q_id
stringlengths 5
6
| title
stringlengths 3
296
| selftext
stringlengths 0
34k
| document
stringclasses 1
value | subreddit
stringclasses 1
value | url
stringlengths 4
110
| answers
dict | title_urls
sequence | selftext_urls
sequence | answers_urls
sequence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
uxvr9 | european bailouts | Where does the money come from? How is it supposed to fix the problem? What's there to hold countries accountable? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/uxvr9/eli5_european_bailouts/ | {
"a_id": [
"c4zvngc"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"the money is borrowed by way of government bonds (a bond is just a money loan for governments) backed by the future work of non-government workers (taxes). germany can borrow money cheaper than the countries in debt so they borrow it, it also comes from other workers' taxes around the world via the IMF, plus the european central bank is busy printing new money. the people in the countries that receive the money have to pay it back with interest.\n\nit fixes the problem because the money goes to places like french and german banks who bought bonds from countries like greece, spain, ireland but now can't pay the money back. the banks shouldn't have leant the money to these countries, but because governments depend on their banks they will not let their banks fail so they transfer money from the people to the banks.\n\nin the end the markets will hold these countries/banks accountable because they won't be able to pay the interest on the debt (bonds) nevermind the debt itself. when that happens the whole of europe will be bankrupt and the game goes to the US where they have the biggest debt the world has ever seen ..."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
931inx | is there a reason cows have to be milked so goddamn early in the morning? will their utters explode if they’re not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/931inx/eli5_is_there_a_reason_cows_have_to_be_milked_so/ | {
"a_id": [
"e3a0xqa"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"When the udders are full and not emptied, it triggers a release of a hormone that slows/stops the production of milk. A calf would naturally feed several times during the day, milking simulates that.\n\nJust like with humans, a woman who stops breast feeding or pumping regularly will stop lactating"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
30fzsp | ignoring party lines, why is it that people are always so hung up on lowering taxes in order to fix the economy when historically it has very rarely worked and often caused a larger deficit? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30fzsp/eli5_ignoring_party_lines_why_is_it_that_people/ | {
"a_id": [
"cps2vr2",
"cps2y1h",
"cps8dkv",
"cpshd6r"
],
"score": [
39,
8,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Because people want to pay less money to the government, and are quite willing to forget any facts that get in their way.",
"Confirmation bias. Plenty of people want lower taxes. Narratives like supply-side economics feed into that idea and thus get disproportional support. ",
"Because government pisses away money. It is the least efficient way to accomplish any given activity, short of monopoly (which is pretty much the same thing), and only leads to larger budgets and more piss. ",
"There is something called a Laffer Curve that comes from a study of tax rates v total collected taxes. The study showed that if the tax rate was too high, then the total collected taxes would actually raise if taxes were decreased. This study/idea was adopted and implemented by Reagan and became a cornerstone of Reaganomics. When implemented in the US, it actually did increase the total collected taxes when the rate was lowered. However, a false assumption is that by always lowering the taxes, more is collected. There exists an optimal tax rate where the most tax is collected.\n\nMore info for those interested: _URL_0_\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.bankableinsight.com/higher-revenues-with-lower-taxes-the-laffer-curve-explained.html"
]
] |
||
279wux | what's that wubwub sound i sometimes hear when i put my head on my pillow? | I can't hear it if I lift my head...it kind of sounds like the walls are vibrating. Probably something that's on in the house, but I've never been sure. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/279wux/eli5_whats_that_wubwub_sound_i_sometimes_hear/ | {
"a_id": [
"chyrden"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Hard to tell, but it's likely your pulse. The blood rushing through an artery near your ear drum."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
1soii5 | why are gears more efficient than just having the motor/speed axle located directly on the wheel itself? basically, why aren't cars like fixies? | Seems like having the power source axle directly located on the wheel would result in more speed, hence they'll be a loss of energy going through the gears.
Thanks | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1soii5/eli5why_are_gears_more_efficient_than_just_having/ | {
"a_id": [
"cdzmfn8",
"cdzn2ex"
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text": [
"Combustion engines operate efficiently at a fairly narrow range of speeds. A gear system (transmission) allows you to drive the car at a wide variety of speeds without leaving the efficient range of engine speeds. \n\nElectric motors can be attached directly to wheels, and often are.",
"Car engines have to be able to move cars over a very wide range of speeds. The problem is that engines only work well within a certain range of rpms, too slow and they stall, too fast and the engine no longer works effectively. This is just like your legs when bicycling, they work well when you pedal at a certain rate, too slow and it feels like you're \"mashing\" the pedals, too fast and your legs just can't keep up. \n\nThe gears in a transmission let a car (or bicycle) move at many different speeds while the engine (or legs) can keep turning at the speed that works best for it. A perfect transmission would allow the engine to always turn at the same speed (its most efficient speed) and the transmission would adjust the speed at which the wheels turn (this kind of transmission exists and is called a continuously variable transmission, but in practice has its own problems).\n\nFixies (or single speed bicycles) are acceptable because fixed gear bicycles don't tend to have to work over the same range of speeds that cars do, and our legs tend to work better at low rpms than car engines."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
eknuik | not looking for political tit for tat, just an easy to understand explanation or link for presidential powers when it comes to declaring war against another country. thanks! 🙏🏼 | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eknuik/eli5_not_looking_for_political_tit_for_tat_just/ | {
"a_id": [
"fdcp8u3",
"fdcp94k"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"The President is the commander in chief of the military, but the Constitution grants Congress the sole power to declare war.\n\nThat being said the US has not officially been at war since the WW2.\n\nSince then the US has had several \"police actions\", “targeted actions,” “a systematic campaign,” or a “sustained counter-terrorism strategy” but not a war.\n\nEven calling it \"The War on terror\" and the \"War against Drugs\" did not result in a formal declaration of war.\n\nStipulations in the Geneva convention make formal declarations of war a sticky business.\n\nFurthermore in 1973 following the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam Congress passed the War powers resolution meant to restrict the Presidents ability to deploy troops without the approval of Congress.\n\nAlthough never formally tested in the courts the Act has in practice means that the President has been allowed to deploy forces as he sees fit so long as he asks Congress's permission before or after the fact.\n\nBasically the Presidents office has repeatedly started or responded to conflicts without a formal declaration of war throughout the 20th and 21st century and Congress has rarely put up a fight against it.",
"Only the US Congress has the Constitutional authority to declare war. But the president is the Commander in Chief of the armed forces, and has pretty broad powers as such. \n \nThere is a [law](_URL_0_) that is intended to keep the president from going too far in committing the US to hostile actions without the consent of Congress. But it is kind of hard to enforce, particularly if the president has at least one house of Congress kissing his ass."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution"
]
] |
||
3bt7vj | why did gambling prosper in las vegas? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bt7vj/eli5_why_did_gambling_prosper_in_las_vegas/ | {
"a_id": [
"csp9u2c",
"cspa3m1"
],
"score": [
2,
4
],
"text": [
"NOT Las Vegas, you mean Paradise.\n\nAnd probably because it is almost a one-of-a-kind thing, where else in the world is there an ENTIRE almost-state devoted to ONLY gambling? \n\nIt's almost at the same level as a Great Wonder of the World.\n",
"In short, the Italian Mafia made Vegas the way it is today. In greater detail, it started as the next \"happening\" tourist destination after the Great Depression and two World Wars had passed. The idea of a place as massive and luxurious as Vegas existing in the middle of the desert, i.e. a harsh and inhospitable place like the arid regions of Nevada was viewed as a feat of engineering and commerce. To add to its exotic appeal, huge amounts of gambling sites were added after its construction and several resorts had towers that allowed patrons to watch nearby military outposts testing artillery and nuclear devices, something practically no other place in the United state could hope to match.\n\nBut even before the Mafia and other criminal syndicates began rooting themselves into the economy and politics of Nevada and, by consequence, Las Vegas, many prostiutuion rings found Vegas to be an exceptionally easy area from which to garner profits due to a combination of easily bribed local law enforcement and the sheer number of tourists looking for cheap quickies. The crimelords of Vegas did not show up to overtake Vegas' racketeering and sexual service operations until drugs became more widespread as a result of the Mexican marijuana trade booming only a few years after the second World War ended and more globalized economic opportunities presented themselves. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
1set1j | why can't i buy a domain name? | For instance, from registrars, you can only "lease" domains, but they actually need to be renewed after a certain amount of time. Why don't these registrars offer a domain selling service, where you get the domain name permanently? And if that is not possible, why not offer a service to " buy" a domain with free renewals? Who gives the registars the authority to lease domains and charge a fee to renew them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1set1j/eli5_why_cant_i_buy_a_domain_name/ | {
"a_id": [
"cdwvdas"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"All domains are actually registered by ICANN which maintains a list that basically says who owns what. These services, like GoDaddy, are acting as a middle-man by just taking down the information you give them and registering them with ICANN itself. This is because ICANN is a very small organization for what it does and does not want to deal with costumers itself. I imagine you can not buy a domain forever as they wish to make sure domains do not eventually all get used up. \n\nICANN was established by the US government to do this. Previously the US government controlled the internet as they primarily created it. Once they opened it up to the public did ICANN, a non-profit take over. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
c4oh7g | how come apple and samsung, amd and intel, sony and microsoft, tv manufacturers, etc, are reaching the same technology breakthroughs at roughly the same time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c4oh7g/eli5_how_come_apple_and_samsung_amd_and_intel/ | {
"a_id": [
"erxikzs",
"erxj5pv",
"erxjfaz",
"erxntod",
"erxv0nc",
"ery9qs9"
],
"score": [
18,
46,
7,
3,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Industrial espionage and patent infringement coupled with logical next steps based on current technology being achieved in parallel by different companies. Also, many so called \"breakthroughs\" are based on marketing not whether the technology is new or innovative. Many so called breakthroughs were well understood for many years and only added into production items when costs allowed profit or because a rival used that tech and now they need to keep up with the Jones.",
"All have huge R & D budgets\n\nAll use the same market research to plan their next R & D.\n\nR & D is rarely faster if you just pump more money into it. \n\nAll have similarly (but subtantially) skilled engineers. \n\nSo, all are basically doing the same research, with the same market data, with equally smart people, with the same top-of-the-line equipment. \n\nSo all get to the breakthrough at roughly the same time.",
"These companies rarely make everything they produce by themselves, and the development of new products is more often based on the parts they can buy than what features they can add. The most obvious one is display panels. It's not uncommon for phone manufacturers (or even TV manufacturers) to buy their display panels from elsewhere. As a result, multiple manufacturers can sell pretty much the same product.\n\nIn the case of AMD vs Intel, it's because they don't own big semiconducter foundries. They get their chips made by someone else. And these foundries, in turn, are driven by what equipment is available. This means they have about the same amount of silicon to work with on each processor.",
"In addition to things mentioned in the other posts, a lot of development is coming from research teams at universities that spin off into small companies. They then license their new technology or partner to the big companies.",
"amd and intel are chip companies. they have breakthroughs whenever it is possible to create smaller conductor tracks on chip dies, because there is more room than that means more complex structures and less energy. apple, samsung and sony rely on these new chips because they use mostly the same chips and the chips are at the same level of technology, they have their breaktroughs at the same time. also with gaming consoles if you take sony and ms.",
"Academic research is available to the public (for a price). The scientists mover around (for a price). Once it's been done once you can copy it, patent applications contain tips - if you can get round the patent you can profit from its information."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2nk9iz | why do best friends usually use insult humor as a way of bonding? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nk9iz/eli5_why_do_best_friends_usually_use_insult_humor/ | {
"a_id": [
"cmeey64",
"cmehklt"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"You don't use it to bond, you use it to TEST the bond. \"You little shit\" to a stranger is an insult, to a best friend is not, and \"no reaction\" is a reaction that proves a bond is strong enough to withstand it. Basicly it's like stepping on thin ice - first you tap, then you test with one leg, then with half the weight, then whole weight, then you walk on it, then jump on it and then you bring your car, house and children on it. If I can have trust in our bond, I feel close to you, so if an insult can't break it, then trust is stronger, hence friendship is stronger.",
"A lot of the time the \"insults\" are really hidden compliments in a weird way. (Like the opposite of a backhanded compliment.)\n\nFor example:\n\nSimon pulls up in his new car: a flashy Audi. I say \"Hey, Colin. Compensating for something?\" What I mean is: \"That is one very nice car.\"\n\nWhen I say: \"Well, if they need test subjects we can just hand over Simon. He has every STD going\" what I mean is: \"Simon is getting laid a lot.\"\n\nWhen I say during a game: \"You conniving, two-faced BASTARD\" what I mean is: \"That was a really well played bluff, that got me hook, line and sinker.\"\n\nWhen I say: \"Yeah, but on the other hand *you* like the Twilight films\" what I really mean is ... okay that one is just an insult, but in my defence I am trying to help him."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
5bgprb | what actually stops online games from being played cross platform? | I'm curious after seeing the CoD game being refunded because people who bought it on one platform couldn't play with everybody else. Are the games that different when played on different hardware? Are consoles more different than, say, a cheap laptop and a huge gaming rig? What gives? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5bgprb/eli5_what_actually_stops_online_games_from_being/ | {
"a_id": [
"d9ochy0",
"d9oergt",
"d9orgph",
"d9ow5bo"
],
"score": [
10,
22,
2,
4
],
"text": [
"Business and licensing issues. Also, sometimes players from other platforms (for example, PC players and console players on FPS games) might have a slight advantage.",
"Between Console and PC, PC players have the advantage of being able to use the much more precise mouse input, which would lead to very lopsided skill levels for the most common games. Between consoles, Microsoft forces developers to host online games on first-party servers which you can't access from other consoles (I think Nintendo does this too). Playstation is the only console that has ever support cross-platform online, but the only example that comes to mind wasn't even between the same game: EVE Online and Dust 514 took place within the same servers but you couldn't directly interact with the players of EVE from the PS3.",
"There are significant technical differences between versions of a game developed for different platforms. But as has been alluded to in other replies, even if you work out those technical differences, there are only a handful of games where cross-platform play is healthy.\n\nThere are countless stories of competitive games released cross-platform, especially shooters, where the PC players had an insurmountable advantage because of the superior speed and precision of the mouse and keyboard compared to console controllers.",
"Technically, often nothing.\n\nSome games such as Final Fantasy XIV are cross platform. I can play FF XIV on either my PS4 or my PC. I use the same account with the same characters and play in the same world as others. Notably though, FF XIV on the PS4 does support mouse and keyboard gameplay.\n\nCompetitive games need to be kept balanced in order to maintain fairness. Permitting cross-platform play between players on a PC with a mouse and keyboard and players on consoles with controllers would result in an inherently unfair advantage for the PC players. Cross platform experiments pitting the best console players against mediocre PC players have consistently resulted in the console players losing dramatically.\n\nCross-generation gameplay presents its own technical difficulties as well. There may be significant gameplay differences in terms of game scale and game logic between releases of the same game on the PS3 and PS4. For example, a multiplayer map may be larger on the PS4 release and thus render cross-generation play impossible.\n\nNothing at all is technically preventing a developer from incorporating XBox 360, XBox One, PS3, PS4, PC, and perhaps even WiiU players all into the same online universe. If this is a goal from the outset then it is surely one that can be achieved. However, it will be accompanied by significant design constraints that may result in a product that doesn't shine as brightly as it could were the universes segregated.\n\nBusiness decisions and product licencing are other considerations. Access to a company's online network (XBox Live, PSN, Steam, Origin) requires the developer to abide by that company's licencing agreement. While competition laws do prevent anti-competitive behaviour, they do not prevent distributors from offering inducements or from enforcing lawful contract provisions.\n\nIf a developer wishes to utilize Valve's Steamworks platform for online communication and matchmaking, Microsoft may not agree to distribute a product that contain's Valve's software libraries through it's own store and vice versa. Rather, the developer has to include Microsoft's platform for distribution through Microsoft's store and Valve's platform for distribution through Valve's store."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
4ld862 | why was knowledge of greek virtually "lost" in western europe during the middle ages if it was still spoken in the byzantine empire? | I know that's an oversimplification, but how did things like the *Odyssey* and the *Iliad* or writings of Aristotle "vanish" from Western Europe if Greek was still widely spoken and these texts survived in libraries across Southeastern Europe and Asia Minor? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ld862/eli5_why_was_knowledge_of_greek_virtually_lost_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"d3mcpoi"
],
"score": [
38
],
"text": [
"When 99.99% of the population is illiterate and the 0.01% that can read reads Latin it's easy to lose Greek texts."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2rsu7n | why are most sql error messages useless? | I guess this is software developer oriented, but I hope we know what sql is.
I have never had a good sql error message, mostly just relying on the syntax highlighting of the editor I am using.
But, I was working with mysql recently and the error was essentially, "An has occurred" and I wanted the sql on one line, so the error was pretty much useless.
It ended up that I was using a keyword as a column name. Are sql parsers that dated, that they can't parse the sql and tell me that I am using a restricted keyword.
I assume there is a reason, but I have experienced this on other systems as well.
Example error message: 'You have an error in your SQL syntax;'
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rsu7n/eli5_why_are_most_sql_error_messages_useless/ | {
"a_id": [
"cniy1ag"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"They're not useless. They give you the exact line the problem has occured on and the nature of the error. It is assumed that you know what you're doing and are competent enough to be aware of which keywords exist. Why did you cut off the rest of the error message you quoted:\n\nERROR 1064 (42000): You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'NOT NULL,\nPRIMARY KEY (userID, tweetID),\nFOREIGN KEY (userID) REFERENCES User(' at line 4\n\nReferences being capitalised is a pretty big clue. I don't mean to be rude but you're stupid."
]
} | [] | [
"http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16342929/vague-sql-error-whats-going-on-here"
] | [
[]
] |
|
p3vqa | why do computer processing speeds continue to increase? | I know Moore's Law, and it's clear that it's essentially true, but I have a couple questions:
1. Why do computers seem no faster now than they used to?
2. If Photoshop and FCP and whichever other processor-heavy applications aren't really changing that much, why do computers need to keep getting faster?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/p3vqa/eli5_why_do_computer_processing_speeds_continue/ | {
"a_id": [
"c3maugn",
"c3mbp56",
"c3mfu9n"
],
"score": [
19,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Things have gotten a lot faster, really - in even the last 10 years, processor speeds have gone up by a pretty good margin. Now you can buy stuff that clocks in at like 3.3GHz, which would have been totally crazy back in the year 2000.\n\nBut I suppose you're talking about things \"seeming\" faster. Well, that's probably because computers are super, super fast. Like, right now I programming something that is for a board that clocks in at 50MHz, something that most people would balk at - fifty megahertz, that's terrible! The computer's clock only ticks 50 000 000 times a second! If there's something I want to do that takes, say, 5000 steps, the computer takes a hundred microseconds to do it. (100 * 10^-5, or 0.001 seconds.)\n\nNow, I could pick up a nice processor today that runs at... say, sixty times that speed (3GHz). I do the exact same operation with the exact same steps (aside: computer people, let's just assume the exact same instruction set, ok?). Now I get a result in 166 *nano* seconds (that's 0.000000166 seconds).\n\nThat's a lot of zeroes, so the two are off by a *huge* factor. But how about this: you tell me the difference between the two. I'll start my stopwatch, and you tell me STOP! once some time between 0.000000166 and 0.001 seconds have passed. I'm not sure you'd get it on your first try.\n\nHumans just have this limit of perception when it comes to things that are very small. You can't easily tell the difference between 10 nanoseconds and 100 nanoseconds any more easily than you can tell the difference between 10 nanometres and 100 nanometres, even though if it were the same factors' difference on a larger scale - like 10 centimetres and 100 centimetres - it'd be very, very obvious to you. It's just that computers live in this world where *literally billions of things are happening every second* - and it's hard to tell when that changes.\n\n~\n\nAs for the second part of your question, well - why not? If we have better hardware, we can attempt bigger and better things with software. There's kind of a symbiotic relationship between the two - better hardware means that people can attempt more complex things with software; when people push machines to their limits, other people want to make better machines.\n\nIt's also worth mentioning that even on a supercomputer that has hundreds of processors all working together, some things can take *hours* to finish computing (mostly in scientific fields). I've done some work with a supercomputer, and when I wanted to submit a job for it to run I'd have to get in a virtual line and wait for my turn - even running constantly and doing trillions of things per second, there was more demand for the supercomputer's time than there was actual processing time available.",
"Well, over the last few years, the performance gains have been in specific areas. \n\n1.Multi-core architecture means running more processes at the same time, assuming the OS and software can handle it. That and more memory means you opening 20 browser tabs, running iTunes, and doing photoshop at the same time. You wouldnt want to have tried that some years ago. \n\n2. Also, graphics processing has gained comparative leaps and bounds, and even been encorporated on chip now. The quality of graphics has gone up drastically. Today, with no discrete video card you can power 2 displays that have roughly 3-4x the pixels each, of yesteryears machines.\n\n3. The still massively more power chips today, use far less energy today on average. Also more focus has been put into mineraturization, for mobile, and small form factor uses. 10 years ago you couldn't dream of playing a 3d game on a phone. Now they damn near look like a PS2. \n\nEven though the clock speeds don't keep increasing exponentially, doesn't mean the processing ability is not radically increasing.\n\nAlso, the limit to most systems, for longer than 10 years for sure, is the hard drive. It cannot throw data at the processor fast enough to affect program launch times, etc. that's why flash is so popular for performance today. It is also why your computer doesn't seem to be getting perceptibly faster. The one part hasn't made great strides until the flash HDD, and that is still not popular.",
"Can I just add an additional question or two - what is it that's actually going on physically that drives the increase in computer speeds? I understand that as time passes we can fit more and more transistors onto the same space (or something) - how are we able to do this? What is it that keeps changing?\n\nI've also heard that there's a physical limit to this process i.e. there's only so many transistor you can fit onto a silicon chip, so eventually we'll reach the end of Moore's law. Is that right? What if we find a new substance to use (e.g. graphene)? What difference does that actually make? \n\nAlso, if we continue finding new substances to use will Moore's law continue forever or is there some other known limiting factor which we will we eventually run regardless of the substance used?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
4d4qnl | how come after humans see a bug of some sorts (ex. spider) they get feelings that the bug is crawling on them when it's really not | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4d4qnl/eli5how_come_after_humans_see_a_bug_of_some_sorts/ | {
"a_id": [
"d1nszn0",
"d1nwo6r",
"d1o15zt",
"d1o29qv"
],
"score": [
207,
11,
2,
9
],
"text": [
"Your body is constantly receiving stimuli that your brain chooses to ignore, making you conscious of very little of the sensory input your body actually receives.\n\nIt frequently perceives little fluctuations in pressure on your skin, but generally throws out those signals as part of the \"irrelevant, not important for Consciousness to know about\" pile.\n\nBut when you've just seen a bug, the calculus changes, and your brain thinks: Maybe that little feeling is the bug. Better warn Consciousness just in case.",
"... what makes you so sure there aren't?!",
"Fun fact - the sensation that something is crawling under your skin is known as formication",
"As another redditor has said, you body ignores extraneous stimuli unless it thinks it's relevant. This is also why phantom phone vibrations are now a thing. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
ah38ir | how do zippers work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ah38ir/eli5_how_do_zippers_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"eeb42k0"
],
"score": [
16
],
"text": [
"The zip is made from two lengths of plastic “teeth” and an interlocker which is the bit you slide up and down. Thats the zip. Th zip itself is shaped sort of like a “Y” on the inside. This means that when you pull the zip up, the “Y” tapering into a single point causes the interlocking teeth of the zip to do just that, interlock. When you pull the zip down, the “Y” is backwards, causing the interlocked teeth to split and open the zip."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
2l5k51 | how do seat belts work? | As in the mechanism inside of it that causes it to lock up so quick | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l5k51/eli5how_do_seat_belts_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"clrnrgk",
"clrogvm"
],
"score": [
2,
4
],
"text": [
"[Here're some nice pictures.](_URL_0_)\n\nThey're designed to lock when there's a sudden stop, but to stay loose when being pulled slowly. This is achieved with a toothed wheel and some kind of bar or lever that jams into the teeth (and stops the belt from moving any more). It jams into the wheel, stopping the belt, whenever the belt spins too quickly. The website explains it better than I can, because it has pictures.",
"Interesting note to seatbelts - the one handed operational design used today was invented by Volvo who saw they had such great life saving potential they let all other auto manufacturers use their designs for free."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-driving-safety/safety-regulatory-devices/seatbelt3.htm"
],
[]
] |
|
1z4ana | in russia, how do they determine where europe ends and asia starts? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z4ana/eli5_in_russia_how_do_they_determine_where_europe/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfqdgfd",
"cfqdgnm",
"cfqj5p2"
],
"score": [
15,
13,
5
],
"text": [
"The most common [definition in modern times](_URL_2_) is by dividing the contient by major mountain ranges ([the Ural Mountains](_URL_0_), [the Caucasus Mountains](_URL_1_) ) and major bodies of water tying them together.",
"It is wholly arbitrary. Europe is not really a continent as we now understand them. The definition of \"Europe\" was made before plate tectonics was understood.\n\nThere's no good physical demarcation between \"Europe\" and \"Russia\".\n\nPeter the Great, Tsar of Russia, had a desire to be more European than classically Russian. He created and moved his capitol to St. Petersberg and made an effort to get the upper classes of Russia to integrate with Europe. The western parts of Russia established trade and family ties with Europeans. Ever since, Russia has had a dual internal identity as being \"Russian\" and \"European\". Very few, if any Russians consider themselves \"Asian\".",
"The notion of continents goes back the Greeks. They saw that the Mediterranean divided Europe and Africa and the Red Sea divided Africa from Asia. Their incomplete knowledge of geography led them to believe the Black Sea divided Europe from Asia.\n\nWell, they were wrong, of course, but the idea stuck, and was reinforced along cultural lines. Past the Black Sea, there is really no natural dividing line, so various arbitrary ones have been used."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural_Mountains",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasus_Mountains",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundaries_between_continents#Modern_definition"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
1nqdvc | what caused the stock market to so dramatically change and start rising in the late 80's and early 90's? (graph inside) | _URL_0_
What caused the stock market to so dramatically change in the late 80's and 90's and start rising so rapidly? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nqdvc/eli5_what_caused_the_stock_market_to_so/ | {
"a_id": [
"ccl0n4m"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"The economy took off! The two biggest factors were probably increased globalization of trade which boosted the worldwide economy as well as the internet showing up which caused a big bubble in internet stocks. The resulting drop in the early 2000's was the result of a slowdown in the economy as well as that .com bubble bursting."
