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16ogb8 | why with one click i can change highlighted text to italics but i have to completely retype something if i want it to be capitalized. | I open up Word. I highlight the text, and I can press ctrl+I, ctrl+B, or ctrl+U. And it will italicize, bolden, and underline the selection. Why can't this be done with Caps Lock?
I understand in any formal writing that all caps is unnecessary but come on. Why can't I just highlight a word and tap the Caps Lock key?
This has bothered me for like 10 years now. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16ogb8/eli5_why_with_one_click_i_can_change_highlighted/ | {
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"TIL: Shift + F3",
"Because upper-case and lower-lase are different characters. Formatting like bold/italics/underlining are just different ways of displaying the same characters.\n\nYou should totally be able to do that, though.",
"The headline and the question are slightly different, so I'll try both.\n\nFirst, in most versions of Word, you _can_ change something to all caps with a single action: you find the menu item \"Change Case > Uppercase\" And it operates on the highlighted text. Assign this to that key command of your choice, and there you go.\n\nSecond, you'll find you can't assign it to just caps lock. That's because caps lock is considered a \"modifier\" key. It modifies the action of other keys you press, like control, option/alt, or command/windows. Programs _can_ notice when you press just the caps lock key by itself, but by convention they don't take any action because that's not how you expect it to work in other programs.\n\nNot to pass the buck too much, but it's all by convention. There's no reason that pressing the \"A\" key has to produce the letter \"a\"-- it's just what everybody expects, so that's what it does. In a drawing program where inserting an \"a\" might not make sense, the same key could issue a command, or change the drawing mode, or change the color.\n\nCaps Lock modifies alphabetic keystrokes because, by convention, that's what everybody has agreed Caps Lock will do.",
"First, the need to change capitalization after the fact is not a common one. People learn to type while using the shift key as they go.\n\nSecond, there is a toolbar item that looks like **[Aa]** that will allow you to change highlighted text to all caps, lowercase, or sentence case. It's not a hotkey, but even though you seldom need it, it's there.",
"This is why vi is superior to modern editors.",
"I used to use just ctrl+D which opens up a window where you can italicize, capitalize etc. The new versions of Word have an Aa button near the I and B ones. And there's Shift+F3. \n\nSo, there are relatively easy ways, they just don't involve the caps lock key."
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7wyeof | how does a shock from a taser compare to a shock from a 120v residential circuit? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7wyeof/eli5_how_does_a_shock_from_a_taser_compare_to_a/ | {
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"The taser has a high voltage (2000V during pulsing, but far more during the initial arc) but a very low current ( < 500mA)\n\nA home outlet is the inverse, relatively low voltage but a high peak current (10-20A usually)\n\nCurrent is the killer here, more amps means more power and more damage. Voltage helps the power cross gaps and push through insulating clothing, but high voltage alone can't cause harm without the amperage to back it up. Static shocks have enormously high voltage, but no current.\n\nThe 120V AC system in your home will usually cause a shock and recoil if you're not soaking wet and make accidental contact, but it does have the ability to deliver lethal amperage if you cause a sustained short.\n\nOf course, all electricity is dangerous and you should handle both with caution.\n"
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1plae6 | why, if the halves of the brain are "in charge" of different things, do patients with one half of their brain removed not completely lack the characteristics of the side they lost? | My psychology lecture course is telling me that the right brain is holistic, integrative, and in charge of spatial abilities and negative emotions, while the left brain is in charge of sequence, analysis, language, and positive emotions. This kind of sounds like bullshit to me, and I'm wondering how patients who've had a hemispherectomy don't lack everything that side had to offer. Can anyone explain this for me? Perhaps as if I were of the age of five.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1plae6/eli5_why_if_the_halves_of_the_brain_are_in_charge/ | {
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"You probably write with your right hand. If it were amputated, would you be unable to write?\n\nNo, you'd write with your left hand, just not as well.\n\nThe brain can adapt to missing or damaged parts, to some degree.",
"How many patients actually get half their brain removed? Not many. A much more common medical procedure is to cut, partially or in whole, the corpus collosum that connects the half. Some people also just manage to get born without a proper corpus collosum. \n\nThere have been studies and in particular Kim Peek is well know for his savant sort of abilities but also associated disabilities. Kim Peek was absurdly poor at coordination because, obviously, his lack of cross communication meant the body parts on different sides couldn't really work together. \n\nThere was also a study where the collosumless were shown an image in one eye, and asked to draw it again with the other hand. (So the image was seen by the other side of the brain.) They'd draw something different of course, but when it was pointed out that a shovel is not a snowman they'd start rationalizing it like 'well you shovel snow, so I drew a shovel.'\n\nVery interesting.\n\nIn strokes, though, where part of the brain dies you can see the failures you're mentioning though. A patient may have a stroke and their left arm becomes unusable despite the arm being physiologically identical; they just lost the part of the brain that controlled the left arm.\n\nSuch patients can sometimes regain some of the ability with conscious training which makes a new part of the brain responsible for it and re-learns what we have to master as a neonate.\n",
"This isn't going to be the most coherent answer ever because I'm kind of tired. But here it goes. \n\nThis is something that I've never really heard a legitimate, universal response for, but I'll do my best.\n\nQuite simply, the idea that the two hemispheres are so completely different isn't really founded for the most part. A lot of the cortex that spans both hemisphere either doesn't show signs of hemispheric specificty, or we don't yet know what hemispheric specificity exists.\n\nThat doesn't mean we haven't found SOME differences though. For instance, Broca's area and Wernicke's area, two areas necessary for the production and understanding of speech, are found only in the left hemisphere of the brain.\n\nI'd be willing to bet that a lot of the answer can be found in structures of the Limbic System. For instance, the hippocampus (which is necessary for indexing of memories and for encoding of spatial cues) consists of several subfields that vary throughout the structure. The most lateral of these subfields (at least in the rat hippocampus) are the CA3 and CA1 subfields - the ones most critical for spatial encoding. \n\nThe amygdala (critical for special encoding of emotionally charged memories, and therefore important to emotional associations we form) is similar in its heterogeneity of function. Different subfields of the amygdala have different functions. \n\nIt's possible that splitting the hippocampus or amygdala, or otherwise removing half of either, could cause lesioning of some subfields and not of others, which could lead to particular deficits like inability to encode spatial cues or environmental layouts, or inability to form emotionally charged memories. But since most of these structures span both hemispheres, much of what is necessary for survival and to be a person would be in tact. \n\nAs far as having particular traits like being more holistic, integrative or analytic, I can't really say for certain because I don't personally know much about the subdivisions of different cortices (particularly the prefrontal cortex), but I'm most willing to bet some of this at least is bull shit.\n\nThat old concept that the left side of the brain is \"logical\" while the right side is \"creative\" is as fictional as the whole \"we only use 10% of our brains bull shit.\n\nIt is interesting to note that at least one study has found evidence that the male brain is more lateralized than the female brain, and I remember reading something about a study that showed that homosexual male brains show more similarities with female heterosexual brains, and vice versa. But it's most likely that this is a product of early socialization affecting neural development through greater use of particular areas and disuse of others. \n\nBasically, there are definitely SOME differences between hemispheres. And though we don't know all the differences, we do know that disconnecting them by splitting the corpus collosum or even removing one hemisphere will produce some deficits but will not leave you a vegetable or anything. ",
"You can survive losing half your brain(if we're careful and don't scoop out the important bits) because you're 5 and your brain hasn't fully delegated the functions out yet.\n\nIn a normal adult brain, one function involves coordination between the two hemispheres. Losing different portions of the brain will result in different patterns of dysfunction. This is not to say these regions \"do\" a certian thing, rather, they are one part of a system that does something.\n\nIf we remove a car's tires, it's not going to move very well, but the tires are just what enable something to happen. It's always necessary to loom at the roles of regions within the whole system.\n\nAs for living with severe cortical damage, the vital functions like heart rate control or breathing happen deeper in the brain.",
"Related, not specific to your question...but SUPER interesting!\n\n_URL_0_"
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46fi61 | why did people name objects with 2000 in some cartoons and comics? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/46fi61/eli5_why_did_people_name_objects_with_2000_in/ | {
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" Many classic cartoons were made in the 1950s and 1960s. Around then, the year 2000 sounded like an amazing future. So the number 2000 represented futuristic advanced technology. "
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2f75rw | i wash my face in the morning, afternoon, and the evening, yet i still get pimples. why is that? | For background info: I'm 18, a guy, and I want my face pimplefree. I tried facialmasks and everything yet I still get blackheads and some of the pimples hurt to touch. I mostly get pimples on my chin and on my upperlip. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2f75rw/eli5_i_wash_my_face_in_the_morning_afternoon_and/ | {
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"If you are using a powerful oil cutting scrub, you might be washing away too many oils, some that are essential for pore health and regulation. The pores are left open to dirt getting inside them, and the skin overproduces oils to compensate for washing it away all the time. Once a day with a gentle soap would be good, and if your skin feels dry after washing, moisturize with an oil free moisturizer. ",
"Probably also factors include what you eat and how often you rub your face with oily hands. ",
"Check out /r/SkincareAddiction, they're super helpful.\n\nThere's a recommended beginner skincare routine, and a lot of people also post pictures of their skin to get more personalized advice. Give it a try!"
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9f5xp4 | how are school authorities not able to control bullying? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9f5xp4/eli5_how_are_school_authorities_not_able_to/ | {
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"First off, it is exaggerated in movies to make a more exciting story, and is not as common as TV or film would have you believe. \n\nRather than physical abuse being very common, you get harassment and teasing more often. There are many many students and not enough adults to supervise all of them at once, so when students have time away from teachers, there can be teasing, harassment and bullying, but nowhere near as bad as in the movies. ",
"They do control bullying, overwhelmingly. Which is why the vast majority of it is low-key taunting and gossiping rather than the dramatic behavior in movies. That type of thing is relatively rare.\n\nThe reality is stuff that happens throughout life, because there are always people who are irresponsible with the feelings of others. But habitual malice is very unusual.",
"Poor schools usually have it much worse. But you'll probably find some examples in any school.",
"I would like to add that the nature of bullying makes it somewhat harder to be detected if it doesn't involve physical abuse.\n\nSay you're harassed by a bully. You can tell your parents/school. But to a kid, what they might think is that if they did that, it might be gone temporarily but it could come back even worse. Also it's usually somewhat embarrassing to the one who gets bullied which just gives more incentive to not tell. More often than not, bullying is only discovered when it evolve (or devolve?) into physical abuse that causes wound or bruise that the kid can't cover."
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9nzi3d | why can’t we just extract greenhouse gases out of the air and utilize them/compress them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9nzi3d/eli5_why_cant_we_just_extract_greenhouse_gases/ | {
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"We can indeed. The problem is that it uses a lot of costly technology and some energy, if we want to do a great deal of it.\n\nThe slow and cheap solution is called trees."
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a5pqar | why do people perceive different colours when looking at certain objects. for example the dress from a few years ago that some saw as white and gold, and some saw black and blue? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a5pqar/eli5_why_do_people_perceive_different_colours/ | {
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"Your brain makes a lot of assumptions about images you see, this is generally good but can result in disagreements\n\n[Let's look at the checkerboard example](_URL_0_).\n\nWhich square is darker? A or B?\n\nWould you believe me if I told you they were exactly the same? Since B is surrounded by even darker squares it ends up looking lighter\n\nFor the dress, there was some skewing of color and brightness in the image. If your brain chose to see the image as washed out then it assumes the colors are darker so it's black and blue. If you see it as underlit then it appears white and gold. Moving the baseline one way or another changes the interpretation",
"The eye has cells that see color called 'cones'. In the human eye there are three types of cones that specialize in three colors; red, blue and green. But each cone doesn't just see one light frequency, it sees a range. It is most sensitive at the center of each range. There is some overlap in the ranges between cone types. So when light is detected the brain must interpret the color based on which cone cells are triggered and at what intensity. The frequency of peak intensity of each cone cell, the position of each cone cell on the retina, the sensitivity of each particular cell, all can be different between different people leading to slight or drastic differences in perception of different colors."
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eullyz | why resting heart rate drops after taking up running? | I saw [this](_URL_0_) post and got curious. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eullyz/eli5_why_resting_heart_rate_drops_after_taking_up/ | {
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"The heart gets stronger, like every muscle. Which means it can pump more blood volume with each pump and so it has to do less pumps to move around all the blood.\n\nA little analogy: \nTake a bucket of water. You want to empty that bucket. Take a cup and start taking water out. You need a whole day till the bucket is empty. Mow you fill it again and take cup twice as big to take water out. Now you need half the time. If you still want to fill a whole day with work, you will have to work slowlier. \n\nThat is what the heart does. It pumps slower because it is now more efficient with each pump.\n\nHope it helps.",
"If equations help:\n\ncardiac output = stroke volume x heart rate\n\nChanges in cardiac structure from training give you a higher stroke volume. At rest, your required cardiac output is the same as before you began training so your heart rate lowers."
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1nkfkt | why do people in shows slip on banana peels? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nkfkt/eli5_why_do_people_in_shows_slip_on_banana_peels/ | {
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"This doesn't need to be verbally explained. Put a banana peel on the ground, step on it and apply a little force in a lateral direction. ",
"I am proud to say I once slipped on a banana peel.",
"Originally, it was supposed to be a reference to slipping on animal crap (which is much more slippery than a banana peel.) From there, it kind of became a thing of its own."
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6psv0f | why dirt in a shower becomes pink if not washed after several days? | I've seen this in the past especially at the base where the water create small pools of water. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6psv0f/eli5_why_dirt_in_a_shower_becomes_pink_if_not/ | {
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"I'm not sure that it is dirt: an airborne bacterium technically known as Serratia marcescens ... \"a forgotten but ubiquitous bacterium that can produce a red pigment called prodigiosin and likes to hang out as a pink film in the shower grout and toilet bowls of less-than-scrupulously clean homes. The pigment is so persistent that giant amoebas called slime molds that dine on S. marcescens turn red just as flamingoes that eat shrimp turn pink.\" Source: _URL_0_"
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2fgfy7 | why is cos(a) used when its the same thing as sin((a)+pi/2)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fgfy7/eli5why_is_cosa_used_when_its_the_same_thing_as/ | {
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"For convenience, because it saves having to write out sin(a + & pi; / 2).\n\nMost of mathematical notation is shorthand for something. Even though the cosine function is the sine function with a phase difference of & pi; / 2, it's useful to treat it as a different function in many areas of mathematics.",
"Sounds like you answered your own question... which one was easier to write? It's the same reason we say 5 instead of 1+1+1+1+1"
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4qv2sf | why are forest fires considered good for the forest? | I've heard things before about forest fires being good for the overall health of a forest, but it seems pretty counter-intuitive. Any explanation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qv2sf/eli5_why_are_forest_fires_considered_good_for_the/ | {
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"A forest fire in a sense is a \"reset\" button for the ecosystem. They fertilize the soul and revitalize the watershed. Although only considered good when not interfering with human development.",
"Small ones, yes. They get rid of old and dead trees, leaving in their wake, nutrient rich ash from which fresh new plant life can grow. Larger ones however take longer to regenerate and may cause permanent damage to the terrain in the form of soil erosion and what not.",
"For almost 100 years, the common forest management theory was exactly the same as yours. Stop all fires in the forests. The problem was when fires broke out they were more intense and more damaging than they should have been.\n\nThe current theory is regular low intensity fires are good for the over all forest health. Fires burn up dead and unhealthy trees which may be harboring diseases, beetles, termites, etc which will spread and weaken healthy trees. \n\nFires clear out the undergrowth such as bushes and smaller trees which act as ladders to help the fire spread to the canopy of the tree. With out a thick undergrowth the trees survive. Fires burn up the leaf litter on the forest floor and help return the nutrients to the soil. Finally some trees need the heat of a fire to open their pine cones, or other seeds. ",
"Some species rely on forest fires. I know there are certain coniferous trees whose seeds are released after burning and there are a ton of bird species that benefit too. A quick Google search will help you find some more things that rely on fire. It's nature, baby. \n\nHere's a short NPS document. _URL_0_",
"The podcast \"Stuff You Should Know\" just did an episode on controlled burns that covers a few of the things folks are mentioning. \n\nI highly recommend it, the whole podcast is basically an audio ELI5",
"Biologist here!\n\n**Forests and grasslands are fire-born**\n\nFires are part of the natural dynamics of some ecosystems, like [grassy meadows](_URL_1_) or [pine forests](_URL_10_). The leaves of the plants die and [fall to the ground](_URL_6_), where they begin to [rot and get recycled](_URL_3_). But most of the times the leaf production rate is higher than the leaf decomposition rate, thus, leaves begin to accumulate in the ground, becoming potential fire fuel.\n\nImagine you have a can with a teaspoon of gasoline. If you light that amount of gasoline, the fire will be [brief and not too intense](_URL_0_). What happens when you have more than a teaspoon of gasoline, something like, a full gallon? The fire can get intense and last for even more time.\n\nThat's what happens in the those ecosystems. Naturally, [the fires occur every few years](_URL_9_), thus eliminating the few fuel there is and, at the same time, liberating all the nutrients that were arrested in the leaves and took so long to liberate through natural decomposition.\n\n[When you prevent fires](_URL_4_), the fuel accumulates more and more and more, until you have a whole barrel of gasoline.\n\nIn the forests, the tiny fires aren't capable of actually burning the trees, the bark has chemicals that aren't very flammable and the leaves are far from the ground, the forest can endure a tiny cyclical fire. \n\nOn the other hand, fires fueled by years and years of neglecting natural fires cause the fire to [reach the top of the trees](_URL_5_), thus setting the leaves on fire, which is just adding more fuel to the already huge amount of fuel.\n\n**The fire of life**\n\nYou might think that it is counter-intuitive, but life is capable to adapting to the harshest environments if the events are cyclical. For example, in [some species of pines](_URL_2_) the release of seeds is regulated by the high temperatures of a fire, these pines don't open until a fire occurs! In some the [seeds don't germinate until a fire occurs](_URL_7_)!\n\nIn grassland, the plants (mostly grasses and short shrubs) are capable of resisting fires by having strong root systems that will always re-grow after a fire. They can do this by always having an energy and matter storage at the root (yes, some tubercles are like that).\n\nEven before humans existed, fire has been part of the natural dynamics in the ecosystems, they're able to withstand the harshness of such events because, after years and years to living within that cycle, they have adapted. Even though huge fires were also present before humans existed, they have become a problem the moment we interfered with the natural balance of such systems, provoking gigantic uncontrollable forest fires that burn the whole forest for weeks and weeks.\n\n[But life, uhm, finds a way.](_URL_8_)"
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14bgfz | do people with a lazy eye or cross eyes see normally? | I've always wondered if people with one eye that is positioned in another direction see a different picture out of each eyeball. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/14bgfz/do_people_with_a_lazy_eye_or_cross_eyes_see/ | {
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"I have severe (and still have it) [strabismus](_URL_0_) (what people think of as a lazy eye).\n\nI don't have normal vision, and in fact it's a little complex.\n\nFirst my peripheral vision is a little wider than normal. Secondly, this also caused a genuine lazy eye to develop (a lazy eye is when you prefer an eye's dominance over another to where you use the non-dominant eye much less).\n\nAs a baby They tried and failed to correct the strabismus. They tried patching my left eye to build up my lazy eye but that failed also.\n\n\nCurrently, I have perfect vision in my left eye, but I'm near-sighted in my right. To see beyond a few meters my brain automatically switches to my left, and when reading or doing things up close it switches to my right. I can suffer from eye strain more often than others.\n\nWithout the ability to see with both eyes in the same focus I've been told it messes up my depth perception. I'm also not sure if I view the world in 3d or not. To me the world looks like TV (or TV looks like the world) but since I really can't match \"normal\" vision I have no way to confirm this.",
"I don't have a bad lazy eye, or any fancy names. But when I was younger I had more of a lazy eye, but it was more from lack of focus or concentration, I would just look out of one eye primarily, and the other would just drift and be peripheral. \n\nNowadays, I usually try to look out of both eyes, and make a point to do so even when tired or not concentrating. But I can look out of just one eye at a time if I want to, and the other will drift off and become peripheral. I like to do it to people, I'll drift one eye off and then pull it back in, and then drift the other eye off and pull that one back in. It's like I look out of one eye, and then slowly look through the other eye which will pull it back centered.",
"Fun fact: We strabismus weirdos have no depth perception. I see the world as though I were watching it on TV.\n\nTo get a good idea of how this works, cover an eye and play catch."
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489eor | the cost of the proposed nyc 2nd avenue subway line is $17 billion, or about $2 billion/mile. this is around five times as expensive as similar completed urban subway projects around the world even before inevitable cost overruns that have already occurred. what's the deal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/489eor/eli5_the_cost_of_the_proposed_nyc_2nd_avenue/ | {
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"New York is the oldest, densest city in the US and one of the densest cities in the world. People have been living there for more than a hundred years. When they dig they find all kinds of pipes, cables and wires for water, sewage, electricity and telephones that they need to work around or replace. Also NYC is on bedrock. It is much harder to dig. \n\n",
"It's a combination of very hard and dangerous construction conditions and very powerful labor unions. I recently read that there is one portion of this tunnel that has an abandoned subway tunnel, a bunch of underground infrastructure, a busy street, an above ground rail, and massive fucking buildings above it. Before they could move forward, they had to install a huge frame to support the weight so the tunnel doesn't collapse and bring a NYC block down with it. In another instance, they hit a silty, sandy aquifer instead of what was supposed to be solid rock, flooding a good portion of the dig. They had to bring in divers to find the leak and seal it. \n\nGiven the high risk of injury and death, the labor unions insisted on super high pay. Combine this with the red tape and seedy connections big city construction has to deal with, and you end up with probably the highest construction labor wages in the world. ",
"There's a few main reasons:\n\n* The age of NYC (it's been settled for ~400 years) and the tunnels mean that you run into all kinds of tunnels, utility pipes, and other objects that you don't know are there. This, combined with the fact that you have one of the most densely populated cities in the world above it makes construction both difficult and dangerous.\n\n* The reason NYC can have so many tall buildings is that the island of Manhattan is essentially one huge slab of granite bedrock, as opposed to most cities on the water, which have relatively mud-like soil. This is very slow, difficult, and expensive to tunnel through, though it makes for better tunnels in the long run.\n\n* Because of the danger associated with this work the labor unions have demanded high wages to offset the potential risk to workers, making for very high construction costs.\n\n* New York City is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in. Everything, from a cup of coffee to building a subway tunnel, is going to be significantly more expensive then just about anywhere else.\n\n* Big cities, and New York City in general, are known for a ton of red tape being involved in construction projects, which increases the costs significantly.",
"Seems like some of the other posts have answered this pretty well but as someone who walks past this site everyday, the thing that I'm amazed by is the lengths they go to to keep traffic flowing on 2nd Ave. They dig up half the street and keep the other half open to traffic. They do what they need to do underground then close up that half, rebuild the street on top, open it to traffic and then work in the other side. When they're done, they close that side up, rebuild the street and go back to the first side again. They've probably gone back and forth like 4 times. They could probably save a few bucks if they could just open the whole thing up at once and do everything they need to do.",
"The MTA is notorious for dragging out projects they have the money for so they can earn interest on the money. This is the organization that several years ago tried to get a massive fare hike because they were broke, only to have it revealed that they had a $650M slush fund they weren't telling anyone about.",
"I like it how the 2nd Ave Subway is a minor running joke on Mad Men. A show set in the 60s.",
"I suspect this question was posed to bait union hate because there's going to be a whole lot of it.",
"It's the same price as Crossrail in London which is a comparable scale, so this checks out.",
"Toronto's subway line expansions are budgeted for around a billion dollars for every stop. It's not really that expensive, comparatively, based on NYC's titanic size.",
"Yeah those unions , all the unions. Was watching new union auto workers the other day making 12.10$ top rate. Bullshit. Conservatives broke the unions around the time Americas middle class started dying. Like roe v wade there are far too many Americans who don't remember America prior to strong unions and strong laws. But I think you will learn a very hard lesson. ",
"For $17B (it will probably end up like $40B) they could probably invent teleportation or at least flying cars instead and save all that work.",
"For that kind of money they should build a monorail or cable car type system. For 17 billion you could give everybody their own blimp and everybody can go blimping to work. ",
"As someone who lives on 2nd Avenue, I cant wait for this to be completed so I don't have to walk the dreaded TWO blocks to the 4-5 train.",
"To do any project in NYC requires paying off dozens of unions. First, there are the extra, unneeded people. Union decides the number of men required, you pay that many or no work gets done. Then there are the rules. Plumber needs a tool plugged in? He waits four hours doing nothing until an IBEW electrician comes by and gets half a day's pay to insert a standard plug into an outlet. Multiply by tens of thousands over years, and you see the problem. ",
"three reasons:\n\nMTA has closed books, i.e. they can do anything they want\nthe MTA, they are the mob\nworkers who will be out of a 40$ per hour job the faster they work, don't work faster.",
"I don't have a comprehensive explanation, but one possible reason is corruption.\n\nA whistleblower who worked for a subcontractor working at 86th Street station said that the subcontractor tried to scam the contractor - by taking apprentice workers (who make $34 an hour) and trying to pass them off as skilled mechanics (who make around $94 an hour), and then pocketing the rest of the money. The whistleblower said this kind of deceit and corruption isn't uncommon on MTA construction projects. \n\n_URL_0_",
"This is an excerpt of a great article published in Bloomberg magazine:\n\nA huge part of the problem is that agencies can’t keep their private contractors in check. Starved of funds and expertise for in-house planning, officials contract out the project management and early design concepts to private companies that have little incentive to keep costs down and quality up. And even when they know better, agencies are often forced by legislation, courts and politicians to make decisions that they know aren’t in the public interest.\nComparing American transit-construction practices with those abroad yields a number of lessons. Spain has the most dynamic tunneling industry in the world and the lowest costs. In 2003, Metro de Madrid Chief Executive Officer Manuel Melis Maynar wrote a list describing the practices he used to design the system’s latest expansion. The don’t-do list, unfortunately, reads like a winning U.S. transit-construction bingo card.\nPerhaps the most ostentatious violation of Melis’s manual of best practices is expensive architecture in stations. “Design should be focused on the needs of the users,” he wrote, “rather than on architectural beauty or exotic materials, and never on the name of the architect.”\nAmerican politicians have different priorities. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is spending $3.8 billion on a single subway station at the World Trade Center designed by Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish architect known for his costly projects. If New York could build subways at the prices that Paris and Tokyo pay, $3.8 billion would be enough to build the entire Second Avenue subway, from Harlem to the Financial District.\n\n_URL_0_",
"The real reason? Upper east side residents and property owners do not want to see it built.",
"also, each of the execs of the project need multi-million bonuses for picking the colors of the materials and signing those sharp-edged papers. ",
"NYC sucks; dishonesty prevails at every level; graft and corruption are as natural as breathing.",
"what's the deal? - the deal is paying off all of the crooks along the way - the crooked contractors, crooked government etc. - it's basically how that moron Trump got wealthy.",
"This reminded me the story of the central park ice rink, it was supposed to be completed within 2 years and 2 million dollars.\n \n2 years later, nothing was done, so the city extended the contract budget by another 2 years and 4 MORE millions dollars.\n \nANOTHER 2 years later, still nothing was done, so they increased the budget 2 more years...and this time 8 MORE million dollars.\n\nA total of 6 years and 14 million later, the city and their corrupt workers absolutely got nothing done, the public was pissed, so Donald Trump came in and finished the damn thing in 4 month and a million. \n \nMorale of the story? Maybe I will vote for Trump after all, because fuck the established government bureaucracy.\n\nEdit: sorry numbers were off a bit: _URL_0_ ",
"This works out to about $378,000 per linear foot, which is even more astounding than the $250,000 per foot for the Los Angeles subway. But it's a safe bet the NYC one will actually get used by lots of people..."
