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1oaecc | are you good with css? | If so, please consider reading this!
As we approach 1,000,000 subscribers, we'd like to make our subreddit look a little more clean. Primarily, we're looking for a way to *slightly* change the link listing, especially how the flair is displayed in the link listing (and it should mirror in the search results and of course on the page containing the post itself).
To clarify, we are *not* looking for just concepts-- we would like proposals of actual CSS code we can implement. Of course, if you don't want to code the whole thing out right away, you can state what you would make it look like and then you could work on it.
We also don't want to dramatically change the look from reddit's default. The sidebar would stay the same, and we don't want to change the colors of the links themselves or their backgrounds. We just want the flair to look a little more aesthetically pleasing than it is right now. Feel free to change the image files in the flair from our "M" and star and check mark. And we do want them to say "explained" and "modpost" and "official thread" when you hover like they do now.
We can't guarantee that any submissions will be implemented, but I thought I'd open this up to the community to see if you all have any good ideas. Please don't spend too much time on this. You'll be credited in the stylesheet and at the bottom of the subreddit.
If you don't want to post your idea in response to this comment, please PM me personally at /u/anonymous123421 so I can share it with the other mods without us having to get flooded with different modmail PMs.
Thanks!
~123421 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1oaecc/are_you_good_with_css/ | {
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"CSS is very easy coding wise. The only difficult area I might see is finding what you want or you're looking for in clarity of the links. \n\n_URL_0_ - this page is what you're going after correct link wise? \n\n"
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2pkh5d | what was the justification for the chinese government selecting the last panchen lama? | I'm reading a BBC news article, and I discover that the Panchen Lama (the one who "plays a key role in selecting the next Dalai Lama) was chosen by the Chinese government. Apparently, the Dalai Lama chose a Panchen Lama, but the government rejected the choice.
Reading on, the Chinese government claim that THEY will select the next Dalai Lama (even though the current Dalai Lama is saying that he may well be the last one). What is the justification here, why do the Chinese government think they are entitled to do this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pkh5d/eli5_what_was_the_justification_for_the_chinese/ | {
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"The way I understand it is China had a pretty good relationship with the Tibetan buddhists and for hundreds of years there was an understanding between the two. The Chinese respected the choices made by the Panchen for finding the next Dalai Lama. \n\nFast forward to the current Dalai Lama and the friction between them. After they snubbed Tibet's choice of new Panchen Lama and selecting their own the Chinese now essentially get to choose the next Dalai Lama after the current one dies and remove Tibet from the equation altogether. It is a devastating blow to the Tibetan buddhists and that's why he's saying after he dies its pretty much game over."
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89yw80 | why do google captchas make you click street signs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/89yw80/eli5_why_do_google_captchas_make_you_click_street/ | {
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"They're used to train their image recognition software so that they can read street signs more accurately.",
"Google is working on self driving cars and they need their algorithms trained. So they crowd source it. And they know computers cant tell because that is why they are having you train their cars.",
"What about the one that just says “I am not a robot” and you just click it once and the box turns into a check mark and lets you go",
"As pointed out in other posts, they are using it to train their image recognition software. The machine learning algorithm they are using requires training. \n\nThey will start out with a massive database of known data that is used for the initial training. Then they will continually refine the algorithm over time. Both these steps take a lot of work because manually validating that a dataset is correct takes a lot of manpower.\n\nGoogle captcha essentially is a huge mechanical turk. By asking real people to validate what is in a picture they can now validate and refine the algorithm. [this training piece is a part of the algorithm, it's not a manual thing]. All the while the algorithm is also \"guessing\" and comparing it's answers with the manicured data set of known answers provided by humans.\n\nYou lower risk of getting bad data by asking say 30 people the same question. You can make some assumptions that if 80% of the people said box \"X\" is a road sign, car face.... that yep, it's that thing.\n\nEssentially Image Captcha is saving google millions of dollars in real human time to help improve their machine learning! And if you've ever gotten a Captcha wrong (and you were right); it's most likely because the image didn't have enough answers to achieve a consensus to say you are right, but it does hold on to your answer to help build that consensus for the next person!",
"...and does the pole count as part of the sign?",
"Everything Google has you do is to feed/train a new technology it is working on.\n\nThe new image captchas are most likely helping train some sort of image recognition AI.",
"They run out of books to digitize for google books, so now they are digitizing street signs for google maps. ",
"Current bots have hard times with pictures, so it shows that you are human. You are also helping google develop their self-driving cars. That is why cars and street signs are what you are always clicking. You are essentially training their car bots while proving you aren't an internet bot.",
"The irony of all of this too, is that once machines are 100% successful at completing CAPTCHAs, they will be obsolete as a method for checking human vs. machine.",
"[A lot of people here aren't reading from Google's info on reCAPTCHA](_URL_0_)\n\nELI5: Google cuts up images into a grid 4x4 for small images, 5x5 for bigger ones, and so on and so forth. Google gives these images to their bots and teaches (trains) them to find which grid has what object. Google has the answers for this small set of images, and for the bots that guess correctly, they get to have clones made of them.\n\nThe reason Google breaks up these images into smaller grids because it's easier to find Waldo in a small box, but harder to find Waldo in a big, crowded image.\n\nGoogle's bots, after some time, are really good at spotting objects.\n\nA reCAPTCHA on a website asks a user to figure out which squares have a stop sign. Google and their bots know the answer to this. But Google is tired and doesn't want to go through new sets of images and identify more and more traffic light, for instance.\n\nGoogle then asks several bots to guess where the traffic light is. To make sure the bot's guess is right, the user, from earlier, that answered the first reCAPTCHA right is asked to find the traffic light. Many more of the user's friends are also asked the same question to make sure it's right.\n\nIf the bot and the users think the traffic light is in a particular square, then the bot is given a pat on the back, and has many clones made of it.\n\nA benefit of Google asking a lot of people what's a traffic light, what's a stop sign, what's a store front, is that when the bots get older and can drive cars, they can recognize when to stop, and where.\n\nAnother benefit is that Google's bots can help other people find things in images, like a person lost in a flood from an image taken from high above.\n\nMore detailed info from the link above:\n\n > reCAPTCHA offers more than just spam protection. Every time our CAPTCHAs are solved, that human effort helps digitize text, annotate images, and build machine learning datasets. This in turn helps preserve books, improve maps, and solve hard AI problems.\n\n--\n\nSide note: a lot of people still hate reCAPTCHA, but, it's quicker, now, is better at protecting sites, and contributes to image recognition.",
"What are you supposed to do with one like [this?](_URL_0_)",
"Do you know what this picture is? (It's a banana.) And this one? (It's a dog). People have very good eyes, and are very good at telling what is in a picture. Computers don't have eyes! They aren't very good at telling what is in a picture. They need some help from people. \n\nSome smart scientists want to teach computers how to tell what is in a picture, but they need help from lots and lots of people. When you click on the pictures of street signs, you are helping the computers learn how to see what is in a picture!\n\n",
"2 purposes:\n\n- Giving a task that is relatively hard for AI to perform reliably (making sure you're human and not a bot)\n- Creating training data (where is the sign & where it's not on a photo) to improve their image recognition, most likely in preparation for driverless vehicles.\n\nOld text-based captchas are being solved pretty easily by open-source deep learning setups these days, so they are not a good candidate to filter out bots anymore."
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2v7nkx | how is nintendo able to demand ad revenue for related youtube videos? | I've been reading a bit about all the idiocy that Nintendo's been doing recently with Nintendo-related YouTube videos. However, doesn't fair use law apply? I would think that I could post any Nintendo content I wanted without paying royalties, as long as it doesn't stop people from buying the game, but I haven't heard anyone else talk about fair use. Explain?