]
} | [] | [
"http://i.imgur.com/J9bnPjl.png"
] | [
[]
] |
|
wrb5q | why you can only defrost food once. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wrb5q/eli5_why_you_can_only_defrost_food_once/ | {
"a_id": [
"c5frajx",
"c5frr99",
"c5frv3p",
"c5fsnnj",
"c5fw9v9",
"c5fyu4t",
"c5g3u0l"
],
"score": [
370,
43,
26,
115,
7,
7,
3
],
"text": [
"As far as I'm aware:\n\nAll food has a certain amount of bacteria on it, no matter how much you try to stop that happening. When you freeze food, you keep the number of bacteria the same, but stop them from working and multiplying. Imagine the bacteria is at 'low level' now. That's fine.\n\nWhen you defrost the food, the bacteria 'wake up' and start to increase in number (multiply), because during the defrosting process, the food goes through the temperatures that bacteria multiply best. Because defrosting is a slow process, there is plenty of time for them to do this and they can multiply a lot. The bacteria is now at 'medium level' - that's fine, as long as you cook the food thoroughly, as this will reduce the number of bacteria back down to 'low level', which is safe.\n\nIf you now freeze the food again, the number of bacteria will stay at the 'medium level' they were at after defrosting and can't do anything. But, when you defrost the food the second time, this 'medium level' of bacteria wakes up and starts to multiply. This will mean that there is now a 'high level' of bacteria on the food, which can be bad for you, even after cooking.\n\nIf you cook the food thoroughly after defrosting it the first time, then re-freeze it, you can get away with two defrosts.",
"The main reason why I don't freeze and thaw food multiple times is because freezing causes damage to the food. The tiny cells in the food contain water and water expands as it freezes. This breaks down the cells and causes the food to taste odd.",
"When you freeze food you \"rearrange\" the water in the food. I'll use meat as an example. When you get a good steak from the store it has a little moisture on the outside, but you wanna cook it up that day because most of the moisture is **inside** the meat. Water is a funny thing, because when it freezes it gets larger and takes up more space. When you freeze that steak the water inside it expands in an irregular fashion. The outside freezes faster than the inside. 2 things happen. Some of the water is pushed out of the meat, to the surface. And, Some of the areas freeze faster than other, creating tiny tears in the tissue. \n\nNow, If this only happens once you're generally ok. But the more you freeze and thaw meat the more it gets torn up, and more importantly more of the moisture ends up in the wrong places, i.e. on the surface. This is what everyone calls freezer burn. The meat turns grayish(for other reasons as well) and you see ice crystals on the outside of the meat.\n\nBut how do you get freezer burn when you freeze something only once? The truth is that (with most freezers) you really are re-freezing it over and over again. A regular freezer, like the one on the left hand side of the fridge, go through a defrost cycle. This warms the freezer up a bit every once in a while to remove any ice frozen to the sides of the freezer. This doesn't warm it up too much, but just enough to displace some of the moisture in your steak. As time goes on your steak is getting more and more \"mealy\" and will have more and more ice on the surface. This is why it is a good idea to cook steaks within a day or so of buying them. \n\nSo essentially your freezer is against you out of the gates, but if you thaw, and re-freeze items you're making the problem worse.",
"I realize your question has been answered, but here is a wiki on \"flash freezing\" which is used by the frozen food industry to freeze food with minimal damage to the cell membranes. [(_URL_0_]\n",
"I think that there are two answers to this question that others have said, but not together.\n\nThe first answer has to do with the temperature danger zone for food. That range is from 40 to 141 F. A very good rule to use, and the one that we abided by when I used to work in restaurants is that food can be in that zone for up to 4 hours - cumulatively. That is a very important last word. Let's take a steak for example. When you get it, you should assume that somewhere along it's road to you it has been in the danger zone for around 30 minutes. You now have 3.5 hours of safe time left. If you thaw it out to 40F or above, then you start subtracting that time from your balance. Now, you can cool it and thaw it (or heat above 141 and cool below that) as many times as you want, but every time that the food temperature lies somewhere between 40 and 141, then bacteria are thriving and your safe time decreases.\n\nThe second part of the answer is the physical changes that freezing makes to food. Most likely you are just throwing your food in a household freezer and don't have any method of quick freezing it. Because of the length of time that it takes to freeze, the ice crystals that form throughout the food become pretty big and break lots of cells' membranes. There is no cure for this. Depending on the type of food (meat holds up better, fruits and veggies are terrible), and the freezing method used, even freezing food once can make it very mushy once it's thawed.",
"TIL you can only defrost food once",
"YOU CAN ONLY DO IT ONCE!?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_freezing"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
6zd1eo | how is someone who has lucrative stocks actually rich? do you have to sell your stocks to realize any fiscal return? | All I know about the stock exchange is buy low, sell high. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zd1eo/eli5_how_is_someone_who_has_lucrative_stocks/ | {
"a_id": [
"dmud0g1",
"dmud584"
],
"score": [
4,
2
],
"text": [
"Those people are potentially rich, not actually rich. Your are correct. The shares/stocks would have to be sold while still valuable in order for the owner to be actually rich.\n\nThink of it like a collector. Your antiques are potentially valuable if sold at the right time, but you don't get to spend money that you haven't made yet.",
"So, the first thing to know is that there's a lot of different kinds of stocks, and they're meant for different things.\n\nSome stocks work like you imagine. The company issues and sells them as a way of crowdsourcing funding for a project. When that project is done, the company will usually either buy back stock, or will shift over to another model.\n\nMost stable companies that aren't trying to save up for a big project issue 'dividends'. They look at how much profit they made in a year, set some aside into a contingency fund, and pay out the rest to shareholders. These dividends are usually set on an annual basis based on how the company expects to perform.\n\nIf one of these companies hits trouble, like a few failed product lines, they might issue more stock to borrow more money. If they do, that lowers the value of the stock, and often means lowering the value of the dividend. By contrast, if a company has a lot of capital and nothing to spend it on but buying stocks of it's own, it will usually issue large dividend or buy back some stock, as well as paying a heaping bonus to the management staff.\n\n'Shareholders' have certain rights. If you own stock in a company, you are a shareholder. Shareholders elect the Board of Directors of a company, who's job is to serve the shareholders' interests. They order dividends to be increased as a way of 'campaigning' continued mandate extension. The board also brings some policy proposals to shareholders meetings to be voted on. It's all unsurprisingly plutocratic."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
1lpsje | how we can say the earth is tilted on it's axis, when it's a sphere? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lpsje/eli5_how_we_can_say_the_earth_is_tilted_on_its/ | {
"a_id": [
"cc1jvgr",
"cc1jwoz"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"What is meant by \"tilted\" is that the earth's axis of rotation is not perpendicular to the plane of its rotation around the sun.",
"The tilt is the angle between earths rotational axis and the orbital axis (the plane of the orbit around the sun). [Like this](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.edesign.nl/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/north_season.jpg"
]
] |
||
6tuz7z | how do we know sharks are confused about people being meals? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6tuz7z/eli5how_do_we_know_sharks_are_confused_about/ | {
"a_id": [
"dlnoh1y",
"dlnokx8"
],
"score": [
11,
6
],
"text": [
"Because after biting, they release and do not continue attacking or eating the human.\n\nSharks examine things by biting them, kind of like toddlers.",
"Because sharks avoid humans otherwise. Sharks are still dangerous animals but we are pretty low on their list of desired meals. We also tend to kill them, a lot. So in general sharks avoid humans. \n\nWe know they are confused because they disproportionately attack people who are using a mode of transportation that from below makes them look more like sharks' more common meals."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
56jwpv | what happens when a computer is turned on | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/56jwpv/eli5_what_happens_when_a_computer_is_turned_on/ | {
"a_id": [
"d8jvz59",
"d8jw1h5",
"d8jw5es",
"d8jwaws",
"d8jyaxn"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
6,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Computer has programs stored in a special memory that deal with checking everything is OK and starting up all the hardware. Each manufacturer does this slightly differently so it's hard to be specific. Once everything is ready to go then the system passes start up control to the hard disk. This holds the operating system and programs for you to use. The operating system... Windows, Linux, etc all load little programs which run services you might need like printing, USB, display, keyboard.... Again it depends on the operating system just what is loaded.... Hope this helped a bit. ",
"When the computer first powers on, the processor is wired to automatically jump to a certain address in memory and start executing code from there. That address is generally wired to some read-only memory containing the code (often but somewhat incorrectly called the BIOS) that reads the first bit of the hard disk and executes that code, which in turn knows enough about how the disk is laid out to read and boot the operating system.",
"When a PC is first turned on, it runs a special program called BIOS (Basic Input/Ouput System) , a very simple program that let's the computer interact with the screen, keyboard, mouse, hard drive, USB ports, network, and other basic I/O components. \n\nAfter the BIOS finishes, it goes to a specific location on the hard drive, called the boot sector, and runs the program that resided there. That program launches the operating system, a more complicated program that basically tells the computer how to be a computer.\n\nThe operating system itself can be configure to automatically launch other programs whenever it starts up. Things like anti-malware programs and IM programs, which usually run all the time, are often launched this way.",
"If I'm not mistaken, it's the BIOS which is essentially your interface with the motherboard, from there you can dictate control over all other hardware. Boot sequence settings determine which hardware comes online first. Usually your keyboard(so you can adjust settings in the BIOS) and the hard drive containing your operating system(OS) would be among the first in the sequence(as well as RAM, CPU and cooling solutions). If you are booting up for the first time and need to install an OS you may boot from USB or an optical drive, so that you can install an OS from either of those media sources. It goes much deeper than thay though, the short answer would be that the motherboard gets power and then boots everything in accordance to it's BIOS settings. ",
"The first thing that any programmable compute does when it is released from reset (or turned on, same thing) is start executing instructions at the *reset vector*.\n\nThe reset vector is a hard-coded location in the microprocessor's address space. The computer's chipset decodes this address and loads its contents into memory. Since the computer is fresh out of reset, this location will almost always decode to a ROM (read only memory) which contains the computer's firmware.\n\nThe complexity and nature of the initial firmware varies from device to device. Since you specifically used the term \"computer\" rather than \"phone\", \"tablet\", \"router\" or any other device I'm going to describe to you the process that x86 computers use to load an operating system.\n\nWhen an x86 microprocessor from Intel or AMD is released from reset it loads the reset vector like any other microprocessor and starts executing the instructions at that location. This location is decoded by the chipset to a ROM on the motherboard that contains the motherboard's BIOS or UEFI compliant firmware. The design of this ROM must support Execute-in-Place because the system has no driver setup for reading the ROM's data; it must be an extremely simple interface.\n\nThe firmware performs a number of tests collectively called POST (Power-on Self Test), detects PCI and USB peripherals, detects and configures the system's memory, detects and configures storage devices, configures power settings, etc... Finally, the firmware begins the boot loading process.\n\nThe boot loading process is where the firmware effectively says \"I'm done my part, now you need to choose what to do next\". If the firmware has performed its startup functions correctly, the firmware will have identified all of the storage devices attached to the system that it is capable of reading. What happens next varies.\n\nOlder x86 firmware based on the decades-old BIOS interface from IBM operate on a partitioning scheme known as Master Boot Record, or MBR, and a non-partitioning scheme known as Volume Boot Record, or VBR. A Boot Record rests at the first sector on any storage device that has one. Partitioned devices can have both an MBR and multiple VBRs. Boot records can have embedded boot loader programs.\n\nThe BIOS firmware will allow the user to configure a priority list of devices and it will scan the first sector of each device in the priority list until it finds one with a valid MBR. A common priority list may be Floppy Disk > CD-ROM > Hard-Disk 1 > Hard-Disk 2.\n\nIf a floppy is inserted and the floppy has a VBR it will boot using the floppy disk. If no floppy is inserted it will then check for a CR-ROM. If there is a CD-ROM but it does not have a VBR (not bootable) it will move on to the Hard-Disks. If no bootable device is detected, an error will be presented saying as much.\n\nOnce a bootable device is found, the BIOS firmware loads the boot loader program into memory and starts executing it. If the boot target is a hard-disk with an MBR, the embedded boot loader will have the user select a partition if necessary. If the boot target is a VBR (often occuring after an MBR) then the VBR will begin loading the operating system.\n\nUEFI firmware is a much more modern firmware interface that has completely replaced BIOS over the past decade. UEFI supports MBR and VBR booting but it also supports its own scheme called GPT, or GUUID Partition Table. Whereas BIOS firmware has no intrinsic knowledge of partitioning and does not contain its own boot loader, UEFI not only has knowledge of those, it also understands the FAT32 filesystem which allows it to read files on the partitions.\n\nGPT is functionally similar to MBR in that it sits at the beginning of each partition device. However, it contains no boot loader program; it also contains much more information about the partitions on the device. The UEFI firmware scans each device attached to the system and identifies those which have GPTs. It then scans and enumerates the bootable partitions on all of the devices. The user then selects the appropriate partition (or the partition is selected automatically based on priority) and the UEFI firmware loads the UEFI image on the FAT32 formatted boot partition which begins the process of loading the operating system.\n\nIf you have any more questions feel free to ask them here or PM me."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
29e4rh | why is if bad for sites such as facebook to track what other sites we visit? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29e4rh/eli5_why_is_if_bad_for_sites_such_as_facebook_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"cik12jy",
"cik28it",
"cik29eq",
"cik29lr",
"cik2jps",
"cik4kdz",
"cik5uxr",
"cik6kvp"
],
"score": [
11,
162,
4,
11,
3,
9,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Suppose you want to be a teacher at a school. And facebook links your pornography site activity to your account. Some parents think teachers should be be inhumane robots basically, and if a teacher so much as thinks about sex, obviously they have to be thinking about their children, right? Make sense? No? Anyways, so then that teacher loses their job.",
"I am going to expand slightly on this question, because it is very interesting to watch this on a social scale. \n\nSomeone who is older, lets say 27+, would probably never ask such a question. Someone younger would...\n\nIt is likely because the idea of privacy has completely shifted, and watching questions such as this relating to internet use is honestly - very very interesting. \n\nTo answer the question - most people do not want their private information (and what we do online is basically a private affair) - shared with ANYONE. This is due to several factors, but primarily because privacy was always a sought after \"right\", and one we did not always have. \n\nWhen you allow Facebook to trace the websites you visit, perhaps read your chat logs, and watch your online transaction activity, you are allowing Facebook to create a profile of you. Perhaps you don't care - and in peace time (such as what we have had for 6+ decades) this may not matter at all. However, the danger is that privacy is used to negatively affect your life - from the government using such data against you (purchases, comments, porn, whatever you may be doing online) to perhaps even commercial companies some day using this activity against you. \n\nImagine banks denying you a loan because you spend all day on reddit, instead of educating yourself?\n\nOr if your information were to be attainable by multiple organizations (hi NSA) - this could severely limit you when applying for jobs, or running for obvious things such as public office or senior executive of a publicly traded firm. \n\nNow this all seems far-fetched, and it is (probably) not happening now. However, the more data you hand over about yourself, the less privacy you have. To some, this would correlate to having less leverage in the world, which in return directly impacts your freedom. (see the banking example, or the government collected data on you, as is actually happening). \n\nTo summarise, it is a perceived threat - not one we can actually grasp yet. Privacy is incredibly important to freedom, because otherwise you are giving away personal (and valuable) information that can be, some day, used against you. You would have to start shaping you personal life differently, because the government could leak your lifestyle - thereby damaging (or I guess enhancing in some cases) your image in the public eye. At this point, the government could easily control the masses, and history repeats itself. \n\n",
"I think the theory is, if they track your history to tailor adds, what else are they keeping track of? And that could lead to bigger issues",
"For the same reason you wouldn't want your mother doing it: privacy. What if you found out your mother (or brother, or friend, or coworker) had gone on your computer without your permission, looked through your browser history and wrote it all down on a little pad of paper? ",
"It isn't bad if you know everything they're doing and don't mind them doing it. The reason this is brought up so often is because people simply don't know because hardly anyone actually reads up on user agreements and such. Many people don't want companies and site looking into what they're doing because it's an invasion of privacy. ",
"A friend of mine who owns an excavation business, popped a wheelie with one of his machines...he didn't think anything of it other than how cool it looked, took a photo and posted it on facebook. Two days later his insurance company dropped him and sighted his photo on facebook as the reason. The type of things ddllb is talking about is happening already, and this is why people should value their privacy. He is now having a considerably hard time finding a new insurance company.",
"Sign up for Facebook Prime or we'll post your browsing and search history to your friends' newsfeeds.",
"Allow me to set the scene: \nA guy you don´t know comes over and wants to read your diary, rifle through your research for your business, your old love letters, etc., so he can send door to door salesmen to pester you to purchase things they believe you will like from knowing more about your secret desires. Occasionally, you let a friend write in your journal (use your computer), and suddenly their interests and yours are mixed up. Your friend holds different political beliefs, or religious beliefs, and adds that to your journal (web searches). To the reader of the journal, your handwriting is indistinguishable. \n\nFast forward a few years, and the changing tide of politics gives rationale to the idea of rounding up a certain demographic (think WWII internment of Japanese in the US). Your friend was writing a paper in Islam, or curious sexually about taboos, or simply followed a random link from reddit that adds you to a list. That info is correlated off your own interests (maybe you inherited a heirloom rifle, and looked it up to see how to care for it)...\n\nCue secret police at your door. \n\nZuck Fuckerberg and the beast that wants to know everything in my life without permission."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2sfy1g | how do self winding watches stay in time | How is that self winding watches managed to stay in time in with out quartz or a battery | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sfy1g/eli5_how_do_self_winding_watches_stay_in_time/ | {
"a_id": [
"cnp2ykf",
"cnp3jzn"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"There is a oscillating spring (a spring or pendulum will oscillate at the same rate even as the path it follows gets shorter) so time is based off that \n\nAlso they fall out of sync all the time ",
"The basic notion is that of the pendulum to keep the time. As long as the length of the pendulum remains constant, the timing will always be the same (each swing of the pendulum will always take the same interval of time). \n\nIn a watch, they use a type of pendulum called a balance wheel - which is essentially a weighted wheel with a coil spring attached to it. The wheel spins in one direction (by unwinding the spring) and then stops when the spring is uncoiled, then it spins back in the opposite direction as the unwound spring tries to wind itself back up - and the wheel stops when the coil spring is wound up too tightly, then the spring releases causing the wheel to spin in the first direction again - and back and forth, again and again (coiling and uncoiling the spring). The time interval the wheel takes to switch from spinning in one direction to the other remains constant.\n\nThe energy for turning the hands of the watch and keeping the balance wheel spinning is provided by a second coil spring which is coupled to a second wheel having a weight on one side. As you move your hand, the second wheel moves causing the second coil spring to wind up. The second wheel has a ratchet (a series of teeth) which allows the second wheel to turn in only one direction - the direction needed to wind up the second coil spring. So your body movements actually wind up the watch."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
exhh7c | - how is it that we "choke on air?" | Have you been there? Talking to someone, and end up in a coughing fit, trying to inhale any air you can find? You weren't eating or drinking anything but you end up "choking on air." Why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/exhh7c/eli5_how_is_it_that_we_choke_on_air/ | {
"a_id": [
"fg87xjz",
"fg87ybf"
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text": [
"Two possibilities. Saliva droplets have entered your airway OR dust particles have entered your airway and your body is fighting to get these foreigners out of your lungs.",
"Not quite sure what you mean, but there is a flap in your throat which switches between air and food, it works so food doesn't end up in your lungs and air doesn't go to your stomach sometimes if fluid is being moved it can flip over when you weren't apparently eating."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
6a84sh | how do free online bank make profit ? | "traditional" banks usually charge an account holding fee (monthly or yearly), charge for issuing you a credit/debit card, and allow you a small credit line so your account can go in debit, subsenquently charging debit interests.
I've recently switched to an online (can mention which one but I didn't want to advertise upfront), no monthly account fee, free debit card and no debit interest (since no debit allowed).
How does this bank manage to keep in business ? I've often read that when something is free, -you- are the product. Does it work the same for an online bank ? Is there a risk to my privacy (data/transactions) ? I haven't seen any advertisement on the app or website.
Thank you for clarifying !
edit : spelling. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6a84sh/eli5_how_do_free_online_bank_make_profit/ | {
"a_id": [
"dhcfhr0",
"dhcgh5a",
"dhcgkvc",
"dhcgytq",
"dhcicnl",
"dhd5na1"
],
"score": [
8,
3,
3,
3,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"They take your cash and lend it out to other people/institutions and charge them interest. They pay you a small portion of this interest and keep the rest. ",
" > \"traditional\" banks usually charge an account holding fee (monthly or yearly)\n\nNo. Most of their money comes from having giant mountains of money which they can invest/lend and make profits on. Any fees on top of this are just gravy.\n\nThese days, transaction fees from debit cards are also big money. It might only be a few cents per transaction but they're getting a cut of 80% of the purchases made in the country.",
"Most banks, online or traditional, earn their money from the interest on loans that they make. Because you and all the other customers have given the bank you money, they have a large pool of money with which to make loans for houses, cars, businesses, and any other organization that needs money.\n\nThe money earned from this far outpaces anything that account fees or overdraft fees can bring in. That's not to say that those sources of income aren't important, they just aren't the primary money maker.\n\nYour online bank doesn't have to pay for a bunch of branches, which are really expensive, so they can back off of the account fees and whatnot to drive new customer acquisition.",
"Many people don't actually pay account fees at traditional banks because they have direct deposit set up, more than a certain threshold of money in various accounts, etc. \n\nBank revenue (and after expenses, their profits) come from the spread in interest... say they pay 1% on savings accounts, and charge 5% on a mortgage or car loan, 18% on a credit card. That difference is their revenue. Multiply that by billions of dollars in accounts, and it adds up. And when a bank is only online rather than having 100's of branch locations, they can operate much more efficiently due to lower overhead.",
"Banks take your deposits and lend it out. Depending on the risk their lending portfolio has, they'll make a few percentage points over any interest paid on things like CDs. Since they really don't pay much interest for liquid accounts they make a bigger spread.\n\nIn addition, the Federal Reserve also pays 1/4 percent on any reserves(deposits that they retain instead of lending out).",
"I don't know of any of the \"traditional\" banks in the UK charging a fee for their standards accounts. \n\nThere are premium accounts but these tend to offer benefits such as inclusive car breakdown recovery, family travel insurance, phone insurance, etc. or enhanced customer services (emergency cash, quick replacement of lost cards, etc.)\n\nThere has been a greater growth in free accounts giving benefits such as cash back. These do tend to have minimum cash balance obligations though. \n\nATMs in UK that are owned by the banks are free to use (and you can use ATMs owned by a bank different to the one associated with the debit card you use to withdraw cash). Third party ATMs do charge in many cases although some businesses host them and pass on no charges as a customer benefit (encouragement).\n\nThey make their money from:\n- selling you other services and products\n- lending to others\n- charging when you fail to meet your obligations \n- charging retailers who take payments using cards\n\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
3gz0vj | how did the winklevoss twins manage to successfully sue mark zuckerberg? | I've always read from entrepreneurs that ideas are worthless. Anyone can have an idea, it doesn't mean it'll be a success as its the execution which matters. The Winklevoss twins shared their idea with Zuckerberg and he decided to make his own thing instead.
**How did they manage to sue Zuckerberg over an idea?**
*
*
^When ^i ^was ^7-8 ^years ^old ^i ^had ^an ^idea ^for ^a ^blanket ^with ^sleeves. ^Can ^i ^go ^sue ^Snuggie ^for ^stealing ^my ^idea?