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utzl9 | how come string cheese doesn't taste as good if you just bite into it rather than pulling it apart first? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/utzl9/how_come_string_cheese_doesnt_taste_as_good_if/ | {
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"It's probably just a placebo effect, but the only scientific answer I can think of is \"more surface area on the pulled apart pieces means more cheese on your taste buds.\"",
"Texture is a pretty significant aspect of taste, and the texture is different if you do it that way.",
"When you pull apart the cheese it allows more oxygen to get into the cheese. Sounds dumb but its what I've always heard from cheese connoisseurs ",
"I clicked on this thinking I was in /r/ExplainLikeImCalvin ",
"See, I've always thought it tastes the best if you just bite into it. Very small bites, like an entire piece of string cheese should take around 20 bites.\n\nVery intense flavor.\n\nAm I weird?",
"Eating string cheese right now thinking about that same exact thing, holy shit!",
"Because you think it tastes better if you pull it apart",
"When you pull the cheese apart the strands of cheese become thinner and more delicate. Not only does this mean you have more surface area on your tongue (there is more cheese touching your taste buds, thus a stronger taste) but the fat in the cheese softens more quickly. Fat, is what most chefs will tell you gives food flavor. This is why cheese ( a high fat food to begin with) tastes good while shredded or melted cheese (maximum surface area on tongue + liquified fat) tastes even better.\n\nHoped that helped",
"That is kind of an opinion. ",
"Pulling it apart in small strips gives it more surface area = more cheese to taste.",
"I'm going to say, more surface area means more to taste. It tastes better because you are tasting more of it.",
"I used to have this cheese slicer where you'd put the cheese on this little conveyor belt and there was a wire at the end you'd push down to cut it. I used to attempt to slice it as paper thin as possible because, for some reason, it tasted better. I chalked it up to the fact the flavor had nowhere to hide. I assume cheese strings follow a similar law. Its science. ",
"This does not belong in this subreddit.",
"The cheese tastes better because the tearing motion creates more surface area than just biting it does. This allows the cheese to be oxygenated, unceasing the quality of the taste. This works with most cheeses. Try crumbling your block of cheddar next time, instead of slicing it. world of difference. ",
"Pulling it apart or warming it up will cause some cheese molecules to break free so your scent receptors can pick 'em up. Smell+taste > taste.",
"Two reasons: salt and surface area/fat.\n\nThe salt content in the cheese is a large reason why string cheese tastes good (salt increases the volatility of some aromatic substances in food). However, the outer layer of the stick has a waxy coating which contains much less available salt than the inside of the cheese. Thus, when you pull it apart, the salt hits your tongue more directly.\n\nAlso, when you have a thinner piece of cheese, it actually covers *more* of your tongue, because it melts (i.e., is dissolved by saliva) much faster than a big hunk. This allows the fat content to register on the [umami](_URL_0_) taste buds in your mouth more readily. \n\n**tl;dr** thinner, inner slices give higher availability of salt and fat",
"Wait am I the only person who bites their string cheese instead of pulling it apart? Probably.",
"It could be the texture but it may have something to do with aroma after you pull apart the string cheese. Smell and texture adds a lot to the experience and celebration of food."
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54ztoe | if the senate can just reject the president's veto, what's the point in giving him the ability to veto things? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/54ztoe/eli5_if_the_senate_can_just_reject_the_presidents/ | {
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"A two-thirds majority is required in both the Senate *and* the House to override a presidential veto, as opposed to the simple 50% majority required to advance legislation to the President's desk.\n\nCongress is very rarely so unanimous. The presidential veto is a general check against the legislature, but the override exists to prevent it from being abused.",
"For a law to pass congress, it only needs a simple majority. The president then has the ability to veto the law. If it is vetoed, it goes back for another vote. The difference is that this time it must have a two-thirds majority in favor in both houses of congress rather than the simple majority required if the president doesn't veto the law. This means that if a law is vetoed, it is going to be much more difficult to get passed.",
"Congressional voting is generally done by a simple majority - if more than 50% of people vote to pass a bill, it goes to the president to sign. If the bill is vetoed, congress can push it through with a 2/3 *supermajority* which prevents the system from getting deadlocked if the executive wants to stall the system but only in cases where the vast majority of congress supports a bill."
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23deh3 | why do some movie book adaptations completely change a characters appearance? | While everyone visualizes characters differently, are some movies where appearance of a characters changes completely from the book description... A quick example would be Eragon; in the book, Brom is clearly described as having silver hair with a white beard, but in the movie, he looks like a middle aged man with barely greying hair...
So... why is this the case? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23deh3/eli5_why_do_some_movie_book_adaptations/ | {
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"Many reasons could apply. Snape and Umbridge, for instance, would be so ugly you'd have trouble finding an actor who could fill their roles from among Hollywood's largely photogenic inhabitants. Other times it's because what works in print, doesn't work well on film for color reasons, or believability. For instance, in Game of Thrones they aged up the kids several years so you wouldn't have to depict twelve-year-old Daenerys having sex with thirty-ish-year-old Drogo, and fourteen-year-old Robb leading armies credibly.\n\nThey may have aged Brom down to make him appear more physically threatening to enemies.",
"Because attractive white people sell. "
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nquot | eili5: the whole viva revolution with che guevara? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nquot/eili5_the_whole_viva_revolution_with_che_guevara/ | {
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"Che Guevara was one of the leaders of the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s with Fidel Castro. He now enjoys immense popularity as a t-shirt.",
"Che Guevara was one of the leaders of the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s with Fidel Castro. He now enjoys immense popularity as a t-shirt."
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2jnmb9 | what are the differences (practical and otherwise) of different company types? | Can someone tell me the differences between these different types of business entities? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Wikipedia didn't really help very much.
* Incorporated
* Company
* LP
* LLC
* Corporation
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jnmb9/eli5_what_are_the_differences_practical_and/ | {
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"Sole proprietorship: This is the farmer that sells his produce on the side of the road. It is very easy to create, but offers the owner 0 liability protection. Revenue generated by the business is taxed as income for the owner.\n\nGeneral partnership: 2 or more people share ownership of the business. Very easy to create, but offers the owners 0 liability protection for ALL actions of the business. Revenue is taxed as income for the partners.\n\nLimited Partnership: 2 or more people share ownership of the business. One general partner accepts all liability, while all other partners are considered limited partners and accept no liability. Limiter partners do not get substantial control over the business. Revenue is taxed as income for the partners.\n\nLimited Liability Corporation: the LLC is only moderately complicated to create, and offers some liability protection to the owner. You can consider this a beginner company. Revenue is taxed as income for the owner or owners.\n\nC-Corp: this is the classic corporation that you see. Offers full liability protection to the owners. Requires extensive documentation to establish and maintain. Can go public and sell shares to investors. Revenue is taxed at corporate tax rate, and taxed again if revenue is distributed as dividends.\n\n"
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3iyxzy | why is gold so important for central banks of any country? what exact role it has to play in the economy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3iyxzy/eli5_why_is_gold_so_important_for_central_banks/ | {
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"None. It's been over 40 years since currencies were pegged to gold. It has little meaning in the greater economy now. Except in the general sense it's a commodity like other metals. ",
"Most central banks have gold reserves as well as reserves of other nation's currencies. Buying and selling either gold or another country's money can be used as a way to stabilize the exchange rate between two currencies. \n\nIn the economy generally gold is useful both for its industrial properties and for its ability to hold its value during periods of high inflation.",
"To serve as additional protection for reserves and further protect the credibility of a currency. This is a good eli5 read: _URL_0_\n",
"people who are saying '' none '' are sort of wrong, or their arguments are incomplete. There are two main points here:\n\n 1. Gold is, on it's own, pretty useless. Of course it can be used as a metal, but that's it actually.\n \n Cash money ( euro, yen, dollar etc ) is, on it's own pretty useless. You can burn the banknots, or wipe somewhere wet, but that's it actually\n \n Digital money ( your bank account ) is, on it's own pretty useless. Actually not pretty useless, but completely useless.\n\n Digital money and cash money has a value because there is a consensus on them. People think they have worth. they are willing to give you actual stuff, to provide service for it.\n\n Now replace ' digital money and cash money' with gold. It is just another currency actually, not a currency of a country but of the whole world.\n\n 2. So why it is important for a central bank to have gold ? Because it is special. Special in a way that dollars or euro isn't. You can't print gold. For example Fed has been carrying out a monetary expansion strategy for a long time ( it means they print a lot of money, loan that to whole world with nearly no interest at all. ) So it loses value, although you still have 100 dollars, you have the wealth after the expansion.. No one can do that to gold. Well you can always mine more, but it is not as easy as clicking a button. So it is an option for those who don't want to watch their wealth, money fade away slowly.\n\n Another thing that differantiates gold from other currencies is the fact that other currencies are usually tied to a country and it's economy. That means, if an economy of a spesific country is going down the hills, people may not value their piece of paper compared to other pieces of paper that much.\n\n Gold has no homeland, so it stays unaffected, it can always find a buyer. If, for example, France nuked the shit out of germany tomorrow( not that it is a possiblity but you get the idea), well no one even would want to get near to a banknot of euro. \n\n",
"Gold has value because it can be used in industry and commerce. But many metals are valuable to some extent.\n\nThe special thing about gold is, it is rare and quite evenly distributed throughout the Earth's crust. So it's unlikely that anyone would find a very large amount of gold anywhere. This means that the amount of gold produced is stable and predictable, and this has been the case for a very long time. This is why the value of gold is so stable.\n\nGold is also very chemically stable, meaning it doesn't degrade even after many years of storage."
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1pbzb5 | how do individual campaign contributions work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pbzb5/eli5_how_do_individual_campaign_contributions_work/ | {
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"In US politics, it's pretty staightforward. You fill out a form on the candidate's campaign website with your credit card. You select how much money you want to give. Then they spend that money on their campaign. Or you could give them a check or something, but online is easiest.\n\nThe individual limit is $2,600 per year per candidate. For every donation over $200, the campaign must publically disclose the name of the donor.",
"If by \"campaign contributions,\" you mean political campaign contributions, then they work in a few ways (this is assuming you're asking about the American political system - I don't really know much about contributions in other political systems):\n\nFirst, they give contributors/donors the happy feeling that they're a part of something bigger - that they're helping with a cause that they care about.\n\nSecond, they help because in reality every dollar counts. There are different \"contribution limits\" depending on the race - which means the maximum amount of money individual people can contribute to a campaign. For example, individual people can donate a maximum of $3,600 to a campaign for [California State Legislature](_URL_0_). Remember - every state and every level of government is different.\n\nWith that in mind - individual campaign contributions help the most when it's a smaller/local/municipal race or issue - when the candidate might be representing just a city a county. These races fortunately have a smaller average \"spend\" (media buys, campaign office expenses, consulting costs, paying staffers and campaign team, etc). So $100 from an excited individual can help pay for a stack of yard signs that supporters can then show off or even gas to help get campaign volunteers from one event to another, or even to help pay for renting out a venue for a campaign kickoff event.\n\nProbably most importantly (relating to my first point), individual campaign contributions are kind of a monetary pre-\"vote\" for a candidate or a side of an issue. More individuals/\"everyday people\" donating to a campaign allows the campaign to show that they have more \"grassroots\" support for a candidate or a side of an issue. It gives those campaigns \"legitimacy\" through support from \"the people.\"\n\nAlso - upon re-reading your exact question, I realized that maybe you meant even more of a basic question as in \"how do individuals make a campaign contribution and how is the money dealt with?\" If that's the case, sorry for the super wordy \"philosophical\"/strategy approach above.\n\nFor individual campaign contributions, people can either donate in these ways:\n\n- online (most campaigns now have online methods)- Acts kind of like a PayPal (some campaign even do go low-tech and use paypal) on the campaign site, so that people can tell the system to take out money from their account and put it directly into the campaign's account\n\n- by mail - people write a check to the campaign's headquarters and then the campaign literally deposits the check into the bank\n\n- in person with a check - people write a check to the campaign and then gives it to a campaign representative who'll give it to the campaign's \"Fundraising\" person or treasurer and that goes to the bank.\n\nThen the campaign literally has a bank account of money that it can then write checks out with to pay for various expenses."
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2p5j9d | some people can do pullups using a single finger, how can such a small amount of muscle be able to lift such heavy weights like human bodies? | Same with pullups. I don't understand how people can hang onto heights with one hand perfectly fine. Why are muscles so capable compared to their size? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p5j9d/eli5_some_people_can_do_pullups_using_a_single/ | {
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"Hold on to the base your forearm and move your finger, you'll feel movement because there are [tendons](_URL_0_) connecting your finger to muscles in your forearm. Tendons are extremely strong and could support multiple times your body weight in some cases, so it is just up to how developed your forearm muscles are.",
"Remember, there is a big difference between resisting motion, where no work is technically be done, and lifting with your fingers. The same guy could probably not life and lower himself with said finger. Its like getting yourself into an arm wrestle where you are completely capable of holding each other at the centre but neither can come close to winning."
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844rzv | why do many workplace pcs still run on old software? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/844rzv/eli5_why_do_many_workplace_pcs_still_run_on_old/ | {
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"Windows 10 was not free for companies so money. Money is Why. And they have update all the software they use.",
"A few reasons:\n\n1. Cost. Upgrading software is expensive. If an upgraded licence costs $50 that may not seem like much, but doing that for 5,000 machines gets really expensive really quickly. \n\n2. Compatibility. Very often, companies will have custom or specialized software that may not function well with newer software. If the older software doesn't have patches/upgrades, or those patches/upgrades are not cost effective (see point 1) you may need to keep other software downgraded in order to preserve compatibility.\n\n3. Security/Reliabilty. Older software - particularly in the enterprise - can be more secure and/or stable because the bugs and security holes have been patched. Newer software may introduce newer bugs that can compromise operations.\n\n4. Usability. Not everyone is computer literate in a company and upgrading their software may confuse them to the point where they struggle to do their job until they learn the new software. ",
"Cost/Licensing restrictions are a biggie. Business versions of stuff like Office cost more money than the home versions, and if you need to roll out Office Enterprise for $150 a pop to 500 machines, that's a lot of money you're spending on licenses, time you're spending upgrading things, and time you're spending retraining people on how to do their job with the new software. \n\nProfessional software like AutoCAD or various Adobe products are MUCH more expensive. And for something like an ERP system that's at the core of your business (processing invoices, orders, shipping, quotes, etc etc etc etc), you can easily spend millions of dollars and the better part of a year transitioning over to a new version and if you screw up, your business is crippled.\n\nAlso, most users aren't super computer literate. If you switch them from Office 2007 to the latest version, a lot of people are going to have a very hard time adapting to a new interface and need a lot of handholding, which means you're reducing productivity in the meantime and stretching your helpdesk.\n\nSo basically if it ain't broke, don't fix it.",
"Usually it boils down to the cost.\n\nThe cost of upgrading canned software like MS Office, SQL, or Exchange can be astronomical. Even $150 x 500 machines gets very expensive very quickly, and that doesn't include the labor.\n\nCompanies also often have highly customized software like ERP systems or applications built in house that aren't compatible with newer OS's and they aren't willing to spent the time, effort and money to upgrade it.\n\nThe government in particular are notorious for this. They often don't have the resources to perform an upgrade because they either contracted out the software development in the first place and that company is out of business. Or the people that worked on it quit / were laid off / retired / don't have the prerequisite skill set.\n\nSo more often than not they sit on the problem until it becomes insurmountable and only then do they make an effort to upgrade.\n\nAll too often companies are willing to make an upfront investment to develop a system to suit their needs without any real understanding of what will be involved in maintaining it moving forward. Next thing you know they lay off all the developers to save costs... The application is working after all, why do we still need devs?\n\nThe reality is the cost of IT upgrades don't go away because you ignore them, they accumulate. So more often than not it costs more to upgrade long after the fact then having just done it in the first place.",
"A huge one is that a business runs on a wide range of software. I had an issue where I had to revert an uprade to W7x64 because a piece of software that was very much needed only existed as a 16 bit app. It was utterly horrifying, but hey. ",
"A lot of times IT departments are wary of upgrading because it might break old software they're using. If you update your operating system you run the risk of breaking any software that hasn't been updated for the new OS yet (or is no longer maintained and won't be updated at all). Even updating individual pieces of software may cause workflow disruptions if something no longer works the way it's supposed to.",
"I work for a company that had a production app written in a defunct language. The company that wrote the software went out of business and we gained all of the rights to it but didn't have the ability to use it. It would only work on windows XP and windows 7. Until we could have it rewritten to work in a LAMP environment, we were stuck with outdated OS software. End of the day it boiled down to money. ",
"Cost is certainly an issue but there are some good reasons. If you've got a plant with processes controlled by software, you've got to make sure your controls are compatible with the upgrade. Checking all that takes time. Secondly, you don't want your production to go offline because of some previously undiscovered bug. Time let's the new version get it's bugs resolved.",
"*“Why should we waste money on something that is working fine?”* - Boss",
"In our company locker room, the conveyor belt that dispenses uniforms still runs on Windows 95.",
"I think you got many better answers then i have, but for me ITs two points:\n\n 1) If it does what is suppose to do, why change it?\n\n 2) It would cost a lot of money to get it working on newer system but it would still do exactly the same thing.",
"It's not just the cost of the software as most people are mentioning.\n\nIn science we use SUPER old computers to work with SUPER old equipment. We have lots of software that won't even run on windows 7. Upgrading to new computers would not only cost us the cost of new computers, but new, multi-tens of thousands of dollar machines as well.\n\nAlso, integrated serial ports work a HELL of a lot better than the USB - > serial converters. Hell, we still have machines that require the computer to have a GPIB card.\n\n(And they still work well so why would we want to replace them.)\n\nYou get really good at pirating old versions of windows when you're in science. (Go ahead, you go try to buy XP without it being super overpriced.)",
"Don’t forget compliance, aerospace industries use old software as changing the software means you have changed how you build the item and you may need to get that item re-certified. Until you get the item certified you can’t sell that item.",
"So lots of folks so far have mentioned cost. Giving the $50 x 5000 is a big number makes sense, but there is a second hidden factor I've not seen mentioned. Complexity. If I change Office 2013 to 2016 then all the macro's that finance uses to update the SAP database stop working because VBscript. Oh also turns out we are running important business functions off a shared Access database that would update with Office and break that other multi-million dollar process.\n\nThe biggest problem I have seen in every business is once IT released the software to the users, the users found a way to maximize it's usefulness all on their own via secondary processes. Those processes are almost never built by an IT person so they aren't modular and can't tolerate any piece moving. (Serious I know of a company who made millions off of excel, a DB connection in Excel to SAP, and a mail client macro. Changing out email servers required building a proper middleware and literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in project money to make the new system reliable and scaleable.) Often times when a upgrade comes along people discover the shoestring and bubblegum systems and have to acquire proper cap-ex to build what should have been put together from the start. You do this a few dozen times for each software product and you'll it gets really complex really quick. So much so that the cost has spiraled out of control and the deadline is impossible.",
"My store runs on really old software. We want to upgrade but, cant. It does cost a lot of money and the guy who was doing it died leaving it unfinished.",
"So a point many of the commentators are missing, is unions. Changing software is considered a tool change and as such must be negotiated and as anybody who deals with organized labor knows, it's something you don't want to do unless you have to. People forget with any \"tool change\" often come deals like \"you have to train our people\" and \"you can't doc anybodies performance for the next X years because it's not their fault they missed the deadline, you changed the tool\".\n\nFor example when we moved from Office 2010 to Office 2013 we had to agree that no union member would be penalized for not meeting any deadline that involves writing anything for one full year after proof we provided them a four hour formal block of instruction on Office 2013 first and unsurprising we still have people years later than haven't met a deadline since. Because you know the upgrade in Office versions was such a massive change that one could no longer write work orders on time.\n\nPeople simply forget lots of organizations simply don't change because organized labor negates any improvement you could possible realize by ~~my~~ making that change.\n"
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3oxho6 | why do people say redheads have no soul? is it because they're such a minority? when did it start? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3oxho6/eli5_why_do_people_say_redheads_have_no_soul_is/ | {
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"It was started by a South Park episode. Season 9 episode 11 Ginger Kids, and spread out from there.",
"South Park popularized the image in an episode parodying bigotry, and the phenomenon was further popularized by the viral \"GINGERS HAVE SOULS\" kid.\n\nRedheads were persecuted a bit in history, sometimes related to witches, and often stereotyped by the Irish hating Englishmen, but I don't think that the \"no souls\" joke came before South Park.\n\nSome people think that red hair was an \"evil mark\" put on Cain in the bible, but I've never seen definite confirmation of this."
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6m8zuz | how are garages with remote openers safe if they sell universal remotes for garages, what is preventing people from breaking in by programing a different remote to my garage? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6m8zuz/eli5_how_are_garages_with_remote_openers_safe_if/ | {
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"Your remote has to be paired with your garage opener. There are older styles with DIP switches where you set both the DIP switches on the remote and the opener to the same setting to open the door. Then there are the newer kind where the opener \"learns\" which remote is yours. The procedure will vary depending on the manufacturer, but generally you press a button on the opener, then you press one on the remote, and confirm on the opener (or something). It's sort of similar to Bluetooth device pairing (but in no way Bluetooth based). \n\nWhen garage door openers were brand new (around 1950-ish) there were only about 8 or so \"codes\" that a garage door would respond to. So basically you had to be careful that yours didn't also open your neighbors. Likely only a real problem in dense track-home areas, but it was still a concern. This is why in modern ones there are so many combinations it makes the likelihood of your remote ever being able to open up mine something I just don't need to worry about. Your remote isn't paired with my opener. "
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btfvx7 | what are our bodies actually doing when we "suck in" our gut? | And where does our gut go when we do that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/btfvx7/eli5_what_are_our_bodies_actually_doing_when_we/ | {
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"Your “gut” ie your intestine is very soft. So when you contract your abdominal muscles, they push your lower abdominal cavity back. As well, you may notice you breathe in when you preform this. There is connective tissue all over your upper and lower chest cavity, when you breathe the diaphragm moves some other things with it"
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2wgrmp | what is the difference between 'random' and 'chance'? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wgrmp/eli5what_is_the_difference_between_random_and/ | {
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"Let's say you're rolling two dice. The *chance* of getting 2 is much smaller than getting 7 - to get 2, each die has to turn up 1, but to get 7, you can do 1+6, 2+5, 3+4, 4+3, 5+2, or 6+1. But, each roll is *random* - getting a 2 on your first roll doesn't change the chance of getting a 2 the second roll. There's no pattern going from roll to roll, they're independent events.\n\nPut another way, chance describes how likely something is in a random system."
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dnl0af | why does the heart beat faster when holding breath | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dnl0af/eli5_why_does_the_heart_beat_faster_when_holding/ | {
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"text": [
"Because the oxygen isn't entering your heart anymore, and the heart pumps more to try and make up for it"
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mcii6 | how did we get to the moon with computers so weak compared to today | My guess is it has something to do with the fact that computers today need more power to run graphical interfaces, but thats about where my computer knowledge ends. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mcii6/eli5_how_did_we_get_to_the_moon_with_computers_so/ | {
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"Perseverance. At the time, they were working with the best technology of the day.\n\nSomebody correct me if I'm wrong, too, but the original rockets were far more 'analog' than the current generation, which are themselves running largely on 80s technology. ",
"Rocket engines are basically just giant pumps, and orbital calculations aren't all that difficult. There's not a whole lot that needs computers.",
"A few reasons.\n\nFirst, much of the electronics of the early space programs were analog, like old timey radios with a dial you could twist, or a cheapo washing machine. That kind of electronics doesn't need much computational power.\n\nSecond, space travel didn't actually require a lot of advanced computation. Oxygen level detection doesn't need a fancy computer. Orbital calculations were pre-programmed, not calculated on the fly. Radios were analog. Control systems were the main digital component, and they were simple.\n\nThird, complex systems are often more prone to failure. Better to have (it was thought) well trained humans that could use brain power to actuate simpler systems, than have complex computers running everything. Remember, every electrical connection has a chance of coming loose during the vibration of lift off.\n\nConsider a modern space game. That game might need to keep track of the position of thousands of objects, and millions of polygons. The Apollo missions needed to keep track of **one single object**, the spacecraft itself. ",
"The shortest answer is that because computers were slower they were only used for \"important\" things, like doing hard math quickly. Since they were relied upon to do less, we did not expect them to do as much.\n\nAlso, when a computer is designed to do only one or two things it can leave out the machinery to do the things it does not need to do. Today's computers are designed to do as much as possible. This gives them more power than is actually required. The computers used to reach the moon would have been designed to only do things required to go to the moon.",
"Also, programmers. Real ones. ",
"Slide rulers and tons of guys who earned physics degrees after taking advantage of the GI Bill.",
"It's hardly rocket science.",
"We got to the moon by sitting on top of big rockets!\n\nThe computers didn't do that much. The course was calculated by hand ahead of time. I'm not sure you'd even need a computer to go to the moon, if your analog timing circuitry was sufficiently accurate.\n\nA modern wristwatch probably has the computational power needed to go to the moon... what it's missing is a thousand tons of rocket fuel!",
"**ELI5 answer:** \n \n1) We WANTED to!\n2) We wanted to beat the Soviets. \n \nReally, that's it. The technology wasn't the computers as much as the thrust to get our rockets up, down, up, and down again. \n \nAs a species, we are fucking (sorry, five-year-olds) AMAZING!!! We can do stuff like this and more if we want to, with the technology that's available. \nWhy don't we have space hotels right now? Because the lawyers and lawmakers have convinced us that we don't want to be there badly enough to risk our lives for. \n \nWe could do it. We CAN do it. We've chosen not to take the risk.\n",
"Lots of math.",
"If there was a national push to go back to the moon, we could invest that money and do it without a whole lot of problems. We can't get to the moon today because of a lack in public interest, not a lack in technology.",
"To put it VERY simply, a lot of the power of todays computers is needed to make them user friendly. A good UI is a requirement for commercial success, but not so for a science/research project.\n\nSimple example: The textbox that I am typing this has a cut/copy function, a spell checker, undo/redo,etc\n\n10-15 years back, a full fleged Word processor may have advertised these as features",
"Perseverance. At the time, they were working with the best technology of the day.\n\nSomebody correct me if I'm wrong, too, but the original rockets were far more 'analog' than the current generation, which are themselves running largely on 80s technology. ",
"Rocket engines are basically just giant pumps, and orbital calculations aren't all that difficult. There's not a whole lot that needs computers.",
"A few reasons.\n\nFirst, much of the electronics of the early space programs were analog, like old timey radios with a dial you could twist, or a cheapo washing machine. That kind of electronics doesn't need much computational power.\n\nSecond, space travel didn't actually require a lot of advanced computation. Oxygen level detection doesn't need a fancy computer. Orbital calculations were pre-programmed, not calculated on the fly. Radios were analog. Control systems were the main digital component, and they were simple.\n\nThird, complex systems are often more prone to failure. Better to have (it was thought) well trained humans that could use brain power to actuate simpler systems, than have complex computers running everything. Remember, every electrical connection has a chance of coming loose during the vibration of lift off.\n\nConsider a modern space game. That game might need to keep track of the position of thousands of objects, and millions of polygons. The Apollo missions needed to keep track of **one single object**, the spacecraft itself. ",
"The shortest answer is that because computers were slower they were only used for \"important\" things, like doing hard math quickly. Since they were relied upon to do less, we did not expect them to do as much.\n\nAlso, when a computer is designed to do only one or two things it can leave out the machinery to do the things it does not need to do. Today's computers are designed to do as much as possible. This gives them more power than is actually required. The computers used to reach the moon would have been designed to only do things required to go to the moon.",
"Also, programmers. Real ones. ",
"Slide rulers and tons of guys who earned physics degrees after taking advantage of the GI Bill.",
"It's hardly rocket science.",
"We got to the moon by sitting on top of big rockets!\n\nThe computers didn't do that much. The course was calculated by hand ahead of time. I'm not sure you'd even need a computer to go to the moon, if your analog timing circuitry was sufficiently accurate.\n\nA modern wristwatch probably has the computational power needed to go to the moon... what it's missing is a thousand tons of rocket fuel!",
"**ELI5 answer:** \n \n1) We WANTED to!\n2) We wanted to beat the Soviets. \n \nReally, that's it. The technology wasn't the computers as much as the thrust to get our rockets up, down, up, and down again. \n \nAs a species, we are fucking (sorry, five-year-olds) AMAZING!!! We can do stuff like this and more if we want to, with the technology that's available. \nWhy don't we have space hotels right now? Because the lawyers and lawmakers have convinced us that we don't want to be there badly enough to risk our lives for. \n \nWe could do it. We CAN do it. We've chosen not to take the risk.\n",
"Lots of math.",
"If there was a national push to go back to the moon, we could invest that money and do it without a whole lot of problems. We can't get to the moon today because of a lack in public interest, not a lack in technology.",
"To put it VERY simply, a lot of the power of todays computers is needed to make them user friendly. A good UI is a requirement for commercial success, but not so for a science/research project.\n\nSimple example: The textbox that I am typing this has a cut/copy function, a spell checker, undo/redo,etc\n\n10-15 years back, a full fleged Word processor may have advertised these as features"
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a6c5m9 | how does movie distribution work for independent films? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a6c5m9/eli5_how_does_movie_distribution_work_for/ | {
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"Often independent films will pay a company to package and then distribute the movie for them or with them as part of the agreement for them making the film. "
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ciu8vw | if female orgasms are better than men’s, then why are men typically the ones who bother females about having sex and not the other way around? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ciu8vw/eli5_if_female_orgasms_are_better_than_mens_then/ | {
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"\"Better\" is subjective.\n\nHas anybody ever been biologically male, and then biologically female, and compared the two? I don't think so. So we can't ever actually compare them.",
"Every woman is different regarding whether they thoroughly enjoy sex or not with a lot of various factors (i.e. confidence, beliefs, respect, if the focus is always on the man or also on the female) but I think a major factor is their man - if he knows their body and how to do the job it’ll be a big difference. I think society’s association with being a slut if a female likes sex is also part of it. That cliche saying about it not just being about the end, but also the journey also applies to sex. It’s good to please your man and he should also please you. Ultimately, it is different for every female.",
"Because men are virtually guaranteed an orgasm and women are not. If you had an orgasm every time you did something, you’d be highly motivated. If you had an orgasm only sometimes, you’d be less motivated. Most women do not achieve orgasm during intercourse. Statistics vary, but the story is consistent: _URL_0_"
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m4dbc | how can an appendage be reattached to a body? | Such as if your finger is chopped off, but you get it put back on. How? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/m4dbc/how_can_an_appendage_be_reattached_to_a_body/ | {
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"Apart from the risk of infection, most tissue will re-heal. They connect things like arteries to recirculate blood flow, and then bingo, it all works out",
"Apart from the risk of infection, most tissue will re-heal. They connect things like arteries to recirculate blood flow, and then bingo, it all works out"
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205iix | why aren't we using flash on smartphones or new technology anymore, when it used to be a good option for animation? | I remember that when the iPhone appeared they decided not to use flash (which seemed awkward cause apple owns adobe), now even andriod has no flash and it's starting to go away faster and faster on new technology.
