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bi30eb | how does jb weld work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bi30eb/eli5_how_does_jb_weld_work/ | {
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"Its an epoxy, you mix two different chemicals together, they react with each other and harden."
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6t594o | why our voices go up in pitch when asking a question | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6t594o/eli5_why_our_voices_go_up_in_pitch_when_asking_a/ | {
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"This is a tonal cue specific to English which indicates to the listener that the person is asking a question, or is unsure about what they are saying. Pitch going up with a questioning statement is *not* something which is universal among languages, and isn't even necessary in English for the idea to be conveyed through syntax.",
"its cultural, an English language quirk. it clarifies what response you are wanting from the other person. Chinese for example accomplishes the same meaning by adding the word 'ma' to the end of the sentence. ",
"As people have said, this is a culturally specific cue that signals the question without verbal markers. However I'm pretty sure it isn't just english that uses it. It's the same in Italian, therefore probably more languages as well."
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1hxju7 | "social anxiety" | Maybe its an American thing but seriously - reddit is the first place i've heard about this... medical condition? What is it? What causes it? What are the symptoms?
Is it an acknowledged sickness or just some kind of weird excuse or "cool sickness" like ADHD sometimes?
edit: I feel like I should clarify that it is not my intention to call out people with anxiety problems - no offense. I'm not a native speaker so this is coming off harsher than intended. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hxju7/eli5_social_anxiety/ | {
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"I've been diagnosed with Social Anxiety. Normally I am going about my day, but for instance I have to go have lunch with a large group I instantly become distant and start being very concerned about what others think about every move I make. I'm a very judgmental person myself so I'm assuming the worst is being thought about myself as well. The worst situation as many others will attest is a dance club or any large crowd where you're supposed to socialize. For me, I get really mad, say mean things, and start shaking uncontrollably. Mine specifically kicks in in a group of more than 3 people. \n\nThe cause as far as I know is usually something traumatic in a life experience, i.e. getting made fun of in school, or anything making an individual feel inferior. I don't know what caused mine, but no one in my immediate family has any sort of anxiety issues.\n\n\nI know it's a \"cool\" disorder on Reddit because those people saying that are usually just using an excuse to stay on Reddit in their rooms all day.",
"It's a real listing in the DSM, but for some that is worth a grain of salt. At it's simplest think of it as a phobia of social situations.\n\nFor some it is mild enough that it can be hard to differentiate a person looking for an excuse to be a couch bum and avoid people from someone who has social anxiety. \n\nThis is like trying to differentiate a person who is afraid of spiders from someone too lazy to get up and handle said spider. Then again there is the third option that is similar, but not the same, where they might think the spider is fine where it is without needing to bother it (introversion in this butchered metaphor). Well, I guess shyness would be wanting to solve the spider issue, but doesn't for some reason?\n\nBack on track, like other phobias it can get worse too. How each person reacts depends on their experiences. ",
"Social anxiety falls under the umbrella of anxiety disorders, which is a psychological condition.\n\nIt is normal to feel anxious, like when facing a tough exam or meeting new people, but it becomes a disorder when it negatively affects the quality of the person's life. A person with social anxiety gets anxiety when faced with normal social situations, like small talk with co-workers, dealing with cashiers, talking on the phone, using public bathrooms, asking questions or meeting friends. It often comes from the fear of being ridiculed or embarrased. \n\nPeople with anxieties spend a lot of time thinking about their anxieties; in that they worry about having a visible reaction (sweating, stuttering, shaking hands, crying, panic attacks), or they review past interactions to try to figure out if people picked up on their anxiety, or try to think of ways to minimize the discomfort, which can often lead to unhealthy habits. People will also have anticpatory anxiety, so the same anxiety feelings are created before the event even happens, which can happen for days or weeks before hand.\n\nWhile most of the symptoms of anxiety do not seem that bad to someone who has never experienced them, when it gets to the point of a panic attack, the symptoms feel very scary. Often the first time people experience them go to the hospital because they think they are having a heart attack. Other symptoms include feeling like you can't breathe or choking, irregular heartbeat, sweating and chest pain. \n\nSocial anxiety are often connected to other mental disorders including OCD, depression or panic disorders. The most effective treatments are Cognitive-behavior therapy and medication, but normal counseling and learning deep breathing relaxation techniques can also be helpful. Getting help sooner is a better plan, because for the most part, the longer you wait, the deeper the habits are engrained in you and the more serious the anxiety gets. ",
" > Is it an acknowledged sickness or just some kind of weird excuse or \"cool sickness\" like ADHD sometimes?\n\nI know you're asking, so that's a start.....\n\nBut this really annoyed me. Grow Up ass, people are different.",
"I've been dealing with social anxiety for a while so I'm going to do the best I can to describe how I’ve experienced it, but a therapist would probably give you a better answer.\n\nSocial anxiety probably isn’t too different from being shy, it’s just a more scientific designation. Since I have a general anxiety disorder, it helped to think of social situations in the same way I think about other anxiety triggers. The symptoms varied depending on where in the exposure (social situation) I was. While socializing the most extreme symptom I’ve had were panic attacks. It would begin with a extreme mental discomfort, sort of like your brain is screaming at you, which would to progress to physical discomfort, chest pain, shortness of breath and in extreme cases hyperventilation. The trigger event could vary, usually a perception that I have said or done something wrong, something that could irrevocably change someone’s view of me. These extreme cases affected how I approached social situations in general. When considering whether or not to go out or meet up with a friend, it was easy to imagine situations where I could be in pain, and how much easier it would be to just stay home. Even if I was socializing and not feeling particularly bad about it, I could be drawn away by what might happen, leaving to an overwhelming desire to escape and go home. These types of thoughts happened when there was a lull in conversation, or I would find myself a lone momentarily at a party. It would even make me feel guilty about hanging out with my friends, a feeling that I was relying on them too much and was becoming a burden. \n\nAnxiety is insidious because it fundamentally changes the way you think, and social anxiety is no exception. Anxiety forces you to focus solely on risks instead of rewards. The obsessive qualities essentially make you search for risks, and rationalize avoiding them. Before going out I would rarely think about any potential fun I might have, only that it might cause me anxiety. You begin to look at minor accomplishments as evidence that you no longer need to try. I joked around with some colleagues at work, which was hard; therefore I don’t need to go out tonight. Or I’ve been at this party for a half an hour, I tried, I can go home now. Of course if you do stay home or go home early you may feel relief, but it will be met with an even greater sense of guilt and self-loathing for not being able to do what seems to come so natural to other people. It’s very hard to step back and analyze what decisions you are making and what decisions are anxiety driven. I have gotten much better at dealing with my anxiety but it’s still incredibly difficult to assess when I’m choosing to stay home because I’m comfortable with myself and am confident that I will have a better time at home, or that I’m afraid to go out. \n\nStill the hardest part about social anxiety and overcoming it, is realizing that it’s an incredibly narcissistic disorder. People with social anxiety lack confidence and are insecure, so conceptually its hard to view yourself as a narcissist, but that’s what a person with social anxiety is, they consistently overestimate the influence they have, and are almost manically focused how they are being perceived and wether or not people find value in them. Its was very hard for me to accept that people didn’t really care about me enough that an innocuous comment or bad joke would ruin their night, or even their perception of me. Once I got to the point where I could accept that people weren’t really concerned with how I was feeling or what I said, that I was able to step back and analyze my thoughts in a rational way. After that point I was able to conclude that people actually enjoyed my company, that my friends actually liked me instead of just putting up with me. \n\nI understand the desire to downplay social anxiety, it really is just a form of shyness, but it’s taken me a long time, lots of therapy and occasionally drugs like klonopin to get to the point where I am somewhat comfortable in social situations. This may not be true for everyone that claims to have it, and many people probably do use it as an excuse to limit themselves, but that wasn't the case for me. \n",
"[In an alternate reality..](_URL_0_)"
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7iso0a | how come you have that break in your voice that separates falsetto and normal voice? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7iso0a/eli5_how_come_you_have_that_break_in_your_voice/ | {
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"I think I have the answer. When you are singing out of your falsetto, you are not using your diaphram as much as normal. This is also the reason why non vocally trained peoples voices crack when switching from falsetto to normal. There is a term that some singers use called chest and head voice. Your head voice is your falsetto, and your chest is your normal voice. \n\ntl;dr its because your using different parts of your body",
"Falsetto just vibrates the edges of your vocal cords, regular sound production vibrates the whole thing. \n\nWhen you really stretch out those vocal cords, they can still vibrate the edges even though there’s too much tension to vibrate the whole thing, producing higher frequencies, but with less volume.\n\nThe “break” is whether the vocal cord body is vibrating or not. ",
"Your falsetto and your modal (ie normal) voice are two of a couple different registers the human voice can produce. They're sometimes called different \"voices\", and very aptly so - the vocal folds actually behave differently and use different methods to produce and control sound. With each register the vocal cords are capable of producing a certain range of pitches, but they are not very closely related so the ranges won't always meet, leaving you with a gap in the pitches you can produce ",
"That break is very much like hearing your vocal chords hammer onto a new fret, or hearing an engine rev while it switches gears. \n\nOn a guitar, there are two ways to change the pitch of a string. The normal way to change pitch during music production is to change fret. This changes the effective *length* of the string. Shorter effective length produces a higher pitch. The unusual way to change pitch, which usually happens between periods of music production, is to turn the tuning keys. This smoothly changes the effective *tightness* of the string. You could re-tune a guitar to play in a slightly lower key, or just match whatever tuning standard is useful at the moment.\n\nVocally, we have similar methods for changing pitch, but we use them in the opposite way. The normal way to change pitch during vocal production is to smoothly adjust muscle tension, which changes the effective tightness of the chords. The unusual way to change pitch, which doesn't produce a smooth sound, is similar to changing fret. Actually, it's changing harmonic.\n\nThink of that guitar again and, instead of pressing down between frets, just lightly touch the very center of a string. This also changes the effective length of the string -- you effectively have two half-length strings. The pitch pops up a full octave.\n\nWhen you pop up to falsetto, you're shifting between harmonics while dialing way down on tension. This is similar to shifting gears on a car. The tension-to-pitch ratio changes are similar to a car's power-to-speed ratio. All of a sudden, the same input produces a significantly different output.\n\nSo, your voice must either fall silent or crack. There's your break. The transition between two sets of harmonics are significant.\n\nVroom vroom."
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4knyrj | how the us constitution could be changed to allow for a dictatorship | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4knyrj/eli5_how_the_us_constitution_could_be_changed_to/ | {
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"In order for it to be amended to allow a dictator it would have to go through the Constitutional amendment process. \n\nThat process includes 2/3rds of Congress agreeing on it AND ratification of 3/4ths of the States in the Union. \n\nBasically it requires extreme support of the majority of the government and the majority of the populace in order to happen. Which means if it happens it is democracy working as intended. This possibility is not a flaw, if the people want a dictator they should be allowed one. ",
"The US Constitution could be amended to say anything. The Constitution could be amended to say that the worlds largest Hippopotamus will be President. \n\nThe Constitution is the highest form of law in the US and whatever it says goes. Period. This is no loophole, this is an intentional design mechanic of the law. Having said that making an Amendment to the Constitution is literally the hardest possible law to pass. It takes a 2/3 majority in both the house and the Senate, and then 3/4 of all the states have to ratify it. It is very hard to do. \n\n",
"Essentially, if the restrictions on amendments were, themselves, amended such that, say, the president or some general could make amendments on their own authority it could result in a dictatorship.\n\nGodel was a mathematician, and this is a kind of \"math logic\" flaw in the constitution.\n\nIn reality, there's no way that such an amendment to article V (slackening the requirements for amendments, let alone vesting the power to make them solely in a single person) would ever pass.\n\nIn a sentence: \"If the country were stupid enough to approve an amendment that stated 'the president can amend the constitution as he sees fit' it would totally be legal and the president could fairly easily become a dictator.\"",
"Godel never disclosed the flaw (he was prevented from doing so during his citizenship hearing). So we can't know for sure what he found, but the logic outlined in the article rests on article V which allows the constitution to be amended, including article V, so a potential dictator need only amend article V once (or get a sop to amend it \"for the children\") then take over the government and freely amend to constitution as to give the office holder more power. \n\nIn practice it is quite hard to imagine the conditions that would result in congress and the states agreeing to cede that much power to a potential dictator, though I imagine there was some fool in the Roman Senate saying the same thing when Julius was appointed Dictator, too. \n\nIt would seem to be far simpler to stuff the Supreme Court with lackeys who interpreted the language of any part of the constitution as the dictator saw fit. "
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230psp | the concept of "illegal warfare" | I get what is considered "illegal" in war. According to a quick google search its using tactics such as poisoning or bombarding undefended cities or towns, destroying religious artifacts, purposely killing innocent children and wounded, and the obvious big one: no nukes. But why? If the saying is: "All is fair in love and war" and nations are constantly making and improving better ways to kill each other, why are some tactics considered illegal and others not? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/230psp/eli5_the_concept_of_illegal_warfare/ | {
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"As it turns out, a lot of stuff is fair in neither love nor war. Most of those things are prohibited in an effort to minimize pain, suffering and noncombatant fatalities.\n\nIt's the middle ground between wanting to stop all war and recognizing that war is inevitable.",
"An analogy: In the past, it used to be legal to have duels. If you and I had a really serious disagreement, we could agree a time, a place, and a weapon, and then *fight to the death*. Point is, there were rules about the fighting. You couldn't challenge someone to a sword fight and then show up with a gun. You might think \"Well if we're fighting to the death, why would I not go all-out?\", but if you did that, other people would intervene and you'd be punished severely.\n\nThis system actually worked and was very widespread for a very long time. If you tried to just ban fighting, people would still murder each other in chaotic and unpredictably spiralling revenge feuds, but with a system of duelling the killing is limited in scope, the risk of injuring innocents goes down, and so on. As a way to mitigate violence when you can't prevent it, it works ok. Now we have good enough police and so on that we can actually prevent most violence, but before that was in place, duelling worked.\n\nI hope the analogy to international conflict is clear. Perhaps one day we will be able to prevent wars from happening at all, but until that happens, having rules that limit how awful a war can be makes the world a better place.",
"War may be illegal due to the justification that is given by the attacking force. The U.N. Charter dictates that the U.N. security council will determine who has cause a breach of the peace and what ramifications may be appropriate and whether any forces were justified in there involvement in any breach of the peace or war. Also, The Geneva Convention (article 3 if i remeber right) discusses when war may be appropriate. However there is also a school of thought in international law that dictates a country may go to war to prevent war crimes (also contained in the Geneva Convention) or human rights violations (contained in the ICCPR, the ISCER and the Rome Statue). War may also be illegal in the way that it is conducted, i.e. one or multiple sides causing war crimes or human rights violations \n\nThis is what I remember from International Law class I took 3L year. "
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26ygk3 | if every person with hiv or aids suddenly died, would the condition cease to exist? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26ygk3/eli5if_every_person_with_hiv_or_aids_suddenly/ | {
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"No. HIV was transferred by contact with another mammal, probably a monkey. If every person died, contact could still occur between IV strains in the monkey population and could still jump to people. ",
"HIV would probably live on in some reservoir, but a whole bunch of associated illnesses would probably cease to exist. Things that are relatively common in HIV/AIDS patients and AIDS defining illnesses would be almost eradicated. PCP pneumonia, Mycobacterium Avium Complex, Brain Toxoplasmosis, Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy, Kaposi's Sarcoma, Primary Brain Lymphomas, Esophageal Candidiasis. There are a whole bunch of well known conditions that were extremely rare prior to the early eighties and the discovery of the HIV virus, so they would probably become just as rare again.",
"nope, someones going to fuck a corpse then we'll be back to square one."
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384kb4 | when the picture was bad on an old crt television you could smack it and the picture could be fixed, why is that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/384kb4/eli5_when_the_picture_was_bad_on_an_old_crt/ | {
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"There were more parts physically connected by sockets, jumpers, twisted in wire caps and just generally mechanically attached rather than nicely all soldered on one board like today's tvs. As things heated and cooled, those physical connections worked themselves loose, and banging it sent enough of a jolt to knock things back into contact again. See also the Apple III, which had as part of the troubleshooting process [dropping the computer on a hard surface to knock things back together](_URL_0_)."
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4ty8qv | there are certain layer of atmoshphere that hot but yet we cant feel it, why is that? | I learned that there are layer of atmosphere that very hot in temperature but yet we cant feel it such as thermosphere that said might reach 1500 celcius and ISS orbits in this layer and astronout seem not burnt out. Why and how is this happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ty8qv/eli5_there_are_certain_layer_of_atmoshphere_that/ | {
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"While the gas in the thermosphere is hot, at 50+miles above the Earth the density is so low that it's vacuum for practical purposes (like heating up astronaut suits).",
"You dont feel the heat because it's so close to being a vacuum that you don't encounter enough particles of that temperature to warm you."
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420lta | help me understand networking protocols and ports | I am lost with trying to understand protocols. I am looking at this list of tcp and udp port numbers.
_URL_0_
My question is, when it comes to ports, do ports have protocols assigned to them? Like when you go down that list, each one of them has a different description. Like I see that 80 is HTTP which I know is a protocol. Is "Active Users (systat service)" on port 11 a protocol also? Is that all ports are, just a reserved spot for a certain protocol to transfer information?
Also, I see that in the one column, it has whether it is TCP, UDP, or both. What does this mean? I thought tcp and udp were also protocols, so shouldn't they have ports also? I understand that tcp is a more reliable way of transferring information because it assures the information is transferred and UDP is not as reliable. But I am just confused how it is different than for example HTTP or FTP. Is it just a protocol using a protocol?
Sorry if these are simple questions, kind of new to this. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/420lta/eli5help_me_understand_networking_protocols_and/ | {
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"nitpick -- UDP is a network layer protocol, as it's best-effort. TCP is a transport layer protocol, as orderly delivery is guaranteed."
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28wjv3 | why do things measured in gauges (like shot guns and needles) get larger as the number gets smaller? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28wjv3/eli5_why_do_things_measured_in_gauges_like_shot/ | {
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"The gauge number is, roughly speaking, \"number of [whatevers] that can be crammed into a particular given space\". So smaller = more [whatever] can fit into the given space = higher number.",
"Not sure about the needles, but shotgun gauge is the denominator of the fractional weight in pounds of the largest solid lead sphere that will fit in the barrel. So a **12**-gauge shotgun barrel will fit a 1/**12** lb lead sphere.",
"The gauge notation (in wires, needles and sheet metal) originated from the ancient metal working times. The had to pass the the stock metal through the rollers so many times to achieve the thickness they want. That is what the gauge number reflects. Later they have been standardized.\n\nI do not know about guns, though."
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2lk4ad | how are certain guns manufactured by different companies without some kind of infringement. | How come certain guns such as the M4 or 1911 are made by a variety of manufactures while others don't seem to be like the mp5. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lk4ad/eli5_how_are_certain_guns_manufactured_by/ | {
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"As the name implies the 1911 has been in production since 1911. \nMany manufacturers will grant each other permission to produce these firearms at request or by fee. Other times they are contracted out by the original manufacturer.\nThis usually only apply to models that have been around for a very long time such as the m4 and 1911."
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4quywi | why are pdfs so hard to edit? | You need extremely specialized programs to edit a PDF, and most of them are barely usable anyway. Even then, a lot of them won't let you do even basic text edits without a paid subscription. Yet everyone insists on using PDFs for everything it seems. Why has no one developed an open source user friendly way to deal with PDFs?