^^This ^^is ^^obviously ^^a ^^joke ^^but ^^i'm ^^just ^^trying ^^to ^^understand ^^how ^^they ^^managed ^^to ^^win ^^a ^^lawsuit ^^over ^^an ^^"Idea" | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gz0vj/eli5_how_did_the_winklevoss_twins_manage_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"cu2qbpt",
"cu2qc2u"
],
"score": [
8,
5
],
"text": [
"They didn't sue Facebook simply because Zuckerberg stole their idea. They alleged that he broke an oral contract to build the social-networking site and used source code that they provided to create Facebook.",
"Well.. The Winlevoss twins didn't actually successfully sue Facebook. They tried, and the judge said \"Hey, this doesn't need to go to court, you guys go figure this shit out\" (this is common, few cases actually make it to court).\n\n The twins and Facebook made and agreed upon a settlement between them, and that was mostly that, and done. The twins then kinda still tried to sue, and the judges basically said, \"no, you agreed on a deal already, like we told you to, the deal is done and signed, its legitimate, so go away and stop trying to take this to court\" and it ended there.\n\nThe twins claimed Zuckerberg stole their ideas and stuff, he probably did, and the twins would persue the shit out of the case, hoping to get a favorable decision. Facebook didn't want to get involved in a gigantic lawsuit that would last many years, and cost many tens of millions of dollars per year, and they likely will still have at least partially lost the case, so they just gave them hush money to go away, and the judge said that's cool."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
2je9sp | how is ebola only contagious after the onset of symptoms? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2je9sp/eli5_how_is_ebola_only_contagious_after_the_onset/ | {
"a_id": [
"clavuko",
"clb21z6"
],
"score": [
7,
6
],
"text": [
"From what I've read, and studied in biology. Symptoms appear when a virus is incubating and multiplying its genetic code via host cells in your body. Therefore when you start showing symptoms your cells are infected and are being made into factories for the virus. So touching someone with active symptoms means a higher chance of contracting the virus.",
"Ebola resides in internal organs (namely the liver) as opposed to something like the flu which sets up shop in your lungs and sinuses. So when you have an Ebola infection it takes while for the virus to build up in your body, and when it does it's in your blood and fecal matter. Contrast that with the flu where the virus build up in your saliva and mucus. This means that a sneeze is likely to transmit the flu, but unlikely to transmit Ebola. For Ebola the contact which is most transmittable is with blood, feces, and vomit. Generally you aren't bleeding or vomiting randomly, only as a symptom of something else."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
ck58ym | why is that usually the richer people get, the more conservative they become politically? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ck58ym/eli5_why_is_that_usually_the_richer_people_get/ | {
"a_id": [
"evjc5is",
"evjenrt",
"evjpal8"
],
"score": [
7,
3,
3
],
"text": [
"Once you have something to lose you May begin to feel threatened by the “takers”...or something like that.",
"Conservative economic policy tends to lean on the side of less taxes and less government regulation, which are good for corporations and not as much for the average person. So, once you get more wealth and get into the higher tax brackets and have more and more regulation apply to you, the more you might dislike such policy and edge toward the economic right.",
"A very simplistic view is that when you are young and have nothing, the idea of sharing and equality sounds great because it may actually benefit you. When you get older and you’ve had to work your ass off to get what you have now, the thought of sharing your earnings with people who don’t want to work becomes a lot less appealing."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1lz5o3 | hardy-weinberg equilibrium model | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lz5o3/eli5hardyweinberg_equilibrium_model/ | {
"a_id": [
"cc47hv4"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium is a mathematical model that describes the genetic makeup of a population (group of organisms of the same species) that is unaffected be evolutionary pressures. At least in theory, a population could be unaffected by evolution if the following conditions occurred: no mutations, no trait favored by natural selection, infinitely large number of individuals in the population, everyone having the same number of children, random selection of who to mate with, and nobody entering or leaving the population. In reality, these criteria are never met together, but it provides a baseline of a perfect scenario and sometimes allows for an estimate of allele frequencies (how common traits are). \n\nThere are also a couple of equations associated with H-W equilibrium. The equations generally use the terms p and q, though you can use any letters for your own calculations. For the purposes of this explanation, pretend we have a population of flowers. Term p refers to the pink allele and the term q refers to the green allele. The alleles affect the flower color.\n\nOur first equation is p + q = 1. This is a very simple formula. In terms of percents, 1 is equal to 100% and smaller percents are equal to decimals. This equation is basically saying that if you add up the percent of flowers in the population that are pink and the percent that are green, the total will be 1 (100%) of the population. For example, if we know that a quarter (25% or .25) of the flowers are green, we can conclude that 75% or .75 of the flowers are pink. Please note that when talking about alleles, that's a calculation of phenotypes, not genotypes. In other words, we're just looking at what color the plant expresses. Even if the flower has a pink allele and a green allele, if the flower is pink, we count it as only pink for that equation.\n\nOur second equation deals with genotypes, the alleles that dictate the color, but don't necessarily get expressed. This equation is identical to the first mathematically, except that you square the expressions on both sides of the = sign. If you know the FOIL technique for algebra, you can expand (p + q)^2 to derive this formula on your own. Anyway, here's the formula: p^2 + 2pq + q^2 = 1. Again, 1 represents 100% and all terms are expressed in terms of the percent of the population. The term p^2 represents the percent of individuals who have 2 copies of the pink allele. The term q^2 represents the percent of individuals who have 2 copies of the green allele. The term pq represents the percent with both alleles. Note that this category may include individuals that look identical to other flowers. For example, if pink's dominant, both the p^2 and pq flowers will look pink. The term pq is multiplied by 2 to make the math work out.\n\nIn summary, H-W equilibrium gives a model to show how common alleles are in perfect conditions, unaffected by evolution. It can be used as a way to estimate allele frequencies and to see how real conditions differ from perfect ones. There are a couple of formulas associated with the concept, though they're simply algebraic formulas saying that everything should add up to 100% of the population. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
2l6vgm | how do banks actually make money from mortgages if they usually aren't paid off for 15 or 30 years? | More context: I understand interest, but if the bank is giving $100,000 to the owner of the house that is purchased and then waiting for the new homebuyer to pay back the loan plus interest, it's going to be many years before that becomes a profitable enterprise. How does the bank wait out those investments on such a large scale? What is the trick I'm missing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l6vgm/eli5_how_do_banks_actually_make_money_from/ | {
"a_id": [
"clrzvjs",
"clrzxh9",
"cls0q0l",
"cls0xhp",
"cls1gpi",
"cls1jy5",
"cls2jaw",
"cls330p",
"cls37bu",
"cls4seh"
],
"score": [
9,
7,
8,
3,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Because they're piling on interest fees for all those years at a much higher percentage then they could make otherwise.",
"Most banks have been around for more than 30 years, so their \"investments\" are always completing. And if they get a default, well, they now have a house.\n",
" > What is the trick I'm missing?\n\nThe loan is amortized. Say you have $100K loan, 30 years fixed at 5%. ([try it out](_URL_0_)). Over the life of the loan, you'll pay about $200K, so roughly twice the value of the home. The bank would like all of that money, but when you sell your home, you get to escape the remaining interest, but you always will owe the remaining principal. So what does the bank do? They shape the loan so that most of the interest gets paid first. If you tried that calculator you'll see that the first payment on $100K loan would be $536.82, $416.67 (~80%) of which is interest on the loan. In the last 5 years of the loan, this flips and vast majority of your payment is toward the principal. \n\nedit: \n\nRe-read OP's question \n > How do banks actually make money from mortgages if they usually aren't paid off for 15 or 30 years?\n\nThat's a false assumption. Most loans are paid off much earlier. In 30 years , you're very likely to either sell the home, or refinance the loan, both scenarios will pay off the remaining mortgage. ",
"In addition to the other comments, don't confuse profit with cashflow. Yes, the bank pays out $100K but that is not an expense, it is considered an asset as an amount due the bank. The interest that then comes in from the loan repayments goes into profit and loss, the principle portion decreases the amount due the bank and increases available cash (zero sum movement between asset accounts).",
"One mortgage makes a payment once per month (typically). Now if you somehow loaned your friend a significant amount of money and waited 15 years for him to pay you back, well that'd be stupid. You'd probably need a loan to float his, even if, at the end, you made some money.\nBut, as a bank who's been loaning money for decades, you've got thousands of mortgages on the books. That's thousands of monthly payments. Those payments (along with savings accounts, reserves, investments, etc...) float any new loans and the bank still receives more in loan payments than it losses loaning money.\nAlso, re: interest",
"You're paying tons of interest. Because it compounds you can end up paying ~40% of the value of the house (or more) in interest over 30 years. Plus they can sell your mortgage to other banks. Or pack a bunch of the rights to mortgage revenue into a single security \"Tranch\" and trade that. ",
"1. The bank keeps the loan, and it's sort of like an annuity. They fork over a pot of money and get interest payments over time. As /u/whiteydude says, the bank gets most of the interest up front. So if after 10 years the borrower gets into trouble, they can still foreclose and make back some of the principle. \n\n\n2. The bank sells the loan to another bank, or as a package of loans (a mortgage backed security). This is extremely common, but was also a big factor in the economic meltdown. If you're a bank that is going to originate a loan, then turn around and sell it at a profit, you don't have a lot of incentive to make sure the borrower is actually going to be able to pay it back. There was also a lot of \"double dipping\" where big investment banks would create these huge mortgage backed securities containing thousands of home loans. Then they would sell pieces of them to hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds etc., therefore getting fees on the mortgages and commissions on the investments. \n\n",
"Banks invest X amount of dollars and get 4% interest. A person invests X amount of dollars in a bank's CD and get 1.5% interest.\n\nThe banks are treating us the way we treat them, except they hold all the cards and set the interest rates.\n\nThe also charge a fee up front to originate the loan, so they get even more money.\n\nThen, when they feel like it, they'll sell the loan to someone else.\n\n",
"How has no one pointed out that the banks almost universally sell the mortgage the second they are allowed to. ",
"A lot of the information I'm seeing here doesn't seem to be correct, or at least doesn't cover the underlying reason why banks are able to give out loans the way they do.\n\nWhen I take out a mortgage for say, $200k the bank does not actually take $200k of their own money and put it in an account for me. The fractional reserve system that almost all modern institutions run on only require a certain percentage (normally 10%) of the money to be placed in the Federal Reserve. In this our case this would be $20k. The remaining $180k is created out of thin air based upon me signing the promissory note.\n\nEdit: [Money as Debt](_URL_0_) is an animated explanation of the fractional reserve. \n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://www.amortization-calc.com/mortgage-calculator/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqvKjsIxT_8"
]
] |
|
b0eitc | falun gong | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b0eitc/eli5_falun_gong/ | {
"a_id": [
"eie1l4h"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Great minds think alike. I've searched tha seven seas fer an answer. Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: What is Falun Gong, and why does the Chinese government hate them so much? ](_URL_3_) ^(_10 comments_)\n1. [Can someone explain the Falun Gong situation in China (Like I'm 5)? ](_URL_5_) ^(_2 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: The politics of FaLunGong/China and all those ShenYun shows that they put on everywhere. ](_URL_1_) ^(_3 comments_)\n1. [Why does the Chinese government ban \"falun gong\", which is just a peaceful meditation as far as I know, what trouble is being caused by practitioners? ](_URL_2_) ^(_7 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What is Falun Gong and what are the controversies surrounding its practice? ](_URL_4_) ^(_2 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: What is Falun Gong and what are the controversies surrounding its practice? ](_URL_4_) ^(_2 comments_)\n1. [Why is Falun Gong banned in China? ](_URL_0_) ^(_7 comments_)\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/a6dvgq/why_is_falun_gong_banned_in_china/",
"https://np.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/348ck0/eli5_the_politics_of_falungongchina_and_all_those/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/9e72i7/why_does_the_chinese_government_ban_falun_gong/",
"https://np.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jrnkg/eli5_what_is_falun_gong_and_why_does_the_chinese/",
"https://np.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/178kl3/eli5_what_is_falun_gong_and_what_are_the/",
"https://np.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jad46/can_someone_explain_the_falun_gong_situation_in/"
]
] |
||
1p3jbr | in double jeopardy (law) a person cannot be tried for the same crime twice. what if they outright say that they did it after being found innocent? | In the US justice system, a person cannot be tried again for a crime they have already been found innocent of. What if George Zimmerman were to go on Letterman tonight and say he did it and he wanted to do it because he hated black people, intent to kill, blah blah?
Ok, Why is it that way? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p3jbr/eli5in_double_jeopardy_law_a_person_cannot_be/ | {
"a_id": [
"ccydrkq",
"ccydyso",
"ccyf65g"
],
"score": [
2,
4,
6
],
"text": [
"Admitting it would be totally stupid, since so many laws exist which could be related. Odds are they would face charges on another related or lesser offense. Even OJ Simpson was not so stupid as to admit anything. ",
"He would likely get screwed over in a civil case which AFAIK hasn't been filed yet.",
"As an extra note, in many countries a confession is not enough to convict you. You can be lying, trying to protect someone else, searching media attention, an so on. You will need to provide some extra evidence to be convicted. For example some details of the crime only the author should know."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
bvwt2w | what are endocrine and exocrine in hormone system? | I need a short "explainlikeimfive explanation" for this topic. I would also appreciate the difference between those two. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bvwt2w/eli5_what_are_endocrine_and_exocrine_in_hormone/ | {
"a_id": [
"ept1tfu"
],
"score": [
12
],
"text": [
"The best example of this is the pancreas, since it has both endocrine and exocrine parts.\n\nEndocrine means the things are secreted directly into your blood. The endocrine part of the pancreas makes insulin. It secretes insulin into your blood system.\n\nExocrine means secreted through an epithelium (or endothelium), typically out of your body. The exocrine part of the pancreas secretes digestive enzymes. The digestive enzymes go into your gut and you poop them out."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
41g8m0 | how does the human body process so many different colored foods and consistently create yellow liquid waste and brown solid waste? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41g8m0/eli5_how_does_the_human_body_process_so_many/ | {
"a_id": [
"cz23v9f"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"As I understand it urine is yellow because that is the color of urea, which is what helps you make urine. \n\nActually, ideally your urine should be closer to clear because of the amount of water you drink. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
8x3y14 | why do people say the universe is so big that there is another copy of yourself somewhere? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8x3y14/eli5_why_do_people_say_the_universe_is_so_big/ | {
"a_id": [
"e20ng73",
"e20oo7l",
"e20pxm2"
],
"score": [
2,
5,
3
],
"text": [
"This is incorrect. The universe is so big that a vast number of things are possible, and even likely. But there are more possible combinations of human DNA than there are atoms in the universe, *and* most combinations of DNA are additional non-human ones, *and* life elsewhere doesn't need to be based on DNA.",
"I guess the argument is that each person is essentially a finite arrangement of atoms, and in an infinitely large universe, you might expect such a finite arrangement to occur more than once.",
"I think you’re confusing something I heard from a video about the number “googleplex”? \n\nI think they said it we lived in a much larger universe, it would be reasonable/ expected that somewhere in that universe we could find copies of ourselves. \nWhy would that be the case? \nImagine our universe to be a box, filled with parts that make up a mr. Potato head. If you were to shake up that box, eventually you might just jiggle all the loose parts together to make a whole mr. Potato head. \n\nNow if you had a really big box of parts, and you shake the box for long enough, it’s reasonable to expect a 2nd or maybe even 3rd mr potato head to form. \nIf we had a really big universe, with lots of “parts” it’s reasonable to think of those parts\nJiggled together to form us, they could also form a 2nd or 3rd copy of us. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
26geyd | the difference between shampoo, conditioner, and body wash? and how the heck they can make a 3 in 1 bottle for all of them? | Edit: Honestly can't belive that my random thoughts while showering made my first front page post xD Thanks for the awesome explanations | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26geyd/eli5_the_difference_between_shampoo_conditioner/ | {
"a_id": [
"chqt0el",
"chqt7fv",
"chqtjy5",
"chqtk11",
"chqu3wc",
"chquj3j",
"chqvb35",
"chqvq83",
"chqvynb",
"chqw6z0",
"chqwiip",
"chqx3ux",
"chqxdqo",
"chqxjqa",
"chqxqn1",
"chqxz7c",
"chqxzru",
"chqzgt2",
"chqzhno",
"chr1dk4",
"chr3ks1",
"chr3p1s",
"chr3v1b",
"chr3xtu",
"chr4doa",
"chr4nh8",
"chr4u4w",
"chr68fx",
"chr6ezl",
"chr8unn"
],
"score": [
312,
1913,
116,
4,
4,
12,
2,
2,
73,
3,
6,
26,
4,
2,
2,
2,
4,
3,
2,
15,
2,
11,
2,
2,
2,
10,
2,
3,
7,
3
],
"text": [
"I don't know how it works with body wash in the mix, but for combined shampoo and conditioner the conditioner basically comes in little packets (micelles if we're being posh) the shampoo does its thing (anionic surfactants actually wash the hair) and then upon dilution with water (e.g. washing the hair) the little packets of conditioner break open (they destabilise) depositing the hydrophobic conditioner (usually something like PDMS) on the hair\n\nSource; I'm a chemistry undergrad\nSorry for spelling on my phone\n\nEdit 1: So people are saying this isn't a explanation 5 year olds will understand and though the rules state clearly that this is not the point of the subreddit I guess I'll try a simpler (yet more detailed) approach:\nShampoo is basically soap, it makes the hair more clean by removal of oil and grease however with no oil or grease hair has no shine and so the intention of conditioner is to add a synthetic oil (called PDMS) to hair.\n\nThe problem: how can you add an oil and something that removes an oil at once?\nThe solution: The Conditioner is wrapped in little packets and is dispersed throughout the shampoo. The shampoo initially washes the hair and removes the dirt oil and grease. Then when you wash away the shampoo the excess water breaks down the little packets of conditioner so they deposit the synthetic oil (PDMS) onto the hair making it shiny and soft. ",
"Shampoo and body wash are both surfactants, which means that they reduce the surface tension of water, making it much easier to remove dirt and oil. Effectively, adding a surfactant to water makes the water particles act smaller so they can fit between the dirt and the surface they're on and lift them away.\n\nTo my knowledge there's no practical difference between shampoo and body wash. \n\nConditioner is effectively an oil that is added to the hair. It's purpose is mostly to replace the natural oils that you're washing away with the shampoo. \n\nMixing the two will gives you a goo that will wash away most of the oil in hair and skin but not all of it. The effectiveness and utility of this is definitely up for debate. \n\n",
"I'm going to try and keep this as short and simple as possible. Shampoos(most brands) are very similar to soap. The difference between traditional soap and shampoo is that shampoo is a lot gentler on your hair preventing the sebum protecting your hair from becoming brittle, from being completely washed off. Conditioner on the other hand moisturizes and helps keep the hair more manageable. Conditioners also have a lower pH than shampoo and are more acidic, this being that it helps promote development of amino acids and keratin that makes the hair look healthier and more desirable. The 2-in-1s sold that are said to do the same job may not work as well as individually applying each bottle. Hope this helped slightly.\n\n\nSources:\n\n[Article]( _URL_0_)\n\n[Article]( _URL_1_)\n\n\nI wash my hair too.\n\n\nEdit: Thanks to /u/hummingbirdpie for the correction.",
"If you look at the ingredients, they're usually exactly the same right down the line for shampoo and bodywash, until you get to the fragrances.",
"Explain like I'm a 5 year old chemist",
"Shampoo is better.",
"I felt like shampoo strips dirty oil and conditioner replaces it.",
"I've been wondering this for so long, so I'll ask here. The fuck is shower gel? Hair or body?",
"First of all, check out /r/haircarescience.\n\nAs is mentioned above, shampoos and body washes are both surfactants. They clean the dirt and oil away. The main ingredient is usually SLS, sodium laurel sulfate, which is present in most soaps. Body washes are much harsher than shampoos, just as they are harsher than face washes, because the skin on your body can take much more of a beating than the skin on your face or your hair. Well, your hair can take it but it will become coarse and frizzy. \n\nConditioners add moisture back to your hair when shampoo has stripped it all away. The main ingredient in most conditioners are silicones, usually dimethicone and any other ingredients ending in -cone. These ingredients coat the shaft of the hair, allowing the hairs to slip past each other and giving the hair shine. The problem with silicone is it is very difficult to remove, and is only removable by sulfates, making shampoo and conditioner a cycle whereby if you use a silicone based conditioner, you have to use a sulfate based shampoo to remove it. This why you now see sulfate free products, because there are large movements (such as no poo) against using these products in your hair. \n\n2-in-1 or 3-in-1 products are not going to give you the same results as using separate products. They will definitely not be able to adequately condition your hair and may be too harsh of a cleanser for your hair. ",
"[This](_URL_0_) is also a good summary.",
"You shower with your dog every day. But if you and your dog are using the same soap, one of you is damaging your hair. Dial Cross-Species is specially formulated for humans and dogs. You'll love how it gets you clean, he'll love that it smells like beef!",
"Shampoo and body wash can actually be interchangeable, as anyone in an emergency situation knows. There's a slightly different pH required for both, but our bodies are quite adaptable, so using the more acidic of the two for both is acceptable, especially for the short time the detergent is on our skin and how rapidly it is rinsed away. Combination shampoo-body washes tend to be made a little thinner than a standalone body wash, so that helps things rinse away well.\n\nThe combination shampoo-conditioners don't condition your hair in the same way that regular conditioners do (which is by replacing oils that the detergent strips away). Combination shampoo-conditioners work on the notion that certain very acidic shampoo formulas leave the cuticle of the hair smoothed down instead of fluffed up. This smoothness feels like there have been oils or waxes added to the hair, but that actually hasn't happened. It just feels that way. (To feel your hair cuticles fluffed up instead of smoothed down, use plain bar soap to wash your hair. It's not pleasant, and is only bearable if you have your hair cut with clippers on the #1 (1/8\" or 3mm) setting.)\n\nShampoo-conditioner combinations are just the shampoos that happen to leave the hair feeling so soft that you won't feel it necessary to add oils or waxes for a softer feeling.\n\nIt's possible, as one other poster mentioned, to capsule-ize the conditioner into something that doesn't burst open until the hair is rinsed, but there are a lot of unknown factors that make this approach less useful. The most important of these is that the time the shampoo is in the hair and scalp is an unknown entity. Some people shampoo up their hair first thing in the shower and don't rinse it off until the end of the shower. Others shampoo and rinse at the very end. If you wait too long after lathering, the capsultes are likely to break open long before the rinsing. If you shampoo and rinse very quickly, then the capsules may not have time to break, and will just be rinsed away with the rest of the shampoo.\n\nPeople with exceptionally dry hair will benefit from a shampoo-conditioner combo *followed by* a conditioning treatment. The \"built-in\" conditioner is actually just a slightly lower pH than other shampoos.\n\nDishwashing detergent not labeled for hand soap purposes is not as acidic, and the surfactants tend to be stronger, and so it makes for a more irritating body wash and shampoo. \n\nOne exception to that: Liquid Octagon used to promote itself as an everyday/everything soap: from people to clothes to dishes to pets to floors. It didn't really do a *great* job on any of them, but it did a passable/barely-acceptable job on everything.\n\nEDIT: Some kind soul gave me gold. Thank you tremendously. I also cleaned up some of the words and hopefully made things a little clearer.",
"Shampoo is better it goes on first and it cleans the hair. No, conditioner is better it makes the hair silky and smooth!",
"Shouldnt this be on /r/showerthoughts?",
"Jim Gaffigan explains it elegantly.\n\n_URL_0_",
"It's all soap.",
"Shampoo is one of those products, like washing up liquid, shaving cream, toothbrushes, razors, that has one basic function and is pretty simple, but the people that make them must continually create more profit so they have to constantly bring out \"new and improved\" versions of them. ",
"-Body wash/shower gel is lauryl sulphate (+colour and smells) \n-shampoo is laureth sulphate (+colour and smells) \n\nBoth laurylS and LaurethS are cleaning agents; but the laureth is made from the lauryl and is a lot milder than the lauryl. \nso you can use shampoo as a shower gel, but you'd be less inclined to use shower gel as a shampoo. \n\nany product described as a mix of 'shampoo+body wash' will actually be shamoo: laureht sulphate.\n\n",
"TL;DR but I only use conditioner, no shampoo, great results always and I'm picky about my hair. ",
" \n“3-in-1 is a bullshit term, because 1 is not big enough to hold 3. That's why 3 was created. If it was 3 in 1, it would be overflowing... the bottle would be all sticky and shit.” - Mitch Hedberg ",
"Shampoo: is specifically made to cleanse the hair strands, will hopefully have a lower percentage of sulfates at least to prevent wash damage to hair, color treatment stuff should have the lowest amount and will be the most gentle, whereas volumizing or clarifying will have the largest percentage.\n\nConditioner: meant to moisturize and hydrate the hair strands. Despite being dead keratin cells, hair appears the silkiest, softest, and is the most easy to deal with when conditioner is involved and allowed (for 1-5 minutes) to absorb into the hair.\n\nBody Wash: generally the chemicals are in a mixture best suited to clean skin. A higher amount of sulfates may be used and sometimes is mixed in a lotiony solution (like Dove does) for those who don't tend to use lotion after they cleanse.\n\nThe sooner and better care you take care of yourself now, the more youthful you will appear in the future, your skin will thank you!",
"Shampoo is soap. Body wash is soap with abrasives in it. Conditioner is oil. Mix all three and you have metal polish. I suggest bathing in Brasso.",
"Shampoo has some kind of double molecule where the head clings to dirt and the tail reacts to water, making it easy to wash out, conditioner reacts to water and closes the cuticles on the hair shaft essentailly smoothing your hair out, this is how it detangles after you've mussed up your hair while scrubbing it. I suppose because they are two very different things is why they work well together, basically like a three in one. one part of the first molecule and the second reacts to water. I can't really explain this in full detail as it's been a lng time since I studied in beauty school.",
"A girl at my work that has tons of gorgeous blonde hair told me that she uses conditioner only. I'm a guy with long hair, so I tried it and I love it. I totally believe my hair is very clean. I don't miss shampoo, but I keep some around for those times when I feel my hair is extra dirty.",
"You are all victims of marketing",
"Shampoo is basically scented detergent, ie it disperses oil. Body wash is just a non specific term for a cleaning product so in this case you're using the shampoo as soap. Real soap works differently to liquid soaps and detergents. It works solely on the principle of building up a lather of tiny micro bubbles which coruscate the skin. Liquid soaps clean using antibacterial agents and various substances that are often thought to be harmful. From my limited understanding of 2 in1 shampoos, the cleaning takes place when you lather your hair, and the conditioner (which basically just coats hair strands like a weak kind of wax or plastic) becomes active through the rinsing process. I saw it demonstrated once using molecular science I didn't quite grasp and cannot find on YouTube. ",
"I'm looking for something that can do all 3, and double as a dessert topping and engine degreaser.",
"2 in 1s are hybrid who's purposes counteract the other. A shampoo is supposed to dissolve oil, conditioner is supposed to add it. It's just sales nonsense. Source: guy with long hair",
"Shampoo is better. I go on first and clean the hair. ",
"Bronners followed by coconut oil everywhere. Best."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://www.differencebetween.net/object/difference-between-shampoo-and-conditioner/",
"http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4107015/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N_GjFMzVT7c&feature=kp"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr5EZN5KJys#t=1854"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1jdntr | how do shockwaves work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jdntr/eli5how_do_shockwaves_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"cbdmldq"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"A shockwave is simply a front which is traveling faster than the sound speed in a material. They compress and heat the material as they pass through. You should be more specific, though, if you want a more specific answer."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
4dj02u | in regards to these religious freedom laws and denial of service to gays, haven't business owners always had the right to refuse service at their own peril? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dj02u/eli5in_regards_to_these_religious_freedom_laws/ | {
"a_id": [
"d1rdblx",
"d1rddfa",
"d1rgl2k"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
4
],
"text": [
"No. They typically don't have the right to refuse service based on religion, gender, race or sexuality. ",
"Yes, but if customer asks why, and they say \"because your gay\", it escalates from refusal to discrimination based on orientation.",
"Not since the 60s. One the provisions of civil rights laws is that certain businesses are a 'public accommodation' and cannot refuse service based solely on certain identities.\n\nThis can get a bit fuzzy. For example, many barbers won't do most women's and African-American hair styles. However, if you're a black person or female who walks into such an establishment asking for the same haircut a white male would receive, they have to serve you.\n\nYou can also set up 'private accommodations'. For example, most private golf clubs are only for the use of their members. So if they want membership criteria like \"no women, no blacks and no lawyers\", they're welcome to do so (although they may face social disapproval for such a stance).\n\nGays fall into a fuzzy category. Sexuality is not a protected class under federal law (it is under many state laws), but many people would like to extend the 'gender' classification to include it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
97txhb | when you touch another part of your body with your hand, is that sense of touch coming from your hand or the part of the body that is being touched? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/97txhb/eli5_when_you_touch_another_part_of_your_body/ | {
"a_id": [
"e4avlr5",
"e4aw2qd",
"e4axyjr",
"e4b10uq"
],
"score": [
19,
4,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Assuming you don't have some sort of nerve damage, and you aren't touching your hair or nails, your brain should be receiving signals from both your hand and the other part of your body when they come in contact. I don't now what else to add but the ELI5 auto mod is always deleting my replies so I guess I will add a bunch of nonsense at the end here so my reply meets the dumb length requirements. ",
"Both. If you've ever had your hand \"fall asleep\" and had it touch you, it feels like the hand of a different person. Likewise, if you have some sort of nerve damage that prevents you from feeling an area of your body, touching that area feels like touching another person.",
"Both, but your fingers have way more nerve endings than most places on your body, so you are likely getting most of the information from your hand.",
"Your skin is full of really small nerve endings that are responsible for your sense of touch/temperature/etc, so the \"woop, I'm touching something!\" feeling is coming from both body parts. \n\nIf your fingers are cold and you touch your arm, you'll probably feel your arm getting colder and your fingers getting warmer at the same time. \n\n[Here's a fun Brainiac video on a body trick that is probably related to this.](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raICSSAzxo4"
]
] |
||
2uttlx | how and why did greece lie to get into the eurozone? why are they being punished (can't think of a better term) for it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2uttlx/eli5how_and_why_did_greece_lie_to_get_into_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"cobpo25"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"They aren't being punished, they are being expected to pay back the debt they promised to pay back."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
346esn | how can using a plunger make my toilet flush? | I understand the concept of a plunger pulling a clog back to allow the water to flow. But why am I sometimes able to plunge enough to trigger the entire flushing process? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/346esn/eli5_how_can_using_a_plunger_make_my_toilet_flush/ | {
"a_id": [
"cqro7vf"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"The thingy (for lack of a better word since I can't recall offhand what it's called) that initiates the flushing process isn't the only way to make it flush. For example, if you take a bucket of water and start pouring it into the toilet, at a certain point the sheer amount of water in the toilet will cause it to start flushing on its own. \n\nSo basically, when you pump it just right with your plunger, it creates enough pressure within the toilet to make it start flushing."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
33wtrw | why the price of milk is cheaper in the u.s. than in taiwan? | I just bought a bottle of milk with price 5.21USD per 2L in Taiwan. I have heard that the price of milk in the U.S. is much cheaper than in Taiwan. If that is true, why?
