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5g8ufo | why do some people understand different accents better than others? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5g8ufo/eli5_why_do_some_people_understand_different/ | {
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"The only thing I have to offer here is that I grew up on a major military installation. There were people from all over in and out. Not only do I not sound like where I'm from, I tend to grasp accents easily. ",
"From my understanding it could be like this. \n\nImagine our hypothetical country Hyborea is split with a border north to south with an eastern state and western state. For a few years they're separated because the roads over the border are ruined by a drunk tractor driver with his plow. \n\nIn the east they speak the traditional accent, in the west they speak a new accent. For ease of understanding instead of the subtle 'pl(a)nt' and 'pl(ah)nt' let's say instead they say 'how are you' in the east, and they say 'you are how' in the west.\n\nIf you grew up in the east for the entirety of your life, never once being able to go to the west. You would only understand 'how are you', and vice versa. \n\nNow one day you come across a man who has recently come from the west after the roads have been repaired. When you engage in conversation he asks, 'you are how'. Now you'd understand the words in whole but the punctuation sounds wrong and it takes a while for your brain to process and understand what is being asked. \n\nNow take a young man from the west who was born a few years later, everyone has moved throughout the country again and the accents can be found roughly equally throughout the country. As he is growing up he is exposed to both 'how are you' and 'you are how' and as a result can understand both of the accents with relative ease. Because he's hearing both ways his brain learns that both of these different sayings mean the same thing and can quickly understand the punctuation. \n\nNow if someone has a thick Scottish accent, and your from New Zealand, you wouldn't have a clue what is being said as most of the sounds seem to roll onto the next (for example) but if you listen closely and the speaker talks slowly your brain doesn't have the same lag time between understanding the sounds and processing the meaning of the words; there is more time to recognise the sounds, and less groups of sounds to recognise as words with meanings. \n\nOther examples could be, of you think of people who: tall too fast, have a lisp, thick foreign accent, loud background noise, or eating while talking to name a few. \n\nI'm not an expert on the subject, but this is what makes the most sense to me. ",
"The more you practice a thing, the better you get at it. This is no different. Got an accent you can't understand? Spend more time listening to it, and you'll get better.\n",
"I'm assuming you're asking as an American understanding accents. I grew up with a parent with a heavy Tamil accent and a step parent with a German accent. I never knew that they had accents until my friends would say that they had a hard time understanding them. We lived all over the Caribbean as well for a while before returning to the US. Carib accents depend on the region and the historical colonizer. I think I'm pretty good at deciphering accents as a whole although some British accents that are IMO largely rural I find harder. I know French accents are also dependent on the region i.e.; Swiss French vs French Canadian. I'm not complete fluent in French but the French I learned in the Caribbean wouldn't pass muster I'm guessing in Paris. ",
"Many independent factors:\n\n* Some people, for whatever reason, seem to have a much better ability to determine, differentiate and remember sound than others.\n\n* People who are frequently exposed to multiple accents of the same language will develop an understanding for common \"mistakes\" that foreign speakers make. For instance, there are quite a few languages that do not have the \"th\" sound; French people often substitute 'z' because they have no experience making the 'th' sound, so you'll hear them say things like: \n*I zought I was supposed to push zat button*\n\n* Some people have an accent that is less distinct than others, giving them more common ground to work with when they try to understand a different, but similar, accent. \nE.g. Iceland has an utterly unique accent, whereas the Australian accent is very similar to much of the British Isles and almost identical to New Zealand."
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2whrh0 | how are made-up languages, such as those in tv and film, made up? what techniques are used to get a solid and flowing speech rather than grouped sounds? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2whrh0/eli5_how_are_madeup_languages_such_as_those_in_tv/ | {
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"Basically, they just take a bunch of common words and \"translate\" them to a group of sounds. Then, they make up the grammar. For example, the Dragonborn language has the same grammar as English.",
"Depends on what the language is going to be used for. Read: _URL_0_ especially the section on Artlangs and it talks about how and why those languages are constructed.\n"
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2rnj9c | the charlie hebdo shooting | Everything related to this incident is to be posted here. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rnj9c/the_charlie_hebdo_shooting/ | {
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"This is the first occurence I've seen of terrorism towards Charlie Hebdo. Has this been going on for a long time, such as threats etc?",
"Since the gunmen got away and now a manhunt is under way, I was wondering where exactly the authorities would begin with their manhunt?\n\nAssuming the terrorists ditch/burn their clothes and dispose of the weapons used for the attack, what leads are there?",
"Just FYI folks, \"Charlie Hebdo\" is the name of the newspaper, NOT a person killed by this vile act of terrorism.",
"For those unfamiliar with what happened:\n\n2 masked gunmen entered Charlie Hebdo's headquarters, armed with AK rifles, shotguns, and an RPG. They entered by forcing a cartoonist at gunpoint to enter in the passcode to the building. They shouted, \"Allahu Akbar!\" and then open fired.\n\nThey shot and killed 12 people, and wounded an additional 11. Two that were killed were police officers. One officer was executed.\n\nWitnesses report that they asked for specific staff members by name. Witnesses also reported that they identified as Al-Qaeda.\n\nThe gunmen escaped in a getaway car, hijacked another car, and then ran over a pedestrian and shot at other police cars.\n\nThe incident is the deadliest mass murder to occur on French soil since 1989.\n",
"Were they actually affiliated with a terrorist organization (I know it says they said they were Al-Qaeda)? It doesn't seem to jive with the terrorist MO to want to get away. Most of the time they seek to cause the most damage possible then go out in a blaze of glory. ",
"At least one of the terrorist was captured and released in 2005. \n\n_URL_0_;\n\n > The three men are believed to have left Paris for Iraq last March, accompanied by three other Frenchmen of North African descent, Redouane el-Hakim, Tarek Ouinis and Abdelhalim Badjoudj, all of whom have been killed, according to French intelligence.\nAccording to intelligence officials, Mr. Hakim is believed to have died during a bombardment of Falluja in July, Mr. Ouinis during a firefight with American soldiers in September and Mr. Badjoudj in a suicide attack in October. Mr. Hakim's older brother, Boubaker, is being held in Syria, where he was arrested before he could enter Iraq.\n\n > The French authorities believe that the men were recruited by Farid Benyettou, 23, who was arrested two weeks ago as he prepared to send two more young men to Iraq. The men, Thamer Bouchnak and **Cherif Kouachi**, both 22, have told the police that they met Mr. Benyettou at the Addawa mosque near their homes in Paris in the 19th Arrondissement, a largely Arab working-class district.",
"I feel dumb for asking this, but who's this Mohammed everyone is taking about? Google ain't helping :(",
"Why exactly did they attack them? I've been really out of the loop and have no idea what's going on. :/",
"What are the cartoons that Charlie Hebdo pressed that started this whole ordeal?",
"French here. I thought I might give some insight on that tragic event. \nAs it has been said, yesterday around 11:30 two heavily armed, masked men rushed into a satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo (\"Charlie Weekly\"), and massacred 12 persons and injured 11. \nSome background on the target. Charlie Hebdo's creation goes back to 1970, when it succeeded to Hara-Kiri, another satirical paper created 10 years earlier. So yeah, it 's a major title, a big part of our cultural identity, a flagship of our freedom of speech. Indeed, charlie hebdo has a long history riddled with lots of trials from a lot of people they made fun of -and boy, are there a lot of them. They had no particular target and hit on everything without distinction. Muslims obviously, but also christians, jews, politicians, culture, cults... They spared literally no one. \nThe 12 victims were not anonymous. They were specifically targeted for being the backbone of the paper. They were all famous, some of them having drawned for Charlie for several decades. **They were all under police protection for several years**, constantly receiving death threats mostly for satirizing Islam. In november 2011 they published a special edition called \"Charia hebdo\" (from Sharia, islamic law) in wich the prohet Muhammet was \"editor in chief\". One of the drawing pictured him facepalmed muttering \"it's hard to be loved by morons\". They were the victim of several attacks, including an arson that burned their office to the ground on the day of the release. \n\nWe french people love that kind of bold persons, not afraid of pressing were it hurts for a good laugh. We loved them, even more today. \n\nNow a little word on the situation here in the aftermath. Two suspects have been identified and are being actively tracked down in one of the biggest manhunt the country has ever seen. How do we know it's them ? Those morons crashed their car fleeing from the scene, and hijacked another one... Leaving in the other some clothes and some ID... \nThe whole country is now on \"national day of mourning\" (deuil national). It's an extremely rare situation called by the president, and it's only the fifth time it's been called since 1970. 3 of them were for the death of former presidents (including De Gaulle), the 4th was for 9/11. \nAll in all, that's all that's being talked about on TV since yesterday, and it's far from being over. **This morning, a masked man opened fire with an assault rifle in the streets, killing a police officer and severely wounding another one**. We don't know much about this event yet, let alone if it is linked to yesterday's. \n\nIn a nutshell, I've never seen my country so shocked, but I'm only 32. \n\nHere are some of the cartoons that caused trouble to Charlie Hebdo. Let's not forget them. Let's not be feared of showing them. Let's defend the freedom of pissing off morons. \n\n[Mahomet overrun by integrists - \"It's hard being loved by morons\"](_URL_6_) \n[Love stronger than hate](_URL_7_). \n[If Mahomet came back... \"I'm the prophet, dumbass\", \"Shut the fuck up, infidel\"](_URL_2_) \n[(Killings in Egypt) Quran is shit - it doesn't stop bullet](_URL_3_) \n[With my new Iphone 5 4\" screen, you can clearly see they ofended the prophet](_URL_0_) \n[Stop fucking around with Mahomet... \"I'm jewish\"](_URL_1_) \n[Riots in the arab world over a movie about Mahomet - no, that's just evening news](_URL_4_) \n\nAnd one of the most troubling, the last cartoon of Charb, killed yesterday: [Still no terrorist attack in France - \"Wait\", \"we have until the end of january to celebrate the new year\"](_URL_5_). Charb was the head of Charlie hebdo and said in 2012: \n\n*\"Je n'ai pas de gosses, pas de femme, pas de voiture, pas de crédit. C'est peut-être un peu pompeux ce que je vais dire, mais je préfère mourir debout que vivre à genoux\"*\n\n\"I have no kids, no wife, no car, no loan. It may be a little pedant to say this, but I'd rather die standing than living on my knees.\" \n\nTalk about having balls...\n",
"So is Mad Magazine a good comparison to Charlie Hebdo for Americans? I grew up reading Mad and absolutely loved it.",
"However, I am curious on why some media movement does things to ridicule figures in religion? What is it meant to achieve?",
"I just can't fathom how a group can open fire in broad daylight and manage to get away in a car; only to be sighted due to them robbing a gas station some time later. I can't believe that citizens weren't calling a local police station with tips as to where they last spotted them.",
"So, I've been trying to read up on everything about Charlie Hebdo and in doing so felt the need to further understand the relation between secularism in France and its disconnect with freedom of speech. But when I read up on France, there's barely any general consensus on what the status quo truly is like. From what I understand (which may in fact be entirely wrong), France prides itself in its secularism in that public indicators of religion are banned. Now, I'd read somewhere that you can't wear a cross to school unless it's underneath your shirt or hidden and that the burqa and hijab are banned in public. Keep in mind I read different accounts of what is law and what is not from different sources. So, I wanted to understand these aspects:\n\n1. If someone could clarify the what and the why of these laws/regulations, it'd be greatly appreciated. \n\n2. If what I'd read is the case, that they want religion to be kept out of public, why is blatant religious reference and defamation lawful in the press?\n\n3. In relation to these laws, why is a person's appearance not considered 'freedom of speech?' For instance, in Charlie Hebdo, they used drawings, which aren't considered speech and are visual expression, to communicate viewpoints. Why is clothing or appearance different than freedom of speech if the drawings are considered a part of it?\n\nTHIS ISN'T AN ATTACK. I JUST WANT A GENUINE UNDERSTANDING OF THE SITUATION AND LEGISLATION.\n\nIf I could get cites for 1, that'd be great. \n\nThanks.\n\n\n",
"ELI5: As a Muslim, I completely condemn the actions of the terrorist attacks in France, but why did a French cartoonist get charges for Anti Antisemitism, but the Charlie Hebdo agency didn't have anything done to them?\n\n[story](_URL_0_)\n\nThat guy went on trial for Antisemitism in his comics, but nothing happens to anyone if you draw anti-Islamic Cartoons. Why?",
"I have a question regarding the cartoon that was published: if drawings of the Prophet Muhammad are forbidden in Islam, how do people know what he looked like in order to draw him, and how do people recognize such images? Have they usually been labelled or has it been shown in some other way who the figure is?",
"So what is happening now. CNN and BBC are giving too many scattered updates.\n\nWhat building were they surrounded in? When did they take hostages? ",
"Hello there,\nI was surfing about Charlie Hebdo incident and i found this video. The website claims all terror act as a hoax. I am just wondering why there is no blood? Did they miss the police officer and he died another wound?\n\nHere is a video of shooting. [NFSW/NFSL](_URL_0_)\n\nP.S: I would like to say, i am a Muslim Turkish citizen and i am very sorry about all this terror acts. Terrorists are dumb, brainwashed maniacs and they do not represent any other normal Muslim in world. I am saying this, because i know some people among here trying the check my reddit past and point out me as a supporter or something worse. I am just curious...",
"Please ELI5 how did these muslims get hold of these weapons in a country w strict gun laws?",
"ELI5: There are approximately 1.6 billion Muslims in the world.\n\nIf only a small percentage is extremists, then why aren't 1.59 billion Muslim people openly proclaiming that these acts are horrific and calling for these extremists to stop this behavior in the name of their religion?\n\nEdit: billion",
"Posted this as a separate ELI5 but bot said to post here:\n\nWhat do terrorist organisations actually want? For example the recent Paris attacks, whilst they instil terror during the actual attack, the incident only seems to have brought unity against radical islamists (and unfortunately muslims tend to get caught up in this category too). As they seem to have been seeking revenge against Charlie Hebdo, why carry out the following attacks? If it's that they want to destroy those who don't follow their beliefs, why not carry out attacks which would kill/injure a larger group of people such as planting bombs or suicide bombers? I mean they had rocket launchers in their possession so were capable of doing a lot more damage than they did",
"What was the social or political point of the satire of the Prophet? It's lost on me, I think.",
"First, I'd like to say that I have a poor knowledge-base on the subject but I am informed about the critical points of the issue.\nCharlie Hebdo posts rather inappropriate covers (before viewing them I thought they were only satirical and nothing of what they truly are, I was shocked if I may say).\nBut why are people buying the magazine? Why are you buying a product whose cover features very insulting graphical images (for those who do follow the religions depicted)?\nI understand that some may do so to support freedom of speech and expression by disregarding the consequences (it's a noble move) but are there really no other options for you to do so?",
"from what i understand is that Muslims in general regard graphic depiction of their prophet Mohammad as offensive. hence the backlash...\n\nto me, its meant to be satire no one is forcing it down anyone' throat? and well it's ok to be offended but to go on a killing spree and says it for your religion and make more racial discrimination issues for your fellow Muslims is just plain crazy. they have it bad as it is already. your just being selfish...",
"What is the meaning of Charlie Hebdo's latest cover?\n\n It has a picture of the prophet Mohammad holding a sign saying \"I am Charlie\" (the slogan of solidarity with Charlie Hebdo heard around the world), with the caption above saying \"All is forgiven\".\nFirst of all, the signifigance of putting Mohammad on this cover is obvious. It is saying they will not be censored or scared or terrorized, and that they will keep doing what they have been doing despite the attempts to stop them.\nBut beyond that, with the caption \"all is forgiven\", I don't understand.\nWhat exactly is the meaning of it? I don't get it. Is it saying that Charlie Hebdo forgives the Muslim community? Or is it sardonic and saying that Muslims will not be forgiven? Or something else entirely?"
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"http://www.lepoint.fr/images/2015/01/07/3044286-2057904089-jpg_2649905.jpg",
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1yjqdp | how does wind actually work? why are places like co/wy so incredibly windy all the time? | I know it has to do with tides and the moon and all... but if so why is it not more windy by the coasts than I have to deal with constantly here in CO? Why is it that a wind howling in one direction can not be blowing at all just a few miles away? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yjqdp/eli5_how_does_wind_actually_work_why_are_places/ | {
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"Wind is the result of temperature and pressure differences across the world attempting to balance themselves. It has more to do with the sun than the tides, as the sun is constantly adding heat to different parts of the globe as the world spins. Mountainous regions, such as in parts of CO, have the added factor that the geography may funnel the wind through some valleys, making the wind stronger in some areas while buffering other areas, allowing them to be very calm."
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1glblm | may sound silly, but what are those intense stomach pains i sometimes get when i really need to poop? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1glblm/may_sound_silly_but_what_are_those_intense/ | {
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"read this is a journal somewhere years ago, but the jist of it is that there are many digestive enzymes and chemicals in your gut that fulfill their function at a specific area within your digestive tract during normal conditions. however, when you have diarrhea these enzymes/chemicals are not given enough time to breakdown/neutralize before leaving the aforementioned segments and end up irritating other areas of your gut that lack the appropriate protective structures/compounds.",
"Also, if you ever want to know what a labor contraction feels like, basically these cramps, but x10. And that's not the bad part. \n\nThe more you know. ",
"If I sleep on my side, I sleep with a pillow between my legs and if I sleep on my belly, the pillow goes to the ground beside the bed. So when I roll over back onto my side and grab the pillow and throw it between my legs, its generally pretty damn cold and if that pillow touches my balls it starts the chain reaction that ends with my crotch and stomach cramping then a poop and all back to normal. \n\nWTF is going on with my body??",
"Labor pains for your shit babies.",
"Honest question:\n\nFor most of my life (starting around 11-12), I've had bloody, mucous shits. It's not every day, it gets better and worse, but it happens. Not just a trace of blood, but abundant, fresh red blood. It's worse after a night of drinking but happens regardless. It's less bad or absent if I've had a lot of fiber previously (LOTS of fiber.)\n\nMy mother and sister have ulcerative colitis, so I thought this may have been it. I eventually got an appointment for an... endoscopy? It wasn't a colonoscopy, but it was similar. The doctor told me, \"You're fine, just eat some fiber.\" Drugged-up 16-year-old me was too stupid to challenge him on that and I haven't seen him or another doctor about this since.\n\nShould I be worried? It's a... lot of blood. Occasionally I'll just shit primarily blood. It's not encouraging."
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823c8d | if matter can’t be destroyed, what happens to an object when it is vaporized? | Seriously curious about this, especially in regards to something like the atomic shadows at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/823c8d/eli5_if_matter_cant_be_destroyed_what_happens_to/ | {
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"It either goes through a chemical reaction whose products are a gas, or it gets pulverized into little bits that are scattered by the blast, or both..",
"vaporized isnt exactly a scientific concept... \n\nbut the closest would be the simple pulverization of solids and liquids into a \"mist\". \n\nperhaps evaporated at the same time if heat is there. could even be burned if its combustible.\n\nbasically, the matter does not go away, but just broken apart into tiny little bits and then dispersed where nothing is left to the naked eye.",
"If you literally vaporize it, the vapor (matter in the gas phase) mixes with the surrounding atmosphere.",
"A vapor is still matter. So are the people who were \"vaporized\" in the atomic blasts in Japan; they were simply broken down into much smaller component parts, probably gas, ashes and dust.\n\nHowever, before they were vaporized, some of those poor people blocked the initial gamma ray burst and some part of the heat and debris of the blast, leaving a \"shadow\" of slightly less damage to the walls and sidewalks where they were at the time of the blast. Again, not very much matter conversion and no matter destruction.\n\nThe atomic bombs themselves, of course, very much do work on the principle of converting matter into energy, which is about as close to the \"destruction\" of matter as we can get. About 700 miligrams of the Hiroshima bomb was converted into energy. That may not sound like much but the tragic results speak for themselves.",
"Vapor is still Matter.\n\nLook up in the sky.\n\nEvery cloud you see is water that's been vaporized, yet it has not been destroyed."
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24cbs5 | why dogecoin is such a big deal | I get why BitCoin is huge - it's groundbreaking, there's both huge value and potential with them, and so on. But I don't get DogeCoin. It's worth fractions of a penny but seems to be getting more publicity than BitCoin at times. Is it all buzz and hype around "lolol dere's a doge coin wtf much bitcoin", or am I just missing something? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24cbs5/eli5_why_dogecoin_is_such_a_big_deal/ | {
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"There are a lot of theories, but nothing concrete.\n\nAs for what it actually is, Dogecoin at its core is essentially a copy of Litecoin, a cryptocurrency that itself was based on Bitcoin except using a different hashing algorithm (scrypt) designed to be better suited for GPU mining than mining using dedicated circuits (although scrypt dedicated circuit miners are starting to appear, so there are now coins designed to resist even those types of miners).\n\nThe reason Dogecoin became successful as opposed to so many other Litecoin clones is debatable. My personal theory is that the fact that it started as and was treated as a joke at the beginning meant that people were a lot more willing to tip, donate, and buy small things with it whereas other such cloned cryptocurrencies were just held for their speculative value. \n\nIt's also possible that the initial impression of it as a joke meant that it enjoyed a fast adoption rate by people. ",
"It was meant to be a joke and it stuck. Its really not such a big deal its basically a rather useless currency but to say you have dogecoin is prety cool apparently",
"+/u/dogetipbot 10 doge",
"The community, the ease of use, and it is easier to get into than other cryptos.. I mean yeah, you could get 0.001 BTC, but what good is that? Instead, you can get 10k doge for the same amount of money (might be slightly off, I haven't checked the exchange rates in a while). There is also a lot going on in the doge space, we sponsored a NASCAR recently! It is also new, so I think people gravitate to that some. \n\nto get you started:\n+/u/dogetipbot 20 doge verify",
"So basically Dogecoin got popular due to it's community(also called as shibes). Bitcoin and Litcoin were primarily traded by serious vendors whereas Dogecoin was for masses, people joking about and tipping each other 20-30 dogecoins for help. Hence it had a faster adoption rate. \n\nthe fact that dogcoin community helped send an athlete to Olympics and is now buliding a NASCAR car also helped."
]
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[],
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fkfsmu | why can't we use immunity from one person to help heal the other that don't have it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fkfsmu/eli5_why_cant_we_use_immunity_from_one_person_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"fksj29j"
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"We do...sort of. That's why horses used to be used to make anti-toxins for various snake venom. You inject the horse with the venom and collect it's blood and separate it's the anti-toxins from their blood. It's also how we come up with most flu vaccines and why they always ask you if you're allergic to eggs. They inject a form of the flu into the egg and wait for it to, hopefully, successfully fight it and collect dead virus from the egg white."
]
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[]
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||
3les9j | why doesn't salt explode when we eat it? | I never was given a chemistry class in HS. I mostly taught myself everything I know about the subject. I do know sodium can explode when it comes into contact with water. From my research, it is because the reaction (caused by an imbalance of PH levels) causes heat, and a release of hydrogen gas, which is then ignited if the sodium temperature rises high enough.
If I understand correctly, salt is a form of sodium, being sodium chloride; Part sodium, part chlorine. Our bodies are ~75% water. Why doesn't the salt we eat heat up from the reaction, and/or the nitrogen explode?
My theory is that the chlorine neutralizes the hydrogen somehow. I could apply the theory by spending a few hours trying to find an answer on the Internet, or the library, but if someone here can present an explanation on this phenomenon, I would be grateful. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3les9j/eli5_why_doesnt_salt_explode_when_we_eat_it/ | {
"a_id": [
"cv5okpm",
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"text": [
"Table salt is Sodium Chloride, and it breaks down into a Sodium *ion* and a Chlorine *ion*. These are a little different than elemental, non-ion versions.\n\nYes, Sodium is crazy reactive, because it has one \"loose\" elecron in it's outer orbit that \"wants\" to react with something. The Sodium ion in salt **already reacted** and disposed of it's \"extra\" electron, making it a Sodium+1 (+1 charge since it's got 11 protons and now 10 electrons).\n\nChlorine is also dangerously reactive because it's got an electron gap, but a Chloride -1 ion has also already undergone a reaction (stealing an electron from the Sodium!) so now it's much more stable.",
" > My theory is that the chlorine neutralizes the hydrogen somehow\n\nSorta.\n\nA slab of sodium and the sodium in table salt aren't the same, so you can't expect the same reaction from them. It similar in principle to why wood (made of lots of carbon) can be ignited in an oxygen environment, but if you take carbon dioxide (CO2), that'll extinguish a flame in short order.\n\nRaw sodium is very reactive, and that's what happens when you drop it into water. The sodium quickly reacts with the water, creating a lower-energy, stable end product. This reaction happens so quickly, releasing so much energy, that it looks like an explosion.\n\nIn table salt, the sodium is already in that low-energy state with the chloride. It's happy and content and doesn't want to react because it's shed that excess electron already (and is thus an ion)."
