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395b42 | being sued for money when you have none | If you get sued for compensatory damages but have no money to pay, how then are you supposed to pay said money? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/395b42/eli5_being_sued_for_money_when_you_have_none/ | {
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"First step is the court awards a judgment against you that says you owe the money. It's good for 20 years and will show up on your credit report. What happens next is up to the creditor. If you have a bank account they can file a garnishment and take it. If you have a job they can garnish your wages (federal and state law limit this at 0 to 25% depending on the laws of your state. These filings cost the creditor money that the court usually let's them collect from you, but only if you have something to take. \n\nBecause the judgement is good for 20 years, often it just goes into a box. Every few years they'll pull your credit report to see if you have money yet. Then they can file things.\n\nFinally even after 20 years they can renew a judgment for another 20. Again, this costs them money they can recover from you, but only if you have it to take. \n\nSo what happens is going to depend on who they think you are and how much money you owe. If it's alot of money - you file bankruptcy and that's the end of it.\n\nSource- I'm a bill collector and i sue people",
"If you can't pay, but you own property, the judgment creditor will often put a lien on your house. If you sell the asset, the lien must be paid from the proceeds.",
"As an aside, lawyers who have any semblance of ethics will tell their clients if they think somebody isn't collectable....as in you'll never get money even if you're in the right and get a judgment. Sometimes clients will pursue anyway just on \"principle\".",
"I have experience working for a debtor's law firm in the US. \n\nFirst of all, **Collection Laws vary highly from state to state. An attorney licensed to practice in your state should be consulted on these matters as they can be very intricate.**\n\nBut, basically, each state (in the US) provides its own rules for \"exemptions\". Certain types and amounts of property are \"exempt\" from collection, meaning that another party cannot take it from you, even if they have a judgment against you. Everything else would be subject to the collection process, which includes garnishment of bank accounts and wages and/or seizure of property to be sold at auction. \n\nFor example, Florida provides an unlimited \"homestead\" exemption to debtors for the home they live in. If I own a mansion worth $5 million, and I live there, my creditors almost certainly cannot put a lien or collect from my house (unless they have an express lien on the house as a security interest.)\n\nIf you don't have anything for the other party to collect, that is their problem. You cannot get blood from a stone, as they say. It is not a crime to not pay a judgment, but it is a crime to lie about what you have or don't have in order to avoid execution of a judgment. \n\nBankruptcy can often provide protection/benefits beyond those available through state law, such as a possible discharge of the debt (a legal injunction against the creditor from pursuing the debt against you.)\n\nI hope this helps your understanding. \n\n"
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4nl6ig | why do we sometimes get really out of breath by performing fairly minor physical exertions, like walking up a single flight of stairs, that other times don't make us lose our breath at all? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nl6ig/eli5_why_do_we_sometimes_get_really_out_of_breath/ | {
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"I don't have any answers but I face that same issue. When I climb, let's say 2 flights of stairs, taking 2 steps at a time doesn't hurt as much as taking each steps one at a time (slow-paced). It's strange considering it doesn't strain so much when you just slowly climb up each steps.",
"Becoming short of breath is a reflex and as such we dont have full control over it. If you start working more then you usually do then the body might believe that you are going to work even harder in the near future and gets ready by for example speeding up your heart rhythm and breathing to prepare more oxygen."
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k844w | how vpn protection works, its advantages and its limitations | I'm mostly curious after stumbling upon this article:
_URL_0_
Would investing in something like iPred be prudent? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k844w/elif_how_vpn_protection_works_its_advantages_and/ | {
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"VPN is a method to connect to a remote host securely. For example, I work from home and need to access my company's network. The company network is not accessible outside their walls so I connect to it via VPN. In order to use it my company had to set up a VPN server and then set up my VPN client to access it with the correct connection settings and correct username/password.\n\nI don't see that this application would work at all with torrenting.",
"ELI5: Imagine that you're in class, and you want to pass a note to Suzie, but you don't want the other kids to know what the note says. If you and Suzie are already friends, you could put your note in a secret code that only you and Suzie know. Even if the class bully intercepts the note, he can't read it because he doesn't know the secret code. (That's called encryption. It's an important part of a VPN).\n\nNow imagine that Suzie doesn't know how to use secret codes, but her friend Dorothy does, and you trust Dorothy. You and Dorothy create a secret code, then you send the note to Dorothy, and she decodes it and passes it to Suzie. That's how a VPN works. It puts all the messages between your computer and the VPN into a secret code that only the two of you know. Then the VPN (Dorothy) decodes the messages and sends them to the right people all decoded and ready to read. The VPN also takes all their responses and codes them to send back to you.",
"VPN is a method to connect to a remote host securely. For example, I work from home and need to access my company's network. The company network is not accessible outside their walls so I connect to it via VPN. In order to use it my company had to set up a VPN server and then set up my VPN client to access it with the correct connection settings and correct username/password.\n\nI don't see that this application would work at all with torrenting.",
"ELI5: Imagine that you're in class, and you want to pass a note to Suzie, but you don't want the other kids to know what the note says. If you and Suzie are already friends, you could put your note in a secret code that only you and Suzie know. Even if the class bully intercepts the note, he can't read it because he doesn't know the secret code. (That's called encryption. It's an important part of a VPN).\n\nNow imagine that Suzie doesn't know how to use secret codes, but her friend Dorothy does, and you trust Dorothy. You and Dorothy create a secret code, then you send the note to Dorothy, and she decodes it and passes it to Suzie. That's how a VPN works. It puts all the messages between your computer and the VPN into a secret code that only the two of you know. Then the VPN (Dorothy) decodes the messages and sends them to the right people all decoded and ready to read. The VPN also takes all their responses and codes them to send back to you."
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2gtn84 | what does wolfram research and wolfram technologies actually do? what is their mathematica product used for? | Wolfram's website is thick on dreamy visions and thin on details. I don't get what their objective is, exactly.
Do they make really versatile/advanced calculators? Do they make products for education? For research? Is Mathematica a CAD program? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gtn84/eli5_what_does_wolfram_research_and_wolfram/ | {
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"Mathematica is a \"computer algebra system,\" or CAS for short. (CAD is different.) You can think of it as an advanced calculator, or alternatively as a programming language with special features for advanced mathematics. \n\nOne way to think about it is that it is a calculator that understands symbols (instead of just working with numbers). A normal calculator can't factor x^2 - 3x + 2 because it has no idea what \"x\" means or how to factor a polynomial. That's the sort of problem a computer algebra system is useful for.\n\nComputer algebra systems are used for both education and research. A lot of my research requires one (I'm a mathematician). I have also used one to teach classes, and my students have used one to \"cheat\" on their homework assignments. So they have many purposes."
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14b8y4 | why i see certain colors as purple when others see them as blue | I just had a moment with a friend when I asked why a section of our textbook the font was purple. She told me she had no idea, but was equally confused that the font in her's was blue. I compared them side-by-side and was quickly told that the text in my textbook was, in fact, also blue. This seems to happen to me a lot, sometimes seeing things as pink when others see it as red and vice versa. What gives? Am I delusional about what colors look like or is this something to do with people's eyes and color receptors? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/14b8y4/eli5_why_i_see_certain_colors_as_purple_when/ | {
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"You might be colorblind. There are plenty of tests for this around the internet: ie _URL_0_ (there are many types of colorblindness, this will catch the most common forms)\n\nContrary to popular opinion, colorblindness is not the inability to see color, it is mainly that some colors are hard to tell apart. Blue and purple are essentially shades of the same color to me."
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bc9gfk | can space ships constantly accelerate in space? if not is it just materials preventing this? | If there is no air or anything in space what’s stoping a space ship from constantly going faster? If it had enough fuel could you keep accelerating forever? What would stop us from hitting the speed of light? Idk I’ve been seeing a lot of space x stuff and have been having a lot of questions. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bc9gfk/eli5_can_space_ships_constantly_accelerate_in/ | {
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"The more fuel, the heavier the ship, the more fuel you need to accelerate. This creates an infinite cycle. With a solar sail this is more possible. However as you approach the speed of light, time from your perspective speeds up, and from an observer you slow down as you get faster. It's... Complicated",
"A spacecraft *can* accelerate forever, and it will approach the speed of light, but it can never reach the speed of light or go beyond it. As it gets closer to c (the speed of light), it's velocity will asymptotically approach c, so the same accelleration will go from 99% c to 99.9%c to 99.99%c....etc always getting closer and closer to c but never reaching it.",
" > If there is no air or anything in space what’s stopping a space ship from constantly going faster? \n\nShort version: The ship can't carry enough fuel and/or propellant.\n\nWhy is that? Well:\n\nIf you imagine sitting on an office chair on wheels, and you're not allowed to use your feet or push off of anything, then you're not going to go anywhere no matter how much you move your arms. However, if you have a friend who is sitting on a wheeled office chair next to you, you can push off each other and you will go in one direction and your friend will go in the other direction. Spaceflight is like that, a rocket goes faster by pushing gas out one end at high speed, which makes the rocket go in the other direction. How much faster it goes depends on:\n\n* How long you run the motor for. This is limited by how big your fuel tanks are\n* the weight (actually mass) of gas - twice as much gas per second will give you twice the acceleration. This is determined by the design of the rocket engine.\n* the speed the gas is going at when it leaves the rocket - faster gives more acceleration. This is determined by the design of the rocket engine.\n* the weight (actually mass) of the remaining rocket - the lighter this is the more acceleration. Note this includes the remaining fuel, so adding more fuel may let you run the motor for longer but it reduces the acceleration you get until that fuel has burned off. Adding more fuel may also mean you need larger, heavier fuel tanks, which increases the weight of the rocket throughout the whole flight, unless you do \"staging\". \"Staging\" is where the rocket splits up in flight, and the empty fuel tanks are discarded while the remaining smaller bit of the rocket keeps going. For practical reasons, in a traditional rocket each stage usually has its own rocket motors too - it's easier to throw away a whole section of rocket that includes fuel tanks and motors, than it is to just throw away a fuel tank and keep the motors. \"Staging\" can also include extra side-mounted boosters like the Space Shuttle or Falcon Heavy has.\n\nCurrent rockets usually generate hot gas by burning some fuel (e.g. hydrogen or methane) mixed with (usually) liquid oxygen. There are also solid fuels, e.g. the two boosters attached to the side of the Space Shuttle are basically a block of solid fuel in a tin can, with a hole through the middle of the fuel for the flames and hot gas to come out.\n\nThese designs give a lot of acceleration, and are good for launching from Earth to orbit. However, it uses a lot of fuel very quickly - if you think back to the Space Shuttle launches, both the solid rocket motors and the huge tank under the Space Shuttle are all empty and discarded by the time the Space Shuttle gets to orbit, which is only a few minutes.\n\nSo you can't carry enough fuel to fly through space with a normal rocket engine running.\n\nSome satellites, and the space station, have ion engines to help them stay in orbit. These work on a different principle. They use a solar panel on the satellite to make electricity, which they use to pump out gas from a small bottle of gas. They use a special electric pump which puts out a tiny amount of gas going very very fast, much faster than a normal rocket engine. This gives a very small acceleration, but they can run for a very long time - months or years. On a deep-space spacecraft, you would be too far from the sun to use solar panels, but you could use a nuclear power pack (either a simple RTG or a full nuclear reactor) to run an ion drive. However, I'd like to repeat that the acceleration is very small - if you try holding 5 pieces of A4 (or US letter) paper in your hand, the thrust from a modern ion drive is about as much as the weight of those 5 pieces of paper.\n\n > If it had enough fuel could you keep accelerating forever?\n\nYes. But it won't have enough fuel.\n\n > What would stop us from hitting the speed of light? \n\nApart from not being able to carry enough fuel:\n\nWeird things happen when you start getting close to the speed of light, and normal rules about acceleration and mass and time all stop working. You need special modified rules. One consequence of this is that if you have a rocket thruster that keeps pushing your rocket forward with a constant force, your acceleration will slow down as you approach the speed of light. You will keep getting faster and faster, but by smaller and smaller amounts. You will never quite reach the speed of light, you just get closer and closer to it. One way to look at this is you get heavier as you approach the speed of light, so the thruster is pushing a heavier object so it doesn't accelerate as much."
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32k5rz | why does the lgbt movement differentiate between lesbians and gay people? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32k5rz/eli5_why_does_the_lgbt_movement_differentiate/ | {
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"'Gay' originally referred to men only. It's pretty recently that lesbians have been called 'gay women'.",
"Not LGBT myself, nor an expert on the community, so take this with a grain of salt:\n\nMy best understanding of it is that the challenges faced by lesbian women are different than those faced by gay men. Lesbian women are more likely to be objectified by straight men (think \"So... can I watch?\" jokes), or told things like \"You're not really a lesbian, you should try dating me!\", while gay men are more likely to be subject to violence, or assumptions about having HIV or other infections. Both groups face difficulties, for sure, but they're different enough that it merits a distinction.",
"* gay is often used to refer to just male homosexuals, using gay and lesbian makes it clear the organization includes both males and females\n* while homosexual men and women have much in common, they also have fairly different experiences...differentiating between the two helps to ensure both of their needs are covered",
"They aren't the ones who made the distinction; the rest of society did.",
"its about visibility - gay was seen as a mostly male term, so, Lesbian was put first. lesbians were sometimes left out of gay community political issues coz a fight with cops over bars that men frequented, or entrapment at beats, or hiv politics sometimes meant womens issues fell off the agenda as being important when they had issues like adoption or womens health that were just as important to them - so the two groups dont always share the same issues just coz they are gay. interestly sydney gay and lesbian mardi gras was officially named that so news readers would be forced to say gay and lesbian on the news each year around the parade...they would alternate lesbian and gay each year in their festival guide as a nod to the politics. sydney lesbian and gay mardi gras then sydney gay and lesbian mardi gras in the body copy...im the one that had to write it..."
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j6twn | li5: understanding wine | Please explain how to know what I'm talking about.. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j6twn/li5_understanding_wine/ | {
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"There's hardly a LI5 answer possible here. There are few hard/fast rules and many beautifully nuanced qualities to understand in wine. It's a world that's very rewarding to take seriously and nerd out about. Start exploring, and take notes on what you like. Track consistent preferences in flavor profiles, and then research which varietals and regions you can depend on for a pleasing bottle.\n\nThe most important protip: **ask for a recommendation**. In almost every case, the most foolproof thing you can do at any restaurant with a wine menu is decide on what you would like to eat, and then ask for either the chef or sommelier's pairing recommendation.\n\nOtherwise, don't drink cheap Bordeau.\n",
"A oenophile, is someone who studies wine. To know more about wine, you might be interested in researching how to create your own, attending wine tastings discovering which you like the most, and how to identifiy certain flavors. The different methods that can be used to achieve different flavors, and so on. There are literally dictionaries designed with words to describe the flavors of wine. From \"dry\" to \"earth tones\" to \"leathery\" to \"undertones of raspberry and peach.\" and forth. Really anything is possible. ",
"There's hardly a LI5 answer possible here. There are few hard/fast rules and many beautifully nuanced qualities to understand in wine. It's a world that's very rewarding to take seriously and nerd out about. Start exploring, and take notes on what you like. Track consistent preferences in flavor profiles, and then research which varietals and regions you can depend on for a pleasing bottle.\n\nThe most important protip: **ask for a recommendation**. In almost every case, the most foolproof thing you can do at any restaurant with a wine menu is decide on what you would like to eat, and then ask for either the chef or sommelier's pairing recommendation.\n\nOtherwise, don't drink cheap Bordeau.\n",
"A oenophile, is someone who studies wine. To know more about wine, you might be interested in researching how to create your own, attending wine tastings discovering which you like the most, and how to identifiy certain flavors. The different methods that can be used to achieve different flavors, and so on. There are literally dictionaries designed with words to describe the flavors of wine. From \"dry\" to \"earth tones\" to \"leathery\" to \"undertones of raspberry and peach.\" and forth. Really anything is possible. "
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a9jv9c | why are there tiny 'pops' on the surface of coffee? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a9jv9c/eli5_why_are_there_tiny_pops_on_the_surface_of/ | {
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"I'm not sure exactly what you're describing. So, I'm looking at a slow-motion video of cream pouring into coffee. _URL_0_\n\nBest I can tell it's either small drops of cream on the surface or the upwelling of cream after it falls into the coffee, hits the bottom and comes back up."
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8gqsi2 | what is an air quality alert for areas of cities when it gets to 90 degrees and why is it issued? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8gqsi2/eli5_what_is_an_air_quality_alert_for_areas_of/ | {
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"An air quality alert can be for various reasons. The most common is high ground ozone levels. But if it's a heat related air quality alert, it's usually because heat accelerates the production of smog. \n\nIf it's a code orange alert, it means it may be unhealthy for \"sensitive groups\" (those with lung disease, the elderly, and children). So keep your kids indoors."
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4q87kr | how this helicopter is still in air without any tail rotor? why isn't it spinning out? | This Helicopterhttp://_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4q87kr/eli5_how_this_helicopter_is_still_in_air_without/ | {
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"That uses NOTAR: _URL_0_\n\nThere's a fan inside the tail boom that blows air out the side of the boom to mimic the effect of a tail rotor.\n\nA heli set up exactly like the one in your pic appears in the movie *Speed*.",
"This is a type of helicopter that uses the NOTAR (NO TAil Rotor) system. Inside the tail of the helicopter (where there would normally be a tail rotor) is a fan that creates air pressure that which exits via slots in the tail creating a boundary layer of air. This can change the direction airflow around the tail of the helicopter.\n\nEven more ELI5: Helicopter tail has a fan inside of it, that changes the flow of air around it."
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49elbx | can (and did) it ever happen that, through sheer willpower, a person is able to commit suicide by holding his/her breath? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49elbx/eli5_can_and_did_it_ever_happen_that_through/ | {
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"No, because you'll black out first before you die, and when you black out your breathing becomes automatic. ",
"no, even if someone could hold their breath long enough to pass out, once they did their body wouldn't be able to hold it any longer and would resume breathing ",
"It can't happen. I mean, you can hold your breath through sheer willpower, and maybe -- just maybe -- you can hold it until you pass out.\n\nAt which time you will no longer be consciously refusing to breathe, the autonomic processes take over again, and you start breathing.\n\nYou cannot move from \"Awake, alive, refusing to breathe\" to \"death\" without first getting to \"unconscious and completely able to breathe.\"",
"Not that has ever been recorded. The human brain will naturally try not to die. When you're not at the wheel it picks things back up and keeps things working. "
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3y5bgw | the culture rift between 4chan and reddit | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3y5bgw/eli5_the_culture_rift_between_4chan_and_reddit/ | {
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"Reddit is not anonymous. If one day I, IHaveSlysdexia, want to go around calling everyone a nigger and the next day I want to make some valid point on a political stance, I can't do that. People would either remember me or often people check your post history and bring that up. \n\nOn reddit your actions have consequences no matter how irrelevant they are (negative karma and so on.) Also on reddit there is the ability to voice your opinion instantly with a click and that changes what people see. Therefore if you see shitposting on reddit people downvote it and it goes away. If you see shitposting on 4chan there isn't much you can do about it. I also personally believe that the people who enjoy calling other people retarded don't do well on reddit so they go elsewhere where they can be seen much more easily.\n\nThis is the best I can do to explain like you're five.",
"- Because it's not just a username, an identity *is* attached to it. The best example of this is your post history, which people *will* go through when they don't like you. The idea that you have to put your real name + picture to have an online \"identity\" is just false. Even Youtube is more \"anonymous\" than reddit in that regard.\n\n- The whole upvote/downvote thing is basically just a form of democratic censorship (and it's not \"abused\" because this is literally its purpose). The idea that the upvoted answers are on top is extremely helpful in some situations (like ELI5 for example), but useless for actual discussion and information/opinion exchange.\n\n- Yes moderation makes a *huge* difference. That said it's not like reddit is unique in that respect, (including the bias and overzealousness). Aside from sites like Facebook/Youtube that are too large to moderate, this is always the case. The fact is the internet functions extremely libertarian, namely, the only rules are the ones you set yourself on your property. The site belongs to X so he can do what he wants on it, which includes banning people because they like a different flavor of icecream or whatever. Being someone who grew up on forums, this kind of moderation always seemed omni-present to me, so I'm always a little confused when people expect reddit to be some \"bastion of free-speech\" like 4chan... 4chan had little to no moderation back in the days (it was only increased by a lot around 2010) which created the culture that it has today, and of course the moderators are part of that culture which is why they really only ban for the most obvious things like off-topic or NSFW on SFW boards. To give an example, \"shitposting\" *is* bannable on 4chan, but the definition of shitposting differ *wildly* between 4chan and the rest of the internet. It refers to things spamming all caps walls of text with tons of smileys and the like, not just calling someone a faggot. Like, almost every subreddit has some rule along the lines of \"be polite and respectful\" and you're wondering why calling someone a retard here ruffles feathers, really?\n\nIn summary, everything about 4chan is designed to freely express yourself. You don't have a prevailing identity, you don't have to \"collect\" upvotes for people to read your post, and there's no moderator to watch out for your quality (beyond an extreme).\nReddit is practically the opposite of that, the only way it could be more different was tying things to your facebook account. So I'm not really sure where you even get the idea from that they *should* have the same culture/behaviour.",
"Reddit is more appealing to people who like to follow rules, who like the illusion of freedom even though it is very heavily moderated. People who visit reddit expect a good experience as they will almost always read views that match their own. It is mainly for people who like to pretend and make-believe. **Reddit is like watching a Disney movie that talks about racism where in the end everyone lives happily ever after.**\n\n4chan is the exact opposite. Except for the one group of retards nobody likes (pedophiles) there is no moderation and your experience on what you read might not always please you and suit your views. No one goes there to help boost their ego, it would most likely get shot down anyways. **4chan is more like watching a documentary of the actual effects of racism.**\n\n**tldr in bold**",
"4chan's low volume of moderation is actually better. Of course every off topic or pedophile stuff gets deleted but even shitposting has some value and comedic value behind them. If they don't the posters don't care about the shitposters or you know \"Ironic shitposting is still shitposting\"\n\nAnonymity of 4chan on the other hand brings a huge non-accountability. With this non-accountability you act as you wish, you don't have to watch out for what you say because you either get banned or people just don't care. There is a form of sub-cultural acceptance there. It's more natural but not limiting. \n\nPeople barely care about who you are on 4chan and you shall be called a \"total faggot\" but you just don't care. You just want to do WHAT YOU WANT to do. If you know how to post on the board people eventually come and discuss something with you. You CAN just ignore shitposters literally and figuratively. Everything is up to you, your way of acting that you decide on, and it's more primal. Thus it can get really creative. \n\nReddit on the other hand is way too moderated both by the moderation and the community itself. It's unnatural. You gotta watch out for everything you say, not because they are wrong but because the community can make it disappear.\n\nReddit is a comfort zone. You come to Reddit, you see what you expect from Reddit and you leave. You get your decent information, cute animal photos, some insight and overall a very, VERY standard experience. If you visit both of them you come here because YOU HAVE TO. You are either at work or you need something, etc. It's your wife.\n\n4chan is your secret love, whore, mistress who has good drugs. Average people look down on her but since you are both on the vice-side of these average norms you don't criticize each other and just have fun. You are at 4chan because YOU WANT TO. Because you always want to be with that fun whore. But life isn't always about fun. Thus you go to back to your wife your secure, comfort zone."
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9y7mgn | when soap is used to wash off a stain/substance from human skin, what is happening on a molecular and chemical level? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9y7mgn/eli5_when_soap_is_used_to_wash_off_a/ | {
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"soap is a surfactant, a compound that effectively reduces the surface tension of water.\n\nBasically, soap allows oily things like dirt to more easily dissolve in water, this makes it easier for them to come off your skin.\n\nSurfactants for water tend to be compounds with a very polar (strongly electrically negative or positive) end and a very non-polar end. The polar end interacts well with water (which, itself, is quite polar) while the non-polar end interacts well with oily substances that tend to not interact well with water."