Tl;Dr Nintendo's been acting stupid, how come I can't just ignore them because of fair use law? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2v7nkx/eli5_how_is_nintendo_able_to_demand_ad_revenue/ | {
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"Fair Use doesn't technically apply to Let's Play content so Nintendo is under no legal obligation to allow that content to remain on YouTube, so they can hold it to ransom all it likes.\n\nFair Use mostly applies to Review content (which Nintendo have been striking off YouTube too, because they're crazy)",
"When you 'buy' a video game you are not truly buying it. You are leasing it (atleast in North America), same for Movies and TV Shows. If you look on the back of any game/movie box/case you will see that it says LEASED not OWNED by the party who purchased the game.\n\nYou do not own that content because you bought it, Nintendo sold you a liscense to play and use the game -- however -- if you start to make money off of Nintendo's product, they have every right to demand a cut of your profits, if not all.\n\nI think it's a totally stupid business move but, Nintendo always does the weirdest stuff.\n\nSorry if it's confusing, I tried to make it as simple as possible.. :)\n\nSide note: Nintendo is really only interested in the people who have high view count and subs, because some of those gaming channels make almost a few tens of thousands a year."
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4xqevm | after a band breaks up or a musician dies, who profits from the sale of their merchandise and music? | Does it all go to the producer/ merch company or do the musicians get any profit?
Additionally, how do you get the rights to print say, a Beatles album cover on a shirt then sell the shirt if the band is broken up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xqevm/eli5_after_a_band_breaks_up_or_a_musician_dies/ | {
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"It really varies a lot based on the legal structure of the group (e.g., incorporated or not) and their agreements with the record label. In general, copyright is treated like any other property, and may be sold, transferred by a will, and so on. \n\nFor example, if the artist assigns the copyright to the band's corporation, and the artist dies, that copyright just remains with the corporation--but the heirs of the artist can inherit the artist's share in the corporation and thus a right to the profits. If the artists retains the copyright themselves, it becomes part of the estate and will go to the artist's heirs (or creditors). Some rights will often be transferred to a record label, but sometimes only temporarily or reverting on death.",
"Generally it goes to the estate of the deceased. However it would depend on the specific contracts that person entered into."
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1j48v5 | why does a gyroscope resist being rotated | Here's my theory, and you can tell me if it's right or wrong. When a gyroscope spins, all of the stuff that makes up the spinny disc goes in a nice circle, and the only forces it experiences are centripetal force. BUT, as soon as you start to turn the axis of rotation funny things begin happening. Suppose our gyroscope is spinning with its axis vertical, and we begin trying to turn the axis clockwise. If you were to examine a single point on the disc at any given moment you would be trying to accelerate it downward (if it's on the right hand side) and then upward if it's on the right hand side. Thus, any force you apply to one point must be applied in reverse half a rotation later in order to keep the axis rotating clockwise.
Am I close? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j48v5/eli5why_does_a_gyroscope_resist_being_rotated/ | {
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dv8zde | why can you cook some things from frozen but not others? | For example if I buy a fresh chicken breast and freeze it myself, cooking it from frozen is bad. However I can buy already frozen chicken breast and cook it from frozen with no problems? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dv8zde/eli5_why_can_you_cook_some_things_from_frozen_but/ | {
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"You *can't* cook originally fresh chicken from frozen??\n\nUh oh...",
" Well if you try to cook it straight out of the freezer you will cook the outside but on the inside it will still be frozen.",
"Usually stuff you cook from frozen has already been cooked once, and you're basically just heating it up. It's easier to do that than it is to make sure the food is actually cooked all the way through if you're trying to cook frozen, raw chicken.",
"I don't know what you've been told, but in terms of food safety, cooking all types of frozen chicken (whether you bought it frozen or not) is perfectly fine. \n\nHowever, cooking frozen chicken takes longer than defrosted chicken, which can be an issue because chicken can get dried out very easily.",
"The colder something is when you start cooking it, the harder it is for it to cook through evenly. With a raw-frozen chicken breast, you run the risk of over cooking the outside layers of the meat without the middle part getting cooked enough to be safe to eat. The heat just can’t penetrate to the center of the meat evenly enough because what it’s penetrating is so so cold. Under-cooked poultry is unsafe to eat because of microscopic critters that could be in there that are killed when the meat is cooked to a certain temperature (I think it’s 165 F for chicken).. \n\nIt’s not an issue for cooked-frozen chicken because it’s already been cooked and those critters have already been cooked/killed. The worst thing that happens in this case is that the middle of the meat is cold, but it was already cooked before you even bought it. Also, when companies prepare these pre-cooked chicken breasts, they tend to flatten them out for exactly the reasons I’m writing about here: They cook faster and more evenly that way. \n\nIt’s less of an issue with some meats than with others, I can only guess because they have fewer critters than live in them, or their critters get killed at a lower temperature. With beef, less of an issue. With pork, just as big an issue as with poultry.",
"It depends on the cooking process. Slow cooking processes work fine from frozen. Fast processes can be a problem, if the food can't transfer the heat fast enough the outside burns before the inside is cooked enough. Chicken can be more of a problem, because the required internal temp is higher. You can cook home frozen just like you cook equivalent pre-frozen. You can't cook a whole chicken with processes that would work for a breast filet, no matter who does the freezing.",
"It sounds like you might be confusing two different pieces of advice.\n\nOne common piece of advice is to make sure you defrost things before you cook them. This is not so much for food safety, as it is to ensure the thing you're cooking cooks evenly. If you put a frozen chicken breast in the oven, and bake it, it's likely that the outside will burn before the inside is cooked throughout, or that the whole piece will dry out when you try to cook it thoroughly. Defrosting normalizes the temperature and helps make sure all parts of the chicken (or whatever else you're cooking) cook at the same rate.\n\nThe other piece of advice is to not re-freeze things that have defrosted without first cooking them. This is true, but only for things that have thawed outside of the refrigerator. The concern here is, if food thaws to a warmer temperature (as if it were in your car, or in the garage, or out on the counter), as microbes previously inactivated by the freezing process, can again become active at temperatures above 40F and start multiplying leading to foodborne illness.\n\nSo for that reason most people will say if you thaw something, you need to cook it (to kill the microbes again) before re-freezing it.\n\nBut in reality, if you take a store bought piece of frozen chicken, thaw it in your fridge (at 35F), you could re-freeze it without worry.\n\nEDIT: spelling"
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cemhl3 | how does the https transfer the key to decrypt the data without compromising the contents of said data? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cemhl3/eli5_how_does_the_https_transfer_the_key_to/ | {
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"To try to simplify, these kinds of protocols work by having the reciever send the lock, instead of the sender transmitting the key.\n\nAn analogy is that I send you a combination safe, you put the thing inside it and send it back to me. The combination to open the safe is only ever known by me, but this way once you put something into the safe you know nobody else (not even yourself) can open it.",
"If data could be encrypted with a paint colour, then...\n\nIf I wanted to send you encrypted data, first I would send you some random colour paint.\n\nNext, you and I would independently choose a second secret random colour paint (both different) and mix it with the first colour I just sent you. We would come up with two new colours.\n\nWe then send each other our new paint colours, and mix in our own second secret random colour with each other's new colour. The result is that we both come up with the same final colour (the final colour each being a total mix of the three colours: the original, your secret colour, and my secret colour).\n\nI can now use this final colour to encrypt the data, knowing that you will have independently come up with the exact same colour.\n\nIf someone else were watching us send these colours, they would get the first colour and the third pair of colours that were produced, but it would be very difficult for them to figure out what each of our secret colours were; it would be difficult for them to un-mix the third colour back to the first colour and whatever secret colour we each chose, so they would not be able to produce their own final colour.\n\nHTTPS uses mathematics that have similar properties, easy to compute one way, difficult to reverse."