]
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1ns6xu | if the tor network was funded by government, how is it guaranteed to be secure? | It's just strange to me that so many people flock to darkweb services, and assume it's safe without doing much research on the medium used. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ns6xu/eli5_if_the_tor_network_was_funded_by_government/ | {
"a_id": [
"cclifed",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Plenty of people have actually done this research: the implementation know as Tor is open-source, it's plain to see what code is used for each Tor node and each Tor client.",
"Tor uses onion protocol, which was funded/created by government. But Tor is created open source using that protocol, so anyone can review that there is no hidden bad code. How Tor works is another story, but it is quite something and that is where the security comes from. That, and the recommendations on Tor site, like turning of js and other objects etc."
]
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dvh974 | why do the insides of your ears hurt so much after being outside in the cold for a while? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dvh974/eli5_why_do_the_insides_of_your_ears_hurt_so_much/ | {
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"text": [
"Huh? You might need to see a doctor.",
"Define what you mean cold? If you are talking -25C or even more into negative temperatures it makes sense to hurt. Because it is freezing cold. We used to drink outside at -25C and we couldn't put beer bottles on the ground because it got frozen solid in about 1 minute. During those drinkings I used to wear two hats at the same time, because our ears would get cold from only one hat. We also worn two pairs of pants, thick jumpers and thick wool coats. If I didn't have hats on and stayed like that for couple of hours drinking I bet my ears would hurt, or maybe I wouldn't even feel them anymore. Ears are thin, with little blood flow to warm them warm. Always wear a thick hat in extreme cold weather.\n\nEdit: - 25C is - 13F",
"Not sure but it happens to me too. Hurts bad. I stuff napkin, tp, cotton balls, earbuds in to help. I always thought it had to do with expansion from cold or something. Not sure it's a medical thing, my ears are fine all other times.",
"Yes, might ears start to hurt if I’m outside longer then 30 minutes in weather less then 40F. I thought that was normal too. That is why people wear earmuff and caps."
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1uwtjb | the difference between a cold and a flu | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uwtjb/eli5_the_difference_between_a_cold_and_a_flu/ | {
"a_id": [
"cemfwc0"
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"text": [
"They're different viruses, but they are similar in certain ways: they both mutate rapidly and both tend to make people sick during \"flu season,\" which is late fall through winter. Because they mutate so quickly, you can get sick by them again and again. That's why people might catch a cold every year and the flu every few years.\n\nColds are caused by a rhinovirus. This virus \"lives\" in the nose and isn't really able to survive in other parts of the body. If you catch a cold, you usually sneeze, you might have a stuffed or runny nose, and itchy eyes.\n\nThe flu is caused by an influenza virus. It usually starts in the nose, like a cold, but it spreads down through the throat and to the lungs. This can cause a deep, wet cough. If it's severe enough, it can even cause pneumonia, which can be fatal. "
]
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[]
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2gr8mk | how do some chickens live with their heads cut off like mike the headless chicken, but other animals like us humans can't? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gr8mk/eli5_how_do_some_chickens_live_with_their_heads/ | {
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"text": [
"Technically we can too. Babies born with Anencephaly have no higher brain function, just mainly the stem. Which is how mike the headless chicken survived. ",
"As others have mentioned - Mike survived because he still had his brain stem, which was responsible for the most basic of functions - he still tried to peck for food not realising that he had no head, and so his owner fed him by dripping food down his exposed gullet. \n\nThere was a news item recently about a [child born without either hemisphere of a brain](_URL_0_) living until the age of 12. \n\nMost children born with this rare condition only live a few months. This child existed in a similar state to Mike, surviving on just a brain stem. He could still breathe and perform basic bodily functions, but, given the absence of any hemisphere was incapable of forming memories, having experiences, feeling sensations, seeing, hearing etc. The question here is - is this really living?"
]
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[],
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"http://www.medicaldaily.com/boy-born-without-brain-trevor-judge-waltrip-dies-after-living-12-years-hydranencephaly-300736"
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||
49obq9 | is feminism a struggle for equality with men, or a struggle for liberation from men? or something else entirely? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49obq9/eli5_is_feminism_a_struggle_for_equality_with_men/ | {
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"It's a struggle for many things, but mostly just for equality. What this means exactly can depend on the person your talking to but it tends to be issues like increased job security and wages, protection, and choice over abortion. The last being about as much liberation they are asking for. ",
"Well, feminism isn't one single unified movement, it's a bunch of different schools of thought that share a core interest in issues surrounding gender but may have different end goals or different beliefs about how to reach those goals. Some feminists will say it's more about equality and others will say it's more about liberation (some would probably say those two goals are ultimately the same thing). There are plenty of debates between feminist groups about what is the \"right\" thing, most notably between pro-porn and anti-porn factions during the [\"Sex Wars.\"](_URL_0_)",
"Asking what feminism believes is like asking what Christianity believes. There are some broad strokes that unify the movements, but the details and areas of focus vary wildly. I think several would say that liberation from men is necessary for equality to them though.",
"Depends on where you go. Some of it is about equality 1:1, and if you visit tumblr in action, you have the minority that are a lot like the westboro Baptist Church. The Christianity analogy is a really good one. I never thought of it like that before. Thanks /u/dreadfulrauw",
"Linda Ellerbee said: \"Feminism isn't about turning the tables on men, it's about throwing out all the tables except the round ones.\" ",
"I think a relevant distinction can be made regarding the means rather than the ends. Most schools of feminism are concerned with gender equality as a basic tenet, but there is a big difference regarding what equality might actually mean. Is it enough to simply remove laws that explicitly discriminate against women so that there is no active subjugation? Or should the goal be actually achieving parity by acknowledging the deliberate, systemic oppression women have suffered throughout most of history and seeking to actively undermine the consequences arising from it, for instance by drawing up quotas to actively try and get a greater proportion of women into positions of political power?\n\nLyndon B. Johnson had an analogy for this basic issue (though he said it in relation to the civil rights movement):\n\n'Imagine a hundred-yard dash in which one of the two runners has his legs shackled together. He has progressed ten yards, while the unshackled runner has gone fifty yards. At that point the judges decide that the race is unfair. How do they rectify the situation? Do they merely remove the shackles and allow the race to proceed? Then they could say that \"equal opportunity\" now prevailed. But one of the runners would still be forty yards ahead of the other. Would it not be the better part of justice to allow the previously shackled runner to make up the forty-yard gap, or to start the race all over again? That would be affirmative action toward equality.'\n\nSome people will claim to be feminists based on the idea that they don't think women are inherently inferior to men and thus the genders should be equal. Personally, that to me is not really feminism - it's just the absence of bigotry. For me, feminism requires acknowledging that women have been deliberately oppressed, devalued, silenced and abused by men for centuries, and that this is not something that can be fixed by simply removing the presence of active discrimination. \n\nYou don't get to pat yourself on the back and claim to be a feminist just because you aren't actively hostile to women.",
"While I agree with other's statements that feminism is to difficult now to apply, and means different things at different times to different people (the Victorians wanted the vote but still believe that women were the delicate moral center of the house, for example), I think nowadays, feminism isn't just about [white] women's rights, it's actually a lot more. \n\nOut of third wave feminism came groups of people who began to understand that while they still felt systemically disadvantaged and constrained by currect society (which like most of society, tends to be framed and controlled by older white men; often referred to as the \"patriarchy\" for simplicity and also because it indicates the problem is not *individual* men, but rather a culture shaped by their collective perspective for their needs as a whole--I know #notallmen), *feminism* was still sidelining these individuals (women of color, disabled individuals, non-cisgendered folks, etc.) for other reasons. Reasons tangential to the patriarchy (of white, generally well-off, men), which resulted in their demographic overwhelmingly suffering more from sexism and misogyny.\n\nAs a result, by integrating sociology concepts which acknowledged these reasons, these other marginalized identities. Thus, intersectional feminism emerged. Like other forms of feminism, intersectional feminism (or intersectionality) recognizes that women's problems (and men's problems) are systemic (not resulting from an individual) and result from the patriarchy. \n\nThus, to address feminist causes, the individual must advocate for larger social change (instead of individual scapegoats which derail acknowledging the problem) while recognizing his/her/their inherent priviledges (higher socioeconomic status, whiteness, cisgenderedness, good mental an/or physical health, maleness, conventional attractiveness--including weight) and be both 1) willing to sacrifice the priveledge resulting from these statuses for greater equality as a whole and 2) willing to call out others from said position of privilege (a fellow man calling out rape culture in friends' jokes, an able-bodied women bringing attention to acessibility issues, etc.) \n\nThe result is that feminism now concerns itself with a variety of things (here are some perhaps surprising ones)\n\n1. The intersection of toxic masculinity and rape culture (the idea that \"true men\" don't rape--most rapists are aquantances, friends, family--or can't be raped)\n\n2. The intersection of heteronormativity and socioeconomic status: marriage, and the resulting tax benefits were not available to LGBTQ folks. A higher portion of LGBTQ folks are homeless than the general public. LGBTQ folks are less likely to be hired and may have harder times getting the healthcare they need.\n\n3. The intersection of race and socioeconomic status or race and gender:\nThe school to prison pipeline (African American boys) and the school to prison/sexual assault pipeline (African American girls) are also considered women's rights issues because they deal with famiy unity and gendered and racialized concepts of violence.\n\n4. The intersection of gender and socioeconomic status: specifically relating to work or childcare. One feminist theory states that work deemed female (and also minority), such as nursing, childcare, cooking, and cleaning tends to be lower paying (pinkwashed) if it is compensated at all (your mother may not have been compensated for raising you). \n\nThis work is often done unrecognized, which serves to lower its prestige, and also generates a concept called \"emotional labor\" the necessary carried out to maintain relationships, often done by a man's SO or mother (scheduling parties and Drs appointments, the man's own laundry, asking about another's day)\n\nFeminism also considers the men who want to do this work (why aren't there changing tables in men's restrooms? Why no paternity leave?, etc.)\n\n5. Gender and Restroom bills. Why should the social construct of gender be tied to sex? Why shouldn't an individual, identified by mom's OB as male, be able to identify as female or neither (nonbinary), or vice versa? \n\nMy point in writing this was to indicate that while feminism has accomplished a lot (critics will say: for white women), it has also ignored a lot, and has a lot to work on.\n\nThis work is necessary and real, and must be done in countries both considered very equal (perhaps Norway, for example) and countries considered more unequal (perhaps Saudi Arabia. Focusing on less equal countries does not negate the problems in more equal countries, and the problems in more equal countries are not necesarily less dire."
]
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3j6ce6 | how come in islam their prophet's name is prevelant among muslims yet in christianity it's almost unheard of? (excluding jesús) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3j6ce6/eli5_how_come_in_islam_their_prophets_name_is/ | {
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"text": [
"The name Jesus is rare in the English speaking world yes. But it's really common in Spanish.\n\n[And it appears that it's also just outside the top 100 most common names in the US.](_URL_0_)",
"Christianity regards Jesus not as a prophet but as an aspect of God himself. As such, naming your child Jesus is much more akin to naming your child Allah than naming him Mohamed. A better parallel is the prevalence of Abraham and Isacc in Jewish naming and the frequency of Peter, Paul, Matthew, Mary, John and Luke in Christian communities.\n\nAs to why Jesus does exist as a name almost exclusively within the Latino catholic community, i am not sure. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.babycenter.com/baby-names-jesus-2292.htm"
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[]
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||
367azc | what is the difference between a genuine psychopath and someone who just acts like one? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/367azc/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_a_genuine/ | {
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"I'm not quite sure what you mean by this question. Someone who acts like a psychopath and someone who is a psychopath would be indistinguishable to outsiders. Clinical psychopathy is distinguished by a total lack of empathy. Where you or I would feel bad to watch someone in agony, or to be causing that agony, psychopaths...don't. Similarly, they don't feel good of they make someone happy. I suppose it might be possible for someone who is not a psychopath to choose to always act in such a way, but they usually can't without going completely insane.\n\nThis is not to say that psychopaths are inherently dangerous. They merely always do what is best for them, damn everyone else. Psychopaths actually make good surgeons, as they never get the visceral feeling of *wrongness* baseline folks would get when cutting someone open, and when a patient dies they will learn from their mistake and move on immediately rather than internailzing it and agonizing over it for a long time. They don't usually kill more patients either, as they went to a lot of trouble to get their surgical license and don't want to get that taken from them.",
"Psychopaths are often misjudged in the matter that it has to be bad. To be a psychopath \"just\" means that a person in unable to feel empathy for another human being, or anything else for that matter. A good example is that a person with normal feelings will feel bad seeing a child crying when it's alone, just because it's a child and you are supposed to care. A psychopath will care, try to find out whats wrong and try to contact the parents or somebody who can care for this child. He or she will just not have the same feeling of \"sorrow\". But he or she will in most cases have learned that this is the appropriate thing to do.\n\nIt's just in extreme cases of psychopaths that they will be \"bad\" in the cases we normally use the expression. It's estimated that about 3-5% of people have psychopathic tendencies, that being unable to feel empathy for other people. These people are often very successful in the ordinary life, reaching positions of CEO's and such. "
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54oro2 | why do turbojets not need compressors at a mach 1? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/54oro2/eli5_why_do_turbojets_not_need_compressors_at_a/ | {
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"text": [
"It's more an issue that turbojet compressors can't stand the forces at play when the air is supersonic in relation to the engine, unless the engine is designed to slow the passage of the air at the inlet (Those big spikes on the SR-71 are an obvious example). If you want to operate without any compression from within the engine, you wouldn't be using a turbojet, you'd be using a ramjet (or scramjet), but you need a way to get up to those speeds in the first place."
]
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[]
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||
4flrqu | what is "being triggered" by something? when should i be worried about triggering people? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4flrqu/eli5_what_is_being_triggered_by_something_when/ | {
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"text": [
"Basically it pulls repressed memories. If someone was a rape victim, talk about rape or anything close to the subject would \"trigger\" them. The alarming amount of bull people claim triggers them and want discussion to cease has grown absurd though. ",
"People use the word \"trigger\", but that's not the real name. It's \"Trauma trigger.\"\n\nA trauma trigger is something, something said or shown or described or heard or tasted, etc. that forces someone to recall a traumatic memory, or series of memories, that caused them significant psychological trauma.\n\nYou ever seen things like war movies, when someone with post traumatic stress disorder hears say, a gunshot and starts a flashback memory? while an exaggeration, that's what a trigger is and what it does to a person.\n\nThe past experience overwhelms you emotionally and you respond poorly. Many people shut down, some explode. You become completely absorbed into those old memories.\n\nIn my life, I had a lot of traumatic (though absolutely necessary) medical work done. The dread I get if someone suggessts i should go to a doctor or if i see something that makes me think I need to is so powerful that I will just kinda sit there, staring, completely disconnected from thigns around me. It evenetually stops but while its there, I'm more or less not. \n\nI accidentally did it to myself writing this, which is why it took four minutes longer to respond then I'd planned. Fortunately Ive gotten a lot of therapy for it and can pull myself out of the episodes quickly (most of the time), but that's not true for most people."
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d8dflk | how did a successful brand like gucci get to its level and keep its balance of a higher brand. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d8dflk/eli5_how_did_a_successful_brand_like_gucci_get_to/ | {
"a_id": [
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"score": [
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"text": [
"This is better in r/answers."
]
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||
1y6slv | what did president george w. bush do that was good and bad? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y6slv/eli5_what_did_president_george_w_bush_do_that_was/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Your asking for something that will open up a hornets nest. I'd suggest you just read about him and make up your own mind, 'cuz reditt is a very liberal community and I'm sure most will tear him down.\n\nMy opinon is not a bad president not a great one either. He did what America wanted him to do."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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||
d30clg | what actually matters in computers and internet regarding speed and performance? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d30clg/eli5_what_actually_matters_in_computers_and/ | {
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"text": [
"Okay, imagine your computer like an office cubical. The CPU is the employee, the RAM is the surface of the desk, and the hard drive like filling cabinets. Some programs are like paper work with lots of pages so they take up more desk space, other programs are like harder paper work so it takes more employee engagement.\n\nThe trick with surfing the web is that you're not just connecting to the internet, you're running a program to interoperate the data and follow the protocols. So that too will take desk space and employee engagement. If you're anything like me, you run too many tabs for your own good and those tabs can add processes to the work load."
]
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[]
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||
ae90ax | why is there restrictions on ways to gather evidence for a criminal case? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ae90ax/eli5_why_is_there_restrictions_on_ways_to_gather/ | {
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"text": [
"Because if you make any methods allowed, you create an incentive for government overreach (violating privacy, etc) and room for corruption (\"oh yeah I discovered this by myself and it totally incriminates that guy I don't like\") among, I am sure, a host of other problems. \n\nIf someone on your street stole something valuable, you and your neighbors wouldn't want them to come root through your stuff, would you?\n"
]
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[]
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||
64afzq | if medical advances are at the point where organ donations and skin grafts are available, why can't women undergoing breast reduction donate breast tissue to, for example, mastectomy patients who need reconstruction? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/64afzq/eli5_if_medical_advances_are_at_the_point_where/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The reason a lot of women opt out of reconstruction isn't because of a lack of tissue/implant to fill the area, but because of risk associated with the reconstruction. Many women who have had a mastectomy are unwilling to undergo additional surgery and fear that tumors could grow in the reconstructed breasts. These women choose to go flat and/or to wear a specially padded bra. Most don't consider their mastectomy a hindrance and would prefer to just be done with everything once the cancer is removed.",
"It was years ago so I don't have the article saved, but I remember reading about a woman who had breast cancer and needed a double masectomy- she had an identical twin, and doctors harvested fat from the healthy twin's stomach (like a tummy tuck) to reconstruct her breasts. It worked because they were identical twins."
]
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[],
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3nsf1z | why are public school teachers protected by tenure, but not other school employees like the janitors or the nurses? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nsf1z/eli5_why_are_public_school_teachers_protected_by/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The goal of tenure was to make sure the teacher would have the freedom to teach, and not have to worry about getting fired for their beliefs. Just because someone has unpopular beliefs doesn't mean that the person was a bad teacher, and that's what tenure was trying to get at. Nurses or janitors don't need tenure because they aren't in a position where their beliefs will likely be known to all. A nurse could be a communist and likely no one would know, and even if someone did it is unlikely that they would call for the termination of the nurse on those grounds. ",
"Tenure has a long, sometimes illustrious, sometimes dirty history.\n\nTenure began in universities as a way to protect professors from being fired for politically motivated reasons. Teaching students always involves a little bit of personal bias, and the subjects you teach might be very emotionally charged subjects. Additionally, professors are *supposed* to be publishing books and theses and other texts, and not all of them are going to be for the university they teach in or on the specific subject they are teaching in class. Professors wanted to be protected from persecution based on their personal opinions.\n\nFor example: if you're a professor in, say, [Kansas](_URL_0_) and you teach something like anthropology. You're probably going to have to talk about evolution at some point (changes in jaw bone structure over time, the migration of early humans, etc.). It's your *job* and part of the subject you were specifically hired to teach. If the president of the university is a staunch Young Earth Creationist, he may not appreciate what you're teaching. But that shouldn't get you fired, right? Ok, so maybe you get hired on *knowing* that you will not be permitted to teach evolution. It's part of your contract. And you don't! You carefully avoid it. But you're working on a book in your spare time, one that has nothing to do with the university, but it's about evolution and you get it published. Should you be fired for *that*? No. And while the same situation *could* happen to a janitor, writing and publishing potentially controversial material is not a fundamental part of his job. But it *is* a defining part of being a professor. Earning tenure in a university is a many-year process, during which you have to publish papers and books for the university and prove your merit, and tenure can be removed by committee.\n\nThat's the pretty good part of tenure.\n\nSchool teachers wanted the same privileges as professors, arguing that their job had the same political challenges. Well, yeah, probably. But here's the big difference: teachers earn tenure by virtue of having a pulse for two years and taking it away is nearly impossible. If God himself descended on a chariot of light and fire and declared a teacher's tenure removed...he'd be ignored.\n\nTeachers' unions are some of the strongest, most powerful unions in the United States."
]
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3mjkqf | is a ship similar to a star destroyer possible with current technology? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mjkqf/eli5_is_a_ship_similar_to_a_star_destroyer/ | {
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"No. We have chemical rockets and small scale ion drives. We don't have any access to anything remotely like hyperspace. Star Destroyers are also about 1.6km long. That's massive. We have no way to build that on the ground and no orbital facilities to build something that big in space. That's not even taking the weaponry into account.",
"No. Not in the slightest. We have no FTL travel capabilities, no energy weapons or shielding, no massive life support systems, no artificial gravity. The best we can do is stock a space station for a year to keep six to 10 people alive. "
]
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[],
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379e5q | why do airport security take sharp objects off you (safety razors, safety pins, nail scissors) and then allow you to buy them at the pharmacy in departures? | I understand that liquid bottles etc are taken away because of what you may have hidden within them, but nail scissors are confiscated because they are a sharp object on the face of it. Many times I have had a safety razor confiscated only to buy one in departures (where I could also buy a glass bottle etc) - is there any logic or is the answer "because money"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/379e5q/eli5_why_do_airport_security_take_sharp_objects/ | {
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"The TSA exists mostly as a show of force to dissuade people from trying things in airport security zones. If a clever person really wanted to get something nefarious in, they probably could, but most people simply aren't that dedicated. By making everyone subtly hate the TSA, the mythos that they are unbeatable permeates the society and fewer people try anything.\n\nThis isn't to say they are ineffective, of course, it's just that their effectiveness has little to do with their actual security precautions, and more to do with the sociological consequences of them.",
"Who calls them nail scissors? ",
"The TSA Airport Show is nothing but security theater. It's designed to con gullible people into thinking that their government is doing something to seriously stop terrorism...which is actually kind of a bad joke, since massive clusterfucks like the Iraq fiasco have increased the number of radical jihadists by some two orders of magnitude over the last 15 years.\n\n\n\n"
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3y5t0r | do these personality assessment for job applications actually work? | For some of these questions I feel as if a normal person would lie about the majority of question to try and land a job. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3y5t0r/eli5_do_these_personality_assessment_for_job/ | {
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"The way they're scored, it's possible to do too good...or at least the one I took years and years ago was.\n\nBasically candidates are supposed to fall somewhere toward the middle of the bell curve. Too far one way, and you're a risk to hire because you're a borderline sociopath. Too far the other and you're a risk to hire because you tried to game the test and aren't trustworthy.\n\nAs for whether they have any real value...I don't think so. But they were (are?) all the rage for a while so people use them.",
"Personality assessments are the modern day version of a sort of viral polygraph test. You place your answers and then someone with a key goes through and scores your answers based on your selections and tallies a score. This produces their assesment of how you would behave in certain situations, who you would act like, and how much you would be able to handle the job they are assessing you for. Is it reliable? Maybe. Is it a cheap cop out? Yes.\n\n"
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ddc9pr | creatine: what does creatine help out with while lifting? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ddc9pr/eli5_creatine_what_does_creatine_help_out_with/ | {
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"wow both of the answers here are wrong. like they don't even lift. holy crap.\n\nyour muscles (and your entire body) use ATP (adenosine triphosphate - there are 3 phosphates) for energy. when ATP is used, it loses a phosphate group and becomes ADP (adenosine diphosphate - 2 phosphates). creatine, which is phosphocreatine in your muscles, donates a phosphate group to ADP so it becomes ATP again. this is much faster than than the krebs cycle that would be used otherwise.\n\nit does not help with muscle building directly. it allows for like a 5% performance boost at most so you can get that extra rep in, which over time can cause a slightly greater stimulus for growth than if you did not use creatine.\n\n[jeff nippard is great at explaining things](_URL_0_)\n\nalso, you need to be saturated with creatine for it to do anything. its not something like caffeine in which you take it and you feel the effects soon after.",
"So your muscles obviously need energy to be able to contract the way they do, and the main molecule that supplies this energy is called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. However, since ATP is so energetic, it's really unstable and takes a lot of energy to make, and even more energy to maintain. Thus, it doesn't make much sense for your body to keep ATP ready on demand-- rather, it makes ATP as needed for your muscles. This is done by adding a phosphate group to a molecule called adenosine diphosphate, or ADP. However, the process of converting ADP to ATP takes a few seconds. But if I want to throw a punch, my muscles don't take a few seconds before I'm ready-- it's pretty much instantaneous.\n\nThis is because your body keeps creatine on hand. In your body, creatine is usually bonded to a phosphate group to make a molecule called phosphocreatine (CP). CP has this property where it exchanges phosphate groups in equilibrium with ADP. Basically, this means that occasionally CP will donate its phosphate group to ADP, creating a small amount of ATP and converting CP to creatine. However, as soon as this ATP molecule forms, it usually immediately loses its phosphate group to another creatine molecule, forming ADP and CP. You can think of this as creatine and ADP playing catch with a phosphate group. When creatine has the \"ball,\" it's CP, and when ADP has the \"ball,\" it's ATP.\n\nHowever, when you tell your muscles to contract, as soon as the ATP forms, it is immediately put to use to contract your muscle. A lower amount of ATP means that the remaining CP is converted even faster to creatine and ATP. So essentially, whenever CP passes phosphate to ADP, ADP turns to ATP and is immediately used up, so no more CP is created, since there isn't anything around to pass the \"ball\" back to creatine.\n\nThis goes on for a few seconds, at which point your CP reserves are depleted. But its OK, since by that time other more permanent pathways have started up to convert ADP to ATP. So basically, creatine serves as a source of immediate energy for your muscles (just a few seconds) while your actual machinery powers up.",
"Creatine is used to regenerate ATP, the source of energy which gets your muscles to do stuff. It is very efficient, so it is able to keep up the amount of ATP muscle cells have. It is also the first way your muscles regenerate ATP, the other ways being anaerobic glycolysis and cellular respiration. But these only take place after your stored creatine is used up. Creatine would essentially give you more \"energy\" to lift. Maybe not the right word, but it would probably help you lift for longer because you have more ATP to use before they are depleted. I doubt it would help you gain muscle mass though, it has no direct effect on the regeneration of muscle fibers."