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51iecn | why does the dea schedule drugs and not the fda? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/51iecn/eli5_why_does_the_dea_schedule_drugs_and_not_the/ | {
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"Because congress has delegated that authority to the DEA and not the FDA. The ultimate authority in all of this is congress. What they say goes.",
"Congress set up the Drug Enforcement Agency to administer the Controlled Substances Act. The Food and Drug Administration deals with the qualify and safety of medicine, while the DEA enforces who can actually transport and distribute drugs.",
"Because that's not true. The controlled substances act which created the power to schedule drugs grants the authority over drug scheduling to the Attorney General to act with the advice and recommendation of the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The advice in terms of scientific and medical matters is binding and if the Secretary of Health and Human Services recommends against scheduling the drug the Attorney General cannot schedule it. \n\nNow the Attorney General leads the Department of Justice, and the Department of Justice contains the DEA to specifically handle drug matters, so the power is delegated by the Attorney General to them, though once they decide the Attorney General has to sign off of course. The Department of Health and Human Services contains the FDA and since they deal with drugs the authority over that role in the scheduling procedure is delegated to the FDA, and of course ultimately signed off by the Secretary. \n\nBoth the DEA and the FDA have a role in it. The FDA's approval is needed to allow the DEA to schedule it, but the DEA being the ones to actually go out and enforce the scheduling decides IF they schedule it. "
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3dgoa9 | how do we make more precise machinery if making these devices requires us using... more precise machinery? | Lately, I have been browsing /r/mechanical_gifs and the thought occured to me that something had to have created all the components of these machines. They seem too perfect for human hands alone, making me think that the components must have been machine-made. However, aren't these machines which make these components also created from more precisely created components?
Note: While I do understand that humans ultimately make machines, ultimately, I want to know more of the process of evolution of these devices. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dgoa9/eli5_how_do_we_make_more_precise_machinery_if/ | {
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"I create a lever hinged at one end, and put a machine tool half way up the lever, and the controller at the unhinged end of the lever. Now the machine tool has twice the precision of whatever it is that is controlling the machine tool.",
"An example:\n\nThanks to geometry, I can make a plate flat to within 0.00001\" with neither measuring equipment nor special machinery. But, I have to make three of them.\n\nI get three big pieces of flattish granite, and a bunch of abrasive. You label the pieces A, B, and C. First you grind A against B, then B against C, and finally C against A. Keep going, and all three will get flatter and flatter until eventually they are flat enough.\n\nWe manage to achieve a great deal by being extraordinarily clever."
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269lp7 | in natural childbirth, what is the mechanism that triggers the delivery process within the body? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/269lp7/eli5_in_natural_childbirth_what_is_the_mechanism/ | {
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"We don't know what causes spontaneous labor. It certainly is an interesting question, but we do not know.",
"It's probably a hormonal spike that allows for contraction of the muscles and dilation of the cervix. "
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34et4q | do dogs actually care about us and are loyal to "us" or are they just loyal to any person who feeds them and takes care of them? | I mean how else could you explain the ability of adopting a pet from a shelter who probably had a prior owner and that pet immediately being part of "your" group.
So is it really loyalty/love or is it just compliance/complaisance? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34et4q/eli5_do_dogs_actually_care_about_us_and_are_loyal/ | {
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"Does your partner love *you* or just the person who has spent time, effort, and emotion on them? Does your partner always love only you, or do they come to love the person who treats them well after you?\n\n",
"Dogs want to belong to a pack and will join a new pack easily if given love food and shelter. Once the pack is adopted most dogs will remain loyal to that new pack unless the pack itself leaves the dog or gives it reason to feel neglected. How you regard this state of affairs really depends upon how you view dogs as pets.",
"Is there a difference?\n\nA dog is loyal to it's social group, it's pack. It's pack being the group that provides it with safety and food.\n\nIf you were an orphan, old enough to understand but not old enough to live on your own. And you were given to a foster family that fed you, clothed you and took care of you. Is there a difference between recognizing that you should respect them because they are caring for you and loving them in a non-romantic, platonic kind of way?\n\nDogs are the same way. Their loyalty only lasts as long as you are taking care of each other. If you don't feed dog, don't care for it and leave out in the yard to catch it's own food, it's not going to recognize you as the pack leader. It's going to be wild and recognize you as a rival."
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68ixt2 | how do movie theaters pay for movies? is it per person? how do tickets sales work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68ixt2/eli5_how_do_movie_theaters_pay_for_movies_is_it/ | {
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"Movie theater companies pay for the rights to show the film to audiences for a limited period of time. Ticket prices vary by location based on the customer demographic and the size of the theater. The real money is made at the concession booth, though. ",
"Typically the distributors (Fox, Disney, Paramount, Universal, Warner Bros) make arrangements with the theatres (AMC, Regal, Cinemark) for a certain % of each ticket sale for their films, usually partly based on how popular the film is expected to be. For example, a film like Get Out may have the distributor earning 40% of profit of every ticket sold while a film like Guardians of the Galaxy 2 may have 60% of profit of every ticket sold going to the distributor. Then as the weeks go on, that agreement for the % of ticket price will sometimes decrease in what the distributor gets and slide more into the theatres' favor as the film becomes less popular and the theatre still keeps it. The theatre then retains a higher % of the ticket price. Some distributors will give rebates to theatre chains if they play a certain % of their films in 3D (thereby granting more revenue for the distributor since the ticket price is higher). \nThis is why theatre chains usually have high concession prices, because a bulk of the admission revenue is going to the distributors. There are multiple other factors that go into the profit sharing between the theatre chain and the distributor but that is typically the basics."
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mkdmu | what is acid reflux? | edit: forgot to ask, too - why does it occur? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mkdmu/eli5_what_is_acid_reflux/ | {
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"What's in your stomach goes back up your esophagus into the throat. \n\nThe acid can cause irritation in your esophagus and throat, which can be painful. ",
"Well, your stomach makes among other things acid to digest the food you eat. Your stomach is ok with this because it also produces mucous that protect it's walls from the acid.\n\nNormally the acid on your stomach only has one way to go, to the duodenum. The duodenum is also ok with all this acid because your pancreas makes a series of substances that make the acid less acid.\n\nUnder certain circumstances the acid on your stomach goes to your oesophagus (the tube that connects your moth to your stomach). - What is known as Acid Reflux. \n\n This is not ok because the oesophagus is not prepared for the acid. This gives a burning sensation on your chest as a bitter flavour in your mouth. If this goes along for long, your oesophagus's walls start to turn into something like your stomach walls that is able to sustain the acid from the stomach. This is not ok because it is like a growing field for cancer. The problem is that when you get to this state even if you cure the reflux, there is no going back, and the risk for cancer is always there so you need to be checked by your doctor from time to time in order to diagnose cancer at it's earlier state.\n\nAcid reflux can be caused by many things and generally there is just not one cause but many factors working at once. I would say the most prevalent factor in developed countries is obesity. What happens is that you have a big belly and your belly is full of fat, that fat occupies space and sends all the food you've just eaten upwards to your oesophagus. Other important factors to consider are certain medication, and napping after you sleep. \n\nTreatment for acid reflux includes loosing weight which has the advantage of treating other diseases related to obesity as Diabetes, Hypertension, and lowering your cardiovascular risk. Other lines of treatment include not sleeping after you eat, taking medication for diminishing the quantity of acid your stomach produces and surgery. \n\nIt is also important to know that acid reflux can be normal to a certain level. ",
"What's in your stomach goes back up your esophagus into the throat. \n\nThe acid can cause irritation in your esophagus and throat, which can be painful. ",
"Well, your stomach makes among other things acid to digest the food you eat. Your stomach is ok with this because it also produces mucous that protect it's walls from the acid.\n\nNormally the acid on your stomach only has one way to go, to the duodenum. The duodenum is also ok with all this acid because your pancreas makes a series of substances that make the acid less acid.\n\nUnder certain circumstances the acid on your stomach goes to your oesophagus (the tube that connects your moth to your stomach). - What is known as Acid Reflux. \n\n This is not ok because the oesophagus is not prepared for the acid. This gives a burning sensation on your chest as a bitter flavour in your mouth. If this goes along for long, your oesophagus's walls start to turn into something like your stomach walls that is able to sustain the acid from the stomach. This is not ok because it is like a growing field for cancer. The problem is that when you get to this state even if you cure the reflux, there is no going back, and the risk for cancer is always there so you need to be checked by your doctor from time to time in order to diagnose cancer at it's earlier state.\n\nAcid reflux can be caused by many things and generally there is just not one cause but many factors working at once. I would say the most prevalent factor in developed countries is obesity. What happens is that you have a big belly and your belly is full of fat, that fat occupies space and sends all the food you've just eaten upwards to your oesophagus. Other important factors to consider are certain medication, and napping after you sleep. \n\nTreatment for acid reflux includes loosing weight which has the advantage of treating other diseases related to obesity as Diabetes, Hypertension, and lowering your cardiovascular risk. Other lines of treatment include not sleeping after you eat, taking medication for diminishing the quantity of acid your stomach produces and surgery. \n\nIt is also important to know that acid reflux can be normal to a certain level. "
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1nrifi | daylight savings | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nrifi/daylight_savings/ | {
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"As you probably know, the Earth's tilt on its axis causes the seasons. This phenomenon results in there being more hours of daylight during the summer than the winter (that's part of why summer happens in the first place). But the day lengthens in both directions. That is, every day after the winter solstice, the sun rises a bit earlier and sets a bit later, all the way up to the summer solstice, when the trend reverses.\n\nSo let's look at an example. New York City. It's fairly far north in the US, and the further you get from the equator, the bigger the difference between the shortest day and the longest day. For NYC, the shortest day has 9 hours 14 minutes of daylight, and the longest day has 15 hours 6 minutes of daylight. That's a pretty big spread! So now we have the basics: Days get longer, and both sunrise and sunset move further away from noon as summer progresses. \n\nNow imagine that the sun is actually directly overhead exactly at noon. That means that half of the day is before that, and half is after. So for the shortest day (9 hours 14 minutes ), the amount of daylight before and after noon is 4 hours 37 minutes. So sunrise would be at 7:23 AM, and sunset would be at 4:37 PM. Sounds like a dark and dreary winter day!\n\nBut what about summer. Now, instead of half of 9 hours 14 minutes, we need half of 15 hours 6 minutes, which is 7 hours 33 minutes. This means that sunrise on the longest day of the year would be at 4:27 AM, and sunset would be at 7:33 PM. \n\nWho needs the sun to be up at 4:30 in the morning?! No one, that's who! So we use Daylight Saving Time to push the clocks ahead by one hour. Now the sun is at its peak at 1 PM instead of noon, and we've shifted sunrise to 5:37 AM, and sunset to 8:33 PM, which is much more reasonable, because most of the daylight occurs in the evening when people are awake to enjoy it, instead of in the morning before everyone wakes up (but the secret is that it's the exact same time as before, and we just changed our clocks to make it *seem* like the daylight is shifted).\n\nOh, and [here's a link to a graph of sunrise and sunset in NYC](_URL_0_). Scroll down to \"Daily Sunrise & Sunset with Twilight and Daylight Savings Time\". Note that the times are slightly off from my example, because I used an idealized noon where the sun was directly overhead, but that's not how noon actually works, because we have time zones, and there will be only a single vertical line per time zone were that holds true (and NYC isn't on that line)."
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fyk40d | how does a country get out of inflation? | There's a lot of materials on what causes it, but I struggle to find explanations about how countries got out of it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fyk40d/eli5_how_does_a_country_get_out_of_inflation/ | {
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"Inflation is natural, inherent, and expected within healthy economies. Why would you want to deflate or stagnate your economy?",
"1) Stop printing money. The economy grows in the sense that there are more people every year and more businesses moving money. As it grows, and there's no new money, the existing money gets more in demand. \n\n2) Give up. The old money is bankrupt and worthless, so we're going to switch from dollars to dollorinos or whatever. The hard part is convincing people that you're not going to just keep printing more and more dollorinos like you did previously. \n\n3) Have an economic crash (and don't print money). If there's a crash and everyone panics and sells all their investments, the demand for money increases. Deflation (the opposite of inflation) becomes a worry."
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41szww | why are the website contents of so many american tv channels not available in my region (denmark)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41szww/eli5_why_are_the_website_contents_of_so_many/ | {
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"Basically, many TV producers make deals with international distributors to give the exclusive rights to air or stream a show in that country. Let's say that I'm HBO. I don't believe I'd make money selling Game of Thrones directly to Denmark. So I ask Danish companies if they'd pay me money in exchange for the exclusive rights to show Game of Thrones in Denmark. BUT, even if no company has bought it yet, I'll keep Danish people from watching it on my website so that theoretical Danish company won't complain that there's no local audience since everyone just watched it online.\n\nIt's an increasingly outdated mode of business, but many TV networks are still committed to this style of business, because they believe they'll earn more money this way."
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1slj84 | my car's idle speed | When I was sitting at a stop light, I thought about why I was braking on a level surface in my automatic transmission vehicle. "Well, I guess the brakes are countering the force from the idle speed." Then I started thinking about why cars have an idle speed. What's the purpose? It seems like a waste of gasoline and unnecessary strain for your brakes (though probably small, it has to add up). | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1slj84/eli5_my_cars_idle_speed/ | {
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"Here's an article on a few aspects of it - _URL_0_\n\nAdditionally, the real purpose of it is that it's the minimum amount of fuel a vehicle needs to use to keep the engine working so you can start and go again immediately without a re-start. This is also the reason for hybrids functioning at these low speeds. It lets the car get moving and during that, the start-up process is happening and then the engine re-engages.",
"As opposed to stopping the engine when you're at rest? Hybrid cars do this, unless they are recharging the battery.\n\nThe problem with a gasoline engine is when you need to take off. You can't start the engine fast enough in situations where you need to be able to move quickly*.\n\nAlso, the idling isn't burning all that much gas. It's pretty much just enough to keep the engine running. The torque converter of an automatic transmission is keeping most of the load off the engine while you have your foot on the brake.\n\nThere's no strain on your brake pads/rotors/drums because no material is rubbed off at a stop. Of course the hydraulics are doing a bit of work keeping the brake engaged.\n\n\\*edit: I should note that BMW actually *does* do this on newer models. The engine restart is keyed off of you taking your foot off the brake, which *should* have it ready in time for you to accelerate. I would personally be leery of it.",
"Traditionally internal combustion engines need to revolve at a certain number of RPM to maintain enough momentum to keep everything moving, idle speed. there are some new systems out there that turn off one or more cylinders when you are stopped to save fuel. ",
"it helps me park."
]
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"http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_green_lantern/2008/05/is_an_idle_car_the_devils_workshop.html"
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ogz13 | why technetium (tc) is unstable, when it's in a stable portion of the periodic table? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ogz13/eli5_why_technetium_tc_is_unstable_when_its_in_a/ | {
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"The basic organization of the periodic table places elements based on the number of protons they have (their atomic number) - so it is irrelevant whether the nuclide is stable.\n\nAnother way to put it - an element is defined by how many protons it has. The number of neutrons, and the stability of the nuclide, has nothing to do with its position in the table. The atomic weight (in brackets for unstable elements) is just the weight of the most stable nuclide.",
"strictly speaking, there are no 'stable' portions of the periodic table. nuclear stability is related to the number of protons and neutrons present in the nucleus, regardless of their location in the periodic table.\n\nany element can be unstable in one or more of its nuclear \"configurations\". the different configurations are called isotopes, btw.\n\nit happens that some elements have no stable isotopes, and the element with 43 protons is one of these. element 61, promethium, is another.\n\ni always found it interesting that 43 and 61 are prime numbers, btw.",
"Dr_Legacy is basically right though there are some very technical reasons why Tc is unstable.\n\nFirst of all when we're talking about stablity of elements, as Dr_Legacy said above the periodic table doesn't really help us. However if you plot Number of Neutrons against number of protons then you get a chart which is pretty useful.\n\nSee [Here](_URL_0_)\n\nSo on that chart the stable isotopes of each follow the black path from bottom left to top right, and around them on both sides are the more unstable isotopes.\n\nLets quickly go into a little primer of why atoms are unstable at all. The nucleus is made up of two particles, Protons and Neutrons. Protons have a very strong positive charge which means they are repelled from each other. The reason they are able to stay together in the nucleus is what's called the \"strong force\". This is a monumentally strong force, that overpowers the electromagnetic repulsion between the the positrons. The problem is that the strong force is very limited in its range, when Protons and Neutrons are very close together they \"snap\" together by the strong force, but if they are too far apart they are pushed apart by the electromagnetic force.\n\nSo the major problem with keeping atoms together is keeping this strong force within the right range to hold Protons together. If you just smushed more and more protons together they'd quickly be too big a lump for the strong force to be able to keep it together, but luckly the Neutrons help here. Neutrons are electromagnetically neutral so they don't repel away from each other, or Protons, but they are still held to together by the strong force. By adding neutrons into an atom we can help balance out the strong force and electromagnetic forces.\n\nSo this sort-of explains why on that chart I sent earlier all the black stable atoms follow a nearly straight line out. Atoms are most stable when the number of neutrons and protons are nearly equal. (its actually more like 1:1- > 1.5:1 neutron:proton). If you add too many protons and not enough neutrons the electric force wins and breaks bits off.\n\nWhy can't you just keep adding tonnes of neutrons though? Given that they don't repel shouldn't they stick together indefinitely? Well the problem with Neutrons is that left on their own they're pretty unstable, after a while the turn into an Proton and fire off an electron. (Basically an electron is -1 charge, a Proton is +1 charge, put em together and you get an neutron with 0 charge). When Protons and Neutrons are held together there's a constant exchange of particles which sort of keep the Neutrons \"refreshed\" and stop them decaying.\n\nAnyway, so if you add too many neutrons or too many protons things tend to start to fall apart and cause the atom to be unstable.\n\nAs you see in that chart the bigger the atoms get the more unstable things are generally, up to the top right the atoms generally become all unstable. That's basically because the atom nucleus becomes so big that no amount of neutrons is enough to hold it together.\n\nSo all this is good and well, so why does Tc, which has three isotopes (97, 98 and 99) in our in our \"sweet zone\" not have any stable isotopes? Well its pretty technical and hard to explain actually. Its to do with how the different Protons and Neutrons \"Pack together\". When there's a Even-number of particles in a nucleus its more stable when there's also an even number of Protons, so 98Tc is not stable, while 98Ru and 98Mo are. When there's and odd-number of particles due to the way the stability curves lay there can only be one stable particle at the bottom of the curve, and this is already taken up by 99Ru and 97Mo.\n\nA simple way to imagine it is that due to the particular way the clump of balls that is the nucleolus arranges for Tc, there's always a little bit sticking out where it shouldn't, and that always causes instability.\n\n*Disclaimer:* I only have a simple knowledge of this type of physics and much of what I've said has been vastly over-simplified."
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22mrhc | how does flying at a low altitude help in evading detection by radar ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22mrhc/eli5_how_does_flying_at_a_low_altitude_help_in/ | {
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"Disclaimer: I'm not an expert.\n\nRadar is basically line of sight.\n\nMost radar installations are at ground level and are aimed *slightly* upwards.\n\nThis gives low flying craft far enough away from the radar source a good chance at avoiding detection by flying \"under the radar\". Of course, as they get closer and closer to the radar source, the advantage wanes, however, low flying craft are just trying to delay the inevitable and will take whatever advantage they can.\n\nThis \"trick\" would not work well when the radar source is on, for example, an aircraft carrier on a calm sea/ocean. The radar would have a great line of sight all around to the horizon.\n\nHope that helps!",
"Most radar points upwards to avoid reflections from the ground, trees, and structures from producing noise on the receiver. If you fly just above the terrain, you may be able to fly under the path the main lobe of the radar searches.",
"Radar basically emits radio waves and records them as they bounce off of objects and come back to the sensor. These waves will bounce off of other objects just as easily as they will a plane, such as trees or terrain. This means that all radar has a floor, below which all signals are just noise. Flying under the radar is flying below this point so that the radar cannot differentiate the plane from other pieces of terrain. \n\nRadar installations are not angled slightly upwards, or if they are, this is not the reason that planes can fly to avoid detection. \n\nCoincidentally, this is why stealth aircraft look the way they do. They are designed to reflect the radio waves that hit them, to minimize the amount that actually reach the sensor.",
"If you are flying over land, you are almost always getting picked up on radar. The only way it is undetectable is by flying where radar can't reach. Examples: next to mountainous areas where as you are below the peek. Spots of the ocean or desolate landscapes. Also military aircraft with anti radar technology. Source - I have been an air traffic controller for 3 years. EDIT: some countries also have shitty radar systems that can't pick up objects as well or only picks up the aircrafts transponder (radio device that tells the controller info about the aircraft) if the pilot turns the transponder off than it can disappear off radar."
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4ycv2m | what does "e" stand for in derivatives ? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ycv2m/eli5_what_does_e_stand_for_in_derivatives/ | {
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"Y'know *x*? *x* is a variable. *e* is NOT a variable, although it looks like one. *e* is a number. Specifically, it's about 2.718281828159, but we'll say 2.718. \n\n*e^x* is a *special* thing. Why? Well if you graph *e^x*, any point on that graph will be equal to its slope. What does that mean? So say you're looking at this graph, and you want to look at x=1. *e^1* = 2.718, and the slope at that point is also 2.718. Same with *e^2*, *e^3*, etc. \n\nA derivative of a function, as you probably know, is the slope of the tangent. Because *e^x* = its slope at that point, the derivative of *e^x* is *e^x*. "
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[]
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akpvey | this ‘whooosh’ sound in the air after planes fly by? (not the plane engine sound) | So I live right near an airport, this means aircrafts fly in front of my apartment at 700~ feet every minute and a half.
On some occasions, after a plane has passed me, I’ll hear this big WHOOOSH sound, as if there’s waves clashing/winds clashing and a whip at the end of it if that makes any sense. Sometimes it’s loud and sometimes it’s not so loud.
