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529pik | what are the dots of pink, yellow, and other colors on boxes/ cans for? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/529pik/eli5_what_are_the_dots_of_pink_yellow_and_other/ | {
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"They're there to show that the printing process is working correctly. If a batch comes out that looks weird. You can look at those and immediately tell which color(s) are having issues printing."
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2zzkl8 | what causes red, blonde, non black colored hair? is it unique to europeans or does it occur in asians or native siberians? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zzkl8/eli5_what_causes_red_blonde_non_black_colored/ | {
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"Blonde, red, eye color are not unique to europeans, but they are recessive genes, that means that if a child inherits one blond gene from the mom and one black gene from the dad, then the black gene will come to play. For blond hair to be present in the child he basically has to inherit blond genes from both of his parents. In asian population blond genes are relatively scarce so inheriting blond genes from both parent is really rare. There are blond africans though, because their gene pool is much more diverse than the rest of the human population.\n\nEuropeans are much more closely related, and so many of them inherited some strands of blond hair and blue eyes or whatever, so much more chances that the offspring will get those genes feom the parents. "
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7enwkm | why is the most accurate and precise way to read a babies’ temperature is through the rectum? | My wife and I our having our first child this week. One thing that we have yet to buy is a thermometer for the baby. As the title says, I am very curious as to why a rectal temperature is the most accurate. There are thermometers in the market that roll over the forehead. Obviously a forehead reading would be much more convenient but why would it not be as accurate?
Thanks in advance for all the comments!
Edit: clarifying the question. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7enwkm/eli5_why_is_the_most_accurate_and_precise_way_to/ | {
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"Because a baby can't be told to keep an oral thermometer in position long enough to get a proper reading. The other end may end up being just as upsetting to the baby as trying to hold a glass tube under its tongue, but it's vastly more successful as well.",
"Watch how the nurses do it in the hospital. I'm guessing they'll use the infra-red ones that go in ears. Is it the most accurate? No. Is it accurate enough? Absolutely, and it's *way* more convenient.",
"Taking your temperature rectally is most accurate for all of us, not just babies. It gives you a much better impression of actual core temperature vs other methods that are a less accurate. Taking your temperature via your mouth/forehead/arm-pit, it is all not really internal to your body, is further away from your core, and is more influenceable by outside factors. If you just drank something cold though (or something hot) a mouth thermometer could give a false reading. \n\nThe thing with babies is though they obviously don't have much of an immune system yet. And they are so young and small that they cannot handle as much as a regular adult can. They also cannot regulate their body temperature as well as an adult, so their temperature can spike more rapidly, which can lead to seizures. And often when they do get a fever, especially when they are really young, doctors want to treat them ASAP. So it can be more important to get a more accurate reading for them vs you as an adult who has the immune system to handle whatever is making you spike that fever. ",
"Off topic, not answer, breaks ELI5 rules and will get deleted, but need to be said.\n\nCongratulations!"
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1jq8ow | why are psilocybin mushrooms illegal and listed under schedule i when they have lowest harm rate vs. alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy, heroin, and tobacco and also have profound proven medical benefits? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jq8ow/eli5_why_are_psilocybin_mushrooms_illegal_and/ | {
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"The same could be said for Marijuana or even ecstasy and LSD. In truth American drug laws haven't receive a serious restructuring on a national level in a very long time. That is why a lot of drugs with medical benefits or low risk of abuse are still classed as Schedule I.",
"No, this isn't a loaded question **at all**."
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1n7zw9 | why are people from america called americans but people from canada aren't called canadans? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n7zw9/eli5_why_are_people_from_america_called_americans/ | {
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"Because it's easier to say \"canadians\".\n\nThis is not some cheap \"one sentence answer\"\n\nSay \"Canadans\" and then say \"Canadians\" Canadians is easier and less tongue-twisty.",
"I bet it has to do with French."
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50556i | what is the difference between digital and analog? | For example, you can have a digital or analog signal. What's the difference?
Edit: Thanks everyone for explaining! I use a computer every day and even do some coding, but I never had a strong understanding of basic things like this :) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/50556i/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_digital_and/ | {
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"An analog signal has different variances in it, like sound wave. A digital signal is made up of being on and off/\"1\" and \"0\" etc. \n\nA record stores its music in an analog format\nA cd is a digital format\n\nHeres another way to think of it:\n\nA dimmer switch for a light would be an anolog way to adjust the brightness of a light with there being infinite points of brightness between on and off\n\nA normal light switch would be digital with there **only** being on and off\n\n*edit-words\n\nHope this helps",
"A digital signal is a string of 1's and 0's that encodes your data. Meanwhile an analog signal is a continuous spectrum.\n\nFor example, say you're trying to get the number 7 from one machine to the next. You could do that by sending a sequence of 0111 (7 in binary), or you could send 7 Volts over the connection (analog)\n\nAnalog signals tend to be more noise sensitive. Long wires tend to deform the signal a bit due to interference and other crap. If you have a crappy pair of speakers try listening to music next to a high power appliance (Washing machine or something), you'll notice a clear 60Hz hum thanks to the interference.\n\nDigital does not have this long distance decay (You'd need some really heavy interference to turn a 1 into a 0...). But digital has its own problems. You can only encode so much information into a string of 1's and 0's. For example, a string of 4 characters can only contain 16 possible values. So if you have to use those 4 characters to encode sound, you only get 16 possible tones. You can increase the number of tones by increasing the number of characters, but then you run into throughput problems. If you have to send 100k characters for every microsecond of sound your system will be too slow.",
"With regards to signals, a digital signal can only be on or off while an analog signal can has a spectrum of possible values. \n\nSo if your analog signal can go from 0 to 255 (some unit), it can do so without steps, meaning that .25 and 254.9 are also possible.\n\nIf you want to covert this analog signal to a digital signal, you'll have to represent this value in binary, so in one's and zero's. If you chose 8 bits to represent this signal, you could have 256 values, 0 to 255 per byte. But note how .25 would now simply be 0 and 254.9 would be 255.\n\nThe digital signal in this case would send out a string of bytes which are 8 bits that are either on or off while the analog signal would actually BE the value.",
"In technical terms an analog signal is time and value *continous*. Time continous means the signal can change at any instant in time, value continous means that when the value changes from 1 to 4 it crosses all values in between them, and every value is valid (i.e. 3.72726 is just as valid as 3.00000). \nDigitial signals are time and value *discreet*. They can only switch values at specific instances, there are only certain values allowed (e.g. 0 and 1, or 1,2,3,4) and the switching between values happens instantly, without any values in between them. \n\n",
"Digital means a signal is mapped to a limited set of discrete quantities, while analog means its able to vary continously. Usually \"digital\" is used in the context of binary electronic circuits (where a voltage, itself an analog quantity, is mapped to either '0' or '1' depending on whether it's high or low), but \"digital\" actually covers a broader category. For example, some clocks of the type usually referred to as \"analog\" (i.e. with moving hands) exhibit digital qualities, with the hands moving in \"jumps\" rather than continuously. And the early mechanical computers developed (but never really completed) by Charles Babbage in the 19th century were digital, despite not using electricity; they represented numbers as base-10 (decimal) digits, even though quantities of course exist between say 11 and 12, these cannot be represented directly in a base-10 digital system, where it goes directly from 11 to 12, without stopping in between. It is possible to increase the \"resolution\" or precision of digital systems by \"scaling\" the units, for example each \"unit\" really represents 0.1, or 0.01 rather than 1, but there's still a solid limit to precision, for example a digital system precise to the nearest 0.01 could represent 0.05 and 0.06, but not any value between them.\n\nAnd usually analog systems convert their data to digital in some way, since it is impossible to meaningfully express data with infinite precision. For example, we might look at an analog clock and say that the time is 6:30 and 31 seconds, when in fact the actual analog time represented by the clock is some small amount before or after 6:30 and 31 seconds.",
"My explanation isn't scientific but I explain it to people this way: \n\nThink of a light switch. One that flips on or off is **digital**. A dimmer switch is **analog**.",
"**ELI5:**\n\nYou're on the beach and you have a sea shell in your hand. Draw a horizontal line in the sand. Place the shell anywhere above or below the line.\n\nDIGITAL = If it's placed above the line it's a 1 if it's placed below the line it's a 0\n\nANALOG = The distance in centimeters from the line, (positive if it's above the line and negative if it's below the line\n\n**ELI15:**\n\nUsing the shell and the line in the sand I want you to convey to me how old you are (you're 11 BTW)\n\nANALOG = Place the shell 11 centimeters above the line\n\nMeasure the distance from line to the shell and it's 11 cm so you must be eleven years old.\n\nDIGITAL = 8 bits (you get to place the shell down 8 times). Each time I'm expecting you to answer yes or no (1 or 0) about whether I should be adding a specific number to the total. I'm going to go in order and you know that the first time I'll be asking if you want me to add 2^0 which is 1, next time I'll be asking if I should add 2^1 which is 2 to the total, so on and so forth until I get to the 7th time (2^6 which is 64). The 8th time will tell you if I want it to be positive number or negative, above the line is positive and below the line is negative. By adding up the values from all the 7 times you said yes I can get your age then the 8th time will tell me if it's positive or negative.\n\n1. 2^0 = 1 = shell above line (YES) (total = 1)\n2. 2^1 = 2 = shell above line (YES) (total = 3)\n3. 2^2 = 4 = shell below line (NO) (total = 3)\n4. 2^3 = 8 = shell above line (YES) (total = 11)\n5. 2^4 = 16 = shell below line (NO) (total = 11)\n6. 2^5 = 32 = shell below line (NO) (total = 11)\n7. 2^6 = 64 = shell below line (NO) (total = 11)\n8. SIGN = +/- = shell above line (POSITIVE) (total = +11)\n\nTotal = +11 so you must be eleven years old\n\nSo analog seems to be much more concise and easy to convey information, why don't we use analog all the time. Well turns out it's much easier for us to figure out if the shell is above or below a line than to know exactly how far the shell is from the line. If we place the shell down at 10.5 centimeters in the analog system, did we mean 10 1/2 or did we mean 11 and we were sloppy or did we really mean 10 and we put it too high or we didn't place ruler exactly on the line.\n\nWith analog it's hard to know what the value was supposed to mean both where we place it and how we measure it. With digital it's much easier to say what we want, the trouble is everyone has to agree on what we are doing. Both the person placing the shell down and the person \"reading\" where the shell was placed has to know we are doing it 8 times and what it means for each of those 8 times. Still it's easier for most machines to speak digitally than it is to speak analog. Imagine that you're standing 20 feet away from the line and you have to eyeball where the shell is. It's much easier to tell if it's above or below the line than to know how far above or below the line it is. \n",
"Imagine the difference between drawing a straight line with either a pen or on Windows Paint. On a piece of paper (present naturally and constant without a catalyst), a pen will draw one straight line completely connected. On your computer screen (electronically calculated and composed real-time), a straight line looks complete, but is actually hundreds or thousands of squares, or pixels, that form closely and consistently to make what looks like a complete line.\n\n\nThe paper is analog.\n\n\nThe screen is digital.\n\n\nTo be thorough: analog is a 100% complete and usually natural composition of units. Digital is a 50-99.9% complete and electronically coded and calculated composition of units.\n"
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8dn6fm | why are cones and pyramids exactly 1/3 of a cylinder or prism's volume? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8dn6fm/eli5_why_are_cones_and_pyramids_exactly_13_of_a/ | {
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"Let's look a simple case first, the cube. A cube is incidentally the base of a pyramid and also a square prism of the same base face as the pyramid. I also happens to have identical side faces, which will help us later on.\n\nImagine a pyramid with the base face of our cube. You can move the tip of the pyramid around without changing the height \\(moving within a horizontal plane\\) and you won't change the volume of the pyramid, right? So imagine moving the tip of the pyramid into the upper right hand, back corner of the cube.\n\nNow imagine a second pyramid, hanging upside down into the cube from the top surface, with its tip on the base face of the cube. This pyramid has the same volume as the first, right? Again, we can move the tip around in the plane of the base face without changing the volume. Now imagine moving the tip of this second pyramid into the the bottom left hand back corner of the cube. Some of the edges of the second pyramid will coincide with those of the first pyramid, but the two volumes will not overlap anywhere, correct?\n\nNow look at the remaining volume in the cube. The front face is completely free, and you have edges from the first two pyramids leading from each corner of the front face into that same lower back left hand corner, correct? Now because this is a cube, the front face has the same area as the base or top face, and the depth is the same as the height. So this means that the remaining space is a third pyramid, with the same volume as the first two. Three pyramids together have the same volume as the cube \\(the square prism, remember?\\), so a single pyramid has one third the volume of the prism.\n\nNow, imagine streching the cube's height, and try and see what happens with the pyramids. You'll be changing the overall volume, but the three pyramids will still all have equal volumes, right \\(two will have their height changed, the third will have its base area changed by the same factor\\)? Still one third of the prism, even if it's no longer a cube.\n\nThe final step is a bit harder to imagine, but you can do the same thing we did with a cube in a pyramid with a tetrahedron in a triangular prism, or a five sided pyramid in a pentagram prism. You can alway fit three pyramids inside the prism \\(it does get hard to imagine for higher numbers of sides\\). In fact, you can do it for any number of sides. And once you have a hundred or ten thousand sides to your prism, the step to a cyclinder isn't hard to imagine.",
"Lets start with a 4 sided pyramid with a height of 1, and a base that's 2x2, divide the base into four squares, and look at the column above one of those squares. The column is 1/4 the rectangular prism's volume and the chunk of the pyramid is 1/4 the whole pyramid.\n\nOk, so the base has an area of 1, and if you look at the cross section as you go from the point down to the base, the area of each cross section is the distance down from the point squared. So at the top the cross section is zero, at the middle, the cross section is 0.25, and at the bottom the cross section is 1. \n\nWe want to add up all these cross section slices to find the volume, and we can do that by taking the integral from 0 to 1 of x^2 dx. Basically, the area underneath a section of a parabola. That end up as x^3 /3 + C. C is zero because we're starting at zero, and x^3 is 1 because we're ending at one, so the final volume is just 1/3.\n\nNow the starting pyramid is 4x bigger, but the prism enclosing it is also 4x bigger. It works for any size pyramid for the same reason a triangle is always half the area a rectangle with the same base and height. The proportion doesn't change. \n\nSimilarly for the cone, the cross sectional area is proportional to x^2, so the integral would still be proportional to x^3 /3. At every cross section you're just replacing the area of a square with the area of a circle, and you're changing both the cross section of the prism, and the cross section of the pyramid by the same proportion.\n\nEdit: If we want to avoid calculus completely, we can imagine a splitting a cube into six pyramids by drawing a line from the center to each of the 8 corners. so each pyramid has a base the area of one of the sides, and half the height. So we get 1/6 (2h * b) which is bh/3. To get different pyramids and cones we can still consider the cross sections. As long as we multiply the cross section of the prism and the pyramid by the same number, the relationship between them doesn't change."
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1p4b8y | what laws are the bankers alleged to have broken when they caused the crash of 2008? | I've heard a lot of people complaining about how the people who caused the financial crash have not been arrested and charged. While I agree that these people have caused a great deal of human suffering and it would probably be reasonable in an abstract moral sense for them to be punished, I'm unfamiliar with the legal argument. When people suggest that the bankers be arrested, what laws exactly are they suggesting they be arrested under? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p4b8y/eli5_what_laws_are_the_bankers_alleged_to_have/ | {
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"That's the issue. There are no laws to be arrested under ~~because no laws were broken~~. Or rather, it's impossible to obtain enough evidence to conclusively prove that bankers broke laws to the extent where they could be arrested. Let me explain.\n\nBanks make loans. Banks run out of money to make loans. Housing demand is hot, and banks are missing out on lending opportunities. But Wall Street comes along and says, listen, you can sell us a big portion of your loans. An investor will buy them, you get a fat fee, and you'll have new money to make more loans. Well, demand for housing continued to sky rocket. Home values were going up and everyone who could buy a house did. But then they ran into a problem. All the traditionally qualified people who could buy a home did. Now you had these underqualified people who wanted homes, but couldn't afford them on the traditional method (due to bad credit score, not enough down payment, etc).\n\nSo the banks said, no problem, instead of putting 10% down, we can tweek numbers and you can borrow the 10% from us, just at a higher interest rate. As long as you can pay the monthly payment, you're fine. And banks did that. And Wall Street kept packaging the loans, even the ones that are of lesser quality. \n\nBut hold on a sec. That's cheating. The new packages are of worse quality. But Wall Street was open about it. These are subprime loans being packaged into subprime securities. And investors still bought them. Why? Because losses were low. As long as the economy was good, and people paid their mortgages and housing went up, everyone won. But at this point a bubble had been created. Houses were going for way more than they were worth. \n\nThen came the dreaded CDO^2. What were these? Well, they were the crappier parts of a bunch of subprime packages repackaged into a new package. And they were rated by rating agencies pretty highly. What? How? Well, the argument was that these crappy loans were all diversified across the country. Sure, a certain area might go bad, but look at the data. America, as a whole, was paying their mortgages with low losses across the whole country.\n\nThe structure of all this was not sustainable. People were blindly buying homes because banks said they could, and they said they could because the economy was great and housing was going up. Wall Street packaged these things because investors were buying them. Rating agencies were giving it the OK with good ratings. The data supported these ratings.\n\nIt sounds so obvious now, but while this was happening, people trusted in the system. There were non-believers. Read the Big Short by Michael Lewis. People were looking at these packaged loan securities and saying, wholly cow these are going to go bad if the economy only takes a slight downturn.\n\nSo to wrap this all up, who broke laws? Were there bankers that knew things were going to blow up? I would say most didn't. I'm sure some did. But which were which? Plenty of bankers got burned themselves in this. Should the packagers be arrested? They didn't do anything wrong. People wanted to buy them. The information showing the bad underwriting was there for the taking in the security's prospectus. What about the rating agencies that rated crappy stuff at AAA? Well, they weren't very sophisticated and securitizations are complex products. So we arrest them because they weren't smart enough?\n\nIn order for someone to be arrested, you would need definitive proof that someone said \"Let's deceive these people by doing X,Y,Z. Look at all the money we made by deceiving them. We got this money by committing fraud.\"\n\nBut technically this never really happened. Were people sneaky? Yes. Were banks salesmen that said \"Oh look, you can afford this monthly payment! Let's do this deal!\", knowing that once the teaser rate period was over the payments would go up? Sure. Did they disclose it to the customer? Oh, absolutely. Was it confusing? Of course. Did people maybe take risks, thinking they'd get raises before the teaser period was over? I think that happened too.\n\nIt's a tricky issue. Not black and white.\n\nTL,DR: It's very difficult to get enough evidence to prove anyone did anything fraudulent. Technically, most of these people did not break the law. Some were sneaky about it. Maybe some broke the law, but very difficult to prove. Is it against the law for a car salesmen to sell a car he knows isn't as great as presented? Tricky issue."
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26t4ee | what plausible explanation could there be that snowden is living in moscow, and the russian government hasn't sought to use him for information? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26t4ee/eli5_what_plausible_explanation_could_there_be/ | {
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"What makes you think they aren't?",
"He has counterintelligence training meaning he will be difficult to break, did not actually bring documents with him to Russia, and frankly keeping him safe and sound with his credibility in tact benefits Russia as it embarrasses the US on the world stage. "
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c7erw8 | why is it that plants in a garden need excessive care like support,waterings, and heavy weeding when plants thrive in the wild without this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c7erw8/eli5_why_is_it_that_plants_in_a_garden_need/ | {
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"Because we usually select the wrong plants when we plant a garden. The things we pick tend to have been selected for their beauty, not their hardiness. There are some demo gardens that show how to plant with local native plants that require little active care.",
"The plants we plant in a garden are trying to make large delicious fruit, or large beautiful flowers. Because that is what we selected them for. These things do not come without a price. They need more water to grow more frippery, and if they spend their energy on that they can't be using it to out-strangle the competition which doesn't care about what you find tasty.\n\nAs for support, well, if you went out of your way to remove the vines from the trees, then you have to provide them with artificial trees."