Thanks everyone. I hate PDFs no less now but at least I understand the rationale | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4quywi/eli5_why_are_pdfs_so_hard_to_edit/ | {
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"You can hack through this by doing 2 things. \n\n1) Getting your 30 day free trial of Adobe Acrobat _URL_0_ then you can edit away, for 30 days, then just sign-up again under another email, hey that is just reality that everyone does...\n\n2) You can extract the PDF data into a bunch of formats or integrate w/Webhooks with _URL_1_ and again, go with a 30-day freebie.\n\nEditing is a Pain, because they are essentially the end product of a \"folder\" that contains type, images, text, etc. so that nearly every operating system and browser can view them. This elimiates cross-compatibility issues, which make people lose their minds.\n\nSo I prefer my own hacky system when working w/PDF's (above). One will let you edit the PDF, the other pull the data from the PDF you want and use it for analysis type projects.\n\n",
"PDFs aren't really designed for editing. On the contrary, the format is intended to accurately preserve document content and layout between computers while being space-efficient, and is ideal for sharing for that reason. Editing needs are primarily limited to filling out forms, signing and commenting, which are features many PDF readers provide. Typography is best left to word processors like LibreOffice, which can export the finished product to PDF, or of course there are fully-fledged design programs like Adobe InDesign for more advanced use.\n\n",
"PDF stands for portable document format. The intent is to have a file format that prints as you see it. Original intent is not for editing but to standardize for printing.",
"You don't actually need specialized programs. \n\nMicrosoft Word 2010 natively supports editing of PDFs, and there's a free full-featured PDF reader/creator called Foxit which is easy to use and doesn't take Adobe's approach of making software slow and inefficient.",
"PDFs weren't really meant to be extensively edited in their final form. They're meant to keep document fidelity across platforms. A Word document might look different between one person to the next. Which can be extremely problematic, résumé submissions come to mind. The portable document format is meant to address this issue. A document shouldn't change between users and the different systems that they may or may not be using. Ease of use can also depends on the system you're using. OS X has PDF integration tied in. You can create PDFs with your Mac right out of the box. Windows on the other hand, not so much. Microsoft came up with the XPS format to compete against Adobe and to handle some things that Microsoft didn't believe PDFs handled well or at all. PDFs have their uses, they're just not necessarily practical for everyone or their given needs. ",
"Think of it this way. PDF is NOT a representation of a document really (despite the name). Rather, it's made up of a set of commands that describe how to draw a document. Just like there are many ways to paint a painting, there are many ways to describe how to produce the same \"look\" for a document. For example, I could specify the placement of each character in a sentence, each word, or each phrase. I could do each of those different types of commands and still get an identical PDF from a printing or viewing perspective. That's how PDFs are internally. Two identical PDFs can be dramatically different internally, and if you turned that into an editable form, you'd never know what you'd see each time you opened a different PDF -- it would be chaos to edit. Technically you CAN edit them, but it's always a bit of an adventure. They're just not meant for that purpose -- they're more like the data produced by a printer driver, stored in a file, than a document.",
"PDFs are designed to be easily created and read across all platforms. Unfortunately, the ability to edit them suffers as a result of this design.\n\nEvery PDF file contains a 'cross-reference' table at the end of the file. This table is sort of like an index in a textbook; it enables the PDF file reader to locate and read sections of the file as needed. For example, the reader application can find instructions for displaying text on Page 3 by using the table without having to read info for any other pages.\n\nSo, onto editing PDFs: The cross-reference table works by telling the reader how far away objects are from the start of the file. If you were to try to add (or change) text for a certain page, you would change how far all the other data is from the start of the file, and the cross reference table becomes invalid.\n\nSo, editing properly can be a somewhat complex task. PDF does allow an application to make 'incremental updates', where all the new data is added *after* the reference table, and a table for the new data is added as well.\n\nHopefully this helps explain a bit why PDF is hard to update; if you're really curious you can look up the 1000+ page PDF Specification that comprehensively details this behemoth of a file format.\n\nSource: I work on open source software for PDFs",
"PDFs are usually documents specifically meant to be preserved in the state they are saved (final documents or as works in progress) but that you don't want someone accidentally screwing up. PDFs are always displayed correctly like a JPEG but have the search and form functions of a Word document. \n\nEdit: As a designer I use PDFs a lot so that I can keep a single file that I can work on and send to the printer or client without worrying that things might get screwed up. It better insures they see my intent. Word and other office documents often have issues like not having the proper fonts installed. A JPEG requires I save out multiple files and they aren't searchable or lack some other interactive features like being able to add buttons and forms. ",
"An Adobe PDF is perfectly editable if you pay for Adobe Acrobat DC Standard or Pro. \n\nThis is specifically Adobe's operating business model for PDF documents. \n\nAdobe Reader exists for free to promote the product. People are able read PDF documents for free. It would be bad business if you had to pay money to both read AND create PDF documents.\n\nTrue Adobe PDF documents (not raster image scans of documents in a pdf) are stored as vector graphics like a Flash video and are able to scale more or less infinitely as a result. This makes them space efficient and ideal for printing. \n\n3rd Party apps suck at editing Adobe PDF documents because it is a proprietary format that Adobe continually changes and upgrades with new features or formating changes. \n\nIt isn't always easy to reverse engineer a proprietary document format and continually keep up with all the changes. \n\nJust look at the way the same Word document appears in Libre office vs Microsoft Word. There are definitely differences. ",
"As many have said, PDFs are designed to display uniformally across all platforms and print \"perfectly\" on a designated sized medium (8 1/2 x 11 paper, for instance.) The great explanations on this thread do not do a great job of explaining why editing can be such a nightmare.\n\nPDFs are not all created by Adobe Acrobat. If they were, generally they would all be much more edit-friendly. PDFs are created by word processors and spread sheet programs, scanners, web-based applications and 10,000 PDF converters and 3rd party programs.\n\nDifferent programs have different ways of saving PDFs. Very few of them actually store the information as formatted blocks of text and images. In fact, sometimes even in Acrobat certain layering issues will force the document to be saved in other ways. Bitmap and vector images are often used to replace fonts, and compression techniques are used to reduce the file size sometimes creating a hellstorm of text, bitmaps and vector images all piled ontop of each other.\n\nTo add to the confusion, different PDF readers attempt all manner of techniques to identify what they are looking at. Some use technology called Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to try to piece together text, but most of the time the software is too lazy to try to identify actual formatting to recreate a text block, and instead just identifies garbled letters.\n\nThe main problem is, whenever you ask a program to recreate media and give it any lee-way or overriding direction, it has a huge potential to screw up the layout. This is why almost all PDF readers do not take this liberty.",
"I actually wrote software to pull apart pdfs to machine read them. \n\nHere's the issue, say you gave a text document. It has some bytes at the front saying \"I'm a text document and I start here\" then a bunch of content in the form of letter 1 letter 2 etc etc. \n\nMaybe you have something more compressed, but it's still generally in the format of a list of characters. \n\nPdfs are... Not like that. Pdfs have a tree and a reference to how bits of the tree link together. Each thing in the tree says what it is (E.g. Picture, text, embedded 3d graphic (why???)) and then the content. \n\nText for example isn't structured logically, it's got an X, Y position within the parent object and then letters followed by offsets. The sequence c offset a offset t might be \"cat\" or part of \"tac a toe\". A human eye can tell based off the size of the spaces and words but it's much harder to understand what's meant to link together and your to translate back to editable source. \n\nPlus if you resize elements the tree will need to be restructured. \n\nIt's very frustrating and hard to edit. ",
"The new Adobe Reader DC has an \"EDIT PDF\" option that has changed everything for me. While it's not the open source solution you're looking for, it's well worth the price (or time to pirate). ",
"Imagine you wanted to send a blackmail letter. You don't want somebody to identify that it's from you so you use scraps of letters and words and pictures. \n\nHow you place them looks like words but in reality you're just putting a bunch of clipped letters in particular positions. \n\nPDFs are structured this way. That's why why can position things in such a way that matches what you would get in a book. But it's also why it's so hard to reflow them (reorganize them for a smaller screen) or to copy them. ",
"There is an easy open source programme: Libre Office Draw from the Libre Office package opens and edits PDFs easily.",
"Overleaf and share latex make it simple and a reference to how bits of the CSS or advanced div tags.",
"I absolutely get the primary intent of protecting the original content, but.\n\nWhen it's a form which I then have to print out, fill in longhand, scan as pdf and email I question the logic. \n\nSurely (Shirley) it's possible to create a doc type of \"form\" where defined blank areas *only* can be edited, maybe even with versioning and audit embedded. \n\nLife would get better. \n\n#firstworldproblems",
"Because PDFs were not meant to be edited. Their intended purpose is for people to be able to publish forms and other documents in a format that prevents them from being edited or changed, either accidentally or on purpose.",
"PDFs are the way they are because PDF format is basically PostScript 2.0. PostScript is basically low level format we used to talk to printers 30 and more years ago. PostScript had instructions telling print head (or plotter) how to move and what to draw. PostScript normalizer (converter) to PDF is still present in Adobes Raster Image Processing libraries. That's why PDFs are still to this day used in printing industry. 'Readonlyness' comes from difficulties of editing such document and not actually disability of making other document file formats read only. ",
"PDF is an *output* or *delivery* format. Think of it like making food:\n\nAn *editable* format is like having the *ingredients* for a meal. If you want to make a larger meal, or change the meal, you add a little of this ingredient or get rid of that. A delivery or output format is like the meal itself. It has already been combined, blended, cooked, or otherwise prepared. Formats designed for *editing* are carefully designed to ensure the ingredients are clearly described and separated so they can be re-assembled efficiently.\n\nWhen a computer is used to edit or display *editable* formats, the computer looks at the \"ingredients\" of the data, assembles everything, cooks it, and then displays it. If you're in Word, for example, and you type a new character, you've just changed the ingredients and caused the computer to prepare the entire \"meal\" over again. You might think, \"wow, that must take forever\" but computers are very, very fast and it turns out this is a relatively reasonable approach. Many programs can also optimize what part of the data they reprocess, so it's not necessarily the *entire* nine-course meal.\n\nWith a format like PDF, everything is *already prepared* for display. To continue with the cooking analogy, the PDF is \"ready to cook\" or \"pre-cooked\" and all the PDF reader does is that final action, displaying it to the screen or printer. It doesn't matter what tools are in your kitchen or how you cook, the meal is ready to go and always the same.\n\nThe general fixed read-onlyish nature of PDFs is largely considered a feature. They are popular because they always look the same because, no matter the device, everything has already been mixed, prepared, set in exactly the intended position. It was never a *goal* for PDFs to be editable, the principal goal was to precisely and predictably describe a visual drawing. \n\nSo why aren't there better tools to edit PDFs? Editing a PDF is only somewhat easier than unscrambling an omelette, and you can never guarantee it will unscramble to the ingredients that made it in the first place. Instead of getting back a pile of eggs, cheese, veggies, and ham, you might end up with distinct piles molecules, amino acids, and such. Some software (Adobe Illustrator) can do a very good job of editing, depending on how the PDF was generated. (Some PDFs are more editable than others.)\n",
"Bluebeam is where it's at. Use it everyday for engineering type work and is by far the most versital pdf software I have come across so far in my career."
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c4vrao | when do soccer games actually end? | I was watching the women’s World Cup today Sweden vs Canada, and the referee add 7 minutes stoppage time which I understand. The problem begins when Canada got a free kick at like 96:30 minutes and by the time they took the kick it was about 97:00 exactly, the ball was forced out and Canada was given a corner kick and several more chances, by the time the final whistle blew it was like 98:50 ALMOST TWO MINUTES OVER EXTRA TIME! How is this possible? when does soccer actually end if not after extra time. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c4vrao/eli5_when_do_soccer_games_actually_end/ | {
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"Unlike other sports, the time is not stopped whenever there is a pause in the game (e.g. when there is a fault). Extra time is given to compensate this. \n\nSometimes the referee may give a bit more time if something happens during the extra time. Also, usually the referees don't end the game when a team is on the offensive, they will wait until the other team successfully defends or if the offense is interrupted",
"Every time a team delays the run of play, the referee adds on that time wasted. So if at the end of the game the ref adds on 7 minutes, but a team wastes 2 of those 7 minutes, he/she will add those two wasted minutes back on to the end of the 7 minutes. Equaling 7 minutes of actual play and not someone lying on the ground being “hurt” for 7 minutes because their team is winning.",
"Because you'll notice that the clock stays ticking when things happen on the pitch (like an injury or penalty) so the referees can choose to add extra time at the end because it would give either team an unfair advantage to stop the game with the clock going to run it out whereas in most other sports the clock will stop in the event of an injury or penalty.",
"So, the thing about extra time is that it functions as the approximate length of time that there was no play during the regular 45 minutes of play. So, a match where there is a large injury, for example, will have much more stoppage time than a match without one. This is mostly unofficial, and up to the observation of the refs.\n\nOne thing that all refs want to avoid is \"time wasting\", where one team runs down the clock through delays in the effort of ending the match. It's very unsportsmanlike, and can result in punishments like a yellow card or a free kick. But further delays can happen through time wasting or injuries or substitutions, which can cause additional stoppage time. \n\nSo, let's say, for example, there is a very exciting match. There are several yellow cards given, maybe a red card, all six subs are brought in, and someone is injured with a leg break. Assuming that all happens in one half, you'd be looking at a lot of stoppage time, or time after regular play has stopped. The official judges that there should be seven minutes of stoppage time. On minute two, a goal is scored. With celebrations and resuming play and arguing with the ref, that's two minutes of stoppage time that is not spent playing. So there are two unofficial extra minutes added.\n\nRefs usually blow the whistle when neither side has a goal scoring opportunity or a punishment pending. If a free kick is given right at six minutes and forty seconds, most refs will allow play to continue beyond exactly seven minutes if a goal scoring opportunity is present. \n\nEssentially, stoppage time is to make sure that both teams are able to spend as much time playing as they can.",
"Added time is down to the referee. The board that goes us is only an indicator of the minimum that is allowed. The ref can play additional added time for further stoppages/time wasting. \n\nAdditionally, the end of the game is usually withheld until the ball is in a neutral position (although this is not necessarily the case), so they’ll go slightly over the allowance to allow any attacks to come to their natural end."
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29ky0r | why are stocks still going up despite everyone warning they're overvalued? | The bank of international settlements just came out arguing that stocks are in "euphoric territory":
_URL_0_
Surely if the bank for international settlements is warning us, markets should react? Instead they just spike up further again. What causes this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29ky0r/eli5_why_are_stocks_still_going_up_despite/ | {
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"stocks are bought on expectations and hopes. not a hard formula for what the value should be.",
"There are a few different theories. Here are two:\n\n1) Stocks aren't overvalued. A stock is simply worth what people *think* they are worth; nothing more, nothing less. The issue is that stocks are not just how much that share is worth *right at this moment*, but also *how much it will be worth in the future.* If, for example, I think GM is going to be worth ten times what it is today in five years time, and today the stock is \"worth\" $100, I'd be willing to pay $999 for it. But the guy across from me thinks GM is only going to be modestly successful, so he wouldn't pay a dime over $499. (Both of these assume we are OK with holding the stock for five years, and that we're discounting inflation and opportunity cost.) To him, it's overvalued at $999; to me, it's not. Everyone in the market has different agendas, time frames, and expectations, so there's no \"wrong\" way to do it; there's only erroneous judgements. \n\n2) The \"greater fool\" theory. Basically, an item (even a share) is \"worth\" it as long as someone is willing to buy it off of you at that price. As long as I can sell it to someone else at that price, I'm fine. This *does* mean that at some point someone is going to be left holding the bag...he's the greater fool. At any rate, this would explain why the market doesn't drop when someone releases news like this.",
"You're working from the flawed assumption that the stock market is run by reasonable, logical people who work for the stable, long-term health of the economy and the greater good of society.\n\nIt isn't. It's run by greedy, panicky, cocaine-addled lemmings who really don't have a clue what they're doing, and don't particularly give a flaming rat's ass if the economy goes off a cliff as long as *they're* left standing on the ledge holding some cash. And the joke is, they *all* think they will be.\n\n\n\n"
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"http://business.financialpost.com/2014/06/30/bank-for-international-settlements-warns-that-stocks-are-in-euphoric-territory-and-central-banks-need-to-start-raising-rates-now/"
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20fil3 | why can't they just open all the gates of the panama canal? will the water levels ever equalise? if not, why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20fil3/eli5_why_cant_they_just_open_all_the_gates_of_the/ | {
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"The canal isn't just a big ditch -- it is largely comprised of lakes that are above sea level. The entire point of the locks is to raise and lower ships to the varying water levels.\n",
"The canal rises up to Gatun Lake, which is 26m above sea level, and then back down the other side. Opening the locks would just drain the lake into the ocean(s), and create a river running down from the lake to the ocean on one or both sides of the canal.",
"The water level in the pacific is slightly higher than the atlantic and the salinity is higher as well. If the locks were to be opened and lake gatun \"drained\" you would still have to gouge out at least 2 gigantic channels in the rock as the bottom of lake gatun is still higher than sea level. So the channel walls would end up being tall cliffs.\nNot to mention the eco system of central panama would be devestated by the total loss of lake gatun and surrounding watershed as well as the damage done from years of construction. Theres no point in even getting into the cost of such an undertaking and who would foot the bill..."
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1zv5v9 | what is the whole background story to the star wars in a nutshell? | Out of curiosity, I looked up episode 4 on the Star Wars wiki to look up some scene, which then lead to reading about the previous movies, and from that the previous books and such. It just seemed like there was no end to the background wars and stuff.
What actually caused this whole space commotion? And why are the two sides still fighting? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zv5v9/eli5_what_is_the_whole_background_story_to_the/ | {
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"A young boy is brought up to be a warrior for good, only to lose himself in the power of evil.",
"So it sounds like you're talking about the beginning of the Star Wars universe and how the Jedi and Sith started fighting. As best as I can recall (someone may well correct me), those details have been completely lost (IE, no one has written about those times.) The earliest thing they have records of is of a Sith warlord some 25000 years before, and he had subspace communications back then.\n\nHowever, when you look at the basics of the Jedi and Sith, it seems easy to see why they would be so against each other. Jedi believe in order, rationality, and subdue their emotions in order to control the Force. They work for balance. The Sith rely on their emotions and are tortured in order to teach them the lessons of the Dark Side, and fight for power. The two concepts are fundamentally opponents, and so, regardless of who the first Jedi and Sith were, it's easy to see how the two ways of approaching the Force would arise, and why they're fighting each other.",
"When Ep. 4 was released, there *wasn't* any back story outside of the movie. Audiences went in to see it & enjoyed the movie as a stand alone piece.\n\nYou don't need to know anything else to enjoy the movie."