]
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zb655 | why is saffron so expensive? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zb655/eli5_why_is_saffron_so_expensive/ | {
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"Saffron comes from the stigmas of a flower called the purple crocus. There's only a few stigmas in each flower. So it takes a lot of flowers and a lot of hard labor to harvest and prepare even a small amount of saffron. I think it's cheaper if you buy saffron threads instead of in ground powder form, though.",
"Think of it this way, in a bag of jelly babies there are many colors but lets say we just want the purple ones (saffron). We'd have to buy many bags of jelly babies just to fill a single one with purple ones! This is because the purple ones (saffron) is just a small part of the plant it comes from so it takes a real lot of them to make just a little bit of saffron!"
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1r413g | so what to do female olympic athletes, or tennis stars do if they get their periods on the big competition day ? how do they cope? my friends say its a big loss of blood, cramps etc | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r413g/so_what_to_do_female_olympic_athletes_or_tennis/ | {
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"cdjctfs"
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"text": [
"Two things: \n\nThing A: Having your period is usually not debilitating. Exercise helps a great deal with cramps, and usually by the time you are an adult if you do happen to be one of the unlucky few with terrible cramps you have probably learned to control them or gotten on medication that helps. \n\nAlso, it isn't \"blood loss\", like if you have a cut, or something. You lose a little more than a tablespoon of actual blood in all that in a month. It's mostly tissue/uterine lining.\n\nThing B: Due to the strains put on their bodies many many female athletes don't have regular periods. So they might not be getting them at all."
]
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[]
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||
553ucq | how does the whiskey and water trick work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/553ucq/eli5_how_does_the_whiskey_and_water_trick_work/ | {
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"Density. \n\nThe water is more dense than the whisky. So water will weigh more than the whisky. They switch places since they are the same volume. The heavier water fills up the entire bottom glass, leaving the lighter whisky nowhere to go except up into the top glass."
]
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||
auk57f | what is equity market? | Well, I saw a few posts about it in r/mapporn and decided post my first post :D. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/auk57f/eli5_what_is_equity_market/ | {
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"Equity Market usually refers to the stock market, the trading of shares of companies. Equity is an ownership stake in something, and investors, etc. refer to the equity market for stocks, as opposed to the bond market, commodities market, derivatives markets and such",
"So if a company wants to raise money thue have 2 options. Debt and equity.\n\nDebt is pretty simple and very much like how you or I would raise money, they ask banks or investors for a loan of cash which they will pay back later.\n\nThe other is equity, equity is basically saying 'my company is going places, give me a bit of money today and I'll give you a slice or the profits when we make some' (note some equity confers voting rights or may have some other benefit than getting a slice of profits).\n\nNow for big companies they can't manage all of this equity issuing themselves as people may want to resell their shares to each other to cash out their contributions. This is where an equity market comes in. It is essentially a big central house that works out how much every companies shares are worth and then let's people buy and sell their shares and get new shares from other companies "
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3hhqrb | why does microsoft alternate between very popular os's and infamous os's? | Since Windows 98 it's been 98 great, ME bad, XP legendary, Vista bad, 7 great, 8/8.1 nobody wants, 10 good. It's become a pattern at this point but why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hhqrb/eli5_why_does_microsoft_alternate_between_very/ | {
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"My guess is the bad one is supposed to be a large jump with a bunch of new things to test what people like and dislike, then to create a new version combining the elements people liked from the previous two versions. ",
"Tick-Tock scheme, as it's common in computing. \nXP is fixed ME ^^^kindof, 7 is fixed Vista, 10 is fixed 8. \nMicrosoft alternates a foundation-shaking release and a 'iterational' release. \nFor obvious reasons, the iterational tends to be far more polished and stable, on the grounds that _it's not doing anything new_.\n\n\n\n",
"XP was hated when it first came out. It was seen as a resource hog when placed next to 98SE. People constantly criticised it's bubbly \"Fisher-Price My-First-OS\" theme. It was less stable than the Win2K it replaced until SP1 or SP2 came out. SP2 was widely criticised for breaking backwards compatibility with tons of software and hardware.\n\nME honestly sucked nuts because it was a half-assed attempt at extending the 95/98 line when the company really wanted to move down the path of NT/2000/XP.\n\nVista & 8 weren't bad. People mostly just bitched because they were *different*."
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7j5yrq | when does deferring to scientific research become appealing to authority? | Im a biological scientist with a BSc. Obviously I have yet to scratch the surface on many key concepts in the field but Ive had a good overview and have been exposed to many fundamental ideas. I like to believe that I am able to quickly assess the quality of a research paper and notice any p-hacking or conflict of interests.
But when I am engaged in a debate with people who have not gone through my field of study - climate change, and vaccine safety are two key examples - I constantly cite relevant studies or theories that would suggest we have a breadth of information available on the topic. Im wondering when does it become appealing to authority? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7j5yrq/eli5_when_does_deferring_to_scientific_research/ | {
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"It's an appeal to authority (in the fallacy sense) if you defer to a person who, in turn, did not justify his/her statement.\n\nScientific research, by definition, does real work to justify its claims and conclusions.",
"An appeal to authority is only a fallacy when the authority referenced is not actually relevant to the claims being asserted. An appeal to scientific evidence is not really a leap of logic, as scientific evidence that is properly documented requires no trust in authority. The data presented as not an argument, it is a factual record of an experimental result and should be readily replicable. ",
"It's an appeal to authority if they're not an authority in a way that's relevant to the topic at hand. Citing an evolutionary biologist in a discussion about evolution is not an appeal to authority because they their work is relevant to the topic. You are referencing the research, not the person.",
"There's nothing wrong with appealing to authority. Much of the knowledge in your head right now is justified by an appeal to authority - it's something you read in a textbook, or heard from a teacher/professor, etc. That's simply how society and the spread of knowledge works; otherwise we'd be limited only to our own personal experiences.\n\nAppealing to authority is only a fallacy when you appeal to the *wrong* authority. A scientific study or qualified expert in the field that you're discussion is a good authority. You can appeal to that, no problem. But you can't appeal to an expert qualified in some other, irrelevant field. \n\nSo when discussing vaccine safety, for example, you could appeal to the US Surgeon General, a qualified doctor and biologist. But you couldn't appeal to, say, Noam Chomsky. That would be fallacious because for all of his qualifications as a linguist, he's not a biologist. ",
"Appeal to authority is only a fallacy if the actual basis of the argument is \"Well he's an expert/authority in X, therefore he's more likely right.\" If I'm an evolutionary biologist and I tell you that the process of natural selection gave rabbits big floppy ears, while your mother (who I assume isn't a biologist) gives you another reasonable explanation for their ears, accepting my answer over hers without any other knowledge on the matter would be fallacious, whether or not I'm right. Even experts are often mistaken.\n\nHowever, if I, as a biologist, showed you several years of research on these big floppy ears, and I had written several peer-reviewed papers on the matter which I could show you, then you're no longer relying on my authority to come to a conclusion, you're relying on the evidence I've provided. My authority, in this case, only comes from my being able to direct you towards these examples. In other words, the facts make my argument more valid, not the fact that I'm a biologist. ",
"An 'appeal to authority' exists when you claim support from a false authority for your argument.\n\nThat being said, a 'false authority' probably isn't what you think it is.\n\nA 'false authority' is any proposed authority that both sides don't agree on. It has nothing to do with degrees, respect of their colleagues or anything else - it's purely a matter of whether the two sides in this particular debate agree that the individual/institution is a legitimate authority.\n\nThat's why relying on authorities for an argument is so dangerous. If your response to someone's beliefs is solely to cite some authority they don't agree is an authority, you're left with no argument. In contrast, if you make an argument of your own, they have to address that argument directly.\n\nAn alternative is to simply select authorities that the opposing side is highly likely to accept as an authority or who they have already accepted as an authority.",
"Referring to scientific research IS a \"logical fallacy\" of appealing to authority unless you actually check the scientific research.\n\nHere's the problem, logical arguments are intended to be necessary and sufficient proofs. A scientific study is MORE LIKELY to be true than some schmuck on the street. If you fully dive into the study, you could definitively prove something, or at minimum identify the flaws.\n\nYou're human with limited time and energy. You don't KNOW that Einstein's special relativity is true, but you also don't have millions of dollars to launch telescopes into space. In practice, you just have to trust that scientific consensus isn't lying to you.\n\nGoing even further, all logical systems rely on some level of faith or postulates.\n\nBut for practical purposes, peer reviewed studies are true with sufficiently high probability that we accept them until counterfactual evidence proves otherwise.\n\nIn fact most studies tell you the probability they're wrong with their p-value, usually 5%.\n\nWe accept peer reviewed studies because ALL of the following systems must fail:\n1) the study itself must be flawed\n2) the publishing authority was wrong\n3) people who read the study were wrong\n\nIt's highly unlikely ALL of them were wrong. So we accept it. But unless you follow the science and math, it's still not a mathematically rigorous proof.",
"In the strict sense of deductive logic, all scholarly citation is a fallacious appeal to authority. You cannot demonstrate the truth of a claim merely by referring to someone who asserts they conducted an experiment, or the collective opinion of the scientific community. (And the fact that someone has a conflict of interest or lacks credentials does not imply anything about the truth of that person's statements.) If you do not do the research yourself, you are always operating on the unstated premise that the claims the other scientists made are true.\n\nRemember that in science, you're usually not practicing deductive logic. You operate inductively, heaping on the evidence so that you make your claim look as *probably* true as it can look, compared to competing claims. With that outlook, it's not surprising to find out that you're wrong, because improbable events happen all the time. Even when the data is hardly in doubt, the theory it seems to support can change drastically; scientific theorizing has more to do with human ways of thinking than a process of objective discovery. The classic work on this subject is Thomas Kuhn's *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions*.\n\nWhen discussing a subject with people not educated in it, you should think about the basic claims of the theory and what data there is to support it. Separate critique of the theory from critique of the data; the latter can be discussed to only a limited extent. If a particular study is questioned, you can supply reproductions of the results, but ultimately, the ultra-skeptic is entitled to believe only his own eyes. Whereas if you fully understand the theory, you should be able to rebut any critique of it, or else the theory is incomplete or flawed."
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9rrolk | why so dropped glasses sometimes bounce a few times before shattering? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9rrolk/eli5_why_so_dropped_glasses_sometimes_bounce_a/ | {
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"A lot of glasses are heavy on the bottom. On the way to the floor initially, they have enough time for that heavy bottom to hit the floor first. On the next few bounces, the rotation is more random and the floor hits a more delicate part of the glass. ",
"Imagine a steel cable that is pulled right up to the breaking point. How does it fail? Do all the strands break at once? Or do a few strands break, which increases the load on the others, causing more to break, and a cascading failure. \n\nGlass is actually fairly tough. It's very rigid and prone to fracture, but like that one strand in a cable giving way first, it breaks much easier if there is a flaw already in the glass. Think of glass cutting, you just score the glass, scratch it really, and that gives it a flaw to break around. \n\nWhen you drop a glass, it may not break immediately but it will often become damaged and those new flaws then make it much easier to break. \n\nOne of the nice things about glass is it's very hard, so it's hard to scratch it. But silica, like sand, can scratch glass. In fact, one of the reasons why a cellphone with strong glass can be demonstrated being hit with a hammer at a trade show, without breaking, is that the glass is brand new, and has no flaws in it. But after being in your pocket, being exposed to dirt and grit, pocket lint, handling, etc, it will get microscopic scratches all over the surface, which provide a convenient place for the glass to shatter when dropped. "
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1qrfmm | how can it be safe to build large office/apartment buildings on top of landfill? | I work in [lower Manhattan](_URL_0_), much of which is built on "landfill". How can you build big buildings on top of this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qrfmm/eli5_how_can_it_be_safe_to_build_large/ | {
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"Most Manhattan skyscrapers have foundations resting right on the bedrock. The bedrock under Manhattan is close to the surface downtown, so they may have driven the foundations through the landfill into the bedrock (there's bedrock pretty close to the surface, even under the water). This is nice, but hardly necessary. The Chicago Loop, for instance, is a neighborhood built on a former swamp. Many of the smaller, early skyscrapers there were built without sinking foundations into the bedrock, and instead rest on a floating pad of concrete and rubble.\n\nAlso, just for your reassurance, construction \"landfill\" isn't made of municipal waste. It's usually soil pulled up from beneath the water, or dumped in from excavation nearby. In lower Manhattan, Battery Park City was started on the dirt removed from the World Trade Center site during the original 1970s construction. [You can see it in this photo](_URL_0_)."
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2342297/Manhattans-original-coastline-revealed-Hurricane-Sandy-flooded-land-reclaimed-400-years.html"
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"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Fr7l76q644M/UiHWUHOWNZI/AAAAAAAAMHs/FY0h00FDLZ8/s640/World+Trade+Center+Under+Construction,+1971+\\(2\\).jpg"
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55lfzr | why is it that one musical note, when continued for a prolonged amount of time, sounds as though it's "vibrating"? | Like, let's say that a soprano singer hits a high note. Whenever I hear it, it sounds like she's going back and forth between two notes, all moving voice up and down, or as though she's being shaken in order to produce such a sound.
The same if I were to hold a key down on an organ. For as long as I press it, it sounds as though it's one single note going through an earthquake, if that makes sense.
Why is that? Also, please don't forget to TL;DR your ELI5. Thank you! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55lfzr/eli5_why_is_it_that_one_musical_note_when/ | {
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"text": [
"It's because the singer is actually doing it purposefully. As far as I know, singers and string instruments use vibrato. As for organs, I'm not sure, I don't know much about organs work.\n\nA bit of bonus info: Before the romantic era of music, vibrato was only used when asked for. It was more an ornament to music instead of something that we always used. As the romantic era had a focus of emotion in music, vibrato became more popular, and today, vibrato is always used instead of only sometimes.",
"Your ears aren't fooling you- you're hearing more than one note. You're hearing a slight change in pitch, alternating between two pitches very close together, which other posters have correctly identified as vibrato. \n\nVibrato comes through different techniques:\n\nFor a singer, it happens naturally. The diaphragm (the muscle that pushes air out when you breathe, speak, or sing) gets tired like any other muscle does. When it gets tired it shakes, like any other muscle does. When it shakes, the pitch of your note starts to wobble. Signers do train to make it sound natural and pleasant, as other posters have noted, but it's always there. \n\nFor instruments where your fingers touch the strings (guitar, violin, etc) vibrato comes when the player stretches the string by wiggling their finger, hand or arm. Stretching the string makes the pitch of the note change. In this case players train to make it sound pleasant, because shaking at the elbow will create a different sounding vibrato than shaking at the finger or wrist. BB King was known for a beautiful sounding vibrato that make his hand look like a butterfly when he did it, for instance. \n\nMany organs have a rotating speaker, in which the speaker literally spins in a box while the music is being played. This is a different ELI5, but the spinning changes the sound because of the Doppler effect. That, or a simulation of it, is probably what you're hearing in the example you mentioned earlier. That's a little more complicated than vibrato, but it does include vibrato. \n\nSome instruments can't do vibrato, like a piano or harp. Although two notes played together will sometimes produce a tense pulsating sound, that sounds different and I don't think it's what you're referring to. You will, however, hear it in an out of tune piano, because each key will play two or three strings that aren't quite the same note. \n\nTLDR: many instruments, including the human voice, often wobble between two pitches that are very close together. This is called vibrato, is achieved in different ways on different instruments, and is perfected over time. "
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bwoog2 | why do so many otherwise great tv shows struggle to end their stories well? what is it about the creative/production process that makes this so difficult? | Specifically talking about shows versus movies, and shows that are widely considered to be good throughout many seasons. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bwoog2/eli5_why_do_so_many_otherwise_great_tv_shows/ | {
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"Simply put, it's easier to tell a 2 hour story than what amounts to an 80 hour story. With a 2 hour movie you spent 20 minutes introducing your characters, build your story a little and then spend 20 minutes ending it. If you've got 65 hours story building, it would feel very cheap to spend 20 minutes on ending it. \n\nIn modern times the internet also plays a factor here. With fan communities theorizing your possible endings, a lot of writers feel an obligation to avoid ending things the way fans expect, so if the obvious ending is the best ending, it may not get used.",
"Movies are self contained story. By the time the author finish the story he know the beginning, the end and everything in-between and can make sure that everything work together, fix any problem in the story. Sometime the story can be worked on for a long time before it's approved for filming, which give more time for the author to improve his story.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe story of a TV show is written as the show aired. Usually it go right for the first season, the writing is done for the entire season by the time the filming start and the author can stat to work on the second season. That's when the problem start to happen.\n\n1) Author now have limited amount of time. They have date by which the filming of the second season will start and they need to finish the writing before that date to let the time for all the preparation. It doesn't matter if the author want more time to work on a story element that he want to improve.\n\n2) As you write you story, sometime you end up writing something that doesn't work with someone you wrote previously. If that happen for a movie, it's ok you rewrite what you wrote before to make everything fit together. But if what you wrote in the past is already on screen in a past season of your show, you can't change it anymore. It's surprisingly easy to write yourself in a corner, something you wrote about a characters or the rules of the universe put your story in a bad situation. \n\n3) The industry can also put the writer in a bad situation. Maybe one of the character is really popular with the audience so the boss ask to put more screentime for that character. Maybe you killed off that popular character and now you are asked to bring him back, because he is good for the ratings. Or maybe the writer change to someone else between 2 seasons and the vision of those two writers is completely different."
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2vz770 | what legally defines "religious reasons?" | In Pennsylvania, and a lot of other states, you can opt out of standardized tests for "religious reasons." However, you do not have to belong to any religious group or even explain anything.
However, in certain cases, religious reasons are only a portion of free speech where a religion is widely known and accepted. An example of this is discrimination by an employer.
Why is the definition of "religious reasons" different depending on the case, and doesn't the First Amendment make any personal beliefs apply to freedom of religion since there is no consistent definition, and anyone can even technically start a religious group? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vz770/eli5_what_legally_defines_religious_reasons/ | {
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"There is no uniform legal definition of \"religious reasons,\" as you put it. \n\nIt sounds like you are asking about the effect that a person's religious beliefs may have in two different contexts: schooling and employment. \n\nUnder the 1st amendment, it is irrelevant whether one's religion is officially recognized. According to the supreme court, all that matters is that the religious belief involved is \"sincerely held.\" I suspect school districts are highly deferential to a student's religious practices so as to avoid the possibility of becoming embroiled in legal controversy. \n\nIn the context of employment discrimination, the \"sincerely held belief\" standard also applies. How widely known and accepted a person's religious beliefs are is irrelevant. They simply must be \"sincerely held.\" If an employee's religious beliefs require the employer making special exceptions to policies to accommodate the employee's religious belief, the employer must do so, unless such accommodations would cause \"undue hardship\" to the employer. Examples of undue hardship include instances where the accommodation is costs the employer a lot of money, compromises workplace safety, or decreases workplace efficiency, etc. \n\nLong story short, in the context of schooling and employment discrimination, it doesn't matter whether a person's religion is widely known and accepted. "
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ew8cxl | what was the holocaust all about and what made it finally end? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ew8cxl/eli5_what_was_the_holocaust_all_about_and_what/ | {
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" > The Holocaust (Shoah) is the term for the murder of around six million Jews by the Nazi regime and their collaborators during the Second World War.\n\n > Between 1941 and 1945, the Nazis sought to eliminate the entire Jewish community of Europe. Jews were murdered by death squads called Einsatzgruppen or transported to extermination camps. Six million of the eleven million European Jews perished. The Holocaust mainly occurred in Eastern Europe, in places such as Poland and Ukraine.\n\n > The term ‘Holocaust’ can also refer to the orchestrated murder of Roma. Other groups were also targeted by the Nazi regime: disabled people, Soviet Prisoners of War and civilians, Polish civilians, homosexuals, socialists, communists and trades unionists, Freemasons and Jehovah’s Witnesses.\n\n > The Nazis did not act alone. Countries which were occupied by the Nazis during the Second World War, such as Lithuania and the Ukraine, assisted the perpetrators.\n\n-[Source](_URL_0_)\n\nIt ended when WWII was over on September 2nd, 1945.",
"r/askhistorians probably knows a lot better.",
"I actually just listen to a Fresh Air podcast episode about this the other day since we just passed the 75th anniversary of the Jews being freed from Auschwitz. I don't think this is exactly and ELI5 answer, but it isn't a simple topic.\n\nIt started with the Nazi Party convincing just about all of Germany to follow their absurd belief that Jews were the root cause of problems across the world. Their initial \"Final Solution\" wasn't extermination, but actually exile. Jews were forced into ghettos because the German government assumed they'd win the war quickly, and could ship all of the Jews in and around Germany to forgein nations that they assumed would come under German rule. \n\nAfter a series of stupid decisions and multiple assumptions that victory was right around the corner (spoiler alert, it never was), the govt. watched hundreds of thousands of Jews that they couldn't get rid of dying from starvation and sickness. So someone in the government had the bright idea that it would be more \"humane\" to kill any Jews that couldn't work, rather than let them die from disease and starvation. Nazis being the effient monsters that they were, eventually developed this idea into the death camps and murder of over a million innocent people."
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3wz22x | how does military pay work? | I was watching Lone Survivor recently, which somehow got me wondering how the paycheck process works for people in the military stationed in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Is your pay just direct deposited into your bank back home? Do you need money for anything while you are stationed overseas? If so does that come out of your paycheck, or is there an extra per diem or something? Are you paid weekly/monthly etc, or is there some alternative structure while you are away? If any military people answer, thanks for your service! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wz22x/eli5_how_does_military_pay_work/ | {
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"Your pay is direct deposited like normal. You get paid biweekly and receive additional monthly payments. Line items such as \"Imminent Danger,\" and there is another I forget. If there is a PX nearby you can purchase basic things there normally. You can also get some of your pay directly in cash from your units personnel department. You can then use that cash however you like. A large portion of deployed soldier's cash actually tends to go to the locals who sell all sorts of bootlegged movies, video games, video game consoles, etc.\n\nSource: OIF veteran"
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au1c7t | how does the pre-flight airplane check actually ensure that the plane is safe to get up in the air again, and what do the pilots check? | I'm a fearful flier and I've been doing a lot of research lately to understand all the aspects because I want to fly again. My main concern is the plane not being able to take off and sudden electronics failure.
& #x200B;
Having said this, I was wondering how does a simple superficial check of the outside of the plane ensure that the electronics will not fail, or that the engines will not explode mid air, or that it won't stall all of a sudden? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/au1c7t/eli5_how_does_the_preflight_airplane_check/ | {
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"Electronics can fail in flight, and engines can also fail.\n\nThe key thing you need to understand it that you will not die if this happens. You probably won't even know about some failures.\n\nThis is because airplanes are engineered with resilience and redundancy. There is no one part on a plane that can fail and have everybody die as a result, that's the \"no single point failure\" criteria.\n\nIf an electronic box fails, the pilots switch it off and use the backup box. None of the passengers ever know that the box failed, it just gets replaced as part of routine maintenance. Even the pilot is redundant, one person can fly the plane if the other dies.\n\nI've been on a plane that had an engine explode, it was called a \"compressor stall\". We had to land short of our scheduled destination and transfer to another plane. The airline was mostly concerned about parking the plane so we wouldn't see the giant burn mark on the hull. We got on another plane, and arrived 3 hours late. I've been 3 hours late many times, but this is the most interesting story.\n\nWhen walking around the plane, the crew is looking for three things: ice, leaks, and missing parts. Ice can form under many conditions where you might not have ice on the road. Ice is heavy and they have to get it off or the plane will fly poorly and use too much gas. This is undesirable, not just because they get in trouble with their bosses. Leaks mean something might be broken, and they want to have a mechanic look at that. Parts come off more often than you'd think, particularly little parts like probes or door handle covers. These also cause poor gas mileage, and might facilitate a more serious problem.\n",
"No one has addressed this, but they don’t just look superficially outside the plane. They do check the electronics, radio, etc. among lot of other things. \n\nHere is a full list of things checked on a small private plane, which still has to be done even if there is only the pilot flying without passengers!:\n_URL_0_\n\n\n\n\n\n",
"Why are those things your main concern? There's nothing in reality that suggests you should be concerned about those things? Aircraft accidents are rare, fatal ones even more rare, and \"planes not being able to take off\" (you didn't specify a reason) or random electronic failure are basically unheard of. You are many many many *many* times more likely to die in a car crash than on a plane. Electronics don't just fail for no reason. Engines don't explode for no reason. Planes don't stall for no reason.",
"As others have said, redundancy keeps the plane flying if anything happens. Modern day planes can continue to fly even when a number of catastrophic events happen, including engine loss. Additionally, the superficial check of the outside isn't half of a plane's pre flight check, the vast majority of it happens from within the cockpit. After all, a sensor suite to tell you whether or not the engines are working is a lot more reliable, thorough, and quick than having a lazy human take apart the finely machined engines and put it back together 50 times a day."
