhfs7 | at which distance is electricity essentially slowed? | Electricity seems rather instant. You turn the switch on, and 50 feet away the light bulb turns on instantly. How far away would we have to place the light bulb to observe a delay between the time we pull the switch and the time the light turns on?(And I mean perceivable to the human eye, not some .001 second delay.) Assume we're using a thick gauge wire with very low resistance. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bhfs7/eli5_at_which_distance_is_electricity_essentially/ | {
"a_id": [
"d193x3c"
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"text": [
"The electromagnetic force, like all forces, travels at the speed of light.\n\nSo to experience a second delay, it would have to be placed a light second away (186282 miles)\n\n"
]
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[]
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|
cbn80t | why does stretching certain muscles feel good yet others remain painful even as i gain flexibility? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cbn80t/eli5_why_does_stretching_certain_muscles_feel/ | {
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"So flexibility is a a little complicated. You have muscles, tendons, and ligaments, and all three have flexibility. Tendons attach muscle to bone, while ligaments attach bone to bone.\n\nIf you try and touch your toes with straight legs, you'll probably feel a tightness behind your knees. This is mostly your 'posterior cruciate ligament' (PCL). Now bend your knee a little bit, and stretch again. This time, you should feel a different kind of tightness, that goes from a little above the back of your knee right up to your butt. This is your hamstring. You are stretching your hamstring both ways, but with straight legs, your limit is probably the limit of your ligaments. \n\n(Note: if you have really really tight hamstrings, you may just feel your hamstrings for both).\n\nWhen you reach a 'limit' while stretching your muscles, you're not actually at a physical limit. Instead, your feeling a stretch reflex. Your muscles will try and stop a stretch long before it becomes dangerous, to protect you. When your muscles feel tight during a stretch, that's partially because they're flexing against the stretch.\n\nYour ligaments can't flex like your muscles do. When you stretch them, you also trigger a relfex to resist the stretch, but this time the tightness is in the ligament, but the flex is in the muscles that close the same joint. This is why it feels different.\n\nMuscle flexibility is also much easier to improve than ligament flexibility. This is because you can re-train your stretch reflex to allow more flexibility."
]
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||
ltiq0 | el15: the european royal families | Where did they come from originally?
Why were the royal families of so many countries related?
Wouldn't a royal family keep getting larger until it's impossible to give each member his or her own little castle?
What happened when the countries of two related royal families went to war against one another? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ltiq0/el15_the_european_royal_families/ | {
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"Why were the royal families of so many countries related?\n\nSimple, royalty marries royalty. When there is nobody to marry in your own country you go looking abroad. In the past there was also a lot of politics involved. ",
"They were individuals and families that sought and achieved power, sustained it through generations and claimed it was God's will.\n\nIt was considered proper and beneficial for royalty to marry other royalty. This let them achieve peace and own more land. Marrying poor people(which was everyone else) was bad. It was better to marry a cousin than a poor person.\n\nIn the modern day, the Saudi royal family is having trouble with this. There are so many princes it is hard to support them all. \n\nRoyal families often did go to war. \n\nFor example, Frederick of Prussia and the Russian Czar were cousins. They called each other by first name, and wrote letters back and forth. \n\nOne of those letters expressed hope that war could be avoided, but even though the two kings didnt want it, their countries went to war anyway.",
"Why were the royal families of so many countries related?\n\nSimple, royalty marries royalty. When there is nobody to marry in your own country you go looking abroad. In the past there was also a lot of politics involved. ",
"They were individuals and families that sought and achieved power, sustained it through generations and claimed it was God's will.\n\nIt was considered proper and beneficial for royalty to marry other royalty. This let them achieve peace and own more land. Marrying poor people(which was everyone else) was bad. It was better to marry a cousin than a poor person.\n\nIn the modern day, the Saudi royal family is having trouble with this. There are so many princes it is hard to support them all. \n\nRoyal families often did go to war. \n\nFor example, Frederick of Prussia and the Russian Czar were cousins. They called each other by first name, and wrote letters back and forth. \n\nOne of those letters expressed hope that war could be avoided, but even though the two kings didnt want it, their countries went to war anyway."
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31gs9r | why modern parking lots seem to be configured in confusing and maze-like fashions through the placement of seemingly random medians? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31gs9r/eli5_why_modern_parking_lots_seem_to_be/ | {
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"It probably didn't look so confusing in the top view. ",
"Might be to keep you moving slower for safety?",
"Many factors at play.\n\nOne concern is drainage. you need to dispose of water, and it can only flow down hill. SO you need gutters (and medians) to intercept, channel and dispose of the water.\n\nYou also need to consider turning movement for large vehicles. If a semi or something has to do a reverse turn through the middle, there will be a set motion it will go through, and placing parks around this may look stupid to a normal driver.\n\nAs well there is earthworks concerns, a median is an excellent place to have some steep fall that would be dangerous on the driving surface.\n\nIf the have to satisfy water treatment criteria a certain surface area of vegetated space may be needed, and necessitate the placement of some otherwise unnecessary areas.\n\nMost probably though, a planner or landscape architect had a bit of a \"creative break\" and gone a bit overboard, resulting in an interesting artistic impression on a plan, but a convoluted mess on the ground."
]
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7th4os | in a deck of cards why is the card called a jack and not a prince? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7th4os/eli5in_a_deck_of_cards_why_is_the_card_called_a/ | {
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"text": [
"Because it represents a knave (or jack), not a prince.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n > As early as the mid-16th century the card was known in England as the knave (meaning a male servant of royalty)."
]
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[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_(playing_card)"
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||
nmxu0 | how phone sim locks work | How do SIM locks on phones work?
Where do the special codes come from that allow them to be unlocked?
How do places like "Joe's Cell Phone Batteries and Perfume" get unlock codes for phones?
Why can phones like the iPhone only be unlocked by hacked software? Is it because AT & T has not provided codes to do it? And how does this go back to my previous question? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nmxu0/eli5_how_phone_sim_locks_work/ | {
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"A carrier, has specific codes on each sim, so that they can identify which is their own sim.\n\nWhen you insert a sim, it sends a signla to tower near by and ask to identify itself ( tower after realying to Cell providers) tells sim, you are on ATT, so when you insert T mobile sim, Tower tells SIM you are Tmobile sim on this device, then instruction comes from tower to tell sim NOT to be work in this device since it is ATT device. \n\nTHe code is nothing but a secret code which is once broadcasted to cell tower & thus opertor tells them the device can use any SIM \n\nThe unlock code is generated via a program/algorithm which produces this random numbers, so Once someone finds out what is algorithm to get that random number, he-she can make a program which will unlock the cell \n",
"A carrier, has specific codes on each sim, so that they can identify which is their own sim.\n\nWhen you insert a sim, it sends a signla to tower near by and ask to identify itself ( tower after realying to Cell providers) tells sim, you are on ATT, so when you insert T mobile sim, Tower tells SIM you are Tmobile sim on this device, then instruction comes from tower to tell sim NOT to be work in this device since it is ATT device. \n\nTHe code is nothing but a secret code which is once broadcasted to cell tower & thus opertor tells them the device can use any SIM \n\nThe unlock code is generated via a program/algorithm which produces this random numbers, so Once someone finds out what is algorithm to get that random number, he-she can make a program which will unlock the cell \n"
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2st7gp | can a woman get pregnant by multiple men and have all of their babies ala triplets/twins/etc? (for example multiple ethnicities) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2st7gp/eli5_can_a_woman_get_pregnant_by_multiple_men_and/ | {
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"Very unlikely but possible. Female must have released 2 separate eggs at the same time, thrn have them both fertilized by sperm from two different males"
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||
3fht4e | what does the foam/bubbles in shampoo do? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fht4e/eli5_what_does_the_foambubbles_in_shampoo_do/ | {
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"Not much actually. Look up Sodium Laureth Sulphate. Nearly all soaps have some form of this chemical. It is sometimes listed by different names. It slightly increases the products ability to dissolve oils, but its main purpose is a \"foaming agent\". It's added simply because people expect soap to make foam and bubbles. Without foam and bubbles, no one thinks the soap is working so they won't buy it.\n\nFor a long time certain groups have pushed to have it banned, claiming it served no purpose, and was possibly harmful. But extensive testing has never shown that it is harmful.\n\nI have used shampoo which did not have a foaming agent. They are very hard to find, over priced specialty items. They are also surprisingly hard to use. You can not tell how much product is in your hair or if you have worked it in well. But they cleaned well enough.\n\nFor me, the issue was solved by male pattern baldness. Now I use shaving cream instead, which, by the way, also contains sodium luareth sulfate."
]
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||
2j3h70 | unless you're a genius mathematician, whats the point of being a mathematician? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j3h70/eli5_unless_youre_a_genius_mathematician_whats/ | {
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"Most people that have a degree in Math enter graduate school. It can be applied to an type of engineering or finance. Or they could continue in academia. ",
"This question has been answered many times. Math is important, learn it as best you can."