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21qcsr | why does the us add at least 10% ethanol to petrol when it decreases fuel economy and in slightly older engines, longivity? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21qcsr/eli5_why_does_the_us_add_at_least_10_ethanol_to/ | {
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"The carbon in corn is from CO2 in the atmosphere, so burning ethanol from corn is technically carbon neutral. But mostly government subsidies. "
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1nq5zl | how do big cat cubs not get hurt when their mothers carry them by their teeth? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nq5zl/how_do_big_cat_cubs_not_get_hurt_when_their/ | {
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"All cats have a scruff of fur on the back of their neck (down to just above their shoulder blades) that is for just this purpose. It is thick fur with few nerve endings, so there is little to no pain and unlikely to harm the cat.",
"Besides, big cats don't have teeth that are as sharp as house cats. Although they can tear out another animal's throat, they have to apply a considerable amount of pressure to do so. When carrying their cubs, they apply just enough pressure so the skin/fur on the neck doesn't sleep out of their teeth.",
"We have a big old fatty tom cat that wasn't neutered into he came into the shelter we got him from. He doesn't have much scruff as unneutered males will get big shoulders and thick skin. He does death rolls to unsuspecting vet techs that try to get him. But squeeze his would be scruff instant kitty and he becomes completely immobilized. Its hilarious. He gets irritated and embarrassed coming out of it though"
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qdxyo | the recent "robo-calls" in canada | What are they and what does that mean for Canadian citizens? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qdxyo/eli5_the_recent_robocalls_in_canada/ | {
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"The Tories has been accused of hiring a firm to call households. They call a household, telling them the voting location has changed. The voters turn up to the new location, all confused and shit, cause there isn't a polling station. It doesn't mean anything to us, because this was when elections were done, so any damage is already done. It probably didn't swing it significantly for either side. "
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9qbjs8 | how can other first world countries afford to subsidize things like education and healthcare, yet in the united states they are crippling? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9qbjs8/eli5_how_can_other_first_world_countries_afford/ | {
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"Your taxes are paying for corporate welfare, not classrooms or surgical theaters. “Subsidizing” basic necessities like education, healthcare, housing, p/maternity leave, social welfare, are foundational to strong and vibrant societies. That’s why the Founding Fathers included those components in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, placing priority to those things which would stabilize society. Promoting the general welfare of the populace is logical if our financial system depends on the strength of the populace. \n\nWe the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity...",
"Their taxes really are higher generally. They also have smaller populations, more taxes on corporations, and smaller military forces. ",
"Taxes are indeed higher, but pretty much only on higher-income people. For example, the US tax brackets for a single person are:\n\n* 10% - $0 to $9,325\n* 15% - $9,326 to $37,950\n* 25% - $37,951 to $91,900\n* 28% - $91,901 to $191,650\n* 33% - $191,651 to $416,700\n* 35% - $416,701 to $418,400\n* 39.6% - $418,401+\n\nHere in the UK, the tax brackets are (with pounds converted to dollars):\n\n* 0% - $0 to $15,504\n* 20% - $15,505 to $60,628\n* 40% - $60,629 to $196,207\n* 45% - $196,208+\n\nThere are a bunch of wrinkles that make these not directly comparable (one of the biggest being that the US has way more deductions, including a standard deduction, whereas the UK doesn't allow many deductions and has a 0% tax bracket instead), but the basic structure is obvious: the US charges lower-income people more in tax and higher-income people less, whereas the UK tax structure is more heavily weighted towards taxing higher-income people and has lower tax rates for lower-income people (in addition to benefits like nationalized health care).",
"I'm a gamer and what happens in the gaming industry right now maybe a microcosm of what's happening in the American society as a whole. \n\nGames used to be a plain transaction, you pay $60 you get a game, the whole game and nothing but the game. Ok, you get the box, a manual and sometimes a poster. \n\nNow they cut games into little pieces and sell it as DLC(downloadable contents), i.e. Aspect of the game was intentionally cut out only to sell it to you later piece meal. Then, there is micro transaction where the mechanic of the game was made intentionally unsatisfying or annoying which can only be fixed if you pay more money. \n\nYou would think any consumer would be against such abhorrent practices but there is actually a large portion of people that supports such practices and more still are people with the mindset \"deal with it, it's been this way for awhile now, you don't have to play it, you don't have to buy the dlc\". \n\nThat's how I feel people deal with other things that adversely affects them as well. They bend over and takes it. They either accept it as the new norm or actually stupid enough to speaks for it. \n\nConclusion: it's because there are too many people not willing to fight and too many fucking morons. ",
" > How can this be possible there, but not here in America?\n\nI think the right question would be \"why is it not possible in America when it is obviously possible elsewhere?\".\n\nThe answer, ultimately, is partly lobbying by the industries that make huge profits from it, and partly culture (\"because it's always been done this way\"). ",
"There's a number of real differences between healthcare in the USA and the rest of world but it boils down to 3 basic economic points. Wages are higher, Lawsuits lawsuits lawsuits and USA is the best. High wage costs means everything costs more, from building the hospital to scrubbing the floors to the cost of educating the doctors and nurses. America is definitely a lawsuit culture and this gives rise to the practice of Defensive Medicine whereby hospitals and doctors are more interested in covering themselves than offering affordable healthcare, which means doctors love using that expensive MRI machine to confirm their diagnosis. This also feeds into why administration costs are so high because everything has to be accounted for. Lawsuit culture also this makes hospitals less inclined to employ cheaper foreign doctors and nurses. Americans have to get the best treatment when they go into hospital from having the most expensive cancer drugs available to ensuring that everyone goes to hospital to have their baby out by c-section to yes to more of those MRI scans. This is an incredibly simplistic broadside but it should hopefully illustrate that the issues are pretty deep-ceded when it comes to health care and it's not simply a question about taxes and distribution thereof.",
"Since all the answers so far seem to be about taxes, I'll offer a bit of a different view regarding healthcare specifically; it is the *system* that is wrong, and taxes are only a small part of it (though obviously it does have *some* effect). \n \nFirst we have to ask; what is the purpose of the US healthcare *system*? Doctors and hospitals are there to heal and help people, of course, but is the system *really* set up to facilitate that, or to *generate wealth* for insurance companies and such? \n \nUS healthcare costs are [at around 17-18% of GPD](_URL_1_), making it the country that spends *by far* the most on healthcare [in the entire world](_URL_0_). If we compare that to other OECD countries, none spend over 12%, and the average is below 10%, yet many of those have better (or comparable) healthcare than the US. \n \nThe main difference here is the private part of the costs. OECD averages for public spending on healthcare is 7.5%, while it is at just above 8% in the US (putting US public spending in % of GDP below France, Germany, Denmark, etc)... *however*, the US has almost 10% of GDP in *private* costs on top of that, while other countries have 1-3%. \n \n**TL;DR** The US has a very ineffective system built to enrich certain companies, making it have the highest healthcare costs in the entire world (by far) while also having terrible coverage and decent care compared to any other developed nation."
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"https://israel-trade.net/wp-content/blogs.dir/17/files/2014/06/Israel-health-exp.png",
"https://www-tc.pbs.org/prod-media/newshour/photos/2012/10/02/At_17.6_percent_of_GDP_in_2010_blog_main_horizontal.jpg"
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||
2bn4mo | why does the us govt. send national guard troops overseas if their purpose is to protect america? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bn4mo/eli5why_does_the_us_govt_send_national_guard/ | {
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"text": [
"The United States interests do not stop at its borders.",
"Guard units deploy to help ease the strain of active duty troops.\n\nAlso, Guard units were used in Hurricane Katrina.",
"Stabilizing the world economy is usually why we send troops places you would think they don't belong. "
]
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||
2z67tr | what is a copyright? and what are some effective small ways for someone to go about getting one? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2z67tr/eli5what_is_a_copyright_and_what_are_some/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"You don't actually have to do anything to \"get\" copyright. Anything you create, unless you specifically designate otherwise, is copyrighted to you. That means that every time you write something, draw something or make any other type of creative work, you are entitled copyright to that piece. Exceptions exist, for example if you use a creative platform that has on their terms of service that by using it you give copyright to them.\n\nSo, in theory, nothing is required. The problem is that sometimes *proving* that you are the original creator is a little harder, which is why registering a creative work can ensure that no one can claim that they created that piece instead of you. The \"mail it to yourself\" technique described on another reply is one of the oldest, simplest but still legally binding ways to do it [edit: in places where the technique is accepted].",
"A copyright is one of three forms of legal protection for intellectual property that are commonly recognized (patents and trademarks are the other two).\n\nIn the US and most other countries, a copyright vests as soon as a work is \"fixed in a tangible medium\", such as saving it to a hard drive, printing it out, uploading it to YouTube, etc. Basically anything that leaves a record of the act of creation.\n\nCopyrights give the person who created the work several exclusive rights - the right to perform the work, reproduce the work, transfer the work, transform the work from one medium to another, and authorize derivative works. That last one is where things get really tricky.\n\nIf you wrote a Harry Potter novel, you would not own the copyright to your work. JK Rawling would. Your work is \"derivative\" of her work, and so her original copyright interest supersedes your interest. Only if she authorized you to make that novel, and in that authorization transferred some of her rights to you would you gain any copyright interest in the new work.\n\nThis is one of the grayest and most confusing parts of law and it generates endless litigation.\n\nYou can enhance your copyright by registering it with a copyright office. Each country has their own copyright offices and they don't all mutually recognize other country's registrations, but these days things are pretty harmonized. When you register a copyright you submit a copy of the work, and you attest to your ownership of the copyright embodied in the work, then pay a fee. The copyright office keeps a record of that filing and issues you a receipt. \n\nIn the event that you sue for copyright infringement you can win more damages and you get additional remedies if your copyright was registered than if it was unregistered. But even if it is unregistered you are still able to assert various rights against production, performance, transformation and transfer."
]
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[],
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||
fsvn6w | if alternating current means it changes direction back and forth all the time, why do polarized plugs exist? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fsvn6w/eli5_if_alternating_current_means_it_changes/ | {
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"In alternating current, one wire is always neutral while the other (the \"hot\" wire) alternates from positive to negative voltage. With a polarized plug, the neutral prong is longer, which means that it's not possible for the hot wire to be connected while the neutral one isn't. The hot prong is wider which makes it impossible to insert the plug the wrong way.",
"The current goes \"back and forth\", as you said, because the difference in voltage between the two conductors switches between +110V and -110V 60 times per second (if in the US).\n\nThat's the difference between the two voltages and doesn't say anything about their voltage level with respect to the ground, where your feet are. The appliance would work perfectly fine if the two voltages switched between 1110V and 890V, because the only thing the appliance sees is the voltage difference.\n\nHowever, in case the appliance has some metal parts and these metal parts are at the voltage of one of the two conductors, you should consider the risk that someone touches those metal parts. The person touching them would experience the voltage difference between that voltage and the ground voltage. If this is large, then a large current will flow through their body, and possibly harm/kill them.\n\nOne solution to avoid that is to treat the two conductors in the socket differently. One of them is \"neutral\", and it has the same voltage as the ground. The other one is the one \"dancing around\" at +110/-110 V. The appliance will have its metal parts connected to the \"neutral\" wire and will maintain the \"hot\" part (at high voltage) well separated and hidden. This only works if the plug can only be inserted in one way, connecting neutral with neutral, and that's why we have polarized plugs.\n\nNotice that this is not the only solution to ensure safety. In fact, it's widely used in the US, but it is very very rare abroad (not many plugs in the world have an asymmetric design).\n\nAnother solution is to carry a third wire which connects the outside metal casing of the applicance to the ground, and consider both the two conductors as \"dangerous\" and therefore well isolated. To do that you need a three-wire plug, which are very common for larger appliances.\n\nAnother option is to make sure the appliance offers no way to touch the high voltage components or any metal connected to them. These appliances only need two wires, and they don't have an asymmetric design. This is the case of your phone charger, or an electric shaver, for example."
]
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[],
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||
6msjlw | why humans and other animals have such long intestines? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6msjlw/eli5_why_humans_and_other_animals_have_such_long/ | {
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"text": [
"This gives the inside of the intestine a large total *surface area,* which is crucial to absorbing the nutrients from the food. Otherwise the food might be dissolved but not absorbed."
]
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[]
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||
50jogu | how is t-mobile able to offer free streaming/data on certain services? | I've tried to think through this, but would like anyone with a better perspective to answer. Does YouTube essentially pay T-Mobile a fee to offset the "free data" now being offered, and justify it internally by the (potential) increase in advertising revenue they'd generate? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/50jogu/eli5how_is_tmobile_able_to_offer_free/ | {
"a_id": [
"d74kx0k"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"No, youtube doesn't pay a fee for the free data. The free data is simply T-Mobile advertising for them to get more customers. It has nothing to do with Youtube really. T-Mobile is just deciding to not count data from certain sources on their customers data usage. "
]
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[]
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|
3ctcdu | how do middle ear infections work? | When you have a middle ear infection in one ear and that ear gets clogged up with fluid, giving a muffled loss of hearing and a real earache and then the next day you still have the muffled loss of hearing and a slight ache but there's clear, slightly sticky fluid leaking from that ear - does that mean the fluid is coming from the middle ear & eventually the muffled hearing loss and ear aching will stop once the fluid has drained from the middle ear? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ctcdu/eli5_how_do_middle_ear_infections_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"csyqr26"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"The ear ache in a middle ear infection (otitis media) is caused by inflammation and pressure from the fluid. The symptoms will go away as the fluid is removed, but as long as the infection persists there is going to be continuous fluid production by the body in response.\n\nThe infection is caused largely by similar organisms that cause pneumonia (S. Pneumoniae, H. Influenzae etc) that make their way up the auditory canal/eustachian tube into the middle ear. The reason infants are so much more prone to these infections is because their eustachian is more horizontal and more commonly open until they grow. They also stick their hands in their mouths a lot."
]
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[]
] |
|
89saji | difference between breathing into your stomach and breathing into your chest. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/89saji/eli5_difference_between_breathing_into_your/ | {
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"text": [
"To breathe with your diaphragm:\n\n1. Sit comfortably and let your neck relax. \n\n2. Place one hand over your chest and one hand over your stomach.\n\n3. Breathe in through your nose without disturbing the hand over your chest.\n\n4. Exhale by tightening your stomach. Keep your lips closed.\n\n5. Repeat until you get the hang of it. The hand over your chest should not move.\n\nYou should be able to feel the difference. \n\nEdit: I just wanted to use this as an opportunity to mention that puffing out your breaths when you are doing ab exercises, especially weighted ones, is not the correct way to do it. You should be breathing out with your diaphragm or else you will end up with unaesthetic, bloated looking abs.",
"The vocabulary around it is a bit off. In either case the air goes into your chest. The difference is in what muscles are primarily involved.\n\n\"Breathing into your stomach,\" is primarily about pulling your diaphragm down to create low pressure near the bottom of your lung. That's what's illustrated in the bell jar demonstrations.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\"Breathing into your chest\", is more about using the muscles around your chest to expand your rib cage. The effect would be like if you pulled the sides of the bottle wider in the above video.\n\nThe main problem with breathing into your chest is that it tightens muscles around the neck. This can restrict air and blood flow and it's more work. A big advantage of breathing through your stomach for many athletes is that it's easier to coordinate your breathing with your movements to enhance athletic performance."
]
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oMFAMqSlq4"
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||
4ifnrc | why does buying stream-able media cost more than buying dvds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ifnrc/eli5_why_does_buying_streamable_media_cost_more/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Because digital copies are all profit w no physial media overhead. No big corp in the world is NOT going to over charge if they can get away with it.",
"When pricing anything, from media to appliances to food to houses, what the average buyer is willing to pay for it is more important than what it actually costs to produce.\n\nBecause many people want the convenience of a digital download, companies can charge more for it, simple as that. "
]
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[],
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||
2ub724 | why are illegal sports streams such bad quality? | Surely they make the wesbites to make money due to how they are always covered in ads. So why doesn't someone make their streams full HD, take all the viewers from all the other sites, and make more money? I assume its not a hardware issue as I can stream me playing video games in full HD but people running websites live streaming live sports can't manage more than 260p? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ub724/eli5_why_are_illegal_sports_streams_such_bad/ | {
"a_id": [
"co6thbn",
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"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"They are not, many P2P streams are 1080p, but you need good internet. I'm currently watching a good 720p stream of a game\n\nThey are out there, but they can be hard to find as the people watching the stream don't want anyone else seeing it, as a large amount of people watching an illegal stream means that it's more likely to get taken down",
"Also, if it were that great a quality, and gained that much recognition for quality and pulled in a decent income...it would be shut down."
]
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[],
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|
36shp9 | thermodynamic equilibrium | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36shp9/eli5_thermodynamic_equilibrium/ | {
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"crgoafc"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Thermodynamic Equilibrium is a big fancy phrase for \"two things are at the same temperature.\" The phrase exists because when you start defining thermodynamics from the bottom up you come to the concept of \"thermodynamic equilibrium\" before defining the concept of temperature."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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||
8pi9mj | why air flow makes you sneeze? | It happens to me everytime and I don't understand why.
Edit: sorry if air flow is not the exact term, english is not my first language. I'm talking about the air that comes in your house when you open windows and makes your doors close roughly. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8pi9mj/eli5_why_air_flow_makes_you_sneeze/ | {
"a_id": [
"e0bh9nl"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Sudden rush of air into your nostrils can cause you to sneeze, as it agitates the nostril hair and causes the sneeze response to clear any contaminants brought in by the air. Dust, pollen and other airborne particles can also influence this"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
5wn34n | why does milk make your sinuses more congested when you've got a cold? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wn34n/eli5_why_does_milk_make_your_sinuses_more/ | {
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"debers3",
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"text": [
"It doesn't. Mobile now so can't find the source but there was a scientific study that proved it doesn't.",
"It doesn't. It's either something you've been told and you blindly believed it, or you've somehow made yourself believe that it does. ",
"I don't have the source in front of me, but recalling from memory it is:\n\nIt doesn't increase the volume of mucus. But a protein found in dairy bonds with (or possibly gets caught in) mucus and makes it feel more substantial. It goes from a fairly runny texture to a slightly thicker, sticky texture which makes you notice it more and makes it feel like there is more than there was before."
]
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||
5q8io0 | how does twitter censorship work? and how are governments involved? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5q8io0/eli5_how_does_twitter_censorship_work_and_how_are/ | {
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"text": [
"Judging by Wikipedia, Twitter has the ability to limit messages based on geographic region. And apparently has a mechanism by which Twitter can be asked to hide messages.\n\nBasically, if Twitter gets a legal order telling Twitter to hide things, they can comply. How the government is involved depends also on whether you consider the judiciary part of government."
]
} | [] | [] | [
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||
6iosb9 | why are there more air quality alerts in the summer? | My neighborhood listserv just got an email saying that with the air quality alerts coming up this summer, some neighborhood & city services (trash, recycling) will happen earlier in the day.
What is it about the summer that would make the air more polluted? Alternatively, if it's just as polluted as the rest of the day, why would the city change their hours for the summer only, but say it's due to air quality? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6iosb9/eli5_why_are_there_more_air_quality_alerts_in_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"dj7x07r"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Warmer air is able to hold more \"stuff\" than cooler air. That's why 100% humidity at 55 degrees is fine, but 100% humidity at 90 degrees is absolutely dreadful."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
39lnyb | what do the new net neutrality rules mean for a person like me; a normal lower class dude that just wants the internet service he's paying for? | I understand most of what the net neutrality bill said, but what I've never been able to extract, simply at least, is how some one who is not necessarily a legal expert nor a technical expert can use these rules to hold their internet service providers accountable when they're not providing the services you're being billed for. A simple explanation with some references would be greatly appreciated. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39lnyb/eli5_what_do_the_new_net_neutrality_rules_mean/ | {
"a_id": [
"cs4dcpk",
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3
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"text": [
"Well, youre right that the changes don't really empower end consumers to do much, but they do allow content providers (like, say netflix) to challenge an ISP's practices if they feel that it doesn't conform to the new rules. ",
" > to hold their internet service providers accountable when they're not providing the services you're being billed for.\n\nYou're being billed for **up to** 15 MBps, or whatever. This bill doesn't help with that sort of weasel word shenanigans. What it DOES help you with is you'll have options to buy Netflicks, hulu, or other competitors which will all behave more or less the same without your ISP getting paid to cram one down your throat and handicapping another. \n\nSo.... choices and companies competing for your dime rather than being forced to accept Hulu ads in the middle of your show. That's what this bill means for you. "
]
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|
f5o9o1 | how can pepole make an iq test? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f5o9o1/eli5_how_can_pepole_make_an_iq_test/ | {
"a_id": [
"fhzuh7d"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Not really. Proper IQ tests don't use hard questions since that would cause knowledge bias. They use questions that involve mental processing and problem solving ability that anyone can theoretically solve, and pair it with a timer. IQ is determined based on how efficiently correct answers are reached."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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||
1rl2l3 | what is political science? | I was talking to my counseler today and she said to get into law school taking majoring in History and Political Science and minoring in English would be very good. This actually works out really well because I love history and english. I'm currently in my 7 history class out of my four years of high school and I am taking 2 english classes right now, one class that focuses on developing reading skills and the other is developing writing skills. But throughout this whole thing there is one problem: I have no idea what Political Science is. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rl2l3/eli5_what_is_political_science/ | {
"a_id": [
"cdoapzo",
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"text": [
"Someone will surely have a better explanation than I give but simply put it is how all aspects of government work and who runs it. It was amazing seeing how mathematically predictable an election can be studied.\n\nIf taught by the right professor, which I guess could be said in most any case, it is an extremely fascinating class. Especially for those who aren't really into politics and government. ",
"Political science is not a real science so sometimes the title is confusing. That said, political science is a degree that mixes history, philosophy, regional cultural studies, economics, and government. It is usually the precursor degree one takes to get a law degree.\n\nBasically it teaches you about how the government works, the basic assumptions of political philosophy, and the historical and cultural context in which led up to political thought and ideology to how the government works is today. You learn about how our ideas of freedom, justice, democracy, communism, socialism etc all come from philosophers and thinkers in history and how they evolved into what they are today.\n\nClasses you will expect to take would include:\n\nPhilosophy classes on thought and theories of government.\n\nGovernment classes (how the US or foreign governments work).\n\nHistory classes and area study classes.\n\nEconomics about trade, taxation, etc.\n\nSociology and globalization classes.\n\nCommunication classes.\n\nLanguages.\n\nPoli sci majors are often jacks of all trades but experts on few. Expect LOTS of writing papers and essays in a political science degree. Where other degrees teach you how to solve math problems, build things, solve diseases, etc, poli sci degrees teach you how to think critically and communicate in written and oral form effectively. Poli sci degree teaches you how to write well and write persuasively.\n\nPoli sci graduates go on to become congressional aides, government workers, teachers, campaign organizers, law students, researchers, journalists, etc. Lots of jobs with writing skills.\n\nSource: I studied Poli Sci, international relations, with minors in econ and Chinese.\n\n",
"Politics science basically covers the government. Most poli sci courses will teach:\n\n1. System of government (i.e., how the US (or whatever nation you live in) operates (how laws are made, branches of government, etc.)\n\n2. Comparative government. Look at the different types of governmental systems (presidential, parliamentary, dictatorship, etc.)\n\n3. International relations. How governments operate between and amongst each other. Different types and styles of diplomacy.\n\n4. Political theory. Usually involves a lot of philosophy and reading of Plato, Machiavella, etc as they determine the fundamental nature of what politics is.\n\n5. Public policy. How public policy is formed (who writes the laws, interest groups, who enforces or executes the policy).\n\n6. Political history. Basically a history of politics and culture in your home system (i.e. how did two parties form? Why are there different states? Why is the amendment process the way it is?)\n\n7. Statistics. Poli sci has a lot of statistics (for polling, research, etc.) So expect a stats course or two.\n\nAnd there is a lot more. Most programs have specialized classes (such as Congress, Supreme Court, Economics, etc.) That go into great detail.\n\nFrom a practical standpoint, expect a lot of research papers and history. And don't go in as an advocate of a specific ideology; professors don't care. "
]
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6pzcjw | "continuous everywhere but differentiable nowhere." - weierstrass function | How's that possible? I can't comprehend the paradox in this concept.