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5jvd8q | why is it that when some light bulbs are recorded and played back in slow motion, they appear to be turning on and off really quickly? | Follow up: why does this only happen to some lightbulbs and not others? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jvd8q/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_some_light_bulbs_are/ | {
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"LED lights can't dim like incandescent lights can, by just reducing their brightness. Instead, you have to flash them on and off super quickly: dozens or hundreds of times per second. That's faster than the eye can see, but we *do* notice that the average brightness has been reduced, so the lights appear to us to be constantly lit, but dimmer.",
"The lights are being powered off mains electricity, which is alternating current. the current flows back and forth - one way for either 1/100th or 1/120th of a second, and back the other way. So the power turns off 100 or 120 times per second. If the light can turn on or turn off at that speed, then it will appear to flicker at that speed. \n\nBut some lights can't. Normal incandescent lights take tenths of a second to light up or cool down, so they won't flicker, or don't flicker by very much. Old style fluorescent lights do flicker strongly, and cheap LED lights with a simple circuit and no 'smoothing', will also flicker. \n\nOther lights may in fact be running on DC, and do not flicker at all. Others may have adequate smoothing - that is, power storage to keep the light shining while the power cycle goes off.",
"Because they are. Incandescent bulbs are powered directly by passing a current through a filament. The current causes the filament to heat up and emit light. The power grid is A/C or alternating current. North America is 120 volts at 60Hz while Europe is 240 volts at 50Hz.\n\nA/C power follows a sin wave. Power starts at zero, goes up to 120 volts, back down to zero, down to -120 volts, back up to 0. That is one cycle. During the cycle, power reaches peak twice and is at zero in between. At 60hz or 60 cycles a second, a light bulb will flash 120 times. This is beyond human vision so we perceive the light as being on but if you record a light with a high speed camera you can see the power fluctuations. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nIn this video you can see the exit signs flashing, knowing that each flash is 1/120 of a second, you can calculate how long it takes for something to happen just by counting that flashes. 30 flashes would be 1/4 of a second or .250 seconds. \n\nOther lights such as LED or florescent lights operate at at different voltage so you will have a transformer that will step up or step down the voltage with voltage regulators to supply a constant voltage. Basically you have a capacitor that charges when the power is on and discharges when the voltage is at zero. On the LED side it light just sees a constant 12 volts. Because the lights receive a constant power supply, the light remains on at all times."
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cyq8sc | why do hurricanes have “eyes” where there is calmness? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cyq8sc/eli5_why_do_hurricanes_have_eyes_where_there_is/ | {
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"[What goes up must come down](_URL_0_). Anything in weather is about a balance, and so as the cyclone produces violent upward motion in the form of thunderstorms, sinking motion has to happen somewhere else. Some air is dissipated outwardly at the highest altitudes but some of this sinking air approaches the center of the storm and through compression warms which usually means drying; this produces the clear and usually calm conditions it's so well known for.",
"[_URL_0_](_URL_1_)\n\nNo matter how fast the air is swirling around, there must be a point somewhere where it is stationary, and it is in the middle.\n\nIt's a little more complicated than that, since the storm is actually 3D, so in the eye the air may be moving up and down as well, for a more simplified view, just look at the horizontal wind vectors, and you can see that no matter what, there's going to be a place in the middle where the air is not going anywhere, as long as we're talking about a circular airflow like a hurricane or tornado.",
"The eye is the low pressure area that is dragging all of the storms along with it. Much like a tornado or whirlpool or toilet draining, there will be a region where the pressure can’t get any lower and this forms the eye. \n\nIt’s not always clear, but does when the pressure becomes so low and the wind speed so high that it drags all of the storms into the bands around the eye. \n\nRemember centrifugal force, like when you do shot put or spin your little cousin by picking them up and hurling them. The eye is the central fulcrum from which all of the low pressure is sucking essentially the higher pressure into it.",
"I thought this question was more along the lines of why do we call it an eye... Upon review I have learned I am wrong. Also to ELI5 it is the middle part that the rest of the storm is spinning around, like the axel on a car.",
"Because it spins. I was actually in the eye of a hurricane once. For about 20 minutes the day went from dark and non-stop rain and wind, to a bright sunny day. After 20 minutes or so it was back to a shit storm.",
"It's like the center of a merry-go-round. How \"slowly\" it spins.\n\nThis is obviously an over simplification, but on a two dimensional scale, it's about that simple."
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2c22k5 | how do the developers of free applications make money without microtransactions ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c22k5/eli5_how_do_the_developers_of_free_applications/ | {
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"Advertising is a large source of revenue. ",
"Ads. Sometimes they run at a loss just and make apps to market themselves. \n\nCliff Bleszinski said he won't take a wage for BlueStreak until it starts to make a profit. He's obviously well off but thats a long time without making ANY money personally.",
"There's several methods:\n\n1. **In game advertising.** Every now and then, the game will run an advert for anothr product/service. These adverts are paid for by other companies, and shown to users. The higher a user base your app regularly gains, the more they can charge for the ads. These can be images in unused space, or videos that will load mid-session\n\n2. **Premium versions.** What you have is the bare bones version. It's simple, crude, missing a lot of features, and generally works fine for simple use. However, you can buy the better version, with much more useful features which the developer is hoping people will opt in for eventually after having seen how useful the bare bones version already is.\n\n3. **Sequels.** When it comes to games, the free app is the first of many. It has a couple of levels, and a bit of the story. Want to play more? Buy the rest of the series in order to find out what happens.\n\n4. **Subscription.** Simply put. Pay $x.xx every so often to carry on using this app. People who enjoy the app will pay up in order to keep using it. Usually this model starts with on month free, in order to allow customers to try it, get used to it, and want to subscribe to it.\n\n5. **Malware.** Sadly some free apps really are too good to be true. While you're getting a free game, the app is noting your details, and the next time you use your credit card to buy something, for example, the app will record your data and send it to the maker without you knowing. This data is then used in identity and credit card fraud.\n\n6. **Cross promotion.** The app is technically free, but exists as a promotional tool. The people who made it are hoping you'll use it to buy something they do sell, such as an app that finds train times making you more willing to catch a train, or a game where you play as Ronald McDonald making you think of McDonald's and making you want burgers. The app is legitimately free as part of a marketing campaign by brand owners t raise brand awareness.\n\n7. **They don't** Surprisingly, not every app is trying to make money. There are app developers who legitimately just wanted to create something useful or helpful. These people at best may use the creation of these apps on their CV to better their career prospects, or maybe the App is part of a public funded service, such as an emergency medical information app, or a tax calculator app."
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4n146j | how do video cameras shift the focus from one thing to another so seamlessly/accurately? | I see it all the time in movies, TV shows, music videos, etc.
The camera is focused on something in the foreground, and then without shifting the frame, the focus moves to the background super quickly.
Is this done automatically within the equipment? Are there multiple sensors that can figure out where to focus on the item in the background and shift the autofocus to that?
Or is it done manually with skill? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4n146j/eli5_how_do_video_cameras_shift_the_focus_from/ | {
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"It is done manually, with skill! Usually by somebody called a focus puller, who is very stiff, very um... Particular... And carrying a tape measure. When you adjust the focus ring on a lens, you're not \"finding\" the focus, you're actually changing the distance from the lens that will appear in sharp focus so to add emphasis or to make up for a shallow depth of field (depth of distance from the lens that appears sharp) you simply pull the focus from one area to another. This 'effect' fascinated me when I was a kid and the quest of finding that information is the very reason I make films and television today!",
"Part of the setup for shooting a scene involves blocking, where the actors are guided to the places they will move to throughout the scene. These are often marked with tape on the floor. \n\nThe camera operator has an assistant who pulls focus. During blocking they will track the exact points of focus and mark it with a dry-erase marker on the [followfocus](_URL_0_). You can see the white part is where they make the markings. Then the focus puller turns the knob at the right time to the marked points when shooting."
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42olej | why aren't carbon monoxide detectors on cars? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42olej/eli5_why_arent_carbon_monoxide_detectors_on_cars/ | {
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"What would be the purpose of such a device? Cars which use an internal combustion engine release carbon monoxide when the engine is running. You don't need a monitor to detect that. And you already know not to run the car in an enclosed space because of that fact. "
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edwksf | how do mathematicians come up with equations that describe natural phenomena? | Where do they start from? How did we get the equations for motion, thermodynamics and gravity? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/edwksf/eli5_how_do_mathematicians_come_up_with_equations/ | {
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"They run experiments, collect datapoints and then try to come up with some maths that fits the data.",
"There is a simple rule that I was taught by my AP Physics teacher: nature favors simple relationships. So you can guess the basics, such as f=ma, and take derivatives and integrals to figure out everything else.",
"They don't. Mathematicians come up with equations that describe a relation between mathematical entities and then maybe scientists will use them if they're applicable to a natural phenomena. Many mathematicians works on things while not knowing if they will one day be useful outside of mathematics.",
"It can be quite different for each physical equation. Some is simply collect data, find equation that matches.\n\nFor things like gravity or electromagnetism, they have a very geometric / pictorial source. It can be easier to develop the ideas as pictures and diagrams, then deduce the equations from the pictures.\n\nFor example, Newton’s law of gravity and Coulomb law have an inverse-square property, the strength decreases as the square of the distance. This can be seen quite easily when you draw the force field lines exiting from a point",
"Physicists. Not Mathematicians.\n\nExperimental Physics is essentially nothing more than finding the best approximations to (unknown) complicated objects. \"best\" in the sense that the result becomes reasonably matched to experiments you do on those objects.\n\nTheoretical physics takes those laws, finds a common principle, and \"takes guesses\" on other laws in other objects to be studied by experimental physics.\n\nThis goes back and forth until we get new technologies. New technologies also allow for better experiments (and iPhones, yes).",
"You observe phenomena, use past knowledge to develop a formula that describes that phenomena, and then test it to see if it works. \n\nSo for example if your trying to figure out how gravity works, maybe you try to figure out how it works for the earth-moon system and then apply it to the jupiter-sun system as a test. \n\n\n\n\nHere's one way to derive newtonian gravity \n\nWe start with F=ma, and the other two laws of motion proven (newton had already done that work) \n\nHe also new that the force of gravity, at least at the surface of the earth is F_g=m*g (cause Galileo) \n\nwhere m, is the mass of whatever is falling and g is the acceleration due to gravity (9.81 m/s^2 ). but g is just something that we observe experimentally, and we have no reason to suspect that F_g=m*g is true everywhere. \n\nSo we can just more broadly say that F∝m, where ∝ is mathese for \"is proportional to\". So we know that the force of gravity is proportional to the mass of the falling object. \n\nNewton then makes a fairly well reasoned leap and says that if gravity is universal, everything should have it's own gravity. By his third law then if Earth acts on the falling mass, the falling mass should act on the Earth, and that action should be equal. ie, we can say F_g∝M the force of gravity is also proportional to the mass of the earth. \n\nNewton then goes \"well gravity should also work for the moon\". the moon in orbit is a rotating system, and those systems had been well studied by time Newton did his work on gravity. So Newton knew that if the moon was held in orbit by gravity, then the force of gravity had to be the centripetal force hold the system together (otherwise the moon would fall into the earth, or go careening off into the solar system) \n\nSo newton assumes that the force of gravity looks similar to the equation for a centripetal force, and after doing a bit of math shows that \n\nFg=4*pi^2 *m*r/T^2 \n\nwhere m is the mass of something in orbit, r is the orbital radius and T is the period of its orbit. You then arrange that to get:\n\nFg*T^2 /r=4*pi^2 *m\n\nNewton also had Kepler's laws of planetary motion to work with (which kepler had worked out through very careful anyslsis of some extremely detailed astronomical observation. Of particular interest here is the third one:\n\nThe square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.\n\nThe third one is of interest here, because in math form, it says that\n\nT^2 /r^3=constant, and that kinda looks a bit like the T^2 /r*F_g=constant equation we've got there. And of course newton's law of gravity has to agree with every one of Kepler's laws (otherwise something has gone very wrong somewhere) You can't get two entirely unrelated constants out of that. So if everything's on the right track, we can assume that kepler's law holds, and what we've found is just found another expression for keplers law. \n\nif that's true, then F_g=(k/r^2), where k will be just some constant that makes everything equal to Kepler's constant \n\nso now we have a third proportionality:\n\nF_g∝1/r^2 \n\nor the force of gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. \n\n\nWe can then combine those three into one big proportionately. Properly justifying this take a bit of calculus so I'm going to hand wave it (you need to show that all masses can be replaced by a point mass at their center for example, which is something Newton beat his head on for a while) , but you get:\n\nF_g∝m*M/r^2 \n\nAt that point, if you've done the math right, you should be able to take that proportionality, and start putting numbers in and comparing it to real world data. If you've got the right form of equation, you'll find that either it's exactly right (probably not, but maybe), or that its off by a constant amount every single time. \n\nSo in this case: F_g=G*m*M/r^2 \n\n\nwhich should look pretty familiar if you did high school physics. \n\n\nSo now we have to move on to testing it. \n\nthe value of G and the mass of the earth were unknown, and wouldn't be really settled till Cavendish did his work about a century later.However if you pick your test carefully, you can work around those unknowns. One of the things Newton did was to use his equation to calculate the orbital period of the moon. he knew the acceleration of gravity at the earth's surface, he knew the earth's radius and he knew the distance to the moon was about 60 times the earth's radius. So if his inverse square law is true, the force of gravity holding the moon in orbit should be about 60^2 times weaker. Feel free to work through the math yourself, but Newton found something a hair over 27 days, which was really rather accurate. He also showed that his inverse square law produced every single one of Kepler's laws, which is a bit tricker to do."
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1z4j4e | why a front facing camera flips the image it takes? | It makes my face looks weird | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z4j4e/eli5_why_a_front_facing_camera_flips_the_image_it/ | {
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"The image a camera takes of you is how you look to other people. The image you see in a mirror is the flipped one, but it is the one you're used to. \nThat's why people think they look weird in photographs - because their face in a photo is not one they normally recognise.",
"It's what your face actually looks to other people. You're just used to the flipped image in the mirror.",
"When you are just looking at the live image from the front camera on the screen, the software flips the image, the same way as a mirror does. If you hold up your right hand, the image appears to hold up its left hand. When people look at themselves, they are used to doing it in a mirror, so this looks and feels natural to them.\n\nIf you actually take a picture, it *doesn't* flip the recorded image. It is oriented correctly. If there is text on your shirt, it will be readable. Your right hand will still be your right hand. This is different to taking a picture of yourself in a mirror, for example.\n"
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zbb1h | electromagnets and superconductors | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zbb1h/eli5_electromagnets_and_superconductors/ | {
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6asbew | where did all the soil come from? | When the Earth was being formed it was essentially a ball of rock. How did soil come to be if there was nothing but lava and rock?
Or am I just missing something here?
Edit: Wow guys, thanks for the replies. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6asbew/eli5_where_did_all_the_soil_come_from/ | {
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"Rock breaks down into sand and fine particles primarily because of water (running water, freezing cycles, and wave action) but also wind, gravity, and even solar energy.\n\nAfter the molten earth cooled enough, and liquid water was in place, the water not only broke down the rocks but leached elements from those rocks, such as magnesium, calcium, and potassium. Microscopic organisms evolved to use amino acids present in the environment as energy. Eventually they became more complex, gaining the ability to use sunlight and oxygen, as well as expelling carbon dioxide. After an atmosphere developed that blocked cosmic radiation, the organisms moved onto land. They also started dying on land. \n\nOver time the processes of life, energy use, bio waste, death, rock erosion, and weather allowed this raw material to form into soil. Early soils were a lot different than what we know today, but as the environments changed, so did the soil. \n\n(Source. _URL_0_)",
"In addition to erosion from weather and water and the role of bacteria:\n\nAsteroid impacts. The force blasts apart mountains into rock and dust. On the Moon, this layer of dust is called the regolith - a perpetual layer of very fine dust never reforms into rock because the Moon isn't geologically active. On Earth, that dust and rock will eventually get recycled back into the crust and get pressed by the mass of the Earth into hard rock, or melted into the liquid mantle. But it helped form the initial layers of rock and soil.\n\nGeological activity: volcanoes explode, also blowing rock and dust all over the place, not to mention the mountain-forming and mountain-breaking power of the shifting continents. Geological activity is vital because it cycles important minerals up to the surface of the Earth. Volcanic soil is very fertile.\n\nPlants: root systems will slowly work their way into rock to get at water and minerals in the rock. Over tens or hundreds of years, the roots will create deep cracks, allowing weather to get into the rock and breaking the rock into smaller and smaller chunks.\n\nParrotfish poop: it's not really relevant to the production of soil on land, but a huge portion of the rocky sand found in reefs is the result of parrotfish that eat stony corals, digesting the flesh of the coral, crunching the stony skeleton and pooping out the remains as fine rocky sand.",
"TL;WR :: Erosion, Dissolution, and Poop\n\n1. Gross mechanical processes turn large chunks into small chunks.\n2. Chemical processes dissolve things, particularly water and such.\n3. Biology is chock full of gross mechanical and chemical processes.\n\nSo there's a difference between \"dirt\" and \"soil\".\n\nDirt (and silt, and clay, and sand) is the mechanical, un-living accumulation of fine particles of minerals and metals and ash and whatever.\n\nSoil is what happens when dirt is full of living material and organic byproducts (recently living but now shredded or dead stuff).\n\nSo dirt is formed by grinding up and dissolving rocks and such.\n\nWhen a little dirt shows up somewhere then hardy organisms tend to show up just a little later - or in the case of lichen and moss, sometimes really super hardy organisms show up first.\n\nWindblown dirt-and-dust collects in the crevices and then organisms (bacteria, fungus, algae, whatever) take shelter in the dirt-and-dust and use the mineral wealth of the dirt to thrive. As they grow and die there's now more mineral wealth along with some fixed carbon and nitrogen in the little microscopic corpses and poop stuck to the dust and dirt, and larger organisms can show up.\n\nWith more sticky and more crevices comes more dirt and dust, with more dirt and dust comes more places to get sticky and so on.\n\nSo if you grab a selection of moss you'll find that dirt is collecting between the fibers and becoming soil.\n\nIf you look at a decaying woodpile, you'll find the same thing.\n\nSo all these small cycles add up over thousands of square miles of dirt and dust, over millions of years.\n\nEventually you've got herds of bison and cows and deer and raccoons and prairie dogs and spiders and bugs and whatever constantly living and pooping and dying. Turning more and more dirt into thicker and better soil that's full of more and more diverse things like bacteria and fungus and bugs and worms and microscopic plants and animals and so on.\n\nWe'd be neck-deep in soil... but soil has enemies too.\n\nSoil can get washed away, which at natural levels is good for the water right there and down-stream. Soil can be crushed until it suffocates and becomes packed dirt again. Soil can be buried under dirt or ash and so sufficate. Soil can be dried out until it's just dust.\n\nSoil can also be killed by too much acid or too much alkali or to much salt (salt being what you get when you mix acid and alkali).\n\nAnd some biological systems \"don't like\" soil.\n\nFor instance \"rainforests\" tend to have very little soil. The rainforests are deeply invested in the nitrogen and nitric acid cycles. So all their biological value is in the living plants. The ground beneath the plants is very acidic and so there's lots of dirt but only a tiny layer of soil. This is a _necessary_ configuration, but when someone decides to burn down some rainforest to create a cow pasture or farm, they'll use up the tiny, crappy layer of soil in just a year or two.\n\nIt's easy for something disruptive, like a farm, to \"use up\" the soil and then there's nothing left but dirt. Especially if the local soil is the result of buffalo and grass and wolves and prairie dogs, but the farmer drives off all of that and just plants corn or wheat. The soil was used to a diet of all that other stuff and now it starves... like trying to make your dog a vegan, it's just not the right food for the organism at hand.\n\n"
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1k4xfr | why were capitalism and communism so vehemently in opposition to the other in the cold war, and sought to subvert each other even if it sprung up in wildly different cultures and places? | why do we hate communists? genuinely curious about the great ideological struggle of the previous generation. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k4xfr/eli5_why_were_capitalism_and_communism_so/ | {
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"Capitalist thought starts from the idea that a system that lets people keep all the wealth they produce will give the greatest overall wealth. They also believe that anyone willing to work in such a wealthy system would get enough to lead a good life.\n\nCommunists thought differently. They believed that a Capitalist system led to very unfair divisions of wealth, leaving even people who worked hard poor. Their answer was to let everyone work for the government, and then let the government divide the resulting wealth. This is better for those that would be poor under a Capitalist system, but worse for those that would be rich.\n\nOn a global scale, the fights between the USSR and the USA had to do with power. A Communist country naturally wanted to trade more with the USSR and support the USSR, as they had the same idea how the world should look. This was of course bad for the USA, as they had fewer countries willing to work with them and less opportunities for trade. The same was true in reverse.\n\n",
"Capitalism originated in England and Germany due to low tariffs and laissez faire liberal government in the latter half of the 19th century. This was also a result of the decline of mercantilism in the 1810s. Communism originated in England and Germany; Marx was born in Germany and lived for some time in England. It could be said that communism developed in opposition to capitalism and neither would have existed without the other in the form that they do today."
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2nlf7n | - why can't we use acid to get rid of trash? | There's all kinds of un-biodegradable trash laying around, killing animals, right? So why can't we just take a vat of like hydroflouric acid or a similar, very strong acid, dissolve the trash in it, then neutralize the acid? Seems like a win-win -- no trash, no acid. I feel like it's too good to be true but I don't know why | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nlf7n/eli5_why_cant_we_use_acid_to_get_rid_of_trash/ | {
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"Partly because acid is expensive, partly because whatever the product of the reaction with the acid is may be more dangerous than the trash itself.",
"There are so many problems with this, I don't even know where to start:\n\nAcid: expensive and poisonous\nBase: expensive and poisonous\nNeutralization: can be pretty difficult\nAcids and bases aren't just acids and bases that'll \"dissolve\" anything. Certain acids dissolve certain compounds and certain bases dissolve certain compounds. Trash is not just trash so it can't just be \"dissolved\".\nThe trash you're talking about, is that laying around in nature? do we have to collect it before we \"dissolve\" it or can we just \"dissolve it right there?\n\nIf we're collecting it before we \"dissolve\" it, then there's no need to use the acid, since we then have it under control, but collecting it would be unfathomably expensive and time consuming. If we \"dissolve\" it where ever it is, we'd fuck nature up way more than the garbage did in the first place, even if we tried to neutralize it.\n\nThis is not even scratching the surface of reasons why this wouldn't work, but it should be enough to see why.\n\n\nIf you're talking about trash in landfills etc. then there's really no reason to spend enormous amounts of resources to get rid of it, since it's doing relatively little harm.\n\nAnother way to deal with trash:\n\nHere in Denmark we burn most of our non-reusables in Central heat plants, where there is a lot of control, filtration and cleaning of the output, so the air that comes out is actually cleaner than the air that goes in. The ash we use mostly as sub-base in roads.\nEven though there are a bit of fairly dangerous compounds in the ash (such as lead and other heavy metals), we test the stability of the ash composition before using it, so we know it's safe and won't seep into the groundwater.",
"Acid doesn't magically make matter disappear, if you had x tons of material before you'll still have x tons of material later, and solids are denser than liquids. Handling it would be far too difficult."