]
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9plnls | why is amy schumer hated by everyone? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9plnls/eli5_why_is_amy_schumer_hated_by_everyone/ | {
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"Not everyone thinks she is funny. Perhaps that's her choice of comic topics, or her coarse language, or maybe she's not funny.",
"There are several reasons, and varuous \"camps\" of dislike.\n\nPeople of color tend to dislike her because she benefits from white privilege in a lot of ways. She isn't particularly talented, but she made a career anyway, and makes a lot of money, in comparison to older, more established, more talented comedians of color, who struggle. Further, she has made quite a few racist jokes, which is obviously bad.\n\nNow to the other camp. They'll rail against this every day, but their words are quite clear. They do dislike her because they think she's ugly. I don't think she's especially pretty, but in this camp, most of the insults are about her looks and about how they don't find her fuckable. Her comedy isn't just not funny, it's not funny in comparison to her looks. If she were attractive, it wouldn't matter how unfunny she is, but she isn't, so it does matter that they won't laugh at her jokes. And considering most of her jokes are sexual in nature, she isn't \"allowed\" to be crass to this camp, because she's not fuckable.\n\nAnd then there are just people who don't find her funny. ",
"She's clearly not hated by everyone, as she has a reasonable career in popular entertainment.\n\nThat being said, I suspect that she's disliked by some because her prominence in media accounts tends to supersede her talent. She's a halfway decent standup comedian, but hasn't managed to translate that into any truly exceptional performances.",
"She isn't funny.\n\nThere's really no ELI5 for this. Many people think of her as the female Carlos Mencia.",
"Both Amy Schumer and I have something in common.\n\nNeither of us are funny.\n\nI don't have a senator in my family to help propel me to stardom, however.",
"I don't hate Amy Schumer. I don't feel anything for her anymore.\n\nWhen her show Inside Amy Schumer came out, I could have fallen in love with her. She was self deprecating, the bits were hilarious, and she seemed like an awesome person in the street interview bits.\n\nOne she blew up in popularity, I started realizing her show writers had more to do with the funny than she did. Her self deprecating jokes turned out to be more a persona than a point of view.\n\nI've tried watching her specials and they do nothing for me. I thought Trainwreck was boring (outside of Cena and Co) and I've just lost interest in her.\n\nShe's not my cup of tea. I don't begrudge anyone who enjoys her though. "
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1ija6n | how electrical impulses work between neurons and can they jump the dendrites or does it all work through synapses only? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ija6n/eli5_how_electrical_impulses_work_between_neurons/ | {
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"Think about neuron-to-neuron communication as going like this:\n\nElectrical - > chemical - > electrical - > chemical ...and so on. Of course, at such a tiny scale, it gets real obvious that electrical *is* chemical.\n\nI'm not sure what you mean by \"jump the dendrite,\" but I can give you a general ELI5 account like this:\n\nWhen a neuron is triggered to fire (there's no one rule for this--this is complicated, and it depends on what that neuron's job is, and what kind of mood it's in), certain gates open and close along its long trunk, called an axon, creating an electrical charge difference that travels down that trunk. \n\nWhen it gets to the axon terminals at the end, that spark triggers little bags of signaling stuff to pop out of the end into a tiny space--the synapse--between them and the next neuron's dendrite. \n\nWhen those bits of stuff lock onto certain places on the next neuron's dendrite, they can change the way it behaves by making it open or close gates in itself--that makes it more likely or less likely for that next neuron to build up enough charge to fire, and repeat this process.\n\nAlmost right away, right as this stuff has sent the message, it's scooped back up and/or broken down, so it doesn't *keep* sending that message over and over.",
"Yes. Please explain THIS like I'm five. I'm going to need A LOT of references to juice, crackers, and children's television."
]
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7zr4s6 | how does water pressure work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7zr4s6/eli5_how_does_water_pressure_work/ | {
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"If you're washing people away by flooding, like water washing through streets or something, it's all going to be at atmospheric pressure anyway. You would need to worry more about volume. A given volume can be driven through a given size hole at a given pressure, or a smaller hole at a higher pressure.",
"In fluid mechanics it's called the hydrostatic equation, it describes the pressure in a fluid at a depth when the water is still, like in a reservoir. Pressure = density*gravity*depth. Since only the depth changes in equation for a given system you would want your reservoir to be a high as possible. \n\nThis is way water towers are generally one of the taller structures in a town so it can provide emergency water pressure. "
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10su8s | the word "jihad". | Why are there so many different definitions of the word? Why do some people consider it to mean crusade and others say it's just a Muslim struggle to keep faith? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10su8s/eli5_the_word_jihad/ | {
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"It's a really old word, and the longer a word is around the more meanings it picks up. The reason for this, and part of the problem with things like \"Jihad\" is that a lot of people aren't using the religious texts for guidance, but to justify things they already decided, and when someone asks them about it, they say, \"No, this is what it really means!\"\n\n(This line of reasoning applies to pretty much anything that exists as a law at one level or another.)",
"Jihad is the last of the seven pillars of Islam. To answer your question simply, it's both fighting a war to protect the religion and fighting off Shaitan (Satan) in one's own struggle to remain true to the religion.\n\nThe first part was really only applicable a long long time ago in history when enemies of Islam (people who were Muslims and deliberately disobeyed tenets of the religion and teachings of Prophet Mohammad) were out to kill the Prophet and his family and followers. They had to fight then, because of issues like land and kingdoms and religious rule of different lands, and, you know, the fact that the Prophet and his family's lives were at risk.\n\nThese days, the religion itself and its leaders aren't in mortal danger, and we no longer have kingdom/land issues (I'm not going to get into Israel/Palestine here--that's an entirely different issue) that require war. So they don't fight wars for the purpose of jihad anymore. In modern times, jihad is really only practiced in that second way: an inner struggle to stay true to the religion and to fight off Shaitan.\n\nJust for clarification, jihad is not and has never been a crusade. It's basically patriotism, but for your religion. You fight in wars because your religion/leaders are under attack (actual attack, mind, not some offensive badly-dubbed video insult), to protect it/them, to defend. Not to needlessly mass murder people in the name of God/religion."
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6yexus | how does meditation physically alter the brain's structure? | There are several scienctists that claim meditation physically alter the brain's structure.
Meditation is about focusing on the breath and letting thoughts come and og - not about blocking them out. So why do this activity - sitting down and focusing on the breath - alter the brain?
They say we get more grey matter. What is the purpose of this grey matter? Are there other activites that produce more grey matter? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6yexus/eli5_how_does_meditation_physically_alter_the/ | {
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"Imagine you're a guitarist. When you start playing, your fingers don't do what you want them to, they're \"slow\" and \"heavy\". After a while, they get lighter and more agile. Same goes with chords. Some chords start off by seeming like an impossible positioning of fingers. After a while, they're also really simple and immediate to do, you barely have to \"think\" to do it. What is happening is that you're developing muscle memory, both in your fingers and in your brain. It strengthens the connections between neurons and muscles. \n\nThat's what meditation does; meditation trains your brain do to certain thinks: namely, control your focus or your lack of focus. In long term, your brain becomes better and better at taking control of your focus during long periods of time, which results in being able to do so with less effort. The brain is a muscle, and muscles can be trained -- and in the case for the focus, meditation is the training. ",
"This is one of those things that's true but completely overblown.\n\nLook, *everything* physically changes the brain's structure. Reading this very sentence has altered your brain's structure. That's how our brain works. If our brain couldn't change, we'd never *experience* anything, because synaptic connections is how the brain does stuff. \n\nYour brain also creates new brain cells *every single day of your life*. \n\nOur brain is not static. It's constantly changing. \n\nNow, meditation is still a very beneficial practice. It helps you focus, which is a very, very useful skill. But it ain't magic! ",
" > There are several scientists that claim meditation physically alter the brain's structure.\n\nThat is not just a claim, it has been proved with visual evidence using magnetic resonance (MR) images.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_",
"Ever meditated? It will actually burn you out like hard math problems which indicates to me atleast that your brain is being trained in some way or another. So it doesnt really surprise me",
"Put your finger on your forehead. Right behind there is the part of your brain that tells the rest of your brain what thoughts are important and which ones aren't. If one part of your brain is going \"I want cake!\" and another part's going \"I want to lose weight!\" this part of your brain sorts through those thoughts and decides which takes priority. The more tired you are, the more this part of your brain struggles to work, and the more likely you are to do what the more impulsive parts of your brain want to do.\n\nWhen you meditate, you \"work out\" this part of your brain, making it bigger and denser. This makes it better at its job and improves what we call \"willpower.\"",
"Jordan Peterson says long term meditation has been shown to grow the hippocampus and shrink the amygdala.",
"It shrinks your Amygdala, which pumps out cortisol, which is a fight, flight, or freeze chemical, and if it's overactive will make you anxious.\n\nIt grows your prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for planning complex cognitive behavior. \n\n"
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2p2tyy | why is plastic surgery for hands so ineffectve? we see many ageing celebrities with young-looking faces, but their hands always give away their true age. there's surely a market for it, so what's holding it back? | Probably the best example of this phenomenon is [Madonna](_URL_0_), whose face is as tight as a 20 year-old, but whose hands reveal her to be in her mid-50s. She definitely has the money and motivation to make her hands look younger, so there must be a technical reason why it can't be done. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p2tyy/eli5_why_is_plastic_surgery_for_hands_so/ | {
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"There are procedures to make hands look more youthful. Chemical and laser or light procedures to remove brown spots. Fat injection or filler injection to restore volume. As for why Madonna possibly does or does not do those things, well, the decision is hers. ",
"You absolutely can use fillers (like Juvederm and Radiesse) in hands and restore a more youthful appearance, so I wonder why she doesn't. ",
"I'm guessing because gloves are so much less expensive\n",
"Another give away for a persons true age that plastic surgery does not seem to help is neck. A lot of celebrities have had their faces done, but they have these necks with lots of droopy skin (chicken necks). They hide it by wearing scarves.",
"You ever notice how people with a lot of work done on their faces can't be very expressive because their faces don't move as much? Now imagine the mobility in your hands is that limited. People are willing to sacrifice some ability to move their faces (which everyone will see and notice) more than dexterity in their hands.",
"Because there are no muscles in your hand, just tendons. You can't inject tendons with botox. Botox permanently relaxes muscles therefore removing wrinkles.",
"Toebesity is a much greater issue. I can't even wear sandals.",
"In addition to what is said here, plastic surgery is an investment for lots of celebrities, to get more work. \n\nThis may not be relevant for Madonna, but hands are rarely seen on camera, and even if there's a problem a director will use a body double to get the shot (or just shoot the weird hands/feet as they are and hope nobody notices)."