(On the contrary, international edition textbooks are cheaper then U.S. edition.) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33wtrw/eli5_why_the_price_of_milk_is_cheaper_in_the_us/ | {
"a_id": [
"cqp3dbo"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Cows make milk. \n\nCows need land to graze. \n\nLand is cheaper and more plentiful in the U.S. \n\nMilk is cheaper because it is cheaper to raise cows in the U.S. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
201e2t | what exactly happens when i hold back a bowel movement for a short while and then the need to defecate seemingly disappears for several hours after? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/201e2t/eli5_what_exactly_happens_when_i_hold_back_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfyvnsr",
"cfywgbs",
"cfyyuux",
"cfz0bdx",
"cfz2bo9",
"cfz4qmy",
"cfzg3rt",
"cfziuu6",
"cfzlvb0",
"cfzmpa0",
"cfzmvuv",
"cg2u86n"
],
"score": [
27,
1843,
12,
15,
37,
10,
5,
2,
2,
2,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"No explanation really needed I assume, but to the best of my understanding, once fecal matter reaches the \"red zone\" of the intestinal tract, the urge to defecate is communicated through pressure in the lower stomach. If I hold it back for a certain amount of time, though, this urge completely disappears. I don't believe that the fecal matter has crawled back up my intestines, so why do I not need to go again for hours on end after getting through this spot?",
"The reason it comes and fades, and then recurs (repeat as needed) is that Peristaltic waves move in a one way direction down the digestive tract. The waves push the intestinal/colonic contents toward the posterior opening. These waves are not conscious, but occur at regular intervals day and night. Often the cycle occurs in the 10 to 20 minute time frame, but not always.\n\nThe urge to poop comes when fecal material enters the rectum and approaches the internal anal sphincter. The internal sphincter opens, and then the external opens. When we are potty trained, we can resist opening the external sphincter, and wait for the next urge to void the bowels. Babies can't control the external yet, therefore more frequent and usually softer poop.\nOne of the dangers of putting off pooping in adults is that the colon is a very good organ for the reabsorbtion of water...so the longer one puts off pooping, the more water is removed from the fecal mass...the result is dry, hard and smaller feces; in fact they may become little hard spherical masses and in extreme cases must be removed manually.",
"What about when people have diarrhoea and can't hold it in? What happens to the external sphincter? ",
"Voluntary defecation begins with the sensation when the rectum expands as it fills with stool. This stretches the pelvic muscle and the rectal wall, which signals the urge to defecate. Stool fills up in the internal sphincter, which automatically relaxes (something called the recto-anal inhibitory reflex) and the external anal sphincter is voluntarily contracted so you don't shit yourself. \n\nWhen the situation is socially appropriate, you shit voluntarily. Sitting straightens the rectum and makes the poop fall out through a straighter intestinal \"pipe.\" To start pooping, the external anal sphincter and the pelvic muscle relax. Then the glottis (valve that makes sure poop doesn't go backward) is closed, the pelvic muscle that's holding the butthole shut relaxes, and abdominal muscles contract to raise pressure. Colonic muscle and gravity then propel the stool out. \n\nSource: _URL_0_ \n\nEDIT: Made it more ELI5. Apparently it was more ELI6.",
"Psychologist here!\n\nI actually have an answer. The answer is habituation. When you sit with the feeling of having to poop for a considerable amount of time your body begins to get used to the feeling and eventually the signal of the pressure will go away. Its the same as when you smell a skunk at first and then your nerve endings get exhausted and the smell goes away. \n\nHabituation is essentially our bodies way of tuning out stimuli that would make us crazy. It why you don't notice a ticking clock after a short time, or feel that we are wearing a watch throughout the day. Our body gets used to non-pain inducing stimuli relativity quickly. \n\nEDIT* Its the same principal of this video. Its why the mouse no longer is scared of the noise. (This is funny, but imagine each noise is the mouse being told he has to poop internally). Eventually the stimulus isn't that effective.)\n_URL_0_",
"This may be the right forum to ask for clarification on something I was told by a friend (who is a MD now):\n\nI heard that, since bowel movement can be gaseous, holding in poop can cause the colon to develop \"air pockets\" and these air pockets close after defecation. This action can result in little amounts of fecal matter being trapped in the (now closed) pocket area and, thereby, increasing the chance for infections/diseases of the colon. Is this true?\n\nTL;DR: Want to confirm if holding poop in can have longer term consequences.",
"It's a well known fact that when the poo is unable to come out after a short period it retreats to your semicolon. ",
"You might want to read what Freud wrote about anal retentive psychology. Just for some self awareness.",
"Good question. I had to hold it in for 10 hrs yesterday. I was at work and I don't poop there because I won't run the risk of someone else using the stall next to me. My stomach hurt so bad I was working at about 30% productivity. It felt like I would explode all day. I'm curious if this is damaging.",
"Where is DrColon? One of my fave redditors. He needs to chime in on this. ",
"Body says: \"Fuck, we gotta stow it, boys!\"",
"Simple answer: Migrating Motor Complex.\nWhat does this mean?\nEvery couple hours after you eat a meal, your body sends a wave of contraction down the intestines and colon that moves food down the intestines. This is what causes food to travel down the GI tract and eventually become poop. Finally, your poop will reach the rectum (the last part of the colon). The poop will stretch the wall of the rectum and stimulate stretch receptors that give you the \"feeling\" to defecate (i.e. the defecation reflex). At that point you now have control of whether you want to defecate or not. If you voluntarily choose not to defecate, the feces will move back into the sigmoid colon and the defecation reflex stops until the next migrating motor complex is initiated. Thus, for another couple of hours until the next wave of contraction hits, you won't feel like defecating. Eventually, after going through multiple migrating motor complexes, there will be so much poop accumulating into the rectum and so much more stretching of the rectal walls, that you will feel a really strong urge to go."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9033/"
],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfu0FAAu-10"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2z5gdw | why can my sleeping brain create a wildly imaginative dream with intricate detail, but my waking brain struggles to come up with a creative premise upon which to write a story? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2z5gdw/eli5_why_can_my_sleeping_brain_create_a_wildly/ | {
"a_id": [
"cpfubis",
"cpfutzl",
"cpfzuxo",
"cpg2a2x",
"cpgs1w0"
],
"score": [
10,
22,
9,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"All you will hear about 10 percent are bullshit. Your brain works more when you are sleeping than when awake. That's it.",
"The part of the brain that creates common sense is part of the brain that slows it's function when you sleep. Your brain is no longer trying to think rationally and is going through your memories. Occasionally, usually near the end of your sleep, these random senseless strolls through memory lane is remembered and the mind starts trying to make sense of it all and what you get is your standard dream. You dream at other times at night but your mind is too asleep to remember it or make sense of it.",
"Apparently because your self-censorship or critical tendencies keep you from basing stories on your dreams.",
"I'm sure you can easily come up with a story just as crappy as your dream, dreams have no logic. ",
"When you sleep, you are using much less functionality of your brain to process the information your 5 senses experience. This would allow for more possibility of exploration into creativity in dreams without \"white noise\" of information needing processing while you are awake. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
73wuk9 | why can't people who have had cancer in the past donate blood? | Edit: well this blew up overnight. Thanks for the informative answers everyone.
My mother kicked breast cancers ass the second time just over a year ago and was told she could not donate blood ever again. It had spread to get lymph nodes so maybe that's why? From the responses I gather that unless it's a cancer of the blood you're allowed to donate after 1-5 years clear. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73wuk9/eli5_why_cant_people_who_have_had_cancer_in_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"dntq8rx",
"dntve7t",
"dnu1nym",
"dnu2rtk",
"dnu34u3",
"dnu496f",
"dnu5d1f",
"dnu5g3n",
"dnu5ky1",
"dnu647w",
"dnu7nbh",
"dnu7v31",
"dnu8cav",
"dnu8r01",
"dnua5w4",
"dnuboxs",
"dnuc8kd",
"dnudxg9",
"dnuegl6",
"dnv3h8w"
],
"score": [
208,
2597,
6,
393,
362,
17,
62,
20,
9,
40,
14,
27,
3,
41,
6,
2,
4,
129,
6,
2
],
"text": [
"Even if there's no detectable cancer ie remission, there might be some stray cancerous cells in such a donor, which could mutate and cause cancer in the recipient after a transfusion. It's unlikely, but statistically possible, so standard practice is to bar cancer survivors from donating blood.",
"Some cancers (like leukemia) go into remission. Other cancers (like melanoma) don’t go into remission; patients are considered “NED” meaning no evidence of disease. Doctors don’t see any cancer but it could, in theory, still be present. Cancers like melanoma can travel through the vascular (blood) system, so cancer patients cannot donate. \n\nMy son was diagnosed with melanoma when he was 3. It’s super rare in kids, and unlike adult melanomas it’s due to genetics rather than sun exposure. Protect your skin, and see a dermatologist regularly!",
"In Australia at least, once a person has been in sustained remission for over 5 years, they can donate blood again. ",
"I had leukemia and I’m unable to donate blood. From what I understand, it is because my blood is more susceptible to getting leukemia again than the average person. So donating my blood would increase that risk for the recipient. Same reason I can’t donate plasma or be an organ donor.\n\nSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s what I remember doctors telling me. Being unable to donate blood or plasma or register as an organ donor has been a real bummer. \n\nEdit: this comment blew up! i’m honored, thank you everyone for your replies! ",
"I lost an eye to melanoma. I am now \"cancer free\" but need to be rechecked once a year. (used to be every 3 months) Those little bastard cancer cells can migrate and lay dormant. Then suddenly kapow, they shit their shit. I need to hit the Mayo for the next 15 years. So on the off chance that one of those little cells hitch a ride in the blood bag, no donating for me.",
"If any cancerous cells get in the blood, they could set up shop in the blood recipient's body, growing into a tumor and killing them. \n\nIt's pretty unlikely because usually the recipient's immune system will recognize the cells as foreign and kill them just like it would a bacteria or other invading organism, but it could happen if, say, the patient was immunocompromised in some way (as many people who find themselves in the position of needing blood are) or if the donor is too similar to the patient for the immune system to tell the difference.\n\nAs an interesting aside, there are some cases of cells which originally began as cancers turning into transmissable diseases as well as free living organisms. There's at least one documented case of a human cancer evolving into a common pest which contaminates laboratory settings. So, hbasically a cancer is in many respects only a few evolutionary steps away from being a wild parasite or free living organism. ",
"It's just an unnecessary risk, no matter how small, it's better not to take it. \n\nYou may think, \"well, it's better than nothing...\". But most of the time, that's not the situation, unless you're doing a direct blood transfusion because there really isn't any other blood available.",
"In the UK you can't donate blood if you have ever received blood as a transfusion. Which kind of says to me \"our blood could be awful, we don't trust it...\" ",
"I was more surprised that they don’t allow people who’ve had tattoo work in the last year. Which terribly ironic considering they’re a huge chunk of the population that doesn’t have an aversion to needles. ",
"I can't donate blood in New Zealand simply because I lived in the UK At the height of the mad cow disease. It's still considered transmissible.\n\n",
"Okay people cancer is NOT contagious. Again, there are no cancers known to be able to jump from one person to another. Your immune system is gonna take down any foreign cancer cells in no time.\n\nThe reason people with a history of leukemia, lymphoma, liver cancer etc are not able to give blood is because all those cancers affects your blood producing organs, so after cancer your blood is essentially \"not as good\" as normal patients.\n\nAfter you donate , they don't just take that bag of blood and hook it up to someone else. They separate the blood into components like red cells, platelets, plasma etc which are stored and infused separately. I guess they don't want to do all that processing if your blood might not be of good quality.\n\nI mean most of these ex cancer patient blood is probably fine, but donations are highly regulated by the red cross monopoly so there are lots of factors where they have decided to just exclude potential donors.\n\nTldr: they don't want your Ford Pinto ex-leukemia blood when there is (usually) plenty of perfectly good Camry blood available from non cancer patients. ",
"At this point in time, science has not determined exactly how malignant cancer spreads from one place to another even within its original host. While there are varying theories on this, no one really knows, making it possible that the blood of someone who has had cancer carries with it the ability to cause cancer in others.\n\nWhat we do know is that cancer is relentless. Cancer cells can be taken from one organism and placed within another and will fully metasaticise within the new organism. The new host does not even need to be members of the same species for a tumor to form. Transmitable cancer is currently one of the biggest threats to the Tasmanian Devil, and is thought to be spread through exchange of bodily fluids while fighting.\n\nSo, likely the prevention of cancer survivors of donating blood is a safety procaution based on the understanding that cancer in the right conditions may pass between hosts.",
"Wait. So if you transfuse the blood of a cancer patient to someone healthy, you can give them cancer? Like a virus?",
"Just an FYI since most people aren't mentioning this.\n\nAt least in the USA, most cancers, if \"gone\" and are no longer seeing the doctor for regular medical care only have a 1 year deferral so they can indeed give blood again. \n\nOur donors do it all the time. While it's sad to lose them for a year or two (as they battle and beat the cancer), it's always wonderful to have them back once they have recovered and can donate again.\n",
"I am an apheresis Technician for a blood center spread in the south. Most cancers if you've been treated and released from doctors care at least a year ago we will accept you. We have a standard operating procedure to hobby with the small list of cancers we turn away.",
"Stupid question maybe, but can people who've had Hepatitis C and have been treated donate blood?",
"A Cancer is a collection of own cells that continuously divide and grow uncontrollably and chaotically. Normally our cells are \"programmed\" to divide and grow in a controlled manner by lots of different safety mechanisms in their DNA. In a cancer, cells acquire mutations (random changes in DNA that slightly change how cells behave) that stop these safety mechanisms from working, thus causing the cells to grow like crazy. \n\nThese cells continuously mutate with one purpose: to grow and divide further. Therefore as cancer progresses the cells get better and better at essentially being cancerous. \n\nThe fear with blood transfusion is that even though you may have been treated for cancer, you may have the odd cell floating around in your blood somewhere. Since this cell has the genetic mutations that make it a \"super grower\", there is a fear that it could get into another person through a blood transfusion and start growing there. \n\nWhy would the cell be able to grow in another person but not the blood donor? The next person is a different environment, and though the blood donors body may no longer be hospitable to the cancer cell, the theory goes the transfusion recipient might be (especially since people receiving blood transfusions are often quite unwell to start with). \n\nThere isn't any evidence of this actually happening, but the theoretical risk is judged to outweigh the potential gains of allowing previous cancer patients to donate.",
"Read this article:\n\n- [Cancer's Invasion Equation](_URL_0_)\n\nwhich was covered in this reddit post:\n\n- [Cancer's Invasion Equation](_URL_1_)\n\nAccording to the article, even when a human has a few tumors which are stable there may already be metastatic cancer cells detectable in their blood - i.e. the tumors are shedding that. Yet in many patients these do not cause additional tumors (i.e. there is no rampant metastatis or spread/re-seeding in another place of the cancer cells etc.). This is contrary to the layman understanding of tumors and cancers - where just having **any** cancer cells shedding from the tumor are seen as being potential metastasis agents - i.e. almost like every such cancer cell that is loose in the bloodstream can lodge somewhere and create another tumor. But this article suggests the reality is something different - i.e. actually cancer cells are being shed all the time, and don't necessarily create new tumors. And when they do create tumors, they tend to favor certain organs more. The idea being suggested is that actually humans may have a pretty robust system working **against** cancer all the time - it's just when that fails that you find metastatis taking place. Again I am not an expert to comment on these things - that is just my reading of what the article seems to be suggesting. But this idea that cancer cells are being shed by tumors all the time - is scary. But then the idea that despite that constant barrage, new tumors happen only in certain special conditions - is heartening. Because it suggests cancer cells do not hold all the cards - there are other factors (i.e. the \"soil\" or conditions in the patient's body - which may depend on immune system, as well as organ to organ variation in how welcoming the conditions are for cancer cells to lodge and grow into tumors in that location).\n\nThis suggests that it may be possible that in cancer patients, and possibly even in non-cancer patients (or undetected cancer humans) there may already be metastatic cancer cells running around in their blood. Except those cancer cells are not taking root elsewhere. This is what the article discusses - the idea of looking at cancer not just from the point of view of the cancer cell, but from point of view of the \"soil\" i.e. what causes already-prolific cancer cells to NOT take root (example being patients with a few stable tumors who are shedding cancer cells, but they are not taking root beyond a few places).\n\nIf this view of cancer is correct - it could mean blood transfusions from even a presumed non-cancer patient could be dangerous. And it is dangerous for sure when that donation is taken from a known cancer patient - because even though they are cured i.e. their existant cancer cells are not taking root, they might do so in another patient.\n\nThey give the example of cancer patients who have gone in to remission and seem to be long-term cured - yet when their organ was donated to someone else - that recipient developed aggressive cancer. The idea being that for some reason in the donor the immune system or \"soil\" so to speak had become hostile or conditions were not right for cancer cells to prosper as tumors. But in another patient (i.e. different \"soil\" - using that analogy again) - those same cancer cells may find a more supportive environment for those cancer cells to grow.\n",
"Nobody who has ever had cancer can be definitively declared cancer-free. At best, cancer is no longer detected in the body. The cancer can still be there, just not at detectable levels. It is why people who have 'beaten cancer' get checked for cancer on an annual basis to see if it has returned. ",
"This will probably get lost in the comments, but some donors (and former patients eg) need their blood themselves rather than donating it. One must not forget that by donating blood, you also donate part of your current immune system so to speak (white blood cells, antibodies et c), which is also why it's not recommended to donate blood if you're not feeling 100 % well, for example if your starting to catch a cold - by donating part of your immune system along with the red blood cells, the cold could come around full force. Sometimes you need your blood yourself!"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/11/cancers-invasion-equation/amp",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/72itrn/cancers_invasion_equation/"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
31lj2v | what is the difference between isis, hezzbollah, al-shabaab, hamas, boko haram, al-queda and why aren't they allies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31lj2v/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_isis/ | {
"a_id": [
"cq2pq1w",
"cq2r22s",
"cq2s1no"
],
"score": [
4,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Basically they are all extremist groups willing to use violence to obtain their goals. Their goals can be very different. Al-Quaeda allegedly wants the USA to burn. ISIS wants one large unified Islamic State. HAMAS are the extremists in Palestine fighting for Palestinian sovereignty. So what they want is fundamentally different. But they also have a lot of the same stuff to do to accomplish their goals. So maybe destroying local militia that like the USA is on all their lists. They'll get along fine while doing that. But then ISIS might want to apropriate an oil feild for their own gains while al-Qaeda might want to burn it to put economic strain on their preceived enemies. So the two groups might be at conflict there.\n\nObviously this is very simplified, and I didn't talk about all the groups but I hope it gives you an idea.",
"There's very little similarity between them except that all of them are Muslim and assholes. \n\nAlso, there are a number of really big rifts in Islam. \n\nHamas and Hezbollah in specific are focused on the whole Israel/Palestine thing and don't neccessarily care about other places. \n\nBoko Haram is about far-right, insular Islam specifically in Nigeria. \n\nAl-Qaeda is mostly Arab and originally just wanted the US out of Saudi Arabia. ",
"Actually al-Shabaab is united with al-Qaeda. The big reason they aren't the same organization is location. When we mention al-Qaeda anymore its usually meaning AQAP (Al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula) based in Yemen. al-Shabaab operates out of Somalia, but does a lot of work in Kenya because of the border that practically doesn't exist.\n\nBoko Haram and ISIS used to be aligned with Al-Qaeda but broke up with them over because they disagreed about how they should handle the kids I MEAN how harshly they should enforce Sharia Law (Islam code of conduct, good enough definition for this response.\n\nHezbollah and Hamas have one goal: Restore their countries, they don't necessarily want to create a massive Islamic state. For Hamas that basically means fuck Israel, but if the US wasn't supporting Israel Hamas would probably not give a shit about the US.\n\nAl-Qaeda and IS has identified the West (and IS really fucking hates Australia because they stuck it out in the 2003-holy shit it's still ongoing invasion of Iraq) as enemies of Islam and trying to fight them through their attacks. Even al-Shabaab is pretty much only focused on Somalia and Kenya, which is in response for Kenya sending forces in AMISOM (African Union Mission In Somalia). Although al-Shabaab does claim a couple attacks in other countries (most notably during the 2010 world cup in Uganda), their actions are almost exclusively in those two countries, and many people in the Area of Operations for AS in Kenya are ethnically Somalis. They aren't AS FOCUSED on killing us in our beds as AQAP and ISIS are.\n\nBonus explanation: there are 2 reasons we aren't actually fighting Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram. 1) it's on the \"black contininent\", and 2) if we go in there we might find evidence of genocide (and this is really almost certainly true for ISIS and Boko Haram, with all the evidence that has been covered by the media), and if we do, the US is obligated to go in and prevent the genocide. And we do NOT want to get involved in Iraq again, or in Africa at all.\n\nTL;DR Al-Shabaab and AQAP do, Boko Haram and ISIS do. Most organizations have separate agendas so they don't benefit from working together."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
47x5pa | why there's a sense of motion even if you're lying still when you're drunk. | Like when you hit the bed and it seems like it's moving around. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/47x5pa/eli5_why_theres_a_sense_of_motion_even_if_youre/ | {
"a_id": [
"d0g1avo",
"d0g1hdn"
],
"score": [
18,
4
],
"text": [
"The spins happen because of an odd effect alcohol has on your ears -- specifically, on three tiny, fluid-filled structures called the semicircular canals. Inside each of these canals is a fluid called endolymph.\nAs you move around, the movement of the endolymph lags behind the more solid cupula, distorting and bending it -- and those little hairs. When the hairs bend, the electrical signal they send to your brain is altered, helping you to make sense of the rotations your head experiences on each of the three planes the canals sets.\n\nLPT: Looking at a fixed object and keeping your feet planted on the ground can help lessen the effect.",
"Part of how you detect motion is via your semi-circular canals in your ears. They have fluid, and as your head turns or you accelerate, the fluid moves in the canals. Your brain interprets the signal to tell you how you're moving and oriented. Your brain also uses visual cues.\n\nWhen you're drunk, the alcohol messes with your brain's ability to interpret that signal from your canals. So you get a false signal from them, which your brain interprets as weird, nauseating movements. Incidentally, that's why closing your eyes often helps with beer sickness: the [false] signal from your ears is disagreeing with the input from your eyes, and your brain gets really confused. By closing your eyes, it cuts that signal, so while the signal from your ears is still nauseating, at least it's not crossed signals from your eyes."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
lhw0n | female to male gender reassignment surgery. | I understand how it works in the other direction, but where does the penis come from?