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a4jtug | how the casino know where we put our bets on the roulette and how do they avoid us lying that we won the bet? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a4jtug/eli5_how_the_casino_know_where_we_put_our_bets_on/ | {
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"Each player has different colored chips. There is a big table with all the possible options that you can bet on. There's a space for each number, for black, for red, for odd numbers, etc. You have to put your chips on the table before the dealer waves and says no more bets. There is a camera right above it. Then the ball lands on a particular color. If your bet wins, the dealer puts the correct amount of money on top.",
"The really ELI5 answer is: They watch you.\n\nThe dealer is watching first and foremost, it's their responsibility. Most of them have also been doing it long enough that even if they don't see you place extra chips on a winning bet (called capping a bet, not to be confused with pulling money off a losing bet called pinching a bet) they will often notice if they look away and look back and more chips were there than they remembered.\n\nBut cameras are always watching. Even if the eyes behind the camera aren't watching you at that very moment the camera is recording so it's as simple as going back on a youtube video to double check if anyone did anything funny on that table.\n\nAnd it's a crime. Around these parts it's similar to theft and at best you're going to give the money back and get your ass kicked out and at worst end up in jail."
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cmuyip | why does playing a game at higher frames than originally intended (e.g. 60fps instead of 30fps) often cause glitches with the physics? | If you change the game to be 60fps, shouldn’t everything adjust as a result? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cmuyip/eli5_why_does_playing_a_game_at_higher_frames/ | {
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"These games run the FPS and the physics engine in the same loop, and make some assumptions about the speed. They don't calculate physics that would have happened since the last calculation, they just calculate another 1/30 of a second of physics. So, by increasing the FPS, you increase the number of physics calculations but not the time its calculated for, resulting in 'faster' physics.",
"Graphics and physics are processed separately. Think about the inside of your computer. It has a \"processor\", which is technically called a CPU, or \"central processing unit\", that handles all of the math and interactions between things, etc. Then you have the \"graphics card\", which is technically called a GPU, or \"graphics processing unit\". Note how they are both distinct processing units. Basically, graphics require so much memory that you have to do them separately.\n\nNow, the CPU tells the GPU what it should be doing in general, such as \"make the character move forward by flying/walking/etc.\" but the GPU does the calculations of what it looks like, such as your feet hitting the ground and the weapon swaying in your arms. To a large degree, where you see your character is what the CPU recognizes for physics.\n\nSo, the CPU and GPU are linked, but let's say the GPU is updating information faster than the CPU (such as playing at 60 fps on a game intended for 30 fps). You run your character into a wall. Your character model running forward happens at a faster speed than the CPU registers the collision of your character against the wall. For a brief moment (milliseconds), your character model passes into the object model of the wall. When the CPU next refreshes, it calculates a collision, since it has a program saying those two models can't intersect, but since you are intersecting, it forces you out of the wall at high speeds.\n\nYou can do similar things playing at low FPS, but the logic is a backward (CPU registers movement but character model never intersects with another object)."
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1qb7p9 | what difference does the wheel size make, specifically in regards to winter tires? | Ok, I have been looking for an answer to this and I can't find one I understand/that seems legit.
I have a new car, that came with 18" alloy wheels and the tires are 245/45R18 all seasons. But I live in Calgary and need winter tires. I do understand how winter tires work, I did my research and have the brand picked out but what I can't understand is the size.
I was thinking I would get the tires switched out so I have winter tires on the wheels that came with my car. In the spring when it comes time to switch back, my intention with this plan is to buy new wheels for the summer tires. Purely based on vanity, assuming in the next six months I will find what I'm looking for that will fit my car.
Everyone I've spoken to has said buy new wheels for the winter tires, and ones on a smaller wheel. 16 and 17" have been suggested. When I ask why, reasons include: it's cheaper, it's really expensive to have your tires switched out, a blank stare, etc. They don't seem to understand I would like new wheels in the spring, and I know you can change them. I don't intend to switch them out every season. It's also cheaper in the short term, and in the long term if I get new wheels anyways.
So, is there some kind of benefit to having winter tires on smaller wheels? I did hear there is more tire touching the ground....but I don't understand how that would work. If it is better (safer) I will do it but I need to know why it should be that way. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qb7p9/eli5_what_difference_does_the_wheel_size_make/ | {
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"You want narrow tires for snow/ice. 245/45R18 aren't that narrow. \nUsually what people do is buy a cheap set of steel rims in a size common on econoboxes, so they cay buy cheap, tall, narrow econobox winter tires to put on them. Also because you can slide around into curbs and only mess up your cheap steel rims and not your nice alloy ones.\n\nThat said, your plan will work fine - especially since you live in Calgary and chinooks melt most of the snow. I never changed to winter tires when I lived in S Alberta."
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ngifg | why i get so many nose bleeds in the winter and other people don't | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ngifg/eli5_why_i_get_so_many_nose_bleeds_in_the_winter/ | {
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"Its something to do with the sensitivity of the blood vessels in your nose and how the cold dry air of winter often exacerbates said sensitivity. Atleast thats how I think of it because I'm getting the fucking nose bleeds too.",
"Cold air is dry air. You may be able to make the nosebleeds stop by getting a humidifier for your home, or at least for your bedroom.",
"Shower more. Seriously. By regularly getting nice hot steam and moisture up in there, it keeps it from drying out.",
"You aren't alone! I don't feel like it's really winter until I wake up with a bloody pillowcase :/",
"Its something to do with the sensitivity of the blood vessels in your nose and how the cold dry air of winter often exacerbates said sensitivity. Atleast thats how I think of it because I'm getting the fucking nose bleeds too.",
"Cold air is dry air. You may be able to make the nosebleeds stop by getting a humidifier for your home, or at least for your bedroom.",
"Shower more. Seriously. By regularly getting nice hot steam and moisture up in there, it keeps it from drying out.",
"You aren't alone! I don't feel like it's really winter until I wake up with a bloody pillowcase :/"
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193eu5 | the amazon web services | Things like what's the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
What's the difference between the Simple Storage Service (S3), the Elastic Block Store (EBS) and Relational Database Service (RDS). And so on. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/193eu5/eli5_the_amazon_web_services/ | {
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"The basic idea is that Amazon has *shitloads* of computers, all set up so that if one goes down, nobody will ever notice. They've designed their system to handle massive spikes of customers so they can handle the holiday rush. Once they had all this figured out, they realized they could rent out server space/time.\n\nEC2 gives you a virtual server that you can use for whatever you want - most people use them for web servers but that's not a requirement. You can create & destroy them on the fly from software, depending on the load. It's easy to clone fully-configured servers, rather than having to set each one up by hand.\n\nS3 is a way to store files for your website and redistribute them. You don't have to worry about buying new hard drives when you run out of space, doing back ups or even making sure you have enough bandwidth. Like EC2, you can easily manipulate things automatically with software.\n\nOne of the downsides to EC2 is that, while you can create and destroy servers automatically, you can't store much on them. If you wanted to run a database, for example, where you needed a lot of fast, reliable storage space it just wouldn't work. EBS gives you 'drives' you can attach to your EC2 instances.\n\nFor data that you want to keep around, but don't plan on using, there's Glacier. You 'pack it away' and can get to it if you need it, but it might take a while to get. If you want to keep data going back a few years to be safe, but never actually read anything older than 3 months - this is where you put it. It's a lot cheaper than the other storage services.\n\nThe RDS is (big surprise) a database. Once your server load gets past a certain point, it's hard to just add another database - RDS hides all the complexity of that from you and handles scaling and sharding and all the stuff you need when a site gets huge.\n\nThere's a bunch more services that tie in to these things. Some things, like the queuing service, start to make sense when your system is running on hundreds of servers at once."