What is this sound I hear? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/akpvey/eli5_this_whooosh_sound_in_the_air_after_planes/ | {
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"I've heard this sound, too. My assumption has always been that it's the tornado-like wind created by the wingtip vortices. On larger aircraft, those forces are powerful enough to flip a small aircraft.",
"Sounds are air being compressed/moved, and that movement propagating through the air and hitting your ear drum.\n\nPlanes displace a lot of air as they move through it.\n\nThe noise you are hearing is the air moving to fill in where the plane just was, and the waves that movement causes vibrating against your eardrums.",
"You're hearing wingtip vortices. Here's a [picture](_URL_1_) of them, made visible because the airplane is passing over a cloud. \n\n[Wiki article](_URL_0_)"
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingtip_vortices",
"https://i.pinimg.com/236x/29/ee/7b/29ee7bcfe94cf5b91bb82942debdbc7f--vortex-airplanes.jpg"
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6eq6hb | if children have milk teeth, why do they have to frequently brush their teeth? they fall out anyway. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6eq6hb/eli5_if_children_have_milk_teeth_why_do_they_have/ | {
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"because they are still in their mouth for years and can rot and cause health problems. \n\nYou completely replace your skin every few days, so why bother showering?",
"Brushing isn't just about teeth health, its mouth hygiene for gums, tongue etc. Plus it's good practice to get them into the habit early.",
"Yeah, you lose your baby teeth when you're 6-8, but I'm sure you'd like to be able to chew things before then. And with poor dental care and high sugar diets like we have, you would lose them far earlier than 6 if you didn't brush at all. And poor dental health (cavities) can be painful. \n\nPLUS, getting kids to brush regularly young simply sets up a good habit for when they're older. "
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aa2rf9 | what happens to people's brains when they get excessively lonely? are there people who don't get lonely at all and are their brains different? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aa2rf9/eli5_what_happens_to_peoples_brains_when_they_get/ | {
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"Schizoids (people who prefer solitude to social company) don't get lonely. It's one of their defining characteristics. There doesn't appear to be any chemical or physical difference in brains of schizoids as compared to the average person. "
]
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||
91eyxt | from a crt: what is an electron gun, and what exactly does it do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/91eyxt/eli5_from_a_crt_what_is_an_electron_gun_and_what/ | {
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"An electron gun is a device that emits a continuous beam of electrons when powered on. In a CRT, electromagnetic coils bend the electron beam back and forth to scan across the screen like printed text, left to right then top to bottom. The beam strikes phosphor strips that coat the inner surface of the screen and cause them to glow. The strength of the beam determines how much the phosphors glow and is continually varied by modulating the amount of power sent to the electron gun to draw the desired image.",
"Electrons are charged particles, and as a result accelerate when put in an electric field. \n\nAn electron gun is simply a source of electrons (often some heated metal that doesn’t hold its electrons very well) and an electric field. The field pulls electrons off the source and accelerated them down the “barrel” of the electron gun. \n\nThese are made more useful by having more than one electric field. They’ll have one electric field to accelerate the electrons, and two in other directions to direct the electrons at a target (these are at right angles to the field that accelerated them). \n\nOne use is to display images. If you coat glass with a phosphorescent material, electrons hitting the coating will cause the coating to glow (commonly green). So drawing images is possible with electron guns, and thus sort of thing is really common in scientific equipment. \n\nIf I’m not mistaken, cathode-ray tube televisions used an electron gun (which is the tube itself) to display the image on your screen. This is why CR-TVs are so thick and heavy, they have this huge cathode-ray tube in them. ",
"Doesn't 'electron gun' sound cool? IMO it sure does, even though the heart of an electron gun can get quite hot. :)\n\nAn electron gun is used as a source of electrons which are often used in imaging devices. In practice, a substance is heated to release electrons as electrons get too excited. This is called thermionic heating. 'Too excited' means their kinetic energy exceeds the ionization energy, i.e. the energy related to the electric force between a nucleus and its (outer) electron(s). The flow of emitted (released) electrons is then accelerated to desired voltage and focused with lenses in order to form a beam of electrons. As the main qualities of the beam are known, it can be used to observe or analyze material. After the electrons hit a target, the qualities of then released electrons convey information of the target. A target may be something manufactured to form an image on a screen or to analyze an unknown sample with an electron microscope.\n\nThe most common types of electron guns by source material are tungsten filament, solid state crystal (CeB6 or LaB6) and field emission gun (FEG).\n\n**Tungsten filament**\n\nThe cheap, traditional option. It's basically a light bulb on steroids: more power so that electrons, instead of light, can be emitted.\n\n**Solid state crystal (CeB6 or LaB6)**\n\nOffers about 5-10 times the brightness and a much longer lifetime than tungsten.\n\n**Field emission gun (FEG)**\n\nA wire of tungsten with a sharp tip (tip radius < 100nm) for improved emission and focusing ability\n\nThat's about it. This is my very first response on Reddit. Hope it helped and answered your question!\n\n(And yes, English is my second language, so please be kind.)"
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244ggn | could north korea pull a massive turnaround like china did from 1970s to present day? | After reading this _URL_0_
I was wondering, would it be possible for North Korea to do a similar thing? And how likely is it that that will happen any time soon? (Assuming that Korea is not united, and there is no intervention from the west) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/244ggn/eli5_could_north_korea_pull_a_massive_turnaround/ | {
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"They do not have the resources, population or space to ever become anywhere near as successful as China has in recent years. However it is possible that they could turnaround and become an economically successful country like their neighbours to the North and South. Under Kim Jong-un though, I really can't see it happening. They would need an intelligent, moderate leader who would improve relations with the rest of the world and open up the country. Can't see it happening though."
]
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/243mx4/eli5_how_did_china_go_from_north_korea_lite_to_a/"
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[]
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|
6mfs8a | what happens to your body if you take an x-ray without protective lead shields? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6mfs8a/eli5_what_happens_to_your_body_if_you_take_an/ | {
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"You expose yourself to low levels of radiation. Radiation can cause cancer, and your reproductive organs are especially vulnerable to radiation, so in an abundance of caution, people wear the lead apron to cover themselves up. \n\nThe best illustration of radiation levels and dangers that I'm aware of is this xkcd infographic: _URL_0_\n",
"You have a very slightly increased risk of getting cancer in later life.\n\nAll X-rays have the potential to damage DNA, so they shield you so you get the least exposure possible. Sometimes, like with a chest X-ray, there isn't much choice but to get a larger exposure. Your doctor has to weigh the benefits of having the X-ray against the risks.\n\nBut in general, a single full body X-ray will not have a significant negative effect."
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||
61d7i7 | why is that a browser needs 5-10 million lines of code? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61d7i7/eli5_why_is_that_a_browser_needs_510_million/ | {
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"A browser needs to understand, and interpret, the various commands and files that web servers send; web pages are instructions for your browser on how to put together the text, images, videos, and menus, for you to see and interact with. You can right-click or go through the menus and you'll see an option to \"view source code\" available in most browsers, click it and you can see the raw code.\n\nThere are many types of files, pictures, and video formats out there, and your browser needs to be more like a miniature operating system, to handle all of them. It's not a simple app.",
"Because software has lots of code.\n\n5-10 million might sound like a lot, but that is about right for a medium to large sized project. A modern OS might have a few hundred lines of code, Google internet services is a few billion.\n\nAlso realize that source code tend to be pretty sparse. It is not usually to have only 10-20 characters per line of code."
]
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[],
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7jdodx | shortened urls like goog.le, _url_1_, _url_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7jdodx/eli5_shortened_urls_like_google_youtube_reddit/ | {
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"text": [
"Just because a domain is registered in Italy does not mean that the traffic is routed there.\n\nRemember, domain names are created for humans. Computers use IP addresses, not domain names when it comes to actual traffic routing. There is a service, called a DNS, that your ISP provides that translates domain names into IP addresses. \n\nAll that the suffix of the domain name means is that the country in question is in charge of issuing the domain. It has nothing at all to do with routing. \n"
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"redd.it",
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||
1wb831 | who funds the olympics and the athletes' training? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wb831/eli5_who_funds_the_olympics_and_the_athletes/ | {
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"It depends a lot on where the athlete is from. Many countries fund their athletes directly through government programs. The US largely doesn't do this though, and they get their funds from private contributions, or from advertising deals if you're a big enough deal.",
"In Germany most athletes are in the Bundeswehr (Gewrman army) and get funded through that."
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e27stq | why does our brain switch into depressive states? | Is it a defence mechanism of our brain shutting down for a period of time and how does it work? People that have anxiety attacks over an extended period tend to match it with depression for a period of time, why does this happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e27stq/eli5_why_does_our_brain_switch_into_depressive/ | {
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"Hormonal fluctuations and cycles within the body are likely the culprit. Clinical depression, as you probably already know, is due to the brain not producing enough serotonin. Production of chemicals like this and dopamine (the reward chemical) will change depending on life situation (if you're under a lot of stress or unhappy), diet, excercise, cycles such as the menstrual cycle, etc.\n\nAs for your question regarding anxiety being matched with periods of depression, I would reckon it is a result of being in a state of extreme agitation (thus using a great deal of energy and mental faculties) for some time. The body and brain burns itself out and is still dealing with the aftermath of the chemicals created during the anxiety attack. Might be to do with a lack of GABA (Gamma Aminobutyric Acid) as well which is a neurotransmitter that calms you down. GABA's been linked to anxiety and mood disorders like depression"
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5eawpv | why do many old black and white films have everything sped up? everyone just seems more animated as they move quicker than actual. can't we slow down the frame rate? or is that not possible? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5eawpv/eli5_why_do_many_old_black_and_white_films_have/ | {
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"Everything was hand-cranked, leading to inconsistency. Silent films aimed for 15fps, meaning it would need to be speed up to play in 24fps (a pull-down would be way too jarring).",
"These days, with media player software on computers, it should certainly be possible to digitise old movies and mark the digital video for playback at 15fps. The software should be able to handle that just fine. "
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7mttk6 | why does your body gasp for air when exposed to sudden contact with freezing water? it seems a bit counterproductive to inhale when wet (e.g falling through a frozen lake) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7mttk6/eli5_why_does_your_body_gasp_for_air_when_exposed/ | {
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" > it doesn't make much sense that your body would make you gasp for breathe when the logical choice would be to not breathe in.\n\nNot really addressing what this response is, whether or not it happens to all humans, and what causes it: remember that we humans are just tall, bipedal apes who like all other lifeforms on this planet are products of evolution.\n\nAnd evolution does not reward that which is perfect. That \"makes sense\" or is \"logical\". Only that which is *\"eh, that's good enough\"*. To get enough members of a species to breeding age to pass on their genes, to evade their predators and find sufficient food to pass an environment's selection process. Everything alive today has passed that brutal filter. Everything that didn't is very, VERY dead.\n\nSo the follow up question would be, *would the urge to inhale on encountering very cold water be a selective pressure that would prevent a large number of organisms from reaching breeding maturity?*\n\nAnd the answer to that question is certainly *no*.\n\nEspecially considering our species, homo sapiens, originated on the continent of Africa where freezing cold water sources would have been non-existent.",
"It makes you breathe in quickly because you are potentially about to be entirely submerged in cold water so it makes sense to take as big a breath as you are able.\n\nThis typically won't occur if your head is the first thing to enter the water.",
"The reflex to inhale when exposed to a colder temperature is to stimulate the newborn's first breath after delivery.\n\n(I cant find sources though. I think it was two germans who tried to map all reflexes and that was their conclusion.) I dont know if it still holds water.\n\nAnd I fully agree with /u/sovietwomble that this is more beneficial than to not have it. In some cases it might be a disadvantage though. Just that the pros outweighs the cons."
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1cmakw | tumblr. what is it? how does it work? why is it so popular? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cmakw/eli5_tumblr_what_is_it_how_does_it_work_why_is_it/ | {
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"Tumblr is a blogging platform. It's typically best for short-form post. Think of it as an in between Twitter and a traditional blog. \n\nTumblr essentially allows you to post text, photos, videos, etc. It also makes it very easy to share content between blogs. For instance if you like a particular photo you can \"reblog\" the post, with credit, to your blog. The entire process is pretty easy to get a hang of if you are just starting out yet still offers the ability to professionally blog easily. \n\nTumblr became popular with youth and this popularity gradually led the platform to be adopted by journalists, artists, and other companies as a way to spread their content easily."
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av2p2r | how does running water get from a water tower into the plumbing of your house, and eventually have enough pressure to come out your faucet? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/av2p2r/eli5_how_does_running_water_get_from_a_water/ | {
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"Well, there is source water like lakes, rivers and aquifers that enters the system. \n\nWater towers are just there to provide pressure. Water is pumped to the tower and the pressure of that weight is what keeps a constant water pressure in the system. This can also be done with a system of pumps, and it is done this way in lots of places, which is why not every place has a water tower.\n\nHowever, Gravity is very predictable, consistent and doesn't need power to work.",
"The first part may sound simplistic but there are pipes connecting the water tower to the plumbing in your house. They start out really big and get smaller the closer they get to your house.\n\nWater pressure is a bit more interesting of a story. The reason that water towers exist is to make sure that there is always enough water pressure in the system. Normally water pressure is created by water pumps. But, balancing the exact demand for water with the exact supply of pressure is a tricky task. They get around this by pumping water up into the tower when electricity is cheap. Then they can let it out and gravity will do the work of keeping pressure in the system. As the water falls down from the tower it adds pressure to the whole system.\n\nA very tall building like a skyscraper will have to have its own pumps and possibly a water tower at the top because the city's water pressure won't be enough to get it all the way to the upper floors."
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53n3by | why are countries around the world all of a sudden able to demand money from google? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53n3by/eli5_why_are_countries_around_the_world_all_of_a/ | {
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"Google did not have that much to do with the Panama papers released by Wikileaks. They have not been hiding their money, only using known tax loopholes to not pay tax. It is a bit harder to set up as you need more lawyers and lobbying but for a multimillion dollar public company it makes sense rather then sending the money to hidden accounts.\n\nThe issues that Google, Apple, Amazon and others are facing now is that the tax loopholes they have been using are being closed. Nobody wanted to be first to close their loophole since a tax loophole brings in some money to the country. However now that EU have forced the Irish loophole closed and even collecting on the unpaid tax other countries are following suit to hope to increase their tax income."
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36hqq9 | why is there so much fake-rayban-sunglasses spam on facebook? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36hqq9/eli5_why_is_there_so_much_fakeraybansunglasses/ | {
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"YEAH! Why is it sunglasses? Why is it all the time?!?! I wonder if it is some kind of secret code or something. "
]
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||
776ucj | why are the players more prone to breaking out into fights in some sports compared to others? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/776ucj/eli5_why_are_the_players_more_prone_to_breaking/ | {
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"Certain sports are more 'aggressive' than others...When the sport is physically demanding where the opponents are, in a sense, battling each other (a combat sport – combat = war), then the aggression level of the players is heighten as if they are in war or predator vs pray…this makes the players more prone to fight where as a physically demanding endurance sport like cycling is the opposite – the endurance sport is a race from point A to B, not combative. "
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||
2h3ch5 | when a woman has a radical mastectomy, why can't she keep her nipples? | I heard of a tattoo artist who will tattoo nipples for women who have had mastectomies. Breast cancer runs in my family, so I'm honestly curious. Why can't they save a woman's nipple? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h3ch5/eli5_when_a_woman_has_a_radical_mastectomy_why/ | {
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"text": [
"A radical mastectomy is the *entire breast*, and a good portion of the skin it is under, as well as the chest muscle and lymph nodes that are associated with the breast. Which in this list of course includes the nipple. As there is so much missing, there's no support structure for it to live on.\n\nAnd there's now sort of a cavity from such a procedure, so there's nowhere for the nipple to go. You have to save it from the surgery, but if you're doing all that, you don't even want it around anyway, for the reason behind it is to get rid of ALL the cancer... which again, includes the nipple, potentially, as a host.\n\nBut let's say you saved it. Now it has to live in a strange place, and await the reconstruction. Not that it can't be done, but... it's just a lot of work for a now non-functioning part of the body, and induces more complication possibles than it is worth to try.\n\nIf you tried a modified mastectomy, though, they might be able to save it, and part of the breast or muscle or such. BUT... it isn't as complete, and there's a chance of relapse. A complete radical mastectomy gives the best chance of remission compared to a modified version that tries to save things, but allows a host material/compromised material that might still store/make the cancer. \n\nOf course, there's metastisizing of the cells into another place. (My mom's did this, went from her breast to her lung, but they got the bit lung and she's been fine since, many years later.)"
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5nx2ti | what is polynomial time and np problems and what relevance does it have to computer programs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5nx2ti/elif_what_is_polynomial_time_and_np_problems_and/ | {
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"If an algorithm runs in polynomial time, its run time increases at most as a polynom of its input size, when run on \"normal\" computer (deterministic Turing machine). For example if you search for an item in a bag, taking one by one out of the bag until you find the right one, and there is N items (size of input = N) in the bag, you will need to take at most N (run time) out of the bag in order to find the right item - this is polynomial time, since the run time is at most N with input of size N. If an algorithm runs in polynomial time, we say it is in P class, and it is considered to be a reasonable algorithm.\n\nIf an algorithm is in NP class (short for nondeterministic polynomial), it runs in polynomial time on a special machine (nondeterministic Turing machine), that is \"faster\" than normal computers and that doesn't exist in real world (at least as of yet), only in mathematics. That means:\n\n- Problems in P are automatically in NP (because the extra fast computer will be naturally able to solve the P problems in the same or shorter time than a normal computer)\n- Problems in NP may or may not be in P. There are problems (such as travelling salesman problem) that we don't know how to solve in polynomial time. But we also don't know they cannot be solved in polynomial time.\n\nWe DO NOT know whether P and NP classes are the same - this is the famous P vs NP problem. We suppose, however, that P ≠ NP, i.e. that there are problems in NP that are not in P. But there is not a mathematical proof of this, so we only believe this.\n\n[Here is a little image from wiki](_URL_0_)\n\nThe problem here is that we rely on the belief that P ≠ NP, for example in internet encryption. The encrypting algorithms suppose that decrypting encrypted data without the key would be an NP, but not P, problem, i.e. it would take a very very very long time on a normal computer to break the encryption. But since we don't know this for sure and there is a possibility that P = NP, there is also a (very small) possibility, that somewhere on earth some genius hacker will find a way to break the encryption in P time, i.e. quickly, and will be able to break any encryption. That would be disasterous of course. The chance of this is very close to zero, but it's not zero since we don't have a mathematical proof yet. When we have the proof, we can be sure the encryption is really safe, and we can also stop looking for ways to break it (since we know we can't), and we can spend our time on other research."
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9h2lgf | what is the internal clock in gameboy advance games such as pokèmon emerald, and why did it cause so many problems when it eventually "went dry"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9h2lgf/eli5_what_is_the_internal_clock_in_gameboy/ | {
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"The night and day cycles were controlled by a small secondary battery in the cartridge and when it died the game no longer did night/day cycle. so berry harvesting and evolving espeon and umbreon couldn’t happen. ",
"The internal clock is exactly that: a clock within the game cartridge, which tells the game what time it is. If the battery runs dry and can't run, then the game won't know that time has elapsed, which has adverse effects within the game.\n\nIn extreme cases, losing the battery meant *losing your save file*, which can sometimes mean as many as five years of real-life progress."
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dxh1b1 | why does division of floating point numbers take a lot more time than multiplication of floats in computers? | While working on a programming related project, I was told that code should always be optimized to multiply instead of divide floating-point numbers to achieve the same result, and it could take upwards of 6 times the time just to divide than multiply. For example, 5 \* 0.5 and 5 / 2 would give the same number, but the time it takes would be 6 times more to divide. Can anybody explain why floats work like this is in layman's terms? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dxh1b1/eli5_why_does_division_of_floating_point_numbers/ | {
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"Divide is a much more difficult operation, the best algorithms like [Euclidean Division](_URL_0_ ) take many times more steps than multiplication algorithms like the lattice.",
"It's easier to multiply a*2^n x b*2^m = (ab)2^(m+n) than it is to do the associated division. Sometimes division is basically iterative addition/subtraction.\n\nThink of doing long division. it's an iterative process\n\n __333_ \n 3|1000 \n 900\n ----\n 100\n ...."
]
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5fs2sm | how do some animal species know to escape from their predators as soon as they hatch from their eggs? | So while watching Planet Earth II, I started to ask myself: how is it possible that some animals, especially reptilians and amphibians, know to run away from their predators the minute they hatch? Moreover, they know techniques that will make them 'invisible' to the predator, e.g. Stopping motion, so that snakes can't detect them etc. how is it they possess all of this information, without having prior observations? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5fs2sm/eli5_how_do_some_animal_species_know_to_escape/ | {
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"It's not about knowing. It's about which pre-programmed behaviors led to a higher rate of survival.",
"Imagine a population of marine iguanas, just like the community of humans where you live, they are different, each of them has different traits. Mating seasons arrives, followed by hatching season.\n\nAll the eggs are offspring from this population, and they inherited traits from their parents. These traits are being filtered by the population of snakes.\n\nAt the beginning, you had hatchlings that didn't have the behaviour of escaping as soon as they hatch and got eaten by snakes. So, the individuals with that trait can't reproduce in the next mating seasons.\n\nRepeat this event over and over and over. Generations to generation of hatchling with different traits, some escape, some doesn't. After a long time, those who have hatchlings with the behaviour of escaping, will survive and dominate the population.\n\nAlthough we know that behaviour is in some way encoded in their DNA, DNA is far more complex than \"a single gene codes for a single trait\". Some genes do code that way, but most of them code for more than one thing, some things needs several genes, some genes regulate instead of coding and there's epiDNA (modifications in the DNA by methyl).\n\nThey don't really \"know\", it only happened that those who escaped, survived, giving them the chance to mate. Those who didn't escape, got eaten, taking away the chance to mate."
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8hf70w | why is salt water so difficult to make drinkable/usable? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8hf70w/eli5_why_is_salt_water_so_difficult_to_make/ | {
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"It's not really. It's as simple as boiling the water. It just takes a lot of energy because water takes a lot of energy to heat up, which makes it economically infeasible to do for regular use.",
"It's very usable. It's great at corroding rocks and housing sea animals. And that happens without any human intervention, how cool is that!?",
"It's not difficult at all. You just heat the water, capture the steam, and condense it into pure water. The salt gets left behind.\n\nWhenever you boil a pan of salty water on your stove, such as when you're cooking vegetables, and condensation runs down your cold windows, you're doing it. That condensation is pure water with no salt.\n\nThe only thing that's difficult is being able to do it cheaply. ",
"Don't forget RO (reverse osmosis), it doesn't heat the water, so it takes less energu, but does require replacing filters. ",
"Salt dissolves into water leaving individual atom ions. So, it's not like dissolving sugar in water, where there are giant sugar molecules floating around in the water. These atoms are about the same size as water molecules, so you can't filter them our. You can dilute them out, using reverse osmosis, or you can vapor separate them by boiling the water to gas. Both these processes take a lot of energy.",
"It isn't difficult so much as impractical.\n\nExtracting salt from water take a lot of energy. The simplest way it to distill (boil) the water, while the more complicated but less energy intensive reverse osmosis is becoming more common. But both are quite expensive.\n\nThe more serious obstacle is distributing the water. Most of the world's water distribution network is driven by gravity. Water from uphill flows downhill and is diverted to where it is needed. Desalination gets you a bunch of water at sea level, which is about as downhill as you can get, and leaves you with the expensive problem of how to get the water to where it is needed."
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1sp3q9 | the difference between "damnit", "dammit", and "damn it" | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sp3q9/eli5the_difference_between_damnit_dammit_and_damn/ | {
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"Spelling. They all mean the same thing.",
"\"Damn it\" is the proper spelling.\n\n\"Dammit\" is a colloquialism, showing how people tend to pronounce it as if it were one word.\n\n\"Damnit\" is a compromise between the two. I've rarely seen it spelled this way.\n\nAside from that, they all have the same meaning."