Also, inb4 "You're five, I'll tell you when you're older." | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lhw0n/eli5_female_to_male_gender_reassignment_surgery/ | {
"a_id": [
"c2svp7f",
"c2svp7f"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"Let's talk about fetuses.\n\nEvery single fetus starts developing off the same template, which looks female. It has the little bud of a clitoris, a cleft for the vagina with labia around it, and tiny lumps of breast tissue beneath the nipples. You have gonads near the hips.\n\nIf you're female, as you develop, the cleft will deepen into a vagina, your gonads will produce ova and connect to fallopian tubes, and so on. At puberty, those lumps of breast tissue will start to develop in response to hormones.\n\nIf you're male, the labial skin will fuse together and weaken, to form the scrotum. Your gonads will later drop into the scrotum from their internal position and eventually produce sperm. The urethra will be poked through the clitoris as it grows, and it becomes your penis. Your tiny lumps of breast tissue will never develop.\n\nThis is why men have nipples and can suffer breast cancer -- we have those little leftovers from the early template. And it's why women have clitorises; they're biologically useless leftovers from that initial template.\n\nFemale-to-male gender reassignment is actually the easier kind, because as you can see, it's pretty damn close to what nature would do to you in the womb. They can issue hormones that grow the clitoris significantly, and increase the blood flow for stronger clitoral erections, to the point where it can function sexually almost identically to a penis. [Here is an image of a female bodybuilder whose steroid use has given her an enlarged clitoris.](_URL_0_) So yeah, the clitoris really is just a penis without a urethra in it.\n\nThese same hormones often cause body hair growth, so the patient will grow a beard along with tougher and thicker hair on their chest, legs and arms. Oftentimes this makes it easier to build muscle as well, and often combining these hormones with breast reduction surgery is enough for 95% of transmen to pass.\n\nThe next step is to stretch the labial skin and fuse it together around two silicon implants the size and shape of testicles. This surgery can produce an exactly lifelike scrotum.\n\nThere are further surgeries that can be performed, but those are the basic steps. One increasingly popular option is an implant placed in a surgically-enlarged penis that induces an erection when pumped, usually via squeezing one of the artificial testicles. This is not solely used by transmen but also by men who suffer impotence due to blood-flow problems.\n\nThe only real unsolvable problem in female-to-male reassignment is the shape of the hips.",
"Let's talk about fetuses.\n\nEvery single fetus starts developing off the same template, which looks female. It has the little bud of a clitoris, a cleft for the vagina with labia around it, and tiny lumps of breast tissue beneath the nipples. You have gonads near the hips.\n\nIf you're female, as you develop, the cleft will deepen into a vagina, your gonads will produce ova and connect to fallopian tubes, and so on. At puberty, those lumps of breast tissue will start to develop in response to hormones.\n\nIf you're male, the labial skin will fuse together and weaken, to form the scrotum. Your gonads will later drop into the scrotum from their internal position and eventually produce sperm. The urethra will be poked through the clitoris as it grows, and it becomes your penis. Your tiny lumps of breast tissue will never develop.\n\nThis is why men have nipples and can suffer breast cancer -- we have those little leftovers from the early template. And it's why women have clitorises; they're biologically useless leftovers from that initial template.\n\nFemale-to-male gender reassignment is actually the easier kind, because as you can see, it's pretty damn close to what nature would do to you in the womb. They can issue hormones that grow the clitoris significantly, and increase the blood flow for stronger clitoral erections, to the point where it can function sexually almost identically to a penis. [Here is an image of a female bodybuilder whose steroid use has given her an enlarged clitoris.](_URL_0_) So yeah, the clitoris really is just a penis without a urethra in it.\n\nThese same hormones often cause body hair growth, so the patient will grow a beard along with tougher and thicker hair on their chest, legs and arms. Oftentimes this makes it easier to build muscle as well, and often combining these hormones with breast reduction surgery is enough for 95% of transmen to pass.\n\nThe next step is to stretch the labial skin and fuse it together around two silicon implants the size and shape of testicles. This surgery can produce an exactly lifelike scrotum.\n\nThere are further surgeries that can be performed, but those are the basic steps. One increasingly popular option is an implant placed in a surgically-enlarged penis that induces an erection when pumped, usually via squeezing one of the artificial testicles. This is not solely used by transmen but also by men who suffer impotence due to blood-flow problems.\n\nThe only real unsolvable problem in female-to-male reassignment is the shape of the hips."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://i.imgur.com/ZA5sp.jpg"
],
[
"http://i.imgur.com/ZA5sp.jpg"
]
] |
|
jcvp6 | heartburn | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jcvp6/eli5_heartburn/ | {
"a_id": [
"c2b2lag",
"c2b2lag"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Like you're 5: Basically, different foods react differently in different people. Heartburn can be caused by a wide variety of food, but it's usually a food the is high in acidic content or is spicy. When eaten, that food doesn't sit well in the stomach and causes stomach acid to react, often 'climbing up' the esophagus during a burp. When this happens, the left over acid in the esophagus creates a 'burn' in the chest or throat, usually in the area around the heart or just above. \n\nThis is heartburn. \n\nThere's a lot more to it, and the way I described it may not be 100% accurate sounding, but that's the basics of it.\n\nnot so ninja edit: you're*",
"Like you're 5: Basically, different foods react differently in different people. Heartburn can be caused by a wide variety of food, but it's usually a food the is high in acidic content or is spicy. When eaten, that food doesn't sit well in the stomach and causes stomach acid to react, often 'climbing up' the esophagus during a burp. When this happens, the left over acid in the esophagus creates a 'burn' in the chest or throat, usually in the area around the heart or just above. \n\nThis is heartburn. \n\nThere's a lot more to it, and the way I described it may not be 100% accurate sounding, but that's the basics of it.\n\nnot so ninja edit: you're*"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
2cc657 | how is 50 shades of grey terribly written? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cc657/eli5_how_is_50_shades_of_grey_terribly_written/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjdz8py"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"I'm going to remove this, as it's not really an ELI5 question. \n\n > ELI5 is for requests for easy-to-follow explanations of complex concepts and subjects. That means no questions that are just looking for straightforward answers, that are subjective, a request for a guide/walkthrough, or that are objective but not asking for an explanation of an answer. ELI5 is absolutely not a repository for any question you have."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
28hggp | why did the iraqi army cave so quickly in 2003 even though they had the 7th largest army? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28hggp/eli5_why_did_the_iraqi_army_cave_so_quickly_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"ciaybrn",
"ciayewq",
"ciayl7s",
"ciazz18"
],
"score": [
5,
3,
2,
2
],
"text": [
" Large doesn't mean most advanced. Our weaponry was far superior to theirs, and our men were better trained.",
"Netflix had an awesome documentary series about tank battles. One episode was about the Gulf War and they had some amazing animations that really demonstrated the technological superiority of American armor against Iraqi armor. The Americans were able to cross the desert from an unexpected direction, drive right over mines without stopping, and repeatedly hit Iraqi tanks before they could even see the American tanks.",
"I don't know about the Abrams, although I suspect it is similar, but the UK Challenger 2 tank is able to hit a target the size of a football on a dark night at a distance of 5 miles. Its armour is so advanced the only tank lost was to friendly fire when it was hit by another challenger. In another incident a challenger was hit by over 100 Iraqi RPGs and was fully repaired 24 hours later with no injury or loss of life. Whilst all this is happening tornado attack bombers are dropping laser guided munitions on their command and control networks and destroying their airfields. When your army is being attacked by 2 countries that have the most advanced weaponry on earth, you aren't going to last very long.",
"US#1 military in the world. \n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
21jve1 | if my dead body is sinking in the mariana trench, what happens? | Does it sink all the way to the bottom? Is it crushed by the water pressure, so I become like a pancake or something? Does it reach a place somewhere in the middle that it won't sink anymore because the water under me is more... dense... than my body? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21jve1/eli5_if_my_dead_body_is_sinking_in_the_mariana/ | {
"a_id": [
"cgdqhdu"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Dead bodies generally float so you probably wouldn't end up deep enough for anything special to happen. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
27wij9 | why do chefs wear white when in the kitchen where foods can spill and stain them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27wij9/eli5_why_do_chefs_wear_white_when_in_the_kitchen/ | {
"a_id": [
"ci520vd",
"ci520ze",
"ci522gw",
"ci527ij",
"ci52803",
"ci5f4tk"
],
"score": [
14,
2,
4,
13,
6,
2
],
"text": [
"Precisely because of that. You don't want a grimy chef making your food.",
"For exactly that reason. If they wore black, then they wouldn't be able to see yesterdays soup that spilt on them and all the bacteria that come with it",
"I imagine it's similar to why doctors wear white when they're likely to see blood. White = clean and safe. Would you want to eat at a restaurant where the chef was wearing splattered and stained clothes? \n\nNot very logical, I agree...but socially established and therefore deviating from it would likely cause more grief than regular laundry. ",
"During the 16th century, artisans of all types (including chefs) were often imprisoned, or even executed, because of their freethinking. To alleviate persecution, some chefs sought refuge in the Orthodox Church and hid amongst the priests of the monasteries. There they wore the same clothes as the priests-including their tall hats and long robes-with the exception of one deviating trait: the chef's clothes were gray and the priest's were black.\n \nIt wasn't until the middle 1800's that chef Marie-Antoine Carême redesigned the uniforms. Carême thought the color white more appropriate, that it denoted cleanliness in the kitchen; it was also at this time that he and his staff began to wear double-breasted jackets. Carême also thought that the hats should be different sizes, to distinguish the cooks from the chefs. \n\n[Source] (_URL_0_)",
"One word... Bleach.\n\nBleach takes stains out really well. It also takes colors out. So, if you get white clothes dirty, they can be bleached at the laundry and look brand new.\n\nAs an aside, lots of chefs and cooks are moving to black.",
"I run a business that sells chef clothing and equipment. White is simply the traditional colour but a lot of chefs now wear black. If working in an open style kitchen, sometimes they will wear one jacket while prepping and change in to another one just before service so they look a bit more presentable. \nOh and bleach. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.cheftalk.com/a/jackets-and-toques-the-history-of-the-chef-uniform"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
17rb7l | why does the u.s. export f-35's, but not f-22's? | They won't export any F-22's, but they will export F-35's. Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17rb7l/why_does_the_us_export_f35s_but_not_f22s/ | {
"a_id": [
"c884jn8",
"c884mhc",
"c888vv5",
"c889gyn",
"c88f9g1"
],
"score": [
8,
22,
26,
11,
3
],
"text": [
"Because F35 was conceived as a joint venture between nations on the grounds that a number of NATO countires (but mainly the US and UK) identified the same capability gap.\n\nF22 was developed solely for the USAF and is considered (erroneously) to be a world beating weapon system hence a reluctance to let anyone else use it. The same applies, but to a much greater extent, with B2.",
"If I remember correctly, the F-35 was built for export, but it's not as capable as the F-22. While the F-22 is a fantastic air superiority fighter/interceptor, the F-35 is a jack of all trades, but not excelling at any of them as much as a dedicated platform would. Also, it should be mentioned 'export variants'. Typically made to the specifications of the customer, and usually not containing the latest and greatest technology, unless they nation is allowed to have it. Which is why so many nations can buy F-16's, but they can't get the latest avionics/radar/radios in it. \n\n\nFrom wikipedia: \n\n\"Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II procurement is the planned selection and purchase of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II by various countries.\n\nThe F-35 Lightning II was conceived from the start of the project as having participation from many countries, most of which would both contribute to the manufacture of the aircraft and procure it for their own armed forces. However, the program is now threatened with cancellation over ballooning project scope (\"feature creep\"), or to share proprietary software codes with purchasing partner nations, and failed efforts at cost containment, together with multinational resistance to purchasing an unproven aircraft developed and fast-tracked through a non-competitive, no-bid contract process, and even calls from politicians and defense analysts in the United States and elsewhere for the program's immediate termination.\n\nWhile the United States is the primary customer and financial backer, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Turkey, Australia, Norway and Denmark have agreed to contribute US$4.375 billion toward the development costs of the program.[1] Total development costs are estimated at more than US$40 billion (underwritten largely by the United States), while the purchase of an estimated 2,400 planes is expected to cost an additional US$200 billion.[2] Norway has estimated that each of their planned 52 F-35 fighter jets will cost their country $769 million over their operational lifetime.[3] The nine major partner nations, including the U.S., plan to acquire over 3,100 F-35s through 2035,[4] which, if delivered will make the F-35 one of the most numerous jet fighters.\"\n\n_URL_1_\n\nand \n\n\"No opportunity for export currently exists because the export sale of the F-22 is barred by American federal law.[44] Current customers for U.S. fighters are either acquiring earlier designs such as the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle, General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon, and Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, or are waiting to acquire the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II (Joint Strike Fighter), which contains technology from the F-22 but is designed to be cheaper, more flexible, and available for export.[45] The F-35 will not be as agile as the F-22 or fly as high or as fast, but its radar and avionics will be more advanced.[46] On 27 September 2006, Congress upheld the ban on foreign sales of the F-22;[47] and confirmed this in December 2006.[48]\n\nThe Japanese government showed interest in the F-22 for its Replacement-Fighter program.[49] However, a sale would need approval from the Pentagon, State Department and Congress. It was stated that the F-22 would decrease the number of fighters needed by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF), reducing engineering and staffing costs. In August 2009, it was reported that the F-22 would require increases to the military budget beyond the historic 1 percent of GDP.[50] In June 2009, Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada said Japan still sought the F-22.[51]\n\nSome Australian politicians and defense commentators have proposed that Australia should purchase F-22s instead of the F-35.[52][53] In 2006, Kim Beazley. leader of the Australian Labor Party supported this proposal on the grounds that the F-22 is a proven, highly capable aircraft, while the F-35 is still under development.[54] However, Australia's Howard government ruled out purchase of the F-22, as its release for export is unlikely, and lacks sufficient ground/maritime strike capacity.[55] The following year, the newly-elected Rudd Government ordered a review of plans to procure the F-35 and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, including an evaluation of the F-22's suitability. The then Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon stated: \"I intend to pursue American politicians for access to the Raptor\".[56] In February 2008, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he had no objection to F-22 sales to Australia.[57] However the RAAF found that the \"F-22 Raptor cannot perform the strike or close air support roles planned for the JSF.\"[58]\n\nThomas Crimmins of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy speculated in 2009 that the F-22 could be a strong diplomatic tool for Israel, strengthening the capability to strike Iranian nuclear facilities.[60] Crimmins also stated the F-22 may be the only aircraft able to evade Russian S-300 air defense systems, which Russia may sell to Iran.[61] However, Lockheed Martin has stated that the F-35 can handle the S-300, additionally Russia has stated they support and voted for United Nations sanctions on Iran preventing sales of the S-300.[62][63]\n\nThe 2010 defense authorization bill included provisions that required the DoD to prepare a report on the costs and feasibility for an F-22 export variant and another report on the impact of F-22 export sales on the U.S. aerospace industry.[64][65]\"\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\nI can't help but feel I've missed something... Oh well, I'm sure the reddit army will catch it.",
"the top rated post does a great job on the details, but this is ELI5, so here goes:\n\nWhen countries (the US excluded) are buying planes for their military, they want to spend as little as possible while doing as much as possible. A multi-role fighter like the F-35 suits many missions and requires less support to deploy. The only countries with the support necessary to deploy a dedicated air-superiority fighter like the F-22 already have their own in development.",
"The F22 has new technology the US does not want to export.\n\nNote: I used to work on the software for the F22.",
"Well mr 5 year old, it basically comes down to export licenses and what things we have that we tell our friends about. There are some things that the US has which we will share with our friends and some things that we will not. Some toys are just too precious, like your favorite dinosaur. You wouldn't let Timmy play with the dinosaur last week because it is your best toy, but you would let him play with the truck.\n\nThe truck is good too, and it can do a whole lot of things that the dinosaur can't, but it just isn't as cool as the dinosaur. So, when Timmy showed up for the play day last week and wanted to play with the toys you let him have the truck. He had a great time running through the house and playing with the truck; driving it all over, and putting things in the truck bed and hauling them around the house - but you still had the dinosaur and you could just pick up the truck in your big mouth and crunch it if you wanted. \n\nThat is why the US will not sell the F-22, but will sell the F-35."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II_procurement"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
841xn3 | exactly how does corruption hold mexico back? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/841xn3/eli5_exactly_how_does_corruption_hold_mexico_back/ | {
"a_id": [
"dvmfans"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Imagine you are trying to build a nice house for your family and some people come along and knock it over in the middle of construction. Instead of the trouble makers getting thrown in jail, they pay the cops a bribe and are free to do it over and over again. Will anyone ever have a nice house if this sort of thing goes on long enough?\n\nWhen you can bypass the rules and laws with money or shady deals, society as a whole suffers when those trusted with power abuse it. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2ueddx | for 99.5% of humanity's history, a baby that wouldn't breastfeed, would die. simple as that. almost all of your ancestors, and my ancestors, for hundreds of thousands of years, successfully breastfed. so why are there suddenly so many babies who have problems with it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ueddx/eli5_for_995_of_humanitys_history_a_baby_that/ | {
"a_id": [
"co7mwz0",
"co7mx9b",
"co7mzjt",
"co7n1nd",
"co7n4nb",
"co7nc1s",
"co89r3v"
],
"score": [
2,
13,
2,
3,
5,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"It's only a guess, but the population has also exploded recently, so it might just be that all those babies would have died before.",
"I can only assume that a fuckload of kids back in the day *did* die because of it, and therefore didn't go on to breed. Simple as that.",
"A trait doesn't necessarily have to be genetic.",
"To be frank.. Women now have a choice. Back then, you didn't have a choice, breastfeed or your child dies. Nowadays if a child has a problem feeding, because there is an alternative, Drs and nurses don't persist much\n\nAlso, as a mother who breastfed two kids, my first had some major issues feeding and my doctors were quick to jump to bottle feeding due my child apparently being \"allergic\" to my milk. I persisted an extra three weeks and she settled and I breastfed for an entire year.\n\nThat is not to say that some babies don't have serious issue with feeding, in the past they had wet nurses. Now we have formula.",
"It wasn't/isn't uncommon for other women in the tribe to breastfeed other kids. Get a tribe with 20 or so people, there is bound to be at least one female who is lactating at any given time.",
"I'm not so sure they would have just dies (in the past, as you say)...most people are smart enough to at least try feeding the baby other liquids, if it won't breastfeed...whatever they would offer would obviously not be as good for the baby as breast milk but might have been enough to survive? I'm thinking soup...or rice paste in water?",
"Many of the problems babies have nursing could be overcome with more persistence, supplementation, feeding with expressed breastmilk, or wetnursing. However, an easy alternative makes those unnecessary. Some of the infants with persistent nursing problems are premature or have birth defects that would have made their survival unlikely before modern medicine."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
3qfo9q | the european union voting in favour of internet fast lanes and slow lanes | As in what is a fast lane and slow lane for internet? Why is it so important? Why is everyone losing their shit? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qfo9q/eli5_the_european_union_voting_in_favour_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"cweqes3"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"The fast lane/slow lane is a bit of a misnomer. It gives the impression that new, faster lanes are being built. In reality, normal speed will be the new \"fast lane\", which will cost extra, and everything else will be in the throttled \"slow lane\"."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
16ktfl | how race cars and street racing cars can rev their engines without moving forward. | I've never understood how, and I've been too afraid of ruining my engine to try to do it myself. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16ktfl/eli5_how_race_cars_and_street_racing_cars_can_rev/ | {
"a_id": [
"c7wxkvd",
"c7wxnlz",
"c7wxqh2",
"c7wxtq7"
],
"score": [
3,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Put your transmission in neutral and go crazy with the gas. That's about it.",
"all cars have a way of disengaging the motor from the wheels when shifting gears or stopped. they need this otherwise as soon as the car turned on you'd be moving with no way to stop other than turn the car off. An automatic transmission takes care of engaging/disengaging for you. As soon as you press the pedal it sends power to the wheels and you get a nice smooth take off. \n\nYou can rev your engine without moving by putting your car in the neutral gear usually indicated by an N(surprise). This will keep the power from ever getting transferred to the wheels. so throw your car in N, and rev it up like you are Vin Diesel in the fast and the furious. ",
"With a manual transmission, the crank of the motor is physically disconnected from the driveshaft and can rev freely.\n\nWith an automatic transmission there is a [fluid coupling](_URL_0_) that allows the engine to rotate and rev, but will not result in movement since the brakes are applied preventing driveshaft movement. Doing so, however, places extra load on the transmission and should be avoided whenever possible.",
"First you have your engine. Your engine is running and using fuel to produce power from the second you turn the key in your ignition. It doesn't move the entire car forward unless you connect the engine to the wheels. This is what your transmission is for.\n\nTwo kinds of transmissions available. One where you manually choose which gear to drive in, this is called a manual, stick-shift or standard transmission (all interchangeable) It's also common to hear someone refer to their transmission by how many gears it has, don't be confused by this either. If you hear someone say they have a \"5 speed truck\" they are MOST LIKELY referring to a 5 speed manual transmission, I wouldn't recommend referring to an automatic transmission by it's speeds because the driver has very little to do with those gears and you'll only cause confusion with whoever you're talking to. Automatic transmissions are very common now, if you DON'T know what type of transmission you have I GUARANTEE you have an automatic. Automatic transmissions decide your gear for you based on programing. \n\nEither way, as long as the transmission isn't engaged (by say putting your vehicle in drive, or reverse), and is in neutral you can feed the motor all the gasoline you can afford and it will run as hard and as fast as it was built to, but you won't be moving forward because that power is being wasted and not being transferred to your wheels by your transmission.\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leCEmJA0WsI"
],
[]
] |
|
162qsd | where do cranes come from? | Right now there's one of those giant, 30 story, stationary cranes in the downtown part of our city. Like [this one](_URL_0_) from the recent James Bond flick.
But my coworker asked me what he thought was a simple question: where did it *come from*? They couldn't have possibly rolled it in fully assembled, or it would knock down power lines and stuff. If they assembled it on it's side, on the ground, it would have extended for blocks and blocks and blocks, waaay out of the construction site. So this leaves the possibility of a second giant crane. But then where did that crane come from???
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/162qsd/eli5_where_do_cranes_come_from/ | {
"a_id": [
"c7s5vyq",
"c7s86pm",
"c7sj8tj"
],
"score": [
22,
5,
2
],
"text": [
"[A big crane is assembled using ground level, flexible length cranes that are mobile but can't carry as big a load as the main crane](_URL_0_)",
" Usually a huge concrete pad is built and the crane is built with mobile cranes a section at a time. These can't the large loads used by the big crane which is why they don't just use them. Also the big crane usually has a larger area that it can work in. When they are done, the smaller cranes come back and the big crane is disassembled. The big concrete pad is then either buried or used as part of the parking lot. Having worked around a few cranes I can say that they are pretty dang cool and the guys that operate them have some ridiculous depth perception skills.",
"When mommy crane and daddy crane love each other a lot..."