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5cgg8f | do all software have bugs in their code or can there be bug-free software? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cgg8f/eli5do_all_software_have_bugs_in_their_code_or/ | {
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"As software becomes more complex, the likelihood that it will be used in unforseen ways increases exponentially. \n\nThere are tons of bug-free software. Have you ever seen a 4-function calculator crash? Probably not. \n\nBut, realistically, the chances of having something as complex as Windows or MacOS or a modern day video-game not have any bugs is zero. There's just too much going on.",
"A bug in program just means that there is a discrepancy between what the programmer wanted it to do and what it actually does. I.e. it crashes when someone inputs numbers or is too slow to be convenient. \nWith small snippets it's very easy to make a software which doesn't have such mistakes. For example, a program which replies to all inputs with \"hello\" would be rather hard to get wrong.\n\nHowever, when you expand the scope of the project, guaranteeing perfect operation becomes impossible. With arbitrary inputs, people intentionally trying to break it and potentially millions of lines of code all interacting with each other, it's impossible to confirm that the software works perfectly in every situation imaginable."
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cbhqx2 | why do more razor blades = a closer shave and more razor burn? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cbhqx2/elif_why_do_more_razor_blades_a_closer_shave_and/ | {
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"Each item on a razor blade pulls the skin tighter and tighter as it passes over the skin. A 5 blade razor will pull from the back of the head, and then each blade which will slice closer and closer to the stretched skin. Since your skin isn’t perfectly smooth you end up ‘shaving’ a little bit of your skin off which causes irritation and inflammation, aka razor burn.\n\nIf you suffer from this, use a single blade safety razor.",
"More blades removes more layers of skin, allowing you to remove more of the hair than like a single blade. Losing the extra layers of dermis causes the razor burn."
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1vt977 | why are rear wheel drive cars better for racing than front wheel drive cars | please say more than just "torque steer' | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vt977/why_are_rear_wheel_drive_cars_better_for_racing/ | {
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"Mostly because 1) when a car accelerates, weight is shifted to the rear. More weight = more traction. By the same token, less weight in the front means less traction. 2) Steering is easier because in a FWD car, the front wheels have to move the vehicle AND steer. You can get a lot of negative side-effects like torque-steer and understeer. RWD cars propel from the rear and allow the front wheels to just steer. Pretty oversimpified, tho.\n\nedit: words",
"if you look at all the \"hot hatch\" type cars, they are tryig to push more power than any other type of car through the front weels. They can only realistically go up to like 300hp without needing all sorts of clever trickery to eliminate torque steer, wheel spin, heavy steering, etc. Its simpler and easier in high power cars to jut put the power to the back for a plethora of reasons, which have already been stated so I won't waste your time. Also, people tend not to realize this but race cars are as a general rule extremely simple. So in following that logic rear wheel drive is the common choice",
"As others have said, weight transfer and the pushing/pulling effect are parts of it. When the car accelerates, the weight is put onto the rear tires. For drag racing/accelerating, this makes RWD better because you can put more power down. In the corners, RWD also wins because although weight is being transferred off of the front wheels, the rear wheels sort of push the front end down again. This allows a RWD to corner much faster than a FWD. RWD also allows for better weight distribution. One of the best handling cars in the world, the 1st-gen Mazda Miata, is able to have an almost perfect 49.5/50.5 F/R weight distribution because of its drivetrain. RWD is also more controllable if one end of the car loses traction. It's faster to oversteer around a corner than to plow through it understeering, although keeping the tires gripping is still the fastest line. That, in a nutshell, is why RWD is favored by racers.",
"Makes doing donuts easier.",
"All of these are great answers. I'm an automotive engineer, and I've studied this exact question. The major reason is the transfer of effective sprung weight (as people here have mentioned). Basically, as a car accelerates, the centre of mass is effectively shifted backwards. This means there is more weight over the rear wheels, increasing the normal force between the rear tires and road surface. As frictional force is directly proportional to this (normal) force, the rear tires have increased grip under acceleration. The same principles apply with deceleration (braking) which is why our main braking system (brake pedal as opposed to handbrake) is on the front wheels.\n\nEdit: If we were explaining it like we were 25 year olds, the transfer of effective mass is explained by Einstein's theory of equivalence, that the effects of gravity and acceleration are equatable. This means that as you accelerate, it's as if gravity is acting on the rear of the car more than the front."
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6y3eqi | what is that strange feeling of numbness we get when we wake up in the middle of the night? | Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night not feeling my body. I am fully awake and aware of my surrounding but I can not feel any single part of my body and slowly regain feeling of it | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6y3eqi/eli5what_is_that_strange_feeling_of_numbness_we/ | {
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"Yer probably describin' the physical consequences of *sleep paralysis.*\n\nYarr! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: Sleep Paralysis ](_URL_7_)\n1. [ELI5: Sleep paralysis and why it happens. ](_URL_0_)\n1. [ELI5: Sleep Paralysis ](_URL_2_)\n1. [ELI5: Sleep paralysis? ](_URL_1_)\n1. [ELI5: How does sleep paralysis work and why does it happen? ](_URL_3_)\n1. [ELI5: Sleep paralysis ](_URL_6_)\n1. [ELI5: What happens during sleep paralysis? ](_URL_4_)\n1. [ELI5: What does Sleep paralysis feel like? What happens during it? ](_URL_5_)\n"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p0zz0/eli5_sleep_paralysis_and_why_it_happens/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ohjso/eli5_sleep_paralysis/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4evd7k/eli5_sleep_paralysis/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/581vdp/eli5_how_does_sleep_paralysis_work_and_why_does/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gkmbk/eli5_what_happens_during_sleep_paralysis/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/46iskd/eli5_what_does_sleep_paralysis_feel_like_what/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/u55av/eli5_sleep_paralysis/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rje2w/eli5_sleep_paralysis/"
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2h13vd | how come only the skin on the palm of our hands and at the bottom of our feet get 'soggy' when we are in water for too long? why not our arms or legs etc? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h13vd/eli5_how_come_only_the_skin_on_the_palm_of_our/ | {
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"_URL_0_ \n \n\"...Common perception is that wrinkling is a local effect on the skin, unconnected to rest of the body... \nEinar Wilder-Smith, a neurologist at the National University of Singapore, has done research looking into the wrinkling effect over the past decade. His research suggests that finger wrinkling relies on nerve endings that entangle sweat glands and blood vessels in our fingers. “",
"Nobody knows. However [some scientists believe](_URL_0_) it is to give our ancestors better grip on wet/slippery objects, and it is a nervous reaction."
]
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7a6t3s | why and how is bottling up your feelings bad for your health | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7a6t3s/eli5_why_and_how_is_bottling_up_your_feelings_bad/ | {
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"It'll make you neurotic. If you can't process and come to acceptance of your emotions, it can lead to anxiety, depression, bouts of anger, unhealthy impulses, and self destructive coping mechanisms.",
"Because burying your feelings tends to make them last longer and even get worse. Negative feelings accumulate in our unconscious and cause negative emotional responses to other stimulus that may not have caused negative feelings without that extra baggage. \n\n\nWhen you are emotionally hurt, angry, etc, you experience a bunch of physical symptoms which are typically lumped together as “stress”. They can include increased heart rate and blood pressure, increased production of various hormones and other biochemical messages within your body, etc. \n\nAll of these physical responses actually have an evolutionary purpose - your body is trying to get ready for whatever physical exercise you may need to undergo to escape from whatever danger is causing your stress. Ultimately, your body is built to survive, and stress is an indicator to your body that survival may be at risk, better get ready. \n\nHowever, modern stress isn’t really about survival of the “better-run-or-get-eaten” variety. And moreover, it doesn’t go away in a few minutes to an hour the way evolution has taught our bodies stress is likely to behave. Instead, we remain stressed for days, weeks, months, and our bodies undergo that chemical “better be ready” thing far longer than our ancestors ever had to. So we end up with higher blood pressure and heart disease, weakened immune systems, lack of sleep, headaches, even just grinding our teeth. It can all affect our health negatively. ",
"Among other things stress can lead to heart disease. Just like lack of sleep caused by stress. "
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b8a2l7 | what is the laplacian operator (in both scalar and vector forms) in vector calculus? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b8a2l7/eli5_what_is_the_laplacian_operator_in_both/ | {
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"The Laplacian can be thought of as the \"curvature\" of a function. To grossly simplify it, you could say it takes the average of the gradients of a function. For example, a flat surface will have no curvature and thus has a Laplacian of 0."