Can you help me? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6pzcjw/eli5_continuous_everywhere_but_differentiable/ | {
"a_id": [
"dktcqih"
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"text": [
"Derivatives rely upon the concept that if you have a small enough change in input, the function's response can be modeled as a line. The weirstrass function is made up of an infinite number of cosine functions, and so it never really \"settles down\" to a line as you zoom in. It's wavy all the way down, and as such, has no derivative while it is still continuous. "
]
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|
8zfau6 | why do (aa & aaa) batteries in a package seem to very rarely leak even after sitting in the cupboard for years and batteries left in a dormant device leak after a much shorter time? | Why do (AA & AAA) batteries in a package seem to very rarely leak even after sitting in the cupboard for years and batteries left in a dormant device leak after a much shorter time?
(....And then ruin the controller unit on my gas fireplace)
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8zfau6/eli5why_do_aa_aaa_batteries_in_a_package_seem_to/ | {
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"e2idokj",
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"text": [
"The corrosion is caused by hydrogen gas escaping the battery, allowing the battery to leak, this still happens when on the shelf, but at a slower rate. When your device is 'off' there's a small amount of drain happening causing extra gas to be produced, also depending on what the contacts are made of on the device they made corrode as well (causing it to look like more battery corrosion).",
" Your device has a phantom drain. In other words, there is a small amount of current that is causing the battery to over - discharge. This can happen even in devices that are switched off if the device is poorly designed or poorly manufactured. Over-discharge results in battery leakage. ",
"As batteries are being used, they contain hydrogen gas inside. When a battery is dead, it also has a lot of hydrogen gas. Eventually, it will start leaking acid or start corroding. When batteries aren't used, they discharge very slowly so they still will eventually leak."
]
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7nws3h | how does an ecu tune on a car engine affect the performance of the car? what happens? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7nws3h/eli5_how_does_an_ecu_tune_on_a_car_engine_affect/ | {
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"I've searched tha seven seas fer an answer. Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: If doing an ECU remap on a car increases performance and fuel economy, why don't car manufacturers just do that before it leaves the factory? ](_URL_6_) ^(_6 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What is an ECU and how does it work? ](_URL_0_) ^(_8 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What is a tuner chip and what does it do vs. A turbo/super charger? ](_URL_1_) ^(_5 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Tuning an engine ](_URL_3_) ^(_49 Comments_)\n1. [ELI5: How do chips modify the power of car engines? ](_URL_2_) ^(_4 comments_)\n1. [ELI5:What is the catch with car's chip tuning? ](_URL_4_) ^(_8 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What are you exactly doing when you chip a car? ](_URL_5_) ^(_2 comments_)\n",
"I did ECU calibration for a major automotive supplier for several years, so I can offer some insight.\n\nWhen an engine controller is programmed by the manufacturer of a car, there are several goals they're trying to meet. Some of those goals are mutually exclusive, so that improving performance in one are decreases performance in another area. The three primary goals that they have to balance between are performance, fuel economy, and emissions. Depending on the vehicle and its intended customer base, those goals will be more or less important. For example power is very important for a high-end sports car, so fuel economy and emissions take a backseat. \n\nHaving your ECU tuned, or installing an aftermarket ECU alters the way your car operates, usually shifting the balance point of those three things one direction or another. If you wanted to increase your car's fuel economy, you can do that at the expense of performance or emissions.\n\nIt's something you need to be very cautious with, since many aftermarket tuners and ECUs don't do the kind of testing and validation that OEMs do, so you're getting a less certain product. It may also make your car illegal to drive in certain places (i.e. California)."
]
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[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i6bdw/eli5_what_is_an_ecu_and_how_does_it_work/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wl5k7/eli5_what_is_a_tuner_chip_and_what_does_it_do_vs/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6e1qwk/eli5_how_do_chips_modify_the_power_of_car_engines/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/5exh9i/eli5_tuning_an_engine/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sdj30/eli5what_is_the_catch_with_cars_chip_tuning/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ef8ox/eli5_what_are_you_exactly_doing_when_you_chip_a/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3c77j4/eli5_if_doing_an_ecu_remap_on_a_car_increases/"
],
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||
89lwwc | if dead tissue rots so quickly, how do clothes based on animal matter like leather or wool endure so long? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/89lwwc/eli5_if_dead_tissue_rots_so_quickly_how_do/ | {
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"Wool is not living tissue, it's just hair. Leather requires processing to preserve it. Its dried and cured to prevent decay. ",
"Not all dead tissue rots equally, and there are ways you can treat materials, like drying or tanning, that reduce the potential rot practically to zero.",
"The reason things rot is that they are fed upon by bacteria and fungus. When you “tan” something, you make it poisonous to all of the things that would feed on it, so it never gets broken down and eaten and decayed. You do have to keep it oiled though, or it will dry up and turn to dust per time. I had a job where I worked with hundreds of years old leather, and that’s what would happen to it if not properly cared for."
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93u430 | why are our fingers' movements not independent from one-another? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/93u430/eli5_why_are_our_fingers_movements_not/ | {
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"The muscles that control the flexing of your fingers are actually in your forearm, stretching all the way down to the fingers. The muscles (flexor tendons) are shared and makes it difficult to flex just one finger without practice.\n\nTrained pianists can control the fingers independently by building up “intrinsic” muscles (muscles within the finger only). This can counter the “extrinsic” muscles (muscles stretching from the arm).\n\nYour thumb is special that it has its own dedicated muscles, so you can very easily move it independent from other fingers."
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1e77rp | the process of a tv show, from script to air and beyond | I've always loved television and want to know what goes into the creation of a show. Say we have Arrested Development in 2003. What does Mitchell Hurwitz do to get the attention of FOX? How does he cast the show? What's it like on set during filming? Who controls content/censorship post production?
And the inevitable: Why the fuck did a beloved show critically get axed? How did Netflix go about acquisitions last year? What's different about reviving a cancelled show vs. new dramas/comedies?
Thanks, and I'm gonna go work at the Banana Stand today. :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1e77rp/eli5_the_process_of_a_tv_show_from_script_to_air/ | {
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"OK. So your a writer and you have an idea for a show. You write a basic outline for your idea and perhaps a script for an episode. You then go around down, hustling like a mad man, talking to everyone you can trying to get someone to pay for a pilot.\n\nA pilot is a test episode, it is something for network people to watch and get a better idea of your show idea. 99.9999% of peoples ideas never make it to the pilot stage. There are thousands of reasons but mainly they are, a bad show idea, an impractical idea, never getting in front of the right people, or the person who owns the idea is an ass hole. \n\nSo lets assume you have your idea, you did your little writing, then you manage to get in front of a person with the power to make a pilot. Then there is a big meeting, where you, and everyone else who has an idea to pitch, goes into a board room and attempts to sell your idea to a group of people. Might include production people, network people, whatever. Just powerful TV people.\n\nSo 50 people with ideas pitch them. The TV people have space for 5 new shows. So they decide what kind of shows they want to show for each night, they have all kinds of business considerations, whatever. So of the 50, they will cut you down to something like 15. Remember they are only going to actually make 5 shows.\n\nSo they pay for 15 of you to make a test show. The test shows are shown around to advertisers and network people to gauge interest. At the pilot stage you do things like casting and set building. But remember, your budget is super small. You only have a commitment for 1 episode and the simi popular actors are all running around making pilots. If you hire an actor for a pilot they need to commit to doing the show. Then if the show never gets made they can go try to do another one. An actor would be unlikely to do 2 pilots at once for example.\n\nSo you have your shiny pilot. You now take it to the big meeting and try to get the network and advertisers to like it. Its all about selling your show, again. Of the 15 pilots, only 5 get \"picked up\" to actually air.\n\nAfter they air it's all about how sucessful they are if they stay or not.\n\nPeople often get confused when a critical acclaimed show is canceled. Here's the sad truth. TV networks are not in the business of making good television. They are in the business of selling advertising. The more popular a show is the more advertising they can sell. The sad fact about shows like AD is that they were to smart. While lots of people loved AD there is a whole massive chunk of the population who just did not \"get\" the show. Critics loved it but critics don't bring in advertisers.\n\nEvery time a network starts a new show they have a chance at a hit, a chance at a moderate success and the chance of a flop. Sometimes it makes good business sense to drop a moderate success in order to use that time slot to attempt for a hit. Basically the reason AD was cancelled is because the network has limited resources (money and timeslots) and they felt that they would make more money placing those resources behind a different show."
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3kgwkp | why are some people mouth breathers (myself included) and how can it be fixed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kgwkp/eli5_why_are_some_people_mouth_breathers_myself/ | {
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"I breath from my mouth most when my nose is plugged. I would recommend making sure your sinuses are clear and practicing keeping your mouth shut.",
"There are three causes of mouth breathing: \n\n**Obstructive** mouth breathing happens when a person can't breath through their nose at all, or can't get enough air through their nose to be comfortable. This can be caused by nasal polyps, septum deviations, sinus inflammating etc.\n\n**Anatomic** mouth breathing is caused by physical defects in a person's face which don't allow their mouth to close comfortably at rest. This can be due to malformation of the lips or jaw.\n\n**Habitual** mouth breathing is not particularly common, but sometimes happens when a person has a temporary nasal obstruction (or frequent temporary obstructions) and gets used to breathing through their mouth.\n\nMouth breathing is not healthy and can damage your teeth and gums, so you should have a doctor look at your face and nose to determine the cause. If it's just a habit, just try to switch to nose breathing whenever you become aware of your mouth breathing (and perhaps set alarms to remind yourself), and you can change the habit over time."
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owgam | why ticketmaster and livenation are the root of all evil | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/owgam/why_ticketmaster_and_livenation_are_the_root_of/ | {
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"The fees go to Ticketmaster themselves, which is the problem. They charge $5 convenience fee and $2 for the right to print out a piece of paper. That's why it's ridiculous. It certainly does not cost ticketmaster $7 to process each transaction. \n\nUnfortunately, their status as a ticket broker means they are able to either buy up all the tickets or have a contract with a venue where they only sell the tickets through ticketmaster, creating a monopoly, meaning if you want to go to something you more or less have to pay them ",
"For a lot of people, it is the bait and switch aspect of it.\n\nI might be willing to pay $50 to go to a concert. But it is really annoying to think I'm paying $36 to go to a concer, only to see a bunch of arbitrary fees jacking it up to $50 at the last minute.",
"You don't buy a lot of concert tickets, do you?",
" > where do all the fees that are tacked onto my ticket go exactly?\n\nMy paycheck... I work for them. I'm just a basic ticket girl though, so I probably wouldn't be able to answer any good questions about the fees or anything, sorry.",
"I've actually purchased a ticket through Ticketmaster that was $10 for the ticket, and after the fees it was $23.",
"They're portrayed as the root of all evil because they generally have a monopoly on concert tickets. In normal circumstances this wouldn't be a problem since people would simply stop paying them their excessive fees. However, hipsters can't bear to stage a boycott because they might miss their opportunity to see The Shits before the drummer overdoses.",
"Relevant Linkage: _URL_0_ ",
"The fact that I have to pay £5 (uk) for them to mail my £20 ticket to me, which is bad enough when the cost of a stamp is 50p for me to buy, and they'll have a huge discount on that (know there's other costs, but an envelope doesn't cost £1 each)\n\nMy other option is to pay £2.50 for *me to go to the box office at the venue and pick it up myself*\n\nwhat the fuck? I'm charged 1/8th of the cost of the ticket for them to send my ticket (and a bunch of others) to the venue?\n\nThe problem is that they have a monopoly (how they argued otherwise when Pearl Jam wanted to take them to court I've no idea)",
"I build ticketing websites for theaters, zoos, etc. Every single venue you deal with on Ticketmaster is taking a bigger cut of those fees you're paying. Usually, if you're seeing a $5 fee, the venue takes $3 while TM takes $2. In a way, Ticketmaster is helping the venue/artist, so that you don't realize you're paying them *more* money for the same product.\n\nTheir 'print at home' fee is horse shit, though.",
"Go ahead and downvote me for complaining or whatever, but is this really the appropriate subreddit for this? This sure doesn't seem like a complex topic that you need explained in laymans terms.",
"Two words: LCD Soundsystem.",
"It really disgusts me when the print at home fee is higher than the will call fee. I've had this experience with some MLB tickets. If I'm using my own electricity, computer, ink, and paper, I should pay less in ticket fees when I print at home - or at very most equal. Definitely not more. "
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1zaxy1 | how does body analysis scale work ? | As the title say, how does it determine my fat, muscle, bone percentage as I'm just standing on it with my bear food? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zaxy1/eli5_how_does_body_analysis_scale_work/ | {
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"text": [
"Bare foot sorry. :D"
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4tyqjc | neither cheddar cheese or butter is naturally yellow. (in fact they're both white.) why and when did they start adding food dye? | I've always wondered this. Things like candy or pastries it makes sense, but there's plenty of white cheeses. And Butter starts out as cream which is white to begin with. How did they even get the idea to add dye in the first place? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4tyqjc/eli5neither_cheddar_cheese_or_butter_is_naturally/ | {
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"Grass fed butter is yellow, actually. Grass fed milk has a yellowish tint, too. Cheese made with high quality grass fed milk has an orange tint.\n\nAnnatto was added to cheddar as both a flavoring and a colorant so that inferior cheese could replicate the color of grass fed milk when using cheaper milk. This started in the 16th century or there about. It stuck around as tradition.",
"While some cheese is dyed, some cheese is naturally colored by proteins and organic compounds. Cheese is only white as long as the fat membrane and protein structures stay in place and held together, if that gets washed away or broken down (which it often does) you can have other compunds in the food that reflect light, changing the color. ",
"Dairy products can naturally be tinted yellow(or just off white) depending on factors like the animals diet(and time of year, location). Coloring the product is a much easier way to ensure consistency(and probably cheaper than some sort of bleaching).\n\nConsumers looooove consistency.",
"Butter actually is naturally yellow if it is properly grass fed cattle. As is cheese to an extent. In addition Annatto is added to Cheddar cheese to add flavor to it and it also acts as a natural dye. ",
"I make my own butter regularly (I like being able to control salt content) and its always come out a medium to light yellow, and I certainly don't add any dye. Try it for yourself, bust out your mom's stand mixer, pop the whisk on, and pour some heavy cream in there and get to whisking. A while later you'll have unstrained butter in the bowl. Then you just strain it (a mesh strainer works well for me) and then squeeze the remains in a cheese cloth. It'll be yellow, no color needed. I just use whatever the cheapest cream is at the store, I don't go for all that organic, free range, massaged every day bs, so I'd imagine the cows it came from are probably fed a mix of feed and vegetation they find in the fields. "
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bguzb9 | how microprocessor works? | Is there any simple visual guide how Microprocessor works? From the internals, to how electrical current can change the positions of transistors inside and how it can run simple commands?
For example a chip may contain thousands of transistors how does a electrical pulse sends information to tell the chip which transistors go "0" and which one go "1"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bguzb9/eli5_how_microprocessor_works/ | {
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"It is a bit difficult answering a question like this for ELI5, because computers are so layered. You start with the basics of how transistors and electricity work. You then put those transistors together in simple circuits called gate which make some simple calculation (like \"the output is 1 if and only if both inputs are 1\" or \"the output is 1 if either of the inputs are 1 but not both\"). Then you build up more complicated circuits using those gates that do something more elaborate (for instance, adding two numbers written in binary or storing a pattern of 1s and 0s for later). Those more complicated circuits can be combined to make a device that can perform actions in a sequence of steps and even alter that sequence by looking at patterns of 1s and 0s stored in its circuits. At that point, you have the beginnings of a computer, and the rest is adding on bells and whistles.\n\nAs for guides: there are books that cover this sort of thing. You might try checking out your public library. There are also Youtube videos out there that might be helpful. Ben Eater has got a whole series where he builds a computer from scratch, although that might be more technical and detailed than what you want.",
"I'm not aware of such a guide, but you may be interested in Minecraft videos that show designs of CPU... in Minecraft. You would be surprised how accurate that might be.\n\nThat being said, you might get a pretty good understanding knowing those ingredients:\n\n- a transistor has 3 wires: one input that control it (ON means pass through, OFF means you shall not pass), one input that carry the data, one output that carry the data if it could pass through or is dangling otherwise.\n\n- memory: you send it an address, it respond with data, that's a \"read\". you send it an address and data, and it memorize it, that's a \"write\".\n\n- program counter: it's the heartbeat of the CPU. It's a counter that do +1 every cycle, without asking.\n\n- instruction: every cycle the \"instruction pipeline\" will read the memory to get an instruction. It will read at the address indicated by the program counter.\n\n- decoding: that instruction is cut into pieces, some bits says what to do (load/store/jump/add/multiply), some bits says where to get the inputs (this load need an address, it will find it in register 14, etc...) and where to put the output (this multiplication will produce its result in register 5).\n\n- dispatching: a routing network (kind of like a bunch of train tracks with intersections made of transistors which are controlled by the instruction bits) will activate the circuit that do the operation and send it the data of the registers that are input, and propagate its result to the registers that are output.\n\n- compute: that's what people explain most of the time, a lot of transistors that compute the actual operation.\n\nTo me, the most interesting part of a processor is the memory subsystem. That is, the registers, the cache, the memory. That's much more powerful than the computing unit. In reality, you can compute using memory only! But that's a story for an other time.",
"It would be wrong approach to answer this question as OP would like to.\n\nThe right approach is to use *abstraction*.\n\n* First you learn how transistors and analog circuits work\n* Then you learn how to construct logic gates (AND, OR, XOR etc.) from analog circuits. By this time you should no longer care about the transistors as long as you work within specified electrical parameters (voltage, frequency, temperature etc.).\n* Then you learn how to construct digital circuits (ADDERS, MULTIPLEXERS. TRIGGERS etc.) from different combinations of logic gates.\n* Then you learn how to combine multiple ADDERS to sum binary numbers and combine with other digital devices to move the result to memory devices made from TRIGGERS etc.\n* By this time you might be getting the intuition needed to see how you can possibly put together a rather complicated device that could do a multitude of things depending on what binary instruction it receives. This device would possibly be Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) - a crucial part of a processor that performs arithmetic and logic operations.\n* Next thing is to possibly combine this ALU with a memory registers to make a primitive processor. Processor would receive binary instructions that would say e.g. take this byte from this memory location and take this number, then give both these numbers to ALU and instruct it to sum them up. ALU would then put the result in some known location.\n\nAs you see, it might not be possible to explain intuition to someone who has not gone through the pains of learning each level of abstraction here. When processors are designed multiple people work on that and they work on different levels.\n\nEDIT: For further reading (watching) I'd suggest this MIT lecture series. I'll link the 5th lecture which starts by explaining the transition from analog voltages to digital 1s and 0s.\n\n_URL_0_",
"No one has been able to give you a satisfying answer. I work with a fellow that invented the current generation of transistors. He also cannot. This question requires a crazy deep understanding of entire fields of science. Each field uses assumptions and abstractions from the other fields to do their own work. \n\nI'm just chiming in to say that you won't find a satisfying answer. It is not a limitation of reddit. Its just too complex. Each part can be explained to a five year old. How a transistor works. How chip design works. How digital circuit design works. How logic can be used to manipulate information. How an operating system works. How your actions (clicking, typing) interact with an operating system. How computer programming languages work. It is not possible to quickly explain what each electron in a computer is doing when you launch Google chrome. It's too much."