]
} | [] | [
"http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00998/bond-casino-royale-_998096c.jpg"
] | [
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHvZoq_FQxU"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
fompf9 | why is it that every generation alive thinks the world is going to end when they’re alive? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fompf9/eli5_why_is_it_that_every_generation_alive_thinks/ | {
"a_id": [
"flfzw3t",
"flg1zu0",
"flg45zm"
],
"score": [
2,
8,
3
],
"text": [
"It’s a rationalization we make that when we are done the world is done it’s a philosophy that most generations bring along with them as a way to make sense of things",
"Serious answer:\nIf the world is going to end someday,\nThen we must be closer to the end of it than ever before.\nTherefore, it's more likely to happen now, while I'm alive, than ever before.\n\nSlightly more irrational:\nIf a problem will end the world, and no problem before had ended it, then maybe this is the one that will.\n\nWe are wired to rate threats more highly than normality gets rated. We respond to threats, but we don't respond to normal life, we just live it.",
"Because everyone kind of has an \"end of history\" assumption. The past is full of all these interesting events, but the present is relatively static and things are going to remain in a status quo for the time being. So if some great upheaval comes along, it seems less like an interesting historical turn of events and more like the normal world derailing."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1g09gz | why are movies with good publicity generally rated poorly while movies that are not as well publicized generally rated better? | Every time I look at current box office movies, they generally are rated poorly by critics. But then I also see a bunch of movies that I've never heard of or never saw any advertisements for that tend to do better with the critics than their better publicized counterparts? Of course there are sometimes fantastic movies that are very popular too, but it doesn't happen too often. What causes this trend? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1g09gz/eli5_why_are_movies_with_good_publicity_generally/ | {
"a_id": [
"cafi2nx",
"caflo66"
],
"score": [
4,
2
],
"text": [
"Think of it like restaurants. You have fast food like mcdonalds, and then you have smaller places w more quality. Mass Appeal is the problem, MOST people don't have a solid attention span or enough cinema experience to watch a movie where everything isn't spelled out 59 times.",
"There could also be some confirmation bias going on here. You don't necessarily hear about all the bad movies that were unpopular."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
5rwpee | why is tv in the usa censored so much compared to other countries? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rwpee/eli5_why_is_tv_in_the_usa_censored_so_much/ | {
"a_id": [
"ddaqcfn"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"It depends what you consider censored. \n\nIf you mean sexual expression for example, this is largely due to America's past as a more Puritan society. Language is also for similar reasons.\n\nIn many formats, America is far less censored than any other country due in a large part to First Amendment freedoms. It is because of this that sometimes items may seem censored simply due to the massive flood of information that may drown something out. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
1teg71 | - why do the african children have to walk so far every day for water? why don't they live near the water instead? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1teg71/eli5_why_do_the_african_children_have_to_walk_so/ | {
"a_id": [
"ce73nbh",
"ce77ntj"
],
"score": [
13,
6
],
"text": [
"Living near the water isnt always the best place to be. \n\nRivers flood sometimes quickly and without warning. In places that are dry, like large parts of Africa a brief rainstorm upstream can cause a flash flood downstream and the people downstream never knew it rained. Villages tend to be built on higher ground which is often away from the flood plain. \n\nThe best place to grow crops may not be the river bank either. Most people would rather walk once a day to get water and live close to the crops which have to be tended, and protected constantly. Protected from things on the ground and coming out of the water like hippos.\n\nWater attracts animals. They can diverted around a crop but you aren't going to keep the herd from water if your right on the shore. With the herbivores come predators, living near the place the predators hunt isn't a good idea. Predators include not just things like lions on the ground but crocodiles coming out of the water. While its dangerous to get water in the daylight its worse to wake up to a crocodile in the hut.",
"This is all based on personal experience from living in Africa, which of course is composed of roughly 55 countries, so the water situation is going to vary dramatically across the continent:\n\n* Digging wells is incredibly expensive, and piping water in is even more expensive once you have a well. As a result, most water sources in rural areas are communal ones (pumps, wells, etc.) that are shared by neighborhood, and this requires walking. (In the cities, piped water is now pretty much standard in buildings from Nairobi to Dakar to Capetown.) in my Malian village the distance from house to pump really wasn't that bad, maybe like 1/8 of a mile.\n* Locals may not talk about \"global warming,\" but they do talk about water sources drying up, the increase in catastrophic events like drought, and the boundaries of the desert changing. These patterns increasingly limit the available sources of water.\n* As far as why children do this labor, it's because often collecting water is a gendered activity in African societies and women have way too much other stuff to do back at the house. Children in agrarian societies are a source of labor to be drawn upon and they don't really ever sit idle outside of school. Also keep in mind children help with all sorts of other (equally gendered) tasks like taking animals to pasture, harvesting crops, helping to cook, sweeping, etc. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
smogm | [hypothetically] what would happen to the world if china experienced a credit-crisis-like situation similar to the one in america | What's the likelihood of it happening? What would be the fallout? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/smogm/eli5_hypothetically_what_would_happen_to_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"c4f8g29",
"c4f9gq0",
"c4funz8"
],
"score": [
3,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"like a out of control fire drill.",
"Back in 2009 they did. The world financial crisis effected China like everywhere else. There was a spike in unemployment because a lot of factories temporarily shut down. I remember reading that one province suddenly had 5 million unemployed (take a second to think about that number).\n\nThe government responded by treating this like a holiday and sending those people back to their home villages. Remember that most Chinese factory workers are migrants from the countryside.\n\nUnlike the U.S. China was able to recover quickly and all those people went back to work. ",
"The Chinese economy is special and differs a lot from the American and European economies. \n\nGenerally, when we talk about economies, we talk about supply and demand - that is, people that want to buy good and people that want to sell goods. For a good economy to grow, you need both sides of this equation to grow - it does you no good to have more people making goods but having the same amount of people buying goods.\n\nThe way economic growth happens is by investments. This may be through investing in additional capital (say, factory machinery), labour (people to work the machinery), or technology (improve the efficiency of the machinery). Now, generally people don't just have money on their hand to do this stuff, so they borrow money from other people - this is debt.\n\nThe holder of the debt (the person/bank that lends the money) takes on risk, and they want to be compensated for this risk by getting interest in return. This is the concept of credit - good credit means you can get large amounts of loans cheaply, while bad credit means you can only get limited amounts of loans at higher costs.\n\nA credit crisis occurs when the effects of 'bad credit' starts to affect your economy. For example - people are willing to lend you money at 4% if your credit rating is AAA, but will only lend you money at 5% if your credit rating is reduced to AA. This extra 1% means the cost of doing anything on debt is greatly increased. As credit gets more expensive, less amount of money will be loaned out. This means investments slow down, and thus economic growth slows down. Furthermore, consumption slows down. Remember, credit cards and house loans are debts too, and if your credit card ratings and your house loans interest rates starts to rise, you're much more likely to save money and consume less. What this means is that the economic growth starts to slow, and in very bad instances, starts to contract (consumers consume less because everything costs more, suppliers supply less because costs of operations increase and investments stop). Even merely slowing down economic growth could be disastrous, because this could mean your debts becomes unsustainable - remember, your economy has to grow at a faster rate than your debt interest. When debts becomes unsustainable, you can't pay it back, and when you can't pay your debts back, no one will want to lend you money, and thus everything grinds to a halt, and your economy collapses.\n\nThis is how a credit crisis works in the context of an American and European economy. However, the Chinese economy is a little more different. For the Chinese economy, there are more producers than there are consumers - i.e., there are more goods being made in China than demand for those goods. This is made up for by the fact that other countries and foreign economies consume more than they produce. China, like almost all other advanced economies, run on debt, however their debt is more producer side. That is, U.S. tends to consume on debt, where as China tends to produce on debt (China borrows money to make more goods, America borrows money to buy more goods).\n\nNow, to compare world wide impact: when America goes through a debt-crisis, this means the consumption plummets. When consumption plummets, this hurts production, which is why the big manufacturers like car companies starts to fail. This happens every where that America buys goods from - their economies suffer because less American money comes in. In China case, the reverse is true. Comparatively speaking, the producer side of the Chinese economy collapse before the consumer side (China is a trade surplus country - they sell more than they buy). This has the effect of driving up prices in the countries they sell to, but doesn't have as much direct impact (except for where investment moneys are lost from the collapse of producers). As China does not have as big of a consumer sector (i.e., the middle class) as other economies, and as they don't buy as much goods from other economies as America does, this means that a credit crisis in China will be much more localized than the American credit crisis.\n\nTL:DR - As a trade surplus country, a Chinese credit-crisis will affect the world economy significantly less than the U.S. credit-crisis. This is however not to say this wouldn't be enough for catastrophic results - any collapse-like situation for the world's 2nd largest economy is very bad.\n\nClarification: this has nothing to do with the cause or why the current global credit crisis happened. Almost all of the explanations given are 'incorrect' and are grossly inaccurate/possibly misleading. It's designed to give the gist of the idea to a five year old."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
5j6uz5 | why is are most gifs on reddit 15 seconds long? | At first, I wondered if maybe there were certain rules in place limiting the duration of gifs, but after seeing many over 1 minute long, I'm curious as to why 15 seconds is the common, accepted length. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5j6uz5/eli5_why_is_are_most_gifs_on_reddit_15_seconds/ | {
"a_id": [
"dbdrx6u"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Gifs don't compress very well so you have to keep them short if you don't want the filesize to be absolutely huge, that's why *most* gifs are short and sweet."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2n0op2 | why do some am radio stations have weak signals before sunrise, but sound great during the day? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2n0op2/eli5_why_do_some_am_radio_stations_have_weak/ | {
"a_id": [
"cm9avb8"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Due to radio waves being able to travel farther at night, many 24 hour AM stations are required to reduce power drastically at night. They come back to full power at local sunrise per the FCC rules."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
dnyu0f | in autumn, why do trees shed leaves doused in sun before those shielded from sun? | I've noticed this year that in a given tree, the leaves that receieve the most sun over the course of the day are the first to change color. Shouldn't it be the other way around? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dnyu0f/eli5_in_autumn_why_do_trees_shed_leaves_doused_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"f5jw2x0"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"It costs the tree water and nutrients to sustain leaves. The more sun a leaf gets, the bigger it gets, and the more stuff it needs to stay alive. When the expensive leaf is no longer able to photosynthesize because of the reduced amount of sunlight in autumn, the tree decides to shed it. Since the leaves near the top are the most expensive to maintain because they provide the most photosynthesis, the tree sheds them first.\n\nNot the best answer, but I hope this helps."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
3in57u | why are prisoners treated so poorly by prison guards? | Something i've never really understood. regardless of their crimes, the person is confined from month to years to life (sometimes death) in a barred cell, which i would think is punishment enough. i don't understand how the abuse/rapes/murders happen in prisons. are they not properly staffed or are they given the authority not to care or do anything about it? are they on a "you deserve this" mentality? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3in57u/eli5_why_are_prisoners_treated_so_poorly_by/ | {
"a_id": [
"cuhvs7m",
"cuhvsj7",
"cuhwv95"
],
"score": [
4,
7,
3
],
"text": [
"A combination of all of the above really.\n\nPrisons are chronically understaffed. Prison guards are generally paid extremely low wages for hard, tedious, and often dangerous work. Prisoners themselves are usually in prison because they are violent, or have extremely poor impulse control and decision making abilities.\n\nThrow all that together in a pot, combine with government neglect, poor oversight, and a general CYA attitude, and you get some really nasty prison environments.",
"There was an experiment that handled this. known as the [stanford prison experiment.](_URL_0_)\n\nAlso, people are predisposed to view \"others\" as weaker/less human than them. Which leads to acts that they would never commit on someone they didn't think was an \"other\". This is one of the reasons that Racism was an extremely powerful tool in propaganda against vietnam and even in WW2.",
"* much of the abuse is committed by other prisoners\n* prison guards thing of their own safety first...prison is full of violent, malicious and very bored people who have nothing better to do than think of ways to get at prison guards\n* once guards see what those kinds of prisoners can do, they become very suspicious of everyone"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment"
],
[]
] |
|
6mc5it | why is it so hard to use photoshop? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6mc5it/eli5why_is_it_so_hard_to_use_photoshop/ | {
"a_id": [
"dk0ht8g",
"dk0hz42"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"It's an old program that gathered more and more features over time, so by now the user interface has suffered from huge numbers of additions -- it wasn't originally designed to support such complexity.",
"It's the same reason it's difficult to drive a race car or understand complex medical textbooks. It's very powerful software that's designed for professionals who know how to use it. In order to make it more accessible to the common person it would have to be less powerful or have the more complex things harder to access or make it less versatile. All things which would be inconvenient for the professionals it's designed for. If you want to use it and are struggling there are plenty of tutorials and classes online and in the real world"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
1isz3r | why does china artificially inflate its currency and what exactly does inflation do to and for an economy, in a local, national, and global perspective? | [ANSWERED] | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1isz3r/why_does_china_artificially_inflate_its_currency/ | {
"a_id": [
"cb7qgwz",
"cb7ricm",
"cb7rrf7",
"cb7skix",
"cb7t1cq",
"cb7trrg",
"cb7trwi",
"cb7wh31",
"cb87jit"
],
"score": [
2,
7,
58,
2,
2,
4,
2,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"It doesn't \"inflate\" its currency, it keeps it lower than it would be if it were free-floating. This makes Chinese exports cheaper in other countries, increasing demand\n\nWhen you go on to mention inflation, are you talking about price inflation or something to do with exchange rates?",
"When de value of your money is low, it makes it interesting to other countries to invest. It's cheap, therefore it's interesting.\n\nThe chinese are in a particular situation where there money is valued low enough to be very interesting to invest in (setting up shop there or just speculating on the value of the money). \n\nBut their is a LIMITED amount of chinses money going around, and the demands for cheap labor and high growth that China offers is rapidely growing. This means that the value of the money is also growing. which in turn might slow down foreign investment.\n\nThey keep the value of their money low by buying USD, euros and other currencies with their own currency. This DECREASES the amount os USD and euros on the market (making their value go up) and INCREASES the amount of chinese money on the market (wich lowers the value back down).\n\nThis strategy will work as long as china is growing their economy. when their is no cheap labor and exploitation left to be done there, the interest in chinese money will start to go down, and they won't be able to keep this trick for long. they are banking on the fact that, by then, their economy will be more selfsufficient than depending on the rest of the world...\n\nNot exactly 5 yo, but my best shot at it.\n",
"The goal isn't really inflation, rather, the Chinese government attempts to keep the value of the yuan low relative to the US dollar. Let's do a thought experiment: suppose it costs you 100 yuan to make your widget. If a yuan is worth 50 cents you can sell your widget in America for anything more than $50 and profit. If the yuan is worth 75 cents you would have to sell your widget for at least $75 to profit. China manipulates it's currency to give themselves a competitive advantage to sell goods in America. ",
"Chinese currency has actually appreciated significantly (nearly 40% against US dollar) in the past few years. Depending on the standard US uses, China's currency might no longer be undervalued, as people accuse China of. \n_URL_0_\n\n\"China's current-account surplus for 2011 shrank to around 2.7% of gross domestic product according to government data released Friday, the lowest ratio in close to a decade. It is also below the 4% level which the U.S. Treasury has suggested is a sign of an undervalued currency.\n\nOne way to measure whether a currency is undervalued is to see whether a country racks up extraordinarily high trade surpluses. In 2007, for instance, China's current-account surplus hit 10.1% of GDP. Since then, with major trade partners battered by recession and China's own domestic demand strong, it has fallen every year.\"",
"Actually - you can think of \"inflating\" or \"deflating\" Chinese currency in terms of Chinese demand for dollars. China exports to the USA, and is paid in dollars - not renmenbi. The dollars have to be converted to renmenbi to be used in China.\n\nThe more they export (and the USA consumes) the more China need dollars. Simple supply and demand - the value of the dollar should technically go up as Chinese exporters \"compete\" for more dollars. Chinese currency is then \"inflated\" or worth less in terms of dollars, as the relative value of dollars go up.\n\nChina puts brackets on the amount that the yuan can move in a day, and are printing money faster than even the US is printing it - meaning that they're further depressing the value than competition for dollars would as they're increasing \"supply\" faster than \"demand for dollars\".\n\nGlobally... it's actually pretty much the same. Why is the Euro 1.30:1, when it was 1.7:1 a few years ago? Because Europe realized that their export economy would collapse if their goods were too expensive in dollar terms. So they inflated the currency and dropped it down to current levels. ",
"\nThis is somewhat more complicated than most believe and you rarely hear the real philosophy behind why its done. The value of currency is generally greatly miss understood. Thus I am going to ask you to consider some different points other than what you usually hear and to get there we are going to have to tell a little story. I came about this after working in Asia for a decade and realizing many in the west greatly misunderstands China's economy works and how they are controlling their currency. Ironically I have concluded China may be onto something that the West has missed and has thus allowed China to develop so fast and personally wish those in the west would stop blaming China and realize they have a problem in their own economies that needs addressing. The key word is macroeconomic efficiency and the following is an attempt at a very basic outline of why its important. Since its complicated, I'm only going to give you the icing with no cake and let you think about the details. Hopefully it will spark some discussion.\n\nIdeally currency is a mechanism that is used to reward productivity. That is if you contribute something to someone else then in return you get currency from that and can use it to get someone else to do something for you. Ideally currency has a strong correlation to the amount of work that goes into something that is wanted or needed, thus rewarding work in areas of need and creating a feedback cycle that encourages people to produce the needs of others. This is very important. This is the primary objective of currency, to encourage people to produce goods and services other need.\n\nSo one must ask, does currency necessarily have a strong correlation to production. It can, but it is not always correlated to production. For example, the value of a house may go up, like in a housing bubble, yet no work has been performed on that house. A person then may obtain currency without work, simply by controlling an item that has an increasing value. Another example is a monopoly. If a company or industry can monopolize something, they may limit production which may cause the value of something to rise more than what they have reduced production by. In this case they once again gain currency by doing less work. There are many more examples but these are common failure modes of capitalism as they reduce the correlation of currency transfer to work done on needed items. Sometimes these failure modes work together and once currency has no correlation to work, we loose the feedback mechanism that encourages people to produce what others need. When we don’t encourage people to produce, production goes down as one may obtain more currency by not producing.\n\nThis last part is important, because many people assume currency is correlated to work or productivity but it is not always true. In different countries around the world you will find that currency has a different correlation to work. In some countries you absolutely must do work to get currency, in others, if you area born into a family that owns large tracks of land you will get currency without doing work. \n\nNow consider the total goods and services consumed in a country. When a currency has a poor correlation to work, that means many people are getting currency without doing work, they are not contributing, but they are still consuming. That means others must produce not only for themselves but also for those who gain currency without contributing. In this case from the point of view of the producers, they have a high cost of living. That is they have to do a lot of work to get currency because currency is not correlated to the work they do and thus find living costs high relative to their incomes. It also means they price they sell their good for will be high, as they need the income to pay for the non productive people in the economy. Those who are not producing are adding cost to those that are. A common example may be rent. The landlord often does no work for income, but the rent may be a large portion of a factories overhead cost.\n\nNow if you consider different countries, a country that has a high correlation between currency and work done or productivity can produce goods and services at a low cost. For example, their factories will have low rents. It's also because they don’t have the overhead of supporting so many people gaining currency from not producing. When you have different countries, the country that has a higher correlation between currency and productivity can produce goods at a lower cost than one that has a poor correlation. If you are a developing country trying to compete with an advanced economy then your goal is to have a very high correlation between currency and productivity as it will make your goods cheaper and allow you to out compete your competitor. This is known as macroeconomic efficiency. A country that has higher macroeconomic efficiency will out compete a country at lower efficiency. Don’t confuse this with technology, technology improves micro economic efficiency and is generally replicated between countries. Macroeconomic efficiency is different.\n\nNow as indicated above, there are mechanisms that may reduce the correlation of currency to productivity and thus the question arises how do you ensure currency is correlated to work done. One way, is by inflating a currency base. In some cases inflation, if used carefully can ensure currency is correlated to production. In China's case they do it by giving capital to factories in things like grants. It ensures that productive parts of the economy outgrow the non productive parts, like rent seeking from pre established real estate or profit created from the finance industry that does not produce. Thus if they keep their productive sectors as larger proportions of the economy than what competing countries do their goods will be cheaper and their businesses will thrive.\n\nThus what you see as currency debasement, is actually china ensuring currency is correlated to productivity and thus ensuring their productive sectors are competitive on a world scale. Its a good thing, because it combats monopolies and other elements in economies that consume without producing. On the flip side of this, many European countries, Australia, Canada and the USA have a poor correlation between productivity and currency and are thus less competitive. Although we like to blame china for currency debasement, what we really have are large portions of our economies adding costs and making us less productive or competitive. Finance sector, we are looking at you @@.",
"doesnt inflated currency end up just crashing the economy?",
"Say a can of soda sells for $1 in America and 10Y in China. Americans bottle their soda in America, and Chinese bottle their soda in China. \nChina decides it wants to can America's soda, too, so now it decides that it will trade 13Y for $1. They make their soda in China for 10Y, and inside of China they still sell it at 10Y, but now they can ship it to America and sell it for 13Y. \nIf the American bottler wants to sell its soda in China, it would be selling it for 13Y, when the Chinese can buy local soda for just 10Y. Chinese soda bottlers can now out-compete American bottlers, because they are making a product more cheaply than American bottlers. ",
"Inflation, in the original meaning of the word, means to increase the amount of a supply of a certain type of money, thus making each unit of that kind of money less scarce, and therefore worth less. It is closely related to prices going up (which a lot of people, including the government, have taken to calling inflation). Generally speaking, when you inflate the money supply, prices go up because the goods are still intrinsically worth the same as they were before, but now the currency you are trying to buy it with is worth less. \n\nYour question seems to be using the traditional sense of the word, so that's what I'm using in my answer. It might be easier for other people to understand if we phrased the question \"why does China intentionally devalue their currency?\"--I'm also using that phrasing below.\n\nOne reason you might inflate, from a global perspective, is to make your exports cheap in other currencies. If your economy depends on exports, and your currency starts becoming strong relative to other currencies, then your goods are more expensive when priced in those other currencies, and people in the other countries might start buying less of them. You can get into currency wars here, where countries start trying to make their exports look better by cheapening their money, and other countries respond by doing the same thing.\n\nA \"national\" reason (meaning internal to that nation) that a country might intentionally devalue their money would be on the theory that if people know the money will lose value if it sits, they will look for something better to do with it, like buy an asset or invest in a startup. The idea here is that you are attempting to push people into spending rather than saving (although you will probably pejoratively call it \"hoarding\"), with the goal of stimulating the economy by \"encouraging\" trade.\n\nI will (more fully) disclose my bias here by saying that I think both of those are foolish moves based on fallacious reasoning, but they are fallacies that people like Krugman (Nobel laureate) at NYT believe. Putting ideas like this into law give governments more power and help them be able to act less responsibly, which are both very attractive to governments, which like power and don't like responsibility.\n\nIf you are a debtor, and many governments are, then inflation makes you happy because you owe people a fixed numerical amount of, say 100,000 dollars. If you can devalue the dollar, you effectively owe less. You don't have to pay your debts, which is awesome for governments that buy support from their population by spending money they don't have.\n\nWhat does this do locally? In a very rough sense, when government controls money they can either make it a good idea to save or a good idea to go into debt. When they are devaluing money, money is easy to come by, so debt is easy to obtain. If your competitors are using cheap debt to finance expansion, you may have to do that, too, in order to keep up with the competition.\n\nIf the government were to keep the money supply stable, then it's the frugal people that are rewarded--they are the ones with the capacity to expand because they have been careful with their money and have it available to use when the opportunity arises. Likewise with individuals--if you are careful with expenses and save money, you have an asset that is worth something when, say, a business without money wants to expand. \n\nYou can lend them the money you have saved at interest, and when they pay it back, they are paying you with money that has the same value as when you lent it to them.\n\nSo, locally, inflating the money supply penalizes people who would save. Simply saving money is a loss because the government is taking its value away from you by making what you have worth less. You are forced to either accept this loss, or find a store of value the government can't manipulate (like gold--but then you have to incur transaction and storage costs associated with that, and it's hard to lend that to someone--more transaction costs to get it back into money form), or find somewhere to invest it, which can drive a stock bubble, housing bubble, bond bubble, etc.\n\nIt's incredibly conceited, in my opinion, for anyone to think they know enough to know what \"should\" be done with \"monetary policy\". These are things, like prices, that are best left to be set by the sum of all the decisions made by all the people with all their information and beliefs. Once one player can distort things in a big way, all of those decisions have to take the artificial effects into account and you get stuff, eventually, like the housing bubble. If the money supply had been stable, then when everyone was trying to borrow money to buy houses to get in on the bubble, there would have been a natural limit as money became more expensive because it was scarcer. All of the other things, like mis-rated derivatives that contributed to the magnitude and effects of the bubble, would have been automatically tamed down because money was not being created out of thin air.\n\nReal estate did not become more valuable in any fundamental or intrinsic sense--it just went up in price. And the only way so many people were able to rush into that and make it into the huge problem it was, was because there was a gigantic flood of cheap money coming courtesy of the government.\n\nI don't know China's specific motivations for devaluing, but the US is a large trading partner, and the US is very actively devaluing its money. If China's money becomes strong compared to the dollar, Chinese exports are more expensive for Americans when priced in dollars. Americans may buy less, so the story goes, so China needs to devalue to keep that from happening. China might also buy into the \"encourage people to spend\" idea, but I don't know if that's the case.\n\nMy guess is that they probably have something of a house of cards underneath themselves (for example, they own a lot of American debt, which could collapse) and they feel like they can't risk a slump in exports. Also, if everyone else is doing it, it doesn't necessarily hurt you to do it, so they could be making the decision based on the fact that it's somewhat low risk given how prevalent it is among nations, and they don't want to risk an export collapse.\n\nOver time, if they keep this up, they will likely end up with a debt-fueled economy like the one they are mimicking here in the US."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577214143341727700.html"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
4vplvh | razors in regard to philosophy | Theres like 7 razors on the wikipedia page all by seperate philosophers im assuming? I was just wondering if someone could dumb down what the implication of each razor is. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vplvh/eli5_razors_in_regard_to_philosophy/ | {
"a_id": [
"d60doqh",
"d60dvag",
"d60n9gv"
],
"score": [
3,
12,
2
],
"text": [
"Occam's razor says that if you have two or more competing explanations or hypotheses for something, you should choose the simplest one, or the one with the least assumptions. For example, the shop window in the city was probably broken because a ball got kicked through it by children playing in the street, and not because a horse kicked it.\n\nHanlon's razor says never assume malice when stupidity will suffice. For example, did I mess up the finely crafted spreadsheet because I hate the nerd that wrote it (all the Excel nerds in the house! Put your hands in the air and wave 'em about like =DONT(\"care\", you, \"just\")) and wanted to fuck with him/her or because I don't know what I'm doing and I was just trying to help?\n\nHitchens' razor says that if you make a claim and you don't back it up at all, nobody needs to back up their dismissal of that claim. I saw a motherfucking UNICORN yesterday! No, I didn't take a *picture* of it, and nobody else was around to witness it— why don't you just believe me for once?\n\nNewton's flaming laser sword as it is humorously known, says that if you can't do an experiment to say whether something is true or false, then there's no point in talking about it. Philosophically, it's a bit of a troublesome position to take, so outside of science be careful where you assert it.\n\nRelated to the above is Popper's falsifiability principle. It says that if you are to have a scientific theory, it must be possible for that theory to be disproven by some evidence. There's a flying pink elephant in the next room. \n\n1) Yes it's visible. Oh. No there isn't. * sad face *\n2) No, it's invisible. And intangible. And it makes no noise... etc.\n\nAnd I'm sorry, I don't know the other two. I'm also sorry for the rambling and unstructured nature of this post; it's very late where I am and one ought to doubt whether I should be making these posts ~~but I'm doing it anyway!~~\n\n",