PS: I don't miss Flash webpages, those are just bad. But banners and different forms of animation where good many times. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/205iix/eli5_why_arent_we_using_flash_on_smartphones_or/ | {
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"apple does not own adobe. \n\nthe basic capabilities of flash with regards to animation, streaming and vector graphics have all been included in web standards or have been given special treatment by proprietary browser capabilities. \n\nAdditionally, the flash plugin was/is notoriously unstable, responsible for what some said was the vast majority of browser crashes across all browsers.",
"Flash is kind of a shaky plug in, there's a few issues with it. HTML5 is more stable and can do everything flash does, so flash is really no longer needed.",
"HTML5 is moving more towards incorproating more seamlessly the elements flash had without requiring a plugin. Still, there's a lot of websites and content that still relies on flash on the web and it's unfortunate that that content is becoming largely inaccessible from a mobile platform.\n\nI still use flash and have FireFox on my phone though. It's not a perfect or even ideal setup, but it's better than nothing.",
"Apparently, it is because Flash was more designed for a mouse and a keyboard (at least Flash with code) and since smartphones don't have either than those, it's not the easiest for a person to use effectively, depending on the Flash application. ",
"Steve Jobs explained it: _URL_0_",
"Flash content (especially video) has never worked as well as html5 does now. I have a powerful high end video card. As it stands YouTube on PC still mostly uses flash. What this means is that card is wasted on poorly optimized software, and the experience is usually lacking.",
"Adobe stopped supporting mobile devices about a year and a half ago. Since mobile devices updated and changed much more often than home computers, the flash that was being distributed was unstable at best and unusable at worst. Adobe could put more people on the mobile team to keep up, but it would cost more money than would be made.\n\nSource: kindle tech support, I get this question daily.",
"Short answer, it was never really a good option. The difference is that now we've actually got something better. (HTML5, primarily)",
"To answer your question a little bit differently, Flash is still used for animation by a good number of people, and it is still a solid tool for animators.\n\nAs a runtime environment, however, Flash simply hasn't been maintained very well by Adobe, as they focus more on their enterprise software (Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects). Since Flash was such a closed system and became such a web standard (especially after Adobe bought out Macromedia), and now we're currently seeing the slow shift from Flash to the combination of HTML5/CSS/JS/PHP that offers a lot better cross-platform support that Flash was never designed (nor redesigned) for."
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27iyd5 | how some people can wear only a tee-shirt and shorts in freezing temperatures while others need to wear winter jackets in much warmer weather? | I am not bothered by cold until about 0 degrees while some people I know get all blue and get goosebumps when it is 70 degrees outside. Some people say that I have warm blood, but wouldn't my blood be ~98.6, just like everyone elses it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27iyd5/eli5how_some_people_can_wear_only_a_teeshirt_and/ | {
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"It depends on many factors:\n\n* Energy consumption rate\n* Body weight and fat\n* Age\n* Genetics\n* Many, many other ones"
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3tsjp8 | what makes the new reddit privacy policy different from the existing? anything in there to worry about? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tsjp8/eli5_what_makes_the_new_reddit_privacy_policy/ | {
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"The primary substantial difference is that IP addresses will be stored for 100 days, up from 90 days; according to Reddit, this is to allow for convenient quarterly analysis of usage.\n\nThe other revisions are mostly rewording intended to make the policy easier to read, without affecting its substance.",
"Don't worry about it. They reserve the right to change the privacy policy at will without any notice.\n\nSo even if today it explicitly guarantees that your porn preferences will not be shared with anyone, if tomorrow they figure out how to monetize your porn preferences, your porn preferences will be shared.\n\nYuck. I did not know that about you. I am personally disgusted!"
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e1e6mz | why are cpus overclockable? why don’t manufacturers just increase the base clock speed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e1e6mz/eli5_why_are_cpus_overclockable_why_dont/ | {
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"They rate them at a clock speed that they feel meets a good balance of performance and reliability. By overclocking them you're increasing the risk of failure.",
"Overclocking CPUs make them produce more heat. And it can get dangerous if the computer doesn't have a proper cooling/ventilation system. The manufacturer can't ensure the consumers' computer to have a good enough cooler to handle the overclocked chip. So they keep it at a base level to ensure safety and longer lifetime of the chip",
"Because overclocking typically requires higher voltages going through the CPU, which increases heat, and increases the risk of computational errors. Heat also reduces the operational life of the CPU. That's why people who overclock often use expensive water cooling. It's a trade-off.",
"Because manufacturers have to make a compromise between longevity, heat output and demand/profitability. CPU manufacturers have to make CPUs that last 10 years. Generally, people who overclock their CPUs upgrade frequently so longevity isn't as much of an issue and neither is thermal management since they will opt for better cooling solutions. They are also more likely to spend money unlocked SKUs which increases profitability for the manufacturer.",
"In short: To get the clock speed at the same highest level is simply too tricky so manufacturer just give the safest operating clock to make it as stable as possible. Without letting user experiencing some BSOD or just come with fried chips.",
"In addition to all the other comments about engineering tolerances and tradeoffs it is worthwhile selling the same thing at different price points: [_URL_1_](_URL_0_)\n\nThe price is not determined by the cost of manafacture (except inasmuch as you generally don't want to sell at a loss) but what people will pay for it.\n\nYou might produce something at a cost of £3. If you have 1000 people who will pay £5, 100 who can will pay £10 and 10 who will pay £50 you don't want to sell to them all at any of those price points - you want everyone to pay they max they are willing to.\n\nThe people who pay £50 will buy the £5 version if they can without too much trouble (hence vouchers/coupons and student discounts) but probably won't if it is (or is seen to be) a little inferior (hence gold-plating/limited editions).\n\nIt can even be rational to deliberately spoil or mislabel some of your output to sell at the low price point, so those people won't buy it for £5.",
"When companies make a batch of CPUs, they then test them to determine how fast they can reliably operate, which is called \"binning\".\n\nSometimes (particularly after a given processor has been in production for awhile and all the wrinkles are ironed out of the manufacturing process), they end up having lots of processors that can achieve top-shelf speeds. More in fact, than there is demand for. So some of those really good chips will be labeled, boxed, and sold as lesser chips that customers are wanting, even though they're actually capable of more. Overclocking unlocks that greater potential.\n\nIn addition to that, it's often possible to wring additional performance out of chips by using non-standard settings, such as adjusting timings or increasing voltage. These have disadvantages (e.g. higher voltage means it will run hotter and consume more power), so these aren't the stock settings.",
"Yield management. Each chip is tested to ensure it doesn't fail over the full range of specifications. Often chips that fail at the fastest rating (bin) will work OK at a slower rating (bin). But also chips may operate perfectly fine at a faster speed, but not over the full temperature range. So by adding extra cooling, a chip officially rated at one speed range may work fine at a higher speed as long as the temperature is kept low enough. This is why overclocking typically requires extra cooling. As others have pointed out, by changing other settings (e.g., Voltage) from the official spec., higher speeds may also be possible.",
"ELI5: same reason you don't jog/run everywhere and choose to walk.\n\nThey could make every cpu run at its maximum stable speeds, but it is harder on the chips, they will consume more power and generate more heat, and they won't last as long. By having them run at a comfortable speed (like jogging), that's less than their maximum potential they are able to run more efficiently and last much longer.\n\nSure you can manually tell them to go faster, but at the added cost of power, heat, and reduced lifespan.\n\nEdit: some people are pointing out the lifespan comment. So to continue with ELI5: a Profesional football player will often retire well before they get \"old\". They can, and often will live a full life like the rest of us. However all that early life hard work and stress can lead to more health problems later in life that they wouldn't have had otherwise.",
"Why not make 10 louder?\n\nBut this one goes to 11.",
"* Overclocking typically makes the system less stable (it crashes more) unless the extra heat generated is properly dealt with.\n* The extra cooling typically required for overclocking is more costly.\n* So instead of making two different processors with similar speeds, one that requires extra cooling, and one that doesn't, the company can sell one processor that serves two different kinds of customers.\n* That makes the processors cheaper to make.",
"You can drive your smart fourtwo at 200mph with nitro if you really want to run it that hard. You will not enjoy driving that car at that speed for nearly as long as everyone else.",
"A company makes a promise that a CPU works on a certain speed on all compatible motherboards, with all supported memory, with all power suplies, as long as cooling is good enough. They stay a little on the safe side, just so that they can fulfil that promise with everyone. Now with overclocking, you can take a bit more risk, and try to go faster, but the company already kept their promise, so if it doesn't go much faster, or if the CPU breaks, it is bad luck, or your fault. (And then there's \"binning\" etc..other reasons why companies sell faster CPU's while promising less )",
"A car can run has a top speed but isn't always run at top speed due to it being unstable and higher wear and tear and other increased dependencies. \n\nSame for cpu. Plus they charge you higher for better chips and adding/enabling more features in the better chips. So cost savings aswell.",
"mostly everything has been touched on here. the simplest way i can put it is the company bins(tests) each cpu..assures they can all reach the advertised speed. lets say the box says 4.0ghz, then they will make sure all can reach that speed, the ones that can do says 4.8 for example may get put aside for special editions.but the important thing is every cpu will be different, some will do 4.1,some 4.2 some 4.3. why they call it the silicone _URL_0_ long as it can get the advertised speed the extra is just a bonus",
"There's an additional aspect to this that I haven't seen mentioned yet. If you look into overclocking you'll occasionally hear the term \"silicon lottery\". What this basically refers to is the fact that not all chips produced in a batch will be the same. Some will be capable of running faster than others, somewhat randomly. When a CPU company is producing CPUs in the millions (I don't know any sales figures so millions is an approximate number), it's not practical to test every chip to see how fast it can run. \nInstead, they test a bunch of chips, and decide on a speed that should be 'stable' on all the chips being produced. \nIf they chose a higher speed, they risk running the weaker chips too fast, in which case they may just not work. \nIf they choose a slower speed, they're potentially wasting performance. \n\nWhen you overclock, you test your CPU to see how fast it can actually go, and set it to that speed. For some people this may be a lot higher than the speed set by the manufacturer, for others it may not make much difference.",
"So many wrong/hand wavy replies.\n\nThe correct answer is yield and testing cost. \n\nWhenever chips are made every manufacturer aims for a particular yield. Say 95%. That means 95% of the chips in a silicon wafer (the round shiny things you see in videos about chip manufacturing) need to work and meet the spec -- so that they can be sold (you can say your product runs at 2.4 GHz but have it fail at 2.3 GHz).\n\nSay the manufacturer sells CPUs at 2.4 GHz, then that means that 95% of the chips from the wafer need to run at that frequency without problems. If you make it 2.5 GHz, only 80% of the chips might run at that frequency. When making millions of chips, that 15% waste is a lot of money lost. So they just sell at 2.4 GHz.\n\nAnother thing they do is binning. Where they sell 80% of the chips at 2.5 GHz and the remaining 15% of the chips (the ones that couldn't run at 2.5 GHz) at 2.4 GHz. \n\nMy example split isn't great. In reality as you push the frequency you have a bell curve like drop. With very few chips able to run at the higher frequencies. So let's say the split if 80% at 2.4 GHz and 15% at 2.5 GHz and say 3% at 2.6 GHz. There's no financial benefit for testing for 2.7 GHz and then selling them. That's 1% of their sales where they might get a few bucks more. But the testing cost would increase more than that.\n\nWhen you are looking at enthusiasts over clocking stuff, they are probably getting lucky with the few percent of the chips that can run faster. \n\nAnother thing to keep in mind is that the manufacturer doesn't test each component (in SoCs for example) at different frequency bin. That'll be too much testing and binning cost.\n\nThe CPU might be over clockable but the GPU might not. So that one chip will be put in the slowest bin. The end user might still overclock the CPU and get some fun out of it.",
"The manufacturing process isn't perfect so there'll be tiny differences even between CPUs of the same model. These differences can affect the CPU's performance (this is what people mean when they talk about \"silicon lottery\"), so when deciding on a stock clock frequency and other parameters, the manufacturer has to make sure to choose them such that they'll work for ALL the CPUs of that model.",
"This is something I've never actually done \n\nEven on a gaming laptop playing triple A games at ultra, I've never needed to overclock the processor, I just leave it standard.\n\nSo what's the actual point of overclocking? It seems comparable to how Mercedes F1 run their engine in qualifying mode for peak performance for those 2 singular runs in Q3....maximising every drop of performance out of the machine for that final tenth of a second.\n\nOverclocking from what I understand is the same theory... maximising the perform to eek out that last 5% or so of performance... but much like in F1 how they dont run those engines like that for the entire season because they'll explode, overclocking surely must run the risk of reducing the longevity of the processor??? Or other components?",
"So it’s cheaper to make a million of a high end CPU and then, “bin” down some to fewer cores or lower clock, than it is to purposely design 40 variants and try to manufacture to those tolerances.\n\nAlso how wafer yields work is you get a blend that comes out at different quality. Sometimes one core is fucked but the other 3 can run really fast. Sometimes demand is a lot higher for the low end.\n\n_URL_0_"
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acrcm8 | does the world actually create any new water? or is it 100% recycled? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/acrcm8/eli5_does_the_world_actually_create_any_new_water/ | {
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"It's almost entirely recycled, but it can be created by combining hydrogen and oxygen, either through burning, or through another chemical reaction.",
"A very small percentage of the total water on Earth is 'created' continuously, as likewise a very small percentage of the water is 'lost', both due to biological processes.\n\nA small amount of the water taken in by plants is used in photosynthesis, where it reacts with carbon dioxide to form glucose and oxygen.\n\nSaid glucose does soon get reacted with oxygen to produce water again in respiration, but there's a period of time there where it's not water.\n\nSimilar cycling of water occurs in a lot of protein, carbohydrate, lipid and amino acid reactions within living organisms.\n\nThere is also a very small net gain of water from space, where any ice on meteorites is added to the system.\n\nSo there is a steady shifting of water in and out of actually being water within the Earth's biosphere, but in the grand scheme of things, it's basically just a drop in the ocean. Most of the water in the Earth's biosphere and geosphere has been water since the Solar System formed, and will remain water for billions of years to come."
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1bsdwy | what is wild yeast, how is it alive? and what is fermentation? | I'm going to make some sourdough culture and then sourdough bread, and so I wish to understand the process better | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bsdwy/eli5_what_is_wild_yeast_how_is_it_alive_and_what/ | {
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"Yeast is a kind of fungus and wild yeast is yeast that exists naturally in the air rather than specially bred yeast like brewers or bakers yeast.\n\nFermentation is what happens when this yeast metabolises sugar into carbon dioxide and alcohol (in other words it eats sugar and poops out booze and gas... :P). This is specifically anaerobic resperation (meaning it produces energy for itself without oxygen). If you were to give it air then the reaction would be different (and most likely putrid). Bread takes advantage of the carbon dioxide gas to produce bubbles in the dough and make the bread \"rise\". Beer uses the alcohol to, well... be alcoholic."
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22ss7u | can anyone explain what is going on with northwestern u unionizing? | What does it mean for the players? The school? The NCAA? What are they hoping to accomplish and why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22ss7u/eli5_can_anyone_explain_what_is_going_on_with/ | {
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"This is a very long topic, but I'll try to be brief. Basically, the players want to unionize because they want to get more rights and better benefits. They see that collegiate athletics (football especially) is become more and more profitable and the university's are raking in tons of cash- but the players are not seeing a corresponding increase in their benefits, i.e. a higher stipend, more tuition assitance, better housing, etc. By unionizing, they now have a voice in negotiating better perks for players. Also bear in mind: these players, like pro football players, have a very short shelf life. With average pro careers lasting 3.5 years, football players have an especially acute interest in having a say in their working conditions (even more so now that all this head concussion stuff has come to light).\nFrom the school's standpoint, they want to have full control over the types of benefits they provide to players. Like any employer, they have more flexibility, control and profit if players are put in a \"take it or leave it\" position. They also claim that this blurs the line between student and worker, but this is just rhetoric since university's regularly employ students for a variety of tasks- and there are many unions for such students (grad assistants especially). \n The NCAA has similar interests as the school, so I'll dispense with them.\n\nIf you want to dig deeper into this, one of my professors is widely considered the foremost expert on collegiate athlete unionization, here is an article he wrote on this: _URL_0_\n"
]
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"http://news.illinois.edu/news/14/0407NCAA_labordispute_MichaelLeRoy.html"
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2ex1oq | how does drinking water get from the stomach to the bladder, rather than the anus? | Is it absorbed along the way? Does it simply replace secreted water from closer to the bladder? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ex1oq/eli5_how_does_drinking_water_get_from_the_stomach/ | {
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"The [colon](_URL_0_), the final part of the digestive tract, has a primary function of absorbing useful water out of your waste products before you pass them as feces. ",
"Water is absorbed through your stomach lining and your intestines. It gets distributed and moves alogn with your blood.\n\nYour kidneys are filters that filter toxins and (excess) water from your blood and deposit what they filter in your bladder."
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5mkriw | why do you feel both warm and cold when having the common cold? | Hello I'm on my forth day with the common cold and this always happens to me! Especially during the night my body is usually very warm, although at the same time i feel like i'm actually freezing. Why does this happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mkriw/eli5_why_do_you_feel_both_warm_and_cold_when/ | {
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"The Body raises its' temperature as this kills/slows the infection.\nHuman cells can tolerate the slight increase so only the infection is targeted.\n\nYou feel cold for two reasons:\n\nOne is your body itself making you feel cold, this makes you shiver to heat up(and also seek blankets and heaters).\n\nThe other is you sweat profusely, so as soon as you feel too warm, you seek some cool air or get out from under the blanket. This causes cold air to hit you and the sweat instantly chills on your skin."
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7cc4hv | what makes japanese cars (honda/toyota, etc.) more reliable than german (mercedes/ bmw/ audi, etc.) and american cars (ford/ chevy, etc.) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7cc4hv/eli5_what_makes_japanese_cars_hondatoyota_etc/ | {
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"That all depends on the aspect of the car you are talking about. \n\nHonda is known for the reliablilty of their engines. \n\nHowever American automanufacturers have better durability for trucks overall. \n\nWhen you get into the specifics of a vehicle each country of design has it's upsides and it's downsides",
"When Japanese companies first tried to break into the American auto market, their quality and reliability were horrible. They literally were a joke. \n \nSo they decided to get very very serious about improving. They brought in American quality experts (Juran and Deming, most notably) and actually listened to what they said. They didn't worry about profits; they believed the quality experts when they said that profit would come if they did things right. \n \nThis drive to improve became ingrained in the culture of some of the auto companies. They started to see success in the market as a result, and that just reinforced the culture. They pursued various different techniques to drive continuous improvement, and some of them worked very well. \n \nAmerican and German car companies have tried at times to replicate this, but they can never seem to muster the guts to commit totally and not worry about short-term profits. They have improved, but simply not as much. \n \nAnd some companies (I'm looking at you, Ford) have never been able to get past the idea that if you save $1 per car on a million cars, that's a million dollars of pure profit. They can't seem to internalize the inevitable degradation that happens with this thought process. The penny pinching is ingrained too deeply in their history and culture. \n \nNot to say that Honda and Toyota never have issues. Cars are incredibly complex beasts, and sometimes a supplier can screw you. But in general, those two companies have learned to walk the walk and have reaped the rewards. "
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2qahjb | how do norad, google, and other sites track santa? | How do they go about picking a route? Is it a random algorithm? Is there any kind of order or significance to his route? Does the amount of time he stays in a certain city depend on the population size? It's interesting to me because he kind of jumps all over the place all night. They also seem to pick random cities for him to visit.
Also, Merry Christmas! (or whatever the hell it is you all celebrate.. or don't celebrate) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qahjb/eli5_how_do_norad_google_and_other_sites_track/ | {
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"NORAD, NORth american Aerospace Defense command, is capable of tracking anything from planes to rockets to flocks of birds. A sleigh full of toys and a bunch of reindeer stick out like a sore thumb on their radar, it looks nothing like a plane.\n\nWe'll never know how he manages to visit everyone in just one night. He may appear to jump around, but remember, he has to wait for the tree to be unguarded, or the children asleep, in order to bring presents. He probably just spots the opportunity and makes a delivery while he can.",
"If I'm really explaining this like you're five, then I would say that Santa has a GPS device on his sleigh, and that's sending data to his elves back at the North Pole, and their computers are sending that data out to all the rest of the world.\n\nNORAD, however, seems to be using radar, which is ~~sound~~ radio waves, to triangulate his location. They send out waves from stations all around the world, and depending on how fast the waves that bounce back from Santa are, they can tell how far away he is from those stations.\n\nBy the way, [Google's Santa Tracker is pretty awesome.](_URL_0_)\n\n*edit: swapped \"sound\" for radio waves. Sonar uses sound waves. I are dumb. My kid will also be dumb.",
"Well you have to take in account Santa's amazing ability to manipulate time. I couldn't explain that if I tried since it wouldn't even be comprehend able if we did actually know how it worked.\n\nAside from Santa's warp drive he also has a couple helpers. Some people say clones, but I question that. All in all despite having nearly 364 days off a year. It is much more efficient and far less stressful to have multiple teams working the planet over at once.\n\nNot to cause a panic I'd assume that all but one are inter-dimensional at a time so multiple bogeys don't start showing up all over radar. I mean it is really crazy stuff. Kris Kringle and all.",
"I just want to say that this is my favorite ELI5. Merry Christmas! ",
"Real world answer: Though I don't know, I'd guess that they plot a course for him to take that would cover all of the major cities in the world and then set his location to where he would be on that course, taking into account the earth's rotation and such.\n\nSlightly Off-Topic: My dad teaches physics. Every year, the last day before christmas break, he gives a presentation about the Physics of Santa. By the end, he concludes that Santa would explode, burn up, freeze, suffocate, and disintegrate seconds after he starts. His students hate him.",
"The FAA requires him to squalk with a transponder just like any other private aircraft "
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6asqt4 | how can someone's dna be 18% of sub-saharan africa? i thought dna is split 50/50 between the mother and father's side. | Speaking in reference to [this article](_URL_0_) about a sergeant who recently discovered he's 18% sub saharan african. How does that come about? I have a rather rudimentary understanding of genetics, so I'm only really familiar with punnet squares. Would that mean that his great grandparent was African? In which case, shouldn't he only have 12.5% African DNA? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6asqt4/eli5_how_can_someones_dna_be_18_of_subsaharan/ | {
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"Think about it this way: if you think in terms of starting with 100% on only one side you will get exactly what you found, always a division by two. But the other partner can also have some part of their DNA be from that region, so say one parent is 25% and one is 12.5% then you get 18.75%.\n\nBut you can do this for generation after generation with every possible combination, so by this point practically any DNA mix is possible.",
"Your genome is split 50/50 between mother and father, but a mixed race parent (whether 50/50 or not) does not necessarily give 50/50 ratio of racially identifiable chromosomes. Any mix of chromosomes is possible, so the child might get only 8 of 23 'african' chromosomes and 15 'european' from the mixed race parent and end up with 8 out of 46 chromosomes with african markers"
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"https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/us/cleon-brown-black-lawsuit.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news"
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csfndf | why can’t we just make bigger batteries? | I saw a post earlier about Texas having an abundance of wind power but a lack of storage for it. Is it possible to make batteries larger than they currently are? What would be the cap on how big a battery can be? Can we make batteries the size of a house or larger? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/csfndf/eli5_why_cant_we_just_make_bigger_batteries/ | {
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"Well, for one, Lithium ion batteries are expensive, require lots of shielding to prevent dangerous short circuits, and they tend not to have a long life. Essentially, our current, best rechargeable batteries are expensive and dangerous for use at the level of an electrical grid.",
"Battery production has been ramping up significantly over the last decade, but we're currently only making ~50 GWh per year. If you want to setup a 500 MWh storage facility then you need to buy 1% of **global lithium ion battery production** which will be pretty expensive.\n\nA bigger battery doesn't help this situation at all. We can't make the standard sizes cells fast enough, making a custom massive battery will just slow things down.\n\nAs production continues to increase and prices continue to drop then grid storage will become a lot more common"
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|
1t2fno | what are the us secret courts? | Also, so how do we know if agencies, such as the NSA, actually report their methods to the courts and if they are deemed to be illegal that the agency actually does not implement them. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1t2fno/eli5_what_are_the_us_secret_courts/ | {
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"In the US, it's not generally legal to spy on someone without a warrant (a legal authorization for the government to spy on you or search your stuff). A warrant has to be issued by a judge. However, some parts of the government use spying techniques that are secret they don't want to disclose what they're doing or how they're doing it because that would give away the secrets.\n\nSo the US created a special group of judges who have the appropriate security clearance that the branches of government can tell the judges what they're doing, so they have a legal warrant, but the court proceedings are secret so who and how they're spying don't get out in public.\n\nIn principle, this is a good way to protect the secrets of the government while providing judicial oversight. However, there is significant concern in the US right now that the secret courts have approved spying that they should not have and that the spy agencies may not have disclosed everything they're doing to the secret courts."