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|
7wdkky | how can different liquors affect someone different, ex, “whiskey makes him crazy”, are there any actual differences or is it bs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7wdkky/eli5_how_can_different_liquors_affect_someone/ | {
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"It's mostly based on one's personality and the culture around you.\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_3_\n\nTLDR: It's all in your head. Alcohol is alcohol. You perception of what it is alters your behavior and reaction to it.",
"Different types may hit you faster or slower and thus you'd act differently drinking them but the actual inebriation is identical based on alcohol content. Someone can drink beer slowly all night and maintain a strong buzz and then decide to have a few shots of whiskey that puts them into really drunk territory and they act...well...really drunk."
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"http://www.peele.net/lib/personality.html",
"https://www.shape.com/lifestyle/mind-and-body/4-drunk-personality-types-according-science",
"http://www.sirc.org/publik/drinking4.html"
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ah3bs7 | why do some street addresses have more digits than are necessary? (e.g. 5051 smith road could be a road with only 10 houses) | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ah3bs7/eli5_why_do_some_street_addresses_have_more/ | {
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"I can't be certain based on a hypothetical street address. But, some cities will use a house numbering scheme based on some kind of coordinate system or distance from a starting point. So, even if you call it Smith Road, it could be 50 streets away from the starting point so all houses on the road start with 50.",
"Any number of reasons. Could be that along a longer rural road with multiple other roads crossing it, each section might be the first two digits, the next section the next ten numbers up (i.e. 10XX, 20XX), etc. Usually helps first responders know where along a road an address might be. \n\nCould also have to do with tax lot and block numbers. \n\nIn Philadelphia, for example 2314 Walnut St can be found on Walnut St between 23rd and 24th streets. 817 Market would be between 8th and 9th Streets. \n\nMight also be that there are more parcels along the road than currently are buildings (meaning empty parcels of land). This allows for expansion. \n\nI used to work for a garden apartment developer and we had a system for numbering apartments to make it easier to find a particular unit (mainly for service and emergencies). Typically was 5 digits. First two were the building number, third was the floor, last two the unit number on that floor. So apt 11312 would be building 11, 3rd floor, 12th unit on that floor. \n\nYou'd have to call up the planning department of your town to ask them how their numbering system works. "
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attfdv | what the difference between a headache and migraine is, how you know which one you have, and what they feel like? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/attfdv/eli5_what_the_difference_between_a_headache_and/ | {
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"Just my personal experience....\n\n\nHeadache= “ouch, my head hurts”\n\nMigraine= “oh shit, I can’t see properly, I can’t focus, I can’t speak coherently, I feel like vomiting...oh and my entire head face neck and back hurts”\n\nA headache for me is like a dull pain in an isolated area. It’s painful but not debilitating. A migraine feels like your head and brain are malfunctioning. It’s so painful that it literally makes you sick. "
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||
6i0j8m | why it's hard to escape from a forest fire, even if you are in a car? | I wondered this many times, and decided to actually ask after reading about the [Portugal forest fire](_URL_0_) where people died burned even in the roads.
How's possible? You should see/notice the fire from far, isn't enough to just stay away? And even running away from it, fire shouldn't be that fast going from tree to tree, while a human, or even a car, should be faster, no? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6i0j8m/eli5_why_its_hard_to_escape_from_a_forest_fire/ | {
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" > How's possible? You should see/notice the fire from far, isn't enough to just stay away?\n\nForests can block vision. Also imagine you are hiking a trail and you so see it, can you react in time?\n\n > And even running away from it, fire shouldn't be that fast going from tree to tree, \n\nThey can move as quickly as 10 kph. A person on foot can't outrun that for long and while a car certainly can, cars need to follow roads. What if you don't have a road that heads exactly away from the fire?",
"Wild fires can be very, very fast. Many people underestimate just how fast a fire can spread.\n\nThe other thing is that cars usually only go on roads and roads only go in a limited number of directions.\n\nFire does not always come from a single direction it may circle around you without you noticing.\n\nIf the road in front of you is blocked by fire and the one behind you too, than no speed in the world will safe you.\n\nIn hilly regions like the one in Portugal you may end up with the additional problem that roads though mountains are seldom straight, if the fire doesn't circle around you then if you are really unlucky the road may circle back.\n\nThere have been reports that the fire in Portugal today managed to advance as fast as 20 km in 10 minutes that works out as 120 km/h which is the speedlimit on highways in Portugal.\n\nFires can be faster than people driving away from it in a car can go.\n\nIf the road does not lead you directly away from the fire but at an angle to the direction the fire advances it gets even worse. If the fire advances somewhere else faster than it does behind you it may suddenly appear in front of you too. If your road doesn't lead you away from the fire you are in trouble.\n\nFires can be fast and unpredictable even if you have a complete overview of what is going on. If you only have a ground level view of lots of smoke filled surroundings getting an accurate assessment of where to run can be hard and sometimes there is nowhere to run at all because everything is on fire."
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416yzt | why aren't reptiles eaten regularly like mammals and fish? | Is it due to lack of meat on the animal or is it disgusting? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/416yzt/eli5_why_arent_reptiles_eaten_regularly_like/ | {
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"Reptiles are almost universally carnivorous. Except for tortoises and iguanas, there's not much in terms of plant-eating reptiles that are big enough to be worth eating. Why do I bring this up? Agriculture of course. \n\nThe vast majority of our meat is farmed from domesticated, herbivorous or somewhat omnivorous (pigs, for example) animals. It is practical to raise herbivorous creatures for meat, because all you really have to do is give them plants. For most, a field of grass is sufficient to sustain a small flock/herd of grazing animals. On a more industrial scale, it's relatively easy to provide plant-based feed to cows, pigs, chickens, and so on. \n\nImagine, if you will, trying to do this with a carnivore. You're going to have to grow chickens and pigs and cows, but rather than eat them yourself you must feed them to alligators or snakes or monitor lizards or what have you. At a certain point, someone's going to ask \"Hey, why are we wasting so much time and resources growing this meat to feed to our meat? Why don't we just save ourselves the trouble and eat the first meat, it's kinda better anyway.\"\n\nThe short answer to your question, therefore, is \"Because reptiles, by nature, are a son of a bitch to domesticate, and it's not clear why you'd want to anyway.\" \n\nIn most cases where reptiles are on the menu, they're hunted in the wild. This doesn't produce nearly enough meat to make it a staple food for a significant and far flung population. "
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42hl0h | how does brain washing work? how is it done? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42hl0h/eli5_how_does_brain_washing_work_how_is_it_done/ | {
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"Religious cults often use a method of indoctrination analogous with boiling the frog by slowly increasing the temperature.\n\nIn essence, they start out with a very soft subtle sell of their cult e.g. introducing and inviting you to a harmless event (because it's very hard to convince strangers right from the start to just give up their lives and loved one to be a puppet for their cult).\n\nThen follows a series of steps in which the person is \"trained\" to associate the cult with something positive through attention, praise or material goods.\n\nEventually when they feel you have lowered your guard enough, they will offer your to join or study with them in order to attain a desired reward or prize. They want you to begin to commit to them and very importantly they want you to agree that you want the reward. They want it because it helps with you convincing yourself that you want it and they can use this in the future against if you begin to stray by saying that you say you wanted it yourself.\n\nIf you begin to doubt or protest, they will immediately shut down your dissent by threaten to withhold the reward or say you will never earn it with that attitude. Essentially shutting down any doubt as fast as possible and also begin to establish a sense of guilt in you by reprimanding you for doubting/questioning the cult and that it was YOU that agreed to commit to the cult because you wanted the reward.\n\nHereafter your behavior is \"trained\" in a certain way that fits the cult by rewarding good behavior and punishing bad behavior. As humans motivated by reward and seeking to minimize pain, this may be a very powerful way to change a persons behavior (aka. \"brainwashing\").\n\nAs you get more and more sucked in, the cult will begin to interfere and attempt ot seize control over your identity, environment (e.g. family and social life) and information to and from you. Ultimately having your entire identity and purpose of life devoted to the cult.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nIf you want to read more about this and hear example, [this](_URL_0_) is an interesting read about religious groups and the rough outline of how some try to \"brainwash\" newcomers.",
"To add to what others have said, weekend retreats with meals full of carbohydrates and low protein can cause ones decision making abilities to be impaired while they are removed from their normal lives and surrounded by people promoting the organization doing the brain washing. Sometimes this technique is employed to break the last barriers and really convince someone they are \"doing the right thing\". ",
"Almost all \"Brainwashing\" uses what can be seen as incremental conditioning.\n\nBefore getting into the specifics, allow me to present an analogy. You want to invest your money in something. You have $100, you choose wisely and get $50 back, and now you have $150, so you make a bigger investment and once again get a higher return. If you keep doing this and keep being successful, eventually you have enough money to realistically get whatever you want.\n\nNow as much as people like to believe otherwise, people are a lot more predictable than financial investments.\n\n## Step 1: The Target\n\nYou're a budding cult leader, a sociopath who wants to control people to do his bidding. Now to get into the mind of people who deliberately exert control over others you need to understand that one of the most potent skills these lot have is the ability to spot the right kind of people. People who seek approval, are suffering from abuse, want to run away from parts of their lives... Many people have aspects that can leave them mentally and emotionally vulnerable, and as a new cult leader you're very aware of these people.\n\nA big part of \"Brainwashing\" that's often overlooked is the simple fact that these people will target specific types, and they are very good at identifying the chinks in the armour of everyone around them.\n\n## Step 2: The Hook\n\nOnce a manipulator has found their target, they will most often befriend them. Offering a source of support, a friend, but sometimes also offering something more tangible. This could be religious, material, monetary, emotional... But something to act as a \"hook\". These early \"befriending\" stages will often be characterised by laying down strict conditions for the relationship very early on. To give an example a manipulator might \"over-react\" to a certain \"mistake\" that the target has made in order to make them feel guilty and (this is the crucial part) frame the interaction between the Manipulator and the Victim as one-sided.\n\nThe hook keeps people involved with the manipulator for just long enough for them to get control, and it keeps them going through things that would normally drive people away. The hooks are usually tailored to the person. If the manipulator saw that the target needed a father figure, they'd \"become\" that figure for them. If the victim made a 'mistake' (Read: A behaviour the manipulator considers undesirable), he may threaten or withdraw this interaction.\n\n## Step 3: The Conditioning\n\nOnce a relationship has been established, conditioning can fully begin. The manipulator will have a set of positive and negative outcomes and tailor their actions towards what the victim has been doing. If the victim has gone along with everything, and been subservient then they will be rewarded, which conditions and reinforces the behaviour on a cognitive level. If the victim shows signs of doubt or does something undesirable, the manipulator will \"punish\" them in a way, either by withdrawing or threatening to withdraw the \"reward\", or by methods such as guilt-tripping.\n\nNow there's really no extra step for an individual after this, the manipulator will offer a safe, consistent and stable interaction so long as the victim does what they want.\n\n## Step 3a: Group Behaviour\n\nNow, the one other thing I wanted to note is the fact that once you get one or two devout followers (assuming you were trying to start a cult), you can manipulate these people into helping you with your goal. The relationship dynamic in a social situation between 1 person and another is radically different than the dynamic between 3, 5, or 10 people and another. Having followers exerts far more pressure on new victims than one person alone, and often can be the influencing factor in swaying some of the less mentally vulnerable people."
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2l226y | what's so special about coca cola that made it so widespread? | Ok, I get that Coca Cola is good. But it's not special, is it? I mean... I've tried lots of other soda in different continents that are as ok. So... How did it happen that this particular one got worldwide supremacy so to be found as *the* drink in every single country of the world? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l226y/eli5_whats_so_special_about_coca_cola_that_made/ | {
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"Massive amounts of marketing for a hundred years mixed with a large amount of marketing. Also, it's fucking delicious.",
"They have spent and continue to spend astronomical amounts of money on advertising and other marketting. [Around 3 billion USD a year](_URL_0_). That's more than Apple and Microsoft combined. That's enough money to get 3 billion one dollar bills.",
"It's not special, but they've spent a lot of time and money to create the idea that it *is* special. It seems ridiculous, but we are totally susceptible to brand identity. Generic Store Brand Cola may taste just as good, but we feel cooler buying Coke so we do it. ",
"Am I the only one who find coca cola not that terribly good as advertised? Sometimes, I have regrets an the feeling of disappointment for ordering it with my meals.",
"The original recipe included [small amounts of cocaine](_URL_0_) and it was marketed as a medicine. Cocaine was fairly popular at the time, so with good marketing, they got a great hold on the market. Being one of the first such drinks means that they basically cornered the market. Any other drinks had to try and smash the dominance already established. Coke became a household name, and associated with American culture.\n\nAmerican culture is what spread it to dominance in other countries, later.",
"Coca Cola is a huge company! \n\nThere are a lot of drinks owned by coke and you would never even know it. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nI'm sure their ability to swallow up the competition along with 100 or so years of industry ties keeps them one of the most popular. \n",
"1. Marketing \n2. Product formulation: they have spent years and millions to develop product taste that will appeal to the most about of people. They also change their formulas to cater to different cultures geographic areas. Example coke in the middle east is made of sugar and is significantly sweeter. ",
"In some countries water isn't safe to drink, so bottles of coke are popular because they can be cheaper than bottled water and won't make you ill.",
"I thought what really pushed Coca Cola to world-wide status was its inclusion in the food sent with soldiers during war overseas, especially World War II.",
"Pax Americana. It followed where your military machine went. ",
"WWII - [Quoted from this history piece](_URL_0_)\n\n > The conquest of the world by the Coca-Cola began with the Second World War, thanks to the ancient friendship of Woodruff with General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. The company took Washington to the exceptional authorization to import all the sugar it needs, an article that the conflict had become scarce and subject to rationing. This represented an invaluable advantage, since the competition was not benefited by the same privilege. Woodruff won the Eisenhower Award enticing with the promise that all American soldiers, wherever they were, they could buy a bottle of Coca-Cola for 5 cents, by the time the war lasted. The maneuver allowed Woodruff you even board the ships for free military transport most of the bottling plants that the company mount in Europe. No fewer than 64 plants were thus sent overseas. \n\n\n \n > After the victory, they remained where they were and civilians replaced military customers. Since then, Coca-Cola would be released successively in almost every country in the world, including China and the former Soviet Union, while the company would create a number of other related products such as Fanta and Cherry Coke, Diet, and also Coke ..."
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4nf0aj | how do rare animals find each other for the purpose of mating? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nf0aj/eli5how_do_rare_animals_find_each_other_for_the/ | {
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"The rarity means that the populations are small and restricted to a few small areas rather than being widely scattered over a large area. So within the local area there are normally enough animals to breed, if not then the animal is likely to become extinct.",
"They may have very loud mating calls, or rely on an extreme sensitivity to pheromones. For example, while not endangered, certain moths can detect a single molecule of pheromone in a cubic yard of air from a female up to ~7 miles away.",
"Unfortunately they often don't find each other, and this leads to numerous problems up to and including extinction.\n\nFor example, look at the current global ranges of [lions](_URL_0_) and [tigers](_URL_1_).\n\nThis spotty distribution promotes inbreeding and consequently reduced genetic diversity, which is of course very bad for the species' long-term survival.",
"Sometimes they don't.\n\nHere in New Zealand we have the Kakapo which is an endangered bird, they are extremely friendly, nosy, and awesome.\n\nBut because they struggle to find a mate they have been documented to preform necrophilia on birds of other species. They drag the corpse into a bush and fuck its brains out. Poor little fuckers. ",
"Looking for a girlfriend?",
"There will be a difference in the answer depending on exactly what you mean in your question.\n\n\"Rare animals\" that are rare because they live at very low densities in their natural environment will have evolved sophisticated (or sometimes pretty simple) tricks to find mates. Maybe they can smell each other across vast distances. Maybe their mating calls are very loud. Maybe they only get \"in the mood\" when they go to a limited resource, like water in the desert, that might attract a potential mate at the same time. Maybe once a year all of the members of that species get together in one spot just to mate, and then they all go their separate ways again.\n\n\"Endangered animals\" that normally aren't rare in their environments, however, normally have not evolved such systems, so they do sometimes have trouble finding mates, as other commenters here have discussed.",
"Some animals can either undergo sexual or asexual reproduction depending on the availability of a mate. Sexual reproduction is preferable since it generates diversity while asexual reproduction makes sure that the animal has offspring in the absence of a mating partner. Round worms are an example if I remember my biology courses (someone correct me if I'm wrong). "
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3tvo0v | why does a landline pick up microphone noise while ringing or during the answering machine? | You can hear people waking to the phone and making noise when they haven't picked up/started the connection, or if they're saying "oh it's spam, don't pick up"
I work at a call center and I can always hear this stuff. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tvo0v/eli5_why_does_a_landline_pick_up_microphone_noise/ | {
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"That's not normal, and sounds like a handset malfunction. In a traditional handset, picking up the phone is actually necessary to properly complete the circuit."
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4vj08x | why we see nose with one eye but not with two | Hi, i have a question that is messing arround my brain :D
Why we see our nose with one eye but with the two eyes open we cant (only if we center the eyes on the nose, but i'm talking looking front)
Why this appen?! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vj08x/eli5_why_we_see_nose_with_one_eye_but_not_with_two/ | {
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"It's physically visible, but your brain tends to edit out things that the two eyes disagree on so you don't get distracted by them.",
"Because our nose blocks quite a bit of our vision, our brain simply combines what we see in each eye to give us better visibility."
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2p7c6k | what do the companies that "buy your used cell phone" do with the phones? | Clearly they make money with them somehow but I cannot imagine them reselling my scratched up, dinged up old phone for any amount of money.
Bonus questions: How much do they really pay for say a 2 year old smart phone (when most people upgrade)? I am sure the commercials are overselling how much they pay. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p7c6k/eli5_what_do_the_companies_that_buy_your_used/ | {
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"Take it apart and reclaim parts. Put a new housing on and sell as refurbished"
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32160r | how do videos/lights/lyrics sync at music festivals if the music isn't pre-mixed? | I don't know anything about how the festivals work behind the scenes but I would think the people who work the lights/videos have to have some sort of knowledge of what will be played. Unless the lights are hooked up to the music somehow? Again, not very technical on how any of this works, was just curious. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32160r/eli5_how_do_videoslightslyrics_sync_at_music/ | {
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"There are people that control the lights, just like the Dj's. They are usually way behind the crowd, facing the stage.",
"There are a few ways to do this. Let's start with the good old-fashioned way; a person.\n\nA lighting technician will essentially 'play' the lights using their lighting console. They'll have a load of looks and effects pre-programmed and will call them up as needed. This type of making it up as you go along is sometimes known as \"flash & trash\". Just stabbing buttons and making stuff spin and flash like crazy. (They're usually highly skilled and come up with something that looks a lot more sophistacted than that though!)\n\nBut, assuming that there's been a rehearsal, or that the band has their own Lighting Designer, the lights will be pre-programmed into a cue list and triggered at the right time by hitting the \"Go\" button. Just needs the operator to have a bit of rhythm to hit it bang on cue.\n\nOK, now we get into deeper technological waters... \nMIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. I'm just going to brush over the details and say that you could think of it as *sorta* like USB for instruments. So your instruments are sending MIDI signals down to the lighting desk. The lighting desk has been pre-programmed with all the cues in a list and been told to listen out for specific MIDI signals to know when to trigger each of them.\n\nAnother option is timecoding. Not all bands are fully live and may use some sort of backing track. Or, they may just have many technical elements that they need to co-ordinate precisely in sync. Let's look at musical theatre as an example of this. Sure, they're singing live and the band are playing live, but they're all actually doing it in time to a pre-recorded \"click track\". Basically, a metronome. This ensures that everything musically happens exactly the same way each performance. Then, using MIDI, you can programme all your lighting, projection, set moves, etc to specific times within that track."