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jqesh | the difference between density and pressure | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jqesh/eli5_the_difference_between_density_and_pressure/ | {
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"Density is how much of something there is in a certain volume.\n\nPressure is how much something want to move away from where it is.\n\nThey are related, especially when talking about ideal gases (double the density doubles the pressure), but pressure can change without the density changing, by increasing the temperature.",
"Pressure is measured as a force per unit area. When you turn your faucet on slightly compared to fully open, the force of the extant water out of the spigot per area that it is expelled is increased, thus increasing the pressure. In another case, if you were to whack a hammer against a wall, the force would disperse along the whole area of the hammerhead. However, when you whack a nail with a small area, it's pounded into a wall with greater pressure since the same force is constrained into a small area.\n\nDensity on the other hand is a ratio of mass (the amount of matter in an object) to its volume (the amount of space that object takes up). Density is always fixed for a given material, but can vary slightly depending on ambient temperature or pressure since this may slightly expand or contract the molecules that make up the object.\n\nPressure and density are related by \"equations of state\", many of which are useful for engineering calculations.",
"Stones are dense, but they don't have pressure in themselves. If you put a stone on top of your head, stone makes pressure on your head.",
"Density is how much of something there is in a certain volume.\n\nPressure is how much something want to move away from where it is.\n\nThey are related, especially when talking about ideal gases (double the density doubles the pressure), but pressure can change without the density changing, by increasing the temperature.",
"Pressure is measured as a force per unit area. When you turn your faucet on slightly compared to fully open, the force of the extant water out of the spigot per area that it is expelled is increased, thus increasing the pressure. In another case, if you were to whack a hammer against a wall, the force would disperse along the whole area of the hammerhead. However, when you whack a nail with a small area, it's pounded into a wall with greater pressure since the same force is constrained into a small area.\n\nDensity on the other hand is a ratio of mass (the amount of matter in an object) to its volume (the amount of space that object takes up). Density is always fixed for a given material, but can vary slightly depending on ambient temperature or pressure since this may slightly expand or contract the molecules that make up the object.\n\nPressure and density are related by \"equations of state\", many of which are useful for engineering calculations.",
"Stones are dense, but they don't have pressure in themselves. If you put a stone on top of your head, stone makes pressure on your head."
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63whtv | why is packing/moving so stressful? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63whtv/eli5_why_is_packingmoving_so_stressful/ | {
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"Because it puts you under pressure. Lots to do in a limited time frame plus physical labor and planning the logistics, looking forward to undoing it all at your destination.... ",
"My theory on why moving is SO exhausting and stressful - whether across town or across a country - is the way our brain works.\n\nIn your current home/apartment/dwelling, you have a myriad of cognitive spatial information (also known as a mind map) which stores all the \"routes\" to where everything is, from mustard to magazines. Your brain has fired these physical pathways over time until they're set in stone practically.\n\nThen along comes The Move. You put everything in boxes and all that information in the mind map is suddenly no longer valid. You brain kind of explodes a lil bit. Incredibly disconcerting, unsettling and vulnerable. \n\nSo, not only is there the stress of physically placing all your possessions in boxes and moving them over distances, but also it takes incredible effort and energy to literally break those brain pathways, forget, wipe those parts of your hard drive. \n\nThen you have to re-fire NEW pathways, over and over again until they re-form and you can find the mustard, magazines, towels, scissors, etc. in your new place. Not to mention the location of the gas station/post office, etc. outside the new home.\n\nMillions of tiny re-firings per hour, day after day however long the move takes. It's a wonder anyone does it at all. A modern day syndrome."
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anm2d2 | why aren’t older gaming consoles emulated on phones these days? new phones have powerful processors/displays and should be able to handle nes, snes, sega genesis, etc. right? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/anm2d2/eli5_why_arent_older_gaming_consoles_emulated_on/ | {
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"There are emulators out there, as well as emulators for early PC games. I'm not sure why you think there aren't. The reason the original companies don't make the games again is that it doesn't make much money. So you have to rely on community programmers instead. ",
"There isn't really a lot one can say in answer to this except that they are.\n\nFlagship phones can easily handle everything up to PS1/N64 era games. There are numerous projects that focus on individual platforms and others that try and amalgamate numerous systems into one emulation platform.\n\nThe only real hurdle is controls. Playing games like these with touchscreen controls isn't the most satisfying, but otherwise it's both possible and widespread."
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44b51a | can someone explain me how thermite can work in this scenario? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44b51a/eli5_can_someone_explain_me_how_thermite_can_work/ | {
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"I'm a little confused about what your saying, but thermite doesn't explode. More like, it burns really violently, throwing off sparks and hot material all over. It would potentially ignite anything in the vicinity that could burn, but it wouldn't make anything blow up. "
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5q2q6v | how can solids keep its form if the atoms that make it up are constantly moving? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5q2q6v/eli5_how_can_solids_keep_its_form_if_the_atoms/ | {
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"In a solid the atoms that make it up is not constantly moving. That is the difference between a solid and a liquid. The atoms are moving a bit but they will not move past each other and will therefore keep its general configuration. Some solids, especially pure metals, will allow you to mold the solid as you can move the atoms around ",
"In solids the are only vibrating in their place, not moving around like in liquids or gasses.\n\nYou can see the forces keeping the atoms attracted to each other as rubber bands:\n\nIn solids these rubber bands are stretched, but they are still of rubber, allowing some motion, vibration. \n\nIn a liquid they are lose so the atoms can move more and sometimes they come closer to other atoms so they attach their rubber bands to them instead, thus the atoms are moving around, but as a whole the liquid is sticking together. \n\nIn a gas, the atoms have so much energy that they are too fast and too far apart to even attach to each other with the rubber bands most of the time, should they bump into each other anyway the rubber band isn't strong enough to overcome their high movement energy, so they don't stick together and rather spread out over time - they diffuse.",
"They're linked together like a chain. So tightly that only the smallest molecules can pass through them. Usually those small molecules don't have the energy to break a bond in the solid so the shape is unchanged. It's been awhile since I studied this stuff but I think that's why."
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55me2s | how does someone in stocks make money off of the "put option" where you bet on the value going down? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55me2s/eli5_how_does_someone_in_stocks_make_money_off_of/ | {
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"A put option give the owner of the stock the right, but not the obligation to sell a stock at a certain price.\n\nXYZ is currently at $100 a share. You buy a put option from me, giving you the right to make me buy it at $95 a share. \n\nIf XYZ goes down to $90, you buy it, then make me buy it from you for $95. That nets you $5 profit, minus the cost of the option.\n\nIf XYZ doesn't go below $95, you are out what you paid for the option, which is profit for me.",
"I buy a put contract from you for 100 shares of a company for $10 per share. Say I pay a premium of $1 per share for this. \n\nThis means that once the contract expires, you've agreed to buy 100 shares of stock from me--if I choose to sell them to you--no matter the stock's current value. The only thing I pay up front is the premium, so I'm currently out $100.\n\nThe stock of said company drops to $7 per share. I buy 100 shares at the current market value (7*100 = $700) and sell them to you at the $10/share rate we agreed to.\n\nI've now spent $800 total ($100 for the premium and $700 for the stocks) and you paid me $1000, resulting in a $200 profit for me.\n\nIf the price of the stock goes up, I exercise the right (or my option) to not sell you the stocks in which case I'm only out $100 (since I don't buy any stocks in this case)."
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37eu3b | what happens when your ac is set on cool, but it becomes cooler outside than what your thermostat is set at? | I was told when I was younger than that this strains your AC system and uses more energy.
Example, it's 68 degrees outside but your AC unit set on the "cool" setting is set at 75 degrees. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37eu3b/eli5_what_happens_when_your_ac_is_set_on_cool_but/ | {
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"It depends on whether the AC is set to \"On\" or \"Auto\". If it's set to \"On\" it will continue to blow cool air forever. If it's set to \"Auto\" it will cool the house down to whatever temperature you set it at and then turn off.",
"I cannot fathom any combination of factors that would make a coil based ac unit less efficient in cooler temps...\n\nwith that said, some regions use evaporitive cooling, or swamp coolers. THey are most efficient at low humidity. cooler temps may have higher humidity making it less efficient."
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fahawp | what's the difference between sanitize and disinfect? | On cleaning products, the instructions says to leave the product for 5 minutes to sanitize or 30 minutes to disinfect. What's the difference? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fahawp/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_sanitize_and/ | {
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"sanitizing something kills 99.9% like you see on the products.\n\nDisinfecting is killing 100% of bacteria",
"According to the EPA, which regulates sanitizers and disinfectants for inanimate objects in the US.\n_URL_0_\n\nSanitizers:\n\nUsed to reduce, but not necessarily eliminate, microorganisms from the inanimate environment to levels considered safe as determined by public health codes or regulations. Sanitizers include:\n\n food contact products - These products are important because they are used on sites where consumable food products are placed and stored. Sanitizing rinses are used on surfaces such as:\n dishes and cooking utensils\n equipment and utensils found in:\n dairies\n food-processing plants\n eating and drinking establishments\n non-food contact products - Non-food contact surface sanitizers include:\n carpet sanitizers\n air sanitizers\n laundry additives\n in-tank toilet bowl sanitizers.\n\n\nDisinfectants\n\nUsed on, nonliving surfaces and objects to destroy or irreversibly inactivate infectious fungi and bacteria but not necessarily their spores. Disinfectant products are divided into two major types:\n\n hospital type disinfectants are critical to infection control and are used on:\n medical and dental instruments\n floors\n toilet seats, and other surfaces\n general use disinfectants are the major source of products used in:\n households\n swimming pools\n water purifiers\n\n\nThe level of sanitization also depends on the type of surface. For non-food contact surfaces it's 99.9%. For it to be acceptable for food contact surfaces it needs to be 99.999%. Also, the EPA does not approve sanitizers for viruses. This should not be confused with hand sanitizers, which is regulated by the FDA because it is used on the body."
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3lsff0 | why are republicans pushing to defund planned parenthood when taxpayer money can't be used for abortions? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lsff0/eli5_why_are_republicans_pushing_to_defund/ | {
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"Its an attempt to get their base out to vote. Since its more than a year until the elections this is probably premature. Really it would've been much more helpful if they'd waited for at least 2016 to actually start.\n\nBut yeah. Its just politics to get their base out to vote.",
"It's a social issue and an election is coming up.\n\nIf a governing party has no plan for governing, they must adhere to social issues for votes.\n\nThis way nobody is expecting somebody like Trump to actually discuss things like foreign policy, global warming, oil dependency, wage inequality, defense budget, the NSA, congressional insider trading, infrastructure, our military's suicide rates, heathcare, or immigration.\n\nWe instead can focus on things like abortion, the erosion of Christian power in government, Transsexuals, Gay marriage, etc.\n\nEdit: fixed a capital T.",
"If PP has to choose between paying their utility bills and paying for an abortion and I come in and pay their utility bills I have in effect paid for an abortion. The law prohibiting taxpayer money going towards abortions doesn't actually work because money is fungible.",
"As everyone has said, money is fungible. To explain---\n\nImagine you have only two expenses: Rent which is $500 and a drug habit which is $500. You make $500 a month. Your income allows you to pay for one bill. Your parents call and say they will give you $500 to put towards your expenses, but they don't want you to spend it on drugs. You obviously say \"no problem, I'll put it towards rent\" and use your other income to pay for the drugs.\n\nPlanned Parenthood does the same thing with our tax dollars. By providing them with money you are funding their abortion practice by default.",
"The Republican perspective is based on two things:\n\n1. Having to underwrite the number one abortion provider in the United States\n2. Standard culture war dynamics \n\nMost Republicans oppose abortion because they believe that a fetus is a human being. Therefore it has rights that should be protected under law, according to their perspective. This means that abortion is murder in most cases. Planned Parenthood performs more than 300,000 abortions per year. That's a plurality of all abortions performed in the United States.\n\nSo when someone says to a Republican that state funding doesn't cover abortions, it doesn't make it better that the state only covers the buildings, the tools, the doctor pay, etc that makes large scale abortions possible. And they are being forced to contribute to this system.\n\nSo even though I don't share their perspective, I can see why they don't want to pay for what they consider to be murder.",
"Planned Parenthood provides abortion services. Despite the Hyde Amendment, the Federal money keeps the lights on/their organization running. Simple logic really. ",
"Politics. There isn't an actual policy goal to it, it's just to score points with the base. Both Democrats and Republicans do it.",
"One thing I don't understand:\n\nLet's say I have $50. I can pay for anything I want with that $50. I spend $10 of it buying candy. Then someone comes along and says \"hey, I'll give you $20, but you **cannot** use it to buy candy\" and I agree.\n\nThen I go spend $30 of my original $50 on Candy. Then I have $20, then I spend their $20 and the leftover $20 in original balance to spend on everything else. So what ends up happening is I spend more money on candy, but I still spent *my* money on candy and the money with the rules attached to it on things that were *not* candy.\n\nBut in reality, they enabled me to spend more on candy than I could have if they had not given me the money, so how is that any different from me buying the candy with their $20?\n\n",
"The \"can't be used for abortions\" is not something anybody honestly believes, it's just liberal talking point. It's part of same organization's budget, paying for same staff, buildings, admin etc. It pays for abortions indirectly.\n\nIf they really believed it, they'd split abortion business into separate organization, but if that happened, they'd stop receiving de facto taxpayer money for abortions.",
"Because both dems and reps only run on social issues now, no real solutions just pandering to the base. ",
"Pandering to voters. They need the religious right more than ever because they've alienated all rational, moderate, non-crazy Republicans.",
"Because, in spite of the fact that most of the country subscribes to the notion that the separation of church and state is a good thing, the right-wing Conservatives believe that it is not only their right but their mission to legislate their religious beliefs and enforce them on the rest of the country.",
"Mostly because Planned Parenthood is the number one abortion provider in the U.S. I don't get why this is hard for people to understand. \n\nI am not really a conservative; I'm not religious. I am, however, morally opposed to abortion. I wouldn't quite equate it with murder, but I think it is morally wrong enough that it should be made illegal except in cases of rape or danger to the mother's life.\n\nIf there were a government agency that, despite being mostly dedicated to providing healthcare for the poor, also killed children, would you be okay with it receiving taxpayer money? Wether or not the money goes *specifically* towards killing the children isn't really relevant, as the money is what keeps the lights on. Most conservatives equate abortions with killing children, so it really is as simple as that.",
"The argument is that money is fungible. It's like somebody saying to you \"I see that you are making $60K per year. I'm going to give you another $20K, but I don't want you to spend this $20K on a car.\" You then, go out and buy a car. When he comes back and complains, you say \"No, I bought my car out of the $60K, not the $20K. I spent the $20K on food, clothing and housing.\" (Which is what you were spending the $60K on before you got the $20K.)",
"I mean playing devils advocate here... But if the money doesn't go directly to abortions it still goes to fund the whole thing...",
"A follow - on question on this topic: Why is the decision being made to attack one of the providers of abortions, yet there is no attempt being made to challenge the legality of abortions? Because (and correct me if I'm wrong) blocking PP from performing abortions just means that women are going to be forced to use less safe & professional providers. ",
"It's because the first stage of the plan (make people associate PP with abortion, and abortion with murder of babies) worked so well, now they move to defund it, making them look like heroes.",
"Why not just have government run abortions centres that are free to use? Means more women could have safer abortions and reduce the number of unwanted children especially in low income/ poverty areas. These children statistically go on to commit the most crime. Wouldn't it be better for everyone?",
"I thought the issue was that planned parenthood was selling the fetuses for research or whatever? Correct me if I'm wrong. ",
"Because most Republicans are die hard Christians and vice versa, and this is one of those \"2 birds with 1 stone\" scenarios",
"It isn't to de-fund Planned Parenthood--that is doomed to fail and every single legislator already knows it. It isn't to score political points--the teabagger wing is going to get blamed for shutting down the government while accomplishing nothing and they will look like feckless idiots, exactly like the last time they pulled this very same stunt.\n\nThey are going to shut down the government because they have the leverage and they _can_. They know it causes so much mayhem and strife and a lot of people can't go to work and don't get paid, it puts the entire country into an absolute tailspin, and they want that. Because this is all their politics represents--blind ignorant nihilist rage.",
"It is absolutely nothing but pandering. If you think people like Ted Cruz give two shits about PP and abortion, you haven't been paying attention.",
"Everyone who opposes abortion should have to foot the bill to pay for the kids they are responsible for being born. They wouldn't oppose it much longer if they had to deal with the consequences of their actions.",
"Is this an issue worth shutting down the government?",
"Because our tax payer dollars are being used to advertise and sell it according to the Government Accountability Office more than 1.5 billion in tax dollars were used to promote abortion as \"reproductive healthcare\". Not that I am a republican but I am pro-life.",
"Taxpayer money is used for abortions.\n\nWhen 'Planned' Parenthood gets money they use it to cover whatever costs, this frees up money to be spent on abortions even if tax dollars are not directly paying for them.",
"Because the republicans want to win the votes of the religious people in our country. In general, religious people don't agree with abortions. Since republicans can't realistically fight the laws for abortions themselves, they go after planned parenthood. It's really their only front line attack right now on the issue. It's kind of pathetic how it's being played out like this. And we as Americans have to accept it because there are a lot of religious people who want this to keep happening. \n\nBasically, it's part of what we call the culture wars. The US is split right now culturally between two sides. One side is more secular (allow women to have abortions, accept gays, and science) and the other side is religious (wants to outlaw abortions and gay marriage, against science). Currently the democrats appeal to the secular and the republicans tend to appeal to the religious. \n\nPeople will disagree with me on this, but if they do it's because they are a counter example, and not because it isn't true in general. It is true for example that you can be a republican and still be pro science. But in general the republicans (as a party) have to be careful accepting science because they risk losing the religious votes if they embrace evolution too much, and they may lose the votes of corporations (and the religious) if they embrace climate change.\n\nI personally think the republicans are playing a losing game by taking this approach. As we become more enlightened we become less strict in our religious stances. Take for example the tides of gay marriage. The problem is that there are many religious areas that are not changing and these areas are still large enough that they are worth trying to get votes out of. So somebody has to try and appeal to them. Currently the republicans are, but this may not turn out to be as helpful to them as it is harmful since it puts them on the losing side in the long run. The same thing goes for immigration. Currently the republicans are typically appealing to those in our country who oppose immigration. But again, it's a losing battle in the long run as more and more of our population are minorities. So the question I ask, is how much longer can they rely on the religious and anti-minority votes before the cost of appealing to these groups becomes greater than the benefit? In my opinion, the sooner they ditch it the better off we will all be. Because then maybe I could vote for a republican without the unwanted side affect of lying in the same bed as the racists, anti-science, and religious extremists in our country.\n\nPeople will likely down vote my answer to your question, mostly because they don't like it put in such black and white terms, not because it isn't true.",
"Short and simple....\n\nEach side picks a boogyman and then makes outlandish claims against them knowing that the target audience doesn't care enough to check if what is saying is actually true or not.\n\nFor the right, whose base mostly identifies as religious to very religious, this is any group loosely associated with abortion.",
"Republicans manipulate fundamentalists into voting for them, string them on with breadcrums of regressive social change by enforcing stupid religious laws, meanwhile they use their positions to rig the economy in the favor of the wealthy who funded their campaigns. Meanwhile said fundamentalists ramp up the fundamentalism because they have a political party of their own now, the more outspoken fundamentalism gets and the more relevant the social issue becomes. All social issues are bullshit distractions, but because of the drama involved it gets far more attention then the other things that impact our daily lives far more. If the economy stayed as strong as it was in the 60's we would have organically worked out all the social issues by now. Keep in mind when I say economy, I mean economy for the little guy. It used to be a single earner could work 40 a week with two kids and own their own home and a car, ever wonder what happened to that? Ever watch old TV shows and wonder how a dad can singlehandedly support a family, and then comes the episode where the dad has to explain to his kid that they can't buy something extravagant for him, because daddy doesn't make so much money.\n\nInstead politicians use the fake power struggle over basic human dignity as a smokescreen while they're in the background dismantling the government and selling it off to the highest bidder.",
"There's probably a million other things they should be talking about, but this something that gets people the most riled. This is I think the Republican Party is bullshit. "
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ty5jm | who chooses where the olympics are going to be? | I get that there is a council, but who elects them? Isn't the idea that the Olympics reflect the entire world lost if it is led by one Belgian man? And who pays for everything? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ty5jm/eli5_who_chooses_where_the_olympics_are_going_to/ | {
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"The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is a group whose membership includes one representative from every country that participates in the Olympics. The IOC will request proposals and cities will submit them. There is a multi-part process where the IOC votes on where the next Olympics will be held.",
"The Olympics is run by the International Olympic Committee, which is made up of members from almost every country. There are currently 106 members from around the world.\n\nEach time they need to pick a new host, interested parties put forward their bid and the other members vote on who should win.\n\nBidding to become the host is [kind of a big deal](_URL_0_) and unfortunately there's been plenty of rumours of bribery and corruption in order to attain votes.\n\nAs for who pays for everything? The Olympics are watched right around the globe, and so income from both TV rights and sponsorship will benefit the IOC to the tune of a couple of billion Euro each time. It's a nice money-making affair, and don't let anybody try and tell you otherwise,"
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9nvkv1 | why does our body's blood pressure become lower following long bed rest, when sedentary people usually have higher blood pressure? | For example, I had a recent operation and couldn't move normally for a good while, so I had prolonged bed rest. During this time, I felt dizzier and had little readings on a blood pressure monitor. If most people say being inactive raises blood pressure, why does being inactive lying down lower it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9nvkv1/eli5_why_does_our_bodys_blood_pressure_become/ | {
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"I suppose the caveat is inactivity and poor diet, also stress. You were in a lower stress situation with a somewhat limited diet. However you also have the instance of muscle wasting if you were on bed rest for more than a week or two. If so your muscle when they are activated aren’t having as much an affect (milking effect) on your circulatory system as they did when you were regularly moving."
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edzooe | most of the time, you can find a ‘generic’ product of similar quality and ingredients. why hasn’t anyone been able to accomplish that with crayons? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/edzooe/eli5_most_of_the_time_you_can_find_a_generic/ | {
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"Some generic products are made on the same machines as namebrand products. \n\nCrayola has some brand secrets and doesn't manufacture knockoffs. Same as Coke, which is arguably the best cola.\n\nMost people don't care about making a better crayon.",
"I'm inclined to agree with other comments that nobody cares to make a better crayon than Crayola. They've had the market locked for 100 years. Reinventing the crayon is just as much of an uphill battle as deciding to compete directly with McDonald's at Happy meals.\n\nCrayons are mostly seen as a child's product, so really only parents and teachers buy them. Schools can get them supplied along with the rest of the Crayola line (markers, pencil crayons, plasticine, construction paper, etc etc) with the possibility of some sort of bulk/wholesale discount. Not to mention the reputation for quality, and the niche products like dry-erase crayons or the multicultural skin tone packs. Kids get bored of the standard 8 pretty fast.\n\nBrand awareness makes a parent buying their kid Crayola almost mandatory. They might get away with generic crayons for a bit, but soon enough their child will want something on par with what the class supplies as well as what the other kids are using. Also crayons are pretty cheap, potentially you could offset the cost of brand name crayons with a no-name pencil case, for example",
"Pigment is expensive, wax is cheap. Non-crayola crayons tend to go for more wax less pigment, making them cheaper to produce. Plus everything everyone else already said.",
"Sorry for formatting, I am on mobile.\nTL;DR: Too small profit margins on the product, industry success based on lowest costs and existing relationships.\n\n-\n\nI did a small project on the marketing and distribution channels of the crayon market with the basic findings below:\n\n-\n\nThe problem is that in order to compete in similar quality but at a cheaper price point you would have to cut margins on an already extremely low margin product. The biggest cost to crayons is the distribution of them. \n\n-\n\nThink of it, they are available pretty much everywhere and are a super cheap product where a few cents are a large portion of the profit margin. The transport companies get a share, the retailer's get a share, and you have to pay for marketing, the production and packaging, and each sale is only $1-$5. Now you have to get them from the production facilities to every school supply store, every pharmacy, every dollar store, etc. That's not cheap considering the weight and density compared to value of the product.\n\n-\n\nTo have a product of equal quality you need the same ingredients for less, but the big names already have huge bulk discounts from suppliers and existing relationships with the distribution chains. This means a \"generic\" brand would have to produce just as much as Crayola to get ingredient discounts, and take an even smaller profit. Add to that they would have to spend much more on marketing since the big brands are already known for their quality."
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1io6il | how do cameras focus in on one part of a scene and blur things around it? | Like when you see two people one in front of the other and the person behind is blurred and the person infront is clear. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1io6il/how_do_cameras_focus_in_on_one_part_of_a_scene/ | {
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"A camera works like your eyes. Place your finger about 3 feet from your face and focus your eyes on it. Notice how everything behind it is blurry? Now change your focus to something behind your finger. Now your finger is blurry. The same concept happens with cameras. A difficult thing to do actually is have everything in focus at once. The default for most cameras is to only be able to focus on one distance though I have heard of recent cameras that are able to focus on everything. ",
"What you're asking about is called \"depth of field\". The determining factor of how \"shallow\" or \"deep\" your focus is is the aperture size (I don't actually remember why). \n\nIf it's a bright day out you *have* to \"stop\" your aperture down otherwise everything will be overexposed (a whited out image) and nearly everything will be in focus because you had enough light. \n\nIf it's darker you will need to open your aperture up a bit but there will essentially be a bracket of focus based on your focal point (the object you decided to actually \"focus\" the image on). \n\nSo basically any photography that captures fast action or dark environments will consequently have a shallow depth of field whereas daylight and long exposures will have a deep depth of field. \n\nAs is the case with photography the film speed, exposure length, aperture setting (AKA f-stop), lighting options, etc... can all be manipulated to attempt shallower or deeper DoF to achieve a desired effect."