]
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4b5q1g | how does the nuclear missle defence work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4b5q1g/eli5_how_does_the_nuclear_missle_defence_work/ | {
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"When the nuclear missile is shot down, it's destroyed but no fission occurs, there exists the possibility of radioactive contamination if the core is fragmented, but the radiation is fast less than that of an fission explosion. ",
"No. \n\nModern nuclear weapons require a very precise series of timed explosions take place to compress the fissile material and produce a nuclear explosion.\n\nAn incoming warhead struck by an interceptor missile would not detonate. It would be forcefully torn apart by the impact, and scattered over a relatively wide area in likely very small pieces. The actual amount of nuclear material in a warhead is fairly small, and the resulting contamination would be minimal.",
"The material that a nuclear bomb's core is made of is actually relatively benign in comparison to the materials generated during the explosion. If your choice is pre-detonation nuclear material or post-detonation material, definitely pick the first over the second.\n\nRemember that a nuclear explosion depends on nuclear fission, which is literally breaking uranium or plutonium into different elements. The stuff you start with is stable and pretty safe, which is why it's useful. If it was super-duper unsafe you'd have trouble making bombs out of it. The stuff that results from the fission events, on the other hand, are abominations of nature.",
"It really depends, according to several of my professors who worked in the field (getting a degree in Security and Intelligence was one of the coolest things I ever did) there was a good chance that the nuclear blast of the defense anti-ballistic missile would damage the case and components of the incoming warhead to the point they would not be able to detonate. The estimates from the (admittedly theoretical) studies we read in class estimated that somewhere between 25% to 60% of incoming warheads would fail to detonate properly due to damage.\n\nHOWEVER\n\nDestroying between 1/4 and 3/5 of an incoming warhead swarm was not the purpose of anti-ballistic missile shields. Anti-ballistic missiles were designed to counter intercontinental ballistic missiles, note the word that appears in both titles: 'ballistic'. ICBMs are launched at general regions, and once they have their trajectory, there isn't a lot they can do to change course, though (almost) All ICBMs have some kind of internal guidance system... But in the end these are still 'dumb' programs/gyros, they are normally only capable of limited course correction, used to zero in on specific parts of a region and/or counter high altitude winds over the course of half an hour or more. They rely on the comparatively delicate inner workings and control surfaces of the missile itself to remain intact, without them the missile can no longer aim itself. Not to mention the fact that the whole thing was just thrown ass-over-teakettle by a nearby nuclear blast. \n\nYes it is true that deflecting incoming ICBMs with nuclear anti-ballistic missiles would likely increase the overall radiation around the world, but radiation itself is not by itself a world destroying boogie-man. Its causes, duration and effects on living tissue are well understood. The main destructive force of a nuclear ICBM is not that it will spread fallout that will increase lifetime cancer rates 200 km away; no, the main destructive force of an ICBM is that it carries the most destructive weapon ever designed by human hands and that weapon is targeted at a location of significant military/government/logistical/infrastructure importance, and then renders that target unlivable and unworkable for a period of several months to several years. \n\nThe reasoning behind nuclear anti-ballistic missiles was that, in the end, it is far better to have a high altitude detonation followed by another detonation somewhere in the cornfields of Iowa then it was to allow the ICBM to continue and detonate inside a city of two million people.",
"Nuclear missiles have a lot of safety mechanisms built into them (to make sure they don't blow up in their own silo, for example!). Nukes only detonate when you hit critical mass of a radioactive material, and there's usually a complex mechanism for combining these pieces into a critical mass. \n\nIf you destroy the missile, you will disrupt the ability of the warhead to arm and therefore detonate. Sure, you'd likely get pieces of it scattered across the countryside, but you won't be getting that big mushroom cloud that's going to kill a lot of people",
"It doesn't work. That's why everyone is still afraid to start a nuclear war. Missile defense systems would get overwhelmed by large numbers of multiple warhead missiles. Those missile defense systems can only handle so many incoming missiles at a time. Hundreds of MIRVs plus thousands of decoys with lots of active jamming, EMP effects, anti-satellite weapons to complicate tracking, precision cruise missile strikes against missile defenses and other measures would ensure it's a very bad day for everyone if those defense systems are ever needed.",
"The fallout from nuclear detonations is mostly divorced from the actual nuclear material in the bomb. It's instead materials from the ground beneath the detonation being turned into tiny particles and irradiated. Blowing up a bomb without anything else around would be relatively safe, even if it did fully detonate.",
"While there are some systems that were designed to intercept incoming missiles, most nuclear defenses we have act as a deterrent.\n\nMeaning that if someone else with a stockpile of nuclear weapons were to shoot them at us, we'd detect them with satellites and radar and shoot back before they got to us. That way they'd be just as badly hurt, if not more, than we were. So they wouldn't want to shoot nukes at us in the first place. We'd both take a lot of damage in the process. This concept is called Mutually Assured Destruction.\n\nThis strategy was most prevalent during the \"cold war\", which took place from the 50's to the early 90's. Nowadays a large scale nuclear war is much less likely, and we've been dismantling our nuclear arms in sync with the Russians since.\n\nWe used to even have nuclear bombers orbiting 24/7 near the Russian border to drop bombs on Russia in case of a nuclear war.\n\nThe biggest nuclear threat today is from a small faction with only 1 or 2 nuclear weapons smuggled into a population center or other strategic strong point.\n\n[Mutually Assured Destruction](_URL_0_)",
"Meanwhile, here's a cool demonstration of the Sprint defense missile from the 1960s, meant to intercept ICBMs in the last 20 miles that got past the higher altitude Spartan interceptor (skip to 0:14): [VIDEO](_URL_0_). The video was not sped up; that's the actual speed of 100g acceleration. Both Sprint and Spartan interceptors used atomic bombs to destroy incoming ICBMs because it was thought nothing else would work well enough. In the 1980s there was a proposal to use a steel cable spiderweb-like device, and current interceptors are meant to just hit the warheads, but some defense experts think the only nuclear explosions would work against anything but a tiny attack.",
"It doesn't, at least intercepting long range ICBM's won't. [It's impossible to distinguish between a warhead and a decoy.](_URL_0_)",
"Military guy here- yes, we shoot missiles at missiles too bring them down but it is more about \"destroying the air frame\" (make it so it can't fly) than blowing it up. Like shooting a bird with a shotgun you use pellets not slugs.",
"A lot of people here aren't answering your question. Maybe these systems aren't very effective, but you're asking why we'd even use it since it seems to make things worse. So i'll just add add that a nuclear missile carries a fairly small amount of fissile material (that is the radioactive stuff that you are worried about). If you shoot it out of the air then there basically a large rock or a few small rocks of radioactive stuff lying somewhere, probably at the bottom of the ocean, and that's not going to do that much harm. Since the system is tracking trajectories there may be an effort to recover that waste, but who know if that'd work. Once the bomb goes off it makes lots of small unstable atoms that release dangerous radiation and get spread around for several miles and thrown up into the air where wind currents can spread them many more miles. So we'd rather have a few rocks than a huge cloud of dust. \n\nAlso, in case you're thinking that the bomb would go off when it's intercepted, it won't. Nuclear bombs require several precisely coordinated stages to explode. An outer shell of traditional explosive (like c4) explodes to compress the nuclear material, just as a neutron in fired into that mass, and that nuclear explosion compresses a core of some different material which feeds of that nuclear blast. Simply hitting these things doesn't make them blow up, but it may destroy all the electronics that trigger the detonation, which would make it a useless lump of radioactive metal. ",
"Well, you are going to get a lot of replies. Most of them political replies, some based on old episodes of the West Wing.\n\nI have paid attention to this for a long time. Here is my best evaluation.\n\nSatellite senses launch, and system decides which interceptor asset to use (some are land based, some are ship based). The basic concept is a shotgun. They calculate the lead, and fire a rocket that turns into a cloud of shrapnel.\n\nThere are limits: number of targets, and maneuverability of target. So, the system is basically useless against a country that has hundreds of ICBMs, or many MIRVs per ICBM. What it is probably effective against would be one or two missiles (maybe 10?), as long as they were not advanced ones (like the Russians are developing.)\n\nOh, and the intercept is intended to be pretty high up."
]
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2j4wix | how do musicians with record deals get paid? | Record advances, royalties, touring, merchandise, etc... How does this all usually get divied up? I always hear that musicians handle make money of record sales when on major labels, but have also heard touring is wayyy down. Where is the money coming from? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j4wix/eli5_how_do_musicians_with_record_deals_get_paid/ | {
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"You have it in reverse, a musician typically makes more money from a tour than record sales. There are many ways to structure a record deal. A typical record deal will consist of the label signing the artist to produce X number of albums for X royalty. The royalty rate is usually 10-15%. However, it is not usually based on gross but net sales. Also a $4 tag of processing is often tacked on per physical unit that cannot be part of the balance subject to royalty for the artist (on a $16 cd the artist only gets paid based off $12, assuming it was a full price sale). The advance is an interest free loan in the sense that that too much be recouped before the artist sees any royalty payments. The cost of recording, marketing, and promotion is also calculated against the artist and must be repaid first as well. If the albums producer worked for points rather than a flat fee he too will be paid first.\n\nThe real money in music is in live performance (with merchandise sales) and licensing (unless you are an idiot and signed away the copyright to the label). Unless you are under a 360 deal, the label does not get a cut of this.\n\nRecord labels provide a very valuable tool to musicians in marketing and promotion, and for this they reap the majority of profits from the album sales. However, now that you have a fanbase thanks to aforementioned promotion, you can license your works to tv, movies, games etc and hit the road touring with an already established fanbase to build off of."
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1d9m0c | how games run off a disc when they are built with a proprietary game engine? | I'm a layman when it comes to the tech of streaming data on a disc and such. How exactly does a game run if the entire engine isn't also on the disc? Or is the entire engine on the disc? Example, games made with Unreal Engine... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d9m0c/eli5_how_games_run_off_a_disc_when_they_are_built/ | {
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"Its all data, man. ",
"The engine is basically a bunch of libraries that simplify a lot of coding. \n\nThat being said when you compile a game that uses, say, the unreal engine, it I also being compiled into the game. So technically yes the disc does include the engine inside it. "
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4nfwwi | what is happening when ambient noises cut in and out while you're falling asleep? | Sometimes when I'm in a twilight state just before falling asleep, my hearing will cut away and surge back. I figure this is my brain getting ready to go into sleep mode, but what exactly is happening there? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nfwwi/eli5_what_is_happening_when_ambient_noises_cut_in/ | {
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"I don't have an answer for you but this [happens to me on airplanes.](_URL_0_) I think it's loss of attention to the environment coupled with ceasing to hear \"significance\" in sounds. An example of the latter would be ceasing to hear the refrigerator going on and off, or even things that are significantly noisier but constant.",
"What you are experiencing is the breakdown of \"[cortical effective connectivity](_URL_0_)\". Basically as you fall asleep your brain doesn't actually \"shut down\". Instead different parts of the brain simply cease talking to each other. For example, neuron A, which connects to neuron B, no longer elicits a response from neuron B when neuron A fires, thus you no longer perceive stimuli derived from neuron A (such as ambient noise). This process is slow and progressive, not immediate.\n\nThis function usefully isolates different parts of the brain during loss of consciousness, as well as helps produce loss of consciousness. Similar mechanisms to those that prevent outside noise from waking you also prevent you from acting out your dreams, which would presumably be bad.\n\nMechanistically this occurs through a slurry of neuro-chemical changes principally directed by the suprachiasmatic nucleus. These changes include reduced serotonin and noradrenergic signaling, increased GABA signaling, increased melatonin, etc.\n\n**TL;DR/ELI5:** Parts of your brain slowly stop talking to each other as you fall asleep due to chemical changes. This prevents outside stimuli from entering your consciousness."
]
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[
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6qs5qf | if i go running outside, doing 7 miles in about an hour is totally doable, but if i set a treadmill to 7mph that's way to fast? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qs5qf/eli5_if_i_go_running_outside_doing_7_miles_in/ | {
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"You have very little room on the treadmill for a big stride with a big margin of comfort. And you don't control the speed so it's nervous-making.",
"You will sometimes slow down or speed up on your run, there may be hills that you descend or ascend. The treadmill moves constantly at 7mph, so you will never get to do a fast stretch and then take it easy for a while while still covering 7 miles in one hour. ",
"When running on ground, your pace isn't a constant 7mph. You dip above and below it often, during inclines/declines and when you start to tire out. You may run at 9mph for awhile, then slow to 5mph, then run at 11mph, then stop to stretch, etc. A constant 7mph is uncomfortable because you have no control over your pace at all, and you're forced to keep up with the belt.\n\nTreadmills also don't have room for long strides. You might subconsciously shorten your strides on a treadmill simply because your knees don't have room to drive up as high.\n\nAlso keep in mind that a treadmill is moving backwards. Every time your foot contacts the ground, you get dragged backwards a little bit. Depending on how long you let your foot stay on the belt between strides, it can actually create the sensation of running at a higher or lower speed. The longer you spend in the air between strides, the less you get pulled back by the treadmill. The longer your feet contact the belt, the more you get pulled back. It's pretty subjective."
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1v2cx8 | if i use the same chocolate chip cookie recipe, why do the cookies come out fluffy some days, and flat the other. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1v2cx8/eli5_if_i_use_the_same_chocolate_chip_cookie/ | {
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"Humidity can cause a change in cooking",
"I bake a lot..\ncreaming different ingredients together for different lengths of time...oven preheated differently, baking soda/baking powder old, different brand of flour with different protien content, ect.....MANY different things can affect the outcome of baking.... I would say most probably culprit is mixing ingredients differently (length, order, ect)\n\n",
"Humidity and barometric pressure, time spent mixing (mix flour more, more gluten is produced...), ingredient sources, ingredient age (that flour you bought last year isn't the same now as it was then...chemical ingredients like baking powder change even more over time!)"
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2lezcd | what exactly makes alcohols different, or how does whiskey end up as whiskey and not vodka, etc.? | I'm just curious because it seems like someone who's got a five year old comprehension of distilling, etc. that vodka, rum, whiskey, gin, etc. seem so close and that the process is probably pretty similar too, but I have no idea. Like, there's corn whiskey, but then I've seen corn vodka too, so it's not necessarily the base ingredient that makes the difference, right? Could a vodka distillery decide tomorrow to make whiskey instead, or is it not that simple? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lezcd/eli5_what_exactly_makes_alcohols_different_or_how/ | {
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"All alcohol is derived from fermented sugars. When some sort of grain or fruit is allowed to ferment, alcohol is created. By adding heat, the alcohol is evaporated out of the mixture and captured in a process known as distillation. If you take that distilled alcohol and run it through a series of filters and bottle it without doing anything else, you have vodka. If you add juniper (and a bunch of other botanicals) to the mix, you will have gin. If instead of putting your alcohol straight into a bottle, you let it sit in barrels for a couple years, you'll get whiskey. The barrels are charred on the inside which creates pores and caramelizes the naturally occurring sugars in the wood. This allows the liquid to soak up various flavors and take on a caramel color.\n\nSo a vodka distillery could decided to make whiskey today, but the final product wouldn't be ready for at least 2 years.\n\nAs for base ingredients, they will produce a similar but different type of alcohol. Take grapes, mash them them up and let it ferment naturally and you'll end up with wine (if you used wheat and barley you'd have beer). Take those mashed grapes and distill the product into an liquor and you'll end up with grappa (if you used corn or potatoes as your base, you'd have vodka). Now take that grappa, stick it in a barrel for a few years, you'll end up with brandy (or if you used corn, whiskey).\n\nScotch and Bourbon are specific types of whiskey. Cognac is specific type of brandy",
"Spirits are distilled from various sources depending on what is being made. So corn whiskey is distilled from corn, scotch whisky is distilled from malted barley, vodka is commonly distilled from potatoes but can be distilled from other grains, and rum is from sugarcane. There are others, but those will be enough for now.\n\nLet's use corn as an example, as it can be used to make both vodka and whiskey (American whiskey is typically made from corn). The corn is harvested, ground and turned into a \"mash\", to which yeast is added to convert the sugars in the corn to alcohol. This mash is then distilled, and the alcohol (spirit) is collected. In the case of vodka, the mash is distilled more aggressively to create a cleaner, purer spirit. This filtered, diluted with water, and bottled. Bam. You have vodka. \n\nWith whiskey, it's a little more time-consuming. The clear spirit is placed into oak barrels (sometimes used barrels from other industries like winemaking) and aged for a period of time, usually several years. This process imparts colour and flavour into the spirit, and changes based on the types of barrel used. And voila, whiskey is born.\n\nIt's basically all in the process, so a whiskey distillery would have the specialised equipment for making whiskey whereas a vodka distillery would have the facilities to make vodka. "
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3wbwfw | how does a house electrical ground work? are we just constantly pumping voltage through the earth? | I understand 12 volt DC current pretty well, AC, not really at all. In DC, the voltage is always trying to find a path back to ground, or it doesn't flow. What the hey is going on with house grounds? Why is voltage happy to flow into dirt? And where in hell is the voltage going? Are we just constantly pumping 120 VAC into the ground or what? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wbwfw/eli5_how_does_a_house_electrical_ground_work_are/ | {
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"In the US, 120VAC has three wires: Hot, neutral, and safety (earth) ground. \n \nThe AC power circuit is between the hot and neutral. The third wire is not there for the circuit's operation at all. It is there primarily for safety. The metal chassis of equipment is connected to the safety ground. Then if there's a short circuit from the AC power to the chassis, it will flow to the safety ground instead of through a person touching the chassis. \n \nThis also has the advantage of helping to shield unwanted radio frequency emissions. ",
"Voltage doesn't flow. Picture electricity like water flowing through pipes. It flows from places with high pressure to places with low pressure. Ground is the place with low pressure. \n\nWith DC you're constantly pushing water, or electrical current into the ground. With AC you're pulling and pushing water out of the ground. \n\nOf course we got things backwards and current is then flow of electrons, and in DC what really happens is the electrons are pulled out of ground and not pushed into it (usually). \n\nBut this is why you need a circuit. If you pull an electron from somewhere it's going to push the other electrons around. Those electrons need a place to come from and a place to go, a source and a sink. This is the function of ground, it's a place to pull electrons from and a place to go from. It acts like a giant tank of water we can always pump water out of or dump back in. ",
"DC does not try to flow to ground. All electricity (excluding very high frequency radio stuff, which we'll ignore) is trying to get back to its **source**. This is why stuff like hand-held torches work, even when they're not actually connected to ground.\n\nWhen stuff is fixed, we normally connect one of the current-carrying wires (in DC usually the negative, in AC usually the neutral) to a separate 'ground' cable - this is done at your switchboard.",
"Somewhere near your house there's a transformer that converts the high voltage running along the street to the 240 VAC used in your house. There's a center tap that's halfway between the two, that is, 120 VAC from each power line. That center tap is connected to a grounding rod or equivalent buried in the earth at the transformer, where the electrical wires enter your house, or both. That keeps the neutral wire at roughly the same voltage as the stuff around you; trees, rocks, dirt but more importantly, metal building parts and plumbing. Either power line can hurt you, neutral can't.\n\nWhen everything is working properly your 120 VAC power flows through the two power lines, through your lights and appliances, and back via the neutral**. 240 VAC power flows from one power line to the other without needing the neutral line.\n\nThe grounding wire gets involved when things go wrong. If one of the power lines leaks it can put its 120 VAC into the body of an appliance or a metal pipe or metal building part. If they're properly connected to the grounding wire, the dangerous voltage will be shorted to the ground, hopefully triggering a safety device (fuse or breaker) before melting wires, but in any case not killing hapless people. The earth/ground is not part of a circuit, it's just a convenient easy-to-reach reference that can be counted on not to shock people.\n\n** Since the 120 volt lines are 240 volts with respect to each other, their currents are opposite in the neutral line and cancel each other out. For that reason, the current in the neutral cannot exceed the current on either power line, which is why the neutral line can safely be the same thickness as the power lines.\n\n\n"
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4xxn80 | how a computer (program) understands games. | I can see Checkers, Chess, Go, as games with very clearly defined rules, black and white in formulation: binary answers almost.
But a computer game with -say- certain minimum visual complexity, would need either to be translated to such basic rules, and then fed to the computer, in which case time considerations would render it impossible, or else (pun intended) the computer should somehow must be able to physically see the game... which would result in -again- a translation to more basic rules, and that assuming a computer could be able to extract rules from what its senses are experiencing.
I'm not 5, you can explain me in not such a basic way ;) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xxn80/eli5_how_a_computer_program_understands_games/ | {
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"Except computers don't understand the game. Computers are given instructions how to play the game by the programmer. The computer doesn't see the chessboard. All its doing is calculating formulas based on a mathematical model of the pieces and their numerical positions. All a computer is doing is adding one number to another number then if the sum is some defined criteria by the rules laid out by the programmer, then the computer applies formula to move a numerical value into a spot in a number matrix. Only until that's displayed to the human, is there the understanding the computer made a pawn move 2 spaces forward.",
"In games like first person shooters, the AI is usually a set of processes working together to create a believable challenger. Pathing , which mostly takes the raw information of the map, like it's shapes and props and uses basic rules to find good paths and move tactically. The shooting portion is looking for hit boxes, the exact same system that determines if a shot hits or miss to determine where to fire and when. There may be other systems in place to determine when AI players use other resources, but they also follow very basic rules. ",
"Try to avoid putting too many spaces before a normal paragraph of text in a Reddit post. It makes it...well, look at your post and you'll see what I mean. It's rather inconvenient that way because people have to scroll sideways to read it.\n\nRegarding the question: It depends a great deal on whether you're talking about a computer AI *built into* a game (like the AI opponents you can play against in something like StarCraft) or a separate computer AI intended to play a game using the same information available to a human (i.e. images and sounds).\n\nAn AI built into a game, generally speaking, doesn't deal with visuals or sounds like the player does. The way the game is programmed, the AI always knows the actual raw data that the game uses to generate what you see on the screen. You might see a constantly changing animated sprite drawn to a particular place on the screen based on where a unit is on the map and what part of the map your screen is scrolled to, but the AI just deals with a list of numbers that says 'there's a unit of such-and-such a type at such-and-such a location' and things like that. Most of the time it doesn't even know the actual rules of the game, either; it has its *own* set of rules that it uses to detect specific types of situations and respond to them in specific preprogrammed ways, ignoring the details of what actually happens in the game afterwards. For many types of games this is 'good enough' as far as giving the human player a fun experience is concerned, but such AIs tend to be unable to match the skill and versatility of a human player 1-on-1, hence why the human usually plays with a handicap (such as giving the AI more stuff to start with, or playing against multiple AIs at once, or even letting the AI straight-up cheat in certain ways).\n\nIt's worth noting that *most* external AIs designed to play games *also* operate in this way, although some tricky programming has to be done for them to read the game data properly. For instance, there's an annual competition for StarCraft AIs, using special software that allows other programs to read certain types of game data (such as the types and locations of various units) directly from the game. So these AIs don't need to rely on images or sound either.\n\nBuilding an AI to play a game relying on a human-stye interface is a much more difficult problem, although I believe it has been done for some relatively simple 2D games like Pacman and Breakout. Actual built-in game AIs almost universally do not rely on this (I don't know offhand of any counterexamples). Someone designing an AI of this sort may take one of two possible approaches: Either give the AI the rules of the game and try to make the AI construct an accurate copy of the actual game state based on what it 'sees' and 'hears' from the game (whereupon it can proceed similarly to a built-in AI); or, make an AI that can modify its own behavior, and give it feedback about its success and failure in the game, in the hopes that it will learn over time (by discarding the behavior that leads to failure while keeping and strengthening the behavior that leads to success) what is important to pay attention to as far as imagery and sounds go and what the best way to respond generally is, without necessarily understanding the details of the game rules.\n\nOf course, a human player does *both* of these- we learn what the best strategies over time are by judging our own successes and failures, but we can *also* come up with concepts of the game rules based on what we see, allowing us to predict the outcomes of our actions on the fly. This 'derive the rules and then use them to predict the game' technique is *incredibly* difficult to make a computer algorithm do, and even cutting-edge AI researchers still aren't sure how to go about it.\n\nThe implementation details of any of these particular approaches are rather beyond the scope of this post, and in any case I'm no expert, but I could discuss some more specific examples if you're interested. (It would be convenient then for you to mention what particular games you're familiar with- preferably simple ones.)",
"This is more or less the problem with game AIs for modern video games. How video games deal with this is that they allow AI to cheat everywhere possible, and then they try to make the computer act stupid enough that you won't notice the cheating. Like, first-person shooter AIs controlling enemy units usually have their own separate, simplified layout of the map with hand-made paths connecting different points. Player character is mapped onto this grid as closest point or so, and then AI does some simple algorithm to determine if it sees you or not. It knows where you are in this simplified grid, and in the game world, but usually AI specifically has built-in some set of rules which makes it ignore you until you, for example, make noise near them, or walk to their sight.\n\nActually the Google Deepmind, which recently made go AI that beat human champion, is trying to make the first video game AI that does not cheat. They try to make AI that plays Starcraft against human opponents and it only sees the same visual pixel data humans see. This hasn't really ever been even attempted before, except for very simple 2d games(Deepmind demonstrated their ability to have computer program learn some Atari games), it's the forefront of current AI research, and we don't know how well they will succeed. They may release something about this project in the coming years.\n\nAny game AIs or whatnot, they are just cheating when they play the game. Games itself are designed as set of clearly defined rules, which then require tons of processing to turn into visual format(this is where GPUs come in). You almost never do that process backward, try to turn visual data back into simple rules. Programmers are almost always keeping the simplified black-and-white data saved somewhere if they need to use it somewhere, and they just use that."