"It looks like there's a lot of variety in these razors -- some of them are very serious, some of them are more tongue-in-cheek, all are postulated by different people, etc. What they all have in common is that if a scenario can be explained in, say, five different ways, you can use one of them to eliminate a few of those possible explanations. \n\nSo, with the disclaimer that I haven't looked into any of these in too much depth:\n\n**Occam's Razor**: Really complicated explanations are probably not true. For example, say I flip a switch and my lamp. My friend Bob says \"You know what's happening? Flipping the switch probably turns on a second light, hidden inside the lamp. That activates a light-sensitive panel which, in turn moves a hammer, pressing on a second switch inside the lamp. That switch turns the lamp on.\" I think it makes sense that flipping the switch completes a circuit and turns on the lamp. Occam's Razor says my explanation makes more sense, because Bob is assuming there's a light-sensitive panel and a hammer, and any of those assumptions could be false. \n\n**Grice's Razor**: In linguistics, when a word is used in an unusual way, it makes more sense to say that's due to the context it is in than to say the word has a second definition. Let's say I step outside and notice it's raining, and I say \"Oh, fantastic.\" Do we suppose that the word fantastic has two meanings (\"awesome\" and \"terrible\")? Or do we assume it only has one meaning, but that I'm using it sarcastically? Grice's Razor tells us to pick the second one. \n\n**Hanlon's Razor**: When someone does something mean, they probably did it by accident. Let's say your mother just passed away, and I went up and wished you a Happy Mother's Day. Am I trying to make you feel bad? Or did I honestly screw up, because I didn't know about your mother? Hanlon's Razor tells us to pick the second one. \n\n**Hume's Razor**: The explanation for an event should actually be capable of causing that event. Let's say a house in your neighbourhood collapsed. Bob suggests that a really loud motorcycle drove by, and the vibrations caused the house to collapse. Since the vibrations from a loud motorcycle aren't nearly powerful enough to knock down a house, Hume's Razor says that Bob is either wrong, or forgetting something important (maybe the house is built on unstable ground and was just about to collapse anyway?)\n\n**Hitchens's Razor**: When you propose an idea, it's your job to prove the idea is true. You shouldn't expect anyone to disprove it. Let's say I come up and tell you that the city of Los Angeles has been destroyed by a dragon. You say that it clearly hasn't. I say \"Well then, prove it still exists!\" Hitchens's Razor would say you don't have to provide any evidence, since I sure as hell didn't. \n\n**Alder's Razor**: If you can't figure out something using science, there's no use arguing about it. Let's say I believe that cats are better than dogs. You think dogs are better than cats. Alder's Razor says that its useless to even think about this because there's no surefire way to say who's right. \n\n**Popper's Falsifiablity Principle**: If you're going to call something a scientific theory, there has to be a way to prove it wrong. Let's say that a valuable painting was stolen from my house and Bob suggests it was stolen by the cleaning lady. If we search her house and find the paining, Bob will say \"Aha! So she is the thief!\" If we search her house and don't find it, Bob will say \"Aha! So she's already sold the paining! That's even worse!\". Bob's theory about who stole the painting is not a scientific theory, because we can't prove she DIDN'T steal it. \n",
"I'm going to add one bit of information that had me confused for a long time. It's possible that I'm the only one who didn't get this, so maybe I'm dumb, but I didn't get why they called it a \"razor\" for a long time.\n\nSo for complete novices to this idea who may be reading, the idea of a \"razor\" is that you're figuratively cutting away unlikely explanations for a phenomenon. You're trying to figure out how or why something happened, and you've got this huge list of possible explanations. The philosophical razor is a general principle you apply to say, \"OK, this, this and this aren't entirely impossible, but they're not very likely,\" and whittle down the list to a manageable group of the most likely explanations. And then if none of those explanations pan out, then you go look back at the other ones you eliminated earlier and see if they may actually have merit."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
6r1ary | why does lying around and being lazy just make you feel even more lazy and lethargic than before? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6r1ary/eli5_why_does_lying_around_and_being_lazy_just/ | {
"a_id": [
"dl1lsmk"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"ATP, which stands for adenosine triphosphate, is the sole source of energy for all human metabolism, yet very little of this fuel is actually stored in the body. The source of energy that is used to power the movement of contraction in working muscles is adenosine triphosphate (ATP) – the body's biochemical way to store and transport energy. However, ATP is not stored to a great extent in cells. \nIts my understanding while resting your body isnt making \"atp\" but when you get moving it starts to make atp for the upcoming activity"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
9m8ip9 | why are individual grains of sand roughly uniform in size? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9m8ip9/eli5_why_are_individual_grains_of_sand_roughly/ | {
"a_id": [
"e7cv8p2",
"e7dieyt",
"e7ecqx2"
],
"score": [
4,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Because if the particles were bigger you wouldn't call them sand and if they were smaller you wouldn't notice them. Sand, however, like everything else is in the process of becoming something else. ",
"Imagine i have bunch of dirt clumps sitting on the ground of various sizes. If I step on them, which ones are the first ones to get get broken down into smaller size clumps? The larger ones because they’ll make contact with my foot first. Conversely the smallest grains of dirt may never feel the force of my foot. Over time, repeating this process will create very small bits of dirt of uniform size",
"In a desert, sand is created by wind picking up the smallest rocks (sand) and whipping them at rocks that are too large to get moved by the wind until the force of the wind–carried sand blasts away tiny chips of the rock. This will keep happening to the chips until the rock is chipped into pieces small enough to get picked up by the wind rather than blasted by it. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
8bikj7 | the beaver wars of th 1600s | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8bikj7/eli5_the_beaver_wars_of_th_1600s/ | {
"a_id": [
"dx78odh"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
" You mean the French and Iroquois Wars?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
89j1ww | how do service animals help autistic children? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/89j1ww/eli5_how_do_service_animals_help_autistic_children/ | {
"a_id": [
"dwr9lhu",
"dwr9roq"
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text": [
"Multiple ways, and by the way it's not just autistic *children* who can benefit from service animals.\n\nAmong other things:\n\n* service animals can detect the early signs of a meltdown or shutdown, which are things often (but not exclusively) triggered by sensory overstimulation, and can provide a prompt to leave the situation causing that overstim\n* they can provide active stimulation to aid with grounding\n* they can help reinforce ritual, which is frequently important for autistic people",
"One of the major issues that autistic people have is that they cannot process new information quickly, have problems with crowds of people, and have difficulty controlling their panic response in new situations. So having something like a pet that can help to keep them calm and focus their attention slightly when in such a situation will help them have the time to process without panicking. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
5vk8sn | what are the coloured dots on the side of the page in a newspaper for? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vk8sn/eli5_what_are_the_coloured_dots_on_the_side_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"de2p4px",
"de2p8oo",
"de2pftr"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Printers use those dots to double check the colors of what actually printed against the examples they have of what those colors SHOULD look like. If there is a problem with the ink or the printing press, those dots will show up differently, making it easy for the printer to realize a problem before it becomes too late. ",
"It's like a sample of all the different colored inks used to print! I found this excerpt from online: \"when a sheet of paper is passing through a printing press, and the paper has more than one colour on it, the printer needs to know that his machine is printing colours properly. A modern printing press runs so fast (particularly a newspaper press) that it just is not possible for the printer to look at every part of the sheets of paper to check the colours. So, dots or bars, that represent every colour that should be on the paper are printed near the edge of the sheet, where it's easy for the printer to see them. If a dot or bar is missing, he knows that a colour is not printing properly. A newspaper is fairly low-grade printing, and newspaper offices are always pressed for time, which means that the coloured dots don't get cut off as they do in bookbinding.\" \nI work as a distributor for our local newspaper, it's actually a really cool process to watch them pour the ink, set the plates up, and watch the machine make thousands of papers. :) (hope this helps!)",
"Those are registration and color marks. Papers that print in color will be comprised of usually 4 colors, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (K) known as CMYK printing. Using those four colors you can recreate any other color in an image.\n\nThe marks along the side are to show the pressman if their colors are too light or too dark by giving him a usually small quarter inch square of color. If his solid square of color for each of the 4 colors repeating along the edge of the page.\n\nAnother set of symbols along with the colored bar or dots would be a cross or circle design used to make sure the 4 colors are aligned to each other. If they are off slightly the picture will look blurry. If the color varies such as too much yellow or not enough magenta will also make the image look \"wrong\" such as making peoples skin tones look yellow tinged or blues look like purple. The dots help the pressman control that with a visual representation.\n\n*14 years industrial printing experience."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
44j6u5 | how can led film lights change the color temperature they emit? | I'm talking about [Bi-Color lights] (_URL_0_) where you can adjust the color temperature.
& nbsp;
Do they have different colored LEDs that get dimmed? Is color temperature being changed additive? Like adding cold LEDs to warm LEDs makes the light more cold overall? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44j6u5/eli5_how_can_led_film_lights_change_the_color/ | {
"a_id": [
"czqlckc"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Bi-Color LED's actually 2 led dies inside each package. \n\n[Here is a similar LED.](_URL_0_) \n\nLook down to the specifications and you will see that it is Color Temperature:\tTunable, 2700 K to 6500 K. There are multiple wire connections to apply the desired power to each of the 2 leds inside to get the mix of color desired."
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1080921-REG/genaray_spectroled_240_bi_color_led.html"
] | [
[
"http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Cree-Inc/MCEDWT-A1-0000-0000A1001/?qs=0JU57JYmZjsYZW5UeXVWAQ%3D%3D"
]
] |
|
beof90 | [physics] [fluid dynamics] why does the vapor cone suddenly vanish after passing the speed of sound? see video inside: | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/beof90/eli5_physics_fluid_dynamics_why_does_the_vapor/ | {
"a_id": [
"el7bema"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"The shuttle is going nearly 800 mph straight up, they might just have passed into another air mass with a lower humidity level. The border doesn't need to be super sharp for it to seem to happen quickly when moving at such a speed."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
8wkem4 | is it possible for a shape or object to lack any positions where it can be balanced? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8wkem4/eli5_is_it_possible_for_a_shape_or_object_to_lack/ | {
"a_id": [
"e1w4iqo"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Everything with mass has a centre of gravity on which it can be balanced. Some shapes are harder than others but that point still exists no matter how infinitesimally small."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
2iqj9p | why do older rock layers sink lower into the ground? | In other words, where does the material for more recent strata come from? Is it because of volcanic activity moving magma to the surface? Or is there more to it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2iqj9p/eli5_why_do_older_rock_layers_sink_lower_into_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"cl4j49e",
"cl4kxhx"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"Yeah, sometimes lava or ash from volcanoes. Or sometimes minerals deposited there by flowing water, blowing air or shifting glacier ice. Or sometimes landslides. Or sometimes living organisms that incorporate materials into their bodies and leave them behind when they die and/or poop. Anything that moves dirt from one place to another.",
"If you look at lakes and seas, you can see layers of material being deposited over time with the most recent laters on top. That is one of the primary answers."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
29zmbq | european-style socialism. | As an American I sometimes hear people reference "European-style socialism", which as I understand it is primarily found in the Nordic countries but also seems to be prevalent in the UK and Germany. I know how socialism works and have a firm-grasp of Marxism-Leninism.
However these countries don't *seem* to be Marxist-Leninist and from what I understand have a free market. Basically I just want someone to give me a thorough explanation of what "European-style socialism" is and how it directly differs from the capitalist society of the US and more "pure" socialist countries.
Thanks guys! I'm really trying to broaden my horizons and worldly knowledge so thanks in advance for any help!
EDIT: Really don't understand why I am being downvoted... My question wasn't insulting or stupid, and I searched for an answer before submitting it... I just wanted to increase my knowledge about something I'm not familiar with. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29zmbq/eli5_europeanstyle_socialism/ | {
"a_id": [
"ciq1nda",
"ciq1q16",
"ciq1xan",
"ciq2ysn",
"ciq2z5o",
"ciqlaoj"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
2,
3,
4,
2
],
"text": [
"The European countries aren't socialist. They're capitalists, just with a larger social safety net than the US has. There are more taxes and greater wealth redistribution, but in most cases it's not exactly extreme. I guess that they're \"less\" capitalistic than we are, but they're still much closer to our side of the scale than Marxism. \n\nEdit: Some of the countries in Scandinavia might be pretty close to \"socialism\", but they're kind of a unique case. Small, homogenous populations, lots of natural resources, that sort of thing. Most of the larger countries don't follow that model anywhere near as much. ",
"\"European-style\" socialism means that a part of the taxes you pay are used to fund Health Care, education, unemployment,... I guess this is mainly about health care and pension.\n\nBasically it comes down to this:\n\nYou pay for everyone else, but everyone else pays for you too.\n\nYes, we do have free market and, yes, we are capitalist countries. There really isn't much difference, except for that whole \"Everyone pays for everyone\" thing, which keeps our doctors and hospitals affordable. Honestly, I don't know how people can think Europe is like the Sovjet Union of the Cold War era.\n",
"The basic idea behind socialism is \"from each according to ability, to each according to need\" -- that is, the redistribution of wealth. As has been pointed out in this thread already, most European countries are actually capitalist, but they have tax and welfare regimes which, to a lesser or greater extent, seek to redistribute wealth from the richest to the poorest. Some are better at it than others: the UK, for example, has quite a large \"wealth gap\", while in countries like Norway, the gap is incredibly small, with high earners taxed so heavily and welfare so generous that it's actually difficult to see the difference between the richest and the poorest.",
"Upvoted you because you are somebody who tries to see what's behind phrases.\n\nThe guys here described things very well. Just a practical example: If you have no job in Germany, the government pays for a flat, for health insurance and you will have a (low) monthly income. But you will be encouraged to search for a job again and if you don't find something, your income will be cut.\n\nMany conservative politicians in the US refer to such social systems as \"socialism\" and in fact, the roots are the socialist movements in the early 1900s. But it's not socialism since every european country has a relatively free market.\n\n > EDIT: Really don't understand why I am being downvoted... My question wasn't insulting or stupid, and I searched for an answer before submitting it... I just wanted to increase my knowledge about something I'm not familiar with.\n\n",
" > \"European-style socialism\"\n\nBetter known as a social democracy, a strong welfare state.\n\nThe US is pretty much also a social democracy, though a weak one.",
"Basicly it means that the gouvernment provides us with a safety net for when things turn out bad in return for much higher taxes. \n\nIn Belgium this means free healthcare, 9 weeks paid maternity leave, 20 manditory paid vacation days, if you loose your job you get wellfare, if you loose your house you get appointed a cheap one owned by the state etc. \n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
707bpz | the "proof" rating system of alcohol, what does it mean and how can i use this info? how does it relate to the abv? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/707bpz/eli5the_proof_rating_system_of_alcohol_what_does/ | {
"a_id": [
"dn0zx00",
"dn10g6s",
"dn0zx00",
"dn10g6s"
],
"score": [
3,
10,
3,
10
],
"text": [
"Proof = percent alcohol x 2 or ABV x 2\n\nWhy? No idea. ",
"The term proof dates back to 16th century England, when spirits were taxed at different rates depending on their alcohol content. Spirits were tested by soaking a pellet of gunpowder in them. If the gunpowder could still burn, the spirits were rated above proof and taxed at a higher rate. As gunpowder would not burn if soaked in rum that contained less than 57.15% ABV, rum that contained this percentage of alcohol was defined as having 100 degrees proof.\n\nWith the advent of hygrometers and specific gravity tests, the gun powder test became obsolete, but the \"proof\" rating was still popular. So it was just estimated that a drink with 50% ABV was just 100 proof and proof became twice the ABV percentage.",
"Proof = percent alcohol x 2 or ABV x 2\n\nWhy? No idea. ",
"The term proof dates back to 16th century England, when spirits were taxed at different rates depending on their alcohol content. Spirits were tested by soaking a pellet of gunpowder in them. If the gunpowder could still burn, the spirits were rated above proof and taxed at a higher rate. As gunpowder would not burn if soaked in rum that contained less than 57.15% ABV, rum that contained this percentage of alcohol was defined as having 100 degrees proof.\n\nWith the advent of hygrometers and specific gravity tests, the gun powder test became obsolete, but the \"proof\" rating was still popular. So it was just estimated that a drink with 50% ABV was just 100 proof and proof became twice the ABV percentage."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2h5c6m | how can gambling be illegal in us states that run a lottery? isn't the lotto just state-run gambling? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h5c6m/eli5_how_can_gambling_be_illegal_in_us_states/ | {
"a_id": [
"ckpi3g3",
"ckpi41e",
"ckpi5sn",
"ckpi78c",
"ckpignr",
"ckpjgj4"
],
"score": [
4,
4,
36,
8,
6,
2
],
"text": [
"The profit is supposed to go to schools and other public services. \n\n\n. . . *supposed* to. ",
"There are exemptions in the anti-gambling laws specifically for the state-run lottery. Also things like bingo parlors.",
"Perhaps unsurprisingly, when you are the body that makes the rules, you can make exceptions for yourself in those rules. Lotteries were made illegal for a time and there is no national level lottery. However, many jurisdictions have made government lotteries legal again. \n\nThere's no requirement for the government to write an \"all or nothing\" gambling bill.",
"There's different types of gambling and what is legal/illegal varies from state to state. See the table [here.](_URL_0_)",
"The government does not get a cut from unregulated gambling.",
"This is one issue that absolutely disgusts me as a avid poker player and sports better who lives in the city of Atlanta. The closest poker game to me is a six hour drive! I am not allowed to wager on a sports game unless I go to Las Vegas. But if I want to play a game that has the worst odds in the world (the lottery) I can drive literally 2 minutes to the nearest gas station. The gambling world is probably among the most highly influenced by special interest. Casino owners don't want any more casinos built. Las Vegas does not want gambling legalized anywhere and they've got a whole bunch of cash to throw around to make sure it doesn't happen. Essentially it's the same problem the effects the country of the U.S. as a whole. Corrupt politicians who give a damn about enforcing solid principles. Will we ever hold them accountable? Answer: NO."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling_in_the_United_States"
],
[],
[]
] |
||
9cbh68 | why is it that when i'm boiling pasta with a lid on the pot there is foam trying to escape, but it goes down as soon as i take the lid out? | & #x200B; | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9cbh68/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_im_boiling_pasta_with_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"e59ftsh",
"e59jnou",
"e59lwjn",
"e59m1cq",
"e59mzz9",
"e59nxz2",
"e5a6jhx",
"e5afkoh",
"e5amelf"
],
"score": [
3495,
74,
130,
7,
3,
516,
3,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"When cooking pasta the boiling water will start to bubble because of the steam that is created in boiling the water, the starch that is released into the water by the pasta causes the foamy look. When you take off the lid, the steam that caused the bubbles can escape so the bubbles lower.",
"I have a related question: when my lidless pot of pasta is foaming up, I can make the foam temporarily dissipate by blowing on it. Why is this?\n\n**Edit:** Thanks for all the tips on how to stop this from happening, but I'm really more interested in the science behind *why* it happens in the first place.",
"So the first questions you have to answer are what causes the bubbles and why do they pop? The bubbles are formed by the water vapor that's boiling up through the water in your pot. The water's surface tension doesn't break right away so you get a bubble. It grows as more steam enters through the bottom surface and pops when the pressure inside the bubble becomes too great for the bubble to contain. Except it's not just the pressure inside the bubble that counts; the pressure outside the bubble matters too. It's the *difference* between the inner and outer pressures that is limited by the strength of the bubble.\n\nThe other commenters are correct that the starch from the pasta increases the surface tension of the water, so right away you have bubbles that will naturally grow bigger and take longer to pop. But what, specifically, changes when you put the lid on? The lid actually does a pretty good job of sealing the opening of the pot so it is difficult for the rising steam to escape. With the steam unable to escape easily the space between the water and the lid starts to pressurize. In this pressurized space the bubbles experience a much higher \"outer\" pressure than they did with the lid off, so the inner pressure of each bubble has to grow that much greater for the bubbles to pop. Thus you start to get very large and long-lasting bubbles forming.",
"When you're heating the water, it will soon get off a lot of the starch that is in the pasta or potatoes you're cooking. Now, the starch will make the bubbles that nucleate in the water much more resilient once they surface. Normally, bubbles are quite weak and pop immediatly in the open air. \nHowever, once touching the cool air on the top, the hot air would like to take in a little more space then its cool counterpart. Hot air does this everywhere in the world, thats actually why we have weather. But thats for another question. \nNow, when the bubble expands it will break. But if you put a lid on the pot, there is no reason why this should happen, the surrounding air is just as hot as the air in the bubbles. So now, the old bubbles get pushed up by new bubbles from below until they finally reach the top of the pot and push the lid up temporarily for small amounts of time, enough so that some pressure/bubbles/hot air can be released until the lid comes down again.\n",
"The Lid on the pod is like a blanket. It keeps the air in the pod as hot as the water. Just like when you lift the blanket in your bed, the moment you remove the lid the warm air escaped. The bubbles form because the water boils off, and the noodles make the water like soapy water, so it now can Form bubbles.\n\nRemove the lid, hot air leaves, bubbles want to leave as well and break because they are not strong enough. ",
"Leaving the lid on increases the humidity in the space above the liquid. The increased humidity slows the evaporation of the water, which allows bubbles to grow larger before the liquid in the bubble thins out sufficiently for the bubble to burst. The collection of large bubbles appear as a foam layer.\n\nWhen you take the lid out, the humidity in the space above the liquid falls. Evaporation becomes faster, and the bubbles burst before it gets large, leading to a thinner foam layer.",
"When the lid is on, the air become saturated with water steam and the bubbles walls can stand more time before dessiccating and pop. Take thelid, steam escape by convection, and the bubbles dries and burst more easily.\n\n\n",
"This phenomenon is observable with a pot with boiling water - with/without lid. The effect is visible even without starch in the water from the noodles.\n\nI suspect the reason is the difference in temperature gradient between bottom of pot to top, and difference in humidity.\n\nWith pot lid on, the air above liquid is hotter, and more humid - this may mean that bubbles deflate less as they move to top. However, this effect maybe less relevant than the humidity (which may mean the bubbles pop faster in the face of evaporation of the water from the water bubble surface, thus popping it earlier), and buildup of temperature in pot when lid is on (keeping lid on also boils water faster for this reason - less heat loss - and this may also make boiling more vigorous).",
"Lifespan of foam bubble is humidity dependent. When you take away the lid the humidity drops rapidly and the bubbles pop faster than they are generated. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
38xpeb | how can the federal government demand colleges handle sexual assault under title ix? | It seems to me that the language on Title IX has no bearing on sexual assault. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38xpeb/eli5how_can_the_federal_government_demand/ | {
"a_id": [
"cryncyh",
"cryndt1",
"crynm81"
],
"score": [
16,
2,
5
],
"text": [
"Title IX provides that schools receiving federal money (effectively all of them) are required to ensure that the environment does not become hostile to students.\n\nThe argument the Feds have used to force the schools to comply with this logic is that they (the schools) have an affirmative duty to remove people who pose a threat or by their presence create an ongoing hostile environment to other students. Students who claim they are survivors of sexual assault also claim that interacting with the alleged abuser creates a hostile environment that limits their access to the campus and thus to furthering their education.",
"I think the basic idea is that sexual assault creates a climate that will intimidate individuals into not applying, which in turn means indirectly means \"excluded from participation\"",
"The super short version is that Title IX requires the subject institutions to ensure equal access to education without discrimination on the basis of gender. \n\nGender based harassment and violence is one way in which previously gender segregated spaces have stayed gender segregated after they have been officially desegregated. (That is if you subject women to demeaning comments and violence in a space you want no women in, eventually there will be no women in that space.)\n\nThe theory is that sexual assault - especially prevalent and unchecked sexual assault - creates an environment where women feel unsafe and unwelcome, hindering their equal access to the space. Since educational institutions are required to ensure equal access to the space, they have to combat sexual assault.\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1sgytg | why is it necessary for the us to have multiple governmental agencies like fbi, nsa and cia? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sgytg/eli5_why_is_it_necessary_for_the_us_to_have/ | {
"a_id": [
"cdxguri",
"cdxgy3i"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"They do different things.\n\nThe FBI is our national level police force. They deal with domestic affairs that involve more than a single state.\n\nThe NSA and CIA deal with information and have different missions and objectives they are trying too accomplish.",
"The NSA and CIA are similar in that they are both intelligence gathering operations. However, the NSA falls under the jurisdiction of the DOD, while the CIA is independent. Both report to the Director of National Intelligence.\n\nThe CIA specializes in human-sourced information. The NSA doesn't do this - it has no authority to - but it is charged with managing [SIGINT](_URL_0_), or basically electronic communications. So the CIA is human-based, the NSA is more electronic information based. Both are clandestine operations.\n\nThe ATF (Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms) is in charge of the regulation of federal laws related to Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms.\n\nThe FBI generally deals with investigations of violations of federal criminal law, as well as internal investigations.\n\nThe Secret Service is primarily charged with the safety of the President and certain other VIPs.\n\nHomeland Security is charged with a more civilian-oriented defense of the nation - less emphasis on gathering intelligence/dealing with foreign governments, more cavity searches, immigration handling, and opening your mail.\n\nAny and all of these departments might work together on a case if it is necessary. e.g the ATF might be working a case on a firearms trafficker and end up working with the CIA if they have intelligence (or need intelligence) from the tracker. The agencies do not always play well with each other and might joust for jurisdiction, but generally speaking, they will share information / work together where necessary."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGINT"
]
] |
||
a9c1sw | why are we never tired of watching and admiring sunrise and sunset even though we see it daily? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a9c1sw/eli5_why_are_we_never_tired_of_watching_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"eci4cdy"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"there's no actual answer to this. not 'getting tired' of those is subjective, some people are apathetic to them completely. i imagine most people that like them do so cause every dawn and dusk can be so different depending on cloud coverage and weather. you dont always see the same thing each time."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
c0iswb | why do toys with dying batteries sound weird? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c0iswb/eli5_why_do_toys_with_dying_batteries_sound_weird/ | {
"a_id": [
"er4vj4z",
"er53tho"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Batteries will operate at the correct voltage when they are full or partially filled, but at the very low end the voltage will drop a little and current will also be limited.\n\nMost electronics are designed to work at a specific supply voltage, when this is not given all kinds of effects can happen (even destruction of hardware in some Special circuits). The typical sound amplifier will \"cut off\" peaks of the wave that later becomes the soundwave. The same effect occurs when you try to turn the volume up higher than it can be supported (and this is done on purpose in guitar distorters)",
"This was answered by fubo on /r/answered\n\n\nReply goes:\n\nfubo • Jul 9, 2014, 9:26 AM\nLet's say you have a toy that's powered by two regular AA batteries. That's nominally three volts. But when the batteries get low, the voltage sags. It doesn't go straight from three to zero; it ramps down gradually. Depending on the type of battery, this \"discharge curve\" can be slower or faster; but it's never immediate.\n\nThe toy is designed to operate at three volts. But at a lower voltage, it can still do something. Some digital circuits will behave randomly because instead of seeing a high-voltage \"one\" or a low-voltage \"zero\" they see an in-between voltage that sometimes registers as a one and sometimes as a zero. Devices that generate a sound waveform may run slow, which makes the sound distorted. DC electric motors will run slower and slower as the voltage drops, until they get to the point of not having enough power to overcome their own friction, at which point they'll stop."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
bqgv7f | why do trees and grass grow after winter's over but other plants die? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bqgv7f/eli5_why_do_trees_and_grass_grow_after_winters/ | {
"a_id": [
"eo4cvsu"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"It is not just tree and grass that live for many years a a lot of other plants do that too. A lot of flower we like in garden only live one year but there is plant you can select that live longer.\n\nThey are called Perennial plant and is plant that live longer then two years.\n\nThere is also Annual plant that only live for one yeas and produce new seeds each year and Biennial plant that life for two years but they are relative rare.\n\nThe answer it that thy have evolved to live like that. Why is in part because mutation resulted in that and part is that different plants have evolved different strategies to to thrive and both works.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThere is a drawback to Perennial plant and that is you need to store energy in the roots for them to survive and grow up the next year. A Annual plant can use all energy it get so produce a huge amount of seeds because it do not need to store any energy. Because all those types exist in nature all those way works.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nYou can in a way compare it to animals where mice is pregnant 20 days and produce 3-14 young and can have 5 to 10 litters per year and can have children at a age of six week but live for only 2-3 years. Elephants are large and is pregnant for 2 years and have one calf and the next com 4-5 years late, they can have offspring at a age of 9 and live 60-70 year in the wild. That is tow different strategies in animals that you can compare to plans."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3s6rvu | why are some people still extremely nationalist even though worldwide communication and travel now make it abundantlu evident that no nation is without serious flaws? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s6rvu/eli5_why_are_some_people_still_extremely/ | {
"a_id": [
"cwul3nj",
"cwul5fq",
"cwul9nw"
],
"score": [
3,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Part of it is the education system of each country. It gives the perspective of its own people and hence, is biased toward itself. I suppose this leads to the idea that either they are right or they are better...and hence, nationalism.",
"People can't both be proud of their nation and acknowledge its flaws? Nationalism doesn't mean blind ideological commitment to your country at the cost of any logical consideration of its merits and flaws.",
"Basic instincts. It goes back to the time when humans and our predecessors lived in small groups, it was a survival advantage to loyal to your own group and be skeptical to other groups since you did not know their intension and they might be hostile. Nationalism, or just people being hostile towards immigrant or similar stuff is the same thing, just in a bigger and modern setting. Your country is your \"group\" and you feel a stronger connection to it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1cr6ac | for account security, how is the "security question" feature not a massive security concern? (details inside) | Example:
Let's say someone's password is "Ford%12a". Note how secure this password is: it has a capital letter, numbers, and a special character (the percentage sign).