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4d5d44 | why does almost every creature have two eyes? is there something beneficial to only have two? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4d5d44/eli5_why_does_almost_every_creature_have_two_eyes/ | {
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"Two eyes is the minimum for binocular vision, your brain automatically figures out how far something is by comparing the different images your eyes produce. But eyes are expensive to maintain, they need nutrients and space in a brain to process the information, so most animals evolved to have the minimum number. \nThat being said, many animals have evolved more than two eyes, spiders are one of them and they can see 360 degrees around them at all times. This is very useful as it prevents stuff from sneaking up on a spider, justifying it's additional cost.",
"Two-eyed creatures have more chances to survive because it's easier to tell the distance to food or predator. Add millions of years of natural selection and you will see why two-eyed creatures are everywhere. ",
"In order to use parallax to tell how far away something is (That's when you measure how far away something is by measuring how far it appears to move when you observe it from two different points. We use it to figure out how far away stars are as well.), you need at least two eyes so you have two points of observation. There isn't much benefit to having more than two though, and eyes are very complicated energy and processing power hogs, so we minimize the number we grow.",
"If we're looking at sheer numbers of creatures, most animals have more than two eyes, since the majority of creatures are insects, and possess compound eyes.\n\nThat said, having two eyes is good because it provides a backup eye in case one is injured, allows for depth perception, and helps you see things better because you have two images for your brain to compare and detect objects. However, having eyes is tough. They're very complicated organs, so evolution seems to have settled on two as the perfect number. It balances the pros that I listed with the con of having to feed and maintain extra eyes.",
"most complex animals are bilaterally symmetric, partly due to evolutionary constraints and partly due to the value in symmetry (e.g. two legs let you walk, two wings let you fly). this means two eyes, not one eye. a lot of simpler animals have more than two eyes because their eyes are simpler but they are still bilaterally symmetric.",
"People keep mentioning depth perception, but you have to remember that a lot of two-eyed animals have very little binocular vision (and thus the benefit of good depth perception) as a trade-off for a wider field of vision. Horses, for example, can see almost 360 degrees around them, but have a relatively small field of binocular vision in front of them, as opposed to humans (and most predators) who have forward-facing eyes.",
"About 99% of creatures have more than 2 eyes. Unless you count microbes and bacteria - in which case 99% of all creatures have no eyes.\n\nThere are about 380,000 species of beetles. Not number of beetles, number of species. All have many eyes.\n\nYou just notice the eyes on creatures that are a certain size. Those have 2 eyes because compound eyes do not provide the same type of information as 2 larger eyes (compound eyes are great at detecting movement but not detail).",
"One eye has almost ZERO depth perception and three or more is just a waste unless your head is immensely largelarge.\n\nPredators usually have both eyes facing forward to judge distance to moving prey\n\nPrey have both eyes, roughly speaking, on the sides of the head to give Almost 360^o vision to look for predators.\n\nHTH."
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3bvgd5 | how are people who used to be in shape able to seemingly stay in shape even after they stop working out? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bvgd5/eli5_how_are_people_who_used_to_be_in_shape_able/ | {
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"This doesn't always happen. I've seen people that were body builders get fat pretty quickly after they stop working out regularly (a cousin of mine is a prime example). There are likely a few things that are occurring.\n\nThe first is diet. If they eat healthy - and they probably do since they developed healthy eating habits while they worked out - they won't gain significant weight. They probably refrain from soda, candy, and other high sugar stuff. They probably don't eat a lot of processed foods or eat out very often.\n\nNext, they may still exercise, just not in the typical way. They may stay active through walking more, riding bikes, or playing with their kids. It's not always about pumping iron. Walking for 20 minutes can be just as good for you as running a couple of miles.\n\nAlso, genetics play a huge role in your body's ability to store fat. Some people simply don't store it like others. I'm a pretty skinny guy and never really stored a bunch of fat. I ate and drank the same as my cousins and I grew up skinny and they got a little pudgy. Now that my metabolism is slowing down 'cause I'm getting older I have to watch what I eat a bit more, but all the same - genetics can play a big role.\n\nMy guess, though, is that they eat healthy by avoiding high sugar foods like soda and candy. They probably eat a lot more vegetables and less red meat.",
"It seems likely they simply move just enough to retain most of their muscle mass. Muscles can atrophy very quickly if not used, but it doesn't take very much to activate them enough to prevent it. The people you speak of probably use their pecs, delts, etc. In daily life just enough that their muscles don't atrophy (so like once every three days, not hard to believe). \n\nAlso, there's a big different between exercising and body building. A lot of people build and shape their muscles by specifically targeting different areas with weight training and dieting properly. This is probably what most of these people used to do. Exercise, on the other hand, can be as simple as walking around at some point every day. Though they may not be training specific muscle groups and eating to build mass and cut fat, they're probably still getting enough exercise. \n\nTl;dr: they probably just move enough to prevent muscle atrophy"
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1huo8a | hong kong, before and after the chinese takeover. | What has changed and what has remained the same. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1huo8a/eli5_hong_kong_before_and_after_the_chinese/ | {
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"Before chinese invasion:\n\n1. Hong Kong received a lot less mainlanders and had tremendous economic growth and prosperity.More people spoke English than Chinese. It was also one of the Asian tigers (still is).\n\n2. Hong Kong's readily available capital and technological availability thanks to the development it went through during british times has tremendously helped the mainland get easy money and technology.\n\nAfter Chinese takeover:\n\n1. a lot of main landers started coming there and a huge wealth and technology transfer took place from Hong Kong to China.\n\n2. A lot of Hong Kongers frown upon the unhygienic mannerisms of the mainlander and their general third worldish behavior. There was recently a campaign declaring mainlanders as being locusts\n\n_URL_1_\n\n3. Also, the people of Hong Kong has largely went back to chinese language. But still, Hong Kongers long for British rule as corruption and poor governance are becoming more rampant in the country.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI think just like many SAR regions of china that have been forcibly controlled by china, Hong Kong also sees itself as a separate entity, and it's quite natural given that Hong Kongers mostly speak Cantonese; a language completely different from Mandarin. \n\nThey have a much freer government system (A pact was made while handing over Hong Kong to China in 1997; it had to remain free market and democratic for 50 years). Even economically and socially, Hong Kongers are richer and live in a country that has one of the best HDIs in the world. \n\nIt's per capita income is also one of the highest in the world. While, in mainland, there is still a lot of control over people's life by the party and the police. People are still tortured and sometimes even killed in prisons. People aren't allowed to follow other religions and so on.\nCorruption and scandals are a daily part of people's life and the political princelings are a lot richer than ordinary folks. \nHong Kong is world apart than the mainland. however, it has played a crucial role in transferring wealth and technology to china. \n"
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"http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/03/15/more-than-90-percent-of-hong-kong-citizens-long-to-return-to-british-rule/",
"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/hongkong/9056268/Hong-Kong-rails-against-invasion-of-Chinese-locusts.html"
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342gey | creating original idea free from the influence of a prior memory. | How do you build something out of nothing so to speak? Seeing the original images of H.G Wells war of the worlds illustrations really blew me away as a wholly original idea. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/342gey/eli5_creating_original_idea_free_from_the/ | {
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"Really, it's impossible. An idea can seem more original by taking inspirations and combining them in ways you wouldn't expect, but you can never have an idea completely free of inspiration."
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4cpv8s | why do people write (sic) after some words in articles? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cpv8s/eli5_why_do_people_write_sic_after_some_words_in/ | {
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"sic\n\nadverb\nused in brackets after a copied or quoted word that appears odd or erroneous to show that the word is quoted exactly as it stands in the original, as in a story must hold a child's interest and “enrich his [ sic ] life.”.\n\nLike you're five: \"If you quote a written peace [sic] and there are mis-steaks [sic] you use sick [sic]\"",
"In even simpler terms, it indicates that for the sake of being true to the original source, they leave in any spelling mistakes or grammar errors and quote it directly as it is.",
"It's used in quotes to show that the author of the article is quoting the individual directly. Often in a quote someone spells something wrong, or uses a word that kind of breaks the flow of the sentence.\n\nIt's basiclly the author saying \"I'm quitting this dude directly, I did not make an error or write this myself so don't hold me accountable for how shit it is.\" ",
"If you write a scientific report or a news article and write a quote from a book, you can't just change it in any way - or it isn't a direct quote.\n\nNow what do you do if you want to quote \"the possibility of a asteroid will hit the earth\". Well you are in a problematic state, since there is an error in there, and you can't just write *an asteroid, Mr. president* behind it.\n\nSo normally you write [sic] to state, that the quote is correct in the way that it is a direct quote but you know about the error and let it in - i.e. you didn't make the error.\n\nIn a speech it's even more apparent, when someone misspeaks, you can't just \"interpret\" what he/she meant it have to take it as is (in the quote) and then interpret.",
"The natural next question is of course, why does (sic) mean that? It's from the Latin \"sic erat scriptum\", meaning \"thus was it written\"."
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2sy0tz | the problem of induction | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sy0tz/eli5_the_problem_of_induction/ | {
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"No matter how many times you see the sun rise, and no matter how many times you drop a pencil and it falls, you still can't PROVE that tomorrow the sun will rise or that the next dropped pencil will fall.",
"Deduction is based on logically reaching a conclusion from a set of premises, such as:\n\n1. All men are mortal.\n1. Socrates is a man.\n1. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.\n\nInductive reasoning on the other hand uses observations to reach a conclusion:\n\n1. All swans I've seen are white.\n2. I've never seen a swan of another colour.\n3. Therefore all swans are white.\n\nThe problem of induction is that you can't be sure that 3. is correct, because I haven't seen every swan ever. So the problem is that you can't produce absolute certain knowledge from just a set of observations. But this is how we get most of our \"knowledge.\" We can say the sun will rise tomorrow because it always has, but we can't be absolutely sure it will because all we have to go on is some past observations.",
"While KingKha's answer was good, it only covered half of the problem of induction. The true meat of the problem of inductions is the question: how do we know inductive reasoning is valid? To fully understand the problem, we must consider the uniformity of nature problem as defined by Hume\n\nAt its most basic, inductive inference lets use the past to work out what will happen to something in the future. You test five eggs and they are all rotted. The sixth had the same expiration date. There for indicative inference says it will likely be rotten too. This is vital to the scientists because the point of science is working out rules which work in general.\n\nSay we wish to measure gravity. How do we do it? The simple way is to drop a ball and measure its acceleration. We do it 1000 times and average out the result. This gives a result of 9.8 m/s/s. \n\nFrom this we use inductive inference to say that gravity causes things which are dropped to accelerate at 9.8 m/s/s, and that all things dropped under the same conditions in the future will accelerate at the same rate. But why? Who is to say that something dropped in the future will not accelerate at 11.2 m/s/s, that the rules won't change so the result is different? The assumption that the rules will not change is called the uniformity of nature. This says the rules are constant across space and time, that the past can be used to predict the future.\n\nBut how do we know uniformity of nature is valid?\n\nHume argues we can't. After all, the best argument for uniformity of nature is that it has always held true in the past. That is, all out experiments to day show that results gathered in the now can be extrapolate to predict the future. The eagle eyed among you may have recognised this for what it is: an argument based on inductive inference! And that makes this argument a circular argument. Inductive inference is valid because uniformity of nature is valid because inductive inference is valid! Circular argument are, of course, invalid. You can't prove something is true by assuming it is true.\n\nTLDR: The problem of inductions it he philosophical conundrum concerning induction. We really want to use it but we can't come up with a satisfactory logical proof that it works."
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2ly83y | why are men and women segregated in chess competitions? | I understand the purpose of segregating the sexes in most sports, due to the general physical prowess of men over women, but why in chess? Is it an outdated practice or does evidence suggest that men are indeed (at the level of grandmasters) better than their female grandmaster counterparts? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ly83y/eli5why_are_men_and_women_segregated_in_chess/ | {
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"Because not enough women play chess for there to be a lot of good players. Me being a chess player (2080 USCF) and tournament director I would arbitrarily say that in the last tournament I participated in there was like maybe like 20 girls in the top 125 boards, which in this case was 1500+. However it is not as bad in scholastic events.",
"Men and women are not segregated. Women compete and win open chess competitions which also have male competitors. There are some women-only competitions to encourage more women into the game, since there are far more male than female chess players.\n\nEDIT: More in-depth reply [here](_URL_0_)",
"It is basically a marketing ploy. For a very long time women were discouraged from playing chess. Nowadays there is an effort to get more women playing the game. in order to do this most competitions have a women only division. Anyone can play in the \"male\" competition but men are barred from the women competition. The hope is that women will see other women being successful in chess and more women will pickup the game. It has been successful with the percentage of women playing the game increasing. One day when the game is equally popular among men and women I imagine these women only competitions will fade from use.\n\nEDIT: typo",
"The thing is, there isn't really any segregation in chess between the sexes. A woman's only league exists, but it's mainly a marketing tool to get women into chess. Women are free to compete in the main competition just as much as men are. In fact, the current top female player (who happens to be the greatest female player in history) does not even compete in the woman's league. She is a grandmaster who has been ranked in the top 10 of the world in the past, and has a current elo rating of 2675.",
"Probably for the same reason there'll be local tournaments etc? Presumably these competitions are run for monetary gain and there's more chances of people playing if they actually stand somewhat of a chance? Segregating into gender is an accepted thing and if I were a woman into chess, I would love a chance at being the *world's/USA's/utah's* best *female*, *amateur* chess player. Just like as a dude I would be inclined to play at a local event since I might actually stand a chance at placing.",
"They are not segregated into a men-only and women-only competitions. They are segregated into everyone-allowed and women-only competitions. It just so happens that in the top 100 of best players, there are only 2 women, and one of them retired recently, so in practice the everyone-allowed competitions tend to have almost only men.\n\nA large part of the reason that the top 100 are almost all men is that there are simply many more male chess players than female chess players. Whether that is the only reason or not is a topic of a lot of debate, so I won't say anything more about that.",
"My younger cousin always played in chess tournaments as a kid. They were mixed age tournaments, so he often ended up playing adults considerably older than himself. One of his middle aged female opponents in a particular tournament had to be instructed several times to remove her obnoxiously large breasts from the table, where she insisted on resting them, because they were too distracting to the younger (i.e. 12 and 13 year old) male players.\n\nMy point is that they aren't segregated. But also the boob thing is funny.",
"Judit Polgar, who is the current top ranked female chess player and by far the best female player in history described the experience of playing male players: \n\n\"When men lose against me, they always have a headache ... or things of that kind. I have never beaten a completely healthy man!\"\n\nIt seems her experience is that the male chess world (at least up the recent past) was very proud of itself, with male players thinking that being smarter was more masculine. This is not really a surprise since chess was already the scene of major international grandstanding during the cold war. \n\nThe situation now is a hangover from older times, it will only take a few more women to take up the mantle before we have a female who takes the top ranked spot. Hou Yifan for example became a Grand master at something like age 12 and is ranked in the top 100 players now.",
"They are not segregated... Just as there in no segregation in most tournaments.\nThere is a PGA and an LPGA. The PGA is not for men only. Its for the best players in the world. Same thing in Chess.",
"ELI5 without any PC agenda or sexism:\n\nThey are not segregated. \n\nNo relevant association or competition makes tournaments for men only (there are minor tournaments that segregate based on several criteria, like gender, country of birth, or membership).\n\nBut at the highest level there is no segregation. It just so happens that there are historically few women in the top-20.",
"They aren't. \n\nYou have confused \"women only tournaments' with segregation - the largest chess tournaments are open to both sexes.",
"This question comes up a lot (search and see previous threads)\n\nWhat doesn't get enough consideration in these threads is the fact that females face more harassment in a typical tournament. Everything from \"polite\" comments like\" \"Oh how can I be expected to focus with such an attractive opponent\" to (albeit rarely) outright assault.\n\nThe ladies-only tournaments provide a \"safe\" environment for girls to play without worrying about being hit-on. They can just focus on the game. If you like chess and hope to grow the game, this is a good thing. \n\nIf you just want to use this topic to claim discrimination, fine. I think there are many more damaging examples you can work with though.",
"This made me realize how few movies there are that focus on female geniuses (who aren't evil, aliens, or genetically altered). The only one I could think of that fits in with the typical male counterpart, is [\"Proof\"](_URL_0_), starring Gwyneth Paltrow. In others, the ladies are just supporting roles, or the movie focuses on a singular skill, not brilliance of the mind.",
"It seems like they're segregated, but the reality is that women just don't play as much as men. I don't know why, but if I were to guess, it would have something to do with the history promoting it to men only. Generally, women of the past would have been pressured into domestic roles whereas men would have had more leisure time to take part in leisurely activities such as chess. Eventually, as competitions arose around it, men would have the skill and desire to enter much more than women. ",
"These are just my personal observations, I mean no offense to anyone by it, and I am certainly not sexist. \n\nFirstly, men and women usually aren't segregated, it's just that most of the top players are men, there are high level women only competitions to counteract this lack of female presence in the sport of chess.\nChess is a game of strategy, and while you can train and study to improve your elo rating, there's a point of diminishing returns at which people of average IQ fail to compete with top ranked players even with rigorous training. So when you look at the top rated players, they have ABSURDLY high IQ scores, Judit Polgar is ~170, Garry Kasparov is ~190, Magnus Carlsen is ~190. There are literally only a handful of people with an IQ of 190+, most of them being men. The reason for this, I don't quite know, but I do know that statistically, men have much greater IQ variance, so to the far left and right of the intelligence spectrum, men are prevalent. However, I'd like to note that women have higher average IQ, which actually strongly correlates to highschool and college graduation rates. 62% of associates level degrees are conferred to women, 58% of bachelors level degrees, 60% of masters level degrees, however the majority of doctorate level degrees are conferred instead to men. So applied to the chess rankings, you can see why most of the scoreboard is dominated by men, because the highest ranks of intelligence are also dominated by men. Look at any of the top recorded IQ charts, you'll see perhaps Judit Polgar on the list (mostly by honorable mention since she's just 170). The difference between 170 and 185 might not look like much at first glance, but there are ~10,700 people alive right now with an IQ of 170+, while only 51 exist with an IQ of 185+. Only 7 exist with an IQ of 190+.\n\n",
"It is segregated so women can win once and a while without getting stomped out by male chess nerds (not because they are better, it's just a numbers game of male vs female entries)\n",
"It's the same in e-sports, you'd think there would be an equal amount of women at the top since physical prowess doesn't come into it but the weird reality is that there is not even a single woman who can compete at the same level as all the of males. Look at this [link](_URL_0_), every article which talks about female pro gamers always mentions 'Scarlett' who is actually a man that had sex change operation. \n\nI've never been able to understand why this is, there's an equal amount of males as there are females in the world, so why is it this disproportionate at the top of competitions that rely on mental ability, I don't think \"equal opportunities\" is the issue in this day and age.",
"Less women play chess than men thus the odds of a top player being female is quite small. Thus in order to get exposure for female chess players and hopefully inspire others to take up the game, there are many female only competitions. Also I remember reading somewhere that when certain groups area forced to affirm their group membership they do worse on cognitive challenges. So for example having a woman fill \nout her gender on some form before taking a math test causes her score to drop.Found a source. _URL_0_",
"Chess is an old game and when the tournament system was set up women were viewed as being less capable then men. The so for the same reasons there are youth chess tournaments women got their own chess tournaments. It's outdated and sexist, but it is also a long standing tradition and people hate change.",
"This comes up a lot in sports that are mostly mental like games. You have to understand that once a sport becomes dominated by a single sex, it becomes hard for the other sex to get involved due to how society stereotypes (e.g. you get called a sissy if you're a guy who wants to dance, etc).\n\nSince one sex is encouraged in to the sport and the other is actively not, having events for the minority sex can help correct that.\n\nAlso people like to point out that one sex is just \"worse\" at this sport than the other, but you have to remember that the sex that is \"worse\" isn't encouraged on a cultural level to pursue said sport. They have a smaller pool of people and are less likely to be encouraged to train. That's why these single sex tournaments are important.",
"Woman were barred from chess. Especially from main gatherings in pubs and coffee houses; where early chess clubs began to form. (Early 19th century) \nI read it became male dominated because of how fast paced and challenging it was. But apparently that was only near the turn of the 1800's; earlier literature depicted men and women playing freely. \n*As with anything dominated, ideals and rules will naturally arise and enforce around it. It makes it hard for those who want to be a part of a dominated interest if they are too different or not as expected.\nSo, that minority will have to figure out a different way to participate and promote that interest if it can't be through the majority *IMO \nHence Woman's Chess. Holland had the first Woman's chess club in 1847, I think Sussex held the first woman's tournament in 1884. (43years after first chess tournament in Leeds) The first chess book called 'The ABCs of Chess' was written by a lady in 1860 by the author H.I Cooke. The first woman world championship was in 1927 (59 yrs after first world championship) I listed them to show the progression of womans chess and also why being in a minority can be quite restraining. \nEllen Gilbert and Vera Menchick are the earliest examples of excellence in female vs male chess. In 1995 Judit Polgar and 5 leading woman beat 5 male grandmasters (2 of which were world champions). Apparently in the 90's, the gap between gender and skill narrowed and male vs female comps became more popular",
"There is not. It's not like basketball.\n\nThere are chess competitions. A few of those are women's only. They exist to encourage women to play chess, because they are underrepresented. \n\nBut they do not exist because women can't compete with men because of innate capability – it's not like athletics. \n",
"It is interesting because in Go, no such separation is made. Both men and woman, play at the highest level, against each other. ",
"I always found it a little disturbing that, when I opened up Chessmaster and set it up to give me a default rating, it would give me 1200 if I selected Male and 1100 if I selected female.",
"On average the sexes are equal, but there are more male outliers on the intelligence bell curve...more geniuses and more retards.",
"Although men and women are about the same intelligence on average, there are more men on the extremes (More smart men and more dumb men) and there are more women in the middle.",
"There are a lot of semi-smartass replies about \"ok, not many eskimos play chess, why not create an eskimo-only chess league?\" \n\nThe creation of separate women-only leagues and events is to fill a demand. The demand exists whether it's politically correct or not, whether it opens up a can of worms or not. \n\nIf enough eskimos were clamoring to play chess, then an eskimo-only chess league would be reasonable and popular, and they'd simply ignore the peanut gallery trying to imply it's some kind of sneaky form of racism.\n\nWomen-only competitions don't mean people think women are shitty at chess. It means they want to fill a demand, probably a demand created by women themselves and not by men trying to marginalize women.",
" > does evidence suggest that men are indeed better than their female grandmaster counterparts?\n\n1553 comments later, and nobody has addressed this part of OP's post. \n\n",
"Men and and women are separated because women use witchcraft and seduction giving them a strategic advantage that all chess playing men are incapable of defending against. \n ",
"I doubt there is a segregation thin in chess. Much like Poker, when it comes to games of the brain, both men and women can compete.\n\nThis is why I like eSports, its nice to see women in teams with men, sure there are not that many high profile female pro gamers but at least its an option.",
"Breasts are distracting? ",
"From the little amount I've heard of the professional chess scene, women have their own leagues to give women a higher chance of winning as there is apparently a much lower amount of women signing up to these than men.\n\nI believe they have their own leagues (and better prizes) as an incentive to get more women to sign up",
" > does evidence suggest that men are indeed (at the level of grandmasters) better than their female grandmaster counterparts?\n\nIn a [fascinating 2009 paper](_URL_1_) examining this question, Oxford's Merim Bilalic found that 96% of the difference between male and female chess players (at the grandmaster level) can be explained by the fact that so many more men play chess than women. This leaves very little room -- perhaps no room -- for explanations that depend on biological or cultural differences.\n\nAlthough I initially found the \"innate differences\" hypothesis plausible, Blialic's paper is well-researched and well-argued, and his results appear sound. In my mind, it settles the matter.\n\nAs a side note: guys, we could have saved ourselves 1800 comments and a lot of irresolvable arguments if we'd just spent ten minutes on Google looking for evidence instead of spouting our opposing hunches.\n\nEDIT: [Another paper I found](_URL_0_), by Christopher Chabris and Mark Glickman, reaches the same conclusion by an entirely different method, which strengthens an already-strong case considerably.",
"I scrolled down so far waiting for the \"because men are smarter than women\" comment. But I didn't find one! Nice! ",
"Can't speak on behalf of chess, but in SC2 (At least in the early days) I had never encountered another female player, even after attending several live events (MLG, etc). Finally, an organization called ESL set up a female get together event (prizes were like $20 dollars and a mousepad) that attracted about 20-30 new female players to the game by making friends, learning with peers and getting a start in their first competition. Nowadays you can see female players featured in professional teams for gaming, high level competitions, and more. Small steps like that ESL event were required at the time because of cultural biases as to who should and shouldn't be gaming. ",
"It's just about marketing and making it more attractive for females. There are female only tournaments but no male only ones. So woman can participate in both kinds of tournaments while weaker female players hope for better chances in the female only tournament because it is less competitive (due to a smaller total female player amount).",
"I think it has already been said that there are 'anybody' contests and 'females only'.\n\nI've played a lot of competitive chess when I was young and, certainly at my school, it just didn't attract girls. The whole chess club was boys. We had a super program to get new members in and make them feel good and progress them and we never, that I can remember, had a girl try it even though I know we had some really smart girls when it came to academics.\n\nCome to think about it even when our school chess team was slaughtering all the other schools around and the football team was loosing regularly that didn't attract girls in the other sense either... but that's just me sulking.",
"only at grandmaster level, which would be because [there are only 30 female grandmasters](_URL_0_). it's misleading because there is also a 'woman grandmaster' title which has a far lower rating criterion for qualification",
"I've wondered the same thing about billiards. Why do we have a women's league (WPBA)? I believe the answer is that women wanted their own professional league. They weren't told they couldn't compete against men, it's just that they didn't want to.\n\nI don't see any reason why men have better potential to play pool. I think Allison Fisher said her husband regularly beats her because he has a harder break than she does. But I don't buy that. Men often times use soft breaks during competition because it yields more consistent results for them.\n\nI'd like to see a better mix of men and women competing in national tournaments. Maybe it's easier not to because if a man beat a woman, he'd be seen as a jerk, or people would say women aren't good enough to compete against men. If a woman beat a man, the man would be seen as a wuss. Too much potential for gender wars maybe.",
"This thread has been locked due to an overwhelming number of comments in violation of our subreddit rules. In addition this topic has already received adequate explanation and it's possible it is also unintentionally loaded, which causes further rule-breaking responses to follow. Please [message the mods](_URL_0_) with any questions."