]
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|
98qb84 | if the japanese invented haikus, how are they translated effectively? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/98qb84/eli5_if_the_japanese_invented_haikus_how_are_they/ | {
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"text": [
"You will probably find multiple translations of the same haiku with slightly different word choices. Translating poetry well is a difficult process. In a Portuguese class I took, the teacher gave us a full page or two with probably a dozen or so translations of the same poem. it was incredible to see the different interpretations.",
"I’m so disappointed. You missed the opportunity on that one. \n\n\nJapan invented\n\n\n\nHaiku, are we translating\n\n\n\nTheir poems correctly??"
]
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[],
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3ju4q7 | what's difference between front and all? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ju4q7/eli5whats_difference_between_front_and_all/ | {
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"text": [
"Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Front is the top posts of your subscribed subreddits, and all is the top posts of all subreddits."
]
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[]
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|
5zl1oa | how do grasshoppers morph into locusts? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zl1oa/eli5_how_do_grasshoppers_morph_into_locusts/ | {
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"Locusts are just a name for grasshoppers who are in a swarming phase. They are still grasshoppers. \n\nIt happens due to overcrowding. Certain external pressures can result in a population-explosion, and when grasshoppers bump into each other they get a rush of serotonin. This causes them to change color, eat much more than usual, and breed much more frequently than usual. This results in the swarm that has been the bane of human agriculture since prehistory. \n\nDue to the color and behavior change (since grasshoppers are usually solitary), it was thought that locusts were a different species, but it's actually just a behavior of certain types of grasshopper.\n\n"
]
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||
3ytuzo | what stops a country from abandoning it's currency? | Let's say this. The Australian dollar inflates to the millions and billions, so if you ever wanted to buy a candy bar, you'd have to exchange in million AUD notes. To fix this, the AUD is not the currency of the country anymore, and it's dollarydoos now. The exchange rate for a dollarydoo is 1 dollardoo for a 1 million AUD note. What exactly stops a country from doing that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ytuzo/eli5_what_stops_a_country_from_abandoning_its/ | {
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"text": [
"Countries do this all the time. However, unless they actually address the *cause* of inflation, changing the currency doesn't help -- inflation doesn't magically disappear because you changed the name of the currency. Zimbabwe (the most famous recent hyperinflation) devalued its currency 3 times, but since it never addressed the core issues that didn't end up working out.\n\nChanging the currency can be a step towards controlling inflation, but the currency change itself is mostly psychological.",
"Most countries avoid having hyperinflation in the first place, so they have no need to do that.\n\nAnd even when they do need a revaluation, the usually have a cultural attachment to the name of the currency, so they usually just tack \"new\" on the front of the name rather than making up something entirely different for the name. The new peso. The new shekel. etc."
]
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[],
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|
4ybdqc | what is the "circle" that we see around streetlights and other kinds of lights? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ybdqc/eli5_what_is_the_circle_that_we_see_around/ | {
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"It's a result of light refracting in your eye (or in water droplets in the air, depending on the kind of halo you're seeing). If you have vision problems such as near-sightedness or glaucoma, it can make these halos far more prevalent.."
]
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||
7iilb6 | exposed veins | Basically, I'm skinny as hell and can see my veins a good part of the time, especially after a shower or something like that, I can even tell if they're green or blue, why does this happen?
Also, why do women apparently like it? I remember myself looking up how to get rid of it when I was a kid, after finding out it was relatively normal I was relieved, but it creeps me out a little bit even today. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7iilb6/eli5exposed_veins/ | {
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"You have blood vessels all over your body at different depths because everything needs a blood supply to get the oxygen and nutrients it needs to keep growing, living, and working. Some vessels are deeper in your body and some are shalllow enough to be seen. Some are even so close to the surface that you can see them very clearly and the color of the blood flowing through them can also be visible, after being changed a bit by the skin and tissues running over them of course.\nSome people consider visible, bulging veins to be masculine. Therefore, females who share this view may find such a feature on a male attractive. This has to do in part with the fact that individuals with muscular definition tend to have more visible, bulging blood vessels on their body, so visible veins have become associated with a masculine and/or athletic body. Even males without actually muscular physiques may be viewed as more attractive if they have visible veins merely due to this association.\n\nIt is perfectly normal and nothing to worry about or try to change. Some people just have more visible veins than others, just like some people are taller than others.",
"Fairly visible veins is a sign of a healthy (or busy) cardiovascular system. People who do cardio exercise a lot and don't havemuch body fat will show veins quite a lot, as their bloodflow is strong.\n\nWomen and gay men like seeing it on dudes because it's a sign of strength and health (unless the person is unhealthily thin)"
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616kky | at what age are humans considered to be at their prime? sexually, psychically, mentally. | well i am 18 so i was curious | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/616kky/eli5_at_what_age_are_humans_considered_to_be_at/ | {
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"I believe for most of human history life expectancy was only around 30. So probably before then.\n\nDammit..."
]
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2d18a4 | how port scanning works and how one can infect a pc through ports. | Interested in the PC security stuff and was just curious | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2d18a4/eli5_how_port_scanning_works_and_how_one_can/ | {
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"You see if a computer responds to requests more or less. It tells you what services are accessible on the computer.\n\nYou use it in hopes of determine there's a vulnerable service running.",
"Port scanning refers to knocking on the doors of network services, to see if one is open or not. It's not referring to... say your printer port. \n\n"
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9lxt7j | how does strep throat cause so many disorders and illnesses? | I've seen so many news stories of a healthy kid contracting strep throat and sometimes they either lose their limbs, go brain-dead, or their personalities change. How the hell is a sore throat capable of this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9lxt7j/eli5_how_does_strep_throat_cause_so_many/ | {
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"Because a sore throat is just a symptom. Strep throat is caused by the bacteria *Streptococcus pyogenes.* It's easily treated with antibiotics, and complications are unusual in healthy adults, but if it's untreated and the bacteria *does* spread to other parts of the body, it can cause infections in other locations, or systemic infections like rheumatic fever which can cause lasting damage to heart valves."
]
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6vrtee | if a single rear window is rolled down in the car, why does the wind sound choppy and the car feels like it's shaking? why isn't this the case when a single front window is rolled down? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6vrtee/if_a_single_rear_window_is_rolled_down_in_the_car/ | {
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"It's the same effect you get if you blow over an open bottle. \n\nThat tone you get is due to the air inside the bottle oscillating, or vibrating back and forth. \n\nThe bigger the bottle, the slower that oscillation occurs. \n\nScale it up to the size of a car, and the oscillation is that slow you can feel each vibration.\n\nWhat'll kill it instantly is opening a window on the other side of the car. ",
"None of these answers seen to examine why it only happens with a single rear as opposed to a single front... ",
"Fluid dynamics It's similar to you having a bottle full of water without a cap and you turn it upside down. The water will fall and air will have to come in to fill it. It's not a smooth process but one where the pressure of the air outside builds up and eventually wins against the flow of water coming down.\n\nIf you punch a hole at the bottom of the bottle you don't have the issue with pressure changing so the flow of water would be smooth.\n\nIn a back window you have a similar situation. The air inside the car has a higher pressure than the air outside. The air inside gets sucked out but if you are in a constant speed, the harmonics of air rushing in would be audible.\n\nIf you open the front window the situation is different as the air will be pushed inside. That's because how the air (fluid) flows around the car. Higher pressure in the front, lower pressure at that back."
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5fg81k | why are people considered "social animals", and why is it that people could go crazy if they don't have any social interaction? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5fg81k/eli5_why_are_people_considered_social_animals_and/ | {
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"People are considered social animals because much of our own views of ourselves is affected by others' views. I.e. you can measure your own success by comparing yourself to others, or how they treat you because of your successes. When a human has no social interaction, they lose most metrics by which to judge themselves (even if they have a mirror or the like, as a low example) and because sanity is aided by focus, a lack of validation means a loss in focus. Loss in focus results in damage to a person's sanity. ",
"Our nature as \"social animals\" is a consequence of evolution. \n\nOur diminished physical ability compared to the rest of the animal world (and of other groups of humans) lead to the most socially cohesive groups of humans being able to survive being preyed on or attacked, and also lead to intangible benefits like \"herd immunity\" (inoculation and protection from disease through rapid exposure of an entire group), sharing of discoveries and technology advancement, and even the most foundational aspect of our existence: the invention of common language.",
"Humans are the ultimate pack hunters due to our superior communication abilities. No other species has done it better than we do. A species that evolves out of a pack hunting society is naturally going to be a social animal."
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9jcit9 | how does the southern hemisphere have different seasons than the northern hemisphere? i simply can't seem to wrap my head around this. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9jcit9/eli5_how_does_the_southern_hemisphere_have/ | {
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"The Earth spins like a top, which is what causes day and night as each side faces the sun in turn. But the \"top\" isn't straight up and down, it is tilted. When the Earth is on one side of the Sun, the north pole is pointed more towards the sun, and the south pole is pointed away. As the Earth circles around to the other side, that is reversed. The side that is pointed more towards the sun gets more light, and that is what summer is. Since each side takes turns being pointed more towards the sun, they have summer at opposite times of year."
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2i5sqb | if slaves in america were so expensive, why were they beaten and killed? | I recently saw "Twelve Years A Slave" and "Django" and it inspired me to do more research on the topic of slavery and the general associated economics. A few sources have suggested that a slave may have cost around $1200 around 1860. In today's terms, this would have been around $30,000. Put in perspective, a slave may have cost as much as a good car. Being relatively expensive, it seems that this industry spawned a related financial industry dedicated to loans (mortgages) on slaves. Much like a house, an individual slave was used as security (or collateral) on these loans. All this makes logical sense, but I still have a few gaps in understanding:
1) It appears that slaves were a major investment and very capital intensive. Death or illness should have had a large economic impact on the process. Morals and customs aside, would it not be in the best financial interests of the slave owners to maintain the health and productivity of their slaves?
2) Were the slave owners really so wealthy that they could kill something worth the cost of a modern car for no good reason? Even most modern wealthy people don't go around destroying $30,000 cars for fun.
3) Using slaves as security to back loans seems like very unwise collateral. A simple farming accident could render the security completely worthless. Present banks loan money on real security such as land and buildings which are obviously far more secure than a human life. Why would a bank in the 1800s even consider such a risky form of security?
4) In the event of a default, were the foreclosures or repos on slaves? Would the bank come and take the slaves if payments were not made on the mortgages?
5) After the abolition of slavery, I assume that the value of the security dropped to zero. Were there massive defaults? Did it bankrupt many once rich and powerful families and companies? Or, did the banks and financial institution simply write off the losses now that their collateral was worthless? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i5sqb/eli5_if_slaves_in_america_were_so_expensive_why/ | {
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"The level of constant abuse is vastly overdone in Hollywood movies. They want to express how terrible slavery was but don't have enough time to put it into perspective. So they show it all at once when it isn't exactly realistic; such things did happen, but not likely to be as often or all at once.",
"To specifically talk about your point about killing slaves:\n\nSlaves weren't killed very often, and they haven't been throughout history. What has always been very common, however, is slaves dying. To borrow your analogy about a car, it would be cheaper for a business to overwork an old truck until it can't run any more than to sell it for a fraction of what you paid for it and buy a brand new one.",
"The treatment of slaves varied vastly by geographic region. The claim that Hollywood exaggerates it is a joke. It's slavery. We various post-slavery testimony and interviews that record brutality occurring on a pretty broad scale. \n\nThe slaves that were abused more often where found on large plantations. It's unlikely that a household with only one or two slaves would abuse them (to death or serious injury), because it would be nearly impossible to fill the void. \n\nOn plantations however, with 25+ slaves, the lack of one or two isn't as noticeable. All you care about is productivity. If two fail to perform, you can afford to harm them, and simply force the other 23 to make up for it. Peer pressure will help take care of the rest. \n\nAlso, there is the possibility that slaves (In the US) could reproduce. This makes buying a slave more of an investment, as they will replace themselves. Remember, America imported far less slaves than it actually had. The majority of slaves were born here, and the population was growing even after the end of the slave trade. \n\n+++ Note +++\n\nThis only really applies to the US. In Brazil, they imported a massive amount of slaves, but because of economic factors, it actually made more sense to work the slaves until they died of exhaustion. So they weren't \"intentionally\" killed, their owners knew very well that the workloads they were assigned would lead to death within a few years.",
"The outright murder or incapacitation of a slave was probably pretty rare, because this would be the owner throwing away an expensive investment. But don't underestimate how much of a beating or lashing an enslaved person could take and still remain healthy and productive. A few lashes to the back would be incredibly painful but almost never would it be life-threatening. This was used to discipline and instill fear in the slaves. They likely used the maximum amount of physical torture that wouldn't cause death or disability, but again, this would vary based on region, how cruel the owner and overseers were, and what the reason for the punishment was. ",
"Slavery is based on fear, if your slaves don't fear you, they won't work. \n \nBrutally beating a rebellious slave might cost you one slave, **not** beating a rebellious slave will cost you all of your slaves. \n",
"As an expensive investment, it would be in the owner's best interest to get as much out of the investment as possible- to keep them alive and in good health for as long as possible. But slaves were not always managed by their owners. The slaves would report to someone put in charge of the fields, who would manage in the owner's absence, and whose responsibility it was to generate profits. \nIf the owner is away for 5 years, the manager needed to get as high crop yields as possible, with the least amount of expense, in those 5 years. If, at the end of those 5 years, the slaves were worn out, injured, malnourished, etc. that wasn't the manager's problem- he only needed them to last 5 years. \nThink of it like a lease, if you lease a car for 5 years, you don't worry as much about taking care of it, as you would if you bought the car.",
"Food for thought:\n\nThe slave trade from Africa to the Middle East was also very big, most likely bigger than the trade to the US. In fact, when the US outlawed the importation of slaves, the only slave market left was in the Middle East. However, you don't see many black people in the middle east, do you?! That's a combination of it being popular to A) castrate slaves (btw no anesthesia - the majority died of shock or bleeding out) and B) their incredibly brutal treatment, compared to say, slaves in America. The expected life span of a slave sent to the middle east was only a few years. Believe it or not, \"Christian Values\" were what made the American slave ownership practices mild in comparison. I guess everything is relative...\n\n\nThere were a lot of slaves and a lot of slave owners. Treatment of the slaves varied heavily by regional culture and the individual owner. There are many degrees of everything, even brutality.\n\nA) Yes, you are right, the financial value of slaves provided a strong incentive to not kill them or even to beat them too often. This was especially true in the north of the south, where instead of large plantations you tended to have small farmers that might own one or a handful of slaves. A single slave was a large part of his net worth and they tended to work side by side so some empathy developed.\n\nB) One human having power over another has always been toxic. People do things all the time that hurt their financial self interest. How many people do you see with cars/homes/credit cards/tuitions, etc. that they can't afford? How many people get their stuff repossessed? So, even though hurting your own slaves is bad for you, people could still do it.",
"Treatment of slaves varied widely depending on the region, varying cost and availability of new slaves, type of work slave did, and their temperament of the slaves' owners or supervisors.\n\nIn some cases it was more profitable to work slaves to death than to try to keep them alive, especially if their was a steady supply of relatively cheap new slave imports from Africa. In other cases, especially after the slave trade was banned, new slaves became more expensive, so it made more sense to invest in keeping slaves alive and encouraging them to have children.",
"If you owned ten cars, and you could motivate the other nine to drive extra fast and never ask for an oil change by destroying the tenth, maybe that *would* make economic sense. ",
"Basicly the same reason people drop their iphones or neglect their homes: once it's ours we're allowed to be dicks to it",
"You should probably post this to /r/askhistorians.",
"Modern people buy cars worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and beat the shit out of them. Why would slaves 200 years ago be any different?",
"Can anyone answer points 3, 4 and 5?\n",
"If you want a real answer to your question (instead of popular slavery apologists) I'd head over to /r/askhistorians.",
"This looks like a good question for /r/askhistorians if you want a more in depth answer with citations.\n\n",
"They were beaten to get compliance. They were killed if they did not comply, both because they were useless and as a lesson to those who did not comply. \n\nIt's pretty simple, really. People object to being enslaved, those objections need to be overcome.",
"If your car would learn to obey you better as you deliberately caused minor cosmetic damage to it, would it be worth it?\n\nMaybe.\n\nIf you were planning to sell it, perhaps not. But if you were planning to drive it, and your life depended on it obeying you, then it certainly would be.\n\nUnlike cars, slaves were often bought without the intention of ever selling them again. Their value came primarily from their potential output in terms of work, not from what your neighbor might be willing to pay for them.\n\nAnd in any case, buying a slave was an investment that paid off handsomely in short order. Within a relatively short time the balance sheet for any single slave was decidedly slanted in the profit column. At that point it would be tolerable to accept a (perhaps) temporary reduction in profit to send a message. That message would be received not just by the individual being punished - but by all the others made to witness the act or its aftermath. In fact, it was often the case that more profitable slaves were not punished themselves, but controlled by the threat of violence against others - thus preserving their ability to work.\n\nI don't think I've ever typed up paragraphs that made me feel so uncomfortable. It's difficult to even write about the issue of slavery without becoming emotional. I will never understand how human beings are able to behave in such terrible ways to one another.",
"Was reading about famous women serial killers today and came across [Delphine LaLaurie](_URL_0_) who tortured and murdered her slaves in New Orleans. If you read the wiki article, you'll see that there were laws to govern \"upkeep\" of slaves and that the discovery of her behavior towards her slaves caused enough outrage that a mob ransacked her home. Which means torture of slaves like you see in movies was probably rare. ",
"django has nothign to do with reality\n\n\nit's like watcyhing 'mchale's navy' and extrapolating from that show the history of ww2 or someething",
"The slaveholders had to go to great lengths and morally bend themselves beyond their humanity to maintain a system they claimed was the \"natural order\" of things. From a slave owner's point of view, the only thing worse than a slave's death or injury would be a breakdown of order. So anyone who tries to escape, tries to incite resistance, shows you up, doesn't accept his place, has got to be dealt with very harshly. Maybe even killed.",
"I remember reading somewhere that, in the antebellum South, the slaves were treated better than Irish immigrant laborers, who would be tasked to do the more dangerous work. If an Irishmen got disabled, no big deal--just hire another one. If a slave became disabled, then the owner would suffer a substantial economic loss.",
"1. While movies exaggerate, the system actually was so brutal it was counterproductive in many ways. I remember something or other about this in [Frederick Douglass's first autobiography](_URL_1_). It's been a while since I've read it, but basically, slavery depended on dehumanizing people, in every sense possible. Most slave-owners probably wouldn't have recognized that treating their slaves well was a practical idea, because it would have required empathizing with them. That would have been difficult to do and continue owning them. \n\n2. Maybe some people somewhere, but not in general. If you're thinking of what *Django Unchained* called \"mandingo fighting,\" the movie's [Wikipedia page](_URL_0_) says, \"There is no definitive historical evidence that slave owners ever staged gladiator-like fights to the death between male slaves like that depicted in the movie.\" The main reason for this is probably the cost, like you say.\n\n3. I don't know. I'm not a historian - better to admit that late than never. That being said, it wouldn't be as risky as your example makes it sound. If Tom the slave is used as collateral on a loan and Tom gets trampled by a horse, then it's still in the owner's interest to pay off the loan if he cares about his good name. If he doesn't or can't repay it, he owes the bank one slave in a certain condition, so it might be John the slave instead of Tom. Also, stuff was riskier in general. Buildings could be ruined too, by fires or floods; construction standards were a lot lower those days. \n\n4. Possibly. If the bank didn't have a buyer handy, they might have the slave sold at the next auction.\n\n5. There were probably a lot of defaults, yes, but [the South was a mess in general after the war](_URL_2_). ",
"I have a couple of points. \n\n- Most slave holders did not have gigantic plantations. The poorer/middle class slaveholders usually have a couple slaves who worked alongside them in their fields. In these situations, there were less beatings because the masters and slaves lived and worked so close together. \n\n- On bigger plantations, often times the owner of the slaves and plantation was absent. He lived in a city or town instead, leaving overseers in charge. Planters complained about how a good overseer was difficult to find. Some overseers were very cruel, although not all of them. Some masters also ran very harsh plantations, of course. But mostly beating and killing were saved as punishments/breaking methods. Frederick Douglass speaks of his one experience being beaten by a slave \"breaker\" in his autobiography. \n\n- Sugar was the harshest crop to grow, but sugar was grown mainly in the Caribbean. In the US, sugar was grown mostly in Louisiana. Sugar plantations were basically hell and conditions on these plantations were the worst. Mostly young male slaves worked on these plantations. Lots of them died from harsh conditions. Additionally, sugar cane masters were more likely to beat their slaves to keep them subordinate. They feared rebellion. \n\n- Finally, I think it is worth pointing out that when the impoverished Irish came to America, they were given rough manual labor jobs. Sources from the period remarked that the Irish were given jobs that were too dangerous to give to slaves because slaves cost too much money. \n\n- Basically,slaveholders realized that slaves were an expensive investment. Some slaveholders were very cruel. Some were less cruel. Most didn't beat their slaves for fun because it would have wasted money and potential inspire rebellion. Obviously slavery itself was cruel, but raping your slaves, splitting up their family, or even some beatings won't make them unable to work for you. ",
"Slaves were expensive but if they got \"uppity\" (a term used at the time) they became worthless. An owner maximized their value by maximizing the amount of work they and minimizing the chance that they would flee the plantation through fear and intimidation.",
"The period you should be researching for the answers you seek is between 1520 and 1700 when the Spanish used Native Americans as slaves and the (mostly English) European slave/sugar industry started up. Original documents are spotty, but if you are diligent, you'll find a lot of what you are looking for in scanned copies of the originals in journal resources from your public library.\n\nI would suggest you read \"The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano\" which is the only book ever written by a slave describing how he was kidnapped in Africa and the conditions in the slave ships as he was transported to Barbados.\n\nAlso, I wish to point out that what doesn't make sense initially in terms of economics, does when you know the full story. The case of the ship Zong in 1781 is a good example.\nWhile the Zong was crossing the Atlantic with 440 slaves, disease (probably Yellow Fever) broke out on board. The captain, knowing that he could not sell diseased slaves, but also knowing that the insurance company would pay out for any slaves that drowned during the crossing, began to throw slaves overboard as they fell ill. By the time he reached the Caribbean two months later, he had killed 132 slaves. The only reason this is known today is because of the paperwork he filed with the insurance company to get compensated for the \"lost goods\" He was never charged with mass murder, which is what it really was.\n\nAlso remember that just like buying a car, even today there are people who never change the oil and just get a new car every 4 years. And there are people that change their car's oil every 6000 km. Those that don't change their oil just don't think about the economics of it.\n\nLastly, try to remember that most white Europeans had a very different mind view towards non-whites, right up to the 1940's, although history books tend to gloss over things like Eugenics and Phrenology. I really suggest if you want real answers to your questions, start with Equiano and read the books for yourself before making any judgements. ",
"Slaves in the USA were treated far better than ones working in the Caribbean and South America. The fact that they lived long enough to reproduce and create more slaves is why the slave society in the USA lasted for so long.",
"Ever get so pissed off at your expensive laptop or desktop computer and smack it? Punch it, or throw it across the room? There ya go, sport.",
"Because the only way to get a man to work for free is violence and/or the constant, immediate threat of it. ",
"Farmers today buy very expensive tools. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. In adjustment, much more expensive that the slaves. And many farmers still treat their machinery like shit, and its just a machine. Imagine if you boil prejudice, human nature, and the ability for the machine to purposely fail or do something wrong into the mix in a time where violence was acceptable. That's why it happened, though I speculate not every slave was beaten and killed. Generally people suck, and money doesn't drive logical thought in all. Also, after you had some slaves, you could breed them then your cost per slave is considerably less probably, more dispensable at that point. ",
"Slavery wasn't just \"Slave works/Master relaxes\". There was/is a distinct psychology to it. \n\nA key aspect of keeping and continually buying slaves and perpetuating slavery was dehumanizing the people who were slaves. My history teacher showed us a real notice for a slave auction and asked us to describe what it sounded like they were auctioning. We all agreed the language, imagery and slurs all made it sound like they were selling off animals, not people (I hate to bring it back up, but it said stuff like \"One female negro for sale for (price) along with one male negro\" etc). \n\nIt's well known that dehumanization and objectification makes it easier to be more violent towards whoever being dehumanized (these days it's more commonly linked to female sexual objectification and domestic violence). \n\nNow leading on from my mentioning domestic violence, what is one element of that kind of violence? Control. A slave doesn't ever want to be a slave, that's not how slavery works. Slaves are going to try to escape, disobey, sabotage, anything. But beatings (and all kinds of torture) will keep them in line because they won't risk the pain. Just like a battered spouse will say \"No I love him/her!\" when really they just don't know how to leave now that any movement or action the one in control doesn't approve of result in massive pain, or worse, for the victim. \n\nThis is a great video on the sort of propaganda and psychology that was behind slavery:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSource for discussion about dehumanization leading to violence:\n\n_URL_1_",
"They weren't often killed for \"no reason\". If you just saw \"Twelve Years A Slave\", you'll remember that the owner protects his slave from a man who wants to kill him, partially because it is such a big investment. I thought the movie did a pretty good job of illustrating the strange dichotomy of slaves being both valued and devalued.\n\nIn short, slave owners wanted their slaves to be able to do specific kinds of work, and they wanted their slaves to be healthy enough to perform that work. Beyond that, they didn't necessarily care about the slaves well-being (though some did). They might beat or mutilate a slave in order to enforce discipline, or something like that.\n\nBut it's also important to realize that people don't always act rationally. There are rich people who buy expensive cars, and then drive recklessly and destroy the car. People can be foolish or self-destructive. Rich people are not immune to that.",