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84x41p | what are computable numbers? | I need to write an essay on computable numbers, but it seems to me that basically every number is a computable number. Either that, or I clearly do not understand what a computable number is. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/84x41p/eli5_what_are_computable_numbers/ | {
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"The set of Real numbers is _uncountable_. That is, you can't assign a natural number to every Real number. However you _can_ assign a natural number to every Turing machine: the set of Computable Numbers is _countable_. Therefore the set of Computable Numbers is a subset of Real numbers.\n\nTo take a specific case, for a given non-infinite Turing machine there will be Real numbers that it can't compute, because there will be numbers that it cannot represent or output.",
"This one is a bit of a problem for me to explain so hopefully there is someone with a stronger mathematics/CS background that can do it easier. \n\nAny number that can be explained, whether plainly or by algorithm, through a program is a computable number. This includes almost every number, however there are exceptions; basically numbers which will halt a program before completion. The only non-computable number I am aware of is Chaitin’s Constant/Construct. \n\nBasically it claims that each program has a normal and transcendental number that is not computable. Which as a group are referred to as CC’s Omega. The wiki should provide a pretty good explanation. ",
"You know how there exist algorithms for computing pi and the like? The ones people use to get the 100000-zillionth digit of whatever? \n\nWell, almost every number we normally use is like pi, in that there is a program that can calculate it to any accuracy you want. Even if the digits of pi never end, you can calculate pi up to any digit with no problems.\n\nUsing mathematics, people have been able to show that there exist other numbers that don't have this feature. By that I mean, there is no program that can compute them like pi can be computed. There is no program that will give you every digit of the number if you run if for long enough. It cannot exist. \n\nThese numbers are practically inaccessible. I could never give you a way to enumerate the digits of one, because that would mean the number is computable.\n\nThis is proven by basically showing that there exist *more* numbers (real numbers, including numbers like 0.34234451231.... that never terminate or repeat and go on to infinity) than there exist programs. It's true that there is an infinite amount of programs, but it turns out the way numbers are infinite is bigger than the way programs are infinite. The argument for this is a very clever one called a diagnolization argument.\n\nThere is an infinite number of computable numbers, just like there is an infinite number of programs, but that infinity is smaller than the infinity of all real numbers, so we say that almost every real number is NOT computable. It is ironic that even though non-computable numbers outnumber the computable kind, we'll rarely if ever talk about ones that aren't computable.\n\nSome clever mathematicians have found ways of describing specific numbers that aren't computable. This is usually done by finding a feature that only they possess. Then you can say, \"look, the number that has property P is called X\". You can do this even if you can't compute the number.\n\n"
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fvayfa | why is it so hard to read out loud without yawning? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fvayfa/eli5_why_is_it_so_hard_to_read_out_loud_without/ | {
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"It's theorized that yawning is caused as a reaction to being low on oxygen. (For context, when you hold your breath, it's not the lack of oxygen you're feeling; rather, your lungs burn when they're too full of carbon dioxide.) Therefore, logically, when you're reading, you spend a longer time between breaths, but because you're actively exhaling you don't feel like you're out of breath. Instead, you run lower on oxygen without even realizing it, until your body responds by making you yawn."
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akq97d | why does hearing your own scream not hurt, but hearing other people's screams hurts? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/akq97d/eli5_why_does_hearing_your_own_scream_not_hurt/ | {
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"You don't hear your own voice through your ear drums/through the sound waves directly hitting those membranes, you hear it as a combination of echoes off of walls and the sound traveling through your jaw/skull to the membranes.\n\nIt's the sharp spike in pressure caused by a high-volume and high-pitched sound hitting your ear that causes the pain, and this is lessened when you're not getting it immediately from the source, and instead get it bounced off of a couple walls.\n\nAlso, if you're screaming, you are probably either already getting a hit of adrenaline (from being scared/angry), or you are just about to get a hit of adrenaline because of the pain in your throat from a loud/violent enough scream.",
"Your ear prepares for your own loud noise by pulling the bones of the middle ear apart to dampen sound.",
"Sound reception is modulated by two tiny muscles that pull on the bone chain in your middle ear. The stapedial reflex is the main actuator of this mechanism. ",
"From a neuroscience perspective: Your brain is constantly making *predictions* about the world around you. Stimuli that aren't predicted (sudden loud noises) are much more salient than stimuli that are. Your brain has to put more resources into processing unexpected sensory information. I can't speak to the pain part, because I don't study pain, but I would expect there is some relationship between prediction and pain. Can anyone who studies pain add to this?\n\nWhen you make a sound, you already know it's coming. You not only *expect* the sound, but you control the sound. You know (approximately) how loud it will be, how high-pitched it will be, and how long it will be, because you're the one making it. When someone else makes a sound, your brain doesn't have much forewarning (if any) that it is coming. It predicts your environment to be relatively similar to what it was a second ago, but now suddenly there's a loud noise. \n\nIncidentally, this is the same mechanism that means someone else can tickle you, but you can't tickle yourself.",
"When you open your mouth wide enough, your ears \"rumble\" due to the [tensor tympani](_URL_0_) muscle in your ears slackening your eardrum and dampening the sound,\n\nIt's a bit like a real drum; if you pull it really tight and then throw a pencil at it, the pencil will probably stab through it and hit whatever's behind. But slacken the drum, and the pencil will bounce off like a trampoline.",
"I don't know man, when I scream or sing loud I feel like eardrums are bass during a trap song",
"Some good answers but not really ELI5.\n\nTo put it simpler. Think of a sound wave like a light wave.\n\nIf you're standing behind a flashlight, you can still see those light waves, but it will be much more intense if that flashlight were aimed at your eye.\n\nSound waves work the same way, ask anyone who does acoustics for venues. If you're standing behind a speaker, you won't hear it nearly as harshly.",
"Basically your own brain turns down what your ears can hear when you scream. You can prove it too by screaming back when someone is hurting you with their screams. \n\nAnd since this is ELI5, who ever got hurt when we all scream for ice cream !!! ",
"Just wanna chime in here and say I screamed so loud yesterday that I hurt my ears. They were ringing for an hour.",
"You scream, sound waves aren’t going directly into your ear. Someone else screams, sound waves are going right up in your ear. "
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8wy5h3 | how do small insects fly so well even in low winds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8wy5h3/eli5_how_do_small_insects_fly_so_well_even_in_low/ | {
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"What do you mean by \"even in low winds\" \n\nThat they should only be able to fly in high wind or that just a little bit of wind should make it too hard for them to fly? \n\n"
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20r9ib | if crimea is 60% (ethnically) russian, how did it end up as part of ukraine? might there be similar conflicts over other nearby regions with high russian populations? | When the Soviet Union was dismantled, why did Crimea not remain part of Russia? Only a minority of its population is ethnically Ukranian, which seems to set it apart from the rest of Ukraine.
Other nearby countries also have huge Russian populations. In particular, according to Wikipedia, three provinces in Kazakhstan (Karagandy, Kostanay, and North Kazakhstan) have Russians as an ethnic plurality. What are the odds of Putin/Russia taking action to annex these regions? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20r9ib/eli5_if_crimea_is_60_ethnically_russian_how_did/ | {
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"The USSR transferred Crimea internally from Russia to Ukraine in 1954. When Ukraine declared independence during the breakup of the USSR, Crimea went along with it.",
"Crimea was moved to Ukraine by Khruschev. Since nobody considered the possibility of collapse, this seemed like a routine and rational administrative decision. (Similar thing ocсured in 1922, when Soviet government split Ossetia into North and South, which became regions of RSFSR and GSSR respectively.)\n\nAlso, Crimea is 60% ethnically Russian only now. It wasn't before the WW2, when tatars and Ukrainians consitituted the majority. Tatars were exiled after the war and were allowe to return shortly before the collapse of the SU.\n\nBy the way, Crimea was not annexed because of its native population, it would be naive to think that Russian government gives a shit about ethnical Russians abroad. The whole 'protecting the people' rhetoric was developed to gain public support. Why did Russia really annex Crimea? Maybe Sevastopol port, maybe credible threat, I can make up a lot of geopolitical reasonings but to me they don't make much sense."
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3xvklc | american football head trauma/concussions vs boxing | I must be missing something. It's obvious that American football is a dangerous sport and those who play it are aware they run the risk of injury. It seems as though many people believe that the more we learn about concussions/CTE and how it relates to football the more people believe it will lead to the end of football. I use boxing as an example because I can't fathom boxing being anymore safe than football when it comes to head trauma, yet people still box/MMA. I am fully convinced American Football will live on forever and helmet technology will hopefully eliminate the terrible side effects of constant head impacts.
TLDR: Why do people think American Football will end if they find a direct correlation between concussions/CTE when we have sports like boxing/MMA that are obviously more dangerous Etc. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xvklc/eli5_american_football_head_traumaconcussions_vs/ | {
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"Boxing is already on a drastic decline and some of the cte research is discussing the continual pounding to an already swollen brain to be the reason. Some say football players are receiving similar pounding thus making it just as dangerous as boxing. It starts with youth, there was a Chris Rock bit about how only the poorest race is good at boxing. Now, parents are very reluctant to have their kids play football, and football isn't cheap. If youth don't play, there will be no one to participate. It's the same problem with boxing. Mma is seeing more popularity because youth don't have to strike at a young age, they can learn those techniques later.",
"The real difference is the intensity of the impact. \n\nIn boxing you are hit by a single padded hand. The boxers muscles are mostly to accelerate your hand and glove up to speed and to follow through, but little is applied during the actual punch due to rebound. \n\nKinetic Energy = (1/2)(Mass)(Velocity^2). \n\nA strong punch is about 9m/s which is about 20mph. A hand with glove weighs less than a pound including the hand. \nA linebacker weighs about 250 pounds and is moving at about half that speed at impact. So even at 1/4 the KE per pound, he still delivers 62.5 times as much energy. \n\nAdd to that the difference between padded glove and movable head vs hard helmet to hard helmet locked in a neck brace and you see how football causes heads to undergo a much higher energy dump. \n\n\n\n\nPunch speed data from the abstract of _URL_0_ \n"
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6zlwxt | why is animation treated so differently in japan than the west? | It seems like the biggest western animations are usually comedies (Rick and Morty, South Park, Simpsons, etc.) while eastern animation generally can be seen taking more graphic and serious tones as well as lighthearted ones. It's hard to come by a serious animated show produced in the west. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zlwxt/eli5_why_is_animation_treated_so_differently_in/ | {
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"Someone will probably be able to answer this better than I can. I heard that animation isn't seen as a children's medium in Japan and as such they produce all kinds of tv using it. It started with lore stories which if done with conventional actors would have needed lots of effects to produce the demons, dragons etc. Using animation means this can be done cheaply and easily.\n\n\nThe reason we view it differently in the West is because it has been seen as a medium for children and as such was never used to convey adult themes. Simpson's and South park managed to buck this trend a little which is why we are seeing more adult stuff but not to the extent of japan.",
"Every decade or two, the US works up a moral panic about some form of media. Rock and roll is turning kids into satanists, etc. Rather than risk targeted legislation, industries typically voluntarily censor their content. \n\nWestern animation was affected by a series of self-censorship measures - the [Hays code](_URL_2_)(Film, 1930-1968), the [Code of Practices for Television Broadcasters](_URL_1_)(TV, 1951-1983) less so but still influentially, the [Comics Code Authority](_URL_0_)(print comics, 1954-*2011*). These codes were all pretty draconian to a modern point of view, but were enforced unusually harshly for cartoons-- both because they were seen as a kid's medium, and because cartoons would only be checked for compliance when they were done (instead of at the script phase) and animation is *expensive* - so animators couldn't afford to try borderline cases. [This article from 1939](_URL_3_) explains the kind of restraints they were under.\n\nLike, as an example, it wasn't allowed for a criminal to be a sympathetic character, or get away with it. You couldn't include religious or sexual themes at all. With no capacity for moral complexity or adult themes, you can't exactly write a drama, or really media aimed at adults at all."
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"http://www.cartoonbrew.com/classic/hollywood-censors-its-animated-cartoons-1939-2775.html"
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b8qas7 | how do you know how long it takes you to go to sleep | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b8qas7/eli5_how_do_you_know_how_long_it_takes_you_to_go/ | {
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"I usually know within a few minutes of when I went to sleep by the punch from my wife for snoring and then looking at the clock to see what time it was. "
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60ukke | why is government leaks bad? | in the case of recent news like the leaks from the US government, why is it that this kind of information is so "bad " that its leaked, or what kind of information would be bad if was leaked? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/60ukke/eli5_why_is_government_leaks_bad/ | {
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"Whether it's bad or good depends on what information is being leaked, how that information is being leaked, who is leaking it, who it is being leaked too, and the person you're asking.\n\n**What the information is**\n\n* The information could contain information regarding intended or planned actions regarding the United States against its adversaries. If this information is leaked, those adversaries now have advanced warning and can develop countermeasures.\n* The information could contain details regarding vulnerabilities or flaws in United States defensive capabilities. If this information is leaked, adversaries can try to develop methods of exploiting those vulnerabilities.\n\n\n**How the information is being leaked**\n\n* If you have something you don't want to be leaked, you put in counter-measures to prevent that from happening. If the information is still being leaked, it means those counter-measures aren't working, or you have some antagonistic party within the circle of people entrusted with that information working against you.\n\n**Who is leaking it**\n\n* Whenever information is leaked, it is leaked by someone with some purpose. What is that purpose? Do they have an agenda? Are they leaking tailored or specific pieces of information to give a false impression?\n\n**Who it is being leaked too**\n\n* Who is receiving the information? Our adversaries (directly or indirectly)? What do they plan on doing with the information?\n\n**The person you are asking**\n\nAll the above considered, it is a somewhat objective statement to say whether such leaks are harmful to the US Government, its officers or its citizens. It is an entirely different question to say whether that harm is \"bad.\" Some people want to see harm come to those parties (both or either). This may be out of malice or out of a desire to see change. Some may say it is wholly good. Some may say that is wholly bad. Some may say that the general idea of leaks is bad, while specific instances may serve a greater good (e.g. to uncover corruption or bad policies within the government)."
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ptetx | why did so many people hate windows vista? | I went from XP to 7, and I never used a computer running Vista, so I'm curious to know why so many people hated Vista.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ptetx/eli5_why_did_so_many_people_hate_windows_vista/ | {
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"I'm not familiar with the technical details, but from the [Wikipedia article](_URL_0_), it seems like it was a combination of the following:\n\n* DRM integration reduces resolution of stuff that isn't \"genuine\"; everything has to checked and certified by Microsoft\n* lots of security problems and flaws in protection features\n* slow speeds and framerate compared to XP\n* lots of fancy visual effects that just drain battery life\n* a lot of bloating\n* software compatibility problems\n\n",
"From my personal experience, it was *slow*. They installed it on our computers at work while we were upgrading some other software we use for work. They had to take it *off* 2 weeks later and reinstall XP because it was so slow that it was slowing down response time for cases (and my job is very time sensitive). \n\nIt seems they added a lot of flashy and shiny at the expense of performance.",
"For the same reason we all hated Windoze ME. It was a slow, bloated, horrible pile of shit that came *after* a clearly superior version of Windows. Showing without any doubt that MicroSoft *could* make a good operating system, but simply didn't want to. They were merely trying to take our money - again - and this time with a a sparkle-dusted turd that was *much worse* than what they sold us a couple years ago.",
"My old laptop came installed with Vista. I was willing to give it a try. I [know that laptops aren't exactly meant for gaming, but I'm a student that needs portability] tried to play TF2/L4D and it immediately went black. I spent weeks trying to come up with a launch property code to get it to work. I had to run it in windowed at a low resolution.\n\nI went over to a friends and he had a copy of Windows XP, so he installed it for me. Booted up my vidya games and it ran fine, full screened with no problems.\n\nI recently switched to Windows 7 on a new laptop, and it is wonderful. I would compare Vista to Windows 7 but I'm not using the same machine.\n\n",
"I can't say for anything else, but Vista actually *felt* rickety to use compared to XP. \n",
"Well apart from what the others already answered, I once had to confirm 7 times that I really wanted to move a file.",
"Are you sure you want to post to _URL_0_?\nAre you sure you want to allow your computer to connect to _URL_0_?\nAre you sure you want to breath oxygen?\n\nAdditionally, it was much more resource heavy than XP without adding anything really to justify those resources.\n\nELI5; Nothing neat or new and it makes your same computer slower.",
"Maybe not what people want to hear but I'm not sure **everyone** did hate Vista - that just became the story because it was the case for an awful lot of people.\n\nHere's my story : I went from XP on old machine to Vista Ultimate pre-installed on a new laptop (ThinkPad T61P). I expected a lot of pain based on what I'd heard but needed a Windows OS for my work.\n\nResult ? Basically everything was fine - I think for three reasons :\n\n * When I used XP I already did most stuff on a user account and only that stuff that needed Administrator rights on an Admin account. Vista sort of forced you to do this and a lot of people coming off XP had grown used to doing everything in Admin and hated being prompted to up their privileges when necessary.\n\n * By the time I got my machine it was already maybe 6 or 9 months after the Vista release - hence I presume 'early user' bugs had been service-packed ?\n\n * The hardware was up for the job . As others have mentioned MS were stupid enough to drop the tech requirements for Vista as they headed down towards launch and this was a **VERY BAD IDEA** (TM). I had a decent machine and stuffed as much memory into it as it could take.\n\n... oh crap there were actually four reasons ...\n\n * As I do with all enviroments I turned off all the bells and whistles (in the case of Vista, I turned off Aero and all the other UI glossiness) this probably helped in making it seem OK\n\n*Can't believe I've just written something half-way positive about MS*",
"I work on and sell computers for a living. \n\n* Hardware manufacturers were slow on writing drivers for Vista. There was plenty of time for them to get on it, but because they hadn't had to since XP came out 5 years prior, they got lazy.\n* Its minimum system requirements were far too low: 512 MB, wheras Vista has performance hits below 2 GB; 4 times as much. Many computers were shipped with that little, and the computers ran _horribly_.\n* People hate change. There were a lot of great features in Vista, but between 2001-2007 many people got their first computers. They didn't want to switch to Vista, darnit.\n* People didn't understand what UAC was for and just hated it.\n\nA somewhat valid complaint was that older programs wouldn't work on it, but many would with comparability mode or with software updates (which many software companies didn't come out with, or were slow on). New programs were always compatible, but people didn't want to buy new software, even though OS updates typically required software updates.",
"1. User Account Control, or UAC. It was very poorly implemented, so it was intrusive, annoying, and easy for malware to circumvent.\n\n2. Huge HD space requirements compared to XP.\n\n3. Absolute crap drivers availability at time of release and for a long time after.\n\n4. Frequent crashes.",
"It would be foolish to overlook the purely psychological reasons behind people's dislike of Vista.\n\nThe computer on its own isn't much more than a bunch of pieces of hardware, but the operating system is what we interact with all day every day. Operating Systems are built around all sorts of visual and spatial metaphors (desktops, folders, windows), and these metaphors allow us to create mental models of where everything is, and how everything works.\n\nVista came with a huge number of changes (sometimes justified, sometimes just change for the sake of change) to the way people interacted with their computers. Adapting to all of these changes would be like someone coming into your house and completely rearranging not only the furniture, but the actual rooms (bedroom in the living room, dining room in the bathroom, etc). You'd find yourself constantly walking into the wrong room, or stubbing your toe on furniture that wasn't there before. \n\nThe aggregate experience of all of these little missteps can be incredibly frustrating, but the root cause can be almost imperceptible. The result is a discomfort or dislike of the new, with no objective way to describe your dislike. Just think about the uproar every time a site like Twitter or Facebook redesigns, and then imagine if you were using Twitter or Facebook at least 8 hours a day, relying on it to get stuff done quickly and efficiently in a working environment.\n\nThis is why Apple is so rigid in their Human Interface Guidelines. Don't worry, I'm not about to go all Apple fanboy on you, but just take a look at the [Philosophy of UI Design](_URL_0_) in the Mac OS X Human Interface Guidelines.\n\n**TL;DR** Over time users build an explicit trust in their OS to behave in a consistent and understandable way, and drastically changing these behaviours can feel like having the rug pulled out from under you.",
"To me, My hatred happened when I went to restore a friends machine to factory using the image on the ghost partition of the hard drive. Bear in mind that an XP install only takes about an hour or so tops from a bare computer to a useable desktop. a half hour later or so for the update process and you're golden. An Ubuntu install takes about the same. Win 7? You guessed it, same.\n\nWhen I hit the key on startup I had no idea what I was in for. 3 or 4 completely separate restarts that It apparently had to do and one or two for the updates., made for a combined total of a little less than 4 and a half fucking hours. Yeah, that was disgruntling. I don't exactly know if I was doing something wrong, (I probably was) but I distinctly remember twice thinking that I had a useable desktop, starting into trying to find crap online to install, and having the computer switch back to a restart cycle. I vowed to myself to never work on a computer with Vista ever again.",
"File browsing. this is one of those inane little details that only bugs you if you do it 1000+ times a day, but jesus christ file browsing.\n\nWhy do you need to force me to tell you I want to type in the filepath before you'll let me. No, because I click on the directory it does not mean I want to go there. Anyone who would need that probably doesn't know enough about their file system to use it.\n\nOther than that, it wasn't *That* bad, however it was kind of infuriating when MS came out with those Mojave ads, where they called Vista Mojave and had a bunch of schmucks off the street play with it in a Best Buy for awhile and go \"Hey, this is pretty easy.\" The subtext of the ad was basically \"If this guy can do it, wtf is your problem?\" only more smug. It was ballsy, even by MS' standards.",
"They used it in bomb disposal robots, and it would frequently fail on the operator right in the middle of a disposal.",
"Searching was like waiting for paint to dry.",
"Vista is like a Mad Catz controller. Sure, it looks better than your old NES controller (it has more buttons and features) but it isn't as good as the first party controllers (Windows 7). Windows 7 actually does what Vista wanted to do. If you upgraded from the NES controller to a brand new controller, skipping the Mad Catz one, then you did it right.",
"There are several.\n\nFirst, Microsoft has always been about extremes. When I worked there, everything was driven by customer demand. In some cases, this was great. in others, it hurt them. \n\nGo check out the Code Red and Nimda Virus Outbreaks. In Code Red's case, it took the Internet to it's knees for multiple days. It was all caused by a really small flaw in IIS. Bill gates came out and said something along the lines of: \"From now on when we code, when choosing between security or product functionality, we choose security.\"\n\nEngineers LOVE black and white edicts like that.\n\nMicrosoft promised to fix it. With Windows XP SP2, they did a great job in setting up a better set of security standards, to the point that to get a virus, you needed to A) leave your computer un-patched, OR B) Actively click YES to download and install a Trojan. Seriously, since that point, the Internet hasn't been brought to a multi-day standstill while we brought out Internet Janitors for a MAJOR cleanup on aisle 3.\n\nThey weren't done yet. Instead of leaving the world to the fate of imbeciles, MSFT decided to take it another step. Windows update was tuned, and suddenly file copies that seemed like they could POSSIBLY cause problems were greeted with a \"ARE YOU SURE?\"! window. As a result, doing basic things you KNEW were ok were suddenly met with suspicion. *It was like the TSA, only when you were finally finished with the security process, you didn't get to go see someplace new.*\n\nThis pissed off a lot of people.\n\nThe next bit, and (IMHO) more important, was driver support and the leap to a 64 bit world. Vista did a HORRIBLE job managing legacy drivers. I had one system in my lab purpose built for Vista (for no other reason than to test this), and with a lot of the security bits turned off...it worked great. The problem was? Asking someone to drop a zillion dollars on (at the time) new hardware with native 64 bit drivers caused a lot of problems. Furthermore, Running 32 bit applications on said platform caused even MORE problems.\n\nFinally, the biggie.\n\nYou had: Windows XP home. and Windows XP professional on the client side. Pro? It could join a domain. Home? It couldn't. Other than a few other small details, that was about the extent of the options. Media Center also existed, but at the time it was on purpose built boxes designed to compete with TIVO (who at the time, was seen as a pretty big risk to Microsoft's dominance inside the company, but I digress)\n\nStuck with the notion of a stagnant computer market, Microsoft figured they could get some extra cash to keep investors happy...SOO, you had [a metric assload](_URL_0_) editions of vista ranging from 50 to 600 bucks. Everyone wanted all the features, but a lot of people couldn't understand why paying extra for a sunken cost was at all fair. Apple capitalized on this a year later quite well with 39 dollar upgrades, no product anchoring, and a (comparatively) really easy upgrade process.\n\nOne or more of these points are typically discussed internally to Microsoft as to why the product failed in various ways.\n\n*source: I'm an Ex MSFT employee.\n\n\n\n"
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682q5c | what are the differences between delta force and seal team 6 and why do they exist separately? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/682q5c/eli5_what_are_the_differences_between_delta_force/ | {
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"They both have broadly similar missions. The primary difference is that Delta Force is part of the US Army and Seal Team 6 is part of the US Navy. It's not uncommon for different branches to have overlap in their missions but they will each specialize in different things. For example, Seals often train for amphibious assault off of ships whereas the Army does't emphasize that as much.",
"Delta Force is a special mission unit of the US Army. SEAL Team Six is a component of the Joint Special Operations Command which is from the US Navy. They exist separately because they belong to different branches of the armed forces of the US. Why exactly the people who carry guns on the ground are different from the people with guns on boats, or people with guns on airplanes, is a traditional yet obvious distinction. Both are Special Mission Units of different branches.",
"I understand that they are different branches are military, but I think OP may be asking more of why we need so much overlap of specialized teams? For example why do SEALs do land-based missions and not the army? Does Delta Force do any aquatic or demolition based missions/training?"