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11i02y | the dangers of looking at someone welding/soldering stuff | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11i02y/eli5_the_dangers_of_looking_at_someone/ | {
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"Welding often emits ultraviolet radiation, which can harm your eyes- the same reason you shouldn't stare at the sun. I don't know about soldering though- as far as I know there's no reason why you can't look at a soldering iron at work."
]
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7iu9h3 | human ancestries.. have males always been generally the more dominate sex? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7iu9h3/eli5_human_ancestries_have_males_always_been/ | {
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"Human males have historically been the more dominate sex. In humans, the male is large and physically stronger which makes them better at hunting, gathering, and defending the tribe. Added on to this is the long gestation period that makes females less physically capable for periods of time.\n\nThe result of this is males were better at the necessities for day-to-day survival and this translated over into the social constructs of society.\n\nWe are now past those primitive needs, but as males have been the dominate sex for all of recorded history (until very recently), there is a lot of baggage involved now that the sexes are both equally capable of conducting the functions of day to day life. ",
"Men are expendable (one male can fertilize many women) and getting the valuable animal protein requires a gamble and time to hunt. Women simply don't have time to hunt with a pregnancy 9 months and several years of nuturing a very dependant child. Each male/female roles were/are equally valuable with sure bet of gathering with high risk high reward of hunting. Hunting requires a certain \"brutality\" and physical/mental strength that naturally creates a dominant person...Not to mention, high stress and lack of food, like hunting expeditions, tend to make women temporarily infertile.",
"Human male dominance in many societies isn't a trait that started with Homo. sapiens, but a trait that we share with the vast majority of catarrhines. \n\nCatarrhines are basically any monkey or ape species you can think of that don't live in the Americas. In almost all of them except the baboons, societies are male dominated.\n\nThis makes sense because when you think about what it takes to successfully produce offspring, females have it a lot harder than males. Females have to gestate the fetus in their womb and then have a lactational period where they feed the baby breast milk. This is a very, very labor and energy intensive process.\n\nMales on the other hand, literally have to just ejaculate. So comparatively, female primates have to put in a lot more energy than male primates, and, more importantly, male primates can **always** produce new offspring, while females can only produce offspring during certain windows (When they're not gestating or in lactation).\n\nSo whenever there is a newly estrous female, a *bunch* of males compete over her, in a way that never happens the other way around. You never see females competing for males in many catarrhini species. Since multiple males are competing for females, this selects for bigger, stronger males, which causes sexual dimorphism in many primate species. And since multiple big males are competing for a few smaller females, this unsurprisingly leads to male dominance.\n\nHumans are just a byproduct of this whole system, but we developed certain unique things (pair bonding, for instance) that differentiate us from other great apes. Male dominance continued for quite some time though, but its starting to disappear culturally in many communities. ",
"First, we'll need to specify what is meant by *dominant.\n\nLet's talk about sexual dimorphism first of all. Sexual dimorphism is an apparent physical difference between sexes in a given species. For example, male lions have manes and lionesses do not. Male narwhals grow tusks, females do not. Peacocks are brilliantly coloured and have a large fan tail, peahens are brown and have a short tail. Good? Good.\n\nMale humans could be defined as \"physically dominant\" (ie, larger, heavier, stronger) in the sense that the average adult male can physically overpower the average adult female. In terms of sexual dimorphism, male humans have broader shoulders, thicker brow and jaw bones, more muscle mass, and body hair than females - to name a few main things. Anthropologists believe that before the agricultural revolution about 10,000 years ago, most human societies lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Men were mainly the hunters and defenders and their physical strength lended itself to this role. \n\nNow, physical strength is one thing, but dominance and strength aren't the same thing. When we look at our closest relaive, the bonobo chimpanzee, the males are stronger but bonobo society is matriarchal. In gorillas, the males are stronger and gorilla society is patriarchal. So dominance is more about how the individuals make up the society and less about strength. \n\nA few more examples:\n\n-Male elephants are stronger than females but elephants are strictly matriarchal\n-Male orcas are much larger than the females but orca society is also strictly matriarchal \n-Male elephant seals are 3 times the size of females and the males govern the beach colonies during mating season\n-In birds of prey, the females are most often larger and stronger than the male and they dominate the males\n-Male wolves are usually slightly larger than the females but the pack is governed by a dominant pair\n\nSo differences in size and strength exist all throughout nature, but to say \"stronger equals dominant\" as a general rule is wrong.\n\nBack to humans. Prior to the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago, many human societies were matriarchal. All over the world many societies were led by respected elder female members of the tribe. The Inuit, Apache, Navajo, and Iriquois are a few good examples from North America. These cultures existed for thousands if not tens of thousands of years. Many societies were also egalitarian, and decisions for the tribe was made by a council of mixed elders.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSo when did this change? With the advent of wealth accumulation. As us humans started keeping more \"stuff,\" we were also building farms and houses and cities. We developed currency. All this land and wealth needed to be physically protected to ensure the survival of that particular society. Men, being physically stronger and suited to protect resources and attack to acquire resources, became the dominant sex in most wealth accumulating societies. This is almost always true. While women sometimes were able to attain a high status ( female kings in ancient Egypt, a lady emperor in feudal China), at the time they still were not regarded as equal to their male counterparts and most of these women got shut down at some point. The further humans have developed, the deeper these power structures have become entrenched. \n\nIt is only in the last century that things have started to change. While developed nations (\"first world\" countries) have experienced a higher degree of movement towards gender equality, developing nations (\"second/ third world\" countries) are still struggling."
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75plpv | what does the silica packets in boxes of shoes do and why? | When anyone buys shoes, sometimes it comes with silica packets in them. Why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/75plpv/eli5_what_does_the_silica_packets_in_boxes_of/ | {
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"Silica is highly hygroscopic, meaning that it absorbs water from the atmosphere. It is present in shoe boxes (and in certain dry foods, and other items) in order to ensure the enclosed environment remains as dry as possible, so that the product does not degrade, mould or swell.",
"Its a desiccant. It absorbs water from the air, so that even in humid environments the shoes stay dry.\n\nYou will find those packets in a lot of packaging for things that get damaged when wet.",
"Silica packets absorb ambient moisture in the air. When you figure these shoes are made in places like Vietnam, Malaysia, and other southeast Asia nations with muggy weather before they're shipped across the Pacific and distributed to wherever, it's a good measure to reduce the possibility of mildew getting into the shoes.",
"The silica gel absorbs moisture from the air. Keeping the air dry helps to prevent mildew and friends from setting in while the shoes are in shipping and storage. That way, when you open the box, you get the nice 'new shoes smell' instead of the '3 month old damp rag' smell."
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doaz4r | why are the people planting lots of trees not worried about the impact on the nutrients in the soil? | I don't know much about ecology on that level as far as the soil balances but won't planting that many new large things that fast effect the soil for a while? Are there plans in place to feed the extra needed nutrients to the soil? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/doaz4r/eli5_why_are_the_people_planting_lots_of_trees/ | {
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"Trees bring plants that add nitrogen to the soil, plants die and decay as do all the animals that feed on the plants and live in them. It becomes a cycle that also gets nutrients from the outside.",
"While you do have the semi correct idea, it doesnt apply to the million trees. The idea is to plant trees where trees used to be. Deforrested areas. Also, trees in a functioning ecology will replenish the soil.",
"As others have touched on, a forest is far more than just trees. Once trees are planted there, the land will stop being used for other purposes, and the natural life cycles of plants and animals that move into the area will replenish the soil.",
"There are forest that have existed for millions of years so is is quite clear that you can have sustained growth for very long time without human interaction. The problem when you grops crops is primary that we remove what is grown and use it somewhere else so stuff that is the plants do not return to the ground.\n\nThe plans of plating 20 million trees is a minuscule compared total number of tress that is around 3 trillion in the world. It is also a small program compare to the [350 million trees in a day](_URL_0_) in Ethiopia this year.\n\nForestry companies also plant many times that amount each year, just in Sweden is is around 400 million trees is planted per year. But it is not exactly the same because they cut down the old trees a few years before that.\n\nThat said the program can have a huge effect especially if you plant threes in urban environment or where they stop soil erosion. What trees and where you plant them can be a lot more relevant then the number of trees.\n\n \nBut you have to remember that it 20 million trees is not a lot and programs of global reforestation would require billion of trees. The best way is not just to plant trees but stop the cutting down of forest for framing primary in tropical part of the world.",
"A potential source of confusion that hasn't been touched on yet is that trees are not primarily made out of soil. They derive only trace materials from the ground but are instead composed almost entirely of materials obtained from water and the air.\n\nThis means that new trees planted somewhere will be able to grow without huge impacts on the soil.",
"Most of what you see in a tree is cellulose, trees make that from water and air (and sunlight). I'll ignore the nitrogen cycle for now, just know that some bacteria, plants and even symbiotic fungi living in the soil around the tree can \"fix\" nitrogen for you from the air into compounds you (as a tree) can use. Many species build up a whole ecosystem of fungi living out of sight that that effectively trades sugars that the tree produces in the leaves for various fertiliser services.\n\nThey do need trace minerals from the soil, but mostly just trace minerals. There are several ways these minerals can get into the soil in the first place.\n\n* Decomposing plants - old plants die and leave their minerals behind - both from the previous tree that lived in your spot, and blown in from other areas\n* Animal Waste & Dying animals. Those animals coming along to your forest to eat your fruit and leaves will defecate and die, spreading minerals around.\n* Symbiotic organisms such as Fungi and Lichen can break down minerals in the soil (clay and even rocks) releasing the minerals in them. This is a VERY slow process, but in a forest this is not a problem.",
"To add to other comments, plants and trees protect the soil from sun, wind, and rain impacts which otherwise would lead to erosion. The plants allow the soil to retain moisture, and allows fungus to colonize. Fungus will dissolve rock with acid, these minerals are then used to by the fungus to exchange with a trees via its roots for sugar. The tree then uses the minerals to grow biomass. Leaves from the tree are made of these minerals, and eventually die, decompose and become fertile topsoil."