"I shouldn't be answering this since I one of my friends is a history and economics professor who wrote a book that literally answers this exact question. I sent him a link but in case he doesn't respond here is the story I get from him:\n\n1) The assumption you are making is that these people are both human beings and property, for the slave owner in industrial conditions they are machines. \n\n2) The slave owner is making money hand over fist in the cotton trade (the brutality of slavery seems to increase when slavery moves toward the cotton trade) since there is such a huge market for it in the UK (and later northern) spinning industry. Basically it means you don't need to really need to use the machine in the long term just suck the majority of labor out of it to make enough to recoup its working years.\n\n3) The slave market is actually segmented. The old south is almost a breeding system that moves people toward the new areas of the south dominated by cotton production. This led to a very complex set of financial ties that incentivized brutal treatment on both sides of the market to move people.\n\nSo adding this all up: the incentive for the slave owner isn't that he is using a valuable worker but rather to get the most out a machine before it breaks down. Pain is thus used to motivate fear to maximize the volume of cotton picked before \"writing the asset off\" the same way you would amortize a piece of machinery. As long as your short term gain is enough to cover the cost of another slave which given the conditions of the 1840-60s it should more than do, you are in the money. \n\nAs for the financial side of things I do know there are a few financial instruments related to slaves but as I understand it the south was generally a cash poor environment (in the strict sense of not a lot of currency being used for trade) until the 1930s and the majority of cash like instruments were basically based on credit on future deliveries of cotton (which again makes you want to squeeze your short term gains asap thus making cruel treatment make sense).\n\nAs I said I am not an expert on this (I actually am a practicing economic-historian but this is nowhere near my area or time period) but I sent an email to a friend of mine who is the expert on the topic. \n\nEdit: I guess this isn't very ELI5. ",
"Greetings from /r/AskHistorians! I'll try to give you a good answer to some of this but it's not my area of expertise. Feel free to repost it with us; I'm particularly interested in the finance and banking aspect. \n\nTo understand how slaves were treated and why slavery was so horrible you first have to realize how slaves were viewed. \n\nWe talk about slavery today using words like \"owning people\" but that's not how slave owners in the United States would have viewed it. \n\nRemember the opening words of the Declaration of Independence, a document written by slave owners, in large part. \"All men are created equal.\" Yet clearly \"all men\" were not, in their view, created equal. We tend to mentally translate \"all men\" to mean \"all property owning white men\" but it would be more accurate to say that slaves weren't really thought of as being \"people\" as such. Slaves were not people who happened to be property, they were property which happened to be human. \n\nTo this end, slaves were treated as property first. They were worked without regard for their own well being but with an eye towards the bottom line -- towards maximizing returns. That means that in addition to living a life of what amounted to crushing poverty, slaves could have their children sold, their families broken apart, and lived, moment to moment, at the whim of their masters.\n\n**And this was very much intentional**. In large parts of the south and especially outside of the United States in the Caribbean Sugar plantations, slaves outnumbered whites by a serious margin. The fear of beating, maiming, torture, or execution was viewed by white slaveholders as vital to ensuring the subservience of the slave population. \n\n",
"History is far far different from any movie that you will EVER watch. Slave violence was not always the rule, and although it did occur, many slave owners worked along side their slaves in the field. Now that does not mean violence and cruelty didn't exist; it did and it was common especially among large plantations. But, it was not the rule. For example my family were actually punished for educating their slave children alongside their own. After the Civil War the recently freed slaves stayed on the plantation because life wasn't full of cruelty. There are numerous examples of this.\n\nPlease do not interpret that as my condoning of slavery, or that I believe slavery was not cruel. Despite any humane treatment slaves received they were still property in the eyes of white property owners and did often experience untold abuse. \n\nAnother vital piece of history people often overlook is that of indentured servants; the other slaves. The Irish and Chinese often payed their way to America by indentured servitude, and their treatment was often as bad if not worse than that of many black African slaves. The Chinese especially suffered under these conditions while building the railroads.\n\nKnowing, accurately knowing, history is the most fundamental pillar for any citizen of any country. In America we are often inundated with fantastic interpretations of history and they are often wrong or embellished. In the end slavery was cruel and unjust. African slaves most definitely suffered worse injustices than even indentured servants and that can never be understated. But, it was fundamentally different than is often represented in movies and other fiction whose sole purpose is to engage and implore your emotional self.\n",
"Don't believe movies have anything to do history. You learn about as much about slavery watching 12YAS as you do about Scotland watching Braveheart. \n\nSuper interesting topic btw",
"Slavery just was unacceptable. Children (of all colors) were sent to work in factories and treated brutally. Those people were just beyond ignorant, disgusting idiots, which is why we have laws today. Those type of people are still around only laws hold them at bay.",
"Both twelve years a slave and django are not historically accurrate, one is a cartoon and the other is emotionaly manipluitive tourture porn pretending to be oscar bait.",
"I see most of the comments have gone down the 'hollywood is inaccurate\" route. Historian here - not Early American, but there are some thoughts from history to challenge some of the base assumptions in the question. \n\nFirst, for the moment, look at slaves the way slaveholders would. They're not human to slaveholders - they're capital investments - they are the means of production in a pre-industrial period. (The U.S. South functions essentially as Feudalism does - the Civil War could be equated as a challenge between Feudalism and Industrial Capitalism.)\n\nSecond, not all slaves cost that amount, just as not all cars cost what they cost brand new. There was quite a bit of variability of cost dependent on the slave and the region in question. As noted below, there was also variability in the treatment of slaves based on region. Bear in mind that for a slave trader, their expenses increase the longer they keep slaves without selling them - so slaves that did not sell quickly would get progressively cheaper.\n\nThird, slaves are self-replicating. So, if you've had a number of slaves for a number of years, chances are they're having kids and you're enslaving their offspring. So, let's say that my family purchased 2 slaves for the $30k (mod $) in 1750. Assume each couple has 3 children and every 15 years their offspring reach primacy and reproduce - and we buy a new slave to refresh the gene pool. If my family keeps doing this then by 1865 we would have spent $300k purchasing 10 slaves - but we'd have in actuality about 100 slaves and an investment of about $3 mill. - and this assumes that each old generation dies off every 30 years. So, yes, to this degree, it's wise to keep the slaves healthy and sexually productive.\n\nFourth, Each slave produces additional capital. You're investing capital, but they also create additional capital from their labor, so it's quite possible that over the 100 years in our example, we'd buy much more than 1 at a frequency greater than 15 years.\n\nBut like technology, slaves only create value when they work. If they don't work, a slave owner would have to replace the non-functioning slave - sell it and get capital to replace it. \n\nIf they can't sell the slave because of issues that make it unsaleable (age, disposition, etc.) then it's a sunk cost - the slave either needs to be forced to work or the owner needs to expend new capital to replace the slave. Once the slave owner has reached that point than the brutality doesn't matter - the slave has no value in idleness or resale.\n\nAs far as slaves as security goes, unless you have only one slave to back a loan, the risk would be reduced. If you have 10 slaves and you put the generic value equal to one slave as collateral, then there is little risk if the slave you purchased is injured - the lender could theoretically repo another slave. (I am not sure if they did.) That said, I suspect that land is more likely to be used a collateral as it is essentially the fixed aspect of production in the south in this period.\n\nThe hesitation to the abolition of slavery is economic, right? All of that crap about southern culture is nonsense. The Southern Economy is land based and the slaves are the variable aspect of production. The threat of stopping slavery in this period is equivalent to flipping off power to the south in the modern period. They're going to oppose it. And you can see this in the result of abolition - the landowners either folded financially (land has no value if you can't work it) or they sought to compel the slaves to labor through other means. Only when farming is industrialized is the need for slaves eliminated. So, yes, abolition would have had a distinct financial impact in the period.",
"Mostly to frighten the other slaves? Many punishments are not so much directed against the target, but against the population as a whole, to keep them in line. That's one reason for public executions.\n",
"Everybody in this thread would do well to go read a few WPA slave narratives. They are available free on the Library of Congress website and are very short, but numerous. \n\nThey are a collection of interviews of surviving slaves during the Great Depression through a New Deal program. Although the factual holdings aren't entirely accurate (they go off 50-60 year old memories, after all), they give excellent insight into how the former slaves perceived themselves and their situation. \n\nIt isn't entirely user-friendly, but is easy to go through on the state-by-state level. \n\n[Here be the link.](_URL_0_)",
"[\"The standard image of Southern slavery is that of a large plantation with hundreds of slaves. In fact, such situations were rare. Fully 3/4 of Southern whites did not even own slaves; of those who did, 88% owned twenty or fewer.\"](_URL_0_)",
"I am a historian and I have an answer for you....but I'm at work and can't post a huge response right now. I will a little later. \n",
"While beatings weren't uncommon, killing was almost a last resort, especially after the banning of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade in 1808. With no way to acquire new slaves other than \"breeding\" (for lack of a better word) it made killing a slave for anything but the most heinous \"crimes\" (resistance is a better word) very uneconomical. It was better to sell a problem slave and make money in the process. ",
"_URL_0_\n\nyou're welcome.",
"12 years a slave and Django are practically propaganda to make us pity things even more. Make slave owners seem worse then need be if you ask me. \n\nI mean slave fighting? That shit has NEVER been recorded in history, ever! Way to make our ancestors look like assholes. So exaggerated!\n\nA lot of slaves were not even treated that badly, some slave owners took good care of their slaves. Of course, not with equality, but they wouldn't whip them and beat them and not feed them. \n\nSome did, but not all of them like people like to think.\n\n",
"It is more than likely slaves were killed with a little less discretion prior to DC banning the slave trade overseas. Once that happened, the price of slaves would be raised exponentially and chattel would then be too expensive to just kill off but more likely to be sold further south to more intensive labor.",
"I am not an expert, but I am an economist who loves economic history and has worked in banking for 10 years. What I am offering is logical deductions based on what I know of economics and economic history. Hopefully someone more versed will fill in the gaps. These are excellent questions.\n\n1) I see a flaw in the way you asked the question, which might be why you are confused. A slave was a major investment but not necessarily very capital intensive. The price of a product is derived from the interplay of its value, its cost to produce, and its scarcity. Just because something has a price of X, does not mean that it cost almost X to make it. For example, the hot dogs at a stadium are like $7, but they are basically the same thing you can buy at a stand for like $3 and from grocery store for $0.20 each if you do the cooking.\n\nIf a full grown slave can help you pick $500 more cotton a year plus provide services around the house that would cost you $500 to hire a servant for, plus they raised their own food & built their own housing, suddenly $3000 to buy one is a steal. You basically get your investment back in services in a few years.\n\nMeanwhile, a slave is not very capital intensive. A child can pretty much be put to work at age 4 doing simple tasks, do most farm chores by 8, and be doing heavy labor by 16. This part of the reason that farmers in undeveloped countries have so many children. A child is not to burdensome of an investment and soon morphs in a farmhand.\n\nSo to the large plantation owner with a large breeding population of slaves, he would see little reason to keep a troublesome slave alive. To him slaves are cheap to make. And by being a troublesome slave, his sales price plummets. So if the slave has ruined his value on the market and slaves are cheap to make, suddenly beating & killing the slave to keep the others in line becomes a very viable economic decision.\n\n2) My first answer kind of explains the economics of this choice. Troublesome slaves are near worthless on the market. Slaves are cheap to produce to the plantation owner. Keeping the other slaves in line safeguards their value on the market and maintains their productivity. \n\nBut there are two more parts to this. \n\nOne, plantation owners were the elites of their society and were very wealthy. And sometimes wealthy people (especially those that inheirted it) are very careless with their property because they are so rich. The one that comes to mind to me was when a group of Japanese uberrich car fanatics had a race in their million dollar cars on wet mountain road. The resulting destruction was probably equal in value to the GDP of Parguay. \n\nTwo, slavery is dehumanizing to everyone involved, never forget that. The natural state for humans is to see other humans as humans. Purging that tendency out of ones self is what is necessary to become a slaver. So the typical slaver is going to have a \"taste\" for hurting other humans. \n\n3) Farming is not super dangerous occupation. If it was, then no one would be here. :-) While a lot of things done by slaves is torturous, I only know of two that had high rates of mortality: mining & sugar cane processing. \n\nSo while the risk is there, it was not enough to kill lending. Lending on all forms of farming has been around for a pretty long time. At least a few centuries.\n\nThere is another two factors, what was the Loan-to-Value and what was the interest rates? I suspect that since price of a slave was derived mostly from its value, not its cost to produce, there was a lot of room for high interest rates & low LTV\n\nFor example, suppose a plantation owner came to your bank. He wanted to to borrow $1000 at 30% and he offered a full grown male slave that he had raised as collateral. That male you know the slave sells on the market for $3000. And you know that slave will bring in $1000 worth cotton over the next year. You also know that this fit male only has a 1% chance of dying over the next year. So this a pretty good loan for you. You know that the slave will produce $1000 in cash flow over the next year, which more than enough to cover your $300 in interest charges. And you know that if the plantation owner defaults, you can easily sell off the collateral to repay the principal, accrued interest, and fees.\n\nI personally do not know the LTV and interest rates in the pre-bellum slave mortgages. I am just hypothesising that they were better than those on houses & cars.\n\n4) Yes this would happen. A lot of plantation owners were ruined by excessive mortgage usage, followed by market slumps in cotton & tobacco. It was actually a systemic problem. Plantation owners would mortgage existing slaves to buy more slaves, land, tool, and seed. This would eventually cause a glut one year and the market would crash.\n\n5) They don't call it the Reconstruction for nothing. While losing the slaves was a big deal, the fact that the Northern army practiced Scorched Earth tactics was probably a bigger factor. My guess is that most banks went bankrupt. Those that did not, probably just seized the land & property instead. If I remember reading right, most slave mortgages were bundle deals with recourse. So a loan would be backed by a mortgage on all the slaves plus the land, not just single slave. \n\n----------\n\nI am looking forward to seeing a true historian answer.\n\n ",
"I'll keep this strictly business \n\nThe main fault in your thinking is that you're thinking too small of a scale. \n\nSpending 1500 to ensure a further 150,000 in value is maintained is quite frankly dirt cheap. The mindset was if a few died to maintain the integrity of the workforce well that's just the cost of doing business. Plantations never had just a single slave they had multiple slaves, several hundred in some instances. A single slave inciting others to break authority had to be dealt with harshly to ensure the obedience of the others.\n\nSecond slaves had diminishing value as they aged so the average value does not represent reality. Killing an elder slave who could not breed/work was akin to removing useless inventory. They cost money to maintain. For a modern comparison think of it as replacing an obsolete server. If it can't do the job it doesn't matter how much you paid for it 20 years ago. \n\nThird slaves were considered a self replenishing resource during the period. Native born slaves outnumbered imported slaves long before the import bans, they had sex and you sold the offspring. This works much the same as the livestock industry. The value doesn't deter people from killing a prized race horse when it's no longer able to race due to injury or is diseased.\n\nThe beatings mirrored animal breaking and quite frankly the slaves would heal.\n\nSlaves were bought for their labour therefore their taskmasters didn't care about appearence. Beatings and whippings were done with skill to leave superficial damage and intense pain not to kill. They didn't remove limbs as punishment as that would be self defeating. The beatings served the same purpose as the killings to ensure obedience of the whole. To be frank If one part is lost it is really of little consequence. One slave didn't matter. They resorted to beatings first in an attempt to minimize loss and when those failed they killed to minimize the impact of the disruptive influence.\n\nThe methods used to ensure obedience are a perfectly logical business model which quite frankly is the scary part. \n\n",
"So, maybe I'm remembering things incorrectly, but I think things weren't that bad at first (although horrible things did happen). As I recall the worst of it started when the government ASKED the blacks to go back to their old plantations AFTER they'd been freed with the 40-Acres And A Mule promise. Returning to their old plantations now there was a big grudge between the land owners and recently freed slaves. This is when a lot of places past laws making it legal to kill blacks, etc. \n\nAs a white man who grew up in the northwest, I've always been amazed our country doesn't have more monuments to the black people (freed slaves) who went back to their plantations to save our economy (maybe country).\n\nPlease correct me if I'm wrong about this.",
"The issue of how slaves were treated and exactly what a slave *was* in real as well as economic terms is somewhat complicated.\n\nAs others have pointed out, on the surface and on a purely economic level they were chattel. But in so far as they represented an investment of capital for the making of profit through either agriculture or outsourcing their labor for domestic servitude, etc., it would have made no sense to beat a slave to death and lose that investment.\n\nOne poster here pointed out correctly that on larger plantations, particularly in the deep south, slaves were driven and punished by overseers. In many cases, the owner of the plantation did not live there and did not see what went on there on a daily basis. This was true, for example, in places where the alluvial soil made agriculture very profitable, such as in the Mississippi Delta. Profitable though it was, the region was not a very hospitable place to live. Many plantation owners in the south were basically speculators who lived in cities or larger towns, and they hired people to run their affairs in whatever remote locations produced the greatest profit. \n\nThe outcome for the slave was that an overseer who was not financially invested in the value of a slave was charged with driving and, where need be, punishing that slave. In the event that a slave was killed by an overseer or a white field hand or supervisor, the overseer had to answer to the slave owner. \n\nBut here is where it gets even more complicated. Before, say, the late 18th century, none of this was what we would now call a human rights question. By the 19th century, it had started to change -- at least in regions where ideas about abolition had spread. This is why historians like Eugene Genovese labelled this division of opinion between North and South by the mid 19th century as nothing less than a clash of civilizations. These radically differing worldviews fueled the kinds of violence we often see and hear about in films. The view of slaves as mere property, an idea which can be traced back to classical history and the ancient world, was challenged by the new assertion that these were people. David Brion Davis has written extensively on this.\n\nThe backlash was that slave owners and those who oversaw them directly became more paranoid and reactionary to anything that they believed might have led to insurrection.\n\nSo I think it's important to distinguish between the kinds of violence in earlier slavery that we might call \"routine\" -- basically daily abuse and punishment to get more work out of a farm animal -- and the kinds of violence that were reactionary to the fear that the entire system was being challenged. The latter form of violence and its motivations were more extreme and would seem less rational when defining a slave as a business investment and possibly destroying that investment out of mere wanton cruelty. ",
"Relatively, they weren't. Only 5% or so of slaves went to the US, most went to the Carribean. Few slaves lasted more than a few years down there so they never got a growing population. They did in America.\n\nTo more directly answer your question, why do people spray dogs with water to get them not to do something anymore?",
"Irish slaves were cheap tho. And there were more of them than blacks.",
"A source, a source my kingdom for a source. \n\nIt seems people here are making there assumptions and opinions into facts",
"I'm mainly going to answer question 1 and 2. I realize that this is an ELI5 post, but it is hard to break down the question into one simple answer because there are few absolutes in history. The first thing you need to know is that slavery was not 100% the same across all states. It differed legally and culturally in many ways. \n\nThe price of slaves ranged quite a bit depending on where they were from, their experience, gender, body-type etc. so an owner might have some more expensive slaves, but not every slave that they owned would be ‘valued’ at such a high price. \n\nHistorians are divided on whether or not slavery was 100% for profit. Indeed many historians argue that slavery was more of an attempt to ‘civilize’ non-white people because of the evidence, as you suggest, that slaves could be expensive. Some historians (the earlier ones) suggested that the brutality was justified by the slave owners as a tool for civilizing the slaves. Much like the ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ idea, the slave owners felt it necessary to beat them into civility and they were hired to be ‘civilized.’ \n\nOther historians have suggested that beating slaves helped to control their ‘investments’ by punishing them severely and treating them like children in order to de-humanize them. By de-humanizing their slaves, it allowed the owners to separate themselves from their slaves in their minds thereby making the idea of treating humans like animals more palatable. \n\nWhat is more the slave owners felt that beating a slave into submission was actually a good way of protecting an investment because it displayed the power of the owner and was used for deterring escapes.\n\nStill others contend that slavery because more of a way of life for Southerners. Slaves and owners developed separate cultures which included passive resistance by the slaves as (potentially) a result of the threat of violence. The violence became a way of life and despite it not making the most sense, it became status quo. \n\nLastly, slavery was the worst. \n",
"IMO it's because slave ownership is a sociopathic institution based on absolute power over another person. And we know what absolute power leads to. ",
"The problem with your thinking is that you are only considering slaves as property, not people. If enslavers did not maintain a sense of pervasive terror, they risked revolt. ",
"People don't destroy perfectly good cars on a daily basis. Unless... You're walter white. ",
"If my car kept trying to run away from home I'd have to put it down and get a new car",
"1) Someone mentioned below that there was a major transition when the African Slave Trade stopped bringing boatloads of slaves to the Americas (or at least to the United States) the cost of an individual slave increased tremendously. This led to an improvement in the condition of slaves within a generation. That being said, it is amazing what you can live and work through, and many slave owners would hurt their slaves, but try to make sure they could still work, or at least minimize the downtime. It's a fine line, historically, between healthy and industrious manual labour who you own and healthy and industrious militants fighting for freedom after all. Others have said it, so I'll just add a repeated reminder- some slave owners were good to their slaves, some were downright demonic. The reality of life is always somewhere in the greys between absolute evil and total good, even with something as dark and dehumanizing as the idea of owning another human being.\n\n2) Slave owners as a group are perhaps best represented by your car image- You had the super duper rich who could afford the Rolls-Royce of slaves and plenty of them, the very rich who could buy a nice run of Audis, the reasonably rich who have a BMW and a Civic, but can get a Kia for their new driver, the upper middle class who owned a few used Acuras, the Middle class who owned a single Honda, and the poor who were not much better off than the cars other people are driving. In the time period you are asking about there were very very few people who could afford to kill or throw away slaves without thought, just like there are very few people today who could break a brand new car without caring.\n\n3) Present Bank Loans, especially business loans, can be backed by product with a limited shelf-life. It's not preferred by the bank, but they'll take your inventory as collateral on a loan knowing the value will most likely depreciate. It's risky, but so is much of banking.\n\n4) Depending on the mortgage or type of bankruptcy, yes. Debts could be paid by seizing property, and that would have included slaves.\n\n5) Yes. The Super rich plantation owners in the South went bankrupt overnight. If you've never seen Gone With the Wind, I would recommend you watch it- not only is it a great movie but it does a great job of showing the before and after of much of Southern Aristocratic society after the abolition of slavery. Banks collapsed left and right, sometimes taking communities down with them, sometimes going out of business so fast there was a true question as to who owned a mortgage. Add to this the fact that the Confederacy had tried to create its own currency which by the end of the war was so inflated as to be worthless, and you can see why the Southern economy sucked for so many years. The poor farmers in the South didn't see too much of a difference in lifestyles from before and after the Civil War, except for the massive depopulation of workers from war deaths and wounds.",
"I am assuming the logic would be you have to beat one out the ten slaves to induce fear and thus control over them, without control they are free and the slaveowner is out of pocket.",
"Oddly enough, there were some slaves that objected to the lifestyle of captive labor offered to them by their \"owners\", and regularly attempted to employ various methods to overturn their situation.\nIn order to discourage the vast majority of the workforce from similar thinking, examples were made of the dissenters.\nDisabling or destroying a small portion of their investment in an attempt to ensure productivity and stability from the larger portion was considered good business sense.",
"I have a hunch.\n\nTo keep a **bunch** of slaves in control, it might make sense to make an example of an *occasional* bad apple.\n\n(I mean \"make sense\" in an economic way, not in a moral way.)",
"I don't equate fighting for a whole race of people's freedom as nearly nothing. ",
"In one high school history book, it mentioned that some owners used Irishman and debtors for dangerous work because slaves cost too much to waste. ",
"Slaves were inherently valuable, but they were valuable only so far as they were productive. If you owned a large number of slaves, beating any \"troublemakers\" would make economic sense as a way to deter other slaves from not working hard or being disobedient. I would think that you would want to be generally pleasant to your slaves and occasionally very harsh. You would probably beat any slave who got out of line, but your goal would be to inflict maximum cruelty quickly, scare the heck out of other slaves, and then return everything to normal as fast as you could.\n\nIf a slave was repeatedly getting \"out of line\", then it would make sense to either sell him or kill him because you would not want the example for the other slaves that they could in any way get away with displeasing you.\n\nIn a system where the masters are outnumbered by the slaves, fear is the glue that keeps it together. Without that fear, the system would immediately fall apart. \n\nThere are other ways you would reward and punish slaves such as giving a particular slave a position of relative respect and responsibility for having demonstrated loyalty. Such a person is likely to try to keep the system going in order to maintain his position (unless he starts believing that the system of slavery itself will not or is likely not to remain in place.)",
"You compareslaves to cars. This is a good metaphor.\n\nSome people drive expensive sports cars. They take great care of them, but they're really just for show.\n\nOther people buy expensive work trucks. They put them through the ringer, but they keep up on maintenance and love that good, hard working truck.\n\nThere are luxury cars. Expensive, but they make your day more comfortable.\n\n\nThere are economy cars. They are cheaper and affordable for many more people. They're not the fastest or strongest car, but they get the job done without any frills.\n\n\nYou have your crappy old junker. You got it cheap or inherited it from your parents. It does the job, but you haven't changed the oil since you owned it. No point washing it either, the mud covers up the dings you were to lazy to touch up with primer. If it breaks you can get another pretty easily.\n\n\n\nJesus fucking christ, I feel dirty.",
"This is before slaves had bank accounts and could be charged overdraft fees.",
"I'm no expert but I did take an AP US History course. Slaves generally would resist their oppressors. In fact, uprisings were pretty common though unsuccessful. To combat the need to fight for freedom, slave owners would \"break down\" their slaves by means of torturing them or sending them off to a professional torturer.\n\nThis is just like the way the Nazis would break down Jews. I know of a chart that's called the Triangle of human needs (idk if that's its real name) where basics like food and water are on the bottom. They would try to keep Jews on the bottom so they would only work for the next meal instead of freedom.",
"If new cars are so expensive, why do people still drink and drive?",
"Note that the price of slave labor in 1860 was much higher than it had been earlier, because cotton production had gotten much faster, and demand was much higher, so they needed lots more slaves than were available on the market (it feels disgusting to discuss humans in such terms, but this is what they were doing). The international slave trade had been made illegal, and the rate of reproduction among slaves was much lower than the demand, so the cost per slave went way up. \n\nRegarding the loss of capital after the war ended: yeah. Basically, the economies of southern states crashed. There are a lot of books written about this--probably a better source than Reddit for info.",
"There were forms of \"insurance\" that guaranteed that the slavers would be paid regardless of their shipments safe arrival. If slaves attempted to revolt or if there were too many to feed, often times they would be just thrown overboard. \n\nSlaves that made it to \"the americas\" likely had a conditioning phase in the Caribbean/south american countries first. Their ultimate worth was based around how well they took to orders and how hard they could work. These slaves that met the specifications of their owners were far more valuable and therefore unlikely to be killed. The horror stories we hear about senseless killings tend to revolve around revolts and \"trouble-makers.\"\n\n[insurance sourcing] (_URL_1_)\n\n[seasoning/conditioning sourcing](_URL_0_)",
"At some point your slaves become self sustaining, because unlike cars you can breed them.",
"Slaves could be 10 million dollars today and the Koch brothers could murder a bunch every day for the rest of their lives and not be afraid of running out of money. I'm sure some people had fair enough wealth to afford their own type of life like that back then. Not *so* extreme, but there are always people with enough that the never have to worry about money.",