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coondx | why are there no salty fruits/vegetables? | Fruits and vegetables come in several different flavors (sweet, spicy, sour, bitter, etc), so why are none of them salty? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/coondx/eli5_why_are_there_no_salty_fruitsvegetables/ | {
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"High salt levels would mess with seed germination, so they have to keep it low. However, there’s a salty skinned fruit called the pigface fruit, but I believe that’s the only known exception.",
"because there is no natural mechanism to make salt except to extract it out of the ground unlike other flavors like sweet and sour where plants are able to make sugars and acids. Salt has to be extracted through it's roots and most plants are unable to grow in salty water.",
"They may not taste specifally like table salt (sodium chloride) but they do have some salts in them, I've always thought tomato seeds tasted a little salty. But, the main reason is that fruits of a plant are the end product of seed transport. Salts (electrolytes) are more valuable in the body of the plant to move molecules around that are important for other life functions like respiration and immunisation.",
"Some plants that grow in or near salt water ARE salty. For instance, sea beans:\n\n[_URL_1_](_URL_1_)\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)",
"Really a level of salt that you'd call salty isn't compatible with life, thats why you can salt foods and then keep them basically forever without refrigeration.\n\nWith that said, salt water is salty, and there are things that concentrate the salt and reject it, so they may produce salty things. Most of these reject the salt into the saltwater so you don't notice it. Not all do this, In particular mangroves actually can build salt crystals on their leaves, im not sure how edible they are."
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ar0glt | how does software work the same way with various processor architectures? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ar0glt/eli5_how_does_software_work_the_same_way_with/ | {
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"AMD and Intel CPUs have the same instruction set - so this means that both types of CPUs should be able to run the exact same code. \n\nGPUs have separate instruction sets, but they have drivers, which translate what the computer is asking for into the instruction set for that particular GPU. "
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51lnnz | why are a lot of people saying the em drive will not work when testing in space even though it's been tested to work on earth? | I understand it's breaking the laws of physics, but since it works on earth (for reasons unknown) then why have I seen a lot of people saying it's bound to fail during the space tests? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/51lnnz/eli5_why_are_a_lot_of_people_saying_the_em_drive/ | {
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"It's not known for sure that it works on Earth. It generates a very weak force. The most important part of your question is 'breaking the laws of physics.' It's a very experimental result, that no one knows for sure is happening, and if it is, has no idea how it is happening, and which overturns fairly solid physics bedrock. \n\nThis means there is a lot of skepticism, and with good reason. You don't want to give up on basic physical laws without lots and lots and lots of rock solid empirical proof. \n\nThe people who believe it will fail in space likely believe it has never actually worked as advertised at all, and that the result is in error, or an uncorrected-for variable. ",
"Because if it works, it would cause us to rethink many of the laws of physics we take for granted today. And we take them granted for a reason; they have shown to be true 100% of the time for over a hundred years in every experiment ever performed by any group ever. For this one thing to just magically throw physics out the window while everything else follows those predictable laws is pretty unimaginable. And the fact that the tests being done were not exactly the most thorough and well documented tests cause skeptics to doubt the veracity of the claims. Likewise the fact that the people who did the tests went out and proclaimed that they had a new drive and published instead of the more customary \"hey physics community, we got some results that look like they're wrong, can you go over our data and methods and explain why this happened\" response seems dubious.\n\nBasically, it comes down to shoddy testing, sketchy publishing, and a technology that shouldn't be able to exist with our current, and so far proven, understanding of physics.\n\nNow that's not to say it doesn't work. There's a lot about physics we don't know. We don't know why gravity does what it does. We don't know about dark matter and dark energy. And several other things. Our current model of physics is incomplete and there are a lot of things out there we haven't discovered. Maybe this is one of them. Probably not. But maybe. "
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2jt7hy | when you make a fist, how come your middle knuckle pops out more than the rest of your knuckles? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jt7hy/eli5_when_you_make_a_fist_how_come_your_middle/ | {
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"That bone (the 3rd metacarpel to be exact) is just a little longer than the other bones."
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22kim5 | how sanitising hand gels work? the stuff that doesn't require water and disappears when you rub it in. | I've always been baffled by the fact that you don't have to wash this stuff off. With soap and water, you wash the soap, water and bacteria down the sink, but with this stuff it just dissipates between your hands. So, how does it kill bacteria and what happens to the hand gel and bacteria when it dissipates leaving your hands dry and clean?
EDIT: Thanks for all the answers, I definitely understand it a lot better now. Cheers. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22kim5/eli5_how_sanitising_hand_gels_work_the_stuff_that/ | {
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"hand sanitizers is composed of %70-90 grain alcohol, the alcohol poisons the bacteria to death and evaporates on its own.",
"Alcohol denatures proteins, including those found in cell membranes (the 'skin\" of the cell if it were). When mixed with water, it can denature proteins on any side of the cell membrane, basically making bacteria go pop. It is effective against some viruses, but not all, and maximum effectiveness against lipid-enveloped viruses is achieved by 80% ethanol (drinkable alcohol), 5% isopropanol, and 15% water; this mixture isn't going to be found in any hand sanitizer you can buy, though, and the typical 70% ethanol hand sanitizers that you can buy (most effective against bacteria, good effectiveness against non-enveloped viruses), while pretty effective against most bacteria, aren't super effective against non-enveloped viruses, for one, so hand washing is still important.\n\nAlso, it doesn't really disappear. It mostly evaporates. Any of the bacteria (for example) that it caused to 'explode' is still on your hands, it's just not really going to do anything to make you sick because it's dead.",
"Alcohol is a desiccant or *it displaces water*.\n\nI think /u/____Matt____ you are a little off. Lipid enveloped viruses tend to be more susceptible. Generally those viruses have that hydrophobic coating to keep them from drying out.\n\n/u/alltimeisrelative lipids are [fats/waxes/etc](_URL_0_) and generally resist water. Alcohol is both hydrophobic (dissolves carbon chains like fat) and hydrophilic (dissolves in water). The added issue is that to dissolve with a larger hydrocarbon chain you need a longer alcohol chain. Ethanol is the second shortest alcohol. C2H5OH, only Methanol is shorter at CHOH.\n\nHere's [Lipids for comparison](_URL_2_)\n\n\nAlcohol and water solution is also an azeotrope, where the resulting solution has a lower boiling point / vapor pressure than either of the individual parts. Which is why you can't distill ethanol out of water past about ~96% purity. So it evaporates but most of the physical part of the bacteria is still there.\n\nAlcohol also disrupts secondary and tertiary (2^nd and 3^rd tier) bonding in protein chains. [example](_URL_3_)\n\nBut it does not completely destroy the protein. Just makes it sort of shapeless. The actual peptide bonds that hold the DNA in sequence remain. This is one of the main arguments about not using hand sanitizers. [Known as Genetic Recombination](_URL_1_) E. Coli is notoriously good at this. [Here's one more](_URL_4_)\n\nThus you run the risk of say the more alcohol resistant ones the sanitizer doesn't kill possibly acquiring better antibiotic resistance off the ones you did kill.\n\nTL;DR: The Alcohol/Water gel evaporates, the dead bacteria and their still sequenced genetic structure does not.\n\nTL;DR: Who knew alcohol poisoning would make me so productive the next day.\n\nEdit: Some pics n shit."
]
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"http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/568denaturation.html",
"http://faculty.ccbcmd.edu/courses/bio141/lecguide/unit1/HGT/HGT.html"
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1nvs5i | where does the money for the local police force come from (in the us)? | Does funding for a police force come from taxation of the local people and businesses? Is the federal government responsible for bearing the cost of police forces? Does a police department generate revenue for itself through other channels (like bonds etc.)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nvs5i/eli5_where_does_the_money_for_the_local_police/ | {
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"State, county and local taxes along with some federal funds pay for the various police departments serving at a village, county and state level. The department is there to protect and enforce but does not have a social service role per se. Some have social workers who will help a person connect with social service agencies. Generally local/county or state agencies help the individual in need. \n\nOr are you asking about a need like they are in a broken down care or something? ",
"Primarily taxes, but also from other revenue sources, such as fees, fines, and forfeitures.\n\nThe \"not legally obligated to assist\" thing is...complicated. Police have limited resources, and have to prioritize how they are used. If there is a shooting in a shopping mall, they need to be able to ignore a scary noise in someone's backyard without legal repercussions."
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76c19m | how come our sense of touch is able to differentiate between things like granite and steel, or silk and cotton, or wood and plastic? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/76c19m/eli5_how_come_our_sense_of_touch_is_able_to/ | {
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"We are doing a lot of clever guessing using things we *can* feel:\n\n1. Temperature differences -- some materials suck heat out of your hand much faster than others.\n2. Texture -- which you feel as you move your hand along the material.\n3. Adhesion -- how does the material cling to your skin when it's stationary, and when you move your hang along it."
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41rj43 | how can i determine if my isp is doing what they say they are or if they are doing it well. | I know a little about on peak and off peak but have been very suspicious of late. Be it normal usage or a stress test, is there any way to accurately tell? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41rj43/eli5_how_can_i_determine_if_my_isp_is_doing_what/ | {
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"text": [
"Run a speed test a couple times a day and if you are getting sub-par numbers for download and upload then contact them and tell them whats going on and you want what you're paying for."
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34cmy5 | what allows a country to "invade" another country? | The United States going to war with the Middle East. What allows them to drop troops there? Also, for the Gulf War, what allowed all of these countries to fight against Iraq? Can a country just invade and kill bad guys at their pleasing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34cmy5/eli5_what_allows_a_country_to_invade_another/ | {
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"What's stopping them? If nobody lifts a hand to stop you then you can do whatever you want. ",
"What stops you from going into your brother's room and taking his cologne? \n\nRespect for his room and privacy = other nation's sovereignty \n\nFear of your brother hitting you = other nation's military\n\nFear of being spanked by your parents = other nation's allies invading you\n\nFear of being punished by your parents = sanctions by the UN or other nations\n\nI think that's as simple as I can explain it. So if you sneak into your brother's room, steal the porno stash, he can't admit he has it, so you can't get punished. Also known as covert operations.\n",
"Power flows from the barrel of a gun. \n\nLaws consist of pacts between entities (people, nations, whatever) strong enough, or groups of people collectively strong enough, to enforce them. \n\nThere is no \"allowed\" to the mighty. ",
"There is actually an enormous portion of the [UN Charter](_URL_1_) (basically going from Ch.V through Ch.XI) dealing with exactly that. Particularly Article 2\n > 1. The Organization is based on the principle of the **sovereign equality** of all its Members.\n2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.\n3. All Members shall **settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered**.\n4. All Members shall **refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state**, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.\n5. All Members shall **give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.**\n6. The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.\n7. **Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction** of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll.\n\nSo that whole sovereign equality is kind of a big deal, as most of the world is spoken for and most wars in historical contexts have been over the amount of land a certain nation has, and how it wants some of its neighbors land instead. \n\nThere are [Plenty](_URL_2_)[of](_URL_0_) [resources](_URL_3_) about how war is to be conducted at the international level, and how a government's forces should conduct themselves in an armed conflict.\n\nHonestly, this is what diplomacy is basically all about. To prevent conflicts abroad. The reason we invaded Afghanistan right after September 11th, was that we thought the Taliban was a legitimate threat to our National Security; which at the time, it very much was. The same can't exactly be said for Iraq, I basically think we the public were duped into an unnecessary conflict on that one, and I'm saying that as an Iraq veteran (that also being said, I believe we withdrew far far too early, as the Iraqi military and government weren't stable or proficient enough to really protect their country, which may be why ISIS may be running amok over there right now, then again, I'm not an expert, I'm just some dude that was there for the better part of a year).\n\nThe big reasons a government goes to war are to:\n\n1. Assist its allies\n\n2. Protect its own national security interests\n\n3. Intervene on behalf of the international community to stop maltreatment of the civilian populace (this is mostly called \"peacekeeping\" - the UN has been doing a lot of it in Western & Eastern Africa and a lot of other conflict ridden parts of the world)\n\n4. and finally the one no one likes to talk about - resources. Which can fall under the whole national security thing if you want to argue it. Basically comes down to another country has something you want. You, as your country's leader say: \"Haiguiz, we're takin dis.\" And then you send in your forces. It's also along the same lines as expanding your countries area of influence (read: \"empire building\"). It's really the only unjust terms for war, and is highly frowned upon by the international community. Which is why we're currently putting such heavy economic sanctions against Russia.\n\nAnd I do need to say, that I'm not an expert. I'm just some asshole with an opinion on the internet, so please feel free to correct or expand on any mistakes I have made along the way."
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwpzzAefx9M"
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1tr2ut | if the moon had weather, would it be visible from earth? | Our moon has no atmosphere and therefore no weather. I get that. But let's say if it did, and had something like intense, massive lightning storms. How visible would that be from Earth? The kind of thing you could see with the naked eye on a clear night, or only if you had a telescope? Or would a satellite need to be even closer to its focal planet for such activity to be visible? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tr2ut/eli5_if_the_moon_had_weather_would_it_be_visible/ | {
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"Depending on the size of the weather incident, likely yes.\n\nThe average size of a hurricane is about 160km in diameter, but stronger ones (tropical strength) can be upwards of 400km. \n\nThe Mare Nectaris on the moon is approximately 330km in diameter, and is visible from earth - a storm even half that size would probably be very visible.\n\nThe kepler lunar crater is only about 32km in diameter, but you can still see its halo from earth, meaning a storm of 40-60km in size would likely be visible. \n\n[A list of things on the moon visible with the naked eye](_URL_0_)\n\n",
"[You'll be able to see exactly this.](_URL_0_) Same as looking the other way. Well, no - the moon is a lot smaller, so adjust that photo accordingly. Get a telescope to see more details of the moon (here earth) weather."
]
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5urwst | the one electron universe theory | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5urwst/eli5_the_one_electron_universe_theory/ | {
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"Its kind of cool, but its also probably wrong.\n\nThe idea is that all electrons and positrons are actually the same particle, just going back and forwards in time.\n\nIf you go back in time there can be two of you at once, say one of you in English class, and one of you in math class.\n\nThen the two of you go back in time, and now there's 6 of you out doing different things. Repeat enough and there can be billions of you in short order.\n\nSince positrons (the electron anti-particle) are the opposite of electrons in all ways, the positron is the particle going the other way in time.\n\n\nIts a cool idea, but its probably wrong, since it would require the same number of electrons and positrons to exist, and electrons outnumber positrons massively as far as we know.",
"It is less of a scientific theory and more of a weird and largely unprovable notion.\n\nOne way to look at antimatter is that is matter traveling backward in time. This is another kind of weird notion, but it is theoretically sound.\n\nSo what if all the electrons and positrons in the universe are all the same particle as it travels forward and backward in time. One advantage of this theory is it explains why all electrons and positrons have identical properties."
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6g7ji8 | daily water intake.. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6g7ji8/eli5_daily_water_intake/ | {
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"Science isnt clear on the coffee one. A [study](_URL_0_) suggests that consuming coffee as your main form of hydration might not be dehydrating. However, while coffee can be beneficial in more moderate doses, large amounts of it can have adverse effects.\n\nAs for the water flavorings, I do not know for sure if they're dehydrating. I don't believe they are overall. I feel this would probably be similar to the coffee issue. Some of them have a lot of sugar in them and consuming a lot of that can have bad effects. Personally, I cant stand the stuff. Any time I tried it I found my mouth feeling horribly dehydrated and kinda with that \"sweetly sticky\" feeling you get with some things."