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4jig72 | why do my shirts get short and wide after being washed several times? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jig72/eli5_why_do_my_shirts_get_short_and_wide_after/ | {
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"What materials are they made of- read the wash instructions. Does the company pre wash to avoid shrinking. \n"
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em7j5m | why can't we use super high powered telescopes to view exoplanets for plants to confirm life? | Seeing pictures of exoplanets or habitable planets found by NASA, couldn't we easily look for green on the surface for a good indication of plants as we know them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/em7j5m/eli5_why_cant_we_use_super_high_powered/ | {
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"Even if you’ve got a telescope that could do this (which we don’t), you have to know what you’re looking for. People used to think there might be plant life on Mars, because Mars had surface markings that seemed to change over time. It turned out to be dust storms.\n\nYou can’t just look for something that changes over the planet’s year, because that might be something like the dust storms on Mars, Looking for something green isn’t guaranteed to work, because there are green rocks, and we don’t even know if extraterrestrial plant life would be green. It’s hard to find something if you aren’t sure what you’re looking for.",
"Not directly answering your question, as it has pretty much been answered, but as for the ladder part of your question...\n\nWhen looking for life giving planets, they look for some helpful circumstances. Firstly, as others have mentioned.. these things are extremely far away, and not very bright which makes them hard to see. This means the planets we are discovering are typically the really large ones. The ones that are closer to the likes of Jupiter. We can now find the smaller Earth and Mars sized ones too, but it's still harder.\n\nThe problem with those huge ones like Jupiter is they are typically gas giants or huge frozen planets. There are reasons why our gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn...) are further away from the sun than the rocky planets (Earth, Mars...). Perhaps the most important reason is that water (and many other materials) are in a frozen state when they are that far away from their host stars. They just don't get enough starlight to be warm enough to exist in liquid state. Frozen means crystalline forms which means more area is taken up. For example, a bottle of water or can of pop often explodes in the freezer, because frozen material takes up more space than its liquid form. In space, these crystals start forming essentially giant snowballs (iceballs, whatever). This is part of the reason those planets are as big as they are. A lot of shit is frozen solid.\n\nThis is typically not a good thing for plants. Doesn't mean there can't be any, but it's not a good sign. This is why we look for planets in the Goldilock's zone. The distance from a star (depends on star size) that is capable of supporting liquid water (without added extreme pressures or something from a massive planet). This means not to far away so as to be snowballs and not to close as to be molten. Problem is many planets in that zone are thought to be more Earth sized.. thus harder to find. We can get direct images of planets (they look like a few pixels), but those are only the massive gas giants.\n\nAs others have mentioned the best way to find planets is that they pass in front of the star. This is problematic though. That means most of the planets we have found or can currently find.. are only the ones that pass directly between us and their host star. That's a pretty niche set of circumstances. Not only that, but we have to be looking at the right moment too. So we have found lots of planets, but barely any of the total number of planets even from the stars we look at.\n\nIt also helps if its the right type of star. Our sun is somewhat forgiving, but massive stars have many more solar events which can decimate atmospheres, bathing these planets in overwhelming amounts of radiation. Super small stars tend to not have a large Goldilock's zone and have other issues (I don't remember the exact issues off the top of my head).\n\nWe can see composition of things by the light spectrometers. The problem is getting enough light from a planet is... difficult. Long exposure times help though which is why we get some of the readings we do. But that means a likely multimillion dollar piece of equipment is just starting at this little spec for a long period of time just to potentially see the spectrograph of a possibly habitable planet.\n\nAll in all.. even plants typically require some forgiveness in life. The best bet a lot of these planets have would be microbes or seriously small life. Which.. is not easy to detect or interact with from here.",
"They're too far away and too dark. It's physically impossible to create a telescope that will be able to see that far. In fact, it's impossible to see the flag and land rover that we left on the Moon with a telescope, because they're too far and small.",
"You might be seeing some artist’s interpretations of what the planets look like.\n\nWhat NASA and other space agencies are actually doing is looking at the same stars over long periods of time.\n\nSome of them will dim in regular intervals - basically, that indicates that that star as a planet orbiting it. (The dimming is when the planet is between the star and us.) It’s more like finding and analyzing the exoplanets from their shadows. \n\nThey can look at the changes in the light to also guess what kind of gasses are in that planet’s atmosphere, but they are not looking at the planet itself, so they can really look for plant life.",
"No.\n\nExtra-solar planets are really far away and geometry and physics are a thing we can't really change.\n\nTo actually resolve surface features on a planet in another solar system we would need a telescope larger than we can possibly build.\n\nWe can however use a number of other different means to infer information about such planets indirectly. From these information artist can make pictures of what they think the planet might look like.\n\nThat is the best we can do.\n\nFor example we might 'see' the planet pass in front of its sun (like a tiny partial eclipse very far away) and look very hard at the bits of light that pass through a planets atmosphere and use spectrography to see which types of wavelength were getting absorbed to figure out what sort of elements are in that atmosphere.\n\nThis is terrible difficult but theoretically possible and while not the same as actually seeing stuff about the planet, it is very close.",
"If we could magically make a telescope the size of the entire Earth, then sure, we could see other planets, except obviously we can't do that. Exoplanets are just really far away, really small, and really dark compared to their host stars. Only a few photons ever make it Earth. Except for a few examples, we don't even detect planets by looking at them directly. We measure their presence by the gravitational wobble they induce on their host stars or by measuring a the dip in the light of their host stars as they pass in front of it. The images you've seen are artist impressions, not actual photos of exoplanets.",
"A lot of the \"super\" telescopes don't actually provide images as you think you would get from a back yard telescope. A lot of these as well as extra-terrestial telescopes use other sensors which measure things like magnetic fields, radiation etc. which provides data and information that is used to \"translate\" it into a \"picture\".",
"Exoplanets are just too far away and too close to their stars do that with. Even an object as close as Pluto is little more than a smudge with our most powerful telescopes.\n\nIn fact, very few exoplanets can even be imaged directly, and when they are, they are little more than blurry specks. Most exoplanets are detected by indirect means, like eclipsing their parent star or making it wobble a little."
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[],
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|
6a3hq5 | why does putting my headphones in the wrong ears make the mix sound like it has less bass? | Ive always noticed that if I put my headphones in/on backwards it makes it sound like the music has more treble in the mix. Why does that happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6a3hq5/eli5_why_does_putting_my_headphones_in_the_wrong/ | {
"a_id": [
"dhbij9r"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"If you're talking about \"ear\" phones, manufacturers generally mold each bud to fit in a specific L or R auditory canal. If you put them on the wrong way, they do not seal the canal, allowing the pressure waves to travel out instead of to your drum."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
emo4x0 | how do we know where stars/nebulae are if they don't emit light in the visible spectrum | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/emo4x0/eli5_how_do_we_know_where_starsnebulae_are_if/ | {
"a_id": [
"fdpxt0q",
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"text": [
"I'm not sure why you think some stars only emit and reflect gamma rays - I haven't heard of this. I guess it's possible I just don't know, but I'd be surprised.\n\nIn any case, we *can* take 'pictures' with gamma rays, or at least figure out where they're coming from. It is just difficult. I provide you with [this](_URL_0_) wikipedia page for details on that subject.",
"Well, first, you're very much mistaken that some stars only emit gamma rays or x-rays. That's completely wrong. Even if that were true, we don't just look for things in visible light. We have telescopes that use every part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Radio telescopes, X-ray telescopes, gamma ray telescopes...etc. You're also mistaken about the Hubble telescope works. Hubble takes images mostly in visible light with some near-infrared and ultraviolet, and the images are usually combined."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_astronomy"
],
[]
] |
|
16btip | why do batteries seem to get more juice when you hit them? | For instance, if the remote is dead and you whack it with your hand, it seems to get a little bit of juice for a minute or so. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16btip/eli5_why_do_batteries_seem_to_get_more_juice_when/ | {
"a_id": [
"c7um11w",
"c7umra2"
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"score": [
2,
2
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"text": [
"Batteries are filled with liquid that holds electrical charges. When you hit them, it mixes the liquid a tad and looses some of the remaining charges.",
"You squeeze out the last bit of electrons when hitting it compresses the battery slightly. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
8y1fh0 | how do illegal drugs become such a huge industry? | Pablo Escobar was worth $30 billion from cocaine sales. They can’t market themselves, the target audience is pretty small, and you’ve got law enforcement to worry about. So how do they do so well? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8y1fh0/eli5_how_do_illegal_drugs_become_such_a_huge/ | {
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"text": [
"Word of mouth is powerful advertising so the users are doing most of the marketing, mostly to their friends or families. The target audience is bigger than you'd think, and there isn't enough law enforcement to stop them all. Demand is strong, supply is readily available even if it has to be imported, all the pillars of a potential market are there for the taking.",
"the target audience isn't really that small. it encompasses millions of people globally. Law enforcement isn't always an issue. People can be bought, they don't usually cooperate very well between departments, provinces, states, countries. Sometimes it's law enforcement that are the suppliers. There's also the distribution of prescription meds. like opioids and adhd medication. in university locations it's really not difficult to find at least a few people who are taking it and a not difficult to find someone who is willing to lose a day or two for 20 dollars or so. I don't remember the book off the top of my head but there was a psychologist who proposed we/animals had a compulsion to find altered states of consciousness not unlike the compulsion to eat, fuck and survive.",
" > the target audience is pretty small\n\nThat's where you are going wrong. The target market is not pretty small. Quite a number of people have or will use drugs of some kind and many people use them over and over again over a lifetime. Total spending on drugs can also be quite high because addicted people tend to spend everything that they can on drugs. According to a quick google search, 0.6% of the total US population has used cocaine in within the past month. That's just cocaine, not counting weed, heroin, meth or molly. 0.6% is around the same percentage of the population that identify as trans. So around the same number of people who identify as trans have used cocaine within the past month. That's like 1.5 million people in the US alone! and again, that's JUST COCAINE, and cocaine is not even the most popular drug!!!\n\nPrice wise, 1 g of coke can cost in the range of $100 - $300 depending on quality and location (I'm a little unsure here, I'm not a coke user myself)\n\nWorries of law enforcement and other things are all baked into the street price of the drug. The money is there to compensate the dealers for those risks. ",
"The worst thing that could happen to Pablo Escobar would be a legalisation of cocaine/drugs. That would completely ruin his business. The illegality of those drugs ensures that their price will remain high, because the mafia-bosses control the supply, and therefore they make the prices. It is mainly the high prices that makes this industry huge. You can make billions of dollars in this industry, but you could never do that if those drugs were not illegal. Because they are actually very cheap to produce, at least most of them.\nAlso you greatly underestimate the size of the market. ",
"Early in prohibition, alcohol consumption dropped to about a third. However, within a few year most of that drop came back to nearly 70 & #37; of what it had been before. So the issue is that a law enforcement solution show only moderate decreases in usage but brings with it a whole host of others problems associated with black market goods.",
"The target audience is probably massively bigger than you realize, and the thing about drugs is they work. If you want to get high you do drugs."
]
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|
2bth8q | what's happening in my brain when i stare at carpet and in starts to move and look wavy? | I don't know if this happens with other people, and it usually works best on carpet. But when I stare at carpet and alter my focus and depth perception, the carpet seems to move and appear wavy. I also can't compare it to using any types of drugs (eg. LSD or acid), because I've not done any drugs. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bth8q/eli5_whats_happening_in_my_brain_when_i_stare_at/ | {
"a_id": [
"cj8qf1h"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"This happens to me all the time. Same thing with things like asphalt roads and concrete. I'd be interested to see the reason. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
ctae8e | why do older graphics look horrible years later in games to us? if it was because we saw something better later, wouldn't all of them look bad to us considering how good quality our eyes see in real life to begin with? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ctae8e/eli5_why_do_older_graphics_look_horrible_years/ | {
"a_id": [
"exjnbe8",
"exjph2j"
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19,
12
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"text": [
"Expectations. PS1 was awesome compared to what came before and that was what we came to expect. The next step blew it away and we got used to that.",
"Remember that monitors (or console screens) are also better quality, so a lot of old pixellated games looked 'better' on older monitors/screens than they do on newer faster sharper models."
]
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[],
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||
1kteug | how albums get leaked weeks ahead of their official release date | Who is usually responsible for the leaking? How do they get a copy of the music and what do they do with it besides putting it up on a torrent site? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kteug/eli5_how_albums_get_leaked_weeks_ahead_of_their/ | {
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"text": [
"It could be people involved with the creation and distribution of the album. If they are working on the songs or creation of the discs, they obtain copies of the music. I imagine this makes up most of the people that leak songs before a full release. \n\nSome radio stations or certain individuals may receive advanced copies due to things like album release parties where participants usually receive a copy that has a locked disc that may only play on a CD player and not a computer. They can also use it to track files released early to see which individual may have done so. \n\nBesides torrent sites, it could be uploaded to Youtube, but it would be taken down quickly at the record label's request. I'm sure it's also uploaded to other places to be stored or played.",
"Leaks can also occur from bike messagers because a lot of times record labels need their legal departments to approve music, music clearances ect. There are also artist who burn there own physical copy and have their personal copies in the cars cd player and a valet/parking attendant employee burns a copy while the car is in their possession. CD replication and distribution/fulfillment plants can have employee security breaches. Heavily trafficked music studio with the engineers computer connected to the internet can be a security risk as well. There is a sort of black market for pirated music and such. Depending on how popular the artist and who you go to, if people feel they can make a quick buck before it hits the internet depends on how its leaked.",
"Record labels have promotional copies of albums made and send them out to press, radio, and retailers weeks (sometimes months when dealing with long-lead press) before the album's release date. Anybody receiving the album has the capability of uploading it to the internet. \n\n",
"Most of these are accurate. Additionally, music is sometimes leaked by the artist himself. If it's the whole album it's usually to screw over the record label because of some ongoing dispute or unfair pay. If it's only a song or two it's sometimes a practice to gather hype for the release or to put the spotlight on an otherwise ignored album.",
"This image outlines it best: _URL_0_\n",
"Here's an article that I wrote that explores how albums leak and their impacts. Hopefully this sheds some light on what everyone is saying below\n_URL_0_"
]
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[],
[],
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[],
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"http://globalnerdy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/how-a-record-gets-leaked.gif"
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"http://petehatesmusic.com/2013/09/10/anatomy-of-an-album-leak-how-they-happen-the-impacts-and-what-should-be-done-about-leaks/"
]
] |
|
82tb1c | what series of chemicals/surgeries facilitated michael jackson’s bizarre physical transformation, and why don’t we see more people who look like he did? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/82tb1c/eli5_what_series_of_chemicalssurgeries/ | {
"a_id": [
"dvcmwi7"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"His official statement was that the skin coloring was due to vitiligo which you've probably seen in a number of dark skinned people. Most of their skin becomes white, leaving a lot of dark patches.\n\nI was a friend of his dermatologist Arnold Klein (who has passed away, but he also had a ton of friends, so it's not like I had real insider info), and he only claimed to have been involved in making his skin a uniform color, and he did some filler work (fillers are like collagen that temporarily change the shape of where you put it, and your body eventually metabolizes it).\n\nAs far as his facial structure, that was something else entirely and I can't really speak to it, but there was a lot of heavy duty cosmetic surgery going on. If you look at him in the mid 1970's before his first nose job, he looked very different in the face.\n\nThere are a lot of people who have had radical facial surgery like he did, but it's incredibly expensive, so you don't see too much of it, because most people couldn't afford to do it. Look up Jocelyn Wildenstein for another example of extensive facial work."