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g1o3qr | why do some humans become depressed/anxious when all alone and other humans don't? | I generally become very depressed when I'm alone, while my friend is very happy being alone. Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g1o3qr/eli5_why_do_some_humans_become_depressedanxious/ | {
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"I don't believe there's a single person who wouldn't get depressed when left alone too long. We're a social species and there are many cases where extended isolation has severely damaged people's mental well-being. \n\nNow I think there are definitely people who get depressed faster than the others. Every person is different and it's not really a symptom of anything more than your personality.\n\nI generally am good left to my own devices. But, in a case like this where I'm left alone too long I feel an itch to see people. I miss the company of others even if I don't relish actually speaking to them.\n\nThere's loads of things nowadays online about \"introverts\" and \"extroverts\" and people are very quick to say they are one or the other but psychology is not as simple as \"you exhibit one behaviour. You are X\". Everyone is different and needs their own levels of social interaction to keep sane and I think that may just be human nature. \n\nThere's nothing wrong with you for preferring your own company and there's nothing wrong with wanting to be around people as long as you're not doing harm to yourself and those around you. It's all about knowing yourself and your needs.",
"I imagine that in our evolution, being alone could mean you were losing some social opportunity, and could even be dangerous. Or it could be fine and give time to rest and plan.\n\nSo maybe there is natural brain variation in how people tend to respond. Or it may depend on how they are feeling about themselves and their social situation."
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1yqjoo | if keeping your heart rate up is good for you during exercise, is the same true of watching scary movies, playing video games, or other passive heart rate boosters? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yqjoo/eli5_if_keeping_your_heart_rate_up_is_good_for/ | {
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"Heart rate increases due to exercise are healthier than heart rate increases due to terror (eg. watching a scary movie). Terror-based heart rate increases are accompanied by a spike in adrenaline, which can be damaging to your heart over time. ",
"When you are afraid, anxious, or stressed, the main causes of passive heart rate increase, your body releases cortisol. [It has a lot of negative effects](_URL_0_) including decreased immune function, weight gain, muscle break-down, and decreased thyroid activity. Source provided is one of many you can find.",
"Exercise for your heart is good for maintaining health overall because it is participating in a physical activity, but any thing that causes a \"passive\" boost to your heart is caused by stress, which is a mental activity. There is many different forms of stress that are both positive and negative towards your health, and there are many reasons that causes it. It certainly depends on your initial reaction to certain events, e.g. falling in love, watching scary movies, looking at a pair of breasts for 10 minutes, playing multiplayer FPS video games (i.e. internet lag), throwing a surprise party, or popping the question. Your reactions to these events, based on stress, good or bad, causes you to release a chemical called cortisol. Cortisol has both negative and positive values to what it does to your heart, and overall health. It depends on the events you are experiencing that causes such values to have either a good or bad impact on your heart rate (and health). E.g. a cardiac arrest can develop from the release of cortisol in a stressful situation, like your friends scaring the living bejeebers out of you, or a frail old man.\n\n"
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4bjd07 | why is a two-state solution for palestine/israel so difficult? it seems like a no-brainer. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bjd07/eli5why_is_a_twostate_solution_for/ | {
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"Because Israel is about the size of New Jersey, splitting it would make it downright tiny. Liveable land isn't exactly plentiful as it's mostly desert. It would also require resettling a whole lot of people. Also, the area around Israel has a lot of cliffs and strategic value when it comes to defending the country from the many enemies that surround it. Giving that up would allow a single person with a rocket launcher to fire at pretty much any target they wanted. And then there's the fact that the country of Israel owns the land and doesn't want to give it up.",
"It's because the situation is an endlessly spiralling disaster. The Jewish people have been persecuted so much throughout history up to and including the Holocaust that they felt the only way they would ever be safe would be to create a Jewish State. They had also been forcibly expelled from numerous other nations throughout history. In 1922, the League of Nations gave control of the region to Britain, who basically allowed numerous Jews to move in so that they'd stop immigrating to Britain. Now this is all well and good, since the region was a No Man's Land.\n\n..Except there were people living there. It's pretty much right out of Eddie Izzard's 'But Do You Have a Flag?'. The people we now know as Palestinians rioted about it, were denounced as violent. Militant groups sprang up, terrorist acts were done, military responses followed. \n\nFurther complicating matters is the fact that the people known now as Palestinians weren't united before all of this, and even today, you have competing groups claiming to be the sole legitimate government of Palestine, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. So even if you want to negotiate, who with? There's an endless debate about legitimacy and actual regional control before you even get to the table.\n\nSo the discussion goes \n\n\"Your people are antisemitic terrorists\" \n\n\"You stole our land and displaced us\" \n\n\"Your people and many others in the world displaced us first and wanted to kill us.\"\n\n\"That doesn't give you any right to take our home. And you keep firing missiles at us.\"\n\n\"Because you keep launching terrorist attacks against us\"\n\n\"That's not us, it's the other guys\"\n\n\"If you're the government, control them.\"\n\nAnd on, and on, and on, and on. The conflict's roots are ancient, and everybody's a little guilty, and everybody's got a bit of a point. \nBear in mind that this is also the my-first-foreign-policy version. The real situation is much more complex.\n\nOh, and this is before you even get started with the complexities of the religious conflict and how both groups believe God wants them to rule over the same place.",
"Hard-liners and spoiler groups on both sides. Hard-liners don't want to compromise with the other side and maintain enough control to prevent meaningful negotiations from coming to fruition (consider that Abbas would have gone with Oslo II but for fear of assassination). Spoiler groups (settlers and people attacking other people) keep mucking up the negotiation process and give the hard-line argument credence. \n\nThat, historic persecution experienced on both sides leading to both feeling like they're victims, historic claims to the land, religion, propaganda, and a whole host of other factors has lead to an impasse. But hard-liners and spoiler groups are a large part of it.",
"The Arab nations refused to accept a 2 state solution back when Israel was founded, instead choosing to launch an attack on Israel. The major powers in the region refused to accept any Jewish state at all there. This war and subsequent wars were won by Israel, solidifying opposition to it existence. ",
"Two primary factors: extremists opposed to peace and then one major sticking point for each side - the right of return for Palestinians and dismantling of settlements for Israel. It's been almost 50 years since the 1967 war, but the Palestinians who lost their land in the aftermath want it back. The Israelis who are on that land say no way. Similarly, Israel keeps building settlements in the West Bank and won't give up most of the them in a peace treaty.\n\nThere are lots of other details, but that's the key - the parties fight over the details. And then if they start to get close on anything, some extremist launches a terrorist attack or rocket attack or murders someone and things fall apart. ",
"The truth is, many people on both sides aren't really interested in a 2-state solution. Many Palestinians want to destroy the state of Israel and reclaim their ancestral homeland (see Hamaz). And many Israeli policy-makers want Palestinian territories to remain in a state of limbo with no official recognition as a country.",