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cqgxzm | how can you have two electrical switches that perform the same role independent of the other switch? | In many houses you have, for example, a corridor with two light switches at either end. When you turn either switch on/off then the light turns on. Similarly, either will turn the light off, independent of the other switch's position. This does not seem to follow either series or parallel circuit logic, so how can this be? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cqgxzm/eli5_how_can_you_have_two_electrical_switches/ | {
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"I have a corridor in my house which works as one might think it would. Only lights up if both switches are “on” which is hella annoying",
"It's called a three-way switch. The two light switches are wired up to each other, and also to the light. There's an extra piece of wire connecting the two switches to each other.\n\nWhen both switches are on, the light goes on. When both switches are off, the light goes on. If one switch is off and the other switch is on, the light turns off.\n\nThat way you can control the light from either side. It doesn't matter if an individual switch is on or off - they just need to be in the same state as the other switch.",
"It's called a three-way switch, and works because the switches are very much *not* independent. Here's how it works:\n\nOn one switch, you have an \"input\", and two \"outputs\", A and B. The switch position routes the (power) input to either A or B.\n\nThe second switch has two inputs, A and B, that both come from the first switch, and one output. This switch's position controls which of the two inputs goes to the output (which then feeds power to the light).\n\n[In the jargon, it's two SPDT switches with their common terminals connected to line and load, and the switched terminals connected by \"traveler\" wires.]\n\nThe result is that no matter what state the switches are in, switching one of them will toggle the state of the entire circuit."
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30nc22 | how does an induction stove boil water so quickly and not burn your hand? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30nc22/eli5_how_does_an_induction_stove_boil_water_so/ | {
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"Because magnetic fields.\n\nInduction stoves require special pots — the pots have been \"tuned\" to respond to the alternating magnetic field put out by the stovetop, and it is the pot itself that heats up. Your hand — and the jewelry you wear on it — are not able to have a current *induced* in them that would be resisted and then create heat.",
"ELI5: A piece of magnetic metal is made up of a million small pieces of metal. Each tiny piece of metal is a magnet pressed tightly up against each of the magnets next to it. Let's talk about that one magnet. \n\nWhen you run a current next to it, our one magnet \"flips\" over. By doing that, it rubs against all of the magnets next to it. By rubbing, it generates heat, similar to if you rub your hands together to stay warm. \n\nThe stove will force each of the million magnets to flip up and down, each time creating a little bit of heat multiplied by a million! This makes for a million hot magnets or one hot pan!\n\nThe stove, on the other hand, contains no such magnets, and so it doesn't get hot. \n"
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2eensh | ; why do cable companies block out certain programs like sporting events even though i pay for the service? | I couldn't watch the little league World Series because it was blacked out in my area. Thank you DTV | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2eensh/eli5_why_do_cable_companies_block_out_certain/ | {
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"The local channels are airing it and don't want their viewers stolen by the cable/satellite provider. So the MLB (or other org) forces the cable/sat providers to block it out.\n\ntl;dr: follow the money."
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33byhy | how do dogs know the difference between the road and the sidewalk? | Do they just see it, or can they smell it, or they just not know? I don't know, but I'd like to know | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33byhy/eli5_how_do_dogs_know_the_difference_between_the/ | {
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"Mostly in the same way you know the difference. Dogs can see the different shape/size, different texture, different markings, cars drive only on roads, people walk on sidewalks, they probably do smell different, etc. Each dog may figure it out through a different combination of these clues, or not figure it out at all, but a smart dog will use all these clues to tell the difference."
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2bj2x4 | why and how do some users moderate 300+ subreddits? obviously they can't do it all, so why are they a mod? | Please don't link usernames and bash them. Unless you need to mention the user to answer the question, leave it out please. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bj2x4/eli5_why_and_how_do_some_users_moderate_300/ | {
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"Many who mod that much founded most of those subreddits. They often put other mods in place to do the job and they just are the top of the chain in case they want to change the community in some way, or the mods go overboard and they have to remove them.\n\nOn reddit subreddits are first come first serve, but there isn't a limit to the number of mods.\n\nI'm a mod of ELI5, probably 1/3 of our mods aren't very active (including the top one, bossgalaga) but because he made the community he doesn't want to step down (and no one can make him, and none of the mods want him to). But he added other mods who help out, and those mods added other mods.\n\nThankfully if you don't like a subreddit you can make your own, and YOU get to be the top mod."
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3tn75m | why do people feel afraid or like they're being watched when they're alone? | I'm taking about scientific or psychological reasons (sorry no ghosts or angles please). If you know you're alone and secure with no outside danger present why do you sometimes feel a quick spike in fear or hesitation to walk up the stairs into the dark hallway? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tn75m/eli5why_do_people_feel_afraid_or_like_theyre/ | {
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"the fear of the unknown. you really don't know for sure what's up those stairs and that makes us feel uncomfortable",
"I can't say for sure, but I feel like it's evolutionary, and something buried in us from our ancestors as a defense mechanism. Think about how nervous and on edge animals at a watering hole are in an Attenborough special. Furthermore, since we are social, we are probably used to having other people around as an alert system. I am sure our distant relatives had to keep on guard in the past when danger was everywhere, and a lot of human behavior can probably be tired to those kinds of hold overs. I could very well be wrong though, but that seems to make sense."
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4jixi3 | why is that american music/albums are sold in foreign countries but foreign music/albums aren't sold in america? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jixi3/eli5why_is_that_american_musicalbums_are_sold_in/ | {
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"Lots of foreign bands sell music in America. Look up your favorite bands and see where they come from. For example, Justin Bieber is Canadian. The Beatles were British. They sign music deals with American companies so they can utilize their massive resources and easily sell their music here. I think you've vastly underestimated how much foreign music is sold in America.\n\nAs for why Americans don't import more exotic music, that's primarily because it's not in English. Americans stereotypically can't be bothered to learn another language, meanwhile people in other countries tend to learn English, since it's pretty much everywhere due to English colonization.",
"Foreign music is sold in America.\n\nLorde is a New Zealander, One Direction is British, Bjork is Icelandic, Die Antwoord is South African, etc.\n\nUS pop just tends to penetrate better globally because the US produces a HUGE amount of media. US music and movies and TV are much bigger business than in smaller countries and thus have much bigger budgets.",
"They are. However, the reason that they aren't in the CD aisles in Target/Walmart is simple, money. A very minuscule amount of Americans would buy that music. Many people in foreign countries listen to English music, even if they don't understand it. \n \nEven though K/J Pop is decently popular in America, it's still a very small percentage."