"For those saying that cruelty to slaves was overblown, please be reminded that some men got their slaves for free. And then, this: _URL_0_\n\nSlaves were treated pretty badly.",
"Slaves weren't as commonly killed as movies and T.V shows. The industry was large, so you hear big numbers because it's simply statistics. \n\nIn the answer of #1 they were a big investment, and many small farms kept very few slaves, and often treated them fairly decently (this is how many became free) the bigger ones would often do the bare minimal, thats why the slave quarters were often overfilled, the natural body heat would save them on costs to burn fire/oil to keep them warm at night. The bigger the plantation, the more corners they cut. \n\n#2, some were naturally. It all depended on what they farmed and how well they sold their product. Many would find deals with slavers and get a discount of sorts. They wouldn't really destroy/kill slaves, those were rare cases, usually if a slave continued to runaway, or disobey the masters. You'd never really see a slave hanged for a first offense, they often would be whipped, put in a sun box, starved etc alot of times before getting to that point. it would lessen their productivity, but in the long run many became obedient allowing them to work for alot longer.\n\n\nI don't have any answers for 3, or 4. but as for 5 you should remember that slavery wasn't abolished overnight, and since it is a really old practice that had to change many times over the years (for example, the spanish tried using Native American slaves, but due to disease many died and in turn destroyed/bankrupted many settlements.) When slavery was abolished, the smaller farms often went under, unable to pay the bank, and unable to produce their goods. \n\nHowever, the bigger ones had too much to lose, so they developed a new plan. \"Share Cropping.\" When they were ordered to free their slaves many owners/masters would free them, but turn around and say \"Well now that you're free you need a job, I'll let you take a piece of my land to farm, I'll even pay for your food, seeds, and tools for the first season.\"\n\nThis essentially was another form of slavery, one that used debt over chains and proved much more effective. The farm owners would take 15% of the crop (or more) and often claim that the former slaves needed to pay back the costs that it took to set up the new farm. These slaves wouldn't be able to sell their crops because frankly they didn't know how, and in many cases they sold them to their old masters at a severely reduced price. \n\nSo basically instead of the slave being collateral, his new farm would be, and this made the plantation owners much more wealthy, until the share cropping fiasco was ultimately broken down. ",
"Many of the injuries that slaves received were from the overseer, not the owner himself. Since he didn't have as much infested in the slaves as the owner, he didn't have much concern for their safety.",
"Killing 1 slave, makes the rest of your slaves work harder and less likely to rebel. ",
"People still pay out about $30,000 to someone for a year to treat that person like a disposable thing. \n\nWhy don't employers take care of their employees? Some do, many do not. ",
"The average slaveowner only had 1-2 slaves. Massive plantations with dozens or hundreds of slaves were quite rare, but disproportionately represented in movies and books. These plantations could afford to \"lose\" slaves, by killing or beating to the point of uselessness, as an example to others. For small slaveowners, slaves were taken care of like a useful piece of farm equipment, or a mule, which is how the owner saw them. \n\nYes, I know exactly how awful a sentence that is. ",
"Google a document called \"The Virginia House of Burresses, Death of Outlawed Slaves by Violent or Suspicious Means\"...\n\nYou will begin to understand why it was so difficult to gather data. In most cases that documented runaway slaves, they were found to \"drown themselves\", \"hang themselves\", and even \"smash their brains out over rocks\".\n\nWhy so many cases of fugitive slaves being called suicide? Because then it wasn't the owner's fault, and they would be reimbursed. These stories were fabricated because the bodies were found on some public property. If any of these things happened on private property they would most likely not be reported, or reported only for the sake of reimbursement.\n\nThe history and the reality are far worse than anything you've seen in any movie. The top comment of /u/Phage0070 is utterly wrong, and obviously unsourced.",
"To maintain the productivity of the other slaves. Imagine how much fear you'd have to feel compelled to work for nothing but your own survival. It's worth taking one \"car\" out to ensure the others run well. Historians would know better, but I doubt killing slaves happened willy-nilly except by the super rich or when it ran off enough times it was useless as anything other than an example to keep the others in line.",
"Slaves were seen as nothing more than an intelligent farm animal. And when any farm animal no matter the cost, begins to act destructively and/or cost its owner financially then there is little choice but to put it down. ",
"I've been studying the slavery for a while. Here's my best answers for your specific questions.\n\n1) According to one book I read, a male slave was actually going for $3,000 in Richmond during the war. However, slave prices peaked right at the very end. So they were very expensive. However, depreciation means something entirely different when it's applied to a human being. They were well aware that their \"property\" would lose value quickly as they aged *and would require regular beating to function properly.* There were a lot of similarities with how they viewed horses -- you have to physically dominate a horse to \"break it in,\" and if it is necessary for a horse to do something you have to use spurs on it or beat it. Beating a horse was not uncommon, even though horses were expensive. This is especially common among poor horsemen and those with anger issues. I mention this to show how easily the same behavior can be applied from a horse to a slave, because it's a bit easier for our modern minds to understand it happening to a horse.\n\nSo, long story short, it was in the best interests of the smart ones, and less in their interests with the rich \"YOLO\" ones and the ones in the Caribbean (other posters have gone into great detail about this), but no matter what -- and this is the important part -- a certain amount of beating and rape was considered perfectly normal and in no way depreciating to the property.\n\n2) The rich ones were. But to follow your example through, it's common for people with cars to do things like drive them too fast, get into fender-benders, run over curbs, go months without washing, fail to carry out the most basic maintenance, run on less than a quarter tank of gas for months, and all sorts of things that are cute with cars but deeply f'n horrifying when done to people. And those are the \"good\" car owners. \n\n3) You have a good point, and there were certainly tremendous issues with insurance fraud and ruined creditors in the day. I'd love to be able to find a good history of insurance fraud in the 19th Century -- I've been looking for a couple years, and if you can find one you should let me know. Long story short, questions of security were generally more difficult back then and it was not uncommon for banks to be ruined. By the way, where slavery is concerned the beginning of the 1800s was very different from the middle. A bank could have offered loans based on slaves in 1800 with much better chances of repayment than 1860.\n\n4) Yep! It was very common for a slave to be promised freedom when the master died, only for the master to die with debts and the slave to be taken as payment. There went your freedom!\n\n5) Sure were, but since the entire country was at war it was less noted. Again, this is something that I've only been able to find peripherally discussed, although it's very important. I would love to find a good source for it. Consider that southern banks, the ones that would have been offering loans based on slave securities, were using the Confederate dollar before the end.\n\nThese issues were also well-known before the war and much discussed. People who say they could have just paid the slave owners off are taking a simplistic view, I believe.",
"I have to agree with the consensus that, in general, the treatment of slaves that we see in the media is extremely overdone. However, that's not to say slaves had it easy.\n\nI did a research paper on medicine and treatment of slaves for a class I took in college. Initially I had intended to write my paper on how slaves were forced to practice traditional African medicine because, of course, their owners would have given them the most minor care available. That was not the case. Owners valued the health of their slaves (property) to the point that they were often given care similar to family. There were actually hospitals (especially at universities) that specialized in treating slaves. These hospitals -did- use the slaves for experimental (and often times painful) treatments.\n\nSomething else to consider is that there were actually life insurance policies that you could buy for your slaves. This is sort of a double-edged sword, though. While it shows the owners at least had some semblance of concern for their lives, it also allowed them a safety net if something happened. This means that owners would be more willing to put their slaves into dangerous conditions, like working in swamps or on railroads, and giving them poor living conditions. There's actually a well-documented case of a slave trade ship (the Zong), which had insured all of its slaves, throwing several who had a treatable illness overboard to \"protect\" the rest from the illness.\n\nAnother interesting thing about the life insurance is that the slaves were only insured for a piece of their market value to ensure that owners weren't killing their slaves for the cash. Not because they valued the slaves' lives, but because they didn't like insurance fraud.\n\nSo yes, slave owners did value their slaves. As property and investments. In most cases, especially on plantations, slaves weren't human. Beating a slave to within an inch of their life wasn't really common because it would have lost them a significant investment. But sending them out into a malaria infested swamp was okay, because they would be able to get work done. And on top of that, if they caught the disease and died, they would at least get a piece of the investment back."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_Unchained",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_of_the_Life_of_Frederick_Douglass,_an_American_Slave",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_Era#Material_devastation_of_the_South_in_1865"
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"http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajn9g5Gsv98",
"http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/dehumanization"
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"http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/"
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"http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2956.html"
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tvjzj/what_was_the_average_price_for_a_slave_in_1840s/"
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"http://usslave.blogspot.com/2011/11/seasoning-african-slaves-by-thomas.html",
"http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/general/2002/02/21/slave-insurance-policies.htm"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derby's_dose"
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5xnqpl | what generates a magnetic field that protect a planet from solar wind from the sun? | Why is a magnetic field so important for the planet?
Can we restart a planet's magnetic field? If yes, How? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xnqpl/eli5_what_generates_a_magnetic_field_that_protect/ | {
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"Earth's magnetic field is generated by the movement of molten iron alloys in the outer core.\n\n > Why is a magnetic field so important for the planet?\n\nIt acts to deflect charged particles from the sun, preventing them from pushing off small parts of our atmosphere similar to sandblasting a surface.\n\n > Can we restart a planet's magnetic field?\n\nNot likely unless you have a way to melt the core of a planet."
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4i9838 | why did the uk universities tripling student fees seem to have no affect on the quality of learning? | They went from 3k to 9k in a night, and I'm not seeing any benefits to students, though that could just be me. What did the students gain out of such an increase in their student debt? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4i9838/eli5_why_did_the_uk_universities_tripling_student/ | {
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"The cost went up because the government stopped paying as much. The actual amount the school charges isn't changing, just who pays out.",
"The government cut the funding to the universities, but this cut had to be balanced, so the government let the universities charge the students more.\n\nSo from the perspective of the universities nothing really changed. So they don't have any extra money to give back to the students."
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435ps5 | why do chemicals meant to "protect" plants like capsaicin, caffeine, nicotene etc. end up having strange benefits when consumed by humans? | For example, I have heard theories that say capsaicin was evolutionary advantageous because herbivores would be deterred from eating it and chewing up pepper seeds. Why does it end up that something like this ends up having inflammation suppressing abilities and other strange benefits? It seems counter-intuitive. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/435ps5/eli5_why_do_chemicals_meant_to_protect_plants/ | {
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"Dosage and physiology. Effects on a 0.1 to 10 gram insect or 100 gram bird or lizard are vastly different to those on a 70kg human.\n\nIts the same reason that such a tiny proportion of drugs successfully tested on animals end up on prescription. ",
"The thing you have to remember is there is no intuition with evolution. The plant doesn't decide to start producing capsaicin to protect itself. Through various mutations over many many generations the plant started to produce capsaicin. This proved to be advantageous so the plant thrived. The fact that the capsaicin may be beneficial or enjoyable to humans or other animals is just that. \n\n"
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2m5t97 | how does wine (the linux application) work? | Basically, if it is supposedly Not an emulator...then how Does it go about doing what it does? A simple, but still relatively in-depth answer is what I'm hoping for. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m5t97/eli5_how_does_wine_the_linux_application_work/ | {
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"An emulator emulates a whole system from the ground up. When you look at an NES emulator, it's in charge of recreating all the graphics, sounds & even simulating the CPU of the system.\n\nWINE is not an emulator because it doesn't need to be. Software on a modern OS doesn't ever do direct hardware access, it just expects to ask the OS do do something & have it be done. Windows software on a PC uses the same CPU instructions as software on a Linux PC, the main difference is how it interfaces with the OS to do things like \"open this file\" or \"create a new window\" and stuff like that.\n\nWhat Wine does is it sets itself up between an application and Linux to intercept these calls and translate them into their Linux counterparts. Some of the translations might take a bit more work than others but the application doesn't need to know how much work is getting done, just that when it calls the OS and asks for something to be done, it gets done."
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2klxgf | if cancer exists in someone's testicles (or any other body part), why can't they just cut them off and have that be the end of it? | I've always been curious. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2klxgf/eli5_if_cancer_exists_in_someones_testicles_or/ | {
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"If it's auxiliary piece (balls, fingers, etc.), sure that might work.\n\nFor more vital areas it's a bit tricky since you don't want to cut out what's underneath. In addition, cutting haphazardly can actually spread the cancerous cells to other parts of the body as well as dislodge them into the bloodstream.",
"Because it spreads. \n\nMy father had a tumor on his arm. They took a biopsy and determined it was cancerous. They removed the tumor, and two lymph nodes from his armpit (which is how they test to see if it spread) and the lymph nodes had traces of cancer in them. So they removed all of the lymph nodes and could not find any more traces ... but there's a 50/50 chance that it's still in the body somewhere and will return sometime within the next 3-5 years. \n\nPut simply ... cancer is often aggressively invasive and is not concentrated to ONLY where the tumor is. ",
"We can and we do. This is slightly more problematic if it's brain cancer.\n\nCancer has several stages of development, and generally as long as it has't metastasised and spread throughout the body, surgery can be an option, if the tumour is small enough, has clear edges and isn't in too complicated a spot. But this isn't always the end of the fight, as getting every single malignant cell isn't very easy.\n\nA common example is a lumpectomy, cutting out a chunk of breast to take out the cancerous tumour and some surrounding tissue just to be sure.",
"We can. I lost one of my testicles to cancer, and have been cancer free since its removal almost 5 years ago. The doctor said we caught it crazy earlier, so that may or may not be a factor in how easily it was removed.",
"It happens, but usually, people are attached to their body parts, both literally and figuratively.",
"To answer your first question, the standard of care for testicular cancer is surgical resection of the affected testicle. This is true of most superficial, or easily detected and localized cancers (your skin cancers, small brain tumors, etc.) The unfortunate aspect of cancer is that it is often detected late, and after there has been metastatic spread. It's not as easy to find things like ovarian cancer as it is testicular cancer. Usually symptoms are first just \"general\" things like bloating or constipation. By this time, the cancer has spread to other organs, and cavities. Furthermore, there might be lymph node involvement, or currently microscopic metastases that won't be picked up by other scans. These stages of cancer is better treated by radiation or chemotherapy.\n\nThere are many, many types of cancer that all have their specific guidelines that physicians use to stage, and treat them. Look at the NCCN guidelines for more information. ",
"They can. They do.\n\nWhy is it not \"the end of it?\"\n\nBecause we can't be *sure* that cancer didn't spread. Better to go in and get regular check-ups to see if it turns out it spread, than assume it didn't.\n\nAlso, you developed cancer for a reason. For whatever reason, you're more at risk to develop it again. Better go in and make sure that didn't happen."
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39cg1r | what is spaghetti code? | Just for a bit of clarity, I play League of Legends which is criticized by the community for its "spaghetti code" and I have no idea what that means.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39cg1r/eli5_what_is_spaghetti_code/ | {
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"Spaghetti code is a programming term for code whose flow is very hard to follow. The name is because a flowchart of spaghetti code will often resemble a bowl of noodles, with one segment of code referring to another in a very chaotic and intertwined way. Usually this is seen as bad practice.",
"Spaghetti code is like poorly edited text:\n\nAuxiliary or ancillary thoughts can be added in one position... It needs to be edited... but not split across other ideas... until they are really needed... that is what should be done... If an idea needs to be... taking the core idea and making it flow... or another.... We should wait to bring up ideas... through the entire structure of the work... split up into independent thoughts to accomplish this\n\nIt needs to be edited, taking the core idea and making it flow through the entire structure of the work. Auxiliary or ancillary thoughts can be added in one position or another, but not split across other ideas. We should wait to bring up ideas, until they are really needed. If an idea needs to be split up into independent thoughts to accomplish this, that is what should be done.",
"Imagine writing a sentence where you used a bunch of references that were logical but made it very hard to read. \n\nSo a standard set of sentences:\n\nDick and Jane see spot run.\nRun spot run.\nSpot runs fast.\n\nCould be written like this in \"Spaghetti English\":\n\nDick and Jane see [Ref5] [ref1].\n[Ref6] [Ref5] [ref1].\n[Ref5] [ref2] fast.\n\nref1=run\nref2=ref1s\nref3=ref4\nref4=this\nref5=Spot\nref6=Run\n\nA computer would have no issues remembering all the substitutions and recognizing which ones are actually ignored, while most readers would have a very hard time following the meaning of the second group without rewriting it (and with code rewriting it is like rewriting a novel). ",
"A long time ago I had to repair a program which had stopped working. Looking at it (it was written in Algol) I was unable to understand how it worked, or in this case, didn't. Although it was only a page long, half of the statements were GOTO statements (some conditional) and a third of the lines had labels (targets of GOTO statements).\n\nMy reaction was to re-write it to the specifications of the program, a two page program with **no** GOTO statements.\n\nAt this point I should mention the classic paper [Go To Statement Considered Harmful](_URL_0_).\n\nThe program in question was used to update a data tape. (Remember tapes?) The problem occurred after the company producing the updates had a strike and inadvertently skipped a few product numbers. When the strike was over, the regular workers returned and filled in the gap left by their supervisors. The spaghetti program could only handle additions to the end or revisions in the middle, not additions in the middle.\n\nMy program was longer and possibly slower, but it was only used for the quarterly tape updates, so it was more important that it work and was correct than be more efficient.",
"Have you ever read (or tried to read) a post where they OP wrote 1000 words of text but didn't use any punctuation or linebreaks? And their spelling and capitalization were bad? And they used text-speak?\n\nSure, you could read it 10 times and kind of - but not completely - understand what they meant. But you could also have rewritten their post in half as many words, thrown in some whitespace and punctuation and made it much easier to read and understand?\n\nThat's what spaghetti code is. It's code that works, but is horribly written, so it takes much longer to read than it really should. Remember, code isn't just for computers - other coders have to be able to read it and understand it too. Spaghetti code is much harder to maintain and fix bugs in that well written and organized code.",
"It's named that because it's like a bowl of spaghetti. You find one end of a noodle. Where is the other end? It would be extremely hard to follow the twisting, looping, curling strand through the bowl, and understand where in the bowl the other end is. That's what bad code is like. It's hard to follow where the program is executing.\n\nBack in the day, a command called \"GOTO\" was common in programming languages, and it basically told the computer to change which part of the program was executing, and execute a different area instead. So if programs had lots of \"GOTO\" statements, the computer was jumping around constantly. This was fine for the computer, but incredibly difficult for the people trying to maintain the code. People reading the code knew where one end of the noodle was -- the start of the program -- but due to constant jumping, it was very tough to predict where the program would go once it started executing. It was a bowl of spaghetti.\n\nAnother decent analogy is the \"Choose Your Own Adventure\" books. You jump around the book constantly, and it gets hard to remember where you came from. You'd get to the end of your story, and you'd forgotten where it all began. Bad code is like that.",
"Spaghetti code is hard to read/follow/change code, more specifically spaghetti code has a chaotic structure, often due to developers quickly changing and fixing issues, without properly reorganizing afterwards (this is part of something programmers call \"refactoring\")\n\nIf a ordinary person talking is normal code, and a formally written speech delivered Obama is really structured code, then spaghetti code is like your grandpa incoherently rambling about the good old days.\n\nIts technically valid, and if you really paid attention you could follow it, but god damn its exhausting."
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2pgln2 | at what point is a dollar bill taken out of circulation? and who's the person that finally decides it's time to take it out? where does it go? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pgln2/eli5_at_what_point_is_a_dollar_bill_taken_out_of/ | {
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"I can add some insight to this. I used to work as a bank teller and we had carte blanche in determining if a bill should be taken out of circulation. When our branch deposited with the Federal Reserve we would also deposit bills that were deemed bad. So example $1,000 in 1's, $5,000 in 5's and so on. Then in a seperate deposit transaction we would send our ruined, dirty, or just all around shitty bills. The FR would take the bills and reimburse the bank for their face value. The bad bills are then shredded and you can actually buy $1 million dollars in shredded bills from the FR. "
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2p5dx8 | why are the bottoms of colored people's feet white | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p5dx8/eli5_why_are_the_bottoms_of_colored_peoples_feet/ | {
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"I think because they got their pigmentation from centuries in the very strong sun and being sunburnt, so the areas of the body that weren't as exposed to sun (I.e. bottoms of feet that were against the ground all the time) are lighter? Not sure though, was just my personal thoughts.",
"The original Homo sapiens came out of Africa and was, fairly certainly, \"black\". Not being black is an evolutionary advantage in areas of the world with less sun light and not eating lots of meat. Vitamin D.\n\nBut if you look at the soles of anyone's feet and the palms of their hands, it's a different kind of skin. There's no need for it to be melanised as it's thicker. That's mostly true for soles and less so for palms where there's more variety. \n\n",
"The bottom of everyone's feet is \"white.\" Humans have evolved not to have a lot of pigment in the palms of the hands or the bottom of the feet.",
"Hi there, this is an unconstructive question and has already attracted some bickering and unqualitative answers so I am removing it. Also I am not convinced that this was unintentional, so consider this a warning. "
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538x95 | how do devices automatically turn themselves back on after turning themselves off | For example, I've just updated my PS4 and it states it will automatically restart.
Once it's off, how does it know how to turn itself back on if the power is cut out? Won't the memory be wiped from it's RAM to turn itself back on etc?
Happens with computers too. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/538x95/eli5_how_do_devices_automatically_turn_themselves/ | {
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"It doesn't completely turn itself off: there's some circuitry that stays live, and is \"smart\" enough to get everything else up and running. Also, some of the instructions for restart are stored in permanent memory (ROM/NVRAM) that doesn't require power.",
"In such cases, one method is that the power isn't removed or isn't removed 100%. You can keep a small circuit active and have it do something to get the rest of the machine going. \n \nBut if you are doing an update, you don't even have to go that far. When done you can trigger a RESET signal to the processor, which will result in it going through the standard boot-up sequence. The power doesn't actually go off, it just looks like it has. "
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1q8paw | how did sites like grooveshark, spotify, and google play get all that music available for free streaming? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q8paw/eli5_how_did_sites_like_grooveshark_spotify_and/ | {
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"Grooveshark is currently in a number of lawsuits over copyright infringement.\n\nSpotify has licensing deals with music studios so that they are allowed to stream music on demand. On the free version, they pay for these license fees with ads. In the US, due to streaming music laws, anyone can use music for Internet Radio, assuming that they pay a set royalty fee. This is how Pandora and Spotify Radio work.\n\nGoogle Play All Access is similar to Spotify in that you need to pay $10/month and they use that money to pay for license fees to the recording companies.\n\niTunes Radio is different in that it has worked out license fees with companies for streaming so they can operate in many more countries than something like Pandora. Pandora only works in the US, Australia, and New Zealand. While iTunes Radio is initially only available in the US, many people believe that because Apple's licensing deals span across many countries, it will be able to spread far easier than Pandora.",
"Well, with Grooveshark they're getting the music because users are uploading it. That's why you'll find a much larger selection of music on Grooveshark than any other streaming service. Grooveshark is an entirely different animal than the rest and is essentially the Napster of free music streaming which is why it's gotten sued up the wazoo over the years.",
"All of the major labels have a share of ownership in Spotify... and completely left the artists/songwriters out of the deal. That is why their payments to the artists is an absolute joke, a million plays nets the artist about $125, while the major labels own a share in a billion dollar company and have a constant revenue stream from advertising. Indie labels and artists voluntarily submit their music to Spotify even though they will never make a penny from it simply because so many people use Spotify to listen and discover that you are shooting yourself in the foot if your music isn't up there. Overall these systems have devalued music to the point that most artists make nothing anymore.\n\n",
"Grooveshark operates like \"You, the UPLOADER agree that YOU the UPLOADER are the SOUL OWNER of this song and grooveshark doesn't own it.\" Grooveshark also lets you sell YOUR songs through their service because of this. So when someone uploads a Metallica song, grooveshark points the finger at the IP that uploaded it and says \"hey sue them for trying to sell copyrighted music\""
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2vd3jx | the effects of greece pulling out of the eurozone for both greece itself and the rest of us left within. | There has been much speculation over what would occur should Greece go back to the Drachma. There are conflicting ideas but as far as I understand it, public and private loans within Greece would be wiped off but as the rest of the world would be unwilling to buy Drachmas Greece would have a hard time buying anything on the international market. I am in no way shape or form however, an economist.
Where there is less analysis however is what would happen to the rest of Europe. How would the big guys such as Germany, France and Britain be affected? And how in turn would that affect the likes of Spain, Italy and the Ex-Warsaw Pact states?
So therefore Reddit I put it to you. Help a brother understand this Globalised mess. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vd3jx/eli5_the_effects_of_greece_pulling_out_of_the/ | {
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"The effect on the other Eurozone countries is the million dollar question everyone is worried about.\n\nMost likely what would happen is similar to the financial crisis of 2008 but much worse, where the exit of Greece would make people would panic and look to see if countries such as Spain, Portugal and Italy (+ Ireland and Greece = the PIIGS) are in good shape. Much like a domino effect.\n\nOr maybe that won't happen and everyone is happy Greece is gone from the Eurozone, which is unlikely. Although in all honesty the stronger economies like Germany and the Netherlands will be fine in the long run, France as well. It's the ones most affected by the 2008 crash that'll suffer the most.\n\nBut one thing is certain, the exit of Greece would result in a loss of confidence in the Euro and it'd be a while until the currency rebounds, especially if the domino effect happens.\n\nOriginally the Euro was designed be a competitor to the US Dollar, which it was pre-2008, however now that the cracks are being exposed it's hard to see what'll happen next. The real problem however is that speculation can do much more harm than good, just like what happened with the Stock Market Crash in 1929, one of the major catalysts of the Great Depression of 1933. \n\nAs for Greece itself it's unknown what will happen as well, but we can turn to the financial crisis and depression in Argentina from 1998 to 2002 for evidence of what'll happen. Things got shittier and shittier after Argentina defaulted on their debts and was plunged into a depression. Even now the effects of what happened still resonate in the country, however things will improve.\n\nThe thing about economics and markets is that it's a cycle, almost always it'll get better somehow if you \"let the markets run it's course\". Eventually it will get better, just exactly how or when no one knows, hence the bailout packages and such to either make sure the worst case scenario doesn't happen or to ease the pain of financial collapse if it can't be helped.\n\nTL;DR: We honestly don't know, it's all just speculation at this point which isn't necessarily a good thing."