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ewalvw | what is i2c electronic communication and how does it work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ewalvw/eli5_what_is_i2c_electronic_communication_and_how/ | {
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"Inter-Integrated Circuit or I^(2)C for short is a type of serial bus intended for simple configuration and sensor communication between different integrated circuits. For example say you are designing a bluetooth speaker you may start off with a microprocessor with bluetooth capabilities as an off the shelf integrated circuit. Then you would add a separate chip to convert digital to analog sound but this needs the correct bitrates and sample rates to work. So in addition to the normal lines carrying digital sound you would have an I^(2)C bus between the two chips. It takes very little effort for the DAC chip to receive messages on the I^(2)C bus and set internal registers as it is a very simple bus. You may also want to monitor the temperatures of your amplifier and can add a simple temperature sensor which hooks to your microprocessor through I^(2)C. You may even hook these chips up to the same copper traces as long as the addresses is set right.",
"Looks like it's sending information one bit at a time down two wires. One wire is a clock and one is a data transfer. I found a brief bit about it online. I'll try to explain it as I understand it.\n \nStarting off, one component is going to send out a address to all the other components. All the other components will be listening and if it hears its address it will respond.\n \nBecause you can only send one bit at a time the components listening will need to stack the incoming bits. Every time the clock wire pulses you write the data wire to the stack. Example, sending 0101 will look like this...\n \n CLOCK DATA\n 0 0\n 1 READ > 0\n 0 0\n 1 READ > 1\n 0 0\n 1 READ > 0\n 0 0\n 1 READ > 1\n \nAfter the a component hears its name (address) called it will send back a bit to say 'ok boss, I'm here'\n \nInformation will continue to be passed along this way. It will probably be 8 bits or so at a time, first the address of the component, maybe an instruction word or location within the component you want to send data to, then probably some data that needs to be stored.\n \nSeems you can usually expect the first 8 bits to be a address and instruction put together. If the address was 0011001X you can use a 1 or 0 in place of the X to instruct if you want to send or receive information. The next 8 bits will be the save location of were you want to send or receive data from. And the last 8 bits will be the data transfer.\n \nBetween each step the listening component will send an acknowledgement single to the speaking component, just to make sure everything is going okay.\n \nAt the start and end of the entire process you might have something like this...\n\n 1 0\n 1 1\n\nOr\n\n 1 1\n 1 0\n\nThe data bit changes while the clock is on to say 'hey something is about to happen' or 'okay we're done talking now'.\n \nMost components are likely to follow a standard procedure for communicating, but every now and then it may differ. A data sheet will be the resource to explain how a particular component will behave."
]
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[],
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||
1n9ech | what's going on during a head rush? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n9ech/eli5_whats_going_on_during_a_head_rush/ | {
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"Use the search function, this gets asked a lot. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
1k84v3 | scientific theory | Recently read on Wikipedia that theory means a hunch but scientific theory doesn't necessarily mean that there is doubt about the subject. So what does "scientific theory" mean? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k84v3/eli5_scientific_theory/ | {
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"A scientific theory is an explanation of some natural law. Usually something was discovered a long time ago and then a theory that has not been disproven explains it. Like electrical theory. We knew the exhistence of electricity fom the key and kite experiment before we knew all the reasons why elections flowed. ",
"A scientific theory is an explanation of some subset of our experience that has gained acceptance by being useful for solving some kind of problem in a repeatable and testable manner.\n\nFor example: \n\n* We see things moving about. (Make an observation)\n\n* We measure the movement and describe the pattern. (Recognize a natural law. Like the \"Law of Universal Gravitation\")\n\n* Then, somebody says \"Maybe this pattern is occurring because A or B is true. (Formulation of a hypothesis)\n\n* \"We can tell if that's the case be seeing if B & C are true in conjuction with A.) (The hypothesis is now testable: justr check to see if B & C are true whenever A is true.)\n\n* Some scientists devise an experiment to check A, B, & C. (An experiment is performed and more observations are made.)\n\n* These scientists publish a paper saying \"What this person said makes sense, and our experiment seems to confirm it to some degree of accuracy / up to some error factor. (The hypothesis becomes a theory when other scientists find it useful for solving their problems.)\n\nIt should be noted that scientific theories are valuable because they are useful, not because they are \"proven true\" in a mathematical sense. They are only ever demonstrated to be accurate to some cut-off precision, and are only really accepted when they can be used to solve a problem. (One that wasn't actually invented within the theory.) This is why \"String Theory\" isn't a proper scientific theory, for example. It hasn't led to the invention of new technologies or observations.\n\n"
]
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[],
[]
] |
|
6orovi | what is an "enzyme," exactly? | I have a vague sense that they react with things and from what I understand you can "denature" them with heat, which means they don't work anymore. Other than that I've got nothing. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6orovi/eli5_what_is_an_enzyme_exactly/ | {
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"An enzyme is a kind of protein, so let's start with proteins. A protein is essentially a very large molecule made up of a chain of smaller molecules. Of those smaller molecules, which we call amino acids, there are 20 kinds used by the human body. Each one has the same basic body, but also has a part called a side chain with its own particular set of properties - some are attracted to water and some are repelled; some are acidic and some are basic; some are large and bulky and others are small; some have sulfur that can be used to form strong links with other sulfur-bearing amino acids.\n\nDNA encodes the sequence that will be used to string these amino acids together into a chain, and the sequence of that chain determines the shape that the protein takes - a lot of that comes from the water surrounding the amino acids forcing the water-repelling (hydrophobic) ones inward and pulling the water-attracting (hydrophilic) ones outward, as well as the fact that the amino acids with the bigger side chains take up more space.\n\nThe shape of the protein, as well as the arrangement of amino acids on the outside, will give it special properties. Enzymes are a class of proteins whose special properties allow them to catalyze reactions of other molecules. Their shape, their acid or base characteristics, their hydrophilic and hydrophobic characteristics, allow certain molecules to fit into small pockets on the enzyme surface, and can hold them in place. However, this isn't a perfect fit - it exerts a certain amount of tension, which under the right circumstances can reduce the amount of energy needed for that molecule to react - to break apart, or to join with another molecule, for instance.\n\nIt's important to note that the enzyme itself is not consumed in this reaction; it just pushes the reaction along.\n\nProteins, including enzymes, can be denatured by heat, which can force the amino acid chain to unfold or even break apart. Since the amino acid chain depends on the particular temperature and pH inside the body - and sometimes requires helper proteins called chaperones - to fold the right way in the first place, there's a good chance it will re-fold wrong once the temperature comes back down.",
"Holy confusing responses batman. Lets ELI5 this shit.\n\nYou want to roll a tire up a hill and down the other side. Its a really tall hill, might take you a very long time, if ever. Using a excavator, you remove a big portion of the hill. Much easier to roll the tire over the hill now. Only problem, the excavator doesnt run when its really hot.\n\nRolling the tire is the chemical reaction. The excavator is the enzyme.\n\n"
]
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[],
[]
] |
|
soo7f | how do atoms last so long? | If they have particles, and movement, why don't they just run out of energy and fall apart after a while? How long *do* they last? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/soo7f/eli5_how_do_atoms_last_so_long/ | {
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"Particles all have a tendency to decay into lower and lower energy states. Eventually all atoms might be expected to fall apart because the tendency is for them to do so, but if they are stable, it make take a long time for this to happen. Certain atoms (but not all) can be considered stable, meaning that in a given interval of time it is less likely that the atom will decay, than an unstable atom. It is impossible to determine exactly how long an atom will last, because it decays spontaneously.",
"Look up the quantum mechanical description of an atom (youtube would be a good place to start). The electrons in orbit are replaced by wave functions. The problem with orbiting electrons is that they would radiate energy by their constant acceleration and because of this energy loss, they would quickly collide with the nucleus."
]
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[],
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|
15s5ti | why are europes gas prices so high? | The u.s. ranks 45th in the world in prices, while everyone above them are mostly European countries. _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15s5ti/why_are_europes_gas_prices_so_high/ | {
"a_id": [
"c7pb92b"
],
"score": [
18
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"text": [
"Tax, that's all. "
]
} | [] | [
"http://wallstreetpit.com/92107-highest-and-cheapest-gas-prices-by-country/"
] | [
[]
] |
|
20bino | how and why does countersteering work on a motorcycle? | At low speeds, turning the forks left makes the bike turn left. At higher speeds, turning the forks left will make the bike lean and turn to the right. At what speed does that transition take place and how is it figured? Does tire size, bike geometry, weight, etc. factor into when the transition takes place? Is the transition gradual or sudden? If gradual, is there a certain speed where I could have the forks turned but be going straight? If it's sudden, and I quickly accelerate from a dead stop with the forks turned, will the bike snap from one direction to the other possibly launching me off (highside)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20bino/eli5_how_and_why_does_countersteering_work_on_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"cg1no4h"
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"text": [
"This is an example of angular momentum, which is one of the most fucked up and counterintuitive things in all of physics. Very cool demo of it [here](_URL_0_). A spinning mass generates a vector of angular momentum which points out its axis. This vector acts normal (ie perpendicular) to forces which are applied to it. The magnitude of this vector increases with the rotational speed of the mass (ie if the wheel in the video spins slow nothing happens but when the guy cranks it up it starts to behave strangely). In the video gravity is acting down, however the vector points out the axis of the wheel and therefore the wheel stays perpendicular to gravity. Any force which is applied to the spinning mass will generate this reactionary force perpendicular to the force vector applied. \n\nSo when your bike tire is spinning fast enough (ie the magnitude of the vector is large enough for the angular momentum effect to be observed), if you attempt to turn your wheel to the left, the perpendicular reaction by the angular momentum is to *lean the whole bike over* to the right. It is the lean that makes you turn, not the turning of the handle bars. Note that at low speeds the angular momentum vector is tiny and therefore this effect is negligible, so the motorbike steers like a bicycle.\n\nDisclaimer: I have never driven a motorbike but this is how this was explained to me, and since I think angular momentum is cool I worked it out in my head."
]
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[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H98BgRzpOM"
]
] |
|
5t1zf7 | why won't companies like whatsapp and instagram enter the ipad market? | I find it extremly difficult for me that these companies don't have an app. This leads to using other 3rd party apps with many crashes and bugs. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5t1zf7/eli5_why_wont_companies_like_whatsapp_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"ddji847"
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"text": [
"They don't need to. Remember their goal is to capture users ? There are very few people with an ipad and not an iphone. There's no reason to build and support an ipad app for people who are already using your service."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
jdssf | what is the importance of a 401k and when should i start mine? | What is a 401k, it's purpose, how can one be started, and will it's value depreciate if the economy sinks? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jdssf/eli5_what_is_the_importance_of_a_401k_and_when/ | {
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"A 401k is just a special type of account for retirement. You contribute money to it, and make investments with that money. It has certain limitations and advatanges. Some of the main limitations are, there's a maximum amount of money you can put in it each year, and you usually can't withdraw money from it until you're 59.5. There are also some advantages, depending on how your 401k is set up, you can defer taxes on the money that you put into it. Also, you might be lucky, and your employer might also contribute money to your 401k (free money).\n\nYou can set one up either through your employer or through your bank. Since its just an account for your investments, whether or not it depreciates if the economy sinks completely depends on what you've chosen to invest in.",
"A 401k is an investment vehicle that grows in value over time. Investments made into a 401k are not taxed until the money is withdrawn, so if you make $50K per year and contribute $10K to your 401k, then your taxable income for the year is $40K.\n\nThe catch is that that money is taxed on the backend, when you withdraw. The benefit is that a 401k is intended for retirement, so your income will likely be significantly lower when you're retired, so you pay much lower taxes (if any at all) on the money in the 401k.\n\nMake sure that you don't withdraw money from the account early or else you pay a hefty penalty to the IRS. Many plans don't even allow early withdraw except in cases of extreme financial hardship, although some do allow loans that are repaid with interest.\n\nWhen should you start yours? As soon as possible. The longer that that money can sit in the account, the more it will grow. Also, many employers offer a 401k matching program that is essentially free money. At a minimum (if you can afford it) you should contribute to point that the the company will match (my company matches up to 6%, so when I first started working for them, I contributed 6% of my income, effectively making my yearly contribution 12% of my total salary). After that, steadily increase it as appropriate.\n\nWill the value depreciate if the economy goes in the tanker? Yes. It's an investment and its value is subject to the ebbs and flows of the market. You can protect yourself somewhat by wisely choosing a mix of bonds vs. stocks and investing is less volatile mutual funds, but ultimately, it's still investing. To put you at ease though, the long-term return on the stock market for periods of 25 years or longer is about 9 - 10%. The key is to steadily add money to the pot and don't withdraw anything... just let the money work for you.\n\nTo see how much your money can grow over time, [check out this link](_URL_0_).",
"a 401k is an amount of money you set aside to be invested for you to hopefully build up over time so you can use it to retire. The idea is it's just a way to ensure you have a retirement fund once that day comes. Essentially you pretend that you never had the money at all, it's generally taken out of your paycheck by your company (hopefully with some sort of company match of a certain amount) and it sits in a fund to grow over time for you.\n\nYou should start it as soon as you can, investments need time to grow, so the sooner the better.\n\nSince it is an investment it will go the way of the economy to an extent, but 401k's are usually very safe investments, meaning they take very little risk, and will most likely stay a little north of the entire stock market due to bond investments and so on and so forth, so yes it will go the way of the economy, but will have buffers in place to help it out, and if the economy goes back up your 401k will enjoy the ride.\n\nThis is kind've a scatterbrained answer, please ask more questions if you don't understand.",
"A 401k is like a tree. Usually you get one when you start a job, but it's just a seed. Whenever you get a paycheck, you can use some of your money to water the seed. The more money you set aside for the tree, the faster and larger the tree will grow. If you wait too long to start watering your tree, it won't be large enough to support you when you retire. Most people don't start setting aside money for their tree until they are 30 to 35 years old, but the sooner you start, the better off you will be.\n\nWhen you're ready to start your 401k tree, it's important to choose a seed that is right for you. If you're young, you're going to want to pick a seed that has a lot of potential like an \"aggressive growth\" seed or a \"Technology Sector\" seed. If you are close to retirement, you should pick a \"Income\" seed or \"Large Cap\" seed. You can always trade your tree in for a different type without having to start over.\n\nNow you might change jobs at some point, and you get to take your 401k tree with you. This is called a \"rollover\". You can continue watering it until you retire. You could also start a new 401k at your new job. If you do that, your old tree will continue to grow slowly until you're ready to retire.\n\nAnother important point to make is what's called \"dollar cost averaging\". I only bring this up because lately the market has been a little scary. Sometimes the market is like a roller coaster. It has ups and downs. When the market is down, it's like the water you buy with your paycheck is cheaper. When the market is up, water is more expensive. Since you want to give your tree as much water as possible it's important that you continue putting part of your paycheck towards your tree when the market is down. When the market bounces back the average amount cost of water that you bought over time will be lower than the market price.\n\nWhen you're ready to stop working, you take your tree home and start living off of it. Imagine it starts sprouting fruit which you can sell. When the market is good, your tree will give a lot of fruit. When it's bad, it might not give as much. If you're not careful you could take too much fruit and kill the tree too soon. Some trees, called \"annuities\" can have special abilities that allow them to bear a certain amount of fruit for a certain period of time, or even for your whole life. To make sure you have the right tree, you can always talk to a tree specialist like me, more commonly known as an \"Investment Advisor\".\n",
"A 401k is just a special type of account for retirement. You contribute money to it, and make investments with that money. It has certain limitations and advatanges. Some of the main limitations are, there's a maximum amount of money you can put in it each year, and you usually can't withdraw money from it until you're 59.5. There are also some advantages, depending on how your 401k is set up, you can defer taxes on the money that you put into it. Also, you might be lucky, and your employer might also contribute money to your 401k (free money).\n\nYou can set one up either through your employer or through your bank. Since its just an account for your investments, whether or not it depreciates if the economy sinks completely depends on what you've chosen to invest in.",
"A 401k is an investment vehicle that grows in value over time. Investments made into a 401k are not taxed until the money is withdrawn, so if you make $50K per year and contribute $10K to your 401k, then your taxable income for the year is $40K.\n\nThe catch is that that money is taxed on the backend, when you withdraw. The benefit is that a 401k is intended for retirement, so your income will likely be significantly lower when you're retired, so you pay much lower taxes (if any at all) on the money in the 401k.\n\nMake sure that you don't withdraw money from the account early or else you pay a hefty penalty to the IRS. Many plans don't even allow early withdraw except in cases of extreme financial hardship, although some do allow loans that are repaid with interest.\n\nWhen should you start yours? As soon as possible. The longer that that money can sit in the account, the more it will grow. Also, many employers offer a 401k matching program that is essentially free money. At a minimum (if you can afford it) you should contribute to point that the the company will match (my company matches up to 6%, so when I first started working for them, I contributed 6% of my income, effectively making my yearly contribution 12% of my total salary). After that, steadily increase it as appropriate.\n\nWill the value depreciate if the economy goes in the tanker? Yes. It's an investment and its value is subject to the ebbs and flows of the market. You can protect yourself somewhat by wisely choosing a mix of bonds vs. stocks and investing is less volatile mutual funds, but ultimately, it's still investing. To put you at ease though, the long-term return on the stock market for periods of 25 years or longer is about 9 - 10%. The key is to steadily add money to the pot and don't withdraw anything... just let the money work for you.\n\nTo see how much your money can grow over time, [check out this link](_URL_0_).",
"a 401k is an amount of money you set aside to be invested for you to hopefully build up over time so you can use it to retire. The idea is it's just a way to ensure you have a retirement fund once that day comes. Essentially you pretend that you never had the money at all, it's generally taken out of your paycheck by your company (hopefully with some sort of company match of a certain amount) and it sits in a fund to grow over time for you.\n\nYou should start it as soon as you can, investments need time to grow, so the sooner the better.\n\nSince it is an investment it will go the way of the economy to an extent, but 401k's are usually very safe investments, meaning they take very little risk, and will most likely stay a little north of the entire stock market due to bond investments and so on and so forth, so yes it will go the way of the economy, but will have buffers in place to help it out, and if the economy goes back up your 401k will enjoy the ride.\n\nThis is kind've a scatterbrained answer, please ask more questions if you don't understand.",
"A 401k is like a tree. Usually you get one when you start a job, but it's just a seed. Whenever you get a paycheck, you can use some of your money to water the seed. The more money you set aside for the tree, the faster and larger the tree will grow. If you wait too long to start watering your tree, it won't be large enough to support you when you retire. Most people don't start setting aside money for their tree until they are 30 to 35 years old, but the sooner you start, the better off you will be.\n\nWhen you're ready to start your 401k tree, it's important to choose a seed that is right for you. If you're young, you're going to want to pick a seed that has a lot of potential like an \"aggressive growth\" seed or a \"Technology Sector\" seed. If you are close to retirement, you should pick a \"Income\" seed or \"Large Cap\" seed. You can always trade your tree in for a different type without having to start over.\n\nNow you might change jobs at some point, and you get to take your 401k tree with you. This is called a \"rollover\". You can continue watering it until you retire. You could also start a new 401k at your new job. If you do that, your old tree will continue to grow slowly until you're ready to retire.\n\nAnother important point to make is what's called \"dollar cost averaging\". I only bring this up because lately the market has been a little scary. Sometimes the market is like a roller coaster. It has ups and downs. When the market is down, it's like the water you buy with your paycheck is cheaper. When the market is up, water is more expensive. Since you want to give your tree as much water as possible it's important that you continue putting part of your paycheck towards your tree when the market is down. When the market bounces back the average amount cost of water that you bought over time will be lower than the market price.\n\nWhen you're ready to stop working, you take your tree home and start living off of it. Imagine it starts sprouting fruit which you can sell. When the market is good, your tree will give a lot of fruit. When it's bad, it might not give as much. If you're not careful you could take too much fruit and kill the tree too soon. Some trees, called \"annuities\" can have special abilities that allow them to bear a certain amount of fruit for a certain period of time, or even for your whole life. To make sure you have the right tree, you can always talk to a tree specialist like me, more commonly known as an \"Investment Advisor\".\n"
]
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953dvh | could an animal infant survive off of human breastmilk? if so would there be side effects? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/953dvh/eli5_could_an_animal_infant_survive_off_of_human/ | {
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"There was a animal show that had a calf(cow) surviving off one of the villagers breast feeding it in India; so it's plausible, just I don't think a human being is able to provide the amount of calories large animals require for healthy wait gain.",
"Different mammals produce milk that has different fat/calorie content, depending on how often they breastfeed. So, for example, rabbits produce milk that’s very high in fat and calories because a mother rabbit only feeds her babies every 12 hours; rabbits are “nest mammals” - meaning, the babies stay in a nest and the mom comes to check on them and feed them every 12 hours. Cow milk is moderately high in fat/calories because cows are “follow mammals” - the baby calf follows the momma and breastfeeds more frequently. \n\nHumans, like other primates, are “carry mammals” who breastfeed more or less continuously. A baby primate is basically clinging to the mother all the time and nursing all the time. Human milk, like other primate milk, is very watery and low in calories compared to the milk of follow mammals or nest mammals.\n\nSince neither dogs nor cats are “carry mammals”, presumably their milk will have more fat and calories in it than human milk, and a puppy or kitten won’t thrive on human milk. \n\nTL;DR - don’t breastfeed your kitten."
]
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[],
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] |
||
2o82zm | why doesn't the pre-fix "in" (which means not, lacking, or opposite) apply to the word ingenious? | Also, are there other words that it doesn't apply to? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2o82zm/eli5_why_doesnt_the_prefix_in_which_means_not/ | {
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"The -in in ingenious is not used as a negation in this word (note that it's ingenious, not ingenius). In fact, it isn't a prefix at all.\n\nIngenious is the adjective form of the word ingenuity, which itself comes from the Latin ingenium, from which we also get the word engineering and engine in English.",
"In- can also mean \"in\" as a prefix, both in words built from the English \"in\" or from the Latin \"in\" - ingenious is the latter. Innate and incarcerate are other examples.\n\nIngenious ultimately comes from ingenium (\"in\" meaning within + \"gignere\" meaning produce), which means \"innate qualities or ability\"."