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8f74tt | why has the potency of marijuana increased over the past few decades? will the potency continue to increase? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8f74tt/eli5_why_has_the_potency_of_marijuana_increased/ | {
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"Basically the fact it comes down to a science. Certain strains are more prominent as they have a higher THC content and are bred together. You could definitely make it more potent by altering the genes but the \"natural\" strains can't become higher than they are. ",
"The Iron Law of Prohibition. This is a term coined by Richard Cowan in 1986 which posits that as law enforcement becomes more intense, the potency of prohibited substances increases. \n\nIt is based on the premise that when drugs or alcohol are prohibited, they will be produced in black markets in more concentrated and powerful forms, because these more potent forms offer better efficiency in the business model—they take up less space in storage, less weight in transportation, and they sell for more money. \n\nFor example, in the era of alcohol prohibition, people started drinking more whiskey than beer. Why? It's easier to smuggle more alcohol content this way because whisky contains more alcohol than beer. Another example is opiods. Opium gave way to heroin once the substance became harder to obtain legally.\n\nIn the era of marijuana prohibition, the same rules apply. If it's possible to increase the potency (other Redditors here have explained how this can be done), economic forces dictate that it will indeed increase so long as prohibition persists.",
"It used to be more popular to buy a raw product that had minimal trimming and had seeds and stems all included with that potency. Now when you buy weed, it tends to be seedless with minimal stems. \n\nSelective breeding, nutrient lines made specifically for cannabis, hydroponics, indoor gardening, and Co2 injection have also made a big impact on THC levels. ",
"Selective breeding is a big part of of. There are actually some places (I think the Netherlands does it) where contests are held to see who can bring the most potent marijuana. \n\nWith enough selective breeding you can seriously alter a plant ( or animal) into something way different than its ancestors.",
"It's not changed as much as they say. Cops test old samples from the evidence locker and that data gets more trust than it should ",
"Marijuana farmers have developed better methods, better strains of the plant, etc. It's just like corn or soybeans, the selectively bred version is much more productive than the wild species because farmers preferentially plant the more productive strains. Over hundreds of years, farmers find the limit. It will increase, but a little less each year, until some other factor becomes as important to buyers as THC content.",
"Pretty sure this has been covered but what the heck. \n\nIt's basically all due the that one thing everybody is so afraid of. GMOs. What a lot of people don't understand is that a GMO is an organic, such as vegetables we all love, that has been selectively bred. Sure, there's other types of GMOs, but the simplest way is through careful breeding. To get bigger, better tasting tomatos, you breed them in such a way that that's what you get. To get stronger, more potent marijuana, you do the same. ",
"In the old days, marijuana was grown outdoors and the entire plant sold as product. In the 1980s, Canadian pot activist Marc Emery started importing seeds from the Netherlands, breeding plants, and selling seeds by mail in Canada and the US. At the same time, electric lights became powerful and efficient enough to grow marijuana indoors. The plant were prevented from fertilizing, creating female flowers, and only the most potent parts of the plant were sold as product.\n\nAlso, in the 1980s, Canada passed a new law called the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and one test case from the early 1990s was R v Kokesh. In that case, a policeman had gone up to a house and peeked in all the windows before getting a warrant \"in the course of his duties.\" The Supreme Court ruled that unconstitutional, and police were from then on required to get a warrant before stepping anywhere on the property.\n\nThis led to a rush of growers renting large luxury homes on large properties in British Columbia to build grow shows, which the police could not effectively bust. Selective breeding and sharing seeds led to better and better product and a boom in smuggling from BC into the US. Eventually, American growers adopted the same techniques and seed stocks. Marc Emery was arrested and extradicted to the US for trial, but his project to revolutionize the pot business was effectively complete.",
"Some people claim that good marijuana isn’t necessarily stronger today, but in the old days potent weed needed serious connections to get and today nobody much bothers with the weak shit anymore. As people have pointed out, dirt weed is a lot of volume so the black market favors a higher yield product. I don’t personally know if there is any truth to this theory, but it sounds reasonable and I’m willing to bet Obama knew where to get good shit when he was growing up in Hawaii.",
"One reason is that growers have learned how to optimize the environment and nutrients to get better plants. "
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11h8i0 | why has such extreme corporate consolidation been able to happen in the past ~30 years? | I thought legislation like the Sherman Antitrust Act was supposed to keep things like [this](_URL_0_) from happening. Off the top of my head it also seems like the big consolidation in mobile phone providers and ISPs that has happened would be in violation of this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11h8i0/why_has_such_extreme_corporate_consolidation_been/ | {
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"I found the image you linked to pretty infuriating, so I didn't bother to decipher it.\n\nBut in general, no, antitrust law does not exist to prevent companies from getting big. It exists to prevent companies from engaging in anticompetitive behavior.\n\nThe whole topic of antitrust law is very big and complex, but the short version is this: natural monopolies are fine. If one company does something so well as to completely dominate the market and drive out all competitors, that's *fine.* That's not a bad thing. In fact it's a good thing, because if that one company is really doing so much better than their competitors, then the market is best served by those competitors dropping out.\n\nBut what's not fine is a monopoly that's achieved not through competition, but through other means, like unfair business practices or whatever. That's where the law steps in and says \"Nope,\" in the same way that a referee at a sporting event will stop play in case of a rules violation.\n\nThe Supreme Court really said it best — and most concisely — in their opinion in *Spectrum Sports v. McQuillan* in 1993. \"The purpose of the Act is not to protect businesses from the working of the market. It's to protect the public from failures of the market.\" Competition, including competition that results in market consolidation, is a good thing. What's bad is when somebody subverts the natural workings of the free market to gain a monopolistic position unfairly. *That's* the kind of thing the law prohibits. The law does not exist to punish the successful."
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1ywnvf | why does my stomach growl more in class than when im home all day if im starving at both places? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ywnvf/eli5why_does_my_stomach_growl_more_in_class_than/ | {
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"Your stomach can sense the stomachs of other people and has to show its dominance. So it makes loud growling noises to show that you are the alpha stomach and you are not to be messed with.\n\nAlso, your stomach will growl more when you are out on a date in a quite movie theater as a sort of mating call. Its a primal instinct.",
"It's probably because you hear the growl more often in class as it's more silent and boring (which means you'll notice feelings like hunger and thirst more easily). At home you're probably more engaged in an interesting activity which usually keeps you occupied enough to not notice the growling. "
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k5pto | gauss's law | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k5pto/eli5_gausss_law/ | {
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"Gauss made a lot of law, so do you mean the law with an electric charge?\n\nIt says that \"the electric flux through a closed surface is proportional to the charge enclosed in the surface\".\n\n**Flux**\n\nThe flux is how much electric field passes in the given area. \n\nSo, a first approximation could be E x Area. You can get better approximation dividing the area into more pieces (so, E x A1 + E x A2, where A1 + A2 = A). \n\nIf you continue long enough, you'll have a lot of very small areas. \nIn physics (and mathematics) the sum of a very large number of element is called \"integral\" (integral of E dA).\n\n**Electric charge**\n\nElectric charge is a basic properties of matter. It comes in two types: positive and negative. Like a magnet, two charges of the same type (positive and positive, negative with negative) will repel. Two charges of different kind will attract.\n\nElectric charges flowing in a wire create current (current, in fact, is measured as charges per time).\n\nElectric charge is measured in Coulomb.\n\n\n**The Law**\n\nGauss's law states that flux = Q / e0, where Q is the total electric charge and e0 is a constant (electric constant, in the vacuum is about 8.8 x 10^-12 F/m).",
"Gauss made a lot of law, so do you mean the law with an electric charge?\n\nIt says that \"the electric flux through a closed surface is proportional to the charge enclosed in the surface\".\n\n**Flux**\n\nThe flux is how much electric field passes in the given area. \n\nSo, a first approximation could be E x Area. You can get better approximation dividing the area into more pieces (so, E x A1 + E x A2, where A1 + A2 = A). \n\nIf you continue long enough, you'll have a lot of very small areas. \nIn physics (and mathematics) the sum of a very large number of element is called \"integral\" (integral of E dA).\n\n**Electric charge**\n\nElectric charge is a basic properties of matter. It comes in two types: positive and negative. Like a magnet, two charges of the same type (positive and positive, negative with negative) will repel. Two charges of different kind will attract.\n\nElectric charges flowing in a wire create current (current, in fact, is measured as charges per time).\n\nElectric charge is measured in Coulomb.\n\n\n**The Law**\n\nGauss's law states that flux = Q / e0, where Q is the total electric charge and e0 is a constant (electric constant, in the vacuum is about 8.8 x 10^-12 F/m)."
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j3xdp | the issue with 'grandfathered' unlimited mobile phone plans defaulting to tiered plans. | What is the deal? I see it all over reddit people being happy they signed up for a data plan earlier and they have an unlimited data plan that if anything is changed on their plan; it defaults and they are moved to the tiered mobile data plan. Are telecomm companies trying to phase cheap data out? What causes a grandfathered plan to turn into a metered plan? I assume this movement is adverse for consumers. Compared to cable companies, phone companies have been raping us data price wise forever. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j3xdp/eli5_the_issue_with_grandfathered_unlimited/ | {
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"Although it's sometimes difficult to think about this because it's so abstract and we never see physical representations of it, \"data\" in the sense of all the internet access you use from a smartphone is not an infinite resource that the mobile companies can send out to everyone in limitless amounts. There is a limit to the capacity they can provide, and as phones get ever more advanced and become ever more powerful at consuming larger amounts of data by transmitting it at faster and faster speeds, it becomes harder for them to meet that demand for data.\n\nAs an example, when Verizon first starting rolling out its much hyped 4G network this year, the first people to get on the networks with the earlier 4G smartphones were able to get blazing fast speeds, primarily because there were only a small number of people tapping into Verizon's capability to provide that 4G network. But as more and more people have been buying 4G phones and getting onto the network, the average data speed has slowed down a bit (though it's still quite fast compared to earlier non-4G phones) because more people are having to share that network.\n\nIn a sense, the telecom companies are looking to make money by introducing the tiered data plans. It kinda sucks because the phones are capable of accessing more data than ever before, yet now that they're being capped it kinda negates the bonus of having a phone that can stream hi-def videos smoothly when doing so uses up huge chunks of your limited data. So people are up in arms because they want to keep their unlimited data plans and the phone companies want (eventually) everyone to end up on tiered data plans that will make them more money and strain their networks less.\n\nAs for what causes someone who currently has an unlimited data plan to change to a tiered plan? It's different for every network I think. With Verizon at least, as long as you had a plan with unlimited data before July 7, 2011, you get to keep your unlimited data no matter what, as long as you remain on that plan. You can upgrade your smartphone, but you keep your data. If you transfer to a new plan however, or if you are a customer on another network and you want to sign up with Verizon, you'll be forced to buy one of the tiered data plans, and the old unlimited packages will never be offered to new customers again.\n\nedit:\n**TL;DR**\nIt depends on your carrier, but if you had an unlimited data plan before your carrier started rolling out tiered plans, you're usually able to keep it if you don't make any major changes to your plan (like switching your line from a family plan to a single person plan for example). But any major changes, or switching to another carrier from this point on means you'll be stuck with a tiered data plan.",
"Companies used to make money 'selling' text messages and call minutes. People got internet and used texting and calling less, and internet more. They had cheap deals, so the carriers were essentially losing money. Since people will continue calling less and less, they figured they need to up the data costs. So yes, they are trying to phase cheap data out- in the Netherlands, this starts properly in September."
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6uetx8 | when a person has scoliosis why is it so risky to re-arange each bone to it's proper direction via surgery? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6uetx8/eli5_when_a_person_has_scoliosis_why_is_it_so/ | {
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"The bones are not made of dough, you can't just bend them all back into shape. You can't take apart the spine and put it back together because the spinal cord runs down the middle, not to mention all of the muscles and ligaments that hold your back together so you can stand and bend and move and breath. \n\nIf you push them into a normal position, now there's nothing holding them there because all of the attached structures are also bent out of shape, so you need things like screws and rods and other mechanical fixtures."
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5fkgt5 | the constitution, art. 1, § 7 par. 2 | _URL_0_
Article 1, §7, bottom of paragraph 2.
"If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law."
Is this saying that the President can ignore a bill and it will become law 10 days later? Couldn't this be considered a loophole and abused? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5fkgt5/eli5_the_constitution_art_1_7_par_2/ | {
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"It basically states that if a President doesn't veto the law within 10 days of receiving it, he loses his chance to veto it... unless Congress isn't in session at the end of those 10 days (which means both the President and Congress are ignoring the bill).\n\nThis is very similar to the way the President can appoint people to the Supreme Court by himself if the Senate has a ten-day period where they don't meet.",
"If he signs a bill it becomes law. If he veto's a bill it does not. If he sits on it, and doesn't do anything for 10 days it also becomes law. There's nothing to abuse, he could have just signed it or vetoed it, and gotten either outcome he preferred.",
"This actually closes a loophole - without it, Congress could send a bill to the President for his signature, and he could just do nothing. It could sit there indefinitely, never becoming law.\n\nIf he vetoes it, then Congress can attempt to override his veto. If he had the option to sit on it indefinitely, Congress wouldn't get that option. It prevents a de facto veto power through black holing a bill.\n\nOut of all the powers I'd be worried about the President abusing, this is not high on the list."
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bkizvp | what makes water so special that its 1 ml in stp weighs exactly 1 gram? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bkizvp/eli5_what_makes_water_so_special_that_its_1_ml_in/ | {
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"You have it backwards. 1ml of Water isn't one gram by some crazy coincidence, the gram was **invented** to be the amount 1ml of water weighs, and all the rest of metric weight is based on that measurement",
"Because that's how the SI unit for mass was originally defined. The mass of a liter of water was called a kilogram."
]
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47bgvi | why is it that in the music industry, female pop stars tend to make so much more money than their male counterparts? | Here are some examples of female singers and their net worth (source: Bing)
* Madonna (800 mil)
* Celine Dion (630 mil)
* Mariah Carey(520 mil)
* Beyonce (350 mil)
... the list goes on and on
On the other hand, male pop stars seem to worth much less except for a few outliers.
* Jay Z (460 mil)
* Justin Timberlake (275 mil)
* Justin Brieber (200 mil)
Even such mega star as Bruno Mars is worth only 15 mil. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/47bgvi/eli5_why_is_it_that_in_the_music_industry_female/ | {
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"- Paul McCartney (800m)\n- Michael Jackson (600m)\n- Bono (600m)\n\nYou're comparing apples and oranges. Madonna, Celine Dion and Mariah Carey are decades-long international superstars. Jay Z, Justin Timberlake and Justin Bieber made music for less than a decade to largely American acclaim."
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10z8qg | why wasn't the continental us ever attacked in previous wars? | I learned today that a recon plane dropped a bomb in Oregon during WWII, but basically failed. Why hasn't the US been air raided at all? Seems like everyone was in WWII was except us. Are we too far out or what? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10z8qg/eli5_why_wasnt_the_continental_us_ever_attacked/ | {
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"We have the benefit of two very large oceans on each side of us. To attack the US, you have to get there first!",
"The continental US has been attacked several times.\n\nLook at the War of 1812.\n\nThere were incursions during the Mexican-American War.\n\nThough at sea, German U-boats sank a number of ships off the east coast and some in the Gulf of Mexico during WWII.\n\nThe Japanese captured a few islands near Alaska during the war, as well.\n\nOtherwise, there are two huge oceans and we've had peaceful neighbors. Take a look at how difficult - and expensive - it is to move troops and materiel over several thousand miles of sea. Further, anything coming over would be vulnerable for a very long time.",
" > Why hasn't the US been air raided at all?\n\nDuring WW2, the fighting was mostly happening in Europe. Because many of the enemy force's resources were being used to attack and defend easily accessed land targets, there wasn't much left over to mount a trans-oceanic invasion or large bombing run on the US. Add to that the fact that the US mainland is very large and defended by an equally large military, and any air raid would have almost certainly been ended at the cost of nearly all the enemy's bombers, fighter escorts, and a good portion of any carriers they were launched from. In subsequent years, craft detection has become much better, almost eliminating the opportunity for an air based attack. Even if an enemy force managed to get a bomber into US skies, the first bomb dropped would be a death warrant for the pilots, since the military would know what to look for. Military commanders aren't too keen on sending millions of dollars of tech into a situation they can't reasonably expect to return from.\n\n > Are we too far out or what?\n\nIn a sense, yes. In order for a hostile force with enough firepower to reach the mainland, they would have to cross oceans, or fly over population centers in neighboring countries. This means that the chance of being detected prematurely is much greater than for many other countries. It might be different if we were neighbored by countries with a strong military force and a reason to use it against us. But as of right now, our neighboring countries are peaceful from a military standpoint."
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300e47 | what is misogyny? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/300e47/eli5_what_is_misogyny/ | {
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"Misogyny (/mɪˈsɒdʒɪni/) is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Misogyny can be manifested in numerous ways, including sexual discrimination, denigration of women, violence against women, and sexual objectification of women.\n\n-_URL_0_\n\nGyn like gynaecologist.\n\nIf you think it is ok for men to sleep around but not women then you would be a misogynist\n\n\n\n\n",
"Literally, misogyny is a 'hatred of women' and is the counterpart to misandry. As it is more commonly used, it's an insult directed at people who are deemed to oppose various feminist political policies.",
"The dictionary definition is hatred of women.\n\nIn practice, it means disrespect, harassment, discrimination, objectification, and violence against women."
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bny5yc | how are horses that effective when charging into a line of soldiers? (such as in got) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bny5yc/eli5_how_are_horses_that_effective_when_charging/ | {
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"You can get a lot more momentum with a horse, so breaking through a line of people is much easier. \nImagine linking arms with a line of people and running at another group who is doing the same. Now imagine a line of people against a car. \n\nHorses also give you a height advantage, however sleight. This also comes with some disadvantages as well",
"1. They're very fast.\n\n2. They're very heavy\n\n3. Mass x acceleration = force. There's a LOT of force behind a horse.\n\n4. If it runs you down, you're in for a lot of broken stuff inside you.\n\n5. If you get hit with a weapon, all the force is focused on the tip of that weapon. You dead.\n\n6. Even if you spear the horse, all that mass and speed is coming down on you.\n\n7. They can outrun you. Less force due to your speed being subtracted from the horse's when they hit you, but you still dead. And probably ashamed.\n\n8. They put armor on the horse and everything is even worse for you",
"Got has no realism as far as tactics. Calvary in tight quarters with the golden co spearman wouldve been a slaughter.",
"From my limited understanding calvary is more about flanking your opponent and coming in from the side or the rear. Charging into the the line isnt such a good idea.",
"Horse charges, like in GOT were almost never used unless they were heavy knights. Horses were often personal equipment, bought with a person's own money... gonna buy a new horse after every fight? No. Horses were more often used to outmaneuver or intimidate an enemy. It was far more effective to ride around them than charge through. Warhorses were trained to charge Though.",
"Aside from the obvious mass advantage, imagine being a soldier on the front lines of a battle. You may be a professional battle-hardened soldier, but if 1000 horses are charging you, you're going to be intimidated. This will make some around you or you screw up and break formation, have a spear in the wrong place, etc.",
"they're not, which is why they generally weren't used that way. not to say it *never* happened, heavy cavalry existed, but they were extravagant. if you could field a group of plated horses and riders, you probably could have won that battle cheaper. \n\nthe typical role of cavalry was to harass the enemy army. we like to think of ancient battles as 2 sides lining up and killing each other, but the real battle took place over weeks, months, sometimes even *years.* the main body of the army was fed, literally, by hordes of smaller units that would raid food stores, capture wells, and secure defensible positions before it arrived. cavalry are excellent in this context, with the speed to respond quickly to clandestine enemy action, as well as the inability of a small force to rally a robust spear wall. \n\ncavalry also typically fielded ranged weapons. spears and bows with the added speed of a running horse would rail *through* a person from outside their reach. even the lance was generally aimed to the side of the horse, so the enemy could be hit and the cavalry move away before they can respond.\n\non a major battlefield, like you often see in movies, cavalry were still mostly harassment units. they could respond quickly to battlefield conditions and apply extra pressure at minimal cost. they could also be the first to respond to a break in enemy lines. creating a great many horrific accounts of troops being run down by cavalry, but the part you don't hear is how their defensive formation was broken to allow for that."
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348zz5 | japanese and pornography | How did the Japanese get so in to pornography? A lot of adult actresses are from Japan. So how does a country who places great emphasis on honor and not disgracing your family become this country with a shit ton of adult actresses and weird porn fetish videos. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/348zz5/eli5japanese_and_pornography/ | {
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"Its a combination of three things. (although this isn't the sort of thing that can be explained like a science. It's always going to come down to someones opinion, not fact.)\n\nThe first thing is that Japan is the only place to have always resisted colonization by the west. They stayed true to their roots and never fully accepted western ideals. Not to say that they haven't been influenced by the west, just that they never fully bowed down. (It's possible that after the surrender in WWII they did, but that was generations later than other places).\nBecause of this Japan will always have a different take on things, and seem very exotic to the west.\n\nThe second thing is their fairly conservative culture. People are not as free to express them selves whit the social constrictions put on them by the society around them in japan. Once again this has exceptions. Peoples dark desires manifest themselves in other, more strange ways when this happens.\n\nThe third thing is Japan adopted the technology and culture of the internet much more willingly and quickly than most other places in the world. So all their wired shit has a head start on our wired shit.\n\nThese things combined make Japan seem like a very strange place to a foreigner."
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2blpht | how can i build up a good credit score without racking up debt? | College senior here. I'm pretty frugal with my spending and so I'd planned on never needing a credit card, but after hearing horror stories about not being able to rent an apartment with a good credit score, I got a credit card. I haven't used it yet though. My plan is to pay off every purchase I make with it in full as soon as possible.
Would I get any score here? How do I get a good score? Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2blpht/eli5_how_can_i_build_up_a_good_credit_score/ | {
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"Regular (and responsible) use of credit and time. Keep your utilization low (i.e. your balance versus your credit limit) and make sure you pay on time and make sure you use it. \n\nFor example, I have a couple of my regular monthly bills that auto-bill to my credit card and I can just pay it off right away. All it takes is good discipline.\n\nThe other things I see that count against people are credit-card hopping (when you sign up for a new card for the promotional rate, transfer your balance, and close the old card). The age of your accounts matters. Also, avoid having credit inquiries done too often. Your own and promotional ones don't count against you but too many inquiries for new lines of credit can affect your credit score.",
"This is a good start. You can search the internet for best ways to build credit. But conceptually, here are the top items that build good credit:\n\n1. Consistent usage and on-time payment. This applies to credit cards, auto loans, mortgages - basically any time you borrow money.\n\n2. Longevity. The longer you maintain those good behaviors, the better your score.\n\n3. Debt-to-credit ratio. Having lots of credit available is great. Using a large portion of it at all times is not. Lenders like to see that you've got the ability to borrow a lot, but they don't actually want you to borrow it all the time.\n\nYou're off to a good start. Once you establish good habits, don't be afraid to get another credit card or two. But don't go overboard.",
"Pay for an item or two on the credit card each month. Pay off the credit card on time before the deadline. Repeat. "
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370lbp | how did america win the revolutionary war even though they were massively outmanned, outgunned, and outfunded? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/370lbp/eli5_how_did_america_win_the_revolutionary_war/ | {
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"France and Spain. There were more French soldiers at Yorktown than American. Our allies turned it into a world war, and did most of the winning. The US really only won Saratoga and Yorktown, and this was just enough to get the French involved and have them win our independence for us."