"Alright, I live in Israel, and here's my take. Obviously, this issue is polarizing, but as far as I know the most common reason is this: Security.\n\nPretty much everyone, left and right, maybe excluding the ultra-radical right, would give land, fund, supply, and support a Palestinian nation without a second thought **if it can reasonably assumed that said nation won't attack us**. [Israel has given huge amounts of religiously significant land for sustainable peace before](_URL_2_) and all of Israel agrees that was a great decision. On the other hand, when Israel gave up land unilaterally, without a reasonable promise of peace, it turned into [the geopolitical equivalent of a waking nightmare](_URL_1_), and is widely regarded as one is Israel's greatest mistakes.\n\nThe standing opinion in Israel is that terrorist organizations are too well rooted, that the Palestinian population can't be trusted to do peace, and that the current Palestinian Authority is either unable or unwilling to enforce order in Palestine (this particular opinion, as far as I can gather, is shared by Palestinians as well). This opinion is only reinforced by the recent wave of violence arriving from both Israeli Arabs and Palestinians.\n\nAs of right now, I have to admit, the prospect of a nation populated by people educated by [this sort of stuff](_URL_0_), led by the current PA, being a bottle rocket-launch away from my house, terrifies me to my core.",
"A two state solution would be\n\n1. Unfair to the Jewish people, because they have a historical right to whole Israel\n\n2. Unfair to Palestinians, because they have a historical right to whole Israel.",
"There's a couple of issues here.\n\nOne is that there is land that is holy and sacred to both, and both countries want that in their state. A lot of Jerusalem falls into this category.\n\nThe other issue is right of return. There are millions of people who want to return to their family's homeland, but in a two-state solution, a lot of these people will be on the wrong side of the border and will never be able to return home.",
"My Egyptian professor explained it this way:\n\n\"Imagine you enroll in my class and on the first day of class I tell you that I'll give you a D+ in the class right here, right now. And then you can walk out, go about your life, never come to class, never do papers, never take tests, and I'll still give you a passing grade. (Hey, a D+ is technically passing...).\n\nSome of you might take that offer. But other of you who have bigger aspirations would never settle for the bare minimum when you know you can achieve much more.\"\n\nThe Israelis are willing to do a two state solution, but they'll never give Jerusalem (and other prime areas) to the Palestinians. And the Palestinians want more than just the perceived left overs. They want Jerusalem, the West Bank, etc., too. So you have both groups wanting the same specific plots of land.\n\nTo complicate the matter, neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians speak in a unified voice. While some people in both camps would be willing to sacrifice the areas it wants in order to work together and have peace, others at the extremes of both camps won't compromise and won't settle. So even if the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority came up with a plan, there would be sizable populations on both sides that wouldn't agree to it and would continue to fight for the whole enchilada. ",
"Let's not forget that Israel remains a proxy war for a lot of other nations on both sides, with a ton of national and religious pride, along with hundreds of billions of dollars in profit for profiteers.",
"You have a house. It's not necessarily a particularly nice house, but a lot of it has sentimental value. Then your rich neighbour comes along and says \n\n\"Hi Palestine, this is my buddy Israel. He actually used to live here! Long before you bought the place, though. Anyway, he's fallen on hard times recently so he's going to be moving into your front room and the master bedroom. Indefinitely. Come on, he's had a really rough time of it!\"\n\nYou're not really happy about that. In fact, you kick up a fuss about it for months. You argue with Israel; Israel fights back just as hard because he feels he deserves the house. Then your rich neighbour, and a few others, come round and say\n\n\"We totally get that you're unhappy with this! Completely understandable. So what we'll do is ask Israel to give you back half of the front room, *and* the cupboard where you keep your shoes. He keeps the master bedroom, though, because it's really special to him. I know you liked it too, but in fairness, he lived there first.\"\n\nNo-brainer, right?",
"Has any country other than Israel ever been asked to give back land it won in a war?",
"I need an ELI5 to explain to me why it is a no brainer. Perhaps the most complex ongoing conflict that exists on this earth... ",
"The Israelis are militarily dominant and don't want to give up land when they don't have to. Also Palestine would be chopped in two between the West Bank and Gaza. ",
"Imagine you have a brother who you've never gotten along with. You fight all the time, and on top of that for most of your life the rest of the people you know has largely either joined in or just allowed it. Now in your house there is a room that he likes, even though it is not his room. It's a family room, for everyone. You both hang out there sometimes. Your parents decide that, since you don't have a room and don't feel safe in other areas of the house and community, that should be your room. But your brother is still there. He likes to hang out there. Now, he has been hanging out there before it was your room. He feels justified to it as he has been there so long. But your parents say it is your room, and it's where you feel most safe. So whose room is it? Should you let him have part of the room so he'll leave you alone in your part, or should you claim the room all for yourself?",
"Palestinian people were so foolish back in WWI era.They thought if they fight against Ottoman Empire, Brits would give them freedom.\n",
"To be fair, in 1967, UN security council resolution 242 mandated the withdrawal of Israel from the acquired land.\nOf course, what country would withdraw from land just because of a UN resolution? Except, Israel has been expanding and growing in the West Bank. The EU has declared those settlements illegal. It's not like there has been any reason for the Palestinian violence to stop because expansion hasn't really stopped. But what about Gaza? Well it's taken over by a terrorist group. Gazan leadership doesn't trust West Bank leadership because it believes that political movement and the stone throwing has led to nothing on that side. West Bank leadership says: well you keep trying to shoot shitty missiles and then you get yourself and a bunch of other people killed. You're also under an 8 (9 now?) year siege, so STFU.\n\nI think it'll be hard to provide the whole image in an ELI5 without some assumptions that are usually bias. But I hope you get as much of it as possible. Ultimately, I think the situation is too complicated for most of us to understand. ",
"Israel doesn't want two states and faces no real pressure from the US which could force it to compromise. ",
"The Palestinian Authority is Israel's negotiating partner, but doesn't actually have sufficient authority in either the moral or practical sense over the majority of Palestinians at this point. Hamas is a terrorist group and a lasting peace with Israel is contradictory to its mission and inherent reason for existence. Israel is understandably reluctant make the obvious necessary concessions for a peace treaty with the Palestinian authority when the periodic wars would still likely continue afterwards with Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups like Hezbollah.",
"One state solution: state won't be Jewish anymore\n\n\nTwo state solution : settlements are to deep within areas \n\n \nFull out genocide : impossible , too many repercussions and logistics.\n\n\n\nAnd there you have it , we can't solve it because we are in a deadlock . ",
"_URL_0_\n\nRead the Hamas Covenant of 1988.\n\nIsrael has repeatedly tried to come to the table for a solution, but they are dealing with a democratically elected yet unrecognised government whose goal is to destroy jews in the region.",
"Another factor on top of what /u/zap283 said is that Israel is worried that bringing palestinian rule close to the heavily populated areas ie. Tel Aviv, would make them vulnerable to rocket attacks and invasion much more quickly - a state alongside israel can be used as a platform for a successful war.",
"Because, you can't steal someone else's land, then want to make a deal to split it in two. Well, not without a bit of pushback.",
"What about a one-state solution? One where everyone has equal rights?",
"It's a messy situation. Key points:\n\n* Israel wants more territory.\n\n* Palestine wants their territory back.\n\n* Palestine is really \"with their backs to the wall\", they have a fight or die situation.\n\n* Israel has powerful friends, so they get away with a lot of stuff.\n\n* Most big players on the national scene profit from the ongoing conflict, in one way or another.",