]
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8j3aaz | how do wild animals manage to eat raw food, drink unfiltered water, never clean themselves, etc. without getting sick, but humans can't? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8j3aaz/eli5_how_do_wild_animals_manage_to_eat_raw_food/ | {
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"Oh, we can, but we also don't get intestinal worms, hydatids, typhoid and vast range other preventable diseases & parasites that other animals get by not preparing food.",
"They generally have more enzymes to help digest, stronger stomach acid and a better gut biome. Humans have sacrificed a lot by moving into civilization.",
"Your perception is a good example of something called “survivor bias.” Many wild animals do get sick and you are only seeing the ones that survive or manage to cope with a chronic condition. Most wild animals carry some sort of food-borne parasite or disease. For example, the lifespan of a stray cat is 2-5 years whereas the lifespan of an indoor cat is 15-30 years. We just rescued a kitten that turned out to have an obscure form of food poisoning from raw food. She looked and acted normal, but without antibiotic intervention she would probably would have only lived about a year. "
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l4ai4 | how do politicians benefit from corporate money? do they use it as personal income? | I know it goes to fund their campaigns, but I'm not sure if they can use it as personal money as well. If it only goes to their campaigns, why are they so influenced by corporate money if their positions' salaries aren't super high? Are there loopholes they use?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/l4ai4/eli5_how_do_politicians_benefit_from_corporate/ | {
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"A politician can never use this money for his or her own personal use. If there is leftover campaign funding, it can be donated to a charity organization or the national party. It can also be held for future campaign use.\n\nPoliticians are influenced by corporations because campaigning can be very expensive - often an amount that the politician would never be able to afford personally. The salary of their position is irrelevant. Companies donate money to a candidate with the idea that he or she will act in their best interest.",
"\nI do think corporate money influences elections, but not by bribery. Basically, the way it works is:\n\n1. The corporations try to devise some weird rationalization why what's good for the corporation is good for the public: \"Deregulating the banks is good for the public, because... uh, let's see... because it lowers inflation... no, that's implausible... how about.... uh.\" After throwing stuff at the wall for a few weeks, they eventually come up with a vaguely believable rationalization.\n\n2. They drill this rationalization into every journalist they meet. Some of those journalists are on the payroll, but most are just ignorant: since they have little or no economic background, they're easily fooled. The journalists proceed to repeat this rationalization to the public.\n\n3. Half the public falls for it - they come to genuinely believe that if they deregulate the banks, it will be good for the economy.\n\n4. The corporations search for a true believer who has been absolutely convinced that what's good for the corporation is good for the public. There's always at least one true believer out there. They talk this nutjob into being a candidate, and they fund his election.\n\nSo no, the politician hasn't been bribed. He doesn't need to be bribed: he's a real, true believer, and he thinks that what he's doing is for the good of mankind.\n\nSo no: the election money can't be used for personal income for the politician, but it doesn't matter.\n\nBut frankly, I think the politician himself is a sideshow. I think that once the corporations have convinced the public that corporate interests are the public's interests, then the battle's already basically won. The actual election is just a formality.\n\n",
"Everyone makes good points here, but what people haven't brought up is that while a Senator's salary isn't exorbitant, they are also looking out for what they will be doing after they are no longer a Senator. Politicians can be bought with campaign money, but they can also be promised very lucrative jobs, which are often a high paying sinecure. So corporation X says: you help pass this bill that helps us, and we make sure you get a $200,000 a year job as a \"consultant\" to our company when your term is up. ",
"A politician can never use this money for his or her own personal use. If there is leftover campaign funding, it can be donated to a charity organization or the national party. It can also be held for future campaign use.\n\nPoliticians are influenced by corporations because campaigning can be very expensive - often an amount that the politician would never be able to afford personally. The salary of their position is irrelevant. Companies donate money to a candidate with the idea that he or she will act in their best interest.",
"\nI do think corporate money influences elections, but not by bribery. Basically, the way it works is:\n\n1. The corporations try to devise some weird rationalization why what's good for the corporation is good for the public: \"Deregulating the banks is good for the public, because... uh, let's see... because it lowers inflation... no, that's implausible... how about.... uh.\" After throwing stuff at the wall for a few weeks, they eventually come up with a vaguely believable rationalization.\n\n2. They drill this rationalization into every journalist they meet. Some of those journalists are on the payroll, but most are just ignorant: since they have little or no economic background, they're easily fooled. The journalists proceed to repeat this rationalization to the public.\n\n3. Half the public falls for it - they come to genuinely believe that if they deregulate the banks, it will be good for the economy.\n\n4. The corporations search for a true believer who has been absolutely convinced that what's good for the corporation is good for the public. There's always at least one true believer out there. They talk this nutjob into being a candidate, and they fund his election.\n\nSo no, the politician hasn't been bribed. He doesn't need to be bribed: he's a real, true believer, and he thinks that what he's doing is for the good of mankind.\n\nSo no: the election money can't be used for personal income for the politician, but it doesn't matter.\n\nBut frankly, I think the politician himself is a sideshow. I think that once the corporations have convinced the public that corporate interests are the public's interests, then the battle's already basically won. The actual election is just a formality.\n\n",
"Everyone makes good points here, but what people haven't brought up is that while a Senator's salary isn't exorbitant, they are also looking out for what they will be doing after they are no longer a Senator. Politicians can be bought with campaign money, but they can also be promised very lucrative jobs, which are often a high paying sinecure. So corporation X says: you help pass this bill that helps us, and we make sure you get a $200,000 a year job as a \"consultant\" to our company when your term is up. "
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f7y4jp | what kind of maps do pilots use? | Since earth rotating and flight inside clouds. how do they navigate? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f7y4jp/eli5_what_kind_of_maps_do_pilots_use/ | {
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"Earth rotating is not going to make a big difference\n\nThey use Enroute charts (maps), GPS and other sort of electronic beacons\n\nBefore take off a Pilot has a choice of two types of ‘flight rules’ and has to declare their chosen rule and stick it for the entire light. Their choice will depend on conditions, time of day and type of craft they are flying. \n\nIf are flying under ‘visual flight rules’ they can simply look out the window.\n\nIf under ‘instrument flight rules’ they follow pre set flight plan and rely on their instruments. Compass, GPS, radar etc\n\nA commercial passenger flight pilot will almost always declare instrument flight rules ( so they can fly at night and high altitudes). This will involve a flight plan/route that they ‘must’ stick to - Unless there’s an emergency of cause.\n\nFurther reading for globe navigation: google ‘the great circle’. Yes flat Earthers - take that",
"Maps. Like any other. You can theoretically navigate in the air using any map you get from your local... wherever maps are sold. That said, navigating off of maps, though something pilots need to be able to do, is not too common anymore, as for one, many modern planes are equipped with GPS, and also, at least on overland routes, there are plenty of systems in place. Hence, those maps that are used by pilots are usually covered in various other details, like the callsigns and control regions of towers and other ground stations. That said, pilots either use a globe for navigation, if the plane has according soft- and hardware in place (Think Google Maps, but more advanced) or they use projections that have minimal distortion regarding the distances between points. I could go on a whole seperate tangent here, but basically, its mathematically impossible to project a sphere or spheroid object onto a flat map without causing distortions, hence people have come up with various projections that minimize distortions of some things in exchange for distorting other things more. Which you use depends entirely on what you need in your situation. Hope my comment was helpful.",
"They use maps like this: _URL_0_\n\nIt seems wildly complex but as part of the process of becoming a pilot, you learn to read it, it’s not actually that hard. There also of course electronic and gps help if you have those systems on your plane, but any pilot could easily fly without anything more than a map and a compass if they need to (and you absolutely learn how and know how)\n\nThese maps contain basic info about the airspace, airports, frequencies, navigation helpers, and more. \n\nAs for flying through clouds, you can actually fly a plane completely by instruments and navigation aids. This again is part of your training process to become a pilot, and isn’t really a big issue. Wind is a bigger issue than flying through clouds."
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1irllp | dialectical behavioral therapy | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1irllp/eli5_dialectical_behavioral_therapy/ | {
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"It's leanring how to function socially and cope with offending thoughts or feelings. You really ca't have just one session because they cycle through different \"chapters\". I had six months of weekly three hour group sessins and two hour individual sessions. We focused on methods to deal with conflict resolution, etc. It was a lot of role playing and mindfullness excercises. The first role playing scenario that comes to mind was how to handle someone calling you late at night when you really need to sleep. You need to tell this person that you love and care for them, but you have to sleep so you'll talk in the morning. You learn to be non-judgemental, not just of others, but more importantly yourself. \n\nDBT was developed as a treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder. I hated it the entire time, but a few weeks after I was done, I found myself actually really using what I learned. Tbh, I almost think it should just be a part of health class. It really helps teach you how to function as an emotionally stable person and sometimes I get frustrated when others don't follow similar methods.\n\nSorry for poor typing and sentence structure, I just got back from sending our foster dog to the fire hydrant in the sky."
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1ihq4b | how do tax deductions work? | Why do they exist? Why did they apply to the things they do? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ihq4b/eli5_how_do_tax_deductions_work/ | {
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"Tax deductions exist for three reasons:\n\n 1. They are a way for the government to try to get people to do certain things. They don't want to force people with laws but still make people want to do them. \n\n 2. They are a way for the government to help certain people who need it.\n\n 3. They are a way to reward people or groups who help politicians get elected. \n\n**Edit:** /u/GnosticGnome suggested a 4th reason: the government realizes that your income really is lower than it looks. I like the example of student loans. You have to pay them, you got them for a good reason, there is no way to get rid of them. Your real income is what you have left over after the student loans. \n\nNow some examples:\n\n 1. Tax deduction on a more efficient furnace. New furnaces are much better than the ones made 30 years ago. They waste way less heat. That's good for the environment and it's good for the people who have them because they cost less to run. However they are expensive to buy. If you already have a furnace it's hard to put all the money up at once to get a new one. The government wants you to have a new furnace so they help by giving you a tax deduction for buying a more efficient one. That way the cost of buying a new one is less so you can save money in the long run. \n\n 2. The government gives a medium sized deduction for everyone. It's called the minimum standard deduction or something like that. People with a lot of money have other deductions that are worth more so they don't take it. For the people who can't afford to spend the money to get the other deductions, the standard minimum deduction helps even save money. \n\n 3. Companies often have lobbyists who convince the government to make deductions that help those companies. They tell people that the deductions are like #1, they reward people for doing good things, but often they are just to help the companies. Why would they do this? The lobbyists donate a lot of money to the politicians so they can use it to get elected. "
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9r2918 | what is that fizzing sound in the back of my neck when i'm super hungry? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9r2918/eli5_what_is_that_fizzing_sound_in_the_back_of_my/ | {
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"I dont know but it happens to me too, and was made fun of when I commented it to my family.\nIt's like a fizzy feeling going from my stomach in the front through the shoulders and meeting in the back of my neck",
"Fizzing sound?? Crazy... never experienced it!",
"Huh, I thought I was just a weirdo, you guys feel it too?\n\nI've never really thought of it as fizzy feeling but it totally is. I've always just felt uncomfortable when it happens.",
"Is it like having pop rocks in the back of your throat?",
"I have this happen, though randomly rather than related to hunger. After I did some searching, there appeared to be a few theories the majority are benign and the general consensus that there is no firm answer. Here is the most prominent explanation Cerebrospinal Fluid. [_URL_1_](_URL_0_) The CS Fluid cushions your brain and provides mechanical and immunological protection to the brain. It also circulates in the Central Canal at the top of your spine. This is where you can feel/hear the fluid circulating, which manifests as a fizzing/bubbling/crackling sound and sensation.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nELI5: CS Fluid acts as a cushion for your brain. Like putting an egg in a balloon and filling it with some water, so that bumps to the balloon won't damage the egg. This fluid also exists in the top of your spine, where your back meets your skull. The sound of the fluid moving in this space around your spine is what you hear/feel."
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5eh8io | how do we synthesize / obtain desired genetic sequences? | So, say you can even get a CRISPR/Cas9 kit and you would like to make it cut after a specific sequence and insert another sequence that you have in mind. Once you have the correct sequences surely it's probably easy to do PCR and multiply them. My question is: how do we get the desired sequences in the first place? Can we obtain arbitrary sequences of arbitrary lengths? Is it something really complicated or everybody could do it potentially? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5eh8io/eli5_how_do_we_synthesize_obtain_desired_genetic/ | {
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"Long sequences are built from shorter ones. You can basically take snippets of DNA and fuse them end-to-end to make longer ones. A lot of these assembly steps are done using enzymes from various microbes to copy long sequences and link them.\n\nThe short starting parts are synthesized using fancy organic chemistry, not proteins. This is fairly laborious and the best we can do on larger scales are roughly 100 bases in a row. After that, the process tends to get faulty.",
"Yeah, we can obtain entirely arbitrary sequences. Artificial gene synthesis is a thing, and some guy's lab recently synthesised an entire yeast chromosome and shoved it back in the yeast. There's currently a lot of working going on synthesising more and more minimalistic chromosomes such that we can work out the \"bare minimum\" required for a given organism to live.\n\nHowever, artificial synthesis has limitations that often make it less favourable versus cloning. For one, the difficulty of synthesising a particular sequence can depend on the sequence itself - e.g. drastic alterations in thermostability due to very high/low GC content, or the formation of secondary structures due to inverted repeats. Additionally, you have to take extra steps for error correction, and all of these things require extra labour, money, and time. \n\nCloning is just much more efficient currently. Find a gene you want, use a restriction enzyme to cut it out, and paste it into a vector. When it comes to CRISPR/Cas9 especially, the precise insertion of a gene relies on homologous recombination, i.e. you have your gene, and at both \"ends\" of your gene you have sequence that is homologous to where you want it to go in your target DNA. Cas9 cuts the target DNA, and in the process of repair the DNA repair enzymes recognise your gene as a repair template and incorporate it. This means your gene is even *longer*, again reducing the efficiency of artificial synthesis.\n\nThat's not to say it won't get there eventually; it most likely will. In response to your second question, the science might be complicated but the technique isn't (even the CRISPR/Cas9 system itself is hailed as genome editing made simple!). It is probably something you could teach to most people, to be honest. I don't know if it's the same in other countries, but here (Australia) a lot of the routine/bulk stuff is done by the lab techs, who typically only hold undergraduate degrees."
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atgt7k | what is the calculation to work out odds of you achieving the same outcome over and over again? like say guessing the right number between 1-5? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/atgt7k/eli5_what_is_the_calculation_to_work_out_odds_of/ | {
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"It gets multiplied.\nFor one event it is 1/5\nFor two events it is (1/5) x (1/5) = 1/25\nFor three events it is (1/5) × (1/5) x (1/5) = 1/125\nAnd so on."
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1my3se | how does the "us debt ceiling" crisis repeat every few years? | I'm quite confused as to how this scenario repeats itself.
Especially here in Australia where a tiny amount of debt is regarded as a cardinal sin for the government, yet the US seems to keep running into this issue.
Wouldn't they take steps to fix this after the first time around? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1my3se/eli5how_does_the_us_debt_ceiling_crisis_repeat/ | {
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"The debt ceiling was literally created in order to cause a crisis that repeats every few years. Any fixed debt ceiling will be hit every few years; that's just how public debt works in developed countries.",
"Most other countries don't have a debt ceiling. You just pass budgets as needed and, if they're not in balance, the government borrows to cover the difference.\n\nThe US is a special case as Congress needs to approve extra borrowing. So if the US currently owes $16 trillion and needs another half trillion, the Congress needs to pass an act saying they will raise it to $17 trillion, or $18 trillion or whatever. This limit is frequently reached, partially because the government is running up more debt, and partly because inflation makes the limit smaller in real terms every year.\n\nThe Congress could theoretically raise the debt ceiling to infinity, and they actually did this once, but they brought it back (and have kept it around since) because it's a good way for congressmen to embarrass a President of the other party over all the debt he's going into every year or so. Barack Obama himself has done this as Senator.\n\nHistorically, this would never be a crisis, because the opposition would bank their embarrassment but never really demand anything more than that. Seeing that not raising it would cause a financial crisis, most always assumed that not raising it would never be acceptable, so there weren't any attempts to extract meaningful concessions in exchange.\n\nThis has changed in the last couple of years. The rise of the Tea Party caused the Republicans in Congress to demand greater extractions from the Obama White House in 2011. Obama was willing to agree to these new terms as he thought it would set up a bipartisan budget deal which would win him lots of plaudits. However, that ended up with no budget deal and Obama giving the Republicans big concessions. After that mess, Obama is trying to go back to the pre-2011 era when it was just an embarrassment thing, and is refusing to negotiate. Republicans, however, would rather set the 2011 dynamic in perpetuity. "
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7nwlz1 | how metropolises such as phoenix, tucson, las vegas, other southwestern u.s. cities, get enough water to supply the huge population with no lakes or rivers near. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7nwlz1/eli5_how_metropolises_such_as_phoenix_tucson_las/ | {
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"All these cities share water from the Colorado River under an agreement called [the Colorado River Compact](_URL_0_). it is carried through the area by pipelines."
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63giso | what is the difference between ashkenazi jewish and other jewish people? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63giso/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_ashkenazi/ | {
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"There are two branches of Jewish origin following the diaspora from Israel - Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. Ashkenazi Jews are the ones who ended up in Northern and Eastern Europe... places like Germany, Poland, and Russia, and comprise about 80% of Jews today. Sephardic Jews are the ones who remained in the Mediterranean, such as Spain/Portugal, North Africa, and across the Middle East (there were even Jewish communities in Yemen and Iraq until a few decades ago). There are some differences is practice that developed over the centuries, but those have greatly diminished over the past century as Jews of both branches have ended up intermingling in the U.S. and Israel. ",
"While the other poster here has it kind of right, I'll go into further detail on the ethnic divisions of Jews as it's a bit confusing to understand.\n\nThere are three main divisions: Ashkenazim, Mizrahim, and Sephardim. Other divisions exist, such as Ethiopian and Indian Jews, but I won't get into them right now. Regarding the three main groups, they're classified based on migratory routes either during the expulsion of Jews from Israel, or much later. In the ancient past when the Jews were living in today's Israel, these divisions didn't exist since they were all living in the same area. When the Babylonians invaded ancient Israel and deported the Jews, they brought most of them to other areas in the middle east. \n\nIt wasn't until the Persian Empire under Cyrus that most returned. Those who didn't stayed in modern Iraq, Iran, etc. and many even migrated outwards from there, into central Asia and the Caucasus, or westward towards Egypt or Arabia. Much later under the Romans, Judea became a province. After waves of revolts and rebellions, the Romans expelled the Jews from their province and were prohibited from returning. So now you have Jews who migrated and settled elsewhere in the Roman empire (or possibly east too). Many who migrated towards Europe landed in Spain and became the Sephardim, noted for their much later developed spoken language of Ladino, a derivative of Spanish. Other Jews migrated to Germanic areas, under Frankish and other Germanic kingdoms and later became the Askhenazim, also noted for Yiddish, a derivative of German.\n\nWhen the Spanish reconquered the peninsula back from the Moors, they also expelled Sephardic Jews with them. Many of them either migrated south into North Africa, or east into the then Ottoman Empire. At the same time, many of the Ashkenazim also migrated towards eastern Europe into the Slavic realm, where the settled in Poland, Russia, etc. Yiddish was still spoken, but mostly died out in the last century.\n\nNowadays, since most Jews live in Israel or the US and come from any of these backgrounds, these divisions aren't prominent as they used to be since people started mixing. But as a tldr to your question, to define someone's background, you would have to understand where they came from historically through what paths and what language they spoke."
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63mwrw | the "sovereign man" movement, wherein people act like they not subject to the laws of the land. how does this work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63mwrw/eli5the_sovereign_man_movement_wherein_people_act/ | {
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"It doesn't work. They make dramatic leaps of logic to create a poorly conceived view of \"how law works\" and then lose in court.",
"It \"works\" in that someone believes crazy people with stupid ideas about how the law works and then simply declare that the law doesn't apply to them. Law enforcement however disagrees and applies the law to them regardless of their views on the subject, and people generally point and laugh at their idiocy.",
"It doesn't work. People get so wrapped up in their own philosophical interpretation of the law that they forget that law is ultimately about who has the power to enforce their views. ",
"Lawyer here.\n\n > How does this work?\n\nIt doesn't. \n\nThe Sovereign Citizen/Freeman-on-the-Land/Moorish movement is a complete and utter fabrication devoid of any legal substance or intellectual rigor. Not terribly long ago, con artists began giving seminars and selling literature that ultimately formed these movements. Their ideas are based on very tortured and supremely technical interpretations of ancient laws, which, when mixed with a lot of mumbo jumbo and logical witchcraft, result in academic-sounding nonsense. But this nonsense is appealing to some people because it offers them a (supposed) solution to their problems, so they buy into it even though they don't understand it. They _want_ to believe they can trade in their birth certificate for a huge stack of cash. They _want_ to believe they don't have to pay child support because the flag in the courtroom has gold trim. And so they do. They watch the youtube videos and pay for the seminars and buy the literature. They file arcane and bizarre \"legal\" documents with all sorts of colorful text and stamps because it gives them a greater sense of purpose than just hiring a lawyer (to say nothing of the fact that it's far cheaper, and probably at least a little bit more fun).\n\nFor a while, courts struggled with what to do with these kinds of people. Judges everywhere tend to take it easy on *pro se* parties (individuals without attorneys). Most often, they simply cannot afford a lawyer, and judges don't want to dispose of meritorious cases just because one party is broke. So early on, the judicial response was slow and tempered.\n\nBut as the movement grew, so did the burden on the judicial system. Judges get pretty tired of defendants who won't identify themselves in court, who refuse to enter pleas, who interrupt the proceedings to spout nonsense, who make their clerks process nonsensical documents, etc. Now there's something of a playbook forming to dispose of these types of claims.\n\nThere's a Canadian case called _Meads v. Meads_ (google it), where the judge is faced with a litigant like this. He goes the extra mile in researching the Sov Citizen movemen, dissecting their \"legal\" arguments, and discussing why they don't hold water. I think the movement has produced some newer flavors of insanity since _Meads,_ but it's still a pretty comprehensive overview. "
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3t9aeu | what is actually done to a ps3 game like uncharted when it's "remastered" for ps4? | Does the entire thing have to be "reprogrammed" from scratch? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3t9aeu/eli5_what_is_actually_done_to_a_ps3_game_like/ | {
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"Not typically. More often they'll take the original codebase, update the models with nicer ones, maybe touchup bugs or well-knowni issues, maybe work on the lighting or rendering to make it look nicer, etc. \n\nIt can certainly be a large undertaking, but it's by no means as big of an effort as a full code re-write."
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1dvvrz | "kafkaesque." | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dvvrz/eli5_kafkaesque/ | {
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"Franz Kafka wrote disturbing stories. _URL_0_\n\nKafkaesque means bewildering/alienating/disgusting/terrifying. Like something from a Kafka story. ",
"Franz Kafka was a famous European writer who wrote many highly-praised stories.\n\nOne, *The Trial*, is about a man who is one day arrested, without being told why, and put on trial without being told when, by a person who never meets him, leaving him hopeless to do anything. Another, *The Castle*, is about a man who visits a town ruled by a group it never sees, whose actions are never explained. Everyone seems to have a different explanations of the apparently inexplicable things that the rulers in the town castle do, and the actions of the rulers never seem to make sense, but he's never allowed to speak to them.\n\nHis most famous story, *The Metamorphosis*, is about a man who wakes up one day transformed into a disgusting bug. He never finds out how or why, and just becomes an incredible burden on his family. \n\nSo the word *Kafkaesque* has become a descriptor of any situation that is oppressive, confusing, disorienting, and as complex as it is meaningless, leaving people without any options. "
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6ijcjj | how should an interaction with police during a traffic stop be handled? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ijcjj/eli5_how_should_an_interaction_with_police_during/ | {
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"text": [
"Keeps your hands on the wheel at 10 and 2. Say yes sir/no sir, turn off your radio, explain any actions you undertake (e.g . \"I'm now reaching for my wallet/registration). Just be respectful and you should be fine. Also if they ask if you know why they pulled you over, play dumb",
"The most important thing todo is keep your hand on the steering wheel until the officer makes contact with you. Only reach for your license, registration, etc. after the officer asks for it! It also doesn't hurt to say \"I need to open my glove box for my wallet or reach into my back pocket\". And if you are carrying a weapon, it's important that's the FIRST thing you tell the officer when they approach and also the EXACT location of the weapon (knife, gun, etc). \n\nBe on the same page with the officer! It really does go along way. Imagine being in their shoes? Also comply with whatever they tell you. Even if they tell you to get out of the car, comply with the instructions. If you feel like they are abusing their power, write down their badge number and contact a superior in that agency. Arguing or not complying will just make things worse. \n\nHope this helps! :) ",
"Among other things, do what the officer tell you. If he tells you to get out of the car, get out of the freaking car. A traffic stop is not the place to test the latest crackpot theory about 'allowing an officer to detain you'.\n\nDO NOT challenge the officer's authority. That's not 'protecting your rights', it's 'obstructing a peace officer', and he *will* arrest you.\n\nArguing will just annoy the officer and make things much harder for both of you. Face facts: you *were* speeding, you *did* get caught, and you and the officer *both* know it. Just take the ticket. You'll both get home a lot sooner that way.\n\nAbove all: be polite, explain yourself, and take notes. If the officer is out-of-line, take down his badge number and report to his superiors as soon as your business with the officer is done."
]
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||
1y1fpv | why is it when i sit down i magically get a lot of belly fat | I noticed that I have a flat stomach (not almost six pack but can see ab defintion) but when I sit down somehow when is sit down like all mybody fat shows up in between my thighs and abs and I look like a fat caresalesman | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y1fpv/eli5_why_is_it_when_i_sit_down_i_magically_get_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfghtix",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"I always figured it was because of our being scrunched down piled all of the belly fat into a smaller area. Compared to when we're standing there's more space to fill out. \n\nYou notice if you sit up straighter, some of the pudge receeds. ",
"The fat is always there. It's just that, when you sit down, it has fewer places to spread itself out, so it all bunches up. \n\nIt's like a beanbag chair. It would look a lot skinnier if you pulled it up toward the ceiling. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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