]
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24ztg6 | what's the difference between a cold, a virus, and a flu? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24ztg6/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_a_cold_a_virus/ | {
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"A virus is a piece of genetic material wrapped in a coating that helps it penetrate cells and insert itself into the cell's genome. This often makes the organism sick; many diseases are caused by viruses. Viruses are *sort of* like bacteria, except they are much simpler. In fact, viruses are not technically alive, because they don't carry out any normal life functions. They can only reproduce by infecting a living cell and using it as a factory to make more viruses.\n\nThe common cold is a disease caused by a particular type of virus (rhinovirus), and the flu is a different disease caused by a different type of virus (influenza). ",
"Virus: a protein capsule containing genetic information (either DNA or RNA) that invades a host cell and coopts the cell's reproductive mechanisms to force it to produce more viruses.\n\nCold: a common term for a collection of symptoms such as sneezing, coughing, sore throat, nasal congestion, etc. The common cold often caused by a group of related viruses call [rhinoviruses](_URL_1_), but can also be caused by [others](_URL_0_).\n\nFlu: Short for influenza, this is a disease that can share many symptoms with the cold, but may also include fever, and the flu is specifically caused by [influenza viruses](_URL_2_). While flu symptoms can often be just as mild as cold symptoms, influenza can also be quite lethal, with an [estimated 500,000 deaths worldwide each year](_URL_2_#Epidemiology). "
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40u79o | why does a car falling off a jack and onto a person underneath kill them, but when my ankle got stuck under a tire for a few moments i only got a moderate sprain and contusion? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40u79o/eli5_why_does_a_car_falling_off_a_jack_and_onto_a/ | {
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"Are you asking why a half ton car falling on your head or chest is often fatal, but the same car falling on your foot may not be fatal? "
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2yibe5 | how can "supplements" (vitamins, protein shakes, etc...) be believed to have any effect at all if you can't use them as a primary source for nutrients? | I hope the question is posed clear enough. Just in case i'll elaborate here.
Vitamins and protein shakes and the like have always been said to be a supplement and should never be used in place of real food. My question is, why not? If the nutrients in them are there but can't be used alone, how can we be certain they can be used at all? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yibe5/eli5_how_can_supplements_vitamins_protein_shakes/ | {
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"Macronutrients. Vitamins contain none of them and meal replacement supplements don't do a great job of providing them. In addition, your body needs some bulk to the food it gets. Fiber is important and other non-digestible materials help keep all that beneficial bacteria in your gut happy and healthy. \"Supplements\" are also prone to overmarketing and spurious claims and it would be foolish to base your diet on something that you aren't even quite sure what's in it."
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c1szay | how do people (not in cars) get stuck on train tracks? | I've seen stories about people who get their body stuck in train tracks and can't get free and end up losing limbs or dying. How does this manage to happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c1szay/eli5_how_do_people_not_in_cars_get_stuck_on_train/ | {
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"I suspect you're misinterpreting the stories. \n\nIt feasibly could be possible that someone could get their foot jammed between a rail and a tie and not be able to extricate themselves, but I imagine that is extremely rare. \n\nWhen people not in vehicles are killed by trains it's almost always because either \n\n1. they were trying to cross the tracks in front of a train and misjudged the trains speed\n1. they were trying to stand too close to the train as it passed\n1. they were between two trains going in opposite directions on parallel tracks (that one's a particularly brutal variation on #2)\n1. they were incapacitated on or too near the tracks for some reason, e.g intoxication\n1. some combination of the above, e.g. intoxication can certainly help lead to 1-3"
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5sz7wt | why is peanut butter half the price of actual peanuts if it takes more effort to produce it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5sz7wt/eli5_why_is_peanut_butter_half_the_price_of/ | {
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"According to [this web site](_URL_0_), it's much cheaper to make peanut butter at home than to buy it ready-made, which would go against your premise.\n\nBut then I found [this site](_URL_1_) which backs up your premise, and showing it costs a lot *more* to make peanut butter at home.\n\nSo why the discrepancy? The second link might shed some light on it:\n\n > Note: I used all organic ingredients for the homemade version and was somewhat limited by what was available at Peapod. If you have access to bulk bins or un-shelled peanuts, you can likely bring the cost of the peanuts down by quite a bit...\n\n > I feel sure that more cost-effective sources of peanuts can be found at local markets.\n\nSo it seems like the answer is to buy un-shelled peanuts, in bulk. You're paying a premium when you buy peanuts because they've been shelled and packed into small packages. This a) pushes the cost of manufacture up, and perhaps more importantly b) means we are prepared to pay more for the convenience of having them this way.",
"The price of an item doesn't have to be directly tied to the cost to produce it; often times a business is more interested in the price customers are willing to pay for an item. If customers are willing to pay more for unprocessed peanuts than they are for the equivalent amount of peanut butter, then a company will gladly charge more for the peanuts even if they don't cost more to produce.\n\n(An example of this came from a previous thread about child rates at movie theaters -- it costs the same to have a child in your theater as it does an adult, but they still charge less because families may not be willing to pay full price for all their children.)\n\nThere may be other issues such as peanut quality specific to peanut butter as well, but I don't want to speculate on those. I know more about pricing than I do about food processing.",
"You assume the peanuts that go into a jar of peanut butter are the same ones that go into a bag of peanuts. They're not. \n\nThe food that you buy whole (e.g. peanuts, tomatoes, potatoes, strawberries) are the best of the crop. The food that you buy processed into some other form (e.g. peanut butter, tomato sauce, tater tots, strawberry jam) are the small or bruised or misshapen or damaged parts of the crop. The appearance or condition doesn't matter because it's not going to retain that form when processed anyway. \n\nPeople will pay more for nicely formed, pretty produce. So the stuff you buy whole in the supermarket (or _lightly_ processed, like a jar of roasted nuts) is more expensive than the produce that goes into highly processed foods (where highly processed = it doesn't retain any of it's original shape or form). ",
"I buy peanuts in bulk to make PB at home, and it's way cheaper than store bought PB. But look up how cheap peanuts are when you start buying them by the ton. In the quantities PB manufacturers buy them at, they're almost free.",
"If you were to do an extensive cost analysis I'm confident you'd discover it's more expensive to make your own. I'm not sure if the first website takes into consideration the cost of food processor or grinder to reduce to raw products into butter. You'll need a decent processor to accomplish this. Most of the proper ones will cost around $300. If you want to make oil free butter you can use a Vitamix, but those are pricey (I bought my wife one for Christmas $520). Not to mention your time shelling and roasting peanuts when you could be doing something else. \n\n So if you're ignoring the food processor cost and time you might get close to breaking even with just buying the finished product. I did a quick cost analysis on raw products that I use to make my own PB. I use 32 oz Planter's unsalted roasted peanuts, 1.5 oz honey, .5 oz iodized salt, and 6 oz of vegetable oil. The retail cost before taxes through Google gave me $12.07 for the above recipe. If you break the recipe by cost/recipe it comes to about $5.75 for 32 oz finished PB. You can buy two 16 jars of JIF for $4.96. At a $0.79 different it's not much, but it's still cheaper to buy the finished product. If you only count the cost of the larger quantity ingredients once, you're first recipe is $12.07 plus the processor and your next seven recipes are $5 or the cost of just the peanuts.\n\nI make it for a few reasons: I try to use better ingredients so I at least feel like I'm eating healthier products. In my opinion my recipe tastes better than store bought (I mean way way better). My kids love to help me make the recipe so I enjoy that. I can make a crap load of PB very quickly and it stores very well in the fridge. I use it in all kinds of recipes and it makes those recipes even better. \n\nTLDR: Store bought is cheaper by $.079 cents per 32oz if you don't count the food processor. ",
"It's because they can use any peanut to make peanut butter, regardless of cosmetic flaws, or size. Actual peanuts, usually have some kind of quality control for the nicer looking peanuts, or size. It's a grading process. When they harvest peanuts, they determine based on size, and quality, what's what. I literally live in the middle of a peanut field in Virginia, and lease the property to peanut farmers to pay the personal property tax.",
"Long story short, because they replace the peanut oil with other plant oils. Peanut oil sells for a lot of money so they remove the peanut oil and replace it with a cheaper oil like linseed. The peanut butter tastes pretty much the same and they get the extra profit from selling the peanut oil. The increased profit from selling the oil, combined with the fact that ugly, broken and deformed peanuts that wouldn't sell very well as whole nuts (aka cheap peanuts) are used allows them to sell the peanut butter for cheap.\n\nThere is a downside for people with allergies. Because it's not always clear what oil was used to replace the peanut oil some people with allergies have to avoid peanut products because they are allergic to some oils even though they aren't allergic to peanuts.",
"I actually work for a peanut butter manufacturer and am a roaster supervisor. There are a lot of different kinds of peanuts and a major factor when making peanut butter is the aflatoxin levels in the peanuts. How you sort the peanuts is a major factor into what peanut lots you can use for the final product. There are many many more factors that go into it. The color of the roasted product, the viscosity, the quality as far as the aflatoxin specifications which differs based on if you are making an EU product or domestic. Shits complicated. "
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1ti9x1 | wall of sound | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ti9x1/eli5wall_of_sound/ | {
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"Phil Spector came up with this idea that there should not be any silent parts in a song and that the more sounds he could stuff into a record the more powerful it would be. From what I read they would grab anyone hanging around the studio to shake tambourines or maracas etc. to add to the professional musicians playing. The result was (for the time) a new sound with a lot of power, a \"wall\" of sound. if you listen to songs he produced you will hear it better than I can explain it.\n\nInteresting note - Sonny Bono was an assistant of Spectors, if you listen to Sonny and Cher songs you will hear that same affect"
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1nlh6t | how kids learn to talk ? | Yeah, it's been on my mind for some time now and I didn't understood much from google.
Also how do they figure out what "yes/no" means and stuff like this ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nlh6t/eli5how_kids_learn_to_talk/ | {
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"From basic caregiver/parent interactions. It usually starts with basic sound forming or \"cooing\" and mumbles to eventually mentally and physically developing enough to start forming words. By age 3, most kids will know and understand around 500 words. At around age 5 it spikes to around 5000 words. \n\nMy own personal 2 cents is why I believe it is so important to talk to your baby NON stop about everything. When you are driving around town, point out everything you can from the RED stop sign to the brown DOG. Babies are listening to everything you say.\n",
"Language is a learned behavior, and this learning occurs through context. "
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3u2bbv | how does one nation's pilot warn another nation's pilot they've violated a nation's airspace when they speak two different languages? | From a BBC article this morning about the Russian jet shot down on the Turkish-Syrian border:
"Turkish military officials said its F-16s had fired on an unidentified aircraft after warning it 10 times in the space of five minutes about violating Turkish airspace."
How did the Turkish F-16s communicate the allegeded violation to the Russians? Do they speak Russian? Is there an international phrase for this? Why would the Russian's heed a warning from a language they don't understand? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3u2bbv/eli5how_does_one_nations_pilot_warn_another/ | {
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"English is the international language of air travel. All pilots should have at least a minimal knowledge of English if they are operating internationally.\n\nCountries that know they may come into conflict will also have air controllers ready who are trained in foreign languages and can issue commands in the offending pilot's native language.\n\nAll that said, a missile lock warning and lots of angry shouting on the radio are all most people need to determine that they have seriously fucked up.",
"Several things:\n\n1. In areas where likely violators are known, there probably are going to be radio operators who speak the invaders' language.\n\n2. Failing that, most pilots understand English, as it is spoken at many, many airports (by traffic controllers, etc), regardless of the nationality of the airport.\n\n3. If you can't get past a language barrier, you can always fire warning shots (or lock onto the plane with radar-based armaments, which the invaders' countermeasure systems will detect), or you can send up planes of your own to get near the invader(s) and menace them. You wouldn't think that would happen often, but it totally happens PLENTY often. Situations crop up where rival aircraft will make increasingly aggressive and reckless moves toward one another, along with things like rolling over to show that they are carrying missiles, etc. \n\nIt's a pretty good way to buy yourself into a mid-air collision or a hot-headed jackass firing without orders, and then you've got a war. It sucks.",
"There are international rules regarding everything when it comes to air traffic. Chances are, the Russian pilots did speak English.\n\nHowever, there are also [established signals between aircraft] (_URL_0_) you'd learn in your pilot training.\n\nI'd assume the Turkish pilots used the \"you're being intercepted, follow me\" rocking of the wings.",
"Well English is the most common language used in aviation like airlines and privet pilots. Now that doesn't mean every fighter pilot is trained to speak it be cause it's not cost effective to do so we don't train our fighter pilots to talk to other pilots in there native language's we train them to fight... So one thing that military aircraft have is radar lock warning systems that beep very loud in your ear if it senses radar lock so like a warning shoot in airplane language \nBut it's your choice if your going to leave the airspace as fast as you can to friendly airspace \"bugging out\" or fight or be forced down by the Air Force of the nations airspace... So it could of been any reasons why they shoot him down, war is crazy that way. "
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1tx0hz | why is blackmail called blackmail? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tx0hz/why_is_blackmail_called_blackmail/ | {
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"In Middle English 'male' meant tribute which itself was derived from the Old English 'mal' which meant a lawsuit or an agreement. Black of course tends to refer to things which are seen as bad, shady, etc. So it's a shady form of tribute. ",
"Hi there,\n\nYour post has been removed from ELI5. This is not exactly a 'conceptual' issue, which is what we try to specialise in. Plus, it has been attracting some fairly inflammatory, salubrious comments, so - regrettably - our best option is to kill it altogether.\n\nThe answer has already been explained, but if you want further discussion, you might want to try /r/AskReddit."
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d9bffa | why is it that when you shut your eyes really tight, dull amorphous shapes cloud your field of vision? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d9bffa/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_you_shut_your_eyes/ | {
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"Not a scientist, but I believe the pressure stimulates the color and light comes in your eye and tricks them into 'seeing' nothing",
"**Please read this entire message**\n\n---\n\nYour submission has been removed for the following reason(s):\n\n* ELI5 requires that you search the sub for your topic before posting.\n\nThere are absolutely no exceptions to this rule. \n\nUsers will either find a thread that meets their needs or find that their question might qualify for an exception to rule 7.\n\nPlease see this [wiki entry](_URL_3_) for more details (Rule 7).\n\nHere is a link to the most recent thread: _URL_1_\n\n\n\n---\nIf you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](_URL_2_) first. If you still feel the removal should be reviewed, please [message the moderators.](_URL_0_?)"
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2d7avv | what exactly does "not microwave safe" mean when it comes to dishware and why do dishes marked this way heat up when microwaved? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2d7avv/eli5_what_exactly_does_not_microwave_safe_mean/ | {
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"Microwaves cook via microwave radiation. The object absorbs the energy, and the molecules rotate and hit each other, causing heat.\n\nDifferent molecules have different compositions which sometimes causes them to react more aggressively when exposed to the radiation. Others are resistant to influence of the radiation, which makes them \"safe\".\n\nCertain things like glass and specific rocks can experience a \"runaway\" reaction due to the molecular structures involved, in which they are heated to extreme temperatures. Rocks can be reduced to molten lava and glass can be caused to \"reflow\".\n\n---------\nOn a basic level, it's like magnetism. Certain objects resist it, some are reactive to it, while others are extremely influenced by it. Entirely based on the composition of the object.\n"
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ljxew | why should fiscal conservatives have any interest in creating more jobs? | Isn't the main point of their argument that the market should be left to its own devices and will regulate itself for the better of society? Isn't the drive to artificially "create jobs" contrary to their thesis? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ljxew/eli5_why_should_fiscal_conservatives_have_any/ | {
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"This is really going to be tough to tackle while conforming to the \"no bias\" rule, because we're talking about *opinions* here.\n\nBut in general, fiscal conservatism is the school of political thought which says that a government should do *as little as necessary*. This is as opposed to fiscal liberalism, which is the school of political thought which says that a government should do *as much as possible*.\n\nBoth schools of thought agree unequivocally that government is the entity that regulates economic growth, and that in a stagnant or contracting economy government's job is to stimulate growth, while in an over-growing economy government's job is to moderate growth.\n\nNaturally, the devil is in the details. Different people are not guaranteed to agree on whether a particular economy at a particular time needs stimulating or moderating. Different people are not guaranteed to agree that a particular proposed course of action that's intended to stimulate or moderate growth will actually be effective in doing so. Different people are not guaranteed to agree that a particular proposed course of action, even if effective, is the *best possible* course of action to achieve a particular goal.\n\nSo really, there's not a lot to say here. There is no debate in the spectrum between fiscal conservatism and fiscal liberalism about the *role* of government in the economy. There is significant debate every single day, to the point of exhaustion about the state of any particular economy, whether anything needs doing, whether anything can be done, and what exactly should be done.",
"So this is the sort of ELI5 question that drives me nuts: there's a simple, straightforward answer, but to be honest will offend people get counted as \"bias.\"\n\nSo here's the answer: they *do* believe the market should be left alone. But they know the voters won't accept \"do nothing\" as an answer. So they created a placebo jobs bill. \n\nThe bill is designed to look, to an uninformed voter, like it might be intended to boost jobs. But the stuff in the bill is so minor that it couldn't possibly have any significant effect on the economy one way or the other. That's what I mean when I say \"placebo.\"\n\nIt's their strategy to get the country to continue doing nothing: basically, get the country to choose the placebo prescription.\n",
"This is really going to be tough to tackle while conforming to the \"no bias\" rule, because we're talking about *opinions* here.\n\nBut in general, fiscal conservatism is the school of political thought which says that a government should do *as little as necessary*. This is as opposed to fiscal liberalism, which is the school of political thought which says that a government should do *as much as possible*.\n\nBoth schools of thought agree unequivocally that government is the entity that regulates economic growth, and that in a stagnant or contracting economy government's job is to stimulate growth, while in an over-growing economy government's job is to moderate growth.\n\nNaturally, the devil is in the details. Different people are not guaranteed to agree on whether a particular economy at a particular time needs stimulating or moderating. Different people are not guaranteed to agree that a particular proposed course of action that's intended to stimulate or moderate growth will actually be effective in doing so. Different people are not guaranteed to agree that a particular proposed course of action, even if effective, is the *best possible* course of action to achieve a particular goal.\n\nSo really, there's not a lot to say here. There is no debate in the spectrum between fiscal conservatism and fiscal liberalism about the *role* of government in the economy. There is significant debate every single day, to the point of exhaustion about the state of any particular economy, whether anything needs doing, whether anything can be done, and what exactly should be done.",
"So this is the sort of ELI5 question that drives me nuts: there's a simple, straightforward answer, but to be honest will offend people get counted as \"bias.\"\n\nSo here's the answer: they *do* believe the market should be left alone. But they know the voters won't accept \"do nothing\" as an answer. So they created a placebo jobs bill. \n\nThe bill is designed to look, to an uninformed voter, like it might be intended to boost jobs. But the stuff in the bill is so minor that it couldn't possibly have any significant effect on the economy one way or the other. That's what I mean when I say \"placebo.\"\n\nIt's their strategy to get the country to continue doing nothing: basically, get the country to choose the placebo prescription.\n"
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o0sl7 | clouds | I'm talking about weather clouds, not computing clouds.
-How do they work?
-What are they made of?
-Different types and how they form?
-The illusion of "floating" in air?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/o0sl7/eli5_clouds/ | {
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"Depending on temperature and humidity of the air, tiny droplets will either grow larger, or they'll evaporate. Clouds are not \"water vapor\" since vapor is invisible. Many clouds are just like fog, only formed at high altitude. The highest clouds are made of ice crystals rather than droplets.\n\nOpen a bottle of cola. See the fog that appears in the bottle neck? That's a genuine cloud. When you let out the gas pressure, the gas temperature dropped, which caused water to condense. All the tiny droplets grew on existing seed particles.\n\nBut you can't create these cloud-droplets from nothing, since nano-size droplets always evaporate automatically. So you need \"cloud seeds.\" These are often tiny salt grains from ocean spray, or fine dirt, or carbon from forest fires, or even droplets of acid from polluting industries.\n\nClouds do float. The bits of water or ice are heavy, and they'd make the cloud descend. But condensation releases heat energy, so growing clouds are nearly always slightly warmer than surrounding air. They're buoyant like balloons, and their enlarging warm droplets creates updrafts.\n"
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5v1zgd | how and why are tech companies rated so highly on their valuations? | Regardless of whether or not the start up really does live up to that valuation, what is going on? Why are there so many of these "unicorn" companies all over the US and the globe entire?