"Palestinian here:\n\nIsrael and Palestine are so connected in very different levels, these connections make it very hard to simply separate it to two states and move on.\n\nOther than that, Palestinian are not mature enough to have their own state with borders (yes, you will not hear that from Palestinians), but this is the truth, Israel knows that, and they won't leave the borders of Jordan just like that, Palestinians don't have army, they have a LOT of corruption, and they need a lot of work before being able to become a successful state (if ever), leaving the borders will create a lot of trouble to Israel itself as there is no clear borders for the west bank with Israel.\n\nThird, which is probably the most important thing, is religion, in Jewish religion, what really matters is Judea and Samaria Area which is the west bank basically, there is no mention to Telaviv, Natanya in the bible, however there is Hebron, Nablus, Jerusalem, so they will not leave it just like that.\n\nEDIT: I can think of another reason which is Israeli Allies, Arab (especially gulf states) are standing next to Israel, as they have a lot of common interest in fighting Iran and Hezbullah.",
"Ahmed owns an apple together with Aytac, when they engage in a fight at school with other people Aytac loses his share and Ahmed has it by himself a while. Then comes John and takes hold of it, and later gives it to Shlomo. Ahmed needs this apple to survive, and so does Shlomo, says Shlomo. Shlomo says that Ahmed and Shlomo should share it together. Ahmed says that Shlomo has no right to one single part of the apple, because Shlomo never did anything to grow it. Shlomo responds that if he does not get a share of the apple he will die, because John, Gael, Ivan and Timmy and everyone else on this planet otherwise will kill Shlomo. Which is weird, because Shlomo shares apples with all these people already and they go along with it. And then Shlomo tells an endless story day in and day out about what Hans once did to him. Shlomo has a habit of exaggerating and lying about things so it's not necessarily true at all; but even if it was, how could it be Ahmed's fault? Why does he have to share his apple with Shlomo at all? Shlomo owns the apple factory down the street and has all the apples he needs already. You see kids, Shlomo is a bit of a cunt, and we should not give him any apples, and hopefully he will learn to grow his own. This will end the conflict, this is the no-brainer.",
"A two state solution requires all kinds of compromises. Firstly there has to be agreement on who gets what land. The most contentious aspect is who gets a right over Jerusalem. Then there has to be agreement on whether Palestinians who were displaced (kicked out or fled voluntarily depending on who you believe) when Israel was formed get a right to return to Israel. \n\nThese things are hard to agree on because both sides want a bunch of concession and preconditions just to establish enough goodwill to even begin a proper negotiation process. Neither side are willing to make the initial concession because it compromises their security or their bargaining position or because they don't have the internal support to make those concessions. \n\nEven if Israeli's and Palestinians each had very progressive, peace-orientated leaders, those leaders might risk alienating their support base if they compromise too much too quickly. Both nations are highly divided and skittish about how to approach the situation. \n",
"This question can be answered by another: What borders will the two states have? UN Resolution? 1967? Current borders? There's no fair answer.",
"As someone who has been on holiday there....\n\nIts mostly the politicians, who like in most places are voted in largly by old people...\n\nQuite a lot of the young people are very much pro peace, infact almost everybody is (except for the weirdo American immigrants you get there who are all hyper pro violence)\n\nMost people wether arab or Jew will tell you the same thing.\n\"we would love to have peace, but if you give them an inch they take a mile, they want to push us into the sea/desert\"\n\nAlso America giving Israel a blank cheque for defence doesn't help",
"Whenever they try a 2 state solution map they both want to control the high points in case of future conflict and they can't agree. Then a bomb blows up, a missile gets fired and it's over. ",
"So I'm pretty late to the party, but hopefully writing this is not a waste of time.\n\nThere's a lot of good explanations here, but the national security and great power politics explanations are missing. That's something I figured I'd fill in. \n\nTL;DR: For the Great Powers that can forcefully bring about peace, it's more important to maintain control over oil resources than bring a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. \n\nLong Version: \n\nThe post-Ottoman Arab world was a mess. This was the first time in almost 500 years that Arabs had self rule, and there was a giant political struggle. The unity of nationalism against a perceived oppressor gave way to the bickering of factional politics, and this is not the factional politics of the Democrats and the Republicans. You usually had three main factions: the Islamists, the Western educated liberal elites, and the Communists. These three sides were constantly vying for control of the newly established states across the Arab world. \n\nEgypt is a great example of this. The Communists (Nasir) and the Islamists (The Brotherhood) banded together and ousted the King (WELE). Instead of creating a unity government, though, Nasir reneged on his deal with the Islamists, imprisoned as many as he could, took apart their grass roots systems, and declared them illegal. This, in turn, radicalized the Islamists, which eventually ended in the killing of Nasir's heir, Sadat. The maturation of the Islamists led to their deradicalization and renunciation of violence and culminated in the election of Morsi. Then they were deposed, horribly persecuted by Sisi, and the radicalization has started all over again.\n\nIt's also important to note that the Communists and the WELEs are actually very fluid. This is actually the source of a lot of the instability in the Middle East, particularly Israel (getting there, I promise). The Nassirid communists turned into the liberal establishment under Sadat and culminated into the Western backed Mubarak. \n\nThese narratives repeat themselves across the Arab world: Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Iraq, etc. In fact, Saddam was a \"Ba'thi,\" and Ba'this are usually communists. This is one of the reasons that he was so horribly oppressive to both Sunni and Shia Islamists, and both were happy to see him gone. \n\nNow, none of this would be particularly important. It would just be another tale of post-colonial and post-imperial turmoil which has grasped the majority of the world after the fall of the colonial empires of Europe in WWII. Well, it wouldn't be, if not for oil.\n\nAccess to and securing of resources has and does push the majority of power politics, and this is true today. Oil basically runs the world. After WWII, the US made it a priority to control oil resources in the Middle East, because that is the most important National Security issue for a nascent great power. The problem, though, is that the Arabs are too fluid. You never know when there will be an Islamist or Communist or WELE. Ideally, we'd like the WELEs to come to the top and stay there, but it's never a guarantee. What's worse is that, during the 50s, almost all the Arab governments were Communists or Communist leaning (except for the \"Gulf\" states, who are their own brand of tribal governance). \n\nThe US needed a base, a stable nation from where the US could manage the region. That base was Israel (note that, from the 70s, we made an important decision under Kissinger to \"manage\" the fluidity by supporting strong men. These guys would keep a lid on the politics, in return we would give them power and materials, and in return they would give us their loyalty over the Soviets. It's not a coincidence that this policy brought an end to the wars between Israel and its neighbors). Don't listen to the rhetoric that Israel is a key \"ally\" of the US in the region. Israel is not an ally; Israel is our vassal. And it's one of the best kind of vassals.\n\nThe huge wave of immigration to the region of European Jews, which had been fervently opposed and blocked by the Ottomans, came to a head under the British. The Children of Israel went from 3% of the population to 30. The ensuing chaos sparked great racial hatred between the two groups. Interestingly, the first terrorists in the Holy Land were Zionist nationalists attacking British and Palestinian targets. The Holocaust led to a great guilt gripping the powers of Europe, and they recognized that something had to be done to prevent such a thing from happening ever again.