A person's answer to their secret question of "What was the name of your elementary school?" however may only be "washington", which is a common name for an elementary school. Note that this answer does not have any numbers, special characters, etc.
My question is, how is the whole "security question" model not a massive security hole? It would seem that instead of a hacker trying to find out your password, they would just click on the "I forgot my password" link and then try to crack the secret question that comes up instead.
How is this not a massive security issue? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cr6ac/eli5_for_account_security_how_is_the_security/ | {
"a_id": [
"c9j74kt",
"c9j76f5",
"c9j79x9",
"c9j9ugq"
],
"score": [
5,
2,
5,
2
],
"text": [
" > Let's say someone's password is \"Ford%12a\". Note how secure this password is: it has a capital letter, numbers, and a special character (the percentage sign).\n\n[Relevant XKCD](_URL_2_). Not as secure as you'd think.\n\n > My question is, how is the whole \"security question\" model not a massive security hole?\n\nAnd the answer, of course, is that it is. This is why security questions are two-part. First, they ask your question, and use that to send you an email. They then presume that whoever has email access is you. So the real key is getting as secure an email address as possible. You can do this with extra measures like [two-step verification](_URL_0_) and encrypted password managers like [LastPass](_URL_1_). If you use both of those, then to get your password, someone would need to *also* steal both your phone and whatever USB key you're carrying your LastPass around on, then know your email address to get into that, *then* answer your security question properly on the site they're trying to get into.",
"Hackers don't manually hack your account. They don't sit down and try to guess your password. They use bots that guess randomly. The bot cannot interpret the questions easily, let alone guess the answers to multiple questions. ",
"Usually they ask you several security questions in a row. So instead of one harder password you have three easier ones.\n\nIt is also important to note that special characters and numbers don't necessarily make a password more secure. A password like \"asparagus\" is easy to crack because it is a whole word; just trying a dictionary full of words would find it. \"AsparagusFarts\" would be much harder to crack simply because it isn't only one whole word. Trying every combination of every word in the dictionary would be impractical, you might as well just try every combination of characters possible. That is what the requirement for special characters and numbers is for, to expand the base of possible characters in the password and make brute force even less viable.",
"That's why you don't use security questions, that are easy to guess. I'd to see that \"hacker\" guess my first pet's name."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=180744",
"http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2379288,00.asp",
"http://xkcd.com/936/"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
ehin2j | why plastic wrappers are so loud? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ehin2j/eli5_why_plastic_wrappers_are_so_loud/ | {
"a_id": [
"fcjmpjj"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Think of them as dried up leaves in the fall. The wrappers are made of hard material with little softness so when they rub against each other, it generates more noise (more friction) because rough surfaces of the wrapper have more bumps and thus change the surround air molecules oscillation frequency and wavelength. The process of crumpling the wrapper also generates sound from all small folds that cause many small areas of the wrapper’s surface to rub against each other as well as the sudden deformation causing the air molecules to oscillate in a different manner which becomes audible to our ears. The hardness of plastic is also called **glass transition temperature** in which plastics below this temperature are hard while being above it means it’s softer and more malleable."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
j2rlk | li5, how does a stereo system work? | I ran across [this thread](_URL_0_) on Slashdot and find myself at a loss. A lot of the words mean things to me, but the combination of things I have a basic familiarity with and audiophile/technical jargon leaves me confused.
Examples:
> This speaker is reputed to be 8 ohms at most, and well less than 8 ohms over fairly wide sub bands.
and
> Pure transistor tech, minimalistic layout, signal paths as short as possible. Rich, warm sound. The volume potentiometer started to add a crackle when being turned lately, though - so I guess sooner or later I have to break out my soldering iron and fix the thing.
and
> a pair of McIntosh monoblock vacuum tube amps
or
> So that 200W 7 channel amplifier is actually only putting out about 29W to each speaker, maximum. But distortion and heat will limit you to about half of that continuously, or about 15W per channel. Given that typical speakers are about 87-89db efficient, that means that you net a pathetic 90db or so that's actually usable.
It almost seems like some elaborate con, but I'm pretty sure the things they reference are real. I thought about posting to r/askscience, but I wasn't sure the responses would be more comprehensible. Thanks in advance.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j2rlk/li5_how_does_a_stereo_system_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"c28o0bl",
"c28o5aa"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"First of all, this is a very big topic that I could honestly write about for days, but I'm not sure I could explain it all to you like you're five. Nevertheless, here's the most salient point (and it may not make you feel any better): none of what you *read* about audio equipment matters in the slightest. The only thing that matters -- the *only* thing -- is what it sounds like.\n\nThe problem, as I have explained in other comments on reddit, is that the manufacturers know that buyers almost never listen to the equipment before plunking down their money for it. This realization has enabled them to put a lot more effort into what goes onto the spec sheet and how many blinking lights are on the front panel than anything to do with sound quality.\n\nNow, to address some of your specific points and a few other misconceptions...\n\nThe impedance rating of a speaker is an *average* of the load it presents to the amplifier. It's like an approximation of how heavy a trailer is, so you know how much horsepower your car needs to pull it. The problem is, a speaker is a mechanical device responding to input, so it presents different loads at different frequencies. If you look at the impedance graphs for speakers, you can see that there's no consistent load presented. It varies depending on the signal of the input.\n\nThe electrical functions that are performed by transistors in all modern electronics were performed by vacuum tubes fifty years ago. When the transition happened, a substantial group of audiophiles rejected the transistorized systems as sounding \"cold,\" \"harsh,\" or \"sterile.\" There was good reason for this, as early transistor designs had some problems. Over time, transistor technology and implementation has improved dramatically, but there remains a small group of audiophiles who still consider the vacuum tube designs more \"warm\" and \"natural\" sounding. This remains a big debate in the audio community, but the vacuum tube sound is still popular enough that some high-end manufacturers, such as McIntosh, still design and build equipment based on that technology.\n\nTotal wattage and distortion figures are basically BS designed to get you to buy the gear. The way amplifiers are tested is by playing a test tone through a resistor and measuring the maximum power output. The problem is, nobody listens to test tones through resistors. We listen to music through speakers, and passing that kind of test places a much greater burden on the amplifier.\n\nAlong those lines, everyone needs to know that speakers don't have a power rating (unless they have a built-in amplifier, as with many powered subwoofers). If you go into a store and see \"200W speakers,\" that figure is meaningless. A speaker is a passive device that is powered by an amplifier. The speaker itself only has a power *handling* spec (how much it can take before it blows up), which is also meaningless, because it can be fudged.\n\nThe upshot of all this is that you can't believe anything you see or read about audio. You *must* listen to make a determination. Some specs can be useful in narrowing the field, but they have very little value overall.\n\nFeel free to ask follow-up questions. (Loving this new subreddit, btw.)",
"Ohms are a measure of resistance to electrical current. When electricity drives a speakers electromagnet it causes some resistance to the electron motion. A band is a segment of frequency, a sub band would refer to low frequency sound.\n\nShort signal paths mean short wire lengths, the longer the wire the more resistance it adds to your circuit. Potentiometers are variable resistors used to control things such as volume. A vacuum tube is a type of transistor used to amplify an input signal, they are literally a glass tube under vacuum (no air inside) that house electronics.\n\nAn amplifier outputs a certain maximum amount of power measured in watts, this power is divided into channels for each speaker and actual power delivered can be less than the theoretical maximum. A decibel is a logarithmic measure of signal strength compared to another reference signal."
]
} | [] | [
"http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/07/28/1621220/Why-Your-Dads-30-Year-Old-Stereo-Sounds-Better-Than-Yours"
] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
1sydvp | why do islamic fundamentalists hate the united states? does it have anything to do with religion/religious teachings? if so, where in the quran or the sunnah does it necessitate hatred of western culture? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sydvp/eli5_why_do_islamic_fundamentalists_hate_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"ce2gtwo",
"ce2gv2x",
"ce2k9tw",
"ce2rluy"
],
"score": [
3,
10,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"Many reasons. A non complete list:\n\nUS using middle east states as war buffer against Russian communism during cold war\n\nUS supporting the israli's.\n\nUS supporting rebellious free equality culture\n",
"Varies by group. Fundamentalist Muslims have more or less the same problems with Western culture that highly conservative Christians or Jews do: lives not focused enough on God, focus on materialism/wealth, women having relatively equal status instead of being relegated to the home, etc.\n\nI am not an expert on the Quran by any means, but Muslim theology generally considers Jews and Christians to be closer to Islam than are other religions. Muslims don't reject the Torah or the New Testament categorically, they just believe that it has been corrupted or altered over the centuries. The term is Ahl-Al-Kitab, \"people of the Book\" in Arabic.\n\nNow, as for why they have a problem with the United States specifically? We've been fucking with their shit for the last century. The state of Israel was created pretty much wholesale in a land where people were already kinda living, the U.S. overthrew a democratically-elected government in Iran to install the Shah (who was more friendly to U.S. interests), we armed the Taliban in the interest of fighting the Soviets, and we are *still* bombing their countries and occasionally killing innocent civilian wedding parties. They've got plenty of legitimate grievances, they're just not really expressing them the right way.",
"Because the culture in most Islamic nations is fundamentally different from American and Western culture in general. The following extract is from \"Better Angels Of Our Nature\" by Steven Pinker\n\nSome information on the author:- Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist, and popular science author. He is a Harvard College Professor and the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University,[2] and is known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.\nHere's the extract\n\nThe laws and practices of many Muslim countries seem to have missed out on the Humanitarian Revolution. According to Amnesty International, almost three-quarters of Muslim countries execute their criminals, compared to a third of non-Muslim countries, and many use cruel punishments such as stoning, branding, blinding, amputation of tongues or hands, and even crucifixion.247 Every year more than a hundred million girls in Islamic countries have their genitals mutilated, and when they grow up they may be disfigured with acid or killed outright if they displease their fathers, their brothers, or the husbands who have been forced upon them.248 Islamic countries were the last to abolish slavery (as recently as 1962 in Saudi Arabia and 1980 in Mauritania), and a majority of the countries in which people continue to be trafficked are Muslim.249 In many Muslim countries, witchcraft is not just on the books as a crime but is commonly prosecuted. In 2009, for example, Saudi Arabia convicted a man for carrying a phone booklet with characters in an alphabet from his native Eritrea, which the police interpreted as occult symbols. He was lashed three hundred times and imprisoned for more than three years.250\n\nViolence is sanctioned in the Islamic world not just by religious superstition but by a hyperdeveloped culture of honor. The political scientists Khaled Fattah and K. M. Fierke have documented how a “discourse of humiliation” runs through the ideology of Islamist organizations.251 A sweeping litany of affronts—the Crusades, the history of Western colonization, the existence of Israel, the presence of American troops on Arabian soil, the underperformance of Islamic countries—are taken as insults to Islam and used to license indiscriminate vengeance against members of the civilization they hold responsible, together with Muslim leaders of insufficient ideological purity. The radical fringe of Islam harbors an ideology that is classically genocidal: history is seen as a violent struggle that will culminate in the glorious subjugation of an irredeemably evil class of people. Spokesmen for Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian regime have demonized enemy groups (Zionists, infidels, crusaders, polytheists), spoken of a millennial cataclysm that would usher in a utopia, and justified the killing of entire categories of people such as Jews, Americans, and those felt to insult Islam.252 The historian Bernard Lewis is not the only one who has asked, “What went wrong?” In 2002 a committee of Arab intellectuals under the auspices of the United Nations published the candid Arab Human Development Report, said to be “written by Arabs for Arabs.”253 The authors documented that Arab nations were plagued by political repression, economic backwardness, oppression of women, widespread illiteracy, and a self-imposed isolation from the world of ideas. At the time of the report, the entire Arab world exported fewer manufactured goods than the Philippines, had poorer Internet connectivity than sub-Saharan Africa, registered 2 percent as many patents per year as South Korea, and translated about a fifth as many books into Arabic as Greece translates into Greek.254\n\nHope that helps",
"First: It is important to remember that this only applies to the EXTREMEST and very, very few Muslims violently hate the US more than the average person. **[CHRISTIAN AND JEWS GO TO HEAVEN ACCORDING TO THE QU'RAN](_URL_0_)**. So it has nothing to do with religious teachings.\n\nSecond: It is a matter of information control. If you had every reason to believe that the US as whole killed your family in a tragic bombing you would be pretty upset too. They do not understand how US politics works or what role the people have in the government. Of course, I am referring to those Muslims living in the conflict zones of the Middle East.\n\nLastly: The Qu'ran specifically says to avoid violence, so the hate is purely from extremist propaganda and the less than pleasant moments that come from years and years of war."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Christians_Jews_and_Muslims_in_Heaven"
]
] |
||
24uit1 | why some google's features aren't available in some countries? | I'm from Poland and yesterday I found /r/google. There are some really cool features showed, but when I tested them myself some of them didn't work for me. Here's a shortlist (based on top all from /r/google): googling timer doesn't bring timer; googling "7 - eleven" does nothing (7 - 11 works); nothing happens when I google "get recipes from Amazon" or anything like that; googling "university of Iowa acceptance rate" also does nothing; there is no function to do etymology ("etymology for euthanasia" as an example); Google Music, Google Wallet are unavailable in my country. (Google music is only present as offline music player on android); not to mention Google Now which is really poor. There are loads of features missing such as last train home.
So, why is this happening? If they've implemented some good features why they don't make them available everywhere? Most of them could work with no extra work involved (like googling something to get answer right away). | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24uit1/eli5_why_some_googles_features_arent_available_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"chatm3j"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"I just tried some of the things you mentioned, such as \"etymology for euthanasia\" and \"university of Iowa acceptance rate\", by visiting _URL_0_/ncr (to override the redirect to my local Google). I'm using IE11, even when I turned compatibility view on (IE7, Google puts a black link bar at the top of the page) it still worked.\n\nI'm using Google in the English language though, and that does carry over to _URL_0_ for me, if you're using another language that may explain why it isn't working."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"google.pl",
"google.pl/ncr"
]
] |
|
4lfqsm | battleship armament | How does battleship armament work? What's the difference between two 18 inch guns and 3 16 inch guns? Are bigger guns better, or are more guns better? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lfqsm/eli5_battleship_armament/ | {
"a_id": [
"d3mwyci",
"d3myfvp"
],
"score": [
11,
2
],
"text": [
"Bigger gun means your ammunition can have more weight, usually larger propellant and thus is more energetic.\n\nThis increase in energy can translate to faster speed, meaning more range or reach and better accuracy. Alternatively, it can mean a heavier projectile, capable of carrying a larger explosive charge to detonate.\n\nA larger gun is usually accommodated by increased armor around the turrets, making them more survivable.\n\nOn the other hand, a larger gun requires a larger ship, reduces the total ammunition capacity, and requires far more logistics involving operation of the gun, including larger motors etc.\n\nThe larger ammunition would also seriously decrease the fire rate.\n\nTo be clear, not all larger guns are more powerful than smaller guns. Different factors involved such as technological differences, pressure differences, etc can lead to drastically different gun behavior.\n\nA 100mm gun on a BMP is not going to out gun the 88m tiger for example.\n\nAs to number of guns vs how large the guns are, it depends on the role. If your job is to sink other battleships, it does you no good to have a lot of little guns that can't penetrate the armor of your target.\n\nConversely, if your job is to protect your fleet from smaller torpedo boats, it does you little good to have a handful of large guns only to find yourself reloading while the remaining hostiles enters firing range\n",
"The ability of a projectile's ability to penetrate armor depends mostly on the inertia of the projectile, as well as the area of impact.\nSince the strength of the material is also affected by the force of impact, the speed also plays a role - a rifle bullet doesn't have more inertia \nthan an arrow fired with a bow, yet it'll penetrate armor much better than the arrow.\n\nSo, if you want to penetrate battleship armor, you want the projectiles to \n\n1) be as fast as possible \n2) have the highest ratio of mass/crossectional area (in other words: distribute the force of impact on a small area)\n\nWhen shooting at short range, the obvious way to do this would be to make a very fast, very thin and very dense projectile, like those fired by tanks. They\nare lightweight, but due to their speed and density, they can easily penetrate heavy tank armor. The problem with that is that these projectiles don't have particularly good aerodynamic properties, and therefore limited range. \n\nIn order to still have a high velocity when fired at long range, you will want to minimize the aerodynamic drag relative to the weight of the propjectile. And due to the square-cubed law, the easiest way to do that is to increase the size of the projectile: A projectile 2 times the size has 8 times the mass, but only 4 times the surface area. This means that it will slow down at a lower rate, which in turn results in a higher impact velocity compared to a smaller projectile of the same type.\n\nThe ratio of mass/crossection is also higher with a heavier projectile, for pretty much the same reason: The heavy projectile with 2 times the diameter has 4 times the crossectional area, but 8 times the weight.\nSo if the projectile hits at the same speed as the smaller one, it'll put on more pressure, and therefore penetrate better.\n\nTl;DR: A larger projectile will have a higher impact velocity and pressure, so it'll penetrate thicker armor than a small one.\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
560oh9 | how come, when typing, i sometimes type an entirely different word (spelled correctly) than i intended to put down; what's going on? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/560oh9/eli5_how_come_when_typing_i_sometimes_type_an/ | {
"a_id": [
"d8fcsor",
"d8fdpaz"
],
"score": [
2,
16
],
"text": [
"I feel like this is a difficult question to answer because of introspection illusion. It's hard to identify exactly what you were thinking at the exact point in time when you wrote the word.\nIf while you're writing your mind wanders and a different concept becomes the concept your brain identifies as the concept to translate into writing, you will write that word instead of the word that the original thought would have necessitated.\n",
"Depending on what program you are using and how closely you look at the screen while you are typing, it may just be that you are spelling the word you intend to type wrong and the software is auto-correcting to an entirely different word. This happens to me most in Google Docs, Word, OSX's \"notes\" app, and once in a while on my mobile.\n\nIn other cases I've noticed that even a micro-thought about something else will cause me to type something other than what I wanted to type. For instance, I'll be writing the answer to a test question when my wife asks me what I want for dinner, I'll notice that I've started typing the words \"what do you want for dinner\" because that's what was in my phonological loop (what my brain was repeating) at the time. \n\n**TL;DR - autocorrect and thought-sniping.**"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.