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6kzhoe | how do larger companies buy smaller companies? if the net worth is larger, can the company buy the other company? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kzhoe/eli5how_do_larger_companies_buy_smaller_companies/ | {
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"The purchasing company either gives cash or shares or a combination of both to the owner(s) of the company they are buying.\n\nIt is possible for a small company to buy a big company. They might need to borrow money from a bank or an investor in order to pay the large company's old owner(s).",
"What do you mean by \"larger\"?\n\nA company can be large in terms of revenue, or number of employees employed, or by market capitalization, or by market share etc.\n\n/u/fortyeightD has given a good answer on the basics of purchasing a company, i.e. by cash and/or shares. You are basically trying to buy enough shares in a company to accomplish your goal. \n\nOwnership of a company can be a bit of an abstract concept. You can own shares in a company, but the company will own its property. Owning shares does not entitle you company property but for a share in the dividends and/or vote in meetings (generally). It does not mean you can say, walk into a company and say this chair is your share of the company. \n\n\"Buying\" a company can also mean different things. There needs to be a good reason why a company is being bought and these can be for very different reasons with equally different approaches. Do you want to buy a company because you want to incorporate it vertically or horizontally? then you need to basically own the company as an operating entity (i.e. the shares) and then operate the company as a subsidiary. If you intend to dissolve it, you will need enough shares to pass a winding up resolution (usually a special resolution, see below).\n\nYou also need to distinguish how these shares in a company are traded. If it is a publicly traded company (as most but not all large companies are) then it is usually about buying the required amount of shares. This can be anywhere from 50% plus one vote, or 25% (or whatever special majority is needed). Usually with listed companies (again, as most but not all large companies are), there are local rules as to what percentage of shares must be publicly owned. Sometimes you could just buy enough shares to control the company without the current management's consent (i.e. a hostile takeover). \n\nFor a private company the shares must not be traded publicly, so you will often need an agreement with the current owners of the shares of the company. A private company will by law, usually require that any person wanting to sell his shares, must offer them to current owners first. \n\nIt is possible for a \"smaller\" company such as a private company to buy a controlling stake in a larger company (such as a public company). The logistics can vary, such as being an institutional investor, or financing from third parties (which gets pretty technical).\n\nFinally you will note I use the term \"controlling share\" or something along those lines. Owning shares usually does not give you the right to run the company. It is a basic idea of company law that directors manage the company for the benefit of the shareholders, and shareholders usually don't interfere with the director's unfettered powers to do so. This is usually contained in the company's constitution. What a shareholder can vote on in meetings is dictated by law and the companies constitution, but this almost always does not include managerial powers. What this **does** include is the power to remove directors and appoint directors. This is basically what a controlling share does. The power to appoint who runs the company.\n\nThe basics are there but the technicalities are an enormous bitch; in fact the largest law firms out there tend to specialise in corporate matters, which include mergers and acquisitions. This is generally a massive undertaking and will need regulatory approval etc.\n\n\n\n\n"
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2uyo93 | - the mormon religion, baptizing the dead, the rituals and the believed afterlife. | I am confused and don't really want to invite them over to find out. Also curious if everyone still wears garments ?
[edit] I'm not trying to mock other faiths, I'm just generally curious about different faiths. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2uyo93/elif_the_mormon_religion_baptizing_the_dead_the/ | {
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"I also want to understand these magic underpants, or how jesus lived in what is now America. ",
"_URL_0_ can answer most questions and then you can avoid inviting missionaries over :)",
"Right? I mean the South Park episode gave a little info on the origins of the religion, but I don't understand the baptism in absence or really would like to understand. ",
"Yes, they wear garments still, and if you don't wear garments you aren't being properly modest or holy. With the baptizing of the dead you'd have to get into all the different levels of heaven which is like heaven heaven, kinda heaven, earth heaven, and then not heaven(the outer darkness, where you're completely alone and unloved forever). If you aren't baptized you can't get higher than earth heaven, if you are baptized after death you can move up to kinda heaven but never heaven heaven, if you are inducted into the church and follow all the teachings and spread the gospel and pay them 10% of all your money you can get into heaven heaven.",
"Sounds weird but I was a Mormon for like 3 months before I realized I liked doing things better. So here's what I got from what I was told. Like another user posted there are three layers of heaven, I was told its akin to living conditions, if you're a good Christian you go to sort of the lower middle class houses, if you're baptized then you go into about upper middle lower high class housing, if you were baptized, go on a mission, were pretty much born into it, and tithe you go to super heaven which is upper high class mansion status. The magic underpants and under shirts are an optional piece of appearal but they do serve a purpose, they're meant as sort of a last line of defence against the evils of the world, where while you're wearing them if you're tempted in anyway all you have to do is remember you're part of something bigger and its meant to keep you from falling prey to the temptation. This far along I don't remember what other question you had so yeah. Also I noticed that my mormon friends were by far the nicest and most financially smart people I've ever met, I would sit down some days and just talk to them in the Barracks for hours to see how they felt \"it all meant\". I hope this helps.",
"The idea behind baptism for the dead is that everyone deserves the opportunity to enter heaven despite not having the chance in life. \n\n\nWhen you die there is more than one judgement. After the first, you are sent to Spirit Paradise or Spirit Prison. Paradise is where the righteous go to wait further judgement. Spirit Prison isn't so much for bad people, but more for everyone not Mormon. Prison is where you are taught the true gospel and where you wait until you are baptized in order to receive the next judgement and end up in one of the Kingdoms of Heaven (Celestial, Telestial, Terrestrial Kingdoms and the Outer Darkness)\n\nOne thing to keep in mind is that to move forward you must CHOOSE to follow the gospel. Someone being baptized in your name doesn't force you into heaven, but rather gets a technicality out of the way for those who didn't have the opportunity in life. God will not force you to follow him, because that takes your \"Free Agency\" away (which is exactly what Satan wanted to do, take away everyone's agency to ensure everyone gets into heaven). That being said, it is hard to deny the religion of the angels that are talking to you because you are dead.\n\nI know all this because I spent a lot of time in the church while I was younger and the pre/post-existence elements appealed to me like any other fantasy setting.",
"Alright. I was born and raised a Mormon, so let me try to answer this as factually as possible. (I'm an Atheist now and admittedly a bit bitter about the religion, but I'll try to remain as neutral as possible.)\n\nFirst off, it's important to point out that Mormons, or \"Latter Day Saints,\" as they more formally like to call themselves, consider themselves Christen. Bible is the base. The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Book of Abraham are just supplements. (Bet you haven't even heard of the latter two. Those are where the....really weird things are.)\n\nThe Book of Mormon is just the story of how the Native Americans came to be. Basic gist of it is that they're a tribe that fled from a sacking of Jerusalem guided by God. Bad descendants became dark-skinned, good descendants became light-skinned, they fought between each other. Jesus visited to say \"hi\" after he was crucified, everything was nice and righteous for a while. Eventually good white group becomes really wicked, and God lets the black group wipe them out completely. Dark-group are now the only survivors and are the Native Americans, turning their back on God.\n\nNow the specifics: Baptizing the dead. They believe that you have to be baptized to be saved, and it has to be with a flesh-and-blood body. So, baptisms for the dead are a way to act as a proxy for people who die before they can be baptised.\n\nRituals are a bit vauge to answer. There's a lot of secret things that go in the higher levels of the temple, and I left before I was \"allowed\" in there. I know there's secret handshakes and chants and stuff.\n\nGarments: Yeah, once you go to the temple (~18 years old) you're supposed to wear garments for the rest of your life. Nobody is ever quite clear on *why* you're supposed to do that, just that God said you need to. Something about it being a metaphorical and somewhat literal barrier between you and the world?\n\nAfterlife. Heaven and Hell, just more details. Not only is there Heaven, but there's *rankings* of heaven to reward the *really* faithful. \"Outer Darkness\" = Hell, where anybody who purposefully denies God goes. (no accidental stuff. You basically have to *know* that God exists and then spit it in his face.) \"Terrestrial\" = Heaven lvl 1 / Purgatory. Wicked people and people who just kinda don't care go here. Still supposed to be better than the best place on current earth. Will literally be the planet Earth after it goes through its own \"baptism of fire.\" \"Telestial.\" = Heaven lvl 2. Pretty much the classical Heaven. Not much is said about this guy. \"Celestial\" = Heaven Lvl 3. Super-heaven if you're really, *really* good. You can only go there if you're married via Mormonism. If you're really...really *really* good, you may be able to act as Gods for your own planets and start the cycle all over again."
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20513k | why can companies with massive advertising departments, like geico, not realize that their commercials aren't funny? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20513k/eli5_why_can_companies_with_massive_advertising/ | {
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"They're not designed to be funny. They're designed to make people think about the company, recognise the name, make sure that's the first name that comes to mind when you're thinking about their industry sector.\n\nAnd the fact that you feel the need to come on here and ask about it proves they're very good at doing just that!",
"Alas, it may be we who have to do the realizing!\n\nFirst, we tend to think that we are \"right\" about what's funny, and of course, we are. It's just that the rest of the world doesn't recognize our powers, and they have their own ideas about what's funny. As far as Geico is concerned, if the money is flowing in, then the commercial is just as hilarious as it can possibly be - they're literally laughing all the way to the bank.\n\nSecond, annoying is almost as good, and sometimes better than funny. Geico wants to lease real estate in your head, and they succeed, as evidenced by the free ad you just gave them on Reddit! I'm not trying to be cute or insulting - it's a case of the old adage that the only bad publicity is no publicity.",
"we're talking about them right now, so I guess they are effective?",
"Think of it like the jokes you get inside Christmas crackers. They're 'groaners', things that illicit a negative response from everybody. In essence, it's everybody against the joke, which unites people in their response. The key here is that it gets everyone to respond.\n\nGeico is leveraging that effect to get everyone's recognition. They don't care in the least what you think of the content of the ad, except that you will remember \"15 minutes could save you 15% or more on your insurance\". ",
"Have you ever met a marketing major?\n\nThey're those guys who think they're funny, but aren't. Kind of like the script writers for Dreamworks movies.\n\nThese people grow up to write stupid commercials.",
"...*I* think the Geico ads are funny.",
"Humor is subjective, as people in this thread have said, one man's funny is another's annoying. But also, Geico isn't making those ads, the Martin Agency in Richmond, VA is. I'm sure they come up with hundreds of ads and present them to marketing people at Geico, who are not creative, but want to be. Those Geico employees then pick stuff they think hits their objectives, isn't going to offend people, and hope people enjoy it. I'm sure there are funnier ads that die every round on Geico. \nI work in advertising, and clients have become more and more scared of getting fired over the last 15 years. which is why ads that make it out into the world are rarely good. (as for the \"annoying is effective\" stuff everyone is talking about, no one in advertising really wants people to actively hate their ads, they want them to like it and remember that company next time they might be buying something in that category. except maybe for subway, cause, damn.)",
"Because the individuals making these decisions are a small number of team members who are a closed circle. They feed off one another's egos to convince themselves that their ideas are funny. Ever watch Saturday Night Live? The majority of the skits are very unfunny and go on for far too long. The team of writers are a closed circle, too.",
"They are for my parents. I sat through super bowl commercials completely stone faced while my parents and their friends laughed their asses off. They think everything is funny that is trying to be funny. I could be the world's most successful comedy writer if my audience was a group of baby boomers ",
"The oldest trick in the book geico commercial is funny as fuck and if you dont think so youre a sad little man. Eat my shorts.",
"Geico also doesn't write their commercials in any internal advertising department. They most likely have an \"Agency of Record\" that is responsible for most of their television spots. \n\nHaving worked in advertising (on a competitor of Geico ironically) there are a lot of times that you have to deal with large political groups that all fight for their own agendas which can make getting anything done a challenge much less making it funny. \n\nA lot of bigger companies like to do testing on their commercials. This is a silly process that most people don't value but it's the only way they can justify the millions of dollars it costs to make a spot and then the millions it takes to have it aired. Usually these tests are with animatics or half finished scripts. From there clients are notorious for taking the best, most liked comments and feedback and blending them into one new concept. A lot of times this is done with ideas that don't necessarily work in their original fashion so instead of allowing the agency to reconcept, they push to just rewrite and combine the ideas they have already paid for. The result, as you can imagine, is usually less than ideal. \n\nPlus commercials are meant to relay information and should tell you about a product or offering, give you a way it will enrich or benefit you as a person and then make you feel like you just \"can't not buy it\".\n\nGeico is basically just trying to beat the repetition of their slogans and mantras into your subconscious so every time you are dealing with money and insurance it triggers a thought about \"saving money\" and also paired with a subconscious idea that giant companies put you on hold and are hard to deal with, yet they are different. \n\nOne last speculation: the person/people who write the Geico stuff just isn't very funny. This is highly possible since they crowd sourced their last duo and didn't conceive of it originally. ",
"I'd wager that the creative team does have a bunch of funny ideas. It's just the (non-creative) execs that want them \"safer\" and hence less funny. Some people would say that this is why most advertising sucks.",
"Top answer should be, your opinion isn't universal. ",
"Or to put it another way, why do so many people assume that THEIR personal tastes reflect those of the entire human race?\n\n",
"Creative at an advertising agency here.\n\nNow keep in mind that I am speaking from the advertising sector here. What that means that usually, the people who actually make Geico's commercials, they don't necessarily work at Geico, they're a third party. Geico of course has it's own marketing arm, but for most big brands they usually will get an ad agency to do their campaigns. For example, Old Space's marketing team doesn't do their ads, [Wieden + Kennedy](_URL_1_) does them.\n\nSo, after that clarification, you need to understand that it's a third party that makes these ads, presents them to the client (for example, Geico) and gets those approved, which goes live and is seen by you guys. This system is a very interesting ecosystem because what it allows to have a good balance between marketing and advertising.\n\nMarketing is what most people consider marketing/advertising to be. It's brand awareness, it's getting the product out there, selling units and making a profit and such. This is what the client's main goal is.\n\nFor advertising, specifically what agencies do, while we do understand that's the main goal, that's not our end all be all. You see, the reason why corporations rely on agencies is because we are much more creative. We are not the same type of business as them. We strive to do things that can be more outside the box, stuff that's funnier and more imaginative. The other reason they rely on us is because having a fresh set of eyes means that we can look at the big picture and see the positives and negatives of something.\n\nIf the marketing department takes whole of doing the creative, interesting things happen. \n\nBecause yes, they have the money to put commercials out, but they don't necessarily know how to make them entertaining or funny or resonate with the Target Audience. \n\nThe best example of this is what has happened with GoDaddy recently. Their Superbowl spots certain did get attention, but they weren't really good as actual ads. There was no narrative, no reasons to believe. Just well... a bunch of [Danica Patrick](_URL_0_). In the past two years they've gotten Deutsch as their agency to make commercials and now they've got an actual clear focus to their [spots](_URL_2_).\n\nSo now that you know what goes behind the scenes, it takes it tons easier to explain to you, your question, why their commercials aren't funny.\n\nWell, answer I can give to you is that Geico's current strategy is do target multiple target audiences with it's spots. So meaning, if something might not be funny to you, maybe there might be a lot of other people who do consider it to be funny. Remember that, especially in advertising, we respect that you can't make everyone love you, which is why we try to focus on the Target Audience and don't mind the hit from someone like you. A commercial that's aimed towards 18-24 year olds probably won't resonate the same way as a commercial that's supposed to be for 55+ people\n\nAnother possible answer is that maybe the client really wanted it to be this way. Remember how I said that agencies present ideas to clients to get them approved to go live? Understand that at the end of the day, it's the client's money we're using, so that means that they truly control what the final content could be. Most of the time this works well, because the reason they chose us (the agencies) in the first place is because they trust what we do and that we won't steer it too far in the wrong direction. But, our business is sadly a very human driven one, so if you've got some old fart who's the CMO who's son one day showed him a bunch of memes online and found those funny and suddenly wants more of those, well, we kind of need to steer it now in that direction.\n\nBut this being all said, I can sincerely promise you sir/miss that considering how many people see this work before it goes live and how it takes to make these campaigns, believe me in saying that we know if a commercial is going to be funny or not. It's usually some sort of outside source that happens which causes these things to happen.\n\ntl;dr - While it might not be funny to you, it might be funny to someone else/someone who ranks very highly at the corporation wants it to be this way and we have to listen to him, regardless if that person is right or wrong",
"They're not trying to be funny to everyone, they're just trying to get to what's called \"Top Of Mind\". Meaning they're part of an industry where a consumer has a lot of choice and easy access to competitors. So their goal isn't to make you say \"Oh I'm going with Geico because they're HILARIOUS\" their goal is to be in the top five places you list when you're looking for insurance. Why? Because when most people buy insurance, they call 3-5 places, get quotes and go with the cheapest. Sometimes Geico will be he cheapest, sometimes they won't, sometimes the person will give up after three quotes. But they are in a numbers game, so out of the 2,000 people looking for insurance on any given day, they want to make sure they're in the running on all of them. ",
"Part of the reason is because each commercial passes through a focus group and multiple stages of testing. These test groups give their feedback, but they only see the commercial a couple of times at best. \n\nWhen the commercials for a company as large as Geico hit the national market they often have huge amounts of airtime for their commercial to play in. As consumers we end up seeing the commercial multiple times a day for sometimes months on end. Focus groups and surveys can only tell you so much. \n\nThe obnoxious pig screaming Weeeeeeeeeeeeee actually received very good ratings in focus groups and surveys... then it was played on repeat and drove people crazy. (source: I had a guest speaker from Geico teach in one of my Marketing classes in November 2012 who admitted this) Hindsight is always 20/20. ",
"Designed to be stuck in your head. Which is obviously working. ",
"Some good answers here already. I'd just add that the question itself also suffers from something called the Mind-Projection Fallacy _URL_0_\n\nIn short, it's \"I think it's not funny therefore it's not funny to anyone\". Having seen some of my older relatives laugh at, and almost love, the Geico gecko and pig commercials, I know this is not the case. I don't understand it, but I know they're [funny/cute/effective] for these people. I don't think it's a coincidence that these people spend more on insurance than I do, are more likely to need insurance as a whole than I am, and are more budget conscious than I am. I think they tested these ads with groups of their desired demographics and picked the most effective ones.\n\nThis is one of the core logical fallacies advertisers, web designers, architects, etc have to cure themselves of to be effective: trust user studies, not just your gut. In cases like this I often find I'm asking \"How do they not know this isn't [funny/cute/effective]?\" when I should be asking \"WHO finds this [funny/cute/effective] and how are they different from me?\"",
"Let's look at their restrictions:\n\n1. They have to have a \"gag\" that can be set up and executed in 15 or 30 seconds\n2. They have to draw some sort of line (no matter how tenuous) between the gag and the product\n3. They need to incorporate the name and service in the commercial\n4. They need to let customers feel \"familiar\" with the setup so they a) aren't confused for half the commercial and b) have more time at their disposal with the gag\n5. Be simple enough to appeal to the widest base of customers\n6. No offend anyone.\n\nGiven these criteria: you're not watching a sitcom or a standup routine. It's not going to be sophisticated. *And that's OK.* So what if it's broad comedy that's a soft pitch? They know full well they are trying to shill a product on you, and they want to make it as painless as possible. Sometimes that means talking pigs. \n\nGranted, not all companies do this, but, of course, there are different strategies. One serious powerful commercial might do wonders for some companies, but they can also be ineffective and have a short shelf life. Geico--and Progressive and Aflac and other industries--have chosen volume and mild comedy. That way they can at least entertain a broad base of people with a heavy rotation of new content.\n\nI can assure you that the number of people who are turned off from a product because of \"annoying\" advertising is negligible. People may be indifferent or bitch about it on the internet, but people who actively reject a product due to lame comedy bits disguised as advertising is not enough to count.\n\nAnd in the end, trust me: they have people running the numbers. The reason Geico has run with these campaigns is because people like them. Ad agencies routinely do market research (or contract out for the data) to see what works and what doesn't.",
"People doesn't remember funny commercials but they remember the annoying one. More annoying, more you will actually pay attention to annoy yourself. \n\nThen you remember it was fucking annoying and ask your friend has he seen that annoying commercial. The circle is closed and they got you to advert it more. "
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2rj53p | in the us, the 'red states' are some of the poorest states. yet, they are against a lot of legislation that can help them, such as free healthcare. why? | I am just trying to understand the benefit they can have from not getting support. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rj53p/eli5_in_the_us_the_red_states_are_some_of_the/ | {
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"Because they understand that them being poor isn't the government, and other taxpayers, problem. People in the US that have conservative views tend to want little government involvement in their life when it comes to finances, regardless of being poor or rich. ",
"Many people don't vote purely out of their own financial self-interest, so that's one reason.\n\nIf that were the case then you'd probably also be asking why many rich people support things like medicare or social security, or obamacare right? And no one would ever support any sort of tax. I'd probably be stupid to support any sort of educational funding from property tax, I don't have kids. But we all know that people vote for reasons other than their own personal financial interests.\n\nIn addition, the states that oppose (and republicans) don't see it as \"free healthcare\", because it's not. Nothing is free. They don't think the costs for the government introducing additional regulation into the healthcare market is best, and they don't think that the government should subsidize insurance for the poor. They don't think this would be a good idea in the long run.\n\nSome people also oppose the idea of an individual mandate, regardless of the impact to cost of insurance. They don't think they should be forced to purchase a product from a private company simply to live.",
"Consider this satirical piece from the UK technology website \"The Register\", originally published after the 2004 election, _URL_0_ ",
"There's nothing \"free\" about single-payer healthcare. That's why Vermont scrapped it. \n\nI don't intend to validate or disprove your assertion regarding Red states being mostly poor. However, when you're considering policies you don't necessarily put your own personal life at the forefront. You can if you want, but many choose to focus on what seems best for society overall. For instance, many rich liberals support things such as universal healthcare even though they know it will hurt their pocket, because they think the benefit to society is worth it. Likewise, a poor conservative may oppose universal healthcare even if they'd end up better off through guaranteed coverage, because they believe the increased taxes will hurt the majority of taxpayers.",
"There are a number of misconceptions here:\n\n\"**Free healthcare**\" doesn't work the way most people seem to think it does. The amount of ignorant discussion about what universal healthcare is like on reddit is *astounding*. Free healthcare trades a lot of flexibility for lack of payment. There is no \"free\" healthcare system in existence which does not have a significant number of *characteristic* problems. There are no ideal systems. \n\n\"**Free healthcare in America**\" comes with a lot of strings attached and is typically being more beneficial to the biggest players in the healthcare industry rather than the people. Since the expansion of the healthcare legislation in the late 60s/early 70s the US healthcare market has separated from the rest of the countries and grew in terms of relative costs and share of GDP. In other words the healthcare system in America before \"reform\" was more affordable than it is today with all the welfare options available. It is also one of the biggest (if not *the* biggest) state-run systems in the world since the share of GDP for medicare, medicaid and VA departments is slightly greater than the next state-run healthcare fund (which is IIRC Sweden). Also the current reform is hardly an improvement - it mostly reduces competition and offers some benefits to the lowest-income people while *punishing those in the middle*. \n\n\"**Poor**\" can mean *lower GDP per capita* - which often implies lower costs and not overt poverty - **or** being in *actual poverty* - which entitles people to use a number of existing welfare programs. Most of countries have lower GDP per capita adjusted for PPP (which takes into account prices ) than the US and yet often they have better healthcare systems without being totally \"free\". \n\nTo sum things up - in most cases - especially in a messed up, non-competitive markets like America - introduction of \"free healthcare\" means that the only people who benefit are those who can't afford insurance while those who can afford it have to lose. It's a tradeoff and it seems that there are not enough people in those red states who consider themselves \"too poor to refuse welfare\". \n\nAnd that doesn't even touch on the issue that \"free\" really means \"hiding the payment\". Whether it would reduce the costs by one bit is another story entirely.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n",
"Some \"Blue States\" as well, Like Michigan and New Jersey, are doing badly as well.",