Thanks in advance. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5v1zgd/eli5_how_and_why_are_tech_companies_rated_so/ | {
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"Part of it is because when a company raises money, they want to have a higher value each time they raise money as this signals that the company is growing.This helps existing investors build up value by investing early and with continuing investment. Each time this company runs out of money, they have to raise more to run. As the company is growing (and burning money), they need more and more and more. Eventually this can drive valuations very high, to unsustainable levels in some cases, as the companies need piles of money to then burn \n\nSource: work in venture capital \n\nEdit, re-read the title and didn't like my answer. Another reason is due to the influx of international capital as large firms seek yield. This is a huge problem with Chinese investors specifically. They often want to get their money out of China and are willing to pay outrageous prices in order to deploy capital in American companies. Then because existing investors don't want to lose out on the ownership (certain provisions can essentially make it pay to play). You see this a lot in tech due to the investment duration (life sciences takes forever, 15-20 years sometimes). Most funds have a 10 year life span so it can make investing in LS deals harder for them. So you have all of this money flowing in, that has to be invested, and tech companies tend to be easier to invest in (LS gets complicated). And that drives up the valuations... you have people bidding up the prices on shares when the companies are raising money. This ties into the above. Cheers ",
"It's just future earnings - there's no magic except compound growth. Company ABC has P earnings, and with growth G it will have earnings of P x (1 + G)^10 in ten years. You can see how for very high growth rates, the valuation skyrockets."
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2r8g81 | we eat solids, drink liquids, but can we use gas as a food source? | Are there any examples of a gas being used as a source of calories? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2r8g81/eli5_we_eat_solids_drink_liquids_but_can_we_use/ | {
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"Technically, yes. But there are issues associated with it. \nUsually, you breathe gas into your lungs, not your stomach. \nIt also needs to stay in your stomach long enough to be digested. \nNeedless to say, vapourised foods are stupidly hot. etc. ",
"all caloric calculations are based on the assumption of the availability of adequate oxygen so it could be argued it is part of the energy creation process.\n\nbut otherwise no ",
"For the record, nourishment-wise, you mostly drink solids too... The liquid part is a lubricant and delivery agent among many other roles, think water....",
"TL;DR: You might be able to get a small amount of chemical energy from inhaling alcohol.\n\nThis is a more interesting question than most are giving it credit for. The macromolecules from which we get energy (carbohydrates, protein, fat) are in solid or liquid form. Is there any way to obtain chemical energy through a gas? Large organic molecules are usually liquid or solid, since the molecules generally interact with each other through various non-covalent bonds. I can't think of any sugar, carbohydrate, or protein that could be vaporized and absorbed intact, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. As for lipids (fats), that's a broad and nebulously defined group of molecules, but the usual dietary form of fatty acids and triglycerides are not easily vaporized as far as I know. However, ethanol (and maybe other alcohols) are easily vaporized, easily absorbed into the blood through the lungs, and can be metabolized by the liver to yield ATP (alcohol has calories). I think that technically qualifies as an affirmative to your question, though I can't see any practical application of it."
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4xd7n5 | what's really happening to your body during a "charley horse"? also, where did the term derive from? | When i sleep, I often wake up to an extreme cramping in my left calf, intense enough to draw tears. When it's over, it's usually not really over and my leg continues to try to cramp up through the night. I can feel the muscle stay tense for most of the next day. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xd7n5/eli5_whats_really_happening_to_your_body_during_a/ | {
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"Where the name came from: A 1907 Washington Post story, found by the American Dialect Society, stated that “charley horse” was used in reference to pitcher Charley “Old Hoss” Radbourne who often suffered with cramps during games in the 1880s.\n\nJust about everyone gets a charley horse in their legs or feet once in a great while. Stretching and moving the calf awkwardly can cause the spasm that generates this pain for you. I can't shed too much light of the specific muscles that are involved, but I am more responding because you said you experience them very frequently.\n\nIf you experience very frequent charley horses, it's possible there is an underlying condition.\n\nVia Wikipedia: \"These muscle cramps can have many possible causes directly resulting from high or low pH or substrate concentrations in the blood, including hormonal imbalances, low levels of magnesium, potassium or calcium, dehydration, side effects of medication, or, more seriously, diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and neuropathy. They are also a common complaint during pregnancy.\"\n\nI haven't had a bad charley horse in a few years. I've come close a few times, and managed to stop stretching and relax the calf muscle before it got too bad. Like I said, if you feel that you have them more than normal (more than once a month in my opinion) it wouldn't hurt to bring the issue up with your doctor to rule out anything sinister."
]
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5qx2qn | what is synchronicity and the concept of collective consciousness | Title, Much appreciated. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qx2qn/eli5_what_is_synchronicity_and_the_concept_of/ | {
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"Synchronicity is the idea that there is no such thing as a coincidence, the universe has an order and meaning behind everything.\n\nThe collective unconscious is the idea that, at the bedrock of our minds, is a universal shared set of symbols that are innate and shared with everyone.\n\nThere's no rational scientific reason to believe either of these things."
]
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20btew | if money is man made, and so is the economy, why can't we just reset everything when something like the recession happens? | Or if not reset it, change something in order to set it right again? It always seems to be treated as some kind of natural disaster that we just have to try and live through and treat with budget cuts and stuff.
EDIT - I'm not suggesting the economy isn't real. But I don't understand why it seems to be completely immune to any kind of intervention outside of its own system. 'Reset' might be the wrong choice of words in this case. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20btew/eli5_if_money_is_man_made_and_so_is_the_economy/ | {
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"What do you mean by \"reset it\"?\n\nIf people knew that on a whim everything they've ever worked for could just be reset why would they even bother working or trying to accumulate stuff or money, or security?\n\nJust because something doesn't exist without human intervention doesn't mean it isn't real. it's absolutely real.",
"First, let's distinguish between \"arbitrary\" and \"man made\". If something is arbitrary, it has no real meaning or value one way or the other. Distinguish that from \"man made,\" which simply means that humans were responsible for it.\n\nThe thing with currency is that yes, it is man made, but it is only partially arbitrary. The reason that a single USD is worth about a hundred JPY but only about two thirds of one EUR is arbitrary: countries are free to prefer issuing currency in higher or lower denominations, and it doesn't really mean anything.\n\nBut *all* currencies are intended to *represent* something which is. . . less arbitrary, i.e., value. Value is weird, and it's pretty well accepted that there is no \"universal store of value,\" which would be a good/material against which everything else can be measured. People who like the gold standard think that gold is such a thing, but it really isn't. Prices go up and down all the time.\n\nSo the thing of it is that people are concerned about currency only to the extent that it represents real value to them. If the Federal Reserve decided tomorrow that it was going to completely re-value the USD such that $1.00 in today's dollars is worth $100 in tomorrow's dollars, no one would care all *that* much, because the total value of the dollars that everyone has wouldn't change. You'd change the numbers, but not what the numbers represent.\n\nBut what you're talking about is arbitrarily setting *values* for things. That's something that no one, no government, *nobody* has proven able to do effectively. People want what they want, and they'll pay for it whatever they're willing to pay for it, and telling them that the price is something different doesn't really fly. Set the price too low and you get shortages. Set the price too high and you get a black market. People have expectations about what they have, what they want, and what they're willing to pay for things, and these expectations are extraordinarily difficult to fight.\n\nAt root, the economy is basically just a system for the allocation of physical stuff. That means that at some level, we are not able to just wave a magic wand and have things be the way we want. There is a finite amount of physical stuff, it takes work to make it, and it takes work to move it around. No one can do anything about those things."
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1rbt3f | why does the definition of "cool" change? why do fads exist? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rbt3f/eli5_why_does_the_definition_of_cool_change_why/ | {
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"It changes because the \"cool\" thing is no longer a novel concept. People often want to have the newest technology/fashion/etc, and so when seemingly *everyone* has the same thing, it stops being cool. \n \nTrends come back for the same reason - for example, neon was pretty popular in the 90s, then everyone wore it, so it went out of style, then no-one was wearing it, so it became a \"new\", trendy thing again."
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413b4v | what the hell is going on in europe with the migrants and mass sexual assault? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/413b4v/eli5_what_the_hell_is_going_on_in_europe_with_the/ | {
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"Thanks man. Hopefully they don't remove your post. I couldn't find the ELI5 answer in the searches either.",
"The refugees are from Muslim majority countries. Their culture treats women in a very restrictive way and non Muslims (infidels in their terminology) are fair game for rape and molestation. All the European women are considered infidels, and since their clothing is more revealing the Muslim immigrants attack them. Think of this as a clash of civilizations. This situation is far too complex for an ELI5.",
"Europe allowed in millions of people who do not hold western values and believe women should be treated like dirt. The predictable happened. ",
"Unchecked mass migration, very little integration or adoption of local values/attitudes, and liberal hand wringing preventing anyone from saying anything or making the connection for fear of being branded a racist"
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8tqr8j | what causes the rhythmic beating of helicopter blades in motion? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8tqr8j/eli5_what_causes_the_rhythmic_beating_of/ | {
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"Vortexes!\n\nA wing moving through the air creates high pressure below it and low pressure above it. At the tip of the wing, the high-pressure air from below spills sideways and swirls around to the top of the wing, creating a [wingtip vortex](_URL_0_).\n\nThe rotors of a helicopter are just like the wings of a plane, so they have wingtip vortices too. But unlike a plane where the vortices just dissipate after the plane has flown by, with helicopters there's an extra layer of difficulty. As a rotor spins around, it ends up slamming into the vortex of the rotor ahead of it! This creates a *whumph* sound as the moving air hits the moving aluminum at high speed. When it happens repeatedly at certain speeds, you hear a repeated *whumph whumph whumph whumph*."
]
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145je8 | how come at night when i change the angle of my rearview mirror it receives less light? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/145je8/how_come_at_night_when_i_change_the_angle_of_my/ | {
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"I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, but I'll explain how the little flippy switch in the rearview mirror works.\n\nRearview mirrors actually have 2 mirrors in them. One reflects light normally, and one reflects light very faintly. These mirrors are set at separate angles so that if one has light pointing into your eye from behind you, the other will point it, say, up or down so it doesn't get seen by you. By flipping the switch, it changes the angle of the mirrors by the same amount that they're angled differently so the same image is seen, but using a different mirror which is now at the same angle as the other mirror was before flipping the switch.\n\nYou can test this out by making the mirror dark with a light behind you and them manually moving the mirror until the light is back to normal.",
"[Really old picture](_URL_0_), but it explains it nicely."
]
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5b4m98 | when a bullet hits a bone and shatters it how does modern medicine fix it? | With people getting shot in movies and TV shows all the time I wonder what would happen if it hit a bone. I can't grasp my head around how a doctor can repair something like that | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5b4m98/eli5when_a_bullet_hits_a_bone_and_shatters_it_how/ | {
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"Osteopathic med student here. Very complex situations with bone fractures will usually result in a bone graft. A surgeon will take a section of bone from somewhere else, one place would be from a donor. A shattered bone is referred to as a comminuted fracture, or when the bone is in *at least* 3 pieces. The main objective is for the surgeon to piece the bone back together. In the rare instance that they can't and the body isn't able to execute healing properties, some very important decisions have to be made. It's important to understand that very rarely is a surgeon unable to piece together a bone.",
"I am an orthopaedic surgeon. There are literally multi-volume textbooks written to answer this question. The answer depends a lot on which bone is broken and where/how it is broken. Most tibia and femur (leg bone and thigh bone respectively) fractures can be treated by inserting a long rod called an intramedullary nail down the center of the bone where the marrow is that acts as an internal splint. This is done using surprisingly small incisions. However, sometimes fractures close to or into the joints need to be put together very accurately to make sure the joint continues to function properly. This might require a big incision and a plate with screws. Forearm fractures, wrist fractures, elbow fractures, shoulder fractures, and fractures of the humerus (upper arm bone) more commonly require plates and screws. Sometimes fractures of certain joints (hip or shoulder for example) are so bad they have to be replaced. Hand fractures and foot fractures are treated with anything from pins to plates/screws. Fractures of the pelvis are often very complicated and can often times require big incisions to put them back together using plates and screws. Sometimes fractures are so bad or so contaminated that they have to be treated with an erector set called an \"external fixator.\" This seems quite barbaric but it works very well. This is as ELI5 as I can get. \n\nOff to fix a wrist (using a plate and screws). "
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3texap | if the earth's moon was formed by a collision, how are other moons like europa formed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3texap/eli5_if_the_earths_moon_was_formed_by_a_collision/ | {
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"The same way the moon did actually. The moon wasn't formed by the collision, it didn't 'knock the moon out of the earth'. What happened was there was now a collection of particles orbiting a body that were being held in by gravity. These objects also have gravity and slowly attract each other. Eventually these objects pull each other together slowly while in orbit and make a big object(a moon). \n\nWhen it comes to other rocky bodies it's the same. A lot of asteroids are colelctions of smaller rocks that aren't even really compressed and are 'spongey' with lots of space between the looses rocks held together by gravity. Just because they didn't have a planet to hit, there's a lot of other objects to smack into each other out there, they just have to end up orbiting a planet or being formed around a planet at the end of their journey.\n\nSo either europa formed like the earth or a moon and captured by the huge jupiter or it formed around jupiter. But it's still the same way the earth/moon/mars/etc was formed, just a big collection of smaller rocks, planets/moons are just big enough that the force of gravity compresses things(this doesn't happen in many asteroids made of many smaller rocks, they're just not big enough)."
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1z4a66 | if two different phones/tablets/computers are running the exact same os, how is it possible that one device can experience a bug/glitch but not the other device when performing the exact same task? | I had this question because I bought two exactly identical iPads and one of them has some kind of software bug but the other is fine. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z4a66/eli5_if_two_different_phonestabletscomputers_are/ | {
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"1: A mechanical defect in the device. This could be something as large as a bad piece of solder on a board to as small as an actual defect in a chip, or anything in between.\n\n2: Random cosmic ray strike. High energy particles from space can hit sensitive electronics and \"flip\" a bit from a 1 to a 0 or vice versa, changing the software encoded by that bit.\n\n3: User error. Causes too numerous to enumerate.\n\n4: Corruption of data. During the process of downloading and installing the software an error was introduced which was not detected by the error-checking schemes. Could have been caused by random transient currents in the wires, by errors or misconfigurations of devices in the network, etc.",
"The OS may have different programs, and those programs may be in different states. \n\nFor instance, suppose iPad 1 allows location services and iPad 2 has explicitly disabled them. Also, suppose that when an app tries to use location services on an iPad that doesn't allow them, the system glitches up (it doesn't really though). With the first iPad the glitch will not be experienced when running the app, but with the second it will, even though the hardware and OS is identical."
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2ri2as | cricket. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ri2as/eli5_cricket/ | {
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"Here's a 6 minute video which explains the basics very well. _URL_0_[1] \n\nImagine if baseball only had 1st base.\nWhen the batsman hits the ball and runs to the other end of the pitch (1st base) it's one run. If he's got time to carry on running before the ball comes back, he runs back(home base). That would be 2 runs. If he hits the ball all the way to the boundary(fence), it's four runs. If he hits the ball over the boundary without it touching the ground(home run) it's six runs.\n\nThere's 11 players to a team but you need one player at each end (home plate and first base). So when the batsman hits the ball and is running to the other end, his teammate will be running in the other direction (1st base to home plate).\n\nSo the bowler(pitcher) bowls the ball at the batsman(batter). The batsman is stood in front of the Wicket.(Those pieces of wood sticking out the ground behind him.) \n\nThe batsman is out if,\nhe misses the ball and it hits the wicket. (Bowled)\nhe hits the ball and is caught. (Caught)\nhe hit the ball and tries to run to the other end but the fielders get the ball back and hit The Wicket with it before the batsman has made it back. Run Out).\n\nIf the bowler bowls the ball and the batsman misses it but it hits him on them great big pads he wears on his legs,the umpire might give him out LBW. (Leg Before Wicket). That means the umpire is saying 'if your pads hadn't got in the way, the ball would've hit the wicket.\n\nThe Scoring. 11 players in a team but because you need 2 batsman on the pitch at the same time ( 1 at home plate and 1 at 1st base), you need to get 10 players out to complete an Innings.\n\nScoring examples - Say the batsmen manage to score 30 runs and neither of them have been bowled, caught etc. the score would be 30-0. They've scored 30 runs without losing any wickets.\nThen the batsman hits the ball and is caught. That's OUT! 30-1. 30 runs for 1 wicket. The next batsman replaces him and the 1st ball he faces he misses it and it hits his wicket. OUT! 30-2.\n\n\n",
"You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side thats been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!",
"One team fields, the other team bats. There are two batsmen on the pitch at a time, one at each end. The bowler stands at one end and bowls towards the batsman at the other end.\n\nWhen the batsman hits the ball, both batsmen will run to the other side of the pitch, when they both reach the other end they'll score one run (point), if they hit the ball so it rolls into the boundary rope then it is typically worth an immediate four points, and six points if it goes over the rope without hitting the ground. Each set of six deliveries (bowls) is called an \"over\", at the end of each over the bowler is changed (although it can alternate between two bowlers) and the new bowler bowls from the opposite end of the pitch.\n\nThe batsman is out if: the ball or their bat hits the stumps behind them (this is called being 'bowled out'), the ball hits them when it would have otherwise hit the stumps ('leg before wicket'), they hit the ball and it is caught by a fielder on the full ('caught out'), or they hit the ball and run but the other team get the ball back to the pitch and hit the stumps with it before the running batsman is safe ('run out').\n\nOnce all but one of the batsmen have been taken out, that is the end of the \"innings\". The teams then switch (bat to field, field to bat), and the other team has their innings. In some variants, there will be a limited number of overs, so it's possible for an innings to finish before all of the batsmen are out. In games in which there must be a certain number of innings in a limited number of days teams can \"declare\" and end their innings early to avoid running out of time. If the game is in the final innings (the number of innings will very by variant), the batting team don't need to get all out. If they score enough runs so that they have more than the other team's total then the game is over.\n\nA cricket score for a game in progress has two parts; the number of runs as well as the number of batsmen which are out already. Games which are finished will have their scores quoted as either a number of runs that the last batting team was short by, or the number of batsmen they had remaining when they topped the other team's score. If a time-limited game runs out of time before a result is reached it is considered a draw, and neither team is the winner.\n\nThere are a lot of other rules dealing with specifics, but the above is more than enough to be able to appreciate watching a match on TV. the Wikipedia article is a good place to look for more detail: _URL_0_\n\nSource: Australian",
"I think that American author Bill Bryson [describes cricket perfectly](_URL_0_) in his book Down Under.",
"[This is one of the best ways of describing cricket I've seen](_URL_0_). At it's core it is a joke, but at the same time it does a fantastic job of describing the rules."
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3blmn9 | why doesn't the ocean's water leak out the bottom and into the earth's crust/mantle? the ocean bottom can't be completely free of fissures, can it? | I was looking at the ocean the other day and wondering how it just contains all of its water. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3blmn9/eli5_why_doesnt_the_oceans_water_leak_out_the/ | {
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"* the water doesn't have anywhere to go. There aren't gaping holes for stuff to fall into. Any holes there are has stuff coming out (lava), not stuff going in.\n* any water that does actually make it to a hole gets turned to steam pretty quickly (by the lava), and starts going right back up.\n* rock is more dense than water. That doesn't just mean that rocks sink in water, that means that water _floats_ on rocks. The natural place that water wants to be in relation to a rock is above it, in the same way a beach ball wants to be above water.",
"There is actually a lot of water below the ocean. It does not exist so much as water but as rocks combined with water. Many minerals consist of water combined with the other elements.\n\nMore water is actually in the Earth's crust than in the Ocean. Beautiful minerals are formed. Quartz seams in sedimentary rocks form when water moves to the surface. The quartz precipitates out as the pressure changes.\n\nRain water penetrating into the Earth over a billion years ago caused natural uranium atomic reactors to operate. The heat produced would drive the water away after a few hours stopping the reaction. \n\nThe geysers at yellowstone are examples of water in the Earth and what happens. This is mostly rainwater.\n\nAt fault lines where subduction occurs the crustal rocks moving under other crustal rocks are mostly saturated with water which means the minerals formed have water incorporated into their structure. Which minerals formed depends on the pressure which depends on the depth the subduction goes to.\n\nSo the simple answer is that the salt water of the oceans is less dense than the rocks below it. So the least dense thing stays above the more dense rocks mostly. But on a more complicated level they mix.\n\n\n"
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45nnpb | when a person is outside of a locked car trying to open the door, and a person inside is hitting the unlock button, why is it that when they both do it at the same time the door doesn't unlock? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45nnpb/eli5_when_a_person_is_outside_of_a_locked_car/ | {
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"It is different in different cars. One way to think about is that when you pull the car handle it pulls a rod inside the door and activates a release unless the lock is blocking the release. When you pull with the lock on it puts some tension on the lock mechanism so if you push unlock while the door handle puts tension on the lock then the lock will not actually release. "
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6n27xb | how are movie streaming sites able to operate so openly without getting shutdown immediately? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6n27xb/eli5_how_are_movie_streaming_sites_able_to/ | {
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"Some of them are entirely legitimate, of course - the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video and so on - but the ones that aren't have a tendency to keep their servers in countries where it's very hard to enforce shutdown orders on them. Nevertheless, there is still a relatively rapid turnover in such things."