]
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[]
] |
||
5jh35e | how do holograms work? unlike lasers, leds, and halogen lights that will travel until they hit an object.... some how holograms can take form in mid air to create and object. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jh35e/eli5_how_do_holograms_work_unlike_lasers_leds_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"dbg5mvw"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"_URL_0_\n\nTL;DR Where a red a yellow laser beam cross paths a green dot is formed. Currently the technology is in its infancy, give it a few years."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://english.etnews.com/20151203200003"
]
] |
||
4qe9j6 | why do stripes never look normal on the tv? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qe9j6/eli5_why_do_stripes_never_look_normal_on_the_tv/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The pixels on your TV are arranged in a grid, which is effectively a set of horizontal and vertical stripes (on old CRT tvs, they were actual horizontal stripes). Anyway, when those stripes are laid on top of the stripes on broadcast, they won't line up exactly. \n\nWhen two sets of stripes only sort of line up, it creates what's called a [moiré pattern](_URL_0_). The parts where the stripes overlap look like thicker lines, and the parts where they overlap entirely or separate entirely look thinner. Your brain recognizes the pattern of \"thicker\" and \"thinner\" parts, and particularly from a distance, it's often the most visible pattern instead of the original stripes.",
"stripes on a tv are also subject to \"aliasing\". because all the pixels, the smallest solid part of the image, are all made of squares, they can only form a solid line going up-down or left-right. any lines on an angle create a stairway effect and look jagged.\n\nimagine this is a pixel: []\n\nif we line them up, they make lines : \n\n[] [] [] [] [] [] []\n\n[]\n\n[]\n\n[]\n\n[]\n\n[]\n\nif we arrange them at an angle, the edges are no longer straight and make a staircase\n:\n\n[]\n\n []\n []\n []\n []\n []"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern"
],
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|
801tci | what's the purpose of electronically signing on a credit purchase especially when most signatures are not the person's actual signature or lazy scribble that doesn't resemble letters and in what ways are they used? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/801tci/eli5_whats_the_purpose_of_electronically_signing/ | {
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"I know signature originally were used as a personal stamp on any document giving your approval, authorization, or commitment and use as proof if any legal things came up. But now, how would they prove anything or use it against you when most electronic signature are no where near the same or legible? ",
"There is zero security in a signature. No one checks them, and only a very few are able to detect what is a genuine signature and what isn't.\n\nThe best they can do is provide evidence if the holder of a card who did a transaction tries to charge it back. Then the recording of the signature can be verified by real experts, or, more importantly, video of them signing for the transaction produced in court to support a fraud charge. Similarly, the record of a fraudulent signature will be an extra fraud charge if they catch someone who uses someone else's card.",
"My signature on my drivers license is so bad that i can hardly recognize it. Screwed me\nOver when i was taking the MCAT (med school entrance exam)... everytime i entered or left the room for a break i had to sign a form with a signature matching my drivers license. Since my sig was so abnormal they wouldnt let me sign out or in until i was able to replicate the bad signature. Took a few tries before i could.",
"My family went to sign in to go indoor skydiving, and they made us sign waivers. On a tablet. Problem was that the refresh rate on the pen they used was so low that any normal signature was turned into a scribble.",
"I think the main reason is fraud purposes. Someone used my moms credit card info, and while she never really signed her name at all the thief did. The fraud people pulled her record and saw a bunch of houses and suns and stuff instead of a signature and gave her money back. ",
"I work as a courier, i am always a pain in the ass about getting it signed and with a printed name. funny enough the printed name is more of a signature then the signature. oh well.",
"Every other country on Earth uses a chip and pin system, much like metric the US refuses to play along. I have read at least two articles every single year, from various news sources, stating that chip and pin are coming to the US soon, for the past five years or so, maybe longer. They always go on about how the credit card companies want to reduce fraud and a pin would be more secure than the completely useless signature. I thought it was finally coming when every credit card company seemed to roll out chips in their cards recently, but alas, no pins yet and checkout often still demands a signature. They are super pointless, even the companies themselves admit it, and yet it endures forever literally no reason other than inertia.",
"For card transactions, the signature was intended to play 3 roles: So the clerk could compare the sig on the receipt to the sig on the back of card, to hold the consumer responsible as in a contract sig, and so the card issuer could hold the seller responsible for misuse.\n\nThe first 2 purposes long ago lost their utility as sellers overwhelmingly elected to ignore the fraud prevention purpose in favor of speed at checkout. They still collected sigs as protection from mass disputes of their transactions, but they basically chose to eat the occasional fraud that maaayyybeee could have been avoided by comparing sigs on card and receipt. (In the US, Ace Hardware is one place that, in my experience, has continued to train clerks to verify sigs. They ask to see the card and compare sigs. They make me sign the back of the card and show ID if it is not signed. This slows down the checkout process, but tells you Ace is a stickler for rules.)\n\nOver the past 10-20 years, most card networks removed sig requirements for low-end sales, such as under $25 or under $50, for certain industries at least. Issuers kept sig rules around longer than practical because they pushed a small amount of the fraud expenses on to sellers. Sellers don't have enough incentives to prevent fraud as it is; they are just eager to make a sale. And clerks just want to move the line and make it to their next break with their sanity in place. :-)\n\nRecently, however, Mastercard announced in Oct 2017 that it is eliminating sig at checkout rules as of April 2018 in the US. Discover and Amex followed suit, and Visa more cautiously announced no sig only for chip-based transactions.\n\nSo in the US, consumers may soon see far fewer sig requirements, although some sellers may keep them as the receipt may be considered an agreement between the consumer and seller.\n\nIn Europe and some other regions, Chip and PIN is prevalent and provides better security.\n\nSource: Work in the payments business.\n\nTldr: Sig at checkout is going the way of copy paper and \"knucklebusters;\" into granpa's tales of how hard life was when he was a kid.\n\nEdits: wording and spelling.",
"I think the answers relating to the due diligence of the seller to prevent fraud are the most accurate here. I'll also add though that, generally speaking, the need for a signature is less about the signature providing a unique authentication of the person signing (i.e., by matching the sig on the document in question to their \"normal\" signature) as to provide a simplified way of establishing that the person in question was involved. This is, of course, prone to people lying and saying it wasn't them, but keep in mind that legally binding documents can always be signed with an \"x\" if the person cannot write (not typically an issue anymore and perhaps never commonplace, but certainly not rare 100+ years ago). I mean, anyone could change how they signed something at will--that thought must have occurred to past generations and is not new to electronic signatures. The point is more to make the proof that you engaged in a given transaction easier....asking someone \"didn't you sign this?\" establishes that they agreed to the terms of the sale/contract/whatever without having to go through all the details of what they agreed to, when they agreed to it, whether there was any misunderstanding of the terms, whether one \"actually agreed\" or was just thinking about it--it's much easier to get out of an oral deal by saying \"well, we never finally agreed on that\" than it is if you plop a signature on a piece of paper (or, now, e-sig).\n\nAgain, this is subject to people simply lying about whether they signed something, but a lot of people are not willing to lie directly under oath, but might \"fudge\" the details of the transaction or agreement or say their understanding of it was different, or that the price was different, etc.....a signed receipt or contract clarifies these issues simply by acknowledgement by the person of their signature. Now, if someone lies, comparing the signature in question to other documents they've signed may provide supporting evidence that they are indeed the signer of the document in question, but it is not the primary reason that the signature is used in the first place. Recall too that witnesses are generally required for agreements involving significant stakes (wills, real estate transactions, certain other high-value commercial tranasactions, etc.) which goes to show that nobody ever really thought a signature was a realistic way of conclusively authenticating the identity of the signer of a document.\n\nTL:DR, the need for a signature is more a streamlined method of establishing that an agreement was finalized and took place rather than the form of the signature itself being used for authentication.",
"The purpose of signing the box or paper in the old days was “fraud protection”.\n\nIf you disputed a charge the credit card companies required that you write in a dispute letter. Hopefully you signed that letter, if you didn’t you could expect to receive an affidavit, that affidavit required a signature to be processed. \n\nThe bank would pull the signature from the transaction, and compare it to the signature on the affidavit. If they matched, the investigation would continue or you would be held responsible. If they didn’t match, the charge(s) would be tagged as fraud. \n\nCard associations and Banks have realized this isn’t effective and pointless. So they will soon do away with the signature requirements. \n\n_URL_0_"
]
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||
3wqu5p | why do car dealers get special license plates? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wqu5p/eli5_why_do_car_dealers_get_special_license_plates/ | {
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"You mean the one's that say dealer? Probably signifying the car they are driving isn't registered to any one yet is on the road. It prevents confusion with cops.",
"Because most license plates are meant for one car only and used car dealers' plates can be transferred from car to car as they need it to be. ",
"License plates tend to come when you register the car. Cars owned by dealerships aren't registered. Therefore, dealers get collections of plates which they can swap out on cars to drive them around. It's just a way around having to have dealerships register every car while in possession while still having something on the vehicle to track in case someone uses the car for something nefarious.",
"Car dealer here:\n\nEvery new car/used car dealer is allocated by the state's Dept of Transportation a certain amount of dealer plates in proportion to the amount of vehicles retailed in the prior year. Most new car dealers receive one plate per 25 retail sales the prior year",
"It works as a temporary plate that can be moved from car to car, allowing dealers to transport their cars and take them out for test drives without having to fully register them.",
"Ex car salesman here. Normal tags are car/owner specific. Dealerships own a ton of cars that have to be driven on test drives, get gas, dealer transfers, or demos management/ owners gets to drive as a company car. Most dealer plates have magnet on the back so they can be easily transferred from car to car. "
]
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||
1w4len | what makes the crackling sound when i poor milk in my special k | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w4len/eli5_what_makes_the_crackling_sound_when_i_poor/ | {
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"text": [
"Ketamine is better uncut.",
"There are air pockets in the cereal from the cooking process. They are hot when baked and the when you pour cold milk on it the mix of the air volume change and the cereal losing strength from being wet causes the pocket to collapse. This same thing happens to snap crackle pop or whatever that cereal is. Also pop rocks, except pop rocks work by dissolving and the pressure difference is much higher. "
]
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[],
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||
zsy4o | why does a numbed area "feel" large or swollen when it is not? | For example, after dental work why do I feel like a chipmunk when my mouth is not actually swollen? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zsy4o/eli5_why_does_a_numbed_area_feel_large_or_swollen/ | {
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"text": [
"Good question. I wonder that myself. In addition, why does it also feel unbearably cold?",
"Is this not due to the fact the nerves aren't working so the brain can't feel the current position of the skin/muscles. It also won't be able to give commands to the area to hold its own weight so the areas above it have to compensate - the only other time your brain has felt this sensation was when it was swollen causing a similar stretch on the skin and muscles above.\nAs for Sad Penguin's question - it would feel cold due to lack of response from the nerves telling it how warm it is.\n\nSource: Being weird and thinking too much about this.",
"This is an excellent question. Part of the problem is that anesthetics are not very well understood, so I'm going to start with what I do know and work from there. \n\nLocal anesthetic does not block all nerve receptors. It does block pain receptors but, at least for dental procedures, does not block the nerves responsible for sensing temperature and pressure. One of the consequences of this is that any temperature or pressure sensations that you feel in that area are going to be amplified, because your attention is focused on the weird feeling in your mouth and those feelings are the only ones you can experience. Local anesthetic also increases blood flow to the affected area.\n\nNow we're into educated guessing territory. I believe that there are two reasons why you would feel swelling. The first is that your mouth *is* swelling a small amount because you were just stuck with a needle, and usually that comes with some inflammation. The second is that the increased blood flow to the area would increase the pressure inside your blood vessels, and you would interpret that pressure as swelling. These very small changes seem big because they're the only ones you can feel. \n\nI'm not positive that answer is correct, but I think it makes sense. Please correct me if I'm wrong. :)"
]
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[],
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|
dfyb8j | how are game consoles and other computer devices able to turn themselves off and on again after an update? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dfyb8j/eli5_how_are_game_consoles_and_other_computer/ | {
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"text": [
"The operating system has different code for restart and shutdown options. As long as a device is receiving electricity, it is never truly “off” and data is retained in the chipset. For a restart option, that data is used to initiate the startup sequence, while a shutdown option does not.",
"Well, technically the device is never really powered off. The CPU and the power supply are linked by some input/output lines and so there's some limited control the CPU (via the motherboard) has over the power supply like \"go into low power mode\" or \"go to standby\".... which just keeps the CPU running at slow speed and contents of memory in the RAM and so on. \n\nBut in the case of a reboot for say a Windows update. \n\n- computer operating system downloads the update. \n- inserts commands into its startup scripts to run the new code instead of the old\n- sets a flag at the end of the startup scripts that if it gets to this point it must have worked ok. Otherwise roll back the changes after another reboot. \n- tells self to reboot\n- CPU pretends like its shutting down, powering off and on again\n- follows its startup scripts\n- it worked, removes that flag/check \n\nLiterally there are commands like \"reboot\" or \"shutdown -R 'now'\" to shutdown or reboot the operating system. These in turn end with commands for the CPU to literally turn itself off and on again.",
"The simple answer is that power isn't controlled by a physical ON/OFF switch like electronics had up through the early 2000s. Part of the internal computer ALWAYS has some power as long as it's plugged in. A part of the console's program tells the system which parts of the system to power down and back up. It's all digitally controlled now.",
"There are a few different shutdowns that happen when you shut down your computer, and a few different levels that a computer can be \"off\":\n\n* Physically unpowered: No power cord or no power coming from outlet (sometimes due to a wall switch or a power supply on/off switch). This is the true \"off\" state.\n\n* Powered but shut down: This draws a tiiiiny bit of power that monitors just the power button, and sends a predefined command (held by a really small memory chip, generally) to turn on the power.\n\n* Operating system not loaded: This is the \"boot to bios\" option, where you change things like the CPU clock or clockspeed if you're a power-user. But this is best left alone by 99.9% of users. Generally, if you don't interrupt the BIOS startup sequence (that is a preprogrammed set of steps) it will find your preferred boot media or go through your boot order to find an operating system on the first available storage device (this is why, in older computers, you'd get a \"non-system disk or disk error\" message if you tried to boot up with a disk in your floppy or CD drive; the CD and floppy drives were typically first in the boot order, but if there is nothing in them, it moves to the next. That error is saying that there is a disk there, but the BIOS found nothing that looked like it could be loaded into.)\n\n* Operating system loading/\"booting from disk\"; the BIOS has recognized a storage device with an operating system that it can boot to, and it sends commands to load that OS's boot instructions into RAM to be executed so that the OS can load and let you use the computer as a consumer.\n\n* \"On\": Functional and waiting for you to use it as an end-user.\n\nWhen you \"shut down\" it goes through these stages in reverse, stopping at \"Powered but shut down\"; you have to hit a physical switch for that last bit.\n\nWhat an operating shutdown does is basically take all of the changes you've made to the operating system's initial state, wipe them (except for new installs that go into the OS's load instructions now) and pulls all the data for the OS from the \"fresh\" copy.\n\nBut I digress; when you \"restart\" your computer sends a signal to the bios that says \"I'm going to unload myself from memory, and the last thing I'm going to do is send this signal, when I do, run through startup sequence again, kthx.\" so it gets into that \"Operating system not loaded\" state, and then kicks the BIOS into re-loading the OS, without ever going through the last 2 phases where it's truly without power."
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2es8kr | how do indirect diplomatic negotiations work? | The recent Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire was just brokered via indirect talks in Cairo. How does this work? Did the Egyptians just take what each party said back and forth or is there more to it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2es8kr/eli5_how_do_indirect_diplomatic_negotiations_work/ | {
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"Usually, the Israeli and the Palestinian diplomats talk together in secret (as they usually do), but the presence of the Egyptians allows both sides to not lose face and keep the pretense of \"officially not negotiating with each other.\"\n\nAlthough sometimes, when the relationship between is two parties is *exceptionally bad*, they would do a thing where they camp diplomats from each state in adjacent hotel rooms and a third-party diplomat would spend the entire day carrying messages from one side to the next."
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6l4ajr | when a baby is in the mothers womb, and is developed enough,does it produce human waste from the nutrients the mother provides to it? if so, where does it go or how does the body adapt to that. | Edit: Thank you for all the info! Much appreciated.
Edit: I woke up this morning and was blown away by the amount of answers and popularity this got. Thanks all and Happy 4th! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6l4ajr/eli5_when_a_baby_is_in_the_mothers_womb_and_is/ | {
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"Most fetuses just keep it inside them until they are born, where it is called meconium. If you've ever seen a baby shortly after birth, usually their first bowel movements consist of meconium, which is almost totally oderless and a very sticky texture.",
"Yes. Just a couple of months into their development, little humans begin peeing freely into the amniotic fluid that surrounds them in the womb. Then, foreshadowing all the gross stuff that babies do once they’re born, they’ll consume that urine as they swallow the amniotic fluid. Every last one of us has spent several months drinking our own pee.\n\nIn utero pooping is less common. Fetuses get their nutrients from food that their mothers’ digestive systems have broken down, and the waste from that food stays with mom and is taken care of on her end (Thanks, Mom!). Fetuses do ingest some stuff—mucus, bile, fine fetal hairs called lanugo, cells lining the inside of the womb—that needs to get disposed of, though. All this stuff gets broken down by the fetus’s digestive system and forms a viscous, sticky mass of feces called meconium.\n\nMeconium is almost odorless and mostly sterile. It usually stays in fetuses’ bowels until they’re born, but some kids—around 13 percent—just can’t wait, and let it loose in the womb. This can be a problem, since feces is now floating in the amniotic fluid that the fetus swallows and takes into its lungs, and “meconium-stained amniotic fluid,” as the docs call it, can lead to serious respiratory distress.",
"It's called \"Meconium,\" as u/maaagill said, and babies sometimes do \"poop\" in the womb-- I was a meconium baby as I was born two weeks late because as usual I was too lazy to get up. It's not *super* dangerous for a baby to womb poop but it's not really good, because they can inhale the substance when they breathe on their own for the first time. In this case they put a tube down the baby's throat to suck it out and clear it. It left me with a scratchy voice for a little while :)\n\nEDIT: Since people have been asking, \"a little while\" was as long as six months, according to my mom. I can't really comment since I was an infant, and I can't ask my mom now because we don't speak anymore.\n\nre: twenty comments of \"lololol you ate shit\" yeah I sure fukken did and god almighty can I not wait until you kids go back to middle school in the fall and reddit is full of adults again.",
"My baby expelled meconium as she was coming out. It got alllll over me. We did skin-to-skin and when she finally got lifted off of me, our skin was stuck together from the stuff. I didn't even care. There was no better way to say welcome to motherhood! The doctors were worried that she had pooped in utero but she didn't. Saved it all for me.",
"Yes. As with all placental mammals, food and nutrients go through the placenta to the fetus and fetus waste go back out the same channel, into the mothers blood via the placenta. \n\nEdit* Just to clarify, this is before the fetus gains the ability to excrete waste via other organs. Like excreting carbon dioxide via the lungs or producing its first actual stool, meconium. Maybe that wasn't clear? But it does happen.",
"I'd just like to add that meconium in the amniotic fluid can be a sign of distress in the baby, so if your water goes and it's not clean, go to the hospital immediately. One common reason is the umbilical cord being wrapped around their neck, which may cause blood flow restriction and brain damage, so get it checked out!",
"One thing that I haven't seen mentioned is that the \"urine\" people have mentioned isnt the same urine that you and I have as adults. It's really just amniotic fluid, which has special proteins and such that the baby is constantly swallowing and passing through themselves. This helps them develop throughout gestation. ",
"One more note.. meconium usually comes out shortly after birth because milk or colostrum is a pretty strong laxative. If you see the first poo of a baby that comes out and has a really big drink, they'll put out so much that you'll wonder that they had room for it all. They can actually lose more than 10% of their body weight in the first week even once the milk comes in and they rehydrate. ",
"Direct answer: yes, about 1-in-10 babies (odds are higher for late births) will defecate in the womb. While the baby hasn't eaten anything, they eliminate various stuff (hairs, dead cells, secretions) that the baby accumulates during their development.\n\nHere's story that might be an urban legend :\n\nA woman had just delivered and listens to the neonatal medical staff talking about her child. The mother overhears an unusual word, deciding it would be a good name for the newborn, so she named her kid \"Meconium\"...",
"A couple of other comments concerning peeing and pooping in utero (in the womb):\n\n- Meconium present at birth indicates fetal distress, the baby was stressed by something in the delivery process or shortly before. As has been noted, the stuff is really sticky and if it has been aspirated (inhaled) can lead to breathing difficulties. This can potentially be fatal so meconium at birth is not a good finding.\n\n- If a child fails to produce urine due to malformation of the kidneys or urogenital tract (bladder and urethra) a condition called oligohydramnios occurs. Not only do we \"drink\" our urine as mentioned but we also \"breath\" it in the womb. Babies inhale and exhale amniotic fluid. If there is insufficient amniotic fluid because baby is not peeing, these breathing movements cannot occur normally and the lungs do not develop normally leading to severe problems at birth which can potentially be fatal. In really severe cases of low amniotic fluid because baby is not making urine something called \"Potters sequence\" occurs. \"Potters\" is not someone's name but comes from the fact that the child looks like they had been trapped in a clay pot. They have abnormal development of the lungs because they have no \"breathing\" in the womb (the uterus has squeezed them and restricted this), have abnormal development of the joints in the arms, hands, and legs because they could not move (baby could not kick and move in the womb), and have abnormal appearance of their face because it was smushed by the womb. They may not have the normal lines on the palms of their hands because they could not move them. If severe enough oligohydramnios, the child will not survive due to the failure of the lungs to develop normally, the lungs look \"solid\" and not like \"sponges\" because they little sacs (alveoli) where oxygen adsorption occurs do not develop. Peeing in the womb is REALLY important!",
"Amniotic fluid is about 90% urine. \nSource- my ultrasound tech when I asked if the baby was peeing as she checked his kidneys ",
"I didn't see this mentioned. Forgive me if someone has already mentioned this. For the majority of gestation, waste products are passed back to the placenta via the umbilical cord. There, the waste is transferred into the mother's blood stream, and her body processes it. ",
"I've always wondered if ancients left the meconium on the babies skin to protect it from urine and stool as they couldn't clean it off as readily. Maybe its tar-like nature would be a super skin protectant! Oh, and amniotic fluid is sterile unless the bag is ruptured. When people talk about dry birth, that's an old term--they are talking about a point of time when the placenta is not working and providing the baby nutrients to produce urine. ",
"Kind of, but it doesn't poop until it's out of the womb and the poop isn't really poop. It's just bonus nutrients from the mother. In some cultures they rub the poop on their face or even eat it. "
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3ak5e6 | what happens when windows 10 is released and how does it work? | I've "saved my spot" so to speak.
1. Where do all my things go when I upgrade?
2. How is it going to work for pirated users?
3. Will it ask me if I want to upgrade or will they do it automatically?
4. Is it actually free? There's been speculation of Microsoft tricking us (I'm skeptical, but it felt worthwhile to ask) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ak5e6/eli5_what_happens_when_windows_10_is_released_and/ | {
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"1) Personal files, programs etc should be untouched. \n\n2) They either wont get it, or it will download and install, just not function until they buy a legit license key.\n\n3) You can change the settings of it, but it will download automatically (I think), and then ask you whether you wont to install it. It wont do it without warning you.\n\n4) If you have a legitimate key then yes, it's free. It's cheaper and easier for Microsoft and other developers to only have to work on one OS, so that's their bonus for doing it, it's easier for them than having people use 7, 8 and 8.1.",
"Based on how win7 to 8 upgrade worked:\n\n1. Installer will run check against all installed software and show warning about software that will probably not work on win10. All your documents, programs and users will be untouched, installer will replace only windows part.\n\n2. It will probably ask for a legit key or will allow you to install it anyway. \n\n3. For win8 it was a custom installer you ran manually. Probably will be the same.\n\n4. Yes. No hidden stuff. There were speculations about \"1 year free\" - but that's just misinterpretation."