"I know its off topic, but as a Canadian I just wanted to chime in one on important detail. \nThere is NO SUCH THING AS FREE HEALTHCARE.\nHere in Canada we have Universal Healthcare, but it is not \"free\" by any means. We all pay into it throughout our lives through taxes, and we often do not have to pay anything when we receive care, but it is not free. Many items, such as alcohol, tobacco products, some foods, gas, etc are taxed more heavily in order to put money into the healthcare system. So long story short, is not \"free\" by any means. We all pay for it, albeit in a different manner which gives everyone an equal opportunity to access the health care. ",
"There are many reasons why red states tend to be poorer states than blue states and most of them are long term, complex reasons that have very little to do with federal or state policy in the last 30 years. having said that most of them have made a lot of progress in the last 30 years are are quickly closing the gap. \n\n\nThe main thing you have to remember is you have to compare cost of living as well, when you do that several blue states are rate up there in poverty rates with some of the worst red states. \n\n\nBut to really answer your question, the general attitude of red states is that they don't want the Federal government meddling in their lives and are willing to vote against things, that might by definition help them, if they feel like it infringes on their liberty. ",
"Because they are poor not hypocrites. I believe stealing is wrong, even if it would benefit me personally. \n\nNot saying welfare is stealing, just saying that a person can personally benefit from something and still find it wrong or disagree with it.",
"Nothing is free. If you got something for \"free\", it means that the government took it from someone else and gave it to you.",
"This is the fundamental misunderstanding that the left has about the right. The right and left both want to help the poor: they have very different ideas about how best to do that.\n\nThe right believes that free market forced (properly regulated of course) deliver the cheapest and most efficient goods and services. The left believes government institutions provide the most efficient goods and services. [these are both of course gross over-simplifications]\n\nHowever both sides have the same objective - maximizing the welfare of the american people.",
"Maybe they don't want help from the government. It's much more satisfying earning your own wealth, instead of getting it from the government.",
"American here. Propaganda is the answer to your question. A huge % of our taxes go to subsidies for corporations and almost no one is aware of it. America is literally for and by big business. The Republican agenda is the agenda of business but is packaged and sold as \"conservative\"and the poor uneducated masses rally behind the exact thing that holds them back. ",
"There are a few reasons.\n\nTaxes\n\nRed states tend to elect Republicans. The main economic belief of the Republican Party is that high taxes slow down the economy. When taxes are low, businesses will hire more, and more people will be employed, and the economy will flourish. They believe in a mostly laissez-faire economy, with minimal to no government interference. Red states try to attract more businesses with low corporate taxes, and individuals with low income taxes. When state taxes are low, the services provided by the state are of low quality, or non-existent. We see time and again that red states have less money to invest in fixing infrastructure. [Texas]( _URL_1_) in 2013 considered converting paved roads to gravel roads because they did not have the funds to do so. Furthermore, blue states with higher taxes tend to have better [school systems]( _URL_3_). You will see that there is not one red state in the top 11. Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas, who cut taxes as an experiment and “[shot of adrenaline]( _URL_4_)” to the state economy, cut the public education budget so low, the Kansas Supreme Court stepped in to override his budget, claiming the levels were [unconstitutional]( _URL_0_) The lack of funds from taxes creates a situation in which states cannot also effectively regulate dangerous industries. Just last year a huge chemical leak in the Elk River in [West Virginia]( _URL_2_) left over 300,000 people in WV without potable water. When states do not generate enough revenue from taxes, they fail in their basic duties to their citizens.\n\nLabor Policies\n\nRed states are also hostile to labor practices that give workers more power. Most red states are \"Right to Work\" states. This allows workers to have the option to not join a union for a job in an industry that is unionized. History shows that union members have higher wages, better benefits, and better worker protection than non-unionized workers. Right to work laws decrease the union bargaining power, and give businesses an opportunity to undercut union employees, and pay people less to do the same job. This is a great policy for businesses, but not so much for people who suffer from low wages. As wages get driven lower by undercutting unions, worker protections get pushed to the wayside, and the race to the bottom continues. When wages go down, it is harder for people to keep up with increased living costs. States that are not “Right to Work” have stronger unions, higher wages, and less poverty.\n\n\nThese two reasons cover most of the reason why people in red states tend to be poorer. The following reason is why they are more opposed to policies that would help alleviate the poverty, and bring them on more equal footing to blue states.\n\nSocial Beliefs\n\nRed states tend to be more conservative. Many red state citizens believe that a person is not poor because of institutional poverty, or unfortunate circumstances; but rather due to some sort of moral failing. We saw this in the 1976 election, where Ronald Reagan ran against Gerald Ford and talked about the “welfare queen”- the idea that somebody would rather live off of government assistance rather than get a job. We hear a lot in the news that people do not need food stamps, or unemployment insurance, or other government sponsored programs. If people would just “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” there would no longer be poverty. The majority of Republican policymakers believe in this idea. When states do not enact policies to combat institutional poverty, and keep people who could use assistance down, it perpetuates poverty. \n\n\nWhen all three of these issues combine together, we have a system where, there are less services provided to a population that has less money, who have no state assistance when they need it. This results in red states having more citizens living in poverty than blue states, and refusing to accept or enact policies that could help to alleviate these issues.\n",
"There are multiple issues in every election. Different people rank issues differently. Thus, a person might vote \"against ones interest\" because they are supporting other issues. To take a hot-button issue, for example, a person might support abortion but support an anti-abortion candidate because they value something that candidate represents more than they value abortions. \n",
"I worked with a guy who told me he absolutely 100% refused to accept ANY kind of help from the government, be it foodstamps, unemployment, or anything else you can imagine. On the one hand, I applaud his dedication to his stand but on the other I feel like, I dunno, you PAID for that, its what its for, its there when you need it to help you. why pay the taxes if you won't take advantage when the time comes?",
"The Grand Old Party is the party of the wealthy and powerful. The problem with that is the truly wealthy are few in number, a disadvantage in a democracy.\n\n So what they did was choose to support social policies that would attract working class voters in spite of te GOP's pro-business, pro-employer, pro-landlord, pro-banker economic policies.\n\nOriginally it was prayer in school, gun rights, homosexuality and the big one, abortion. Reaganomics, brilliantly, convinced this willing audience that in order to have jobs it was necessary to deregulate and cut taxes for the already wealthy and powerful.\n\nThis strategy slowly transformed the South from reliable Democratic voters to extremely loyal Republicans.\n\nThe real problem is the ingrained two-party system. If your perception is that only one party can solve the nation's social ills you're forced to swallow their other policies.",
"If you want a good explanation read the book: Your righteous mind by Jonathan Haidt.\n\nBut the short version is:\nConservatives thinks fairness is that you get what you put in to it (a form of karma) and liberals wants more equal outcome regardless of input.\n\nThese two groups definitions of fairness differ.\n\nThis explains this and many, many other differences. ",
"Alright people, we get the idea, there is no such thing as free healthcare. Now answer the fucking question instead of going on and on about a small error in the title. We all knew he was referring to universal healthcare.",
"Now look at cost of living. States like New York are horribly expensive to live in and you can thank Democrats for that. $12 a hour in New York does not go as far as $12 a hour in South Dakota. ",
"Most of those 'poor' red states have per capita dragged down by their 'blue' city populations.\n\nPeople that vote against these programs understand that they come with a cost, and more people are against paying that cost to the government for a benefit they feel they could provide themselves, or get a better product/cost from someone not the government.",
"I believe freakonomics did a podcast similar to this and they explained a study that concluded that people surprisingly don't vote selfishly, they vote what they think is best. ",
"The following argues the opposite. Just food for thought\n\n_URL_0_",
"\"Keep your damn government hands off my medicare!\"—Florida Tea Party Member at a Town Hall Meeting about the ACA.",
"I'm appalled at how many people (from both sides) dismiss the opposing side as \"uneducated\" or \"stupid\" or \"misinformed\". Most from both sides fit all of those descriptions, but there are many in both sides that are well informed and incredibly intelligent. The simple answer is that no one really knows what is best and that's why we have discussions: to talk about issues and determine what seems most reasonable. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't make them a babbling monkey; they simply have a different perspective. Intellectuals from both sides believe their cause is what is best for the American people, it's not all corruption and brainwashing.",
"1: Red states aren't really the poorest states, what you're actually referring to is southern red states - specifically the ones in the black belt. Example: Texas and Alaska are red and doing very well \n2: The poorest demographic that is also in favor of a strong welfare system is in the south \n3: That demographic tends not to vote in non-presidential elections, and is not the majority (it is close to it in a lot of regions though) \n4: Not everyone feels welfare systems can help them, or help the poor. There are arguments in both directions for it (such as creating an artificial ceiling) and so on. \n5: It's not some edgy quote about socialism being the reason (Hint: Welfare is a tool to fight off socialism) ",
"Your question implies that they don't get support, or rather don't \"take\" from the system. That is incorrect. The red states are the least tax producing states, but are the receivers of the most government aid - through various programs. What I believe it comes down to is an attitude of \"I'm just down on my luck, so I deserve help, but the person down the road is a deadbeat who takes from the system.\" Basically, an inability to recognize that everyone, not just yourself, is an actual person with real problems.",
"I don't think you understand the concept of \"free\". The money used to supply health-care to people has to come from somewhere; namely taxes. \n\nPeople in the \"red states\" are more interested in being able to spend the money they make as opposed to the government spending it on what they deem fit for the country. ",
"Fundamental political stance. At the core Republicans want less government, that would include those funding programs. Less gun control, less business regulation, so in turn they're for less \"government hand outs\" for lack of a better term.",
"I am from the South so let me try to explain.\n\nWe are people who have prided ourselves on personal responsibility. If you want something done, you do it yourself. We rarely ask for help. So to accept something from someone we didn't earn feels wrong. It's sort of in line with the idea of charity. Many people do not like to take charity even when they desperately need it because they feel like they have failed themselves.\n\nThat's not to say we don't help each other. Many Southern people pride themselves on being hospitable and helpful when needed. It just feels better when it is our decision to help one another vs the government or some other far away entity.",
"The states would have to pay for the programs and benefits in more/higher taxes. They don't like taxes.",
"Living in one said red state, i can say that refusal to support welfare legislation comes from a strong emphasis on self-sufficiency and personal responsibility. People don't want to become dependent on fickle help",
"ELI5: When did ELI5 become a platform for people to make thinly-veiled political statements instead of asking questions? ",
"I like how a lot of the answers here are just blue states circle jerking about how hick and stupid red states are. It's because we have pride. I would much rather go hungry than accept food stamps because if I'm not man enough to have a job that puts food on the table, then I don't deserve to eat. Same with any government funding, welfare, or people who try to live on unemployment.",
"\"if i allow these laws that will help me now, when i become a billionaire they will use these laws to take my monies\"",
"Poor people do not vote. And don't trust politicians of red States to vote for them. No source. I just see what I see living in the biggest red state. Run by nutjobs who turn down support for poor, because its from onamaxare or would offend the church",
"there's a lot of reasons. one of the big reasons is there are a lot of single issue voters that would vote republican because they are anti-gay marriage or pro-life or whatever.",
"A lot of those \"poor\" Red State conservatives are actually the *working poor*, i.e., those who wouldn't benefit much from the kind of welfare and other benefits promoted by democrats.\n\nSo when Republicans say \"Vote for us and we'll cut taxes on the rich and get rid of regulations so that businesses can hire more of y'all,\" a lot of them believe it. Especially when you're broke and don't have much else to go on and the other side isn't saying much to address your empty wallet.\n\nNot that I buy the G.O.P.'s argument, but I do think the working poor are an underrecognized segment (at least, publicly underrecognized) of the voting populace.",
"If you were 5 it would be easier to explain. If people believe that something, like health care, is not a proper government function, they'll vote against it even if they would tend to be big time recipients of that something.",
"As a Republican living in Texas, I humbly submit myself as a primary source to answer this question, with an opinion perhaps more relevant to this particular question than the speculation generously offered here by those on the opposite end of the spectrum. I'll try and give you the reasons for which others and myself oppose socialism generally, and the ACA in particular.\n\nHowever, and before I answer the question itself, I want to raise two objections to the presuppositions squeezed into it. Firstly, the term \"free healthcare\" is of course a misnomer in the strictest sense. Medical supplies and expertise are of course paid for by someone, and when \"free healthcare\" is mentioned, it means only that costs are hidden as taxes on myself and others. Secondly, the questioner assumes that so-called \"free healthcare\" is beneficial, which is of course the crux of the issue. Most Republicans that I know do not see socialized medical care as beneficial at the level of the individual or society, for the following reasons.\n\n\nMoral Principle\n\nMany Republicans oppose nationalized health care on moral principle. We believe it is unethical and irresponsible to live off of the labor of others, especially without their consent and through government coercion. For example, suppose legislation were proposed in Texas giving me the right to the contents of my neighbor's fridge, rendering him powerless to retain his own property. It could be argued that I am receiving free healthcare in the form of nourishment. I would oppose that legislation and those who support it, even though it might seem to be personally beneficial for me in the short term. My opposition would rest on the grounds that such an act would be theft. Before considering any other factors, the moral equation alone would guide my actions in the voting booth. (So, theft is all right as long as enough people decide it is...)\n\nPersonal and Societal Decay\n\nHowever, we are not unaware that moral principles may arise as social wisdom when the experience of real world consequences is preserved across generations. If we uphold the sanctity of private property, it is because to neglect it is to open the door to tyranny, in this case of the majority, which is ultimately unhealthy for a society. The idea that a population is necessarily benefited in finance or health by the redistribution of wealth is not evidenced by the experience of inner-city blacks or American Indians on the reservation system. Republicans tend to see attempts by government to buy votes with government promises as swindles and cynical subversions of liberty. We also see the cultivation of an entitlement mentality as harmful to the individual and his potential. (So, since populations have traditionally stagnated under wealth redistribution, increasing wealth distribution will benefit Americans...)\n\nIncreased Healthcare Costs\n\nWe are wary of government intrusions into health care because of the excess costs government actions invariably incur. At the level of theory, when government attempts to intervene in my finances, ostensibly on my behalf, it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which it is more concerned with my well-being than I am, or in which it will exercise as much discretion as I would when the time comes to control costs. Government bureaucracies tend to inflate costs when they intervene in the free market, because a legislator or bureaucrat does not incur costs to himself when spending public funds. Actions become disassociated with consequences. Additionally, the bureaucracy itself must be financed, and bribery and corruption enter into the chain of monetary transactions when private interests seek government favor. It is no coincidence that the US government is trillions of dollars in debt. Programs such as Medicare and Medicaid have greatly inflated healthcare costs by flooding the market irresponsibly with cash, so that many providers only deal with Medicare and Medicaid payers. Market forces do not govern how much the government is able to pay, so it becomes a preferred client, and disrupts market equilibrium with myriad consequences. (So, inserting a bloated and unnecessary governmental middle man into the already convoluted healthcare system will reduce costs...)\n\nUnfair Payment\n\nThe cost of health care increases when the government mandates the particulars of the plan my insurance company provides for me. As a healthy, unmarried young man, it makes little sense for me to pay for anything but catastrophic coverage, if that, but that is precisely what the ACA forces me to do. In order to pay for the inefficiencies and wealth distribution at its core, the ACA requires a powerful, steady stream of cash from those who are unlikely to receive any benefit from their investment, in order to give the illusion of free healthcare to others. That the Obama administration blatantly lied by telling Americans they would be able to keep their plans after the ACA's enactment is further cause for our distaste. (So, I am paying for insulin for the obese and radiation therapy for lung cancer patients, while my health is valued by the government chiefly because it can take my money without having to give any back in the form of medical care...)\n\nDubious Legality\n\nThe ACA is seen by most Republicans as contrary to the spirit and letter of the supreme law of our nation, the Constitution. Passed into law before analyzed, the affordable care act places a tax on Americans for simply existing, which is seen as crossing Constitutional bounds on the powers enumerated to Congress. (So, the government has precedent to force me to purchase a product, in spite of my wishes, and tax me if I don't comply...)\n\nFurther Degradation and Nationalization of the Private Insurance Model\n\nWe are unhappy with the existing effects of government intervention in health care. In the medical insurance market, for example, insurance has largely ceased to be what it nominally is, a distributed system of risk management, and has inserted itself, with government assistance, as a middle man for routine medical payments. It makes little sense for me to pay an insurance company to cover routine expenses such as insulin or contacts, but if I am forced to enroll in a government plan which covers these expenses regardless of my need, I am put into a position where it is prudent to pay for routine expenses through my insurance. This would not be a natural or personally beneficial economic arrangement without government intervention. (So, I have to pay for an expensive ACA plan, and many services I don't need, in order to get a yearly eye exam, with a hefty deductible...)\n\nViolation of Liberty and Natural Rights\n\nBeing told that I must pay for a service I do not want or need is offensive to me as an human being and as an American, in the same way that mandating any other activity is offensive. Perhaps I don't want to buy a government issued bicycle to improve my health. I would be offended by a government that forced me to buy one. The ACA, and other encroachments on my liberty are hateful to me, and I will oppose them where possible, in spite of the claims by government that it is acting for my good. (So, liberty and the rights of man are paramount in America, except where a majority in Congress deems otherwise...)\n\nAdditionally there are objections to the ACA on religious grounds (Few Republicans want to finance abortions, etc.) and on the reality seen in many socialized health systems (UK, for instance) of delayed, low-quality, or denied care. As an example, I have spent several years in Costa Rica, and while visiting there in December of 2011 I witnessed some of the consequences of a strike by doctors working for the public health care system, which was not soluble and was lacking in quality relative to private hospitals such as the Clínica Bíblica. A friend of mine almost died because he was not able to get the medical care he needed (a radioactive iodine pellet to treat a thyroid issue). Though this is anecdotal, I can say that it is a fact that I have personally seen public healthcare systems fail their patients after using government to displace more efficient private providers, and that instances of government lying to people with promises of free healthcare before letting them die are real.",
"I am late to this party, but I have a slightly different answer than the ones I have read and I thought I might take a shot at answering.\n\nOne major reason for conservative rejection of large social programs is a sense of trepidation about creating large, expensive government bureaucracies. To an educated urbanite, whose student loans were government financed and who always interacts with well-funded and well-staffed government bureaucracies, this seems ridiculous. But to many more rural voters, systemic change to an entire economic sector seems threatening or dangerous. Many rural communities have been essentially gutted by population movement to cities, and in turn their public services have declined dramatically in quality as the tax base shrinks--all while the world was supposedly becoming a better place due to government spending. To these voters, there is very little reason for them to believe changes to the system will benefit them at all, and many may believe the reason their services have declined in quality is because the money meant for them is somehow being siphoned off to some other project.\n\nSo when someone proposes a plan to provide free healthcare for the poor, many poor Republican voters imagine yet another government agency shuffling money around to no real purpose. In their understanding, what would benefit their family the most is a strong economy in which their businesses would generate more income, or they could apply for better work.",
"Here's a little thing that most people are looking over.\nSoutherners tended to be economically \"left-wing\" until the 1980s. The South was the heart of American Socialism.\n\nWhat changed? The GOP started appealing to Southern Racism and Southern Religious views extremely with Reagan. \n\nThe far-right economic views came AFTER that fact. It's basically the south has been led by right wing economic propaganda piggybacking on reactionary social views that were widely held in the South.",
"It's mostly to do with American politics and how, if you're part of a specific party, you're most likely going to go along with that party. \n\nin this case, republicans/conservatives are against the affordable care act, or frankly, any social construct or social safety net. Why? Well, that's up for debate, as those beliefs are opinions of that politician, and more than likely, the opinion of Fox News (when it comes to conservatives).\n\nIn my opinion, it has to do with the 'baby boomer' and/or the 'reaganomics' generations. To no fault of their own, folks in that age range believe in 'trickle down economics' where if you create wealth at the top, it will 'trickle down' to those at the bottom. When Reagan was in office, Reaganomics worked quite well. He cut taxes for the very wealthy from something like 90% to 75% and then later from 75% to 50%. These MAJOR cuts, created a lot of manufacturing industries. Put in perspective, if you had to give .90 cent of every dollar to uncle sam, then suddenly, you only have to give .50 cent, you could make some major changes on the macro level of how your business is ran: hiring more employees, expanding coverage, growing your business.\n\nThe problem now is that taxes are low and Reaganomics can no longer function. There are mathematics, specifically the Laffer Curve, proves so. However, due to their own upbringing and social experience, you'll find that the majority of baby boomers subscribe to this because it worked then. \n\nMoving on, you also have a great deal of ego to deal with when it comes to anything political. Speaking on conservatives (we wont get into liberalism as it doesnt pertain to your question) they are very nationalistic/patriotic. They were raised under the pretense that \"Murica is the greatest country ever\" and that public support enabled the many wars that followed, and the blind support of Media, the right, and conservative politics due to their own subjugation by very smart politicians. (Reagan was an actor, ha)\n\nThe problem that brings to todays world is that conservatives are mostly steadfast in their beliefs and will refute any claim you have, regardless of scientific support. Couple that with nationalism, racism, and the undying love of religion, you'll have the most cognitive dissonant people to date. \n\nKeep in mind that your parents or grandparents didnt have google, and only the educated elite were well informed. Now, in the modern world, we do have google and mostly all of us are well informed... if we choose to be. Like you, the general population realizes the need for social safety nets and for the united states to once again be a leader... and not just in military strength, but in all aspects of life; technology, industry, healthcare, education, and the like. The educated liberal masses have to argue with the ill-educated/subjugated masses that refute every opinion that opposes their own, and the result is that; a deadlock. \n\nTLDR: \n\n-Reaganomics, nationalism, lack of modern education, prone to brainwashing, stubborn... because that's how they were raised and, at the time, it worked for us as a country.\n\nsource:\n\ni live in NC and was raised as a christian republican. When i went to college, was exposed to the truth, started researching these issues, and have, in a sense, got a general grasp of what is going on, specifically in predominately red-states. \n\n\nedit: In my opinion, only the older generations are red. Mostly everyone I know that younger than 40 is left leaning or has no opinion. Once the baby boomers die off, we will, once again, see government for what it is and what it isnt. We have a government to make decisions on the peoples behalf, to protect a nations people, and to legislate in the name of the people. Voting to fund a multimillion dollar war because the lobby that supported your campaign, yet, voting down the Affordable Care Act (most likely because the insurance-company opponents funded your campaign) is NOT governing. It's legal bribery and corruption.\n\nedit 2: solution: baby boomers die off, educated masses made aware of the real issues, make lobbying/bribery considered treason, punishable by hanging, campaign and election reform; politicians now get small tax percentage from their constituents to campaign AND must make ALL of their finances completely public (prevents back channeling / hidden bribes) AND they can no longer make more money than the average income of their district/state."
]
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[],
[],
[
"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/07/blue_state_to_reds/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/us/kansas-school-spending-ruling.html",
"http://rt.com/usa/texas-gravel-asphalt-txdot-748/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Elk_River_chemical_spill",
"http://247wallst.com/special-report/2014/01/14/states-with-the-best-and-worst-schools-2/",
"http://www.kansas.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/article1096336.html"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/01/04/solved-why-poor-states-are-red-and-rich-states-are-blue/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
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[],
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[],
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|
g0wrl9 | what’s the difference between saudi arabia and uae? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g0wrl9/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_saudi_arabia/ | {
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"text": [
"Arab refers to an ethnic group. \n\nUAE and Saudi Arabia are separate sovereign nations. Like the United Kingdom and United States. Both have the word \"United\" in it - doesn't mean they are one country.",
"The Saudis and the Emiratis come from two separate lineages, two separate tribes, two different groups of people. \n\nArab is an ethnicity that is not exclusive to Saudi Arabia. There are Arabs in Iraq and Syria for instance. “Arabia” in “Saudi Arabia” refers to the region where Saudi Arabia now exists.",
"You've got the Saudi Arabia part backwards. As u/phiwong mentioned, it is called Arabia because it is the historical land of the Arabs. \n\n*Saudi* refers to the fact that the kingdom is ruled by the al-Saud family."