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2mdxqb | what's going on politically in hungary (prime minister, internet tax, protests)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mdxqb/eli5_whats_going_on_politically_in_hungary_prime/ | {
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"Hungarian here! \nThis is rather a longer story, but let's see if I can sum it up. \n\nIn 1989, the socialism in Hungary finally collapsed. There was a young, liberal politician, Viktor Orbán, and his party, Fidesz (the name literaly means young democrats). Some older parties were refounded after the one party system and the formal state party reformed itself as well (MSzMP - > MSzP). Fidest was already the governing party once (from 1998 to 2002), but that is not really important now.\n\nAt the end of the '90-s Fidesz changed: after Orbán realised that liberalism isn't trending, he went from liberalist to conservative pretty fast. (Previously he told the church not to get into politics, now he is in coalition with a christian party only to get more votes).\nIn the '00 years, mostly MSzP was the governing party after their popularity increased back. Now MSzP was corrupt. From state owned comapies they took home some money so people started disliking them, Fidesz used this up and started a massive ranting media campaign. (That causes the infamous 2006 rioting, when the national TV was literally sieged). \n\nAfter this, Fidesz won the elections with a 2/3rd of the votes (In Hungary, you can change the Constitution with that many). Now what they started doing was always on the border of being democratic or not. They made the national TV into a non-stop Propaganda channel, changed the voting system (they got a 2/3rd this year again because of that), put tax on TV advertisements (which only affects oppositional TVs), etc. \n\nNow MSzP was corrupt: they stole sometimes quite big monies, but they were little ligue compared to Fidesz. Orbán and his people simpky doesn't get ashamed from stealing. Just to give you an idea: his university friend, Simicska (maffia mob now) gets every road construction work, all the stations gets build by him (they are building a lot because Orbán likes football), the infamous little village where Orbán was born, Felcsút got a Stadion which can hold 4000 people (the village has 2000 paople), a top league football team (from nothing), its mayor suddenly became the 88th wealthies people in Hungary in years (from nothing), Orbán's father is now very rich as well...\n\nBut the opposition is - partly because the massive media propaganda, partly because MSzP is only a bunch of 100 year old men with the worst media team ever, and partly because Orbán's popularist laws (making paople hate banks, multinational companies and then making both pay taxes) - is very unorganized, ununified.\n\nHowever the Internet tax came, which was the last drop and made people go crazy. First of all it was a very big amount (~0.5 euro, 0.7 usd per GB). As there was a big opposition they said two things: it will be maximised (2.5 Euro for people, 16 for companies) and it will be paid by ISPs who won't be allowed to make it a consumer fee (which is a total bushit, you can get basic internet connection for less than the maximum tax). Because people disagreed the whole idea, a protest happened with ~10 000 people (biggest one in years). The government finally cancelled the bill (this never happened with Orbán). But it didn't stop there, people finally got into a mood: they realised they have power, and they can make Orbán fear them. So there are protest pretty often about everything they were offended by for years, and suddenly there is a hope for a change.\n\nExtra: After the first protest, a couple people went to the Fidesz Party house and broke a couple windows. Now the media was bragging about it for weeks, suddenly forgetting that it was Fidesz who made the 2006 riot happen where parts of the capital was on fire...\n\nAlso the biggest protests are about the 'Ban Scandal', the USA had banned several people close to the government from the States (including the hed of NAV, the institute that checks taxes) for being corrupt. The government now hates the USA...\n\ntl;dr:\nThere was finally some big thing that made people just explode, so riots started against the government which haven't happened in years."
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8y418d | why is arizona a desert if it has monsoons? | Their total annual rainfall is low, but not lower than other areas that arent a desert.
SOmeone once mentioned to me something about the mountains messing with it?
Or is it the ground composition? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8y418d/eli5_why_is_arizona_a_desert_if_it_has_monsoons/ | {
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"The term \"desert\" has to do with rainfall amount. There are deserts in Antarctica. \n\nArizona has high deserts (Mohave, Colorado Plateau), a huge pine forest on the Mogollon Rim, and low deserts (Sonoran, Chihuahuan).\n\nThe Sonoran Desert is the wettest desert in North America. When \"wet summer\" begins, fronts come in from the Pacific and the Gulf Of Mexico.\n\nI am in Phoenix and the monsoons are hitting this week.",
"Also worth noting: a monsoon is a seasonal shift in wind direction that is associated with an increase in precipitation. So, if somebody describes a one-off heavy rain as a monsoon, they are quite wrong. :)"
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2ltdl0 | why are there no solar systems with a huge planet in the middle instead of a star? | Edit > I actually meant "solar system like", or just "system", i know the name "solar system" refers specifically to OUR system. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ltdl0/eli5why_are_there_no_solar_systems_with_a_huge/ | {
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"By definition a 'solar system' is a group of planets orbiting a star, you cannot have a solar system without a star in the middle.\n\nThere may be planets orbiting planets in a solar system like scenario (I mean, theoretically why not?) but we would not be able to see it We can only see planets orbiting other stars with the help of the light generated from the star, even then it is extremely difficult.",
"They very well could exist. Wed have no way of detecting them though. ",
"Jupiter has 67 moons, I guess that would fit your description."
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d8cob6 | why do car doors have those “checkpoints” when you open them that causes the door to swing back if you don’t get it just right? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d8cob6/eli5_why_do_car_doors_have_those_checkpoints_when/ | {
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"There is a spring-loaded wheel with notches at specific points. It is good at holding the door steady with no effort by you, but the side effect is that it pushes the door *away from* spots between the steady spots.",
"Haha, you inadvertently guessed the correct name for that part. It's actually called the door check.\n\nAll it is designed to do is hold the door open at a certain point to resist the door from swinging open or closed. Some are a lot stronger than others, and they all wear out over time.",
"My dad drove a ‘74 el Camino. Those doors were heavy as hell and had no stopper. Hitting the doors was really common. What you’re seeing is a “fix” to that."
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enhvv1 | why does stretching after long periods of staying still feel so good and suddenly turn tiring? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/enhvv1/eli5_why_does_stretching_after_long_periods_of/ | {
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"As a massage therapist I would say that you're probably tired to begin with, and the act of standing and stretching brings your attention from your task at hand back to your body. Once you finish the stretch you probably feel more relaxed physically and mentally and that tired feeling is able to come to forefront of your attention. \n\nSomeone else may have a better answer, but this is the most common thing I see in my line of work.",
"It releases feel good's chemicals into your body, improve blood flow and relaxes the muscles. It does provide a focus reset as well.",
"The nervous system can in one way be functionally divided into two subsystems: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic \n\nThe sympathetic nervous system is what is commonly known as fight, flight or freeze and is activated by exciting stimulus like a boss yelling at you, pressing hard to finish a task or working out. This makes us alert and ready to perform at our best. \n\nThe parasympathetic nervous system is what is commonly known as rest and digest and is activated by for example eating, having sex and , you guessed it, stretching activates the parasympathetic nervous system. This makes your body relax with all of the good things that comes with this response - making you feel good and eventually tired.\n\nAlso the stretching creates stimuli in the C-fibers to the brain. These fibers send information about the dull type of pain you get from being immobile for long. They also send information about movement. Only one type of information can travel along the fibers at once, thus movement will trump dull ache information and you will feel it as being pleasurable"
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1jf2t0 | why do outer electron orbitals hold more electrons? | I would have thought it would have been the opposite. The closer to the nucleus, the stronger the attraction, hence, more electrons. Basically, I don't understand why there isn't enough "space" in the orbitals.
Been wondering this for two decades. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jf2t0/eli5why_do_outer_electron_orbitals_hold_more/ | {
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"For you to fully wrap you mind around this you'll have to think a bit of electrons like a [standing wave](_URL_0_).\n\nWhere each electron isn't so much a particle, but a peak, crest, or node on a wave, and this multiple peak wave goes around the atom. So if you sit at one point in the orbit, you'll see the wave rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall over and over. But from the top looking down the wave looks quite static, just a wonky circle going around a point.\n\nSo if you've wrapped your head around that it starts becoming easy to see why a larger orbit (larger circumference) will hold more points. (Because you'll see the same gap between waves, so the period of the wave is the same).\n\nMake sense?\n\n \n\n",
"Because as you increase the principle quantum number (n, which determines the energy level), there are more and more possible values of the angular momentum and magnetic quantum numbers.",
"It's because the number of solutions to the Schrödinger Equation (on a simplified level) increase in terms of the orbital angular quantum number. In other words, at a given quantized energy level denoted by quantum number l, an electron is allowed to have a specific number of values of the magnetic quantum number (m_l). For l = 0 we can only have one value (1 s-orbital), l = 1, 3 values (3 p orbitals), l = 2, 5 values ( 5 d-orbitals) and so on. The energy levels for a given l are (2l+1)-fold degenerate. Since each orbital can be occupied only by 2 electrons with opposite spin you get 2 s-electrons 6-p electrons etc. \nIt gets even more complicated because a 3s orbital is more \"outer\" per your definition but can still only hold 2 electrons and there is a higher probability of finding a 3s electron very close to the nucleus than a 2p. I suggest reading a general chemistry book on atomic structure to get a better feeling for this stuff.\nSource: Atkins' Physical Chemistry"
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6h12il | what image quality do our eyes see in? is it possible to give this a value in pixels? if not, how does our brain process each tiny piece of colour? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6h12il/eli5_what_image_quality_do_our_eyes_see_in_is_it/ | {
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"It's important to make the distinction and the parallels between say a camera and our eyes. Let's take a camera for instance, there are actually physical layers of filters over pixels to filter a certain colour out of the rest of the light, three layers one each for red, blue, and green. The pixel then is sensitive to the strength of the light that hits it, this gives us a final pixel that is a certain colour and a certain range of white to black.\n\nNow, our eyes are somewhat similar, in that we have structures that are sensitive to colour and light all wrapped up into one, but also have structures that are sensitive to only light and are relied on in low light situations. They are not completely comparable to pixels though, as our eyes actually process information right on the spot, unlike pixels which send raw information to a processing unit. Our retina, the structure that detect light, actually processes information before even sending it up the optic nerve. So we can't really say \"one\" \"rod\" or \"cone\" equals \"one\" pixel. So our eyes don't really have a \"resolution,\" but of course we can only see up to such and such a fine detail and this is I suppose what you could compare to resolution. That, I'm not sure about, I believe it's measured in arc seconds, that is the distance between physical details measured in wavelengths or speeds of light.\n\nOh and how we perceive colour is actually a chemical reaction depending on the wavelength of light that hits our retina. The cells absorb the light and depending on the wavelength of that light undergo a chemical reaction that sends an electrical signal up the optic nerve. And as I said before our eyes actually process information before even sending any information to the brain. Very interesting how our view of the world is so influenced by processing that we are not even aware of on a chemical level.",
"Your highest angular resolution is about 1 minute of arc(20/20 vision), and your vision spans 114 degrees so that's roughly 6840 \"pixels\" wide, but you don't get this resolution across the whole field of vision. You have really good central vision with far worse resolution and color sensitivity on the peripheral vision so the real resolution will be more along the lines of 4000 wide with it being much better in the middle.\n\nYour eye has rods(light/dark sensors) and cones(color sensors). Each cone only sees one color and is grouped with other cones of different colors so you can treat each triple group of cones as a pixel. Each rod is a pixel on its own but generally doesn't function in daylight. Rods are very sensitive to light and tell you if it's light or dark but in bright lights they get overwhelmed and stop.\n\nYour brain receives signals from all your rods and cones and processes it into an understanding of your surroundings, ignoring things it finds not helpful (a closed eye or the side of your nose)",
"You have [60 million rod and 3 million cone cells](_URL_1_), but multiple photoreceptor cells will feed into one of the relay cells that carry the signal to the optic nerve.\n\nThere are about 900,000 of those [relay cells](_URL_0_) that actually transmit image information. They're not directly equivalent to pixels though, the different types have different specialized functions.\n\nAbout half of them are color vision, so you're running on about 450,000 \"pixels\" in a healthy eye. They don't all fire at once (but they are pretty fast) so the actual moment-to-moment resolution is some significant fraction of that.\n\n"
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6if7gj | why do development countries seem to have the craziest drivers and lax traffic laws? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6if7gj/eli5why_do_development_countries_seem_to_have_the/ | {
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"Less strict police because they usually got enough other things to worry about. You still kinda need all those policemen trained & ready in first world countries for special occasions like certain football matches, demonstrations & public events etc. but the rest of the time they don't have as much to do due to lower crimerates. Also, the streets are usually much worse in development countries and there are less radar/speed traps.\nSo the short answer is: You can get away with it much more easily in development countries so people use that leeway. "
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cphlfm | what cause the modern unpopularity of ternary computing? what about it made it not able to be stable or work properly in many cases, and is the concept still under development? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cphlfm/eli5_what_cause_the_modern_unpopularity_of/ | {
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"Binary is fundamentally easy on a hardware level: all your memory bits and circuits and transistors are either ON or OFF. Then you build out from there.\n\nTernary requires more complex states, you need some way to measure magnitude or polarity instead of just crude on/off. It's possible and working models have been built, but the ease and low cost of mass-producing simple binary components basically priced it into oblivion by 1980.\n\nThere's still *some* work going on since it would in theory speed up processes and shorten code, but the massive head start in minaturizing and mass producing binary components makes it a hard sell. Nobody's really shown that it can be cost competitive with binary systems of comparable computing power."
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1y40zl | if reddit is a huge diverse community full of different opinions, why do we always see the same interests and opinions upvoted so much? | I feel like Reddit has a definite "culture," but at the same time I see people saying "Reddit is a huge diverse culture, people like different things."
But then why does it seem like Reddit loves Cats, Bill Nye, Breaking Bad, Jennifer Lawrence, Queen, Calvin & Hobbes, and Parks & Rec.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y40zl/eli5_if_reddit_is_a_huge_diverse_community_full/ | {
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"Like-minded people tend to cluster together, so individual subreddits will probably be skewed in one direction or another. Find some of those non-default subreddits, and you'll find different dominating views.\n\nAnd everyone likes Queen and Calvin & Hobbes. Come on.",
"Reddit serves many purposes for internet users. It is a recipe book, a porn site, a mass blog, a news outlet, a social thread, and many more. But foremost, it is used by a younger generation that generally have similar attitudes to society.\n\nWhile people from all backgrounds use the website, it is dominated by a group of like minded people. These alternative views that you speak of are preset and submitted but are generally down-voted or end up on controversial lists which fail to lead to public notice."
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3szqyw | why is it so important to raise our space budget? how will it benefit our economy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3szqyw/eli5_why_is_it_so_important_to_raise_our_space/ | {
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"Space programs have a huge potential to feed back into the economy, and historically have. NASA doesn't make all of their equipment, they contract with private companies that build what they need. That pumps money into the economy and creates jobs. Space programs also tend to push against the very forefront of scientific knowledge, helping to advance scientific knowledge in tons of fields. So it's a comparatively cheap way to stimulate the economy (by spending money in the economy), create jobs, and advance scientific knowledge.",
"Space requires high levels of technological advancements and development or at least furthering the research which can have magnitudes of positive effect by discoveries. Investing into development and invention should be a priority even if we can't turn profit on it in foreseeable future. Not everything must turn profit to be useful. That's a mentality being suppressed in capitalistic society. Validity on both sides, only question is for tomorrow or next decade. Right now, we are terrible at balancing that. There doesn't have to be just one or the other. "
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o1dkz | what voip is and the difference between it and normal landlines? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/o1dkz/eli5_what_voip_is_and_the_difference_between_it/ | {
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"VOIP is packet switched\n\nLandlines are usually circuit switched, but in some developed markets the backend is now VOIP",
"This is ELI5, what are these people babbling about. A landline is an analog device. When you place a call (at least, as it was originally designed and implemented), you quite literally end up with a wired connection (plus some boosters to keep the volume up) between you and your target phone. It used to be done with switchboard operators moving cables from jack to jack to connect calls. This was retired when automatic switching was implemented. \n\nVOIP is a digital technology. Your voice is recorded, turned into data (ones and zeros) and sent over internet data connections to a target address. There it is decoded back into sound and played back. ",
"This is how analog landlines work:\n\nLet's for a moment forget about everything making up a telephone but the \"receiver\". The name is a bit unhappy, because it also transmits. The earpiece is a loudspeaker, just like in a headphone, the mouthpiece is a microphone. Both are connected in series to the landline.\n\nThere's a bit electronics that makes it, that what you speak will not come out of your earpiece and some switches and/or a tone generator, but this is all not that important.\n\nThe telephone landline connects your telephone to a large system of switches. Each digit in a telephone number makes a switch connect to another of 10 switches, that's how dialing works. But in the end your and the telephone at the other end are directly connected through a series of switches. Those switches form the telephone network.\n\n---\n\nThis is how digital landlines work:\n\nYour telephone stays the same, but instead of a system of switches your landline connects into a digital telephone service node. There are no longer electrical switches there, but converters which take an analogue signal and turn it into a series of digital numbers (about 20000 times a second), and vice versa. Those nodes are connected with each other using something called \"ATM\".\n\nATM works by creating \"virtual switched connections\". For example on a ATM link the nodes communicate, that there are 6 connections active. Now the data (= voice in form of numbers) is packed into so called \"cells\", small bunches of data. Each node on each side knows how many connections there are open. For the mentioned 6 connections this means that the first cell transmitted belongs to the first connection, the second cell to the second, and so on. After the sixths cell the seventh cell with again be treated as part of the first connection, then the 13th cell and so on. By counting the cells and dividing by the number of connections the node on the other end can simply relay those cells into the next node of the chain, without modifying the cell (like rewriting the address, or similar).\n\nYour digitized voice is packed into such cells. And after dialing a circuit switch between the ATM nodes is established, routing the cells through the network as if there was a direct electrical connection. On the other end of the route the cells are fed into the digital to analog converter, and the resulting electrical current sent to the connected to telephone.\n\n---\n\nThis is how VoIP works:\n\nYour telephone is connected to a computer's sound interface. Again the electical signal is digitized, but this time it's not packed into cells. Instead it's bunched up into slabs of about 4ms worth of audio. Those slabs are compressed using a lossy compression method (like MP3, but specially purposed for voice). The result are small packets of data, where each audio slab contributes to multiple packets. This packet gets a sequential number, a address and a number called a TTL (that number is usually 30). Every packet get's its own sequence number, and that address label.\n\nThose packets of data are then fed into the internet. The telephones computer is connected to a so called router. A router is a device that takes packets of data transmitted over the internet, \"rips off\" the address label, look at the address to decide what to do with it. If it knows where to send that packet based on the address, it reattaches a new address label, together with that TTL number counted down by one and sends it to the next… router. This process repeats until the router to which the other telephone-computer on the other end is connected to – or until the TTL number hits zero and the packet is dropped.\n\nNow the important thing about the internet is, that there are many, many routes for a packet to reach its destination and depending on the momentary traffic on each route the routers decide on a packet-to-packet base where to route them next. This has the effect that packets may be received in a different order, than they were sent. This happens to all data in the internet. For something like a website this is no problem, it doesn't matter if the reddit alien is loaded before the red-orange, as long as they all make their way to the other end to form a webpage. But for audio the order in which those pieces are played matters. To make matters worse, the internet may drop packets. Again, not such a big deal for a webpage, the browser just asks the server for a replacement. But you can't expect the user to re-utter that very same specific piece of audio if a audio packet is dropped.\n\nThis is where those sequence numbers become important and the fact, that single audio slabs are spread over multiple packets. The sequence numbers allow the receiver to attach the audio in the right order. And if a packet goes missing, a part of the sound in it also made it into the packets that came before and after it. It's not the whole audio, so the quality is reduced for this packet, but it's still something you can make sense of. Only if too many packets go missing or arrive much later than when they're needed the audio stream breaks.\n\nSo after piecing the packets of data together, decoding/decompressing the audio the signal is converted into electrical current and sent to your telephone where you can hear it."
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chvple | why do radio active nuclear facilities cores glow blue? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/chvple/eli5why_do_radio_active_nuclear_facilities_cores/ | {
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"The blue glow is something known as *Cherenkov radiation,* first detected by Soviet physicist Pavel Cherenkov in the early 20th century.\n\nThis radiation occurs when a charged particle passes through a medium like water or air at a velocity greater than that at which light passes through said medium.\n\nThis velocity is slower than the \"speed of light\" that is the ultimate speed limit of the universe, so the presence of Cherenkov radiation is consistent with, and predicted by, physical law.",
"The phenomenon is called [Cherenkov radiation](_URL_0_). \n\nWhen charged particles move through a medium( in most nuclear facilities, this is water) faster than the speed of light in that same medium, the result is that blue glow. \n\nThat is, the _radiation products are traveling faster through water_ than _light travels through water_.",
"Two people already gave you the correct answer, but this is a way to think about it in laymans terms. \n\nThe blue glow is like a shockwave of particles breaking the light barrier similar to how a sonic boom is from breaking the sound barrier. \n\nJust like the speed of sound changes based on the medium sound moves through, so does light. Sometimes light is slowed enough that other objects can move faster than it while still being slower than the \"speed of light in a vaccuum\" or \"c\".",
"Cherenkov radiation. Basically a \"photic boom\", like a sonic boom but with light instead of sound.\n\nIt happens when a particle, emitted by a radioactive substance, moves faster than the speed of light IN ITS LOCAL ENVIRONMENT (the speed of light is only the speed limit in a vacuum; in other media, light travels slower and other things can move faster).",
"The short answer is due to Cherenkov radiation. Light travels at a constant speed and is the fastest thing we know of BUT water inhibits and refracts the flow of light, Cherenkov radiation is not inhibited by water and therefor travels through water faster than light can. This causes a blue effect to happen with the light, and our perception of the radiation to change relative to that light. Out of water, it won’t glow blie. Water (or a medium that significantly inhibits the flow of light without preventing it) is the cause of this. The reason water is used, is because it acts as a fantastic thermal, and radioactive insulator, and is cheap, and can be seen and worked in."
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yq7wg | why are you supposed to eat the seeds of some fruits and not with others? | EDIT: To clarify, I'm wondering why certain fruits want you to eat their seeds. Think Peaches vs. Strawberries. What's the advantage of each way? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yq7wg/why_are_you_supposed_to_eat_the_seeds_of_some/ | {
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"if you eat a seed, you will grow a plant in you belly.",
"It depends largely on how the plant in question is adapted to spread it's seeds. No seed wants to be destroyed; the ones that tend to get eaten generally use that as a mechanism to travel. \n\nSome seeds are made to be eaten (by people, birds, etc) and can survive a trip through a digestive system. This spreads them around and provides fertilizer. \n\nSome seeds attempt to make themselves unappetizing by being bitter, large, hard shelled, poisonous, etc. Apple seeds and peach pits fall into this category.\n\nSome seeds are meant to be spread by the wind. Dandelions and maple keys are good examples of this.\n\nOther seeds latch onto animals that pass by, like burs. They fall off them they are removed of when they dry out and rot. \n\nThere are loads more methods plants use to distribute their seeds, but this is a general synopsis. I hope it helps!\n\ntl;dr: Seeds want to spread the species around. Some do it by getting eaten, others use different methods. They are simply different means to the same end."
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1nz8we | little red balls on telephone wires. | There is this tall telephone(?) wire that has these little red balls periodically on the wire. What do they do? Why don't all wires have these? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nz8we/eli5_little_red_balls_on_telephone_wires/ | {
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"They're placed on wires near to where helicopters may be flying (eg hospitals).\nThey make it easier for the pilot to see the wire and thus avoid it.",
"Well, I've never hung out on one of these wires!"
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8d0f88 | how can you know the ratings of a netflix series? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8d0f88/eli5_how_can_you_know_the_ratings_of_a_netflix/ | {
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"Netflix—like all distributors— have their own internal metrics that are almost never revealed publicly and when they do, it’s highly suspect as there is no way to verify the info. \n\nThere are companies out there attempting to gauge viewership of Netflix but as of yet, none of them are regarded as much and their analysis is very suspect as we still can’t verify it in a meaningful and accurate manner (there’s actually a lot there say about companies who purport to get viewership of Netflix (generally bad stuff, they are... shady), but that’s a whole different thing)"
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d3cxm6 | what do the regional federal reserve banks do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d3cxm6/eli5_what_do_the_regional_federal_reserve_banks_do/ | {
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"The fed directs fiscal policy throughout the US, the regional banks provide a central point for that control. \n\nFurthermore they act as a place holder \nfor regional cash, your local bank doesn't have nearly as much money in it as you might think. They place orders with the fed on a weekly basis for cash deliveries and exchanges. These regional locations allow for quicker, and easier transactions with the fed.",
"The Federal Reserve operates as a bank for banks.\n\nCommercial banks have accounts with the Federal Reserve that they draw from for cash. They're also able to take out 'loans' to cover their cash flow if needed - this (in theory) would help to guard against 'runs' on a bank (where everyone withdraws at the same time).\n\nThere are regional locations because they service different parts of the country. A Bank in Los Angeles has a much easier time working with the 12th Fed. district than if they had to drive all the way to Washington, DC and back just for some cash."
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1wukq2 | why do we need domain name registrars? why can't we register domain names ourselves, without a company doing it for us? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wukq2/eli5_why_do_we_need_domain_name_registrars_why/ | {
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"Because ICANN (the organization in charge of all of that) doesn't feel like putting up with customers. It takes a lot of work and infrastructure, and that detracts from their overall purpose. So they farm the job out to companies to handle."