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4v1812 | what, ethically not legally, constitues hate speech? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4v1812/eli5_what_ethically_not_legally_constitues_hate/ | {
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"I don't think \"hate speech\" is an ethical category, in the sense that the classification of \"second degree murder\" isn't an ethical topic. \"Don't kill people\" might be an ethical axiom, but the technical line of what constitutes that specific charge isn't part of ethics.",
"You cannot really have hate speech as an ethics category. What would be considered hateful under one set of ethics could be considered neutral in another, or even beneficial in some. This is why legislating against hate speech needs to be limited, and it is best use it as an amplifier for existing criminal offenses than to make it an offense on its own. "
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81cvqb | how do governments make trade deals with other governments? | The governments of the world surely don’t own enough property to make all the trade deals that are made, so what actually happens when these deals occur? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/81cvqb/eli5_how_do_governments_make_trade_deals_with/ | {
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"Most trades happen between companies in the two countries. Diplomats, bureaucrats and politicians may attend these negotiations to help out but they do not have the authority to sign the trade deal on behalf of the company. But all trades are subject to the laws of the country. Especially when there are multiple countries with their own legislation and export/import specific legislation it can become difficult to find a trade deal. There may be different standards for measuring the quality of the product for instance or standards for how the products should be packaged and shipped, as well as of course tax rates and tariffs. Government officials can help by providing clarifications of their interpretation of the legislation and politicians can change the laws if needed.\n\nHowever when you see big \"trade deals\" between two or more countries it is often the case that there are no actual trades in the deals at all. Diplomats and officials can get together and sort out all the issues with the different sets of laws even before any companies have started negotiations. This will help companies that later on wants to do the trade as most of the legal issues have already been solved. It is quite common that such trade deals does require changes in the laws and therefore have to go though all countries parliament to be accepted.",
"A governmental trade deal isn't the kind of trade deal you're thinking of. It isn't that one government says, \"We have 40 million chickens we want to export, and we're looking for rubber and industrial machinery, what can you offer?\" and the other side responds, \"We only want 20 million chickens, and we can provide some rubber and some HVAC parts, but we also want to sell some steel, how do you feel about that?\" and so forth.\n\nInstead, governmental trade deals change the terms by which private parties in the two countries are allowed to trade, generally in such a way as to encourage more private trading to happen. This generally involves some combination of:\n\n* Tariffs, aka import and export taxes. If two countries impose taxes on certain goods they import or export, they might agree as part of a trade deal to lower some of those, encouraging trade in those goods between their countries.\n* Regulation alignment. If two countries make it so their regulations on a class of goods are the same, it encourages trading. For example, the EU doesn't allow a number of the agricultural practices commonly practiced in the US, which means the US can't export food products using those practices to the EU. The US can (indeed, frequently does) try to agree to a trade deal with the EU in which the EU agrees to drop their regulations preventing those practices.\n* Removal of other non-tariff barriers to trade. This can include import or export quotas (including complete bans), local-sourcing laws, domestic subsidies, slow import processing, and so forth.\n\nBy doing this, it makes it easier or more profitable for the private parties of the two countries to trade with each other, thus increasing trade between them."
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2lu3by | why do we grit our teeth when lifting something heavy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lu3by/eli5_why_do_we_grit_our_teeth_when_lifting/ | {
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"When lifting a heavy object quite often the body's response is to use as many muscles as possible to spread out the distribution of the load. I would assume that the muscles in our jaw is one of those muscles that likes to jump in and help even though it's not really necessary."
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9n1swp | what did people use home pcs for in the 70s and early 80s? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9n1swp/eli5_what_did_people_use_home_pcs_for_in_the_70s/ | {
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"We got our first home computer in 1981.\n\nI was in junior high, so I used it for games, and word processing for homework -- papers and such. My dad used a spreadsheet program for some things, and I also used it to learn how to program on it.\n\nBy 1983, we had a modem and we were doing things like connecting to BBSs and commercial online services like CompuServe for discussion forums, downloading software, research and whatnot.",
"It was a mix of hobbyists and people who had some kind of business related reason to have one. Word processing and spreadsheet applications for bookkeeping were both a big part of the early appeal of owning a computer.",
"first computer I got was in the 80s. used it for games and homework. Also tried to teach myself programming ",
"The earliest PCs, which are from the early 1980s, were mostly useful for mathematical/scientific tasks, since they had very limited functionality.\n\nOnes from the mid-to later 1980s had a lot more things they could do. [Here's an example!](_URL_0_) Pretty much the same things we would use them for now, except for the internet--word processing, accounting/keeping track of finances, games.\n\nI'm 30, and my house had a computer in it from when I was very young. It was the early 90s, not the 80s, but I remember writing assignments on it for class, playing games, both educational and not, and learning basic programming (my dad taught me how to write a program in QBASIC that asked me math problems and then told me whether I was right or wrong)\n\n",
"When I was learning to read in elementary school, my sister turned me on to her collection of Star Trek books - thus making me a Trekkie. Along come the early '80s & Commodore had Captain Kirk himself (Bill Shatner) do a [couple](_URL_0_) of [ads](_URL_1_). SOLD!\n\nThe computer didn't come with any way to store (or retrieve stored) programs or data - lesson one. I wound up typing in a game in the back of the manual that didn't work at first - \"SYNTAX ERROR\" messages with a line number from the program taught me about errors from mistyping, a.k.a. lessons two & three (typing & bugs). Once I got that program working (many hours invested), the power was left on as long as I could get away with it because I had no way to store it. Mom didn't like the wasted power so I wound up re-entering that program a few times. Within a couple months I had a datasette drive (dedicated tape recorder for Commodore computers).\n\nI started semi-regularly getting 2-3 magazines that contained programs for me to type in. The inevitable mis-keys eventually taught me to not only type better (although I never truly trusted myself enough to become a proper touch-typist), but also how computers \"thought\" as I hunted down the less obvious bugs - those that didn't keep the program from running necessarily, but did keep it from working as expected. This taught me a LOT about thinking logically - especially as I progressed into assembly/machine language (the former being just a more human-readable version of the latter, and is really the most basic level of a computer).\n\nThe early home computers gave the user full control over every single thing the computer did and it was a feeling of power you just haven't had with computers after the 80's. The control over the machine started being taken away by layers of abstraction meant to simplify, automate, generalize, and - later - secure the system. It certainly made a lot of things easier and better, but also removed the intimate relationship you had with the hardware because you can no longer (or at least not easily) directly access it.\n\nIf we still had to write programs now the way we did back then:\n+ There would be far fewer hardware options, because the market just wouldn't support them all (look at the home console crash of '83).\n+ Programs would easily take *at least* ten times longer to write, although there'd be far fewer bugs because it cost too much to distribute patches without the internet so the programs were pretty thoroughly vetted before going out the door.\n+ The programs would be *insanely* faster if written at (or near for you 'C' language fans) the machine language level.\n+ The amount of memory and storage required would be significantly less to do the same things.\n\netc., etc. It was a very different environment and it definitely had its advantages, so it's understandable why those of us who lived through it miss it.",
"My mom taught keyboarding (typing) as a high school course so she had to stay ahead of the technology. Word processing, spreadsheets, and some accounting in our house, plus I had some games on floppy. Mom typed diaries of our lives at probably 120 words per minute (I wish I were kidding), printed them on our dot matrix printer, and now has a foot high stack for each of us.... oh gosh. \n\n My dad is an engineer and did CAD drafting on it, but that was more in the 90's"
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5wz54m | why do oysters create pearls and yet other shellfish don't? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wz54m/eli5why_do_oysters_create_pearls_and_yet_other/ | {
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"They do. Oyster pearls are just the highest quality because they're so round. [Here's one produced by T. gigas, which is a clam.](_URL_1_) [These ones came from scallops](_URL_2_) and [these aren't really pearls but a pearl like production from a snail.](_URL_0_)"
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1yuiif | why do you sign the back of credit cards? aren't you showing a thief how to forge it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yuiif/eli5_why_do_you_sign_the_back_of_credit_cards/ | {
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"The thief can also order a new card in your name and swipe away. The signature on the back proves that you ordered and authorized the card.",
"The idea is that when you receive the card, you sign it with your signature.\n\nWhen you make a payment, you repeat that signature and the seller compares the two signatures and goes \"yeah close enough\" or \"wait this is not correct\".\n\nSince all sellers are excellent at comparing signatures in the short time they have between seeing the card and the signature, this prevented abuse for a long time. NOT.\n",
"Your signature is used in three different ways:\n\n* To let the merchant confirm that you are the owner of the card by comparing your signature on the receipt with the one on the card.\n* To let the credit card company confirm that the merchant checked the signature by comparing your signature on the receipt with the one they have on file.\n* To let you argue that you didn't make a purchase if the signature on the receipt doesn't match your real signature.\n\nIf you do sign the card and a thief is good at forgery, then the merchant and credit card company might both think you authorized the purchase, but a more careful analysis would still likely reveal the forgery.\n\nIf you don't sign the card, and a thief steals it and signs it themselves, then the merchant will think the signature is correct. However, you or the credit card company can come back and claim that the merchant didn't check properly because the signature doesn't match what they have on file.\n\nSo not signing the card might protect you a little in some cases, but it dramatically increases the harm to the merchant.\n\nThese days with chip and PIN, signatures don't matter as much. Also some credit card companies will now print the signature they have on file on your credit card, which helps avoid this problem."
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4d6gej | what is going on in nevada's dnc race, and how does it affect the final result? | Everything I'm reading is a clusterfuck of information that is tricky to decipher. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4d6gej/eli5_what_is_going_on_in_nevadas_dnc_race_and_how/ | {
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"It's a caucus, there's 3 stages. Hillary won the first stage. Not enough of her people showed up for round 2 so sanders people filled in the missing spots gaining him the victory so far. Round 3 yet to come"
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1sja3z | in asian countries it's customary to remove ones shoes before entering the house. it's seems like a very common sense and practical thing to do. and yet in america most people wear their shoes in their home. why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sja3z/eli5_in_asian_countries_its_customary_to_remove/ | {
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3,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Everyone in Alaska takes their shoes off when going into a house",
"I wouldn't call it common sense and the only time it would be practical is if the goal of taking off your shoes is to keep tracks off your floors. \nOtherwise, when there is no qualifier such as keeping the house clean or preventing tracks, people are free to wear or not wear shoes. \nPeople may or may not care about wearing shoes in the house, so the problem would never arise. \nIn the same sense that it does no harm to take them off, it does no harm to leave them on.",
"It's polite to take your shoes off when going into someone elses house. They will normally tell you not to bother if they don't mind you wearing them",
"It stems from classical Asian (particularly Chinese) thought and perceptions on order. \"Inside\" is separate from \"outside.\" \"Inside\" is clean and orderly while \"outside\" is dirty (this also helps explain why it's viewed as OK in many Asian city for small children to go the bathroom in the gutter, for adults to spit on the sidewalks, trash in the alleys, etc... Outside's just dirty) Naturally, when you transition from \"outside\" to \"inside\" you want to remove the dirty shoes and change into your \"clean\" slippers. ",
"It's less and less common now, in fact I wouldn't even say \"most\" Americans do it nowadays. People from places like Texas are most likely to keep their shoes on because there's no rain or snow to mess up the indoor carpeting and the hot weather tend to make feet smell. \n\nYou often see people on TV keeping their shoes on, but even in Asian TV shows they don't intentionally show people removing their shoes because it breaks the spontaneity of actions. ",
"You walk in public bathrooms in your shoes. So, I like people to take them off when they walk into my house.",
" > yet in America most people wear their shoes in their home. Why?\n\nPossibly they just haven't been exposed to the idea. Everyone I know who understood why you would want to take off shoes before coming in, has adopted the practice. Those who haven't, either didn't understand why you'd want to do it,or were simply never informed that such a thing exists.\n\ntl;dr - Me and my friends all take our shoes off at the door. So I'm not sure I agree that \"most\" people don't do it. Maybe nobody ever told them it could be done."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
7fvr1g | why do we call it cyber monday? i get black friday, why cyber monday? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7fvr1g/eli5why_do_we_call_it_cyber_monday_i_get_black/ | {
"a_id": [
"dqenwf0"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Well cyber, as in on the internet, and Monday because it takes place on a Monday. The reason as to why it doesn't take place on Saturday or Sunday is, I presume, because they want to give customers a chance to get over the mass amount of money they spent on the past friday"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
bv1jvz | why does air feel like it is moving faster in front of fan and slower behind it | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bv1jvz/eli5_why_does_air_feel_like_it_is_moving_faster/ | {
"a_id": [
"epk50ti"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"The air is moving slower behind the fan because the fan sucks in air from more directions than the directions it pushes outwards.\n\nImagine a funnel. The level of liquid above the funnel nozzle goes down slower than the the speed of the liquid leaving it. However, volume is conserved."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
ep4ccu | how can a metals be both a good conductor of thermal energy and a good heat shield? aluminum, for example is use both as a heat sink and to keep food hot. | Aluminum is used in heat sinks but will also insulate hot food. Why doesn't it conduct the heat out of the food and cool it off instead of keeping it hot?
Edit: Title is a grammatical mess, sorry. I Couldn't find a way to edit it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ep4ccu/eli5_how_can_a_metals_be_both_a_good_conductor_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"feh1sh1",
"fehhuai"
],
"score": [
10,
2
],
"text": [
"Aluminum is also a good reflector of energy. When it is being used as a heatsink it is thick and directly attached to whatever it is drawing heat from. When used as a reflector it is thin and usually placed in between the heat source and whatever you are protecting from the heat.\n\nWhen keeping food warm the foil is mostly keeping steam and hot air from escaping. Aluminum is used here mostly because it is cheap, impermeable and can be made into a thin foil, not due to the thermal properties of the materiel.",
"It's important to remember the three types of heat transfer: convection, conduction, and radiation. \n\n* A heatsink needs to be a good conductor of heat, so that it can conduct it away from the item it is in direct contact with.\n* Depending on the circumstance, food usually cools off primarily through convection. Any solid matter that prevents airflow will impede convection.\n* The sun or a campfire warm you through radiation. Any opaque matter will impede radiation, so a thin sheet of anything, including aluminum, paper, wood, whatever, will produce a shading effect and keep you cooler."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
6o8iig | how come we can hear ourself blowing on the headphone's microphone when on the phone or recording while we can't when we aren't? | It's probably a dumb question but I still wanted to know the answer.
Btw, English is not my language, if there's any grammar mistake, sorry! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6o8iig/eli5_how_come_we_can_hear_ourself_blowing_on_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"dkfd9c8"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Your ears are not in front of your mouth. The microphone (which act as your ears) are in front of your mouth so you hear the sound of the air rushing out of your mouth.\n\nHope that helps"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
1dcrml | the differences between gangs and governments | After answering my question about checks and balances, my dad said that government is very much like a gang. The only difference is that governments have more guns and men to point them. The skype call dropped at this point. I don't get this. I thought government use law instead of violence. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dcrml/eli5_the_differences_between_gangs_and_governments/ | {
"a_id": [
"c9p2rie",
"c9p31vl",
"c9p4791",
"c9p4ql2"
],
"score": [
4,
4,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"It's not. Your father is playing with words to make himself sound more profound. A gang does not require \"guns\" or \"violence\". \"Gang\" is just a word that means \"a group of people\", that is colloquially associated with low income individuals who band together to hurt people for their own betterment or economic profit. A government is nothing like that. You could make the argument that a gang and government is somewhat like a mafia though.",
"It's a fundamental truth that laws are enforced through the threat of punishment. If you refuse to pay your taxes long enough, people come and take your stuff away or you go to jail. If you break a law, you get arrested and tried and you have to carry out some kind of sentence. If you try to get out of that sentence you are punished.\n\nIt's a bit cynical to say government is very much like a gang - for one thing, gangs are not **accountable**. If I, as a gang leader, come to every house on the street demanding money and threatening to take your stuff otherwise, there isn't a lot you can do.\n\nIn a democracy, if a politician creates a law you consider unfair, you can try to stop them being elected next time around.\n\nAnother key thing government has is **legitimacy**. A gang has power because it is the biggest, toughest gang around. Government (in a democracy at least) has power because the electorate *voted* for it. That means that the people said to government \"We hereby grant you the right to make decisions about taxes, foreign policy, the army, crime and whatever else for us. We give you certain powers over our lives\". \n\nAnother thing that separates Government from Gangs is that most governments are restrained in their powers by some kind of Bill of Rights or codified constitution. A gang can do anything that it is physically able to achieve. If a gang wants to set your house on fire, it can do that if it has enough petrol and you don't have enough water to put it out. Most governments, on the other hand, can't make laws that stop you from expressing your opinion or wearing purple or eating celery because they have limitations on what they are allowed to do.",
"Government: you willingly put them there.",
"Gangs kill people, steals, sells drugs and everything else that is illegal. Government is here to help you."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
ejh2uh | why do certain materials/surfaces always feel 'cool to the touch' at room temperature (like glass/granite) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ejh2uh/eli5_why_do_certain_materialssurfaces_always_feel/ | {
"a_id": [
"fcxme3x",
"fcxpnfl"
],
"score": [
8,
3
],
"text": [
"These materials have a higher heat capacity than \"warm to the touch\" materials like wood.\n\nYour body doesn't actually sense temperature, it senses heat flow. When you touch a granite object the granite doesn't warm very fast (high heat capacity) so you detect a high heat flow = > cold. When you touch a wood object that's at exactly the same temperature, you warm the outer layer of wood, which is insulated from the rest of the mass by trapped air (low heat capacity) so you detect a low heat flow = > warm.",
"Our bodies produce more heat than they need, and so are constantly venting heat to the atmosphere. Your sense of how hot or cold something is is less based on absolute temperature and more based on how quickly heat is drawn away from your body.\n\nAir is a poor conductor of heat and has a low heat capacity, meaning it doesn't draw heat away from your body and itself heats up relatively quickly (further slowing the heat draw). Granite, glass, water, and other materials, conversely, can absorb a lot of heat, and do so very quickly. Even if granite is the same temperature as air, it will absorb a lot more heat, and faster, than air can, so it feels cooler to you (because it's actually cooling your skin down faster)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
22250n | why do they always announce the dow, nasdaq & s & p on the news/radio programs? what does it all mean? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22250n/eli5why_do_they_always_announce_the_dow_nasdaq_sp/ | {
"a_id": [
"cgilzad"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Those are stock market averages. They indicate the general performance of the stock market."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3zcsho | is there any difference in gravity or any other odd things that happen at the north/south poles? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zcsho/eli5_is_there_any_difference_in_gravity_or_any/ | {
"a_id": [
"cyl2n5u",
"cyl3bbh"
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text": [
"Technically, there should be a difference in gravity at any given point on earth since they are all at different distances from the center of earth. There is also a phenomenon we're the needle of a compass will supposedly spin around in circles. I have yet to test this personally so I cannot be certain. ",
"The Earth has a bulge at the equator because it is spinning. The force of gravity does vary over the surface of the Earth. Partly this is due to the density and thickness of the rocks at different parts. The force of gravity was carefully mapped by the US to be able to target with guided missiles more accurately.\n\nAt the Earth's magnetic poles which are located away from the physical poles the lines of magnetic force are vertical to the ground. Charged particles come into the atmosphere in line with these lines of force creating the Aurora Borealis."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
6v3f72 | what gives rust it's rusty smell? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6v3f72/eli5_what_gives_rust_its_rusty_smell/ | {
"a_id": [
"dlxd7ah"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Iron. Iron oxide is formed when iron oxidizes in the presence of water and air. Particulates of rust fall away and are small enough to easily become airborne, and you inhale them. \n\nYour blood contains iron, and it's very common for people who happen to taste their own blood (like at a trip to the dentist), to say it tastes the way rust smells."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
22kkb6 | what is the connection between wealth and sports like tennis, golf, and crew? | Edit: accidentally called golf a sport. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22kkb6/eli5_what_is_the_connection_between_wealth_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"cgnq5yz",
"cgnqah2"
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text": [
"They were the original preferred sports of the original idle rich, at least during this century. Before the amateur sport movement of the turn of the 20th century, only the ridiculously rich had the time to even think of doing something physical that wasn't manual labor. They also require large chunks of open, manicured land (or waterway,) which the plebes also had no access to.",
"TL;DR Expensive land and expensive equipment"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
28w5ek | why does wet nail polish dry so quickly when you spray pam (cooking spray) on your nails? | I found a tip online that if you spray Pam on your finger nails with wet polish and then set your fingers in cold water for maybe 30 seconds your nails will dry faster than just letting them air dry. It seems to work great! Why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28w5ek/eli5_why_does_wet_nail_polish_dry_so_quickly_when/ | {
"a_id": [
"cif10b2",
"cif1kbb"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"I don't think it has so much to do with drying quicker, as apposed to providing a protective layer. It's either that, or the propellant;, but the only way to test that theory is using canned air....",
"Woah, does this really work? How fast will the nails dry using your method? \n\nI've stopped painting my nails because they always seem to mess up in the long drying period. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
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