]
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[],
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||
7tf0lp | why do so many people find turn of century items (and a few decades before and after) terrifying? more specifically items made for children that weren't remotely viewed as creepy in their era. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7tf0lp/eli5_why_do_so_many_people_find_turn_of_century/ | {
"a_id": [
"dtc3sx9"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"They've been used as set pieces in horror movies set in old 19th century mansions for decades. Eventually the association sticks.\n\nBack in 1910 a mansion built in 1885 was still pretty new, but today it's old and haunted even if it still looks more or less the same."
]
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[]
] |
||
d50xxp | how can a smartphone camera achieve as wide of an aperture (let in light) as some dedicated camera lenses even though they are much smaller? | I understand that some larger lenses have wider apertures than most smartphones (1.8,1.4), but how can a smartphone lense get down to something like 2.2 even though there is physically so much less space to let light in? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d50xxp/eli5_how_can_a_smartphone_camera_achieve_as_wide/ | {
"a_id": [
"f0ikg0e"
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"score": [
3
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"text": [
"Aperture width expressed as an f number is a ratio. So f/2 means the aperture is half as wide as the focal length of the lens. That means it doesn't matter if your lens is 50mm and your aperture is 25mm or your lens is 2 mm and your aperture is 1 mm, both have an aperture that is the focal length divided by 2 (or half the focal length). \n\nIt works because the longer a lens' focal length the less light it allows to pass through, so larger aperture opening on a longer lens both produce the same brightness in the projected image."
]
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[]
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|
1xpj4z | why do i enjoy my hair and head being touched? | I love when someone is touching my hair, I feel like I could fall asleep immediately. Why is this? Does it have to do something with the sensitivity of the nerves on the root of the hair?
Sorry for my bad english. :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xpj4z/eli5_why_do_i_enjoy_my_hair_and_head_being_touched/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfdfh2g",
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"text": [
"Perhaps it's sort of a sensual thing (emphasis on *sense*). I feel the same thing.",
"[Social Grooming](_URL_0_) behavior causes your brain to release endorphins, which are neurotransmitters that cause you to feel a sense of relaxation. I've read that even watching grooming like this will do the job, and I'm inclined to agree from my own experience."
]
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[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_grooming"
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|
anwrd4 | the difference in singing in head voice and chest voice, as in the phantom of the opera is not an opera because it is in sung in chest voice and opera is sung in head voice? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/anwrd4/eli5_the_difference_in_singing_in_head_voice_and/ | {
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"text": [
"Opera singers still use both their head voices and chest voices. They are just trained so well that you can’t hear the difference when they flip between like you can in a singer who is untrained or not classically trained.",
"When you use your chest voice you are concentrating more vibrations lower in your vocal box, it feels like it's in your chest. When you use your head voice you concentrate the vibrations higher in your vocal box, it feels like the sound is coming from the mask of your face (nose and cheekbones). Very well trained singers can flip between the two methods in a much larger part of their range than an untrained singer, but if you sing a very low note you can feel chest voic and a high note should let you feel head voice. (Although some people have a hard time finding their head voice)"
]
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[],
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|
1cf3t1 | why are firetrucks red? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cf3t1/eli5_why_are_firetrucks_red/ | {
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9,
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"text": [
"Because red gets people's attention.",
"I have seen yellow ones.",
"Red also \"goes faster\"."
]
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[],
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||
870stq | what’s the difference between being choked out and passing out vs suffocating to death? | Physiologically what causes you to only pass out vs die due to a lack of oxygen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/870stq/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_being_choked/ | {
"a_id": [
"dw9bna4"
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"text": [
"When being chocked out (usually), your brain gets less blood due to constriction of the blood vessels in your neck. The lack of oxygen/blood results in you blacking out / passing out because consciousness is an energy-intensive state.\n\nWhy don't you die? Because the person chocking you out stops while your heart is still beating. Blood will resume flowing to the brain as soon as the pressure is removed, and you'll regain consciousness."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
bbeyvg | why do flys, bees and other small insects not get completely deafened by the noises all the giant things are making around them? | Always been curious as to why loud noises (some that even I sometimes find uncomfortable) don't appear to faze the tiniest bugs when you try to shoo them away. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bbeyvg/eli5_why_do_flys_bees_and_other_small_insects_not/ | {
"a_id": [
"ekidqg6"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Insects etc do not have ears in the sense that we have. They have organs scattered about them. It's safe to say that those organs' sensitivity has evolved to react appropriately."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2hzygu | the battle of gettysburg. | I'm going there this weekend with some Civil War buffs! What should I know, who won, some important names, etc...When? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hzygu/eli5_the_battle_of_gettysburg/ | {
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"text": [
"I strongly recommend you read \"Killer Angels\" by Micheal Shaara. It's an amazingly good read, and you'll know plenty about Gettysburg by the time you're finished. Gettysburg is generally regarded as the turning point in the Civil War (even though it continued for another two years). Pickett's Charge, in particular, was devastating for the Confederates.",
"July 1-3 1863\n\nThe South (Confederate States of America)\nForces:Army of Northern Virginia led by Robert E. Lee\nPrimary Subordinates- James Longstreet (main Corps commander)\nA.P. Hill and Richard Ewell (new to command after Stonewall Jackson was killed a few weeks before)\nJ.E.B Stuart - Cavalry commander out away from the main army unable to provide enough intel about Union forces\nGeorge Pickett- division commander under Longstreet who was central to the final attack \"Pickett's Charge\" on the final day.\n\nThe Union (USA)\nForces: Army of the Potomac under George Meade\nJohn Reynolds- Senior and excellent Corps commander, killed on Day 1 when trying to prevent Union collapse before the rest of the army came up.\nJohn Hancock- main Union Corps commander whose troops defended against Pickett's Charge\nDan Sickles- Political General who left hos troops on the Union Left exposed in a forward position.\nJoshua Chamberlain- Commander of the 20th Maine regiment on the extreme Union left on Little Round Top who was given a Medal of Honor for leading the defense.\n\nIn all honesty just browse the wiki page for an overview of the flow or just watch the great movie:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n"
]
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[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gettysburg"
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|
20qe8l | why do i think buying stuff will make me happy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20qe8l/eli5_why_do_i_think_buying_stuff_will_make_me/ | {
"a_id": [
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Probably because you don't mute the commercials on your TV. Commercials are designed to lower your self esteem, while suggesting that purchasing their product will make you feel better about yourself."
]
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[]
] |
||
bnzbr5 | on why the hell memes managed to go from lasting months to now lasting barely even a week? also why do some memes "stick" and never die like the skyrim trait meme or the drake/expanding brain/classy pooh memes? is it because they are more flexible with how they can be used? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bnzbr5/eli5_on_why_the_hell_memes_managed_to_go_from/ | {
"a_id": [
"enbbmeb"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"**TL;DR:** Memes have become increasingly reliant on pop culture references. The more a meme makes sense out of context, the longer it will last.\n\n\"Advice Animals\" and other memes that were \"Impact font, text at top and bottom\" were extraordinarily long-lived compared to most of the memes we have today because they're basically stock photos. There's no context behind most of them that cannot be gleaned from the meme itself, like how the initial \"Advice Dog\" was just a derpy-looking dog giving dumb advice.\n\nThat's why the more long-lasting ones like Expanding Brain, Drake, and Pooh have, well, longer lifespans. They don't need prior knowledge of pop culture, or the reference is already an older one that has stayed popular, like Skyrim leveling.\n\nNow, memes are often reaction images used as punchlines to longer jokes, and aren't nearly as funny if you aren't familiar with the media that it was pulled from, like Game of Thrones or Avengers: Endgame, or... I don't know, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure."
]
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[]
] |
||
15o9k3 | how does a beer gut form? | How does a so called beer gut form? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15o9k3/eli5_how_does_a_beer_gut_form/ | {
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"text": [
"Excess calories translate into fat in the body. Beer has a lot of calories. Most heavy beer drinkers (pardon the pun) are male. The male body tends to store fat in the stomach region. Therefore the beer gut.",
"Beer is high in carbohydrates, and a high consumption of carbs will lead to excess fat being stored.\n\nWomen store fat on their hips, thighs, buttocks and breasts in higher proportion to other parts of the body, and men store it in higher proportion on the gut/belly.\n\nAs such somebody who drinks a lot of beer will develop a pronounced belly, aka the beer gut.",
"Drink beer; obtain gut. ",
"Also the drunk 3am pizza. ",
"Fats have about 9 calories per g, alcohol 7, carbohydrates and protein 4. An excess of calories from any group results in weight gain, and because alcohol does not stimulate the release of intestinal satiety hormones in the same way as foods, it's easy to consume too much energy from alcohol. \n\nThe morphology of the beer gut relates to hormones. Estrogens promote weight gain in a \"pear\" shape. Men and post-menopausal women tend to gain weight abdominally.\n\nTl;dr it's easy to overconsume energy from alcohol, and if you're a man or a post-menopausal women you tend to gain it at the waist."
]
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[],
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yofyt | meta. | I don't know when to use or what it exactly means. Can someone break this down for me please? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yofyt/eli5_meta/ | {
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"text": [
"Today's \"meta\" comes from the Greek word \"meta\" meaning \"in the midst of\". \n\nIt basically means referring to itself. For example, the word \"metacognition\" essentially breaks down to mean, \"thinking about thinking.\"",
"Self referential. Like a pie chart explaining the various reasons you like pie charts. ",
"ELI16 - I think it is similar to \"Breaking the fourth wall\".\n\nELI5 - Ask your mother.",
"The characters in a novel are usually confined in a fictional universe they believe it's real. This universe is created by the author and may or may not be similar to ours. We, the readers, live outside of that universe. The book is part of our life because we can read it and discuss on it.\n\nNow, things get meta when the line that separates the fictional universe and the real one (the one where you and I live) becomes blurry. The characters of the novel become aware that they're in a novel, or at least they hint at it or make a reference to it.\n\nSome examples:\n\n* An episode of *The Simpsons* (S11E22, [Behind the Laughter](_URL_1_)) is written as a Behind-the-Music-style TV programme about the TV series *The Simpsons*. The characters in the TV series are now aware that they're actors, and they talk about the show from what seems to be an external point of view.\n\n* The movie *[Adaptation](_URL_2_)* is all about Charlie Kaufman's attempt to write the script for a movie. That movie happens to be *Adaptation* itself. So this is meta, because the movie does not just *contain* the characters, but (fictionally) *created* by them.\n\n* \"A doctor, a lawyer and a priest walk into a bar. The bartender looks at them and says: What is this, some kind of joke?\" The bartender is asking about the possibility he's a character in a joke.\n\n* *Arrested Development* has a lot of meta-jokes. Look at [this](_URL_0_) for example. This is considered a meta-joke because, while the characters are not aware of their status, there is a reference to the details of Hollywood productions, while the lonely cup in the cupboard ironically shows that Hollywood productions, such as *Arrested Development*, can not be detailed.\n\nNow, why do we see some threads on Reddit labelled as \"meta\"? That's because they talk about the subreddit they're in. So there is a discussion about the subreddit from the subreddit itself. It's not referred to fiction, but it still a good use of the concept of \"meta\", because it basically means: **talking or reflecting about X, while being in X itself**.\n\nThat's why we can talk about \"metatelevision\" when a non-fictional programme explains how TV is made. That's why the play about Greek mythology that is set up within Shakespeare's *A Midsummer Night's Dream* is an example of \"metatheatre\" (it's theatrical art that talks about theatre). That's why we use a \"metalanguage\" to talk about language itself.\n\nIt's a difficult concept to explain, but I hope I made myself clear.",
"For visual examples, XKCD provides two good ones:\n\n*[This](_URL_1_): the joke lies in meta being an acronym for \"I'm so Meta, Even This Acronym\".\n\n*[This](_URL_0_): the comic can only exist in this form, since it's describing itself. "
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5thk4d | why are old "religions"(norse, pagan etc.) are not considered religions today, when christianity, islam etc. is and they have pretty much the same proofs for their beliefs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5thk4d/eli5_why_are_old_religionsnorse_pagan_etc_are_not/ | {
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"Depends who conquered who, and who won the wars 😁\n\nIMO, they're all equally valid. That is to say, they're all bs. ",
"1. The people who believe those religions are all dead. \n\n2. Christians, Muslims, and other religious groups have spent time convincing their followers that their religion is the one true religion, and all others are false. Labeling them as mythology, rather than a religion, helps them do that.",
"They are not considered religions because they do not have modern worshipers. The religion died as the people who practiced it were killed or converted to other religions. ",
"They are actually considered religions in many countries today.\n\nYou can look to the Ásatrú in Iceland who have been in the news for building a pagan temple to Odin in Öskjuhlíð hill, Reykjavík.\n\nYou can look how service people in the American military can choose to have a pentagram engraved on their tombstone should the die in the line of duty.\n\nBefore their economy tanked, the Greeks were reconstructing the Parthenon in Athens, with a goal of putting up a new statue of Zeus within (although this may not be a good example of pagan religiosity so much as one of historical reverence).",
"A religion isn't just the things people believe, it's the institution to act in accordance with that belief. That is, Christianity isn't *just* the belief that Jesus lived and taught in Galilee, was crucified by the Romans, and was resurrected, liberating some or all people from some or all of the consequences of sin. It's the whole apparatus of believers and churches and Mass and revival meetings and Bible study groups.\n\nNorse or Greco-Roman paganism doesn't have that in the modern world (except for a few revivalist movements, which most people would agree are religions, even if they think they're silly). The Elusinian Mysteries aren't performed. No one goes to Delphi or Cumae or Dodona to consult with an oracle. There are no Vestal Virgins. The last vestiges of the actual practice of Roman paganism died off in the five or six hundreds.",
"Marketing, mainly. What *you* believe is true. What *someone else* believes is just silly nonsense. So a new King comes into town, and wants everyone to follow their religion - Christianity say. They can't put the existing beliefs on the same level as *their* beliefs - that would be absurd! - so they suppress the existing beliefs, and call them 'myths', and get all the priests and academics to call them 'myths', and in a few generations you've discredited everything else as a valid belief system. Of course in these more modern times, you're just going to piss people off if you dismiss the beliefs of billions of people as being pure rubbish - it's rude, and probably won't achieve what you want it to - but back in the day, you could get away with it.",
"Think about what gives a religion \"legitimacy\" in your eyes. Usually it's just how many people follow it. A religion followed by a few thousand people seems kinda silly when there are over 2 billion Christians. ",
"I'd think it's also because of the fact that most gods in mythology are disproved scientifically. For example, in Shinto, iirc, they believed that earthquakes were caused by a fish(-god?) trying to squirm and escape its bondage, deep under the earth. We know that tectonic plates collide, create large amounts of pressure and eventually release, causing earthquakes.\n\n\nAlso, I don't really know how to say this well, but the Gods in major, at least monotheistic religions today don't really control... Physical things. For example, in many mythologies, there are gods of wind, love, clouds, thunder, etc., which we more or less know how it's actually done today (ex: lightning results from clouds colliding causing large amounts of static electricity, not Zeus getting pissed off).\n\nPlease forgive me if I am missing something. I am not exactly well-versed in this topic but I've done my share of mythological school units and wiki browsing."
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14zegg | how does imgur make money? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/14zegg/eli5_how_does_imgur_make_money/ | {
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"Imgur has paid accounts and advertising. They also might have angel money. "
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6o3bs5 | when and how did "like" turn into meaning "similar to"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6o3bs5/eli5_when_and_how_did_like_turn_into_meaning/ | {
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"According to the [Online Etymology Dictionary](_URL_0_), the \"similar to\" meaning came before the \"pleasing\" meaning.\n\nAs for how the \"pleasing\" meaning came about, \"The sense development is unclear; perhaps 'to be like' (see like (adj.)), thus, 'to be suitable.'\"",
"_URL_0_\n\nAround 1200 AD. It had this definition before it gained the one of you finding something pleasing in the 1500s. "
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3c4k32 | is light produced from a light bulb the same as the light produced by the sun? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3c4k32/eli5is_light_produced_from_a_light_bulb_the_same/ | {
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"Yes. Actually its extremely similar in that both emit a continuous spectrum that is called [black body radiation](_URL_0_) as contrasted to eg. LED lights that only produce spikes at certain wavelengths."
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bn0044 | . why does a company like uber who has yet to post any kind of profits and seems to hemorrhage money, when it goes public more valuable than a company like ford that makes money? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bn0044/eli5_why_does_a_company_like_uber_who_has_yet_to/ | {
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"People are speculating (perhaps right, perhaps wrong) that in the future they will be able to lower their costs or raise their prices, becoming suddenly very profitable.\n\nAmazon did that."
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5jyzhi | what would happen if a president arbitrarily decided to order a nuclear strike? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jyzhi/eli5_what_would_happen_if_a_president_arbitrarily/ | {
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"US law requires that any nuclear order be confirmed by the Secretary of Defense. This makes it very unlikely that an arbitrary nuclear attack order would be executed, because the SecDEF wouldn't confirm it.",
"Likely nothing, the generals and officers that would carry out that order have the authority to contest an order they believe to be illegal, which tht would be.\n\nThen it would go public and you'd have a major scandal because the president just tried to unilaterally decalre war without congressional approval and in violation of numerous laws, resolutions, and treaties.\n\n",
"Questions like these are always hard to answer for two reasons. First,there are so many factors that would shape the response to the event that it would be nearly impossible to set all of them out in a hypothetical. Second, predicting the outcome of any unprecedented event is always hard to do and necessarily involves a lot of guesswork. \n\nWith regards to the first issue, who gets nuked? How many nukes? How big are they? What does it mean to \"arbitrarily\" order a nuclear strike? There'd be a big difference between Trump deciding to use a tactical nuke against suspected terrorists in Afghanistan against the advice of most of his military advisors and Trump sending ICBMs at Russia for shits and giggles after he got drunk one night.\n\nWith regards to the second issue, there's just no way to know even if we set out a very specific scenario. Maybe Putin tries to nuke us back and he succeeds. Maybe Putin tries to nuke us back, but a Russian nuke operator doesn't follow the order in an attempt to prevent World War 3. Maybe Putin starts using nukes in Syria because now he thinks he has the greenlight. Maybe most of the Western world sanctions us because they are angry and appalled at the use of nukes. Maybe the Western world starts bending more to US demands because they're afraid of the US. There are experts who do nothing but study this stuff and plan scenarios and even they disagree on what would happen and often make terrible predictions (read articles by Philip Tetlock about political predictions for more on that).\n\nI guess what I'm trying to say is the question isn't very clear and even if it were clear there'd be no reasonable way to answer it with any certainty.\n\nEdit: /u/Teekno is correct that if it's really an arbitrary order that no one wants to follow it would likely end up going nowhere or end up with the President's removal via the 25th Amendment. If you're asking about an order that went through, though, then there's really no way to say.",
"The Secretary of Defense would have to sign off on it too, but otherwise it would be carried out. Ideally the President wouldn't arbitrarily do it in the first place ",
"Non-American here.\n\nAfaik, USA has [gold codes](_URL_0_) and [Two-man rule](_URL_1_) which are supposed to prevent malicious nuclear launches \n\nEdit: I don't want to sound like a smartass, but it would be pretty dumb to let such a powerful weapon (a nuclear missile) \"unguarded\" 😂",
"Then there would be a nuclear strike.\n\nThen everyone would die. All across the entire planet because everyone else would also launch a nuclear strike."
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78wrcj | [survival skills]: how does tracking work? for instance, when pursuing a prey in the woods, are there any ways to know which way their footprints are headed? how does stepping on the ground make them look different from the untouched parts of the ground? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/78wrcj/eli5_survival_skills_how_does_tracking_work_for/ | {
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"Well, if I were following you through the woods and found some human footprints, whatever direction the toes are pointing would be the direction you were traveling in unless you were walking backwards.\n\nBesides footprints, if you're pursuing a larger creature you can look for things like broken branches, foliage that's been trampled, etc. If you're chasing wounded prey, spotting blood is also a good indicator you're on the right track.",
"Yes, you can look at a footprint and tell exactly which way your prey is headed. Feet are not perfectly circular, so the footprint shape will very much tell you which way the foot was pointed when the print was made. You can look at the distance between prints to tell how fast a creature was moving (large spacing indicates large strides during running, small spacing shows short walking pace strides).\n"
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19woah | the difference (and advantages) between front wheel drive, real wheel drive and 4wd. | Always wanted to know.
EDIT: It's more or less answered, but if anyone wants to contribute further the please go ahead! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19woah/eli5_the_difference_and_advantages_between_front/ | {
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"FWD: the car is \"pulled\" from the front, turns have a greater radius and when you brake at high speed there is a risk that the back of the car tends to slip on the side (specially if you are also using your engine to brake)\n\nRWD: the car is \"pushed\" from behind. Wheels have less weight on them (on FWD cars the weight of the engine contributes to the grip), this means smaller turns but there is a risk that rear wheels will \"slip\" when you accelerate (the donuts that you see at some car show/car race).\n\n4WD: every wheel contributes to traction. This results in less power to the wheels (moving 4 wheels means that your traction system will dissipate more energy. Also: top speed is reduced) but also results in a better accelerations and better handling on rough terrains (if one of your wheels loose contact with the terrain (or slips) on a FWD/RWD car you loose 50% of your ability to move, on a 4WD car you loose only 25% of the grip).\n\nI hope it's simple enough (:",
"To add to what Ionizzatore said there is also a AWD. This is similar but not exactly 4wd. And ALL WHEEL DRIVE has the potential to propel any of the 4 tires and adjusts which tire/tires it uses when/if you loose traction. A 4WD will spin all 4 tires if the hubs are locked."
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3cgfsl | how do etsy vendors sell products with copyrighted characters, images and text without paying any royalties/fees? | As an example:
_URL_0_
Are the sellers liable to pay any fees/royalties? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cgfsl/eli5_how_do_etsy_vendors_sell_products_with/ | {
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"Because the owners of those copyrighted / trademarked characters and works have not yet bothered to track them down and sue them, and/or have criminal theft charges laid against them.\n\nThe people running those tiny shops believe that, because they are small-time, they will be too small to be sued/charged. They don't understand that Etsy, and the payment processors they use, are required to keep their identity and transaction details on file for *seven years minimum*, and that the owners of the properties they are ripping off have *years* to file against them.",
"Not everything is protected. Some of those items would fall under the Parody rule. But the exact copies of of Elmo is illegal and Etsy and the seller could be found liable. Disney has a team of lawyers that go about protecting their rights. Even going to local small bakeries and try to order Disney themed cakes. ",
"The sellers are committing copyright/trademark infringement, and could certainly be held responsible if the copyright holder decided to go after them. Etsy sellers do often get shut down for infringement if the copyright holder makes a complaint. However, the reason many instances are ignored is because many companies don't consider it worthwhile to spend time and resources on finding minor individual sellers that aren't significantly damaging their profits. "
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2ixss2 | why do mountain ranges form parallel to the coast so often? | Like the Sierra Nevada, Rocky Mts, Appalachian, Andes, Atlas mts. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ixss2/eli5_why_do_mountain_ranges_form_parallel_to_the/ | {
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"Mountain ranges occur when the tectonic plates of the continent and ocean (in this particular instance) collide. The lighter continental plate slides over the heavier ocean plate and rises up as it does so, causing the mountain range. It should be noted however that if a continental plate hits another, a mountain range still results, and in fact with any tectonic plates colliding there will be elevation of one, or both, plates. Ranges such as the Himalayas, the Alps (in Europe) are caused by this. \n\nWhere a range is being forced over an oceanic plate, this range will run parallel to the coast because that is the direction of the force acting between the two plates (towards each other, but along the entire fault). The coast is where it is because the mountains have lifted sections of the continental plate above sea-level, the higher ground protruding from the lower continental shelf area that makes up the shallow seas. Depending on the particular range, forces interacting and I'm sure many other factors such as geological make up, the ranges can be extremely close to the coast (I think much of the Andes is like this, with massive elevations just a few miles inland) or a gentle slope for a while before rising into mountains. The exact causes for this can be many, and I would personally quite enjoy a geologist explaining the finer points or expanding anywhere I've got wrong/missed out. \n\nEdit: Expanded to reflect being able to type properly on laptop."