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1t799y | why are milk advertisements for milk in general rather than a specific brand? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1t799y/eli5_why_are_milk_advertisements_for_milk_in/ | {
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"In 1993, Californian dairies agreed to put three cents from every gallon sold towards an overall marketing campaign to promote milk. Since they are all contributing, the ads don't favor one brand over another.",
"Beef farmers will all pitch in for a general beef campaign. They don't know which brand they'll specifically sell to, so they do an overall campaign. People buy more beef from companies, so companies buy more beef from farmers.\n\nSame thing with milk",
"Because advertising certain product's brands don't add to the brand's sales as much as other products.\n\nFor example, Coke can advertise because it's got a unique taste, it's able to be differentiated from Pepsi or Fanta or Mister Pib. Now, Milk, on the other hand, is always milk. Obviously, goat's milk, or any other kind of milk are different from cow milk, but as a product, cow's milk is indistinguishable from brand to brand if you take it out of the packaging. From brand to brand you always get what is basically the same product. Sure, some people have brand loyalty, but rationally, it's more effective to buy the cheapest Milk on sale than the one advertising. The one advertising, as well, is paying large sums that are driving up prices. So, that company is double dipping into it's own problems.\n\nAlso, sometimes with \"healthy\" products like Milk or vegetables, the Government may subsidize advertisements, but it cannot be seen as favouring one brand over another, so they use generic ads instead of brand-specific ads.",
"If you pay close attention, those commercials usually say they're by the \"something or other dairy board\" or the \"dairy farmers of such and such\". These are groups of companies that make, process, or distribute milk, who've all agreed to come together and pitch a small amount of money each, towards advertising milk in general. \n\nThe idea is that no single farmer could afford to produce a TV ad, so they collaborate with other farmers, form some kind of union to produce advertisements which will benefit everyone involved.",
"There's actually some interesting economics behind this:\nSince milk is a rather homogeneous good (that is, milk brands don't really taste all that different) the decision to advertise for milk follows the structure of a classic prisoners dilemma. If one company decides to advertise, none of the other milk companies will, and the word will get out about how milk in general is great, but it's unlikely to make anyone prefer that specific brand of milk. So the company that advertises is not really getting any benefit.\nAt the same time, everyone not advertising for milk is not a solution, either. So milk companies all band together and advertise their milk as a whole product--splitting both the costs and the increased consumption.\nThe same thing can be seen in the recent ads for \"Cotton\".",
"Have you watched the commercials? They say \"brought you by the dairy council\""
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3184b5 | why do a lot of businesses start their day at 8am? | Why do most businesses and offices start their day at 8am? Why not 7? or 10? When was it decided that the world will start at 8am?
Bonus Question: Why is the 8 hr day standard? 8-5? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3184b5/eli5_why_do_a_lot_of_businesses_start_their_day/ | {
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"\n'In larger cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles the problem comes from traffic and parking. By coming in earlier the traffic is thinned somewhat. Some states give companies a tax break for helping out with traffic congestion.\n\nTime differences across the nation can be another factor.\n\nIf you have children it's nice to get home earlier to check on them.\n\nDaylight savings time gets people out of bed earlier also. People like to get home when there is still light out and do things with the family.\n\nCompanies found out if they could keep their employees happier without having to put out more money they got better products and production levels would go up.\n\nIt's a myriad of factors.'",
"Bonus Question Answer: In the old days, workers had the benefit of having lunch in the middle of their shift. This lunch hour continued to the present day. Therefore, in order to make up for the extra lunch hour, the hours are 8-5 instead of 9-5.",
"It depends on the type of business. 8 AM is pretty standard for an office setting while 5-6AM is standard for fast food since they have to serve people before they get to work.\n\nSo why 8AM for most office settings?\n\n1. They can get their breakfast and coffee or whatever they consume.\n2. A reasonable time that everyone could arrive at after doing what they have to do for their personal lives.\n3. Based on traffic like reason 2. But for more severe cases like DC or NYC, there's plenty of offices that starts at 9 AM. My office is flexible to allow you to choose anytime from 6:30 to 9AM.\n4. Depending on location, the mode of transport and its operation hours.\n5. Depending on type of work, offices that deal with international stuff has to compromise on the work hours to have live communication. Most office work are not urgent so they just go with what's most reasonable for the employees(unless you have a crappy boss)\n6. Generally work hours have to align to other organizations or people you have to deal with on a daily basis, so work hours will be similar to the ones that matters most.\n\nTL;DR It is based on a reasonable time for everyone, the purpose of the work, and traffic pattern.",
"Why 8 hours? \nPeople used to work much longer hours and the 8 hour day didn't start to become a talked about issue until the time when slavery was being abolished. White Americans didn't want to work like slaves, so eventually the 8 hour day became law and common place shortly after World War I. In 1912, a social scientist, Goldberg, wrote a book called Fatigue and Efficiency. By World War I, this book prompted the manufacturing sector to start measuring worker's efficiency and after lots of data analyzing, they proved it was counterproductive to have workers work longer than 8 hours a day. \n\nWhy 9 to 5? Why 5 day work week? \nWork hours used to be sunrise to sunset on a farm, every day, as we were mostly farmers when US was settled, and electricity hadn't been invented so we worked only in daylight. This changed when some of us moved out of farming and then realized we needed time to eat and commute to work. In the 1920's, people wanted time off on weekends to practice their religion, Sunday for Christians and Saturdays for Jewish. It took some companies many years to set up the five day week, but Henry Ford was the first, many thought he was foolish. Eventually everyone adopted the forty hour work week, especially once consumerism became popular, people needed time to shop instead of getting everything from the farm or ordering from the Sears catalogue. \n\nWhat is interesting today, especially in tech firms, is one can choose when their work day starts. I have friends who start at 10am and they find it fits with their rhythm well. I know one other that works remotely and loves working until 3am. The challenge today with changing work hours is ensuring people are around to collaborate, or talk to other businesses. Most progressive companies now have a rule that everyone must be reachable, preferably in the office from the core hours of 10 to 3, and leave the defining of 40 hours to the worker. The other challenge is the hours of the school system, most like to have dinner with their kids, or see them off to school, so it presents a challenge in changing the well established work week. Kids' schedules are likely the reason why people like to start at 8am so they are home for dinner time and some time before their kids go to bed. \n\nThere are some countries talking about shorter days, shorter work weeks. France, for example, went to a 35 hour work week in 2000 in hopes to reduce unemployment and have a more balanced work/home life. This was also experimented with during the Great Depression because so many were unemployed, better to have everyone getting some money and worth than not. I think as we get more technology advanced and socially aware, the term 9 to 5 will be history and we'll still work hard, just with more flexibility and efficiency. \n",
"TIL 8 am is a normal start time in a lot of places. In NYC most non banking jobs are 9:30-6 or 9-6. "
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21xtur | why do women crave sweets (specifically chocolate) during "that time of the month" | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21xtur/eli5_why_do_women_crave_sweets_specifically/ | {
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" > A craving for chocolate during the early menstrual cycle is often because of higher levels of hormones that are triggered as insulin increases. This causes low blood sugar. When blood sugar is low, the brain sends signals to the body that it needs more fuel, which is often a misguided message to eat chocolate and other types of sweets. Instead of chocolate, increasing the intake of complex carbohydrates such as whole grains will help counter fluctuating blood sugar levels, which in turn helps lessen cramps.\n\n[source](_URL_0_)\n\nand probably because it's a comfort food, pleasure to dull/distract from the pain.",
"There has been at least one study done that shows that if a person is distracted (say, by being in pain, feeling generally gross, or being irritable and trying not to take it out on people) they are much less able to choose a healthy option when presented with healthy and unhealthy food. \n\nSo it's not so much that women especially crave sweets during their period. It's more that their consistent desire for sweets and chocolate is showing, where usually they resist it.",
"Also, eating chocolate releases those \"feel good\" endorphins, presumably lessening pms symptoms like moodiness and irritability caused by fluctuating hormones \n\nEdit: words",
"Other commenters have addressed the hormonal basis of cravings, but craving chocolate *specifically* is a cultural thing.",
"I had a friend who was in the midst of a male-to-female transformation. She said that chocolate actually tasted different as a female than as a male . . .",
"I actually rarely crave chocolate. Around ovulation (right before my period) I crave copious amounts of cheese and salty things. Apparently calcium can be beneficial for pregnancy...although I've never been. ",
"Just came here to say, I don't ever experience that time of the month and I crave sweets all the time. Wish I knew why.",
"At my house, the cravings are for salt not chocolate. ",
"Your body knows what it needs, and when it's short, it craves things that fill that need. If you're exposed to something enough, your body gets used to it and knows what's in it. Your system doesn't know how many grams of sugar are in that chocolate bar, but it's seen enough to know if you eat it, you'll get sugar. \n\nYou can even see this in cases of things that you've never eaten before. I saw a documentary on Discover, back before everything was about ice road truckers who hunt ducks and such, about a gentleman who was lost at sea on a life boat. He just happened to be surrounded by a school of fish, so he had food the entire of time he was missing until a freighter passed. But after sometime, he started getting weird cravings. He didn't want the flesh anymore. He was drawn towards the eyeballs, liver, etc. The thought disgusted him days before, but now he felt compelled to eat these. His body was saying, \"We're not getting what we need. Try something else!\""
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b367fw | what is the point of "late fees"? if people couldn't pay a bill on time in the first place, how are they supposed to pay more than the missing bill? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b367fw/eli5_what_is_the_point_of_late_fees_if_people/ | {
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"It doesn't make much sense from an ethical standpoint, but it's a way of ensuring people pay in the first place and well it all comes back to profit",
"A lot of late payment is because people forget to pay their bills or even tries to pay the bills late intentionally so they can collect interest on it. The late fees is both to cover the lost interest, the cost of reissuing the bill and as a penalty to make people pay on time. If people do not have the money to pay the bill they should not have taken on the bill in the first place.",
"It mostly stems from the same place that interest on a loan comes from. If I have money that I loan to you, the interest is basically you paying me for the inconvenience of no longer having the money I just loaned you. Similarly, late fees are you paying me for the inconvenience of not having this installment at the time we agreed upon. When you consider something like late fees on a cell phone bill for instance they're considering the prior month's services loaned to you.",
"\n1. Because these companies have their own expenses they have to pay each month (their own bills plus their employees paychecks), they're depending on your money. If they don't get the money from you when they're expecting it, it puts them in a bind. They may have to get a short term loan to cover their costs until you pay them. The late fee helps cover the extra time and expense of dealing with that.\n\n2. The extra cost to you for being late gives you an extra incentive to pay on time. There's plenty of assholes who just won't pay a bill of they can get away with it. The late fee makes it hurt more if they do that. Or a more cynical example: if you have two bills and can only afford to pay one, you're going to pay the one that'll hit you with a late fee if you don't.\n\nEdit: As a side note, I have found from personal experience that if you call a place and explain your situation, they'll often waive the late fee. The folks who answer the phones are just people like you and me. Also, the company would rather get even just some of the money than no money at all.",
"RARELY it's because they couldn't actually pay the bill.\n\nMostly it's because they \n\n* forgot to mail it, or \n* wanted to wait to the last minute, and waited a bit too long or \n* waited until the last minute, but neglected to account for a holiday, or\n* believe that they're Sticking It To The Man by not paying for something, or\n* believe that Big Business Doesn't Set Rules For Me\n\nor some other mindgame that only they know the rules of."