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2lmh5x | how come the un or nato isn't quick to act/doesn't care over russia invading the ukraine slowly? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lmh5x/eli5_how_come_the_un_or_nato_isnt_quick_to/ | {
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"The UN has difficulty acting because in order for anything to get done, **all** of the Security Council member nations have to agree... and Russia is part of that security council. \n\nAs for NATO, well... the Ukrane is not a member of NATO, and NATO is a military alliance. So unless all of the member nations want to start a war with a nuclear power over the matter, I would not expect to see them intervene. ",
"Russia has veto power as a member of the UN Security Council, so can block any actions against itself. \n\nAs for NATO/the EU and why they aren't doing anything, they have been. Sanctions have been put in place, assets of government officials frozen or seized.\n\nWhy hasn't NATO used military force (the only option left after diplomatic and economic)? Ukraine isn't part of NATO. They aren't bound to protect them, and risking war against a country as massive as Russia over a country that they aren't bound to protect, or have a huge amount of investment in, isn't worth it.\n\nIt sounds harsh, and it is, but politicians have to weigh up the costs. A war against Russia would be incredibly costly, bloody and we would tear Europe apart, for the third time in a century, for one country that we aren't sworn to help. \n\nRussia is just too powerful and influencial to declare war against unless we absolutely have to. The EU/Nato would almost certainly win, but not without hundreds of thousands, if not millions dead, cities razed to the ground, the economy thrown into chaos.\n\nAnd that's conventional war, not even taking into account that Russia is a nuclear power. That is a game changer right there. Whilst Russia would be decimated if they used nukes, we would get hit as well, and that just isn't worth it."
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7d8i64 | why are human eye colours restricted to brown, blue, green, and in extremely rare cases, red, as opposed to other colours? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7d8i64/eli5_why_are_human_eye_colours_restricted_to/ | {
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"That is actually a lot of colors. There is actually only one pigement that creates all the eye colors for humans that melanin. Eye color varies because of how much pigment there is, brown is the most blue no pigment in the iris or ocular fluid, but there is some in the stoma. Red eyes comes from albinism, and comes from the blood vessel.",
"There’s more than just those colors, as people can also have gray, violet, hazel, and amber. Eye color is also a spectrum of shades, often containing flecks or streaks of different colors as well. \n\nEdit: Here’s an article on violet eyes, also truly green eyes are “rarer” : _URL_0_\n\n",
"Without any pigment, everyone's eyes would appear blue—it's structural coloration due to the [Tyndall effect](_URL_0_), basically just the way the light bounces around in your eyes scatters more of the short-wavelength stuff outward, same way skim milk or smoke have a vaguely bluish tinge to them.",
"I have brown eyes, but when I'm dehydrated there are more hues of yellow (and only I notice). I've always been insecure about my brown eyes because my boyfriend has blue-green soulful eyes. ",
"Follow up question: What's with eyes where the color appears to change depending on lighting? Mine can be bluish, green, or even grey in different lights. ",
"Here's a follow on question - I am asian and my eyes are black. In asia, everybody agrees they're black. There's no way anybody can mistake them for brown yet everybody in North America insists they are brown. \n\nIs this a cultural thing? And...why?\n\nEdit: OK, I looked at my eyes closely with the aid of a flashlight and they are dark, dark brown. But without the use of a flashlight - black.",
"Elizabeth Taylor was said to have had purple irises. I had a baby sitter as a kid who had one blue iris and one golden yellow iris. What's left, orange?",
"Although it's already been mentioned that there are some rarer variations of colors outside of brown, blue and green, I think what you meant is \"Why can't human eyes be all colors of the rainbow?\".\n\nFirst we need to look at why human eyes have any color. There's a layer in your eye that contains pigment. The most common pigment is melanin. Melanin itself is dark brown. Melanin is also found in hair and skin - people with more melanin in their skin have darker skin, and those with less melanin are more fair. \n\nThose who have very little melanin have blue eyes. Why is this? There isn't a \"blue\" pigment that's in blue eyes. I'm not well equipped to explain this but it's the same reason why the sky appears blue. It has to do with blue light waves (there's all sorts of different color wavelengths) bouncing off oxygen and nitrogen particles in the air. The blue ones are realllly good at this, which is why we see blue. The Tyndall effect is what best fits why eyes with low/no melanin are blue. Light enters, long wavelengths (aka non-blue wavelengths) are long enough to reach the back of the eye. The back of our eyes have the ability to absorb light. So basically all the long wavelengths get absorbed! However, blue is a SHORT wavelength and doesn't reach the back very well. It bounces around and ultimately gets reflected back out. That's why we see some people's eyes as blue. Remember, we see what is reflected, NOT absorbed. For example, a tomato appears red because it absorbed all other light wavelengths except red. The red wavelength is reflected - it's what we see. \n\nIt's actually pretty interesting, there's a laser that's still being approved that destroys the pigment in the iris to reveal blue eyes. Technically we all would have blue eyes if it weren't for pigment. Originally, everyone had brown eyes, blue eyes were a gene mutation that popped up after a while. \n\nBut what about grey eyes? They're...kinda blue, right? Well, there's an idea that this difference is due to some people having more collagen (just a type of building block for stuff like skin and tissue!) in their eyes than other people. This can affect the whole light reflection stuff and give variation. This, along with eye shape (the angle you reflect the light is involved in the 'clearness' of the color) could also explain why some people have eye colors that really kind of \"glow\" and \"pop\" while others with similar eye colors don't have very attention-drawing eyes. Ultimately, we still don't have a truly clear answer as to why some people have bright blue eyes while others might have blue eyes on the duller, grey side. They both have low levels of melanin in their eyes but there's a lot of other factors at play. \n\nNow getting back to the other colors. Really dark brown eyes have a lot of melanin. Sometimes they even look black, but if you took a light to them you would see that it's really just a deep brown color. More pigment = more absorbed wavelengths. So unlike blue eyes, light wavelengths coming in aren't really getting out. You're actually seeing melanin (that brown colored pigment mentioned earlier). Those with really high levels of it will have dark brown eyes, while those with more moderate amounts of it might have light brown eyes.\n\nOkay...but what about GREEN? There's a green pigment, right? \nWell, no. We need to look at what the differences and similarities to hazel and green eyes are to further understand. Hazel eyes involve having both the blue eye effects yet enough pigment to where the color seen isn't blue. So there's little enough melanin to still get some of those blue wavelengths to bounce around and get reflected out again, but there's enough melanin to where you're still seeing brown. Together, you get kind of a brownish green. There's a lot of variations of this of course - hazel eyes are going to look different from person to person due to amounts of melanin and those other possible factors we mentioned in the gray vs blue eyes. \n\nTrue green is actually quite rare. This is why: You have the same stuff as hazel eyes going on (low-ish melanin, blue light reflection) but you also have a decent amount of a different type of pigment called lipochrome. Lipochrome isn't found as often in humans as other mammals like dogs, cats, etc. Melanin is BROWN, but lipochrome is YELLOW. Low-ish amounts of melanin, plus a good amount of lipochrome is what gives people green eyes. The \"greenest\" looking eyes would likely be ones with very very small amounts of melanin, but moderate amounts of lipochrome. The more melanin mixed in, the more brown-green (closer to hazel) you get instead of blue-green. \n\nThose with a lot of lipochrome and melanin might have closer to amber-colored eyes. \n\nEven blue eyed people can have \"flecks of gold\" - this would likely be due to some bits of lipochrome in their eyes.\n\nOther animals like birds can have a wider, more vivid range of colors than humans because they actually have a wider variety of pigments in their eyes. You'll never see a human with the eye color of a great horned owl because we don't produce a yellow pigment in our eyes that vibrant and bold. Lipochrome's yellowness just doesn't compare to some of those bright yellow pigments birds have!\n\nEDIT: Thanks for the gold kind stranger!!\n\nEDIT: Thanks for the second gold!! I'm glad this post was informative and helpful to folks. Sorry if I don't reply to everyone who has asked a question. \n\nAlso to some of the concerns over light perception and light physics stuff: I definitely oversimplified, decided not to bring in refraction because I didn't want to get tooooo much into detail to keep the answer on point and ELI5.\n\nTo those asking more info about the laser tech, I link some stuff in my post here: _URL_0_ . Unfortunately there's not a whole lot of information on it. ",
"Great question. Eye doctor here.\n\nEye color is in the Iris, and the Iris has two layers, a back layer that's always fully pigmented, and a thicker front layer.\n\nThe pigment is melanin, same that makes our skin different colors.\n\nNow when the front layer is densely pigmented, it appears dark, like brown or even black (though shine a bright enough light and you'll see black eyes are just very dark brown).\n\nIf it's not pigmented, it appears light blue. Why? Same reason the sky's blue, light scatters in it. Light scattering is a different topic, but basically short wavelengths (ie blue) bounce differently in the fluffy front layer without pigment.\n\nWhat about in between? Well it turns out if there's pigment but it's not super dense, it's a bit of a lighter brown or dark orange. We call these amber eyes.\n\nIf it's between amber and blue, then it's like a cross between light orange and blue. That's how you get green eyes.\n\nSo that's how you get the spectrum: from blue to green to amber to brown to black.\n\nSo what about \"red\" or \"violet\" eyes? Turns out I lied in the beginning; that back layer I mentioned that's always pigmented isn't in a medical condition: Albinism. These folks unfortunately have a defect in producing melanin pigment, which is why they all have fair skin and light hair and such.\n\nSo why red? It's the same reason you can get red eyes in flash photography; the red is the color of the retina in the back of the eye. Flash photography causes you to accidentally image peoples retinas.\n\nNow without the pigment in the back layer of the iris, the iris almost functionally becomes like Saran Wrap; it's clear and doesn't block out light anymore. So when you see red (or violet) eyes, you're seeing retina through their Iris.\n\nSide note: this is one reason why folks with albinism have poor vision. The purpose of the iris is to act like a camera aperature. Without pigment, it can't block out light like an aperature, removing a whole element of the focusing system of the eye.\n\nDisclaimer: this is a bit of an oversimplification of how eye colors work, but it's fundamentally not too far off. The genetics that go into eye color get very complex, don't think it's some single gene thing; I know this explanation makes it seem like there's just one toggle, but that's not how the genetic part of it works.\n\nEdit: Thank you for the many responses. Unfortunately I cannot give anything out resembling medical advice, nor answer the volume of questions here. I'll try to answer what I can in a general sense where it looks like there's been multiple questions later today.",
"I have a question, I have mostly blue eyes, although around my pupil there's a kind of predominant yellow ring, someone once tried to tell me I'm dehydrated??",
"\"extremely rare cases\" lol almost every adult in North America has a beautiful shade of bloodshot red eyes.",
"There are actually only 2 kinds of pigments that make up the colors of all of our eyes. No one is born with DNA for blue or green eyes, only two shades of brown: the rich super dark brown (melanin), and a more yellowy amber (lipochrome) The interesting part is that the eye actually has two layers which contain these pigments, and strangely enough, this allows for our eyes to APPEAR like there is a huge diversity in color. All eyes contain melanin, but Blue and gray eyes contain very small amounts of melanin. They refract the light in such a way as to appear blue. The light hits the eye, bounces around, rays go a-scattering, and the dominant wave length to make it through the great hurdle is the blue wave lengths. Eyes with lipochrome on the back layer of the eye may read more green, as the yellowy tones of the lipochrome mix with the refracted light on the first layer creating the appearance of green. This is why green eyes tend to shift a lot from blue to green to sometimes hazel, because our eyes interpret color based on the colors we see around it and the color of the light shining on it. Been crying a lot? The redness of your face will probably make your eyes APPEAR greener. Sitting in direct sunlight may make your eyes look more intensely blue or green. \nSo quick recap: eye color is produced by only two pigments, one amber/yellow and one brown. The layers upon which these pigments sit as well as the density of the pigments determine the appearance of our eye colors. Refracted light and color relativity allow for our eyes to read eyes as blue, green, gray, or red when they are actually not. \n\nSource: fell down a rabbit hole about eye color when my doctor told me my eyes weren't green and pissed me off. ",
"I thought I had brown eyes for 30 years. Then when my to be wife actually looked at them, I found out they were hazel.",
"I’m going to take a different tack than everybody else. Everybody seems to be explaining how the colours are produced, not *why* we are restricted.\n\nFundamentally, the *”why”* is an evolutionary question. There is no physical reason why we couldn’t have a whole spectrum of vibrant colours. In fact, other animals (birds come to mind, like [here](_URL_4_), [here](_URL_2_), [here](_URL_1_) and [here](_URL_0_) ) already have some of these. Heck, some animals have [multiple colours](_URL_3_).\n\n\nHowever, the adaptations required to produce the various pigments, materials, or physical properties necessary are complex and slow to develop. Furthermore, there would have to be strong selective pressure to select for those extremes. Superficial animals like birds that are looking for a visually superior mate are far more likely to develop such fancy colours. Humans could do so... but over a huge number of generations, and we would have to care a lot about eye colour.\n\nSo, we are only really restricted by time, mutations and selective pressure. But it could totally happen.",
"Imagine you start with a piece of paper coloured light-blue to light-bluish-green, and you can optionally paint over it with a warm orangeish-brown ink; the ink looks yellowish if it's very thinned out, or nearly black if it's concentrated. If there's any significant amount of the ink, it's enough to completely obscure the actual hue of the underlying paper.\n\nThere are two different mechanisms that give most people their eye colours, and in combination they produce the colours that they do.\n\nSome rarer combos come from anomalies. Sometimes the \"paper\" is partly or completely transparent and there's no \"ink\", so what you end up seeing is the red colour of actual blood that would normally be hidden behind.",
"What colors are you missing? Yellow, orange, and violet? They all exist in varying shades. Research iridology.",
"Can someone break this down for me like I'm a 4 year old please? \n\nMy actual 4 year old girl asked me this question and I didn't know how to explain it to her.",
"what about [sectoral] HETEROCHROMIA? i have green eyes but one of my eyes is about 30% brown. how does that happen? (hoping someone is still following this thread and my answer will be answered. thanks!)"
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyndall_effect#Blue_irises"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7d8i64/eli5_why_are_human_eye_colours_restricted_to/dpwag8n/"
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"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_6sYA7Iz1xgw/TJR4k2AnGpI/AAAAAAAAO7Q/_Uq5LU5YRfg/s1600/Bowerbird+head+-+male+10.09.17+A+-+web.jpg",
"http://cdn.audubon.org/cdn/farfuture/uo8Iqz8s_dSKQeRGjnpY7ZgqyQAgoFE3aQtcRJ2PmL0/mtime:1486757981/sites/default/files/styles/facebook_image/public/Red-eyed%20Vireo%20w02-18-043_V.jpg?itok=ZGd-9SCH",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/Satin_bowerbird.jpg/800px-Satin_bowerbird.jpg",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Big_Eyes_%288753086631%29.jpg/220px-Big_Eyes_%288753086631%29.jpg",
"http://old.lauraerickson.com/bird/Species/Hawks/Sharp-shinnedHawk/Photos/HR2007/DSC09321.jpg"
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3a0bif | how does programming work to make modern stuff? how does "if x else y" turn into say... youtube or skyrim? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3a0bif/eli5_how_does_programming_work_to_make_modern/ | {
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"First of all, you don't start from scratch. You could not create Skyrim if you started from the same point John Carmack did when he wrote Wolfenstein, and you couldn't make YouTube if you started from the same point Sir Tim Berners Lee did when he wrote the first website.\n\nSecond, you don't do it on your own. There's a lot of people writing those if/else statements. A modern program could be hundreds of thousands or millions of lines of code.\n\nIf you were making a game today, you'd probably be starting with something like the [Unreal Engine](_URL_1_) or [Unity](_URL_0_), which handle a lot of the underlying work (the physics, the lighting and shadows, and so on) for you. And you'd need a ton of people to help with the art (unless you're going for a retro look)- Skyrim had about a dozen people working just on the character art. ",
"You wanna know what really should blow your mind? NAND and NOR gates, 2 transistors, build up all logic circuits in all computers.\n\nBut, should it really be surprising? Our bodies are made up of 29 (useful) elements. Everything is built up of small stuff that makes more complex stuff. There are 26 letters in the human language. Combined with a few symbols for punctuation they can make all of literature. Computers and programs are no different. It's a matter of how you combine stuff. YouTube/skyrim are just specific combinations of those things.",
"Paul Ford wrote a giant article/magazine, called 'What is Code?' to explain exactly that to you.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Layers upon layers of programming levels.\n\n* Hardware (processor, memory, etc.);\n* Low level (0/1) language to speak to hardware ([Assembly](_URL_3_));\n* Language with functions to simplify calculations and doing basic programs (ex: [C](_URL_2_));\n* Language with more complex functions and object oriented:\nInstead of simple \"A = 1\", objects can have multiple properties, like saying that A is a person that has black hair and green eyes; (ex: [C++](_URL_1_));\n* Tools like [Unity](_URL_0_) (built on C++) that allows developers to build games with visual tools and code. ",
"When you buy Skyrim or browse through YouTube, you are activating hundreds of scripts written in program languages such as C, HTML, Javascript, Unity, etc. Another word for such script is \"program\" (or program listing). \n\nA program is actually a set of instructions - much like your average cake recipe - that tells a computer what to do. For example: \"If the play left clicks his mouse, fire the weapon in the game.\" A program can also implement an algorithm. For example: \"Given, inputs a and b, calculate c using the formula a^2 + b^2 = c^2 and output c\"\n\nA computer being an inanimate object doesn't understand human language by its own. At a most basic level - the level of electronic components such as transistors - it communicates through series of 1's and 0's. If we feed a series of instructions expressed as 1's and 0's to a computer, it will respond back with another series of 1's and 0's. This is called \"binary\" or \"boolean\" logic (named after George Boole who came up with the idea)\n\nTo answer your question, we need to talk history:\n\nIn the olden days, we are talking about the forties and fifties, a programmer actually had to flip switches to input the series of 1's and 0's into a computer. Any complex program would consume countless hours of gruelling switch flipping by the programmer. And as the logic boards with the chips inside those computers became more complex, flipping switches became very impractical.\n\nThat's when engineers started to think of alternate ways of writing and feeding complex programs to computers. So, they adapted the computer hardware: using complex configurations of chips and connections, they literally hardwired a basic set of instructions. Such as: \"Put value 1011 in register 1100\". The \"put\" instruction would be represented by a set of connected transistors in a certain configuration. Your basic Intel or AMD chip inside your computer today contains a hard wired representation of those instructions. These instructions are called \"Machine code\".\n\nWriting machine code is still tedious, but a step up from flipping switches. It allows you to write more complex programs without having to deal with the individual 1's and 0's. That's when they invented a program that takes another programlisting and converts it in machine code. This program is called an \"Assembler\" as it assembles machine code. \n\nThe program listing is written in a language called \"Assembly\". The assembler is programmed to understand this language and convert the listing into machine code. Assembly instructions are still very much tied to the available instruction set hard wired to a particular chipset. If your program listing contains motorola specific instructions, an Intel chip can't make much sense of it. Assembly is what you call a \"low level language\" because it is very closely related to the bare silicon.\n\nOf course, assembly was still too verbose (you need to do a lot of typing to perform a basic task) and each new generation of chips contained more extensive instructions sets. So, engineers wrote assembly programs that can take a program listing in an even less verbose language and convert it back into a set of assembly instructions. The C programming language was invented that way in 1972 by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. And the program that converts C into assembly (and finally machine code) is called a \"compiler\". \n\nC is a very popular language. Classic games such as Doom or Wolfenstein are written in C and assembly. Of course, writing a game like Doom requires a programmer that can wield complex mathematics and has a keen understanding of turning those maths in terse programming listings written in C or assembly.\n\nToday C is still widely in use. In time, it spawned its own set of popular languages. A classic example is PHP which powers a large part of the web and big sites such as Facebook. In the 90's, as the Web was just in its infancy, engineer Rasmus Lerdorf wrote a C program that would eventually become the PHP interpreter. It takes a program listing written in PHP and translates it into machine code or \"opcode\" (Operation code) \n\nAs time marches on, subsequent generations of engineers and programmers take the current programming languages and invent new ones that are even more expressive (such as Golang) or repurpose existing languages (such as NodeJS).\n\nTL;DR A programming language is a actually a set of abstract concepts - such as \"if\", \"else\", \"function\", \"class\", etc. - that allows programmer to easily express algorithms. The magic trick is automatic and flawless conversion of those concepts into complex series of 1's and 0's a computer can process and converting them back so a human sees pretty cat pictures in /r/aww.\n\n"
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"http://unity3d.com/",
"https://www.unrealengine.com/"
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(game_engine\\)",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language\\)",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_(programming\\)"
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68v8zv | what makes glass so special that it doesn't get harmed by any of the very harmful liquids it holds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68v8zv/eli5_what_makes_glass_so_special_that_it_doesnt/ | {
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"Very strong structure - bit like the difference between say a country stone wall and a sheer concrete wall - one you can get your hands inbetween the rocks and pull them out (i.e. the chemical can react and disrupt the structure) the other is very strongly bound to each other which makes it too hard for you to damage."
]
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4wml1n | why would i need an i7 processor over an i5? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wml1n/eli5why_would_i_need_an_i7_processor_over_an_i5/ | {
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"i7 will make CPU-intensive tasks, like video rendering in your case, run faster. For gaming an i7 will barely provide any advantage over an i5 as it's the graphic card that is usually the bottleneck. So if all you plan to do is play games and edit videos, the decision depends on how much you value rendering times.",
"Given that the current answers perfectly satisfy the question, I'd advice you check out /r/buildapc. We're friendly, and full of knowledgable people to make sure you don't waste your money in unnecessary ways!"