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6ipnym | why is it that only people from the us are called "americans" but not the rest of the continent? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ipnym/eli5_why_is_it_that_only_people_from_the_us_are/ | {
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"It's with the full name. United States of America- > American. United States of Mexico- > Mexican for example. ",
"Because it's the actual name of the country. \"United States of **America**.\" When the country was founded, they gave it the same name as the continent. \n\nAnd we can't call ourselves \"United Statesians\" or something like that, because there are a lot of United States. Our neighbor to the south is one of them - it's full, proper name is Estados Unidos Mexicanos (United States of Mexico). If they're called Mexicans, it only makes sense that we be called Americans."
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advbvb | the physiology behind craving water while eating ice cream | Ice cream shops always have a water fountain or a pitcher of water out for customers. It just seems so weird to crave a cold glass of water while you’re eating cold ice cream. Curious about the physiology behind it since I’ve definitely experienced the craving before. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/advbvb/eli5_the_physiology_behind_craving_water_while/ | {
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"because it contains less water than your body needs to maintain its osmotic balance, hence making you thirsty. just as some foods can starve you because they contain less nutrients than you use when digesting it.",
"Salt is an ingredient in ice cream. In the same way you crave water while eating something salty such potato chips you crave water after eating ice cream because it is a also salty, even though you might not taste the salt. ",
"Wow, lots of wrongish and non-ELI5 answers so far. \n\nHow “dry” or “wet” something feels to your body isn’t just about how much water it contains, but how much water it contains relative to how much stuff is dissolved in it. Ice cream has a lot of sugar, a bit of salt, and other stuff (flavorings, protein from the milk). \n\nSo while ice cream also contains water, the stuff in it has the potential to absorb a ton more water, especially as it warms up in your mouth. When this happens, you get a dry mouth and a drink of water is nice. \n\nAlso, people eat a lot of ice cream in the summer when they probably need some water anyway. "
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5yvee6 | why does older furniture hold up so well when modern furniture seems to break in a few years? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yvee6/eli5_why_does_older_furniture_hold_up_so_well/ | {
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"I can think of a couple of reasons:\n\n1. Quality of materials. Older furniture is made of solid wood and real fabric as opposed to MDF, plywood, fiberboard and synthetic fabrics. Because of this, it cost more, proportionally, and so there was a customer expectation that it would last. Not wanting to lose customers, manufacturers met this expectation of durability.\n\n2. Because it cost more, people treated it with respect and care. Therefore, the framework for any item to last a long time--maintenance, care and appropriate use--was in place and the results were usually successful. There was no cheap WalMart desk to get as an easy replacement, so people put actual effort into making sure their items lasted.\n\nEdit formatting",
"Planned obsolescence. \n\nModern furniture is designed to last for a shorter period of time. It's the same reason iPhone batteries stop working after about 18 months. The makers expect you to buy a new couch after just a few years. ",
"I can't speak to the fabric, but in terms of the wood there are a number of reasons.\n\nHistorically, furniture was made from hardwoods. Many modern pieces are synthetic (mdf, chipboard, etc) which are not as durable. When solid wood is used, it is often soft woods which grow more quickly making them cheaper to harvest. \n\nJoinery in hardwood furniture is traditionally mortise and tenon and similar tight fitting joints which: 1) Do not rely on mechanical fasteners like screws which eventually tear at the wood and loosen up; 2) Work with the seasonal expansion and contraction of wood to remain solid for many decades. This type of joinery is more precise and custom to each piece, so it is harder to mass produce. \n\nModern furniture, by contrast, uses nails, staples, screws, biscuits, etc to speed production thereby saving costs. But ultimately these joints can loosen over time with use.\n\nSource: I'm a woodworker who makes his own furniture.",
"The modern furniture you're seeing is cheap modern furniture. There's modern furniture that holds up well, but it costs a lot more.\n\nWhy wasn't there cheap furniture years ago? There was. But you don't see it any more, because none of it survived to this day -- *because it was cheap*.",
"Planned obsolescence. Does Ikea want to sell you a $500 table once or 3 $200 tables? ",
"Maybe it doesn't but you only ever see the old furniture that holds up because you just throw out broken furniture. "
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9s7g8f | is quantumphysics the base for the theory of everything? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9s7g8f/eli5_is_quantumphysics_the_base_for_the_theory_of/ | {
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"No, there is no base so to speak, and there are many different theories within Quantum mechanics that don't always agree with one another. \nIn a very simple sense, quantum mechanics is one side of the coin, with general relativity being the other side. If these two theories could be reconciled that would essentially be a theory of everything. If I recall correctly quantum gravity is one of the biggest obstacles right now.\n"
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casjq6 | what does your phone do with all of the excess energy it gets after charging to 100%? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/casjq6/eli5_what_does_your_phone_do_with_all_of_the/ | {
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"Modern phones don't overcharge, by design. Its not safe to do so and could cause damage to the battery or other safety issues.\n\nGenerally when they reach 100% they stop charging and actually slowly discharge their power down to about 95%, then charge back up and repeat.",
"There is no excess energy. When the phone is charged to 100% it stop taking energy from the charger. In fact calling the things we plug phones into \"chargers\" isn't really all that accurate. Those things are just power supplies. They produce a certain voltage, and when we connect them to phones, the phones draw a certain amount of current. The phone makes all the decisions about how much current to draw and how long to draw it. So really the phone is the charger."
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aknp5t | what are the differences between serotonin, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine etc and their effects on a human mind? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aknp5t/eli5_what_are_the_differences_between_serotonin/ | {
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"Serotonin, dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine are four of the main neurotransmitters in the brain. When they are released, typically they alter one’s mood, although they do much more than that.\n\nDopamine is the standard feel-good chemical. When you get an A on a test, or find $100 on the ground, your brain shoots a little bit of dopamine out, causing a quick burst of happiness. Dopamine exists so that we feel rewarded for doing things that help our survival (or that we like, I guess.)\n\nSerotonin is a neurotransmitter which affects both mood and cognition/memory. It is released in steady amounts every day and helps you to focus, stay awake, talk to your friends, or remember someone’s name. It also makes you happy.\n\nNorepinephrine is a neurotransmitter which aids in fine motor control. It helps you control your eyes, jaw, and other muscles in the body. If a lot of it gets released, your eyes may twitch or wiggle back and forth, and your jaw may lock up.\n\nAs for epinephrine, unfortunately, I’m not sure.\n\nSource: I’m a drug fanatic and understand a lot about psychoactive, serotogenic drugs and how they work, such as MDMA, classical psychedelics, and opioids.",
"Serotonin is a regulatory neurotransmitter so it helps regulate all the other neurotransmitters. Ssris or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are commonly referred to as happy pills because of serotonins roll in Outlook on life and overall sense of happiness. Serotonin also plays a key roll in your sleep wake cycle, serotonin becomes melatonin in the brain to help regulate your circadian rhythm. Because serotonin is a regulatory neurotransmitter it can also have a wide range of other effects such as sex drive and energy levels. The most interesting use of serotonin though is to help regulate the amount of sensory information that your brain uses to create the reality around you. Psychedelics almost exclusively take advantage of serotonin receptors to cause hallucinations by increasing the amount of sensory data to overload your brain with more information than it's used to.\n\nDopamine is the main reward neurotransmitter. Dopamine rewards us for doing things. Excersize, successfully completing a task, and sex are common causes of large dopamine releases. Dopamine is also released when drugs are used which is the primary cause of drug addiction because of dopamine's roll in regulating behavior. \n\nEpinephrine also known as adrenaline needs less of an explanation as most people are somewhat familiar with it. It can cause anxiety and effects energy levels. If you've had a near death experience you've definitely felt the effects of epinephrine. Primarily causes increased blood flow to muscles and extreminities in preparation for fight or flight\n\nNorepenephrine also known as noradrenaline is in many ways similar to epinephrine though in use more throughout regular activities. It plays a big roll in energy levels, motivation, and high levels can also cause anxiety. In contrast to epinephrine it plays a roll in preparing the brain for action.\n\nThough these are the main 4 neurotransmitters there are many other important ones such as gaba which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. Gaba systems in the brain are utilized in anti anxiety drugs like xanax.",
"Serotonin is a regulatory neurotransmitters keeping you feeling normal, affects the release of a variety of other neurotransmitters and is related to social bonding\n\nDopamine is responsible for motor control and behavioral sensitization. Makes you feel good and is also responsible for things such as social bonding, drug addiction, cognition, and pleasurable feelings\n\nEpinepherine and norephinepherine are very similar however they do have some differences, both are vasoconstrictors and are released in a stimulating situation. Effects heart rate, mucle contraction, stimulation, and wakefullness",
"2nd year neuroscience PhD here. \n\nDopamine (DA), norepinephrine (NE), serotonin (5-HT), and epinephrine (EPI) are all neurotransmitters used in the brain. They are released from one neuron to signal to other neurons. Exactly what they signal depends on a bunch of different factors, including what receptors are activated, how much of each molecule is released, the current state of the receiving cell, and many other things. \n\n\nDopamine, as some others have said, is typically thought of in pop culture as the \"feel good\" molecule. This is somewhat true but is also a gross overgeneralization. While dopamine *is* heavily involved in reward and reward prediction, it's dopamine release in a specific brain region (the [nucleus accumbens](_URL_5_)) that is primarily responsible for this action. To clarify what I mean, dopamine is also heavily involved in proper movement ([Parkinson's is a result of the degradation of dopaminergic cells](_URL_0_)), and the cells that are involved in this function are found in an area called the [substantia nigra](_URL_6_), which does not project to the accumbens. Dopamine is also involved in lactation through connections with the [tuberinfundibular nucleus](_URL_2_). In short, dopamine does a lot of different things in the brain.\n\nI'm probably going beyond the ELI5 scope here, but I wanted to throw out an example of direct evidence that the \"feel good\" status of dopamine is misleading and incomplete.\n\n- [Here's a short youtube video that gives good but brief background on dopamine, before going on to talk about a recent paper's findings.](_URL_3_) There's a great summarizing sentence at 3:27 as well. \n\nNorepinephrine is another neurotransmitter, and one that is involved in sleep-wake cycles, as well as attentiveness. It's typically thought that NE levels operate on an [inverted-U-type graph](_URL_4_) (think Goldilocks) in that too little NE is bad (no focus, no attention) but too much NE is also bad (overly fixated on one thing). As with all things in physiology, you want things to be juuust right, more is not necessarily better. \n\nSerotonin is thought to regulate mood, and to some extent, anxiety. The first line of antidepressants is [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)](_URL_1_), which block reuptake of serotonin by the serotonin transporter and leave it floating in the synapse longer. While the idea that acutely increasing serotonin in the brain is antidepressant is not true, it likely has some sort of role in this process. \n\n~~Have to go back to work now, will return to flesh this out some more and provide some links.~~\nAdded some links. \n\nEdit: thought this was r/askscience and not r/ELI5 sorry. If I had realized it was r/ELI5 I would've simplified my answer. ",
"I wouldn’t say those four are the “main” neurotransmitters in the brain, they are more like the special four that have their own unique functions. Glutamate and GABA are actually the two most common neurotransmitters in the human brain, but they are the “basic” ones so nobody really talks about them as much. Glutamate is the excitatory neurotransmitter which stimulates other neurons to fire, and GABA is the inhibitory neurotransmitter that prevents other neurons from firing.",
"Until they determine a method to measure chemistry in the brain in real time all of these ideas are indirect theories. They are still science but its not like measuring your HDL or blood sugar.",
"MCAT studying, they go into a lot of detail on the neurotransmitters.\n\nA good rule of thumb is that neurons in your body have receptors for a variety of neurotransmitters, but each receptor might cause the neuron to do something different. For example, dopamine acting on an interneuron in the brain will cause that neuron to do something different than if dopamine attached to a motor neuron. The same is true for every cell in your body. Your liver treats epinephrine differently than your eyes do. We sometimes can tell what neurotransmitters do based on where they are found in high concentrations, and by adding radiographic material in some precursors to neurotransmitters that our body metabolizes, then track with an MRI.\n\nEpinephrine and Norepinephrine function as part of the sympathetic nervous system, also known as the \"fight or flight\" response. They come from your adrenal glands (on top of the kidney). Epinephrine moves throughout your blood and activates different cells in different ways: your liver releases sugars, your eyes dilate, your digestion slows, and a lot of other stuff to increase your senses and ability to act quickly. Norepinephrine is a more local transmitter, but basically does the same stuff. Norepinephrine is also highly linked to alertness and wakefulness. Low levels are linked to depression, and high levels are linked to mania.\n\nDopamine is very similar in structure to epi and norepi (they are all a category called catecholamines) but it's in the brain. Its part of the reward pathways, and is also found in high concentrations in the parts of the brain that are responsible for posture (low dopamine is linked to Parkinson's).\n\nSerotonin is very active in our prefrontal cortex and the limbic system of the brain, aka the mood/emotion centers. As others have said, serotonin is responsible for a lot of different mood disorders based on how much a person has. One important thing: when we talk about how much of a neurotransmitter someone has, there are a bunch of different processes that factor in. How much gets released, how much actually binds to the receptors, how long does the neurotransmitter stay in the synaptic cleft (the space between neurons, can dictate how long a \"feeling\" lasts), and how much gets re-absorbed back into the original neuron so it can be re-used later (compared to how much breaks down in the synaptic cleft). \n\nDifferent anti-psychotics or other brain drugs do a lot of different things in the brain. Neurons use calcium, sodium, and potassium to fire signals, so different medications can influence how many of these ions go into nerve cells. For example, Lamictal is an anti-seizure drug in high doses by regulating how calcium channels work in the brain, basically making them more consistent. In lower doses, it can stabilize someone's mood and is used for bipolar patients. We think it might make serotonin release more consistent, as opposed to other anti-depressants that make serotonin last longer in the synaptic cleft.\n\n\n\n"
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathophysiology_of_Parkinson%27s_disease",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_serotonin_reuptake_inhibitor",
"https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/tuberoinfundibular-pathway",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRc_W9xrLW8",
"https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262609173/figure/fig2/AS:202797980098576@1425362214955/Relationship-of-dopamine-norepinephrine-to-prefrontal-function-At-lower-than-optimal_W640.jpg",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleus_accumbens",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantia_nigra"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
srwv3 | how do printers work? | Okay, I'm fairly tech savvy, having almost finished a computer Science degree, but that never covered any hardware workings of printers, among other things, and to this day, I'm still a bit perplexed as to exactly how the printer turns toner that seems to be just black dust, into writing on a paper? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/srwv3/eli5_how_do_printers_work/ | {
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"_URL_0_\n\nIts a bit hard to explain it like your 5 but the above link does a good job at it :-)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://computer.howstuffworks.com/laser-printer.htm"
]
] |
|
72r958 | is liquid water possible in space? could a dense "bubble" exist and support life? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/72r958/eli5_is_liquid_water_possible_in_space_could_a/ | {
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"Not exposed to space, no. The exposed water would instantly begin to boil. This would rob heat from the water below the surface, potentially leaving a core of ice. I suppose it is possible you can envision scenarios where a portion of the core retains enough heat for a period to remain liquid, or the sphere is large enough to form its own atmosphere of water vapor, but I'm not sure that still qualifies as 'in space' per your question any more than water under an atmosphere like on Earth.",
"If you took a block of solid ice out in to space, it wouldn't boil away, but it would sublimate straight to vapour. Without insulation, vacuum and the temperature extremes found in space mean that water just wouldn't last as solid or liquid."
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||
5pwx5u | why did frost only form on my front and left side windows, but not my right side? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pwx5u/eli5_why_did_frost_only_form_on_my_front_and_left/ | {
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"i would guess it has something to do with the direction the wind was blowing. now im gonna type some random stuff cus the bots are fascist. did you know that if you were to add 1+2+3+4+5+6... all the way to infinity that the sum is actually -1/12? that sum is used in many equations in quantum theory and has proven to be effective in modeling higher dimensions."
]
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[]
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||
8ct25c | how do internet archive websites work? they can’t just store several years of everything. do most websites keep several years of history lying around on their servers? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ct25c/eli5_how_do_internet_archive_websites_work_they/ | {
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"text": [
"Storage is cheap man. Think about it, you can but a TB hard drive for less than 100$. The library of Congress converted to a text file is less than a TB. "
]
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[]
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||
2ookk0 | what are the red balls on power lines? | Do they have a purpose? What is it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ookk0/eli5_what_are_the_red_balls_on_power_lines/ | {
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"so small, low flying planes/helicopters can see them ",
"They are obstruction markers so that aircraft (particularly helicopters) can see them before flying into them. In the United States, they are required by the FAA under [Advisory Circular 70/7460-1K](_URL_0_). Anything high enough needs to be marked, which is why tall buildings have red flashing lights on them.\n\nThey are also on maps so a pilot following a pre-planned route will stay well away from them, but news and emergency response helicopter pilots are especially vulnerable to missing thin wires while they're following the action on the ground.",
"To quote one of my favorite R.E.M. songs, [Driver 8](_URL_0_), \"The power lines have floaters so the airplanes won't get snagged.\"",
"When I was a kid, I thought they were flotation balls to keep the lines from sinking to the bottom if they broke.",
"Funny. When I was a kid, I asked my mother if they were to make sure airplanes wouldn't get caught in the wire, and she said no, they were electrical transformers, although she then couldn't proceed to explain.\n\nI feel somewhat justified now. I was 7 at the time. I'm 35 now. I've believed her bullshit all this time."
]
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[],
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"http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC%2070%207460-1K.pdf"
],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u-_m7X538A"
],
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|
bpw41v | how do scientists obtain a single neutron that they can shoot at the nucleus of an atom in fission? | From what I understand, nuclear fission is generally performed by firing a single neutron at the nucleus of an atom (often uranium 235), causing the nucleus to break apart and releasing "dormant" energy that was holding the nucleus together. How is the single neutron obtained if it doesn't have an electric charge? Also, for something like a fission bomb or fission reactor, how is that neutron not only obtained, but stored until it is needed and then precisely and accurately fired to get the designed result? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bpw41v/eli5_how_do_scientists_obtain_a_single_neutron/ | {
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"Fission is a naturally occurring process. U-235 is found in nature and we concentrate it for use in reactors. The radioactive decay of U-235 releases neutrons. \n\nReactors use control rods to absorb the neutrons to control how many fissions occur and this the amount of neutrons produced and therefore controlling the number of neutrons available to cause more fissions. Control rods are made of materials that are more likely to absorb neutrons than the U-235. These materials don't result in more neutrons being produced. \n\nSo to answer your question, for reactors we don't obtain a neutron, we just allow more of the neutrons already being produced to be available to interact with the U-235 instead of the control rods.",
"An isotope is **fissile** if it can absorb a neutron, then break up releasing at least two more neutrons.\n\nEach fissile isotope has an effective cross section, essentially the circle within which a neutron will be captured. Given the density of the fissile material and the size of the cross section, there's a **mean free path**, the average distance a neutron can travel within the material before it's captured.\n\nA chunk of material is **critical** if it's big enough and dense enough that the number of neutrons captured is about one per atom split (so given an isotope that releases two neutrons, only half of the neutrons will be captured. If more neutrons are captured than atoms split, the chunk is **supercritical**, the number of neutrons released will increase until the chunk self-disassembles. If the chunk is too small or not dense enough, it's **subcritical**.\n\nSome of the atoms that are created when fissile material splits will release more neutrons but not immediately. A chunk of fissile material is **slow critical** if the number of neutrons increases slowly, due to the delayed release. It's **fast critical** if the number of neutrons immediately released is increasing.\n\nBombs are designed to go from subcritical to fast supercritical very quickly, to get as much fission done as possible before they self-disassemble.\n\nReactors are designed to be slow critical; the number of atoms being split increases slowly and can be limited by inserting neutron absorbers to take away some of the neutrons. Chernobyl was so badly mishandled that it went fast critical, heating almost instantaneously until it disassembled itself.\n\nAnd your answer: once some atoms are fissioning, a properly adjusted slow critical reactor core will produce all of the neutrons it needs without intervention. Brand new Uranium fuel has too few spontaneous fission reactions to start, so a freshly fueled reactor gets additional neutron emitters to start the reaction. Once it's been working for a bit, the slow release neutrons will keep the reaction going, even if the reactor is shut down and restarted.",
"Typically reactors are first started with what is called a \"start-up source\".\n\nThe start-up source consists of either an Am-Be (americium and beryllium) or a Pu-Be (plutonium and beryllium) source.\n\nAmericium and Plutonium naturally decay and emit Alpha radiation, which is a helium nucleus.\n\nBeryllium likes to absorb the helium nucleus turning into carbon and in the process ejects a neutron. Those neutrons are then used to start the reaction.\n\nUranium also has a very small probability of decaying via a process called \"spontaneous fission\" which will also help release neutrons for further fissioning, but that probability is something like 1% or less.\n\nOnce a reactor is started it is almost never stopped. The fuel is replaced in cycles, often at two year internals with a 6 year total life span. So while a third of the fuel is being swapped out every two years the other two thirds keeps the reaction going.\n\nSource: I work at a nuclear power plant and maintain our start up sources."
]
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|
7748xp | how is an injury like gordon hayward's immediately treated by doctors and medical staff? | When an athlete suffers a severe break or other leg injury, I often see the air cast and then they get stretchered off the field/court. But what happens between the time a player gets injured and has surgery (sometimes days later)? Do they put bones and joints back in place? Do they just leave everything as is? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7748xp/eli5_how_is_an_injury_like_gordon_haywards/ | {
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"this happened to me. yes, they put it back in place, and the bones grind back into position. for me, surgery was the next morning.",
"For the most part, you want there to be time between insult and surgery. The swelling is already going to be pretty severe on an injury like that, which means decreased blood flow to the wound itself (as it’s being trapped in the soft tissue). You don’t want to start a surgery behind the 8-ball when it comes to perfusion to the site. \n\nObviously this goes out the window depending on the injury and risk for worsening damage. ",
"TL;DR: The bare minimum required to successfully immobilize the break so that the patient can be transported to a hospital. Once there, the break will be kept immobile until a more permanent course of treatment is prescribed.\n\nFirst responders generally don't like to try to \"set\" bones on the scene (i.e., put back in the position it's supposed to heal in). Ideally, the break will be moved/manipulated as little as is possible. Just enough to immobilize it. Now, for a break as dramatic as Haywards, a certain amount of straightening out might have been required just to get even a loose air cast going. And sometimes the bone actually breaks the skin (called a \"compound fracture\"), and that's usually something that needs to be dealt with at least a *bit* before moving the injured person. Same if there's serious bleeding. A broken leg won't kill you this afternoon. A punctured major blood vessel totally will. The medics will do whatever it takes to get that bleeding under control, even if it means moving the break more than they'd otherwise prefer. \n\nRegardless, the break won't be properly set until the doctors have had a chance to look at x-rays, etc. Even if no surgery is in view, there's no sense in just eyeballing it. And unless a doctor looks at the films, there's no way of telling how bad it is, whether there are disconnected pieces floating around in there, etc. "
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