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6f1zic | why are credit/debit cards not coded with the card type? | Frequently when I purchase something with my credit card, the machine asks whether I'm using a credit or debit card. I've even chosen the wrong one before out of curiosity and the transaction went through just fine, and showed up normally on my statement later.
So if it's going to work regardless of which button you press, is there a reason this information is necessary in the first place? And is there a reason the card type isn't just encoded on the magnetic strip or chip? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6f1zic/eli5_why_are_creditdebit_cards_not_coded_with_the/ | {
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"The system by which debit and credit transactions are processed are different, both historically and today. Most cards nowadays are able to work with either one (i.e. debit cards can be run as credit too).\n\nIt's giving you the choice because your card supports both, not because it can't tell which one you have. As you pointed out it usually doesn't matter, but I know of plenty of local shops that have a minimum for using one method, or a flat rate added to the other method, etc. There are times when you'd want to explicitly use one or the other.",
"It seems you misunderstood. It's not that the terminal is stupid, it's because the terminal is smart. \n\nThe reason some payment terminals ask you the type is because your card is of both. It has credit side which means your bank pays for you and then sends you a bill later, and debit side which is attached to an account with your own money and no one bills you for that transaction later. The system is merely giving you the choice to select which part you want. \n\nThis is quite typical in Europe. ",
"Its asking you whether to process through the ACH system or the credit card system. ACH does checks too and pulls directly from your bank account. Credit only does credit accounts so it uses Visa/Mastercard/etc, one of those backs your debit or you wouldn't be able to run it as \"credit\".\n\nACH is much looser and has fewer protections in addition to making you input the pin. I strongly prefer credit but my card likes to default to ACH because its cheaper for the merchant.\n\nI've had a \"debit\" only card before and it would fail if you tried to use it as a \"credit\" card. On many terminals nothing stopped me from trying it as EBT (foot stamps) or a gift card. Obviously those transactions did not go through. \n\nIts kind of like a website asking you to log in with facebook, google, or a local account.\n\nACH = _URL_0_",
"A lot of great answers, but I'll try my hand and ELI5:\n\nWhen you use a card for a transaction, the modern process works kind of like a car going to a set destination. \n\nFor example, you may be able to take back roads or a highway; both will get you to the same place, but in a different manner.\n\nIn your card's case, you could say the \"back roads\" are a PIN debit network (common ones are Cirrus, Pulse, Star, etc.). While the highway could be a credit card network (MasterCard, Visa, and by proxy the various processors that process the transaction such as First Data, FIS, or Fiserv).\n\nSo, why two paths? Well that's complicated, but the ELI5 reason is money, called interchange.\n\nThe various networks work kind of like tolls; the back roads may charge 1.25, while the highway costs 2.50. these fees are paid by the merchants to the networks and ultimately back to the Financial Institutions as income for offering you a card and a convenient checkout option.\n\nThis is often why merchants may have a minimum charge; if you buy something for 50 cents, and the minimum interchange is one dollar, then the merchant actually loses money (note, these values are just hypothetical examples, interchange rates vary widely by network and category).\n\n"
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1sxqyg | why hasn't wikipedia gone to an ad based model yet if they are losing money? | Almost annually Wikipedia asks for money to help support their costs. I don't see how the one time a year they ask for money solves anything and it's only a matter of time before they go to ads. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sxqyg/eli5why_hasnt_wikipedia_gone_to_an_ad_based_model/ | {
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"Because they really don't want to. Wikipedia has always been ad free and user supported. People donate year round, not just at the donation drive. They start the donation drive when money gets thin. So far, its always worked. As long as they only have to pester you for a short time out of the year, they see that as far more ideal than having ads year round. One of the big tenants of wikipedia is also neutrality. The many wikipedia pages are (usually, and if not they get fixed) written in a manner so as not to support any one side, but remain factual. Having ads on wikipedia would be inherently not neutral.",
"To maintain their ability to be neutral in their content. The minute they start accepting ads, they start having to worry about making their sponsors happy, and objectivity becomes compromised.",
"Wikipedia was never intended to make money - it's a non-profit organization. Them asking for money is like your local PBS station having a pledge drive.",
"If you look at [this](_URL_0_), you would see that Wikipedia pulled in thirty five million dollars last year, and spent less than thirty. ",
"wikipedia is not losing money, its non-profit, which just means they don't make excess money (nothing is left after paying wages, costs etc.) ",
"Wikipedia has [an article on why they don't use ads for revenue](_URL_0_).\n\nI seem to recall someone, possibly Amazon, serving a copy of Wikipedia with embedded advertisements. I worked at Amazon, so this might have been some random person only slightly higher level than me speculating on something we could do, rather than an actual product offering or even something suggested at the VP level.",
"My husband and I give $5 a month. More than worth it since we use it almost daily. It is a great service and if you can afford it, you should make a donation to keep it that way. ",
"Because ultimately either those of us who consume media have to decide: are we products, parasites, or patrons?\n\n\"Products\" means that we (our eyeballs, spending habits, etc) are what the media company sells to advertisers. We're not the masters of our own destiny, our only choice is what forms of content we wish to take in. If it's all crap, we only get to decide what flavor of crap we like. The problem is, this has become so institutionalized that many, like the OP, cannot conceive of another way of paying for artistic endeavors besides as a vehicle for delivering commercial messages.\n\nAs an alternative to passive consumption, many younger, more tech-savvy people are choosing to escape the advertising messages while still enjoying the content. Being a parasite seems great at first - you get all the content, for free, with no immediate downside. But collectively you kill the host, and the innovators who drive our culture forward get left out in the cold while the same old regurgitated crap gets recycled because that's what the passive and profitable \"products\" prefer^1. \n\nSo if you want to be more than a spectator in the advancement our culture, we actually have to look back to an even earlier time. Painters and playwrights used to be commissioned and paid by the person who expected to appreciate the artwork directly--the patron. In the Middle Ages, only a wealthy person could afford the capital^2 necessary to be a direct patron of the arts. But technology has changed everything - look at Kickstarter, there is a HUGE demand for people to be able to directly dictate what products will be available for them to consume.\n\nThe problem is, we've been trapped in a paradigm where art has become a product to be sold, instead of an experience to be shared. And it has been historically so over-priced^3 that when we consumers have finally been given a chance to \"Stick It To The Man\" and recoup some of the outrageous profits that have been taken from us^4 over the years.\n\nThe challenge in the 21st Century will be restoring the ancient paradigm where we are directly engaged in paying for (and even commissioning) creative content, while we massively expand patronage to all people for the first time in history. When you play it forward over the next several decades, this is the only real alternative to a massively-locked-down, overly-intrusive-DRM future in which we keep trying to force people to pay obeisance to obsolete systems. We have to reclaim ownership of our own culture. And in the end, that means paying for it.\n\nPlease note, I'm not advocating that we all jump in line and pay 99 cents a song to enrich Steve Jobs' ghost. I'm saying that collectively, we have to try to find ways to directly support and engage with artists and other content creators, to offer them an alternative to the traditional commoditizing of their work as a vehicle to sell light beer and herbal supplements. Any time you have the chance to directly pay a creative artist for their work, cutting out the middlemen, you should. We need to make that the new cultural norm, until not doing so is as much a *faux pas* as not tipping at a restaurant^5. \n\nDoes anyone else remember the early days of Napster? When you could listen to any song you wanted, anytime, no hassle? It was glorious! Now imagine if that was the rule for everything - music, news, movies, video games, museums, etc. The only corollary to make the whole thing work would be that if you liked it, as a matter of custom you were expected to make the requested donation. This is already happening for many indie game developers and musicians and I really think it has the potential to revolutionize our culture. The only downside would be that because you would pay AFTER consumption, a bunch of marketroids and PR flacks would have to get day jobs, since profits would be based on the quality of the finished product, rather than running a slick marketing campaign.\n\nThe reason I donate to Wikipedia is that I'd rather give $5/month directly to an organization than indirectly cause them to be given $5/month from various merchants trying to use any manner of annoying ads to sell me crap I don't need. Especially when I think I personally get far more than $5/month worth of value personally from them, AND they also are actively working to fulfill one of the craziest dreams in human history - making a huge portion of the sum total of human knowledge available to everyone, everywhere, for free. Does anyone remember doing research on the Web before Wikipedia? It was basically wading through poorly-sourced web pages that were as reliable as anonymous press releases.\n\nSo yeah, I think Wikipedia represents one of the biggest and most tangible first steps to helping us move from being passive (or active) consumers of content, and into being active participants in our culture. And the fact that they have been (and continue to be) so successful speaks volumes as to the viability of this model for revolutionizing our society. \n\n[If you feel likewise, I highly encourage you to sign up for a recurring donation (can be as little as $3 a month).](_URL_0_)\n\n\n_______________________________________________________________________________________\n^(1This is why there's like 10 crappy Top-40 and country stations in every market but the one \"alternative\" station that plays decent music is always on the verge of folding.)\n\n^(2 i.e., the oil paints, acting troupe, or block of marble needed to create the artwork)\n\n^(3 Many have paid for the same Beatles song on LP, 8-track, cassette, CD, and mp3.)\n\n^(4 Yes, technically you always had the choice NOT to play the only game in town. But culture is what makes us fully human, and it's only an accident of history and technology that small cabals came to control access to large parts of our shared heritage)\n\n^(5 Incidentally, this is one of the clearest proofs that such a system CAN work. It's not required, but everyone does it, because everyone does it)",
"Wikipedia is not \"losing money\" at all. Every year they take in substantially more revenue than their operating costs. This why before I donate to anyone, I always check exactly where that money is going, and how crucial it is."