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536xi6 | why is it easier to remember numbers in groups of three digits? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/536xi6/eli5_why_is_it_easier_to_remember_numbers_in/ | {
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"It seems counterintuitive. How can I remember more information easier?",
"It is easier for the mind to remember and process long lists of information by breaking them up. This not only allows you to repeat them and thus store them quicker but it means that the numbers in the middle of the list are not forgotten/misremembered. [the serial position effect](_URL_0_)"
]
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3knq2r | how do babies find things funny and how do they know what is funny and what is not? | Is it because you do something unusual and unexpected that makes them laugh? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3knq2r/eli5_how_do_babies_find_things_funny_and_how_do/ | {
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"What babies do interests us. It is a survival trait. An interactive child who enjoys us will literally be cared for more than if it were just like a wooden object.\n\nThe subjective impression of what is funny and what is not is not really the criteria. A familiar face talking to the baby is enough to be interesting. We find something to do to make them laugh.",
"I *think* it has something to do with the fact that almost everything is unexpected for a baby. As long it isn't unpleasant, it might evoke the feeling that it is funny",
"Laughter is the sound of surprise. Since babies are learning object permanence, those jangling keys you are holding, that appeared out of fucking nowhere, even though they just tried to put it in there mouths two seconds ago, are fucking hilarious. That's my take on it...",
"real recognize real, right?",
"My little brother seems to take cues from me and my brother/parents as to when to laugh (unless we tickle him). He looks at us and then starts laughing like a second later.",
"Baby's often laugh simply because you laugh. I don't really know what age you are talking about and I am by no means an expert, but toddlers learn by imitation. Also laughing doesn't have to mean the baby finds something funny, merely that they are surprised."
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2750o0 | what is going on when women experience "pregnancy brain"? is this just a mind over matter situation, or is there a real process in the body causing memory loss? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2750o0/eli5_what_is_going_on_when_women_experience/ | {
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"text": [
"I am not a doctor, but pregnancy = hormones and hormones can alter your behavior. Same principals behind PMS. "
]
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4jmn1v | what purpose does an error code have? | What am I supposed to do when I see an error code pop up? What does it signify? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jmn1v/eli5what_purpose_does_an_error_code_have/ | {
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"Computer dudes will be able to know what kind of error occurred based on the code. \n\nOr you could use a search engine to look up the code.\n\nit is sort of like on your car when the seatbelt light is on instead of the check engine light. They tell you what to deal with.",
"It tells you what, specifically, caused the program to fail or what the program was doing at the time it failed. At least, that's what a well-written error code will do. \n\nIf the code is too technical for you to understand that's ok - it's because those codes were designed to help technicians and developers solve your problem and not really written for a general audience. Just copy the error down as completely as you can and then either a) google it, or b) give it to your computer guy. \n\nSpeaking as a computer technician myself, I LOVE users who write down the error codes for me so I don't have to go hunting for them myself. "
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5y5uiz | who took historical pictures of soldiers on d-day and during other battles? were they photographers or soldiers who happened to own cameras? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5y5uiz/eli5_who_took_historical_pictures_of_soldiers_on/ | {
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"They're done by 'war photographers'. The most famous of which was Robert Capa, which actually took photos on d-day. It's not uncommon that these photographers die on the Frontline though. ",
"War photographers were sent in with the troops. In some cases they were non-combatants or freelance journalist who were there with the military's approval. In later years, the army actually had their own combat photographers as well. "
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13mmgy | why hard drive prices seem to have stopped going down. | Simple question. Bought a 1TB drive for 80$ 2 years ago on Newegg, the identical drive is currently 120$ marked down from 150$. Storage in general does not seem to be getting cheaper like it used to. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13mmgy/eli5_why_hard_drive_prices_seem_to_have_stopped/ | {
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"[The 2011 floods in Thailand](_URL_1_) knocked out a significant part of the worlds hard disk production.\n\nPrices are actually on the way down since it rose a lot just after the disaster.\n\nEdit: [here](_URL_0_) is a chart from Computerworld illustrating the pricespike in late 2011."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.computerworld.com/common/images/site/features/2011/11/Hard%20Disk%20Drive%20Prices%20Chart.jpg",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Thailand_floods#Damages_to_industrial_estates_and_global_supply_shortages"
]
] |
|
13qdq6 | - the london (or any) underground - how do they get trains in or out and why doesn't it collapse? | How do you dig the hole for it without the surface crumbling in? Why doesn't it all collapse?
And the trains are huge - how do they get them in or out of the underground if they need replacing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13qdq6/eli5_the_london_or_any_underground_how_do_they/ | {
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"The top of the tunnel is usually arched which is the strongest shape for bearing weight above, and they reinforce the arched ceiling with metal supports at close intervals all along the length of the tunnels ... they get the trains in and out on tracks which lead to sidings at specially widened stations\n\nHere are [some trains at the sidings at Barking station](_URL_0_)",
"Trains are huge, but they roll on rails. In most metro systems, the rails are compatible with the [regular railroads in the country](_URL_2_). So they just have a connection somewhere at the end of the line, where the train comes above ground and connects to a regular rail line. From there a locomotive will pull the metro train to another part of the country. London and New York subways, for example, use the standard gauge (4 ft, 8.5 inches; used for most railroads worldwide), and can take delivery of subway cars by rail if that's convenient.\n\nIf this option isn't available (like the railcars are coming from overseas on a ship), they can use a ramp to put the cars on special truck trailers. In New York, the [Staten Island Railroad](_URL_0_) is essentially part of the subway system (same equipment and run by the same organization) but not connected by rails to the rest of the system. It's just one line by itself, with a small repair facility. So they have to [truck the rail cars](_URL_1_) to the nearest big subway yard for major repairs."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.flickr.com/photos/42537798@N02/6176389654/"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staten_Island_Railroad",
"http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3543/3665774063_7e0c582d2f_o.jpg",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge"
]
] |
|
b4nvai | why is body centered cubic iron (ferrite) magnetic and face centered cubic (austenite) not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b4nvai/eli5_why_is_body_centered_cubic_iron_ferrite/ | {
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"ensheu5"
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"text": [
"on a body centered cubic structure like ferrite, there is one atom in the middle and the rest on the sides. You can think of this as all the spin of the side of the structure is cancelled out by the other side but the center atom not cancelled out.\n\nAustenite has each side and each atom with electrons that cancel each other out because they are on opposite ends and don't have an odd middle atom."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
adecnk | . why does watching tv/using computers cause headaches?? | I've just finished watching Interstellar (great movie, annoying ending) just to have a headache afterwards. I'm wandering if it's because of lack of water for over 2 hours or if it's constant concentration. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/adecnk/eli5_why_does_watching_tvusing_computers_cause/ | {
"a_id": [
"edg84b0",
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"text": [
"Totally anecdotal... dirty screens and flicker give me headaches. Basically eyestrain. Get your eyes checked recently? How old/ new is your tv/ monitor? The old CRT screens were hell.",
"Focusing on a nearby object for too long can cause eye-strain related headaches. Try to make yourself focus 20+feet away for a couple of minutes every half hour or so to relax your eyes and see if that helps."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
2gov5m | are all purebred dogs alive today ancestors of the first dogs of their breed? | For example, can you trace a household sharpei or dalamatian back to the firsts of their breed? Or as dog pedigree and breeding became popular, did separate strains of 'purebreds' develop over time from separate ancestors? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gov5m/eli5_are_all_purebred_dogs_alive_today_ancestors/ | {
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"Don't know if it applies to all breeds, but I know all Golden Retrievers can be traced back to one dog that a Scottish baron had.",
"If they are true purebred dogs they can be traced back to a foundation of ancestors. Obviously, one dog can't mate with itself. Generally purebred dogs are linebred and not inbred now. Meaning you can't trace a common ancestor within five or six generations. ",
"I think you mean:\n\n > ELI5: Are all purebred dogs alive today ~~ancestors~~ descendants of the first dogs of their breed?\n\nNow, if they were ancestors of dogs in the past, that would be a neat trick."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
34g5ba | why are service providers exempt from giving credit for outages of their service? | If I pay for phone or internet service from a carrier with a rate based on a calendar month and not actual usage why aren't they obligated to ensure service is available that entire month?
I was reading the Comcast service agreement and it seems like once you sign you agree to pay them $x/month and they're under no obligation to do anything.
Why are they not required to give credit for the period of time I'm unable to use the service I'm paying them to provide?
I also read in NJ you can request credit in writing but Comcast only accepts communication via telephone. Any requests via email, their portal, or chat system they tell you you need to call. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34g5ba/eli5_why_are_service_providers_exempt_from_giving/ | {
"a_id": [
"cqubq3o"
],
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"text": [
"Because enough people sign that sort of contract that they don't NEED to... and if they did it could possibly end up being very very expensive for them.\n\nNo company in their right mind is going to cut off what might turn into a pretty large percentage of their revenue stream due to Acts of God (another word for a natural disaster), equipment failure, human error or other causes if they can help it. So they try not to, and try to get away with it by creating contracts that transfer the risk to the customer. \"By signing with us, you agree that we won't pay you if...\"\n\nAnd they have the fallback position of \"if you don't like it you can get your internet from another provider\". And if there is not another provider and the internet is that important to you, you can always move. \n\nThis sounds harsh, but business is business. If a massive blizzard or hurricane killed the internet for the most populated states for a week and Comcast or any other company had to give that fee back, they've just lost a huge amount of revenue and had to go through a huge amount of employee effort to credit it back, and their shareholders will be really pissed when the stock price tanks. Much cheaper and more reasonable just to say \"we won't\". "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
1ntm2f | what is a non-newtonian liquid and how is it different from normal liquids | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ntm2f/eli5what_is_a_nonnewtonian_liquid_and_how_is_it/ | {
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"text": [
"There are a few assumptions we make when we scientifically study liquids; these assumptions aren't perfectly accurate, but in most cases, they're close enough that we can get the right results. Liquids that get close to satisfying these assumptions are called \"Newtonian\".\n\nLiquids that just completely break one of the assumptions are called \"non-Newtonian\".",
"Take water. You put it in a cup and just pour it out. It acts like how you think liquid should act.\n\nNon Newtonian liquids act differently. A common NNL that you come into contact a lot would be something such as tomato sauce. You up end the bottle and nothing happens. You give it a whack and suddenly half the bottle is on your plate. What happened with this is that while little forces were acting upon it it acted more like a solid. When a sudden force was applied to it it acted like a liquid \"should\".\n\nAnother one is corn flour in water. If you mix it just right when little force is applied it acts like any other typical liquid. However, if sudden force is applied it acts more like a solid. It's quite fun to make at home and there are a lot of youtube videos of people doing all sorts of cool stuff with them.",
"First, a definition: Viscosity, essentially, is the measurement of a fluid's resistance to movement or deformation. Water is much less viscous than molasses, for example.\n\nWithout getting overly technical, one good way to look at it is that a newtonian liquid's viscosity won't change when it is stressed (pushed, vibrated, moved across a surface, etc). Using this definition, there can be two types of non-newtonian liquids, depending on if the viscosity goes up or down when the fluid is stressed.\n\nKetchup is the latter. Hold a bottle upside down and it doesn't flow for shit, but start vibrating it (or knocking on side of the bottle) and it'll gush out like water. It's not magic; it has been sheared and its viscosity dropped, so it flowed more easily due to gravity. This is also known as a \"shear thinning liquid\", if you'd like to look up more about it.\n\nAs you may guess, the other type is \"shear thickening\". Corn starch mixed with water is a good example (look up some videos on youtube). Imagine shaking or hitting the liquid, and instead of flowing and slopping around in its container, it suddenly gets hard. There are some liquids that are so shear thickening that if you smack a puddle with a hammer, they can shatter (their viscosity gets so high that they essentially become immobile and brittle).\n\nThat's a bit of a simplification, but this is ELI5 after all :)",
"Normal fluids exhibit a constant thickness(viscosity), but a non-Newtonian fluid changes viscosity in response to differing magnitudes and types of forces.\n\nThe most common example is a shear thickening fluid; one that thickens in response to the type of force that scissors make. One such example is particles of cornstarch suspended in water. When stress is put upon this, the starch particles form a long-range structure, sort of like a crystal, but made with the kind of forces that make tape sticky.\n\nAnother common example is a shear thinning liquid. Ketchup is an example of this. In these, the long-range order is present at rest, but isn't very strong. When you apply force to this, the structure becomes less robust and the fluid flows easier.\n\nThe mechanics (and soft materials science in general) are poorly understood on a mathematical level, but we do know that both are mediated by van der waals forces and involve quasi-crystalline structure."
]
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[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2e8k7f | how come taser electricity looks blue but an open power line's electricity looks red and orange? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2e8k7f/eli5how_come_taser_electricity_looks_blue_but_an/ | {
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"Taser 'dry stun' discharge appears blue because it is ionizing the air. Lightning bolts actually do have a blue-ish hue because they also ionize the air, but it's hard to see because there is so much energy being discharged that the white discharge drowns out the color. \n\nOpen power lines have red and orange sparks because they are discharging across the insulation of the wire, causing pieces to suddenly and dramatically heat up and 'spark' off. Electricity doesn't ordinarily 'spark' red or orange when it discharges. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
1x3z0j | why do people with cancer seem to get one last burst of energy in the week or so before they die? | I have had four people that I have known die of cancer. One died within weeks of being diagnosed with stomach cancer. The other three however went through the torturous multi-year process of fighting the disease. In each case, there were times when the person looked literally near death - frail, tired, unresponsive. Just not themselves. Then in each case a few weeks before they finally died they suddenly perked up. Not a little. A lot. They got color, energy, and seem excited about the future. If you didn't know it you would bet these were healthy happy people planning to live a long prosperous life. And then, the downfall comes fast and furious and in a matter of days they are gone.
Why does this happen medically? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x3z0j/eli5_why_do_people_with_cancer_seem_to_get_one/ | {
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"I have witnessed this in a couple of dying people myself. It gives you false hope that they may come out of it and it sucks ass.",
"Probably because the treatments can physically take you down harder than the disease itself. Yes the cancer is fatal, but without chemo and a host of other drugs, your body kinda recovers and feels significantly better than the treatments leading up to that point.",
"Severely stressed plants of some species are known to put all their remaining energy into shooting flower and seed one last time before they die. It makes evolutionary sense, and I guess the same goes for humans on a different level. \n\nReproduction for us is a little more complicated then dropping some seeds. It involves parenting and a family/community environment. \n\nSo what you witnessed could be the human equivalent to these people giving one last boost to increase the chance for genetic survival. \n\nKinda related: C.G. Jung wrote some stuff about the human subconsciousness anticipating death. (for example old people who first had to deal with stuff after which they died fairly quickly.) ",
"Cancer doesn't usually make people sick until it is far, far too late. Why do you think that so many people get diagnosed at the terminal stages?\n\n\nChemo and radiation essentially destroys your body as collateral damage. This is what causes symptoms. If there is no point in continuing treatment, the oncologist will just give them morphine for pain and anxiety and let them live out their remaining days in comfort. I imagine (complete speculation on my part) another component, although probably small, is hypomania as a stress response which can link to elevated energy etc.",
"Used to work in a hospital and seen many people die in my time, that burst of energy you refer to?... I had a theory that it's a kind of cathartic thing, a release of the emotions that they had pent up for years but had never expressed, and when the mind finally accepts and realises that it's going to die it decides to unload those emotions, whatever they may be.\n\nI've seen people get mad, even physically aggressive in the lead up to their deaths, but I've also seen the other side too. \n\nI read a beautiful quote the other day that just sprang to mind for some reason.... \"We're all just walking each other home\".",
"Bizarre and true. \n\nI remember this happening to my mother. She was really sick and weak during her last phase of chemo, Then one day she came back from treatment full of energy and started cooking. She made a huge meal, complete with steaks, veggies, mashed potatoes. We had a nice bottle of wine together, joking around the whole time.\n \nTwo days later she went to the hospital and never came back home. I think she understood what was happening and caught a second (probably closer to her fifth) wind."
]
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[],
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|
410s7r | can someone please explain how soy milk (and other plant based milks) is more expensive than cow's milk? | I mean, I get that there are probably subsidies going on, but why is it that much more when cost of production would be so much less? Is dairy really subsidized that much? And why? Is is the same in most countries around the world? How did it come to be this way?
EDIT: Guys, I grew up on a farm in rural Canada. Those of you who are saying it costs less to get cow's milk than soy milk don't really know about cost of production. If you don't know, and are just guessing at reasons, please don't comment. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/410s7r/eli5_can_someone_please_explain_how_soy_milk_and/ | {
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"Cow's milk is already a liquid it just has to be filtered and pasteurized (heated and cooled) and it is pretty much ready to go in the container. For soy milk the beans have to be ground, soaked for in water for at least a couple of hours, and heated so the process for plant based milk takes a little longer also. ",
"Where I live, cow/goat milk is more expensive than plant-based milk (with exception of the organic variety). \n\nI think that for my area, it's easier to import plant-based milk because they don't spoil as easily as cow/goat milk. (None are large-scale produced locally)\n\nIt may also be a perception thing. Some countries have a large demographic of people going dairy-free. That isn't as prevalent where I live. Perhaps the plant-based milk manufacturers in your area are taking advantage of the trend. ",
"There is an overstock of milk in many western countries since dairy is a big part of the economy, and cows are often treated/bred to produce more milk. This is largely relevant to the US and Canada. Since you're from Canada, see here: [Milk surplus forcing Canada's dairy industry to dump supply](_URL_0_). The state also regulates how much can be supplied.\n\nWhereas soy milk and the like are a much smaller industry. I'm sure someone within the industry will be able to explain in more detail! Here in NZ the cost is similar, since we export a lot of our milk.",
"Don't know about the exact costs of production. However, I can offer a cultural/consumer perspective. Soy milk is very common and pervasively consumed in Asian communities. (Not necessarily related, but lactose intolerance somewhat limit milk/cheese/dairy consumption among most Asians.) With such demand, economy of scale probably makes it a bit cheaper in that regard in non-western locals. \n\nMy impression has been that soy milk has a bit of a trendy hipster reputation in the west. Producers that target a western consumer base are probably \"milking\" the health/nutrition angle a bit by pricing it at a premium over just regular old cow milk."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/milk-surplus-forcing-canadas-dairy-industry-to-dump-supply/article25030753/"
],
[]
] |
|
3xpp2n | do human beings always think today is bad versus history? why? | From what I can read we are at one of the high points of mankind (_URL_0_) your chance of dying from violence is low. Your safety from disease is low. . everything looks cherry. Past history shows a continued improvement.
Yet you wouldn't get that from Futurology or my facebook posts . . .
Do we (humans) always have a "pessimistic" view of today and the future? why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xpp2n/eli5_do_human_beings_always_think_today_is_bad/ | {
"a_id": [
"cy6nojb"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Because everyone is the hero of their own story, and think that their problems are unique to them. People look around and see bad things happening. Since they are worst things THEY have PERSONALLY experienced, they must also be the worst ever as well. "
]
} | [] | [
"https://reason.com/archives/2012/01/11/the-decline-of-violence"
] | [
[]
] |
|
5xhmk6 | how is it possible for some childeren at a young age to enter college? | Every once in a while I hear about some kid going to college at a much younger than average age. These kids are called geniuses, but I'm thinking how is it possible for them to skip that much of a regular school system? For example I heard about a child who was 11 years old going to school for astrophysics. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xhmk6/eli5_how_is_it_possible_for_some_childeren_at_a/ | {
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"text": [
"You don't necessarily have to finish all the grades to enter college. You can also take an entrance exam which determines if you have enough background knowledge, and then sometimes exams to skip prerequisites for courses. Lots of kids are accepted to community college before they graduate high school - my son took calculus at community college when he was a freshman in high school. He just had to test *into* the college and then *out of* precal. ",
"It is possible to skip regular school by: Testing out of classes, Taking the GED instead of normal classes, being home schooled and taking their exit exams that qualify you as having passed high school material. There are also possibly other options depending on the school district and State your school is is. \n\nAdditionally many Colleges/Universities will let anyone that passes their entrance exams take courses regardless of what age they are. ",
"you have to pass the tests, not necessarily go thru the classes. you can take accelerated classes and do summer sessions to get ahead. i went to school with a kid that was taking college math class as a 8th grader. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
b5xmra | what exactly are these articles 11 and 13? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b5xmra/eli5_what_exactly_are_these_articles_11_and_13/ | {
"a_id": [
"ejgmjc4"
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"text": [
"The way I understand it, article 11 would impose a \"link tax\" that would charge user of a certain reach for the use of news links, meaning aggregators like Google news would need to pay a company like Huff-Po and Fox for linking their articles. Which would be fine but it can be a burden on small companies and presents an uncomfortable grey area for internet personalities and political commentators as well as a tighter grip on the news by the government. \n\nArticle 13 means that large platform social medias will become liable for any copyright material shared on their site and would be responsible for it's removal, given the scale of posts on a platform like YouTube or Facebook and Twitter this will result in heavy bot moderation which will most likely target a massive amount of transformative media that is not copyrighted, this also impacts free-use in the EU and makes it's way harder to be a content creator there."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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