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63le40 | what is marginal utility of income? | There's a principle in taxes called "marginal utility of income." Keeps popping up in my homework readings. Investopedia isn't really making sense to me. Can someone explain it to me? Or give an example?
edit: Woah, I go away to write a history paper, come back, and bam! There's answers here that make sense. Thanks, you guys rock. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63le40/eli5_what_is_marginal_utility_of_income/ | {
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"OK. Lets look at 2 people. \n\nPerson 1 makes $1,000,000 per year. They spend 25% of their income on the necessities of life, like housing and food. They spend some on car payments and other luxury items. They spend $1,000 per month on food. They save around 33% of their income for retirement.\n\nNext is a person who only makes $20,000 per year. They don't save anything, don't have a car and don't spend on luxury items. They spend $500 per month on food, 50% of their income on rent and the remainder of things like a cell phone and bus passes. They have very little money leftover at the end of each month. \n\nNow, each person gets a 10% raise. What happens.\n\nWell, person 1 does not really change much. They might make a special purchase, but chances are they'll just increase their savings a little. This additional income does not provide person 1 with very much real world benefit in their day to day life (aka utility).\n\nPerson 2 on the other hand. They might be able to get a better apartment. They might be able to get a cheap car or pay a back bill that has been eating them via interest payments. Person 2 spends all their income on necessities of life, so additional income provides them with tremendous real-world benefit.\n\nThis same effect can be seen with even larger sums of money. Say each of those 2 people got a windfall equal to 1 years salary. If that happened to me, I could repay my credit cards and car payment and still have enough left over to have a downpayment on a home. I'm living paycheque to paycheque and such a windfall would really change my life. Someone who's already earning lots might just dump the whole amount into savings, or buy a better car or nicer house. Not really life changing events, but still beneficial things. \n\nSo the less money you have, the more the next bit of money means to you. Poorer people tend to spend more of their money on critically important things. Wealthy people tend to spend more on those important things, but not as a percentage of their overall income. So additional income means \"less\" to a wealthy person than it does a poor person. ",
"The first $500 toward housing is more useful/important because it determines whether you have a home or not; while the second $500 determines whether it's 1 bedroom or 2 and what neighborhood it's in; while the next $500 determines a second bathroom and whether the kitchen is from 70's or 2000's; at $5000 rent it's about ocean views or private tennis courts... at each level, the next set of dollars are less and less important to the basic role of housing and more about qualitative enhancements. So we tax less the dollars that determine whether somebody has something important to living or not, and tax more dollars that would otherwise go toward enhancing that thing, because it easier to settle for 4 bedrooms instead of 5 than to afford an apartment or not.",
"In eli5 terms: i have 1 pizza, and you have 10 pizzas. Then we both receive 1 free pizza. That 1 freebie is \"worth\" more to me because i doubled my pizza total (1 > 2) while you only gained a 10% increase (10 > 11). \n\nAlso, maybe i want to eat more than one pizza. Now i can! But you had 10 pizzas. You aren't gonna eat the extra one, you'll probably save it. ",
"**Marginal utility** is the additional satisfaction a consumer gains from consuming one more unit of a good or service\n\nMarginal utility of income is the extra utility/satisfaction you get from an extra dollar of income. ",
"Marginal utility refers to the usefulness of the next item(s). You could speak of the marginal utility of drinking a glass of water if you like. That first glass of water you drink is very useful. It's marginal utility is high. If you have already drunk 10 glasses of water the 11th glass isn't that useful to you anymore. It's marginal utility is low. At some point you've drunk so much water that you'll suffer from water toxicity. At that point the marginal utility is negative. \n\nIncome is no different. How useful is that next dollar? How useful is that next dollar when a person makes 30k/year versus 300k/year or 3mm/year? It's a lot higher for the former than the latter. \n\n",
"So if you get paid 1 dollar you get, lets say arbitrary, 100 utility from receiving that dollar.\n\nNext day you get paid 2 dollars, so you get the 100 utility from the first dollar but then 95 utility for the second.\n\nNext day you get paid 3 dollars, so you get 100 for the first, 95 for the second and 90 for the third. \n\nSo the utility of income for the first dollar is 100, for the second dollar it is 95, for the third it is 90. The total utility of income for all three days is 100+95+90. The marginal utility is referencing what the NEXT dollar paid will yield in utility. \n\nSo for the first day, the marginal utility of receiving one more dollar past the first you were paid would be 95. We know that already. One the second day, the marginal utility of receiving another dollar after 2 is ,again we know this, 90. \n\nTypically the marginal utility is decreasing at a non-linear rate, unlike what I showed above, so you can use it to find the most efficient balance of total utility receive vs what ever the input is. For instance, if you are trying to incentivize your accountant, you want to pay him the amount that will break a certain utility threshold that will make him stay, be loyal, and work hard. You dont want to waste any money beyond the amount needed because you are getting less and less utility for each dollar spent.",
"Basically, the more money you have, the less important any given dollar is. \n\n* Person 1 has $5 dollars to pay for lunch. He pretty much have to spend all $5 and is left with 0% remaining. \n* Person 2 has $10. She could spend it all on lunch, but wouldn't *need* to; she can still get the same $5 lunch as before. She might splurge and get an $8 meal, but she'll have 20% of my money left over. \n* Person 3 has $50 and can afford to get anything he wants. However, even if he went nuts and spent 5 times as much ($25) on lunch, he'd still have 50% of his money left over. He'd have 10x as much money as Person 1, but doesn't need to spend it all for lunch like the first person did. In fact, he could buy lunch for all three of them and still have money left over.\n\nThe reason that this comes up in tax policy is that it is easier to collect taxes from the last two people than from the first one, because those people have money that isn't *needed* for something. \n\n* Taxing the first person $1 means that that person would have $1 for food; he'd go hungry. Taking any more in tax means that they'd be extra hungry.\n* Taxing the second person $1 means that her extra money is reduced by 50%. Taking any more would eliminate their savings or force them to get a cheaper lunch.\n* Taxing the third person $1 would reduce their savings by 4%. They'd have to take a lot more before he couldn't pay for his chosen meal. \n\nAs such, it can be seen as more fair (or at least more effective) to tax those people who don't \"need\" the money than try to take it form those who do.",
"Sorry for not typing the explanation out. But this is the link I used to understand the concept + many other basics of economics.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Marginal utility is the measure of happiness each additional dollar brings you, or conversely, the loss of happiness caused by the loss of one dollar in income.",
"Utility is a measure of 'happiness' or satisfaction and comes from Utilitarian philosophy. An individual's utility is measured in units called Utils. This might sound a little stupid, but is a surprisingly clever system if you take utils to merely represent how much enjoyment we get from things relative to each other i.e. it doesn't matter how satisfaction is represented by one util, only that eating ice cream gives me more utils than eating cabbage. Make sure that you are clear on these terms because they are key to understanding the concept as a whole.\n\nThe marginal utility of income is an economic principle, whereby it is assumed that each level of income provides an individual with positive utility (we like money), and that an increase in income provides us with extra utility (we like having more money as opposed to less money).\n\nThe marginal utility of income is a theoretical principle representing how much utility, or how many utils, we gain from a £1 increase to our income, based on what our starting income is. How this is measured exactly generally depends on the model you're using.\n\nIt's generally assumed that marginal utility is diminishing, which means that the larger our starting income the less extra utility we get from a £1 increase. For example, if I only have £1 income and I get an extra £1 income, this will make me far happier (give me more additional utils) than if I have £1,000,000 income and get that £1 extra income. \n\n In other words, marginal utility is the relative value of a £1 increase to your income."
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3guqrf | if all elements are made in stars, and stars don't destabilize until they're making the heaviest natural elements, then where did this range of elements we know come from? | Maybe this is better suited for /r/askscience, but they didn't seem to care about this question. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3guqrf/eli5_if_all_elements_are_made_in_stars_and_stars/ | {
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"Not all elements are made in stars, but it is a big source. Some elements are also synthesized in the actual supernovas and not during the normal life of the star. The range of elements we are familiar with here on Earth is, in part, material scattered from previous stars that have died in rather spectacular explosions.\n\nThere are some other processes which create elements, such as radioactive decay, and some elements are primordial (from the beginning of the universe) such as a lot of hydrogen, helium, and some lithium. It was these elements that combined to form the first stars that helped create some of the other elements we're familiar with. ",
"So there are a few mechanisms at work.\n\nStars will make a lot of elements up to Iron by fusion. However, the heavier elements only get made in the center of the star, so you end up with this layered effect where the center of the star might have lots of iron in it, but the outer parts 'stop' at lower weight elements.\n\nStars can make some heavier elements through neutron capture. Basically all that fusion going on in the star results in lots of extra neutrons flying around. Those neutrons get captured by heavy elements in the star until the element gets unstable and undergoes beta decay. Beta decay changes the element to a 'heavier' one. So you do that enough you can make some heavier elements.\n\nSome heavy elements are only made in really energetic situations, mostly supernova. The supernova basically smashes all sorts of things together and produces elements that wouldn't normally be formed by the star.\n\nThere is a nice chart showing what is made by which process on Wikipedia.\n_URL_0_",
"Stars can make only up to iron and higher elements are typically made when a star goes supernova. Now I don't think you understand just how massive the scale you are talking about is. The mass of the sun is 1,989,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kgs (or 1.989x10^30 for short) and it is ~99 percent the mass of our solar system. Our sun isn't massive enough to go supernova. You need a star that is 1.4 times the mass of the sun to go supernova (2.78x10^30 ). Now it is fairly common to have a star with the appropriate mass, and our universe is ~13 billion years old vs our sun which is only roughly 4.5 billion years old. There was this 9 billion year head start to make the heaviest of elements before our sun was born, and not to mention that our solar system is theorized to be the remnants of a dead star. Here is the thing: our sun has about a 10 billion year life span, and bigger stars have lower life spans. So there is plenty of time to make all of the gold, Krypton, and uranium that we all enjoy using supernovas. ",
"Hydrogen and Helium and small amounts of other elements were created during the Big Bang. The heavier elements like you say are created in stars, but the universe is nearly 14 Billion years old, lots of stars have lived and died in that time. The death we are interested in is a supernova which shoots the heavier elements out of the dead star. When new solar systems form they have these elements. ",
"A main sequence star will, through nuclear fusion, create elements up to, and including, iron. As the star creates heavier and heavier elements it uses up its hydrogen fuel. Around the time that the core of the star becomes mostly iron the star begins run very short of hydrogen, which slows the fusion process. Now, the nuclear fusion taking place at the center of the star provides enough outward pressure to counteract the enormous gravitational forces acting on it. As the fusion process slows it produces less and less outward pressure, thus the balance of forces begins to tip towards gravity.However, at this point the outer shell of the star, comprised mostly of the remaining hydrogen. As the gravitational force increases it compresses the center of the star, and if you have a sufficiently massive star, eventually the gravitational force will compress the core until the only thing holding the core in place is the electron repulsion. if a star is roughly as massive as our sun, or smaller, it will destabilize and die. At this point, as it dies it will slough off the outer, remaining, hydrogen shell and become a white dwarf, which is much smaller and cooler than the star that created it. If the star is roughly 1.4 to 9.0 times as massive as our sun the core will continue to compress until the electrons are forced into the nuclei of the atoms they are bonded to, this creates many new \"synthetic\" neutrons which have extremely strong repulsive forces themselves. At this point, if the star is sufficiently massive it will compress the core until it is just a tightly grouped ball of protons and neutrons. As the core becomes more compact, eventually it will explode rather violently, leaving behind a neutron star. Neutron stars are (as far as I know) the second densest object in the universe after black holes. As the neutron star ages it will fuse whatever hydrogen and other sufficiently light elements remain, until it just a cooling ball of strange matter. Thirdly if the star is roughly 10 or more times as massive as our sun it will follow the same course as most other stars, however the larger the star the faster it burns through its fuel. As the star nears the end of its life it will expand just like any other star, all the fun stuff is happening in the core. The core of a dying massive star is a violent place, As the fusion energy weakens and gravity strengthens, the core of the star compresses further and further, eventually reaching the same density as the average white dwarf, however instead of kicking the bucket at this point it holds out for a little longer and the gravitational forces become powerful enough to compress even the ball of neutrons. When the star reaches this point it will explode extremely violently, this is called a supernova, anything else is simply a nova, (the light from a supernova can sometimes outshine all other light coming from its home galaxy). As the star explodes it emits massive amounts of light along most of the electromagnetic spectrum. At the core of the star the neutron ball collapses suddenly into a black hole, and when I say suddenly I mean that it only takes a few billionths of a second to collapse. This collapse actually happens an instant before the explosion, as the core collapses there is an instant of hyperpressure that fuses the outer core iron deposits into all other, heavier, elements. These \"heavy elements\" are dispersed through the universe as the star explodes, leaving behind the densest object in the universe. sorry for the wall of text, I tend to over-explain sometimes.\n\n**TL;DR**: There really isn't any way to shorten this, so if you're interested, I don't know what to tell you."
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1sxraw | why does netflix offer streaming of only some movies and disc-only for others? why can't they all be streaming? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sxraw/eli5_why_does_netflix_offer_streaming_of_only/ | {
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"For both the dvd rentals and the instant streaming, netflix has to pay licensing fees to the movie studios. Its part of where your monthly subscription goes. If netflix isn't granted the license from the movie company to do it, they can't stream it. Streaming services aren't quite the best way for studios to make money, so they often wait a while before allowing some of their bigger releases to be streamed. It may also be that the company has an exclusivity deal with one of netflix's competitors, like amazon instant. In that case, it doesn't matter how much money netflix offers, because the deal restricts it to the other company.",
"It's easy to share a physical video. By law, once you own it, you can share it as much as you want. Some companies might want to work with you & work on a profit sharing model (ie - you handle distribution of the movies and dealing with customers & they give you the movies for free in exchange for a portion of the profits) but, in the worst case, you can just buy a retail copy of the disc and rent that out.\n\nStreaming video, OTOH, will *always* require you to make a legal agreement with whoever owns the rights to the movie. In a worst case scenario, before you could get the rights to stream from a movie sudio, they'd have to renegotiate the rights with the production company. The production company would have to negotiate rights with the director, the actors & the screenwriter. The screenwriter died 5 years ago, so they have to track down his ex-wife and his 3 kids & get them to sign off on the new deal.",
"You see kids, the way the entertainment industry delivers content is changing in huge ways right now. This is making a lot of executives very concerned, mainly because they see their role as being less important, and also because, like many people in power, they simply fear change. They were comfortable with the blockbuster/movie rental model that dominated in-home entertainment for decades, where they produce a physical copy of the movie, and a rental place buys that physical copy at a premium in order to have the rights to rent it to consumers. This model requires massive VHS/DVD duplication facilities and resources that aren't available to your average aspiring film maker, thus ensuring the continued relevance of these sprawling media conglomerates. It also made the cost of their product easier to quantify, since x number of DVD's were produced and sold, and y profit was the result. Finally, it's simply easier to control the delivery of your content when there is a physical copy.\n\nWhen Netflix started, it was only a threat to Blockbuster, because all Netflix was doing was providing an easier way to deliver the physical copies, which the big entertainment companies still produced and had control over. Then Netflix introduced streaming, which makes the delivery of content so much easier and cheaper. The big entertainment companies are afraid their massive DVD/Blu-ray duplication facilities will become irrelevant, and that any jackass off the street might produce a movie that becomes popular, and has access to the same level of distribution that their big money movies have. Access that used to require huge amounts of capital for the facilities which duplicated the physical copies. They have no problem allowing Netflix to send you the physical copy, because it allows them to maintain the paradigm that they dominate. \n\nThe big entertainment companies don't actually want streaming to be successful, at least not until they have established new ways to control the delivery of content. One of those ways is the tiered Internet system which is being aggressively pursued, mainly because that system will still require huge amounts of capital to deliver premium content. It's not such a huge deal now, but wait until 4K is the standard. That will require huge amounts of bandwidth, and if we are working with a tiered Internet system at that point, only the big entertainment companies will be able to afford to deliver 4K content. Ensuring their dominance of the entertainment industry once again.\n\nIn the meantime, they only give Netflix a trickle of content for streaming, and they make Netflix pay more than they should for it. \n\nFinally, I would like you to imagine a streaming service which had every movie, TV show, and song ever created available at any moment with the click of a mouse. This is possible today, but the entertainment industry is standing in the way. ",
"TIL Netflix still has DVD rentals",
" I wish Redbox had separate machines for older stuff. A back catalogue of TV shows and older popular movies would be fantastic.\nI know I could do it by mail but I hate mail.\n I would call it Greenbox.",
"and this is why i pirate movies.",
"On a more meta level, the Internet has devalued the old physical disc cartel model that the MPAA and RIAA liked to employ because they could control pricing (read: high prices + price discrimination). Streaming makes the costs incredibly low and eliminates the entire system of trucking, warehouses, distributors, disc press machines, etc. Whenever services like Netflix enter a market to \"eliminate the middleman,\" they run into the fact that middlemen are incredibly powerful and have established lobbying. Think tiered Internet, the incestuous nature of content and distribution (conglomerates that own studios, distributors, and news media outlets), net neutrality, law makers and judges getting involved. Don't get bogged down by minutiae; it all has to do with control. \n\nWhenever new innovations and technology disrupt a market, it resets the board for a new fight to determine who gets control. The ones in control end up with the majority of the profits. What you're witnessing now was a cartel model that was usurped, with Netflix's influence being tempered through stream licensing. Hollywood now rides the Netflix bull that makes them much less money through streaming but better than letting Netflix run free uncontrolled.\n\nComes back to profits and control. Should come as no surprise that the MPAA doesn't want a fair, free competitive market. Cartels enjoy being cartels."
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5true7 | what has happened to the oroville dam? | I see photos of what it looks like now, but what was it SUPPOSED to do? I get that it's basically breaking, but what makes it such a flood hazard? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5true7/eli5_what_has_happened_to_the_oroville_dam/ | {
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"So the dam wall has three components, each is at a different level. The lowest portion of the wall is the primary spillway. It's a fully concrete lined channel and spillway with radial gates that block the spillway to either prevent water draining or to control the amount of water draining. Water *should* be able to flow out here indefinitely. \n\nSlightly to the north is the emergency spillway. The spillway itself is also concrete lined and is at a much higher level than the primary spillway. It's a lot larger than the primary spillway and is designed to allow uncontrolled drainage of water if the water gets that high. However, the channel either side of this spillway is not lined, so if water flows over this spillway for too long or too fast, it might cause the spillway to subside somewhat (although not enough to endanger the main wall. \n\nTo the south of both is the main wall. It is highest of the lot and is not hardened with concrete at all so if water ever rose fast enough to overwhelm both spillways and overflow the main wall, the wall would very quickly collapse letting go the entire contents of the dam. Preventing this is mostly why the emergency spillway is so large.\n\nAs to what's going on, I'm only sporadically following but it seems two things..\n\n1. The dam is currently getting huge inflows of water from upstream. \n2. Part of the concrete channel around the primary spillway has collapsed. \n\nAt first the concern was that the collapsed section of spillway channel might be a sign that the main wall was weakening and about to collapse. But this fear has now been mostly ruled out.\n\nBut the collapsed section can't be repaired until water releases stop and to prevent further damage, water releases via the main spillway have been reduced to a fairly smallish amount. As a result, water levels are getting close to the emergency spillway level. This isn't a problem per se, but release rates over this spillway (unlike the primary) are not controllable, which means that the operator can't guarantee that it won't cause flooding downstream, neither can they guarantee that the emergency spillway won't be damaged and make the flooding worse. Therefore, people are being urged to evacuate. "
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3zx6ux | if the powerball jackpot is 450 million, and there are only 292.2 million combinations to win, why couldn't i just buy all 292.2 million combinations and pocket the extra 150-ish million? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zx6ux/eli5_if_the_powerball_jackpot_is_450_million_and/ | {
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"You're assuming you'll be the only winner. If you end up splitting that prize with someone else you're fucked.",
"1. Tickets cost $2, so you'd lose money even without any of the following problems.\n\n2. Buying 290 million tickets, even at the rate of one second per ticket, would take you nine years.\n\n3. There can be multiple winners, so you may suddenly find your jackpot reduced by half or more.\n\n4. You'll owe close to 50% income tax on your winnings."
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5kag0d | why are indian and european languages lumped together under the "indo-european" family when india and europe are so far apart and the languages seem to have nothing in common? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5kag0d/eli5why_are_indian_and_european_languages_lumped/ | {
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"All of the branches of the Indo-European family tree share the same ancestor: Proto-Indo-European. Simply put, Over time, geographic isolation, colonization, and other factors created changes in the ways that groups of people talked, which resulted in new languages. So even though those languages are really different now, they all derive from the same place. ",
"They *do* have things in common, that's the point. Very little is obvious to a lay person, but linguists have been able to trace back the history of the languages and have good evidence that the languages did all start from a common root language.\n\nIt's possible all human languages are related. But there is no evidence that say English and Chinese have evolved from a common ancestor language, but there is evidence that English and Hindi did.",
"Like the other commenters have said, calling them \"Indo-European\" means that they do have linguistic features in common, at least much more than, say, Spanish (an Indo-European language) and Arabic (a Semitic language). \n\nAccording to the most likely version of the theory (scholars disagree about many of the details), there was a group of people living on the Ukranian steppe around 10,000 BCE spoke a language, which we now call \"Proto-Indo-European.\" Over the centuries, those people and their descendants spread out over a huge geographic area and brought their language with them. Once they were in separate places, their languages started to diverge, and over thousands of years, those differences got very great, which is why Urdu and Portuguese don't really sound very much alike now.\n\nBut they have enough similarities that scholars can tell they're related. For example, they actually have lots of words that sound similar, especially the words for common things that those steppe people in 10,000 BCE would have had, like things having to do with horses and cattle, basic verbs, and other things like that. In addition, they have grammatical similarities-- most of them have three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), case systems for nouns, agreement between adjectives and nouns, and a few other things like that. Not all of the languages have all of those things, but enough of them have enough qualities in common with each other that linguists can tell they're related. "
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camady | let’s say you’re flipping a coin an infinite amount of times. can we prove that eventually, we would have come across all possible patterns? can it be that we won’t see a specific pattern in the infinite times of flipping, or is every outcome just ought to happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/camady/eli5_lets_say_youre_flipping_a_coin_an_infinite/ | {
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"Infinity is big. Every pattern will happen. \n\nChances of finding it might be vanishingly small however. Some patterns are so rare that if you flipped 1000 coins a second since the big bang, they may still have never shown up. But with infinite time, it will eventually"
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daq5k4 | why can't we just build more turbines, dams, solar panels, wind mills, yada yada | Like alot more? I understand they often mess badly with wildlife, but surely that could be engineered as well? I just see a long, heavy river that could be loaded up to generate alot more "green" power | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/daq5k4/eli5_why_cant_we_just_build_more_turbines_dams/ | {
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"1) Well first because they cost money. Nobody have infinite amout of time and money to build all of those, so you can only build a certain amount each year. On top of that, we already have power plant that produce electricity, so either you wait for more demand and build new power plant at a slow rate, or you need to decomission older power plant and replace them by new, which add cost and waste the money you already spent to build those older power plant. \n\n2) Hydroelectric power plant need a reservoir, you basically put a dam that slow the rate of flow, fill up a reservoir and use that to power your turbine. The more you build on a river, the smaller the flow at the end of the river. On top of that, river with enough flow to power hydroelectric power plant are rare, so we something need to change the path of a river to combine for the power plant. This kind of thing cause massive international conflict that could lead to war, Turkey built several hydroelectric power plant and this leave a lot less water for Syria and Iraq, same between Egypt and Ethiopia and same with China and South East Asia. That water is needed for people to drink, agriculture and hygiene, so there is a limit on how many of those plant you can build upstream.\n\n3) Wind and Solar panel have a huge problem, they are not a stable source of electricity. Electricity demand peak in the morning and evening, while solar produce at noon where there is a bit less demand. That mean that a large portion of the electricity you produce with solar and wind can be completely useless, because people don't need that energy that the moment you produce it and you don't produce enough energy when people need it. So either you build a LOT of them to that when you have peak demand you produce enough energy, but the amount of solar and wind you need for that it so high that the price of your electricity will be really high. The other solution is to have wind and solar only be a portion of your electricity production and have other source like coal or natural gas that compensate when solar and wind don't produce enough to meet the demand. That will be a problem until we develop and produce enough batteries to stock energy at peak production and use that energy during peak demand. But we are FAR from that.\n\nSo ya it's possible to do what you are saying to an extend, but that would mean skyrockting the price of electricity, especially in place where there isn't that sunny or windy.",
"Because all power is not created equal.\n\nThere are three main kinds of power generation:\n\n* base load - cheap power that can run 24/7, slow to turn on and off (coal, nuclear)\n* load following - more expensive, but can be turned on an off quickly to meet demand (diesel, hydro)\n* intermittent - power generation that depends on current conditions (solar, wind)\n\nThe problem is it is very difficult to store energy, you pretty much have to generate as much power as you are currently using. That means the best solar and wind can do is supplement base and load following power generation, you are always going to need power that works when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.\n\nAs for hydro, you need more than just a river. The amount of power a hydro dam can generate is in proportion to the change in elevation between the top and bottom of the dam. If you don't have change in elevation, it doesn't matter how much water you have, you can't generate very much power. The Hoover Dam has a drop of about 700', the entire drop of the Mississippi from Memphis to the gulf is only 300'."
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2yj8me | how can creatures with small brains be smart? isn't there just less space for neural connections? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yj8me/eli5_how_can_creatures_with_small_brains_be_smart/ | {
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"Are you asking why am elephant with a much bigger brain isn't smarter than us?",
"We've generally found that brain size in relation to body size is a better indicator of intelligence than raw brain size. A large portion of the brain is dedicated to the body simply running itself, and the larger the body the larger the brain needed for this basic function. Animals with larger than average brain sizes for their body size are the ones we have found to be the most intelligent."
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2f65xr | why do one-digit numbers are up to 9 and not more? why 10 is a 2-digit number and cannot be written as one-digit? | I know it might sound as a silly question but to explain better, why numbers are like 1,2,3...,8,9,10,11,12 and not 1,2,3,4,5,10,11,12 ... 15,20 when 10 would be equal as 6, 11 as 7, etc. With the same concept could we use 10 as one-digit with a new symbol? Would there be any problems in mathematics? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2f65xr/eli5_why_do_onedigit_numbers_are_up_to_9_and_not/ | {
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"You forgot the zero.",
"This is called Base 10. It was likely implemented because most people have 10 fingers.\n\n",
"No problem in math. What you are talking about is the base. For example, in base-16, or hexadecimal, the numbers are 0123456789ABCDEF, where A is the decimal (base 10) value of 10.\n\nIt doesn't break math at all. Just how the numbers are represented.\n\nAs for the why, we use base 10 because we have ten fingers.",
"Because we have a base-ten numbering system. That means that every time there is a factor of ten, we add a new place value. (Yes, I know, not the most technical way to explain it, but in a practical sense, that's how it works out.) It actually begins at 0, so 0-9 = 10 digits, and then you add a place value. When you hit 10 x 10, it does it again (at 100), and again at 10 x 10 x 10 (or 1000), and so on.\n\nI don't know how to format superscript, so I can't render that as exponents, sorry. I think it would make more sense if I could. But for more on that, here's the Wikipedia article: _URL_0_",
"We use a decimal aka base 10 system, called so because it uses ten numbers 0-9 which then repeat to represent higher place values. The use of ten numbers can be considered arbitrary and I have mostly heard it attributed to the fact that humans have ten fingers, so we started counting things in sets of ten, but I don't know if that is actually the case. \n\nMathematically it doesn't matter what type of system you use as long as you remain consistent; and there are other systems. Some systems use fewer symbols, binary (base 2) which uses two number symbols, 0 and 1, being the most well known of these. Others use more number symbols. Hexadecimal (base 16) uses sixteen symbols before it introduces a new place value. Since there are no other number symbols in common usage, it uses 0-9 to just like a decimal system, and then uses the letters A,B,C,D,E, and F for the other six \"numbers\".",
"Adding onto what other people have said, it is entirely possible to use different bases in your counting system.\n\nComputers often use base 2 or 16.\n\nThe ancient Babylonians used base 60. (I think. If it wasn't 60, feel free to call me out)"
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5bhfid | if climate change is such a massive problem, why can't the government create laws to begin to limit the usage of items that increase greenhouse gases, until they can gradually completely ban it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5bhfid/eli5_if_climate_change_is_such_a_massive_problem/ | {
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"Because the laws and reforms that would have to be passed to make any extreme impact would cost companies and governments billions to properly perform. Most countries alone don't want to do that and lobbyist will make sure the business side will be heard. Not only that but many economies like China, India, and other manufacturing hubs rely on dirty but cheap methods that cause extreme pollution.",
"In economics, it's called an \"externality\" when the impact or cost of some action will affect a person *other* than the person who's performing that action.\n\nAir pollution is a famous example of an externality. Factories and trucks produce large amounts of smog that can affect plenty of people who had nothing to do with those factories and trucks. Companies who sell these products will generally resist efforts to limit that, because in their mind it's \"not their problem\".\n\nClimate change is similar. There's an overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change will become an enormous problem for us, but there's no economic incentive for companies and countries to change that *right now* -- the harms and benefits won't be felt for many years, and when you're asking companies to spend billions of dollars on something they're going to want a more direct benefit.\n\nIt's one of those circumstances where short-term individual interests are at odds with the long-term common good. Elected officials are hesitant to act because they would risk losing lobbyist support and because voters aren't (yet) convinced this an important issue.",
"You mean remove things like cars, buses, trains and ships? And electric power plants, factories that produce your goods? And the jobs that those industries provide? That kind of talk doesn't get politicians elected.\n\n",
"Remember that not everyone even believes climate change is occurring. I, for one, don't believe in it, and, more importantly, there are enough people in government who agree with me.\n\nIt's only a \"massive problem\" for those who actually think it's occurring :)",
"It can. Economists widely support a carbon tax, which would raise the price of fossil fuels, and likely lead to the reduction of their usage in favor of now cheaper and cleaner energy sources.\n\nHowever, politics is what stops it because fossil fuel is the source of a lot of jobs and because it would raise the cost of gas, thus directly hitting the pockets of everyday people, who vote, and it would raise the cost of everything because almost everything requires the transportation sector.",
"Because climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, coal, oil, and natural gas.\n\nWithout these fuels, our civilization would collapse. We don't want this to happen, so we can't ban them.\n\nThe only currently practical replacement right now would be to build large numbers of nuclear plants, enough to get most of our electricity this way, and switch all vehicles to electric.\n\nNuclear power is highly unpopular, and the people who are the most concerned about global warming tend to be the same people who are the most against nuclear power.\n\nEnvironmentalists would like to replace fossil fuels with solar and wind power, but there are serious drawbacks with each that make it impossible to actually run an electric grid solely off them. The sun doesn't shine during the night, and the wind doesn't blow all the time.",
"You wanna tell Americans they can't do something? Good luck with that."
]
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