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2fs1mc | when using microsoft word, why can't you save a file title that has a colon, semicolon or quotation marks? | When using Microsoft Word, why can't you save a file title that has a colon, semicolon or quotation marks? But you can save a file that has a title with a dash and parentheses. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fs1mc/eli5_when_using_microsoft_word_why_cant_you_save/ | {
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"Those are reserved characters for file paths, or they are command operators. If you could use them in filenames, it would create ambiguous paths or commands.\n\nHere's a list of characters you can't use in Windows filenames:\n\n\n < (less than)\n > (greater than)\n : (colon)\n \" (double quote)\n / (forward slash)\n \\ (backslash)\n | (vertical bar or pipe)\n ? (question mark)\n * (asterisk)\n"
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5iawmd | how was the colosseum built? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5iawmd/eli5how_was_the_colosseum_built/ | {
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"Manpower (not just workers but good engineers who used arches) and wealth (remember that this was when Vespasian made Rome great again) as well as concrete the likes of which match modern day concrete.",
"The Romans were good builders, but Damm near legendary engineers. Plus it wasn't their first arena they had built. Gladiator combat and shows were popular throughout Roman history, they just upped the scale.\n\nCombine quality concrete, large amounts of both slave and plebian labor, and a bunch of money they wanted to blow on ambitious projects and you get incredible works."
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4g452z | why are some people paid salary and others hourly? wouldn't it be easier just to pay every employee a salary? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4g452z/eli5why_are_some_people_paid_salary_and_others/ | {
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"Being salaried generally implies that you are working a set number of hours every week, being hourly generally implies you work a variable schedule.",
"If I, as an electrician, were paid a salary, there would either be no incentive to work overtime (time away from my family), which is sometimes necessary, I would be working overtime for no additional pay, or my employer would have the headache of hiring a skilled worker either temporarily (next to impossible) or full time for little benefit. Bonuses are variable, not guaranteed, and would, I imagine, engender lots of lawsuits for unpaid work. The hourly wage system is much better for my type of employment.",
"In the US, it is illegal to pay certain types of jobs salary. \n\nA salaried employee is called and *exempt* employees, because employers are exempt form some labors laws, like those governing overtime and mandatory breaks.\n\nIn order to be considered exempt, you job has to be self directed to some degree. You don't just show up, operate a machine for 8 hours and go home. You decide what needs to be done and how to do it. The idea is that you have the authority to decide how many hours to work and when to take your breaks, and don't really need a law to protect you.\n\nExempt employers are typically managers, administrators, and technical people who make above a certain amount.",
"First, check out the difference between exempt and non-exempt employees: _URL_0_\n\nDepending on what the employee does, it may actually be illegal to pay them a salary. Usually that's because paying a salary to those people would just be a sneaky way around other laws like minimum wage.\n\nOutside the legal stuff, companies usually put workers into two categories. Generally people who are salaried are people who work on projects with deadlines measured in weeks or months. The company frankly doesn't care if they work 8 hours x 5 days a week, or 14 hours x 3 days a week as long as the work gets done by the deadline and it's high quality.\n\nHourly people are usually there to do a task with deadlines measured in minutes, hours, or days. Take the next phone call, assemble the next unit, etc. They also are used where the amount of work getting done matters less than having a person there for a set number of hours. A receptionist can be the most efficient worker ever, but there still needs to be someone at that desk when the next person walks in the front door.\n\nIn another comment you implied your company has people doing the same work and some are hourly while others are salary. The real answer to that is there isn't necessarily a hard and fast rule. There are laws about certain employees who *cannot* be paid salary, but other than that businesses are free to set things up how ever they want, even if it's stupid."
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7yl2is | if all ingested carbohydrates are just reduced to glucose anyway, what makes "simple" carbs (soda, pastry, wonder bread) different compared to "complex" carbs (whole wheat, rice)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7yl2is/eli5_if_all_ingested_carbohydrates_are_just/ | {
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"Simple carbs are broken down very quickly, while complex ones are broken down much more slowly. Complex ones offer a more stable source of energy. You'd have to eat a lot more of simple ones to get the same result.\n\nComplex ones also have other compounds in them that are helpful to metabolism in general.",
"I'm far from an expert on any of this but this is my understanding. Imagine you have a backpack (your fat stores) and someone is giving you apples (the glucose). So when you drink a soda its like someone handed you 20 apples all at once, you can't eat all those so you shove them into your backpack. If you eat a complex carb, it's more like someone giving you a couple apples every hour. Maybe you can't eat them all so some get put in the backpack but not nearly as many as the simple carb. ",
"Ever built a fire? \n\nEver notice how fast and hot dry leaves and twigs burn as compared to a solid log? \n\nSimple carbs are your twigs and leaves. They burn super-fast, dumping all their energy pretty much right now - and then they're gone. \n\nAs a result, you get a spike of fun high blood sugar making you all peppy - and then an hour later, you've got *fucking nothing*. This 'sugar crash' makes you miserable and hangry, and you go snack some more. \n\nOn the other hand, your complex carbs take way longer to break down. You get a long slow wave of blood sugar that builds slowly, lasts a long time and fades slowly as well. No spike, no crash, just a sensible blood sugar level that lasts you half the day. "
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498to8 | if we could harpoon the moon with a set amount of rockets, could we drag/move the moon closer to the earth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/498to8/eli5_if_we_could_harpoon_the_moon_with_a_set/ | {
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"Harpooning it with rockets and tugging on an attached cable wouldn't work terribly well. (It would work horribly.) \nHowever, mounting a rocket motor on the Moon's equator, and firing that motor when its exhaust is pointing in the same direction as its orbit around the earth, you could lower its closest point to the Earth by a little bit. Wait half a lunar month, and fire that motor again, and you'll lower the \"top\" of the orbit, in a process known as circularization. Rinse and repeat, and you can put the Moon in any Earth orbit you want. \nI highly recommend Kerbal Space Program if you want to get an intuitive understanding of orbital mechanics. In KSP some of your missions are \"Go out and grab an asteroid (a small moon) and put it into such-and-such an orbit.\"\n\n/r/kerbalspaceprogram rocks.",
"If we could harpoon the moon, why not harpoon a second earth like planet and pull it into the same orbit as ours, and make a second earth? Great r/showerthoughts"
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5lgw1c | why is there a separate security code on credit cards? if the three extra digits make it that much more secure, why not just make the number three digits longer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5lgw1c/eli5_why_is_there_a_separate_security_code_on/ | {
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"Two main reasons:\n\n1. They're in a different spot than the main credit card number, so if you get a picture of the credit card you still can't use it because you don't have the security code.\n\n2. On systems that save your credit card number, they are not supposed to save your security code, which means you need to type it in in order to place an order. That means that if someone else gets access to my computer or login, they can't order stuff for themselves because they don't have my security code. The same goes if the seller's system gets compromised, enabling hackers to access our credit card numbers - but they can't use them without the security code.",
"To add to /u/Dacke comment... Android Pay is actually way more secure because when it transmits a credit card, it actually transmits a one-time credit card generated just for this transaction, so stealing it is pointless.\n\nAs with any security system any time you have _static_ or non-changing information it is considered easy to individually compromise. \n\nThe new chip in new credit cards in america means that you never actually transmit the credit card number to the payment system. Instead you transmit an identifier and a rolling code. The code is verified by the server to verify legitimacy. Since reading the code is pointless since it changes by algorithm every few seconds you have a much more foolproof system. So _at least_ the card readers in every store are no longer attack-vectors for credit card theft. Previously you hack a credit card reader provider and you get _everything_.\n\nedit: I'm sorry I think I mixed up android pay and the older Google wallet. ",
"In the olden days, credit cards were often not scanned with the mag strip, because the equipment was still too expensive for smaller retailers.\n\nWhat they did instead was use a carbon paper and a roller machine to take an imprint of the front of the credit card with the numbers. This was commonly part of the receipt, and one copy would be torn off and given to the customer.\n\nThe problem with this, of course, is that now all these receipts you are just throwing away left and right have your whole card number on them. \n\nThis is where the extra numbers on the back to confirm an online(or at the time, over the phone) purchase can be used, if you only had a receipt you found with the front of someone's card, you would not have all the numbers needed to complete a transaction. ",
"It's not just three extra digits, it's a separate code that is used very differently. The credit card number identifies the card, can be read by card readers from the magnetic strip, and is stored by merchants' systems that store your card information. Or, if they use the old machines that make an imprint of the card, that number is on the imprint (which means the full credit card number is on the receipt).\n\nThe CVV code (the three extra digits) is just written - on the back of the card, with no raised plastic, so it won't appear in imprints and won't be as easy for people to see or photograph. It is *not* stored when your card number is stored, and PCI (the standard in the US that companies that take credit card numbers are required to abide by) places more restrictions on where you can keep that number. It can only be temporarily kept for use during a single transaction, and that's it.",
"Those numbers are not \"stored\" or \"remembered\" by merchants. This makes purchases more safe by verifying that you likely have physical possession of the card. If you just added the three digits to the main card it would defeat the purpose of the security measure. Merchants who do not check this code each time are more likely to process orders with stolen credit card information. These codes are something for merchants to check, not to help you. What you(as a credit card user) just need to do, is check your money activity regularly. You can get your money back due to fraud via a backsies(a chargeback) as long as you notice it within 120 days(visa rules) from the transaction date. The money will then be taken from the merchant for being a meanie who ran your card. Even if the merchant checked your billing address(called AVS) and this code(CVV) they will still be responsible if you say it isn't you. ",
"There is a set of regulations that dictate the payment card industry called PCI. if you want to do anything with payment cards you have to be PCI compliant. One of the major things in PCI compliance is you cannot store the CVV (those digits). You also cannot store the mag stripe data.\n\nThis makes it hard to copy a card from legitimate hardware. It also allows companies to tell how you used your card. Merchants are charged different rates for \"card present\" (you physically swiped your card) and \"card not present\" (you typed in your card number, like an online purchase). There are other categories and large companies can negotiate rates.\n\nThe numbers are also present on the back of the card, which makes copying the numbers more difficult. If I wanted to steal your credit card number with the CVV I'd have to see both sides of your card. This means is most likely need physical possession of the card, I cannot sneak a picture.\n\nWhen you combine these features it makes it more difficult to steal someone's card number. It doesn't make it impossible but does out up enough barriers to stop a good amount of low-level thieves. Furthermore the way the numbers are used with mandatory industry standards they serve a purchase for the men behind the curtains that run the show.\n\nLastly I've called the digits CVV but different companies and networks may have a different name for them. They serve the same purpose though.",
"Because no one seems to specifically address the last part of your question: let's say my CVV is 123. You now know it, yet you can't do much about it.\n\nThere are of course tons of advantages to having the card number (basically serves as ID number for the card as others have mentioned), but the simple fact of having to match two things makes it much more secure. \n\nAs others have pointed out, the CVV is printed in a way that it can't just be carbon copied and it's not in the magnetic tape so it's difficult to get both pieces of the puzzle in one \"hack\"",
"isn't the CVV also a checksum to ensure that a valid cards details are entered?\n\nfrom what I understand, this 3 digit number is not completely random, but is derived from an algorithm running through the 16 digits and expiry date of the card. \n\nthe algorithm can reach any of a set of multiple 3 digit ids, though - one of this smaller set of numbers is assigned at random to every credit card. \n\nthe way the checksum works is that when a credit card number is entered, the algorithm is played back in reverse to validate the details entered - this is usually done on the page itself.",
"there is a separate security code (CVV2) on the back of your credit card to allow there to be a different code for cardholder manual entered transactions (e.g. online and phone, not fallback) to those done with magnetic swipe (CVV) and in more recent times yet another one when the chip is used (iCVV). \n\nThe most obvious of demonstrable reasons to have this is so that your card can't be skimmed and then used to do online or phone transactions. Unfortunately given it is static in nature its can obviously be bypassed by taking a photo of the back of the card. To add extra levels of security Visa\\Mastercard\\etc do have services like secret question\\answers etc.\n\nIn regards to why they don't just make card numbers longer... quite a few reasons but a few are - \n\n- if they've stolen your number it doesn't matter if its 5 digits or 50 digits. \n\n- 16 is enough. thinking of just visa and cards starting with 4, theres 140 trillion valid card numbers or something. More than enough really. (Do note that the card number itself has its own check digit at the end)\n\n- it makes more sense to think of these CVVs (Card Verification Value) as codes to validate that the piece of plastic being read or referenced is actually from your bank. Technically the code is generated using a key known to your bank and the card scheme, the card number, the expiry date (in some format) and the service code (basics of what kind of card it is, and some rules. Generally this number is substituted so you get a different CVV codes)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2y209n | can private military companies be used to fight is? | From what I understand there are still thousands of contractors who are still in Iraq. Would it be possible to send them to fight against IS or are there laws preventing that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2y209n/eli5can_private_military_companies_be_used_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"cp5hhoh",
"cp5iz28"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Can they - yes.\n\nCould the US afford to pay them to do it - also yes\n\nAre they willing to do it - probably not\n\nWill they make a total hash of it - probably yes",
"We dont \"send\" them like we send troops.\n\nWe ask how much to go to Isis territories and fight the locals. They give a price on a man per month basis. We say Ok. They pack up and go."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
j3iir | we did baseball; how about explaining cricket like i'm five (and american)? | As a follow up to [this question about Baseball](_URL_0_) from a non-American, would someone return the favor and explain Cricket like I'm an American five-year-old? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j3iir/we_did_baseball_how_about_explaining_cricket_like/ | {
"a_id": [
"c28turf",
"c28tv2x"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"[Asked and answered](_URL_0_)",
"The way I understand it, the game still runs on outs. However, you don't get out by 3 strikes. It's whether the wicket (picture 3 bowling pins) behind you get knocked over. This can happen by: the pitcher hitting it with the ball, you hitting it yourself, and a couple others.\n\nOnce you hit the ball, the other team is still trying to catch it and tag you out. However, whereas in baseball the goal is run in a big diamond, cricket you have to run back and forth. Each length counts as a run (hence the ridiculously high scores)"
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j38oq/please_explain_baseball_to_me_like_im_a_five_year/"
] | [
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j3ah7/explain_the_rules_of_cricket_to_me_please/"
],
[]
] |
|
2qhkm3 | how would my call be directed to the nearest police station if i were to call 911 on a random highway? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qhkm3/eli5_how_would_my_call_be_directed_to_the_nearest/ | {
"a_id": [
"cn65td2"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"The most common answer is that your cellular company can tell where (in general) you are by looking at what cell tower your phone is attached to, and (in specific) by looking at the E911 data your cellphone is sending, which usually includes GPS coordinated. \n\ntraditional phone systems used to have a subscriber address on each line, and an \"in-the-ground\" telephone wire connected to a local exchange box. if you had a telephone in the 281 area code on the 523 exchange, then you definitely lived in Houston TX, because that's where that exchange was, and every call from that exchange could route 911 to the Houston city emergency services. no muss, no fuss. \n\nCell phones used to be based on a similar process, but with portable numbers and nation wide coverage that have come into favor in the last 20 years, most companies now use E911 or tower based routing for 911 calls, and most cell phone numbers are now just 10 random digits (see also _URL_0_) \n\nE911 (_URL_1_) is the system that allows callers phones to identify their location to emergency services, and to route that call to the correct emergency services regardless of \"where\" that call enters the network. This is of biggest concern for VoIP phones, which can be hours, days or oceans away from the phone system that hosts them. the phone system could be in California, and the phone making a 911 call might be in a hotel in Belgrade. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://xkcd.com/1129/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1"
]
] |
||
4df5wq | how can certain presidents serve almost entire terms without vice presidents (ford, jackson, roosevelt), who takes over the vps duties and why isn't a new vice president chosen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4df5wq/eli5_how_can_certain_presidents_serve_almost/ | {
"a_id": [
"d1qe7ns"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Because at that time there was no provision for filling the vacancy of a vice president. \nIt was only added with the [25th Amendment](_URL_1_) in 1967. \nOtherwise the Vice-President doesn't actually do a whole lot of real functions, just look at what Biden has done this entire time. \nIf a new president got killed before the 25th amendment, the [Presidential Succession Act](_URL_0_) would have kicked in and someone in congress would have been president (exactly who depends on which version of the act, it changed over the years). \nAlso, Gerald Ford became vice-president after the amendment, it took only two days to be nominated, and a couple of months for congress to confirm. \nAfter Nixon Resigned, it took Ford only 11 days to nominate Rockefeller and again a couple of months for congress to confirm"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Succession_Act",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution"
]
] |
||
3kvd8n | how is obama getting the iran deal passed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kvd8n/eli5_how_is_obama_getting_the_iran_deal_passed/ | {
"a_id": [
"cv0ujm9"
],
"score": [
11
],
"text": [
"Technically, the deal does not need to be \"passed\". He just needs to make sure it does not get vetoed by the Senate. A veto needs 2/3 of the votes, or 67 votes. As long as there are 34 senators who approve of it, it can't get vetoed so it goes through. Currently there are at least 34 who won't vote to veto, so no action is needed. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
5xutxy | does your depth perception change as you grow up and your eyes get farther apart? | I would imagine it's not a big difference, but I was curious anyway. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xutxy/eli5_does_your_depth_perception_change_as_you/ | {
"a_id": [
"del0mit"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Your brain and your eyes are constantly adjusting. That little change over years are easily accommodated by accommodation. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
Subsets and Splits