\n\nThey found their answer in the very vocal and politically well situated Zionist movement. Up to this point, the Zionist movement had been A movement, not THE movement, among Western Jews. Many Orthodox Jews still opposed it at the time (many Hassidic still do, btw). But Zionism was primarily a nationalist movement, not a religious one. And it afforded the US an amazing opportunity. \n\nThe tensions created after the fall of the Ottomans between the Arabs and the Jews was huge. A British pull out would almost certainly lead to the eradication of the nascent state, and the land would be ripped apart and divided among the Arab nations. This meant that Israel's very existent was dependent on someone outside of the region. \n\nThe US became that guarantor. During the ensuing war of 48, the US supplied Israel with the material and diplomatic cover it needed to survive. This, however, had an unforeseen effect on the Zionist movement: it deeply emboldened it. Up to this point, there were extremists in the movement that wanted ALL of historic Palestine, but a lot of Zionists were happy with the terms of the British, the so called '47 borders. In the ensuing war of '48, however, the extremist militias of the Zionist movement engaged in mass ethnic cleansing, forcibly expelling nearly half a million Palestinians from their homes and taking the land (they made up some story about Arab commanders telling the Palestinians to leave, but this is mostly accepted as a farcical national myth by most historians, and was first disproved by Israeli historians). The US had no choice but to let them keep it. The Israelis knew we needed them, and the Communist Arabs sided with the Soviets. \n\nThis, more than anything else, is the root problem of the conflict. Like most major conflicts in the world, this conflict was a proxy war between great powers trying to leverage their dominance over a very important region using a Grand Strategy known as Off-Shore Balancing. The Soviets and the US tried to empower their vassals and client states in the region to gain an upper hand over the other, and, by way of that dominance, take control of resources. \n\nThe question now, though, is why is it so difficult to make a peace once the Soviets are gone? I think the answer is two fold:\n\n1. Many in the national security scene still believe that Israel is a vital vassal in the region in terms of maintaining control of the oil resources. The Arab Spring kind of proved to many of them that the Arabs are not stable governments, and so maintaining a powerful vassal to manage the region is still important.\n\n2. The Holocaust was, rightly, a great trauma for the global Jewish population. Immediately after the war of '48, they had flashbacks to the Holocaust. They would not allow what happened in Germany to happen in Israel (and the threat was very real, because of the immense racial tensions during the Mandate Period of Palestinian history). To make sure that Israel was always properly protected, the Jewish community in the US, primarily, but around the Western world in general, established very important political institutions to advocate for the protection of the Jewish state.\n\nWhen you combine a national security interest with a powerful political lobby, one which many politicians believe is more powerful than the NRA, it's almost impossible to make it do anything. \n\nAnd that is, in short, the national security reason for the Israel/Palestine conflict.",
"If it seems like a no brainer then you clearly have no idea what the conflict is about. There is no possible ELI5 about this without completely undermining how serious and pervasive this conflict is, culturally/economically/historically etc. ",
"Just because it seems like a no-brainer to an outsider doesn't mean the people like it. I expect you might say the same about the US in 1860. Just make it two states. One slave and one free. It's a no-brainer.",
"The biggest issue is that there are extremists on both sides that refuse a two-state solution. Hamas, the Settlers, and a whole lot of politicians, again, from both sides, refuse to let that be a viable outcome. ",
"1. Israel has a proportional representation voting system with very low thresholds for getting seats. As a result, governments tend to be coalition governments reliant on hardliners for support.\n\n2. The Palestinian authority lacks the resources to effectively govern the occupied territories. In that power vacuum, organizations like Hamas have been able to step in and provide governance. However, this also commits more people to a hardline approach.\n\n3. Even beyond the political system, some Israelis settled in the Occupied territories, making it harder to trade away territory. An Israeli terrorist also assassinated Yitzhak Rabin over the Oslo process. Similarly, terrorist attacks by Palestinian groups can also derail the peace process, pushing support towards hardliners. Israelis may then clamp down on Palestinians, deepening mutual resentment.\n\n4. In many respects, a meaningful two-state solution is impossible. The Occupied Territories are economically reliant on interactions with Israel, and are likely to remain so. A two-state solution might also fail on other fronts (e.g. what sort of rights would gay Palestinians have). \n\n5. Many of the issues involved in resolving the crisis are indivisible. While Arafat and Barak were generally willing to trade land, some land-related issues like the temple mount in Jerusalem were harder to resolve. Elsewhere, giving up land may create vulnerabilities (e.g. the Golan heights could be used to launch rockets into Israel). \n\n6. Each side has a different vision of history, and that informs their negotiating positions. Arafat argued that just accepting the Occupied Territories was a compromise in itself, because they comprised of only 22% of historical Palestine (e.g. the British Palestinian mandate). The main sticking point in negotiation is right of return. Many Palestinians fled (or were kicked out) Israel in the 1948 war, becoming refugees. The descendants of these refugees now number 4 million, and believe they are entitled to return to Israel (and potentially to receive compensation). ",
"Lots of general platitudes, political opinions, and recaps of Israeli-Palestinian history, so I won't delve into those. Instead, the specific issues that are way harder than you probably think:\n\n1. Many people simply don't *want* the two-state solution. Either because of religious reasons (\"god gave us the land\", on both the Jewish and Muslim sides of the argument), because of nationalist entitlement, exasperation with the 20-year attempt to reach it, security considerations, or other reasons. That number was always at around half of the Palestinian and Israeli population, and it's recently becoming a majority.\n\n1. Jerusalem. The Palestinians want a capital in the eastern part of it, while the Israelis strongly object to dividing Jerusalem. And I don't see anyone giving that part up. Both cite political, historical and religious reasons for their insistence. Incidentally, dividing cities, let alone capitals, is generally considered an undesirable thing in international law (Berlin is a famous example). If Jerusalem would indeed be divided, it would be an interesting precedent, with very interesting (read: difficult) challenges.\n\n2. Palestinian Refugees. About two-thirds of all the Palestinians in the world are descended from 1948 refugees from Israel proper. The Palestinian people overwhelmingly demand that all of them would \"return\" to Israel, turning it into a Palestinian-majority state. Needless to say, there's precisely 0% that that Israelis would ever agree to that. The Palestinian leadership is more willing to compromise on this, but it's doubtful they have the mandate to do so. \n\n You might've heard about the Israeli demand for the Palestinians to recognize them as a \"Jewish State\"? That's what they're talking about. The Palestinians object to that, because it would mean preemptively giving up the \"right of return\". And that's exactly why the Israeli are demanding that. Basically, the Israelis are afraid that when the Palestinians are talking about a \"two state solution\", they mean \"one pure, Jew-free Palestinian state, and one Palestinian-majority, Palestinian-ruled state\". Which is no two-state solution at all.\n\n3. Security. Basically, the Israelis already tried a withdrawal from Gaza, without even asking anything in return, and the result was a Hamas-controlled terror enclave that shot thousands of rockets at Israeli cities. If it happens in the West Bank, which is *far* closer to Israel's population center, it would absolutely paralyze Israel and its economy. There is no obvious technological or military solution to that.\n\n4. The settlements. While most settlements are in easy-to-annex blocks, some were intentionally put in the middle of Palestinian territory, with long roads leading to them. At least one of them, Ariel, is a relatively big town, with its own university. Combine that with the fact that Gaza and the West Bank are non-contiguous, and simply drawing a map of the Israeli-Palestinian border becomes a very non-trivial one. \n\n Although, on a personal note, I think that's actually the easier part of this. Most Israelis, and even some settlers, *are* willing to give up settlements for a true peace agreement. That could not be said about the other items on this list.",
"A lot of people really aren't answering the question, they are just telling you about the situation, the problem is the US (not just the US but it's simplified) and Israel are allies so why give up land?",
"Its simple, there is hardly any Palestinian land left to create a viable Palestinian state because almost all of it has been colonized and Palestinians displaced. I really don't understand why people keep thinking this is a complex and ancient topic! No it's not, it started in 1948 and it's a beef over land and human rights, not religion or some ancient feud. ",
"So, Jewish person from Israel, speaking from first hand events.\n\nI am currently in Israel for school with several other people, all non-Israelis. The fundamental issue that a lot of them question is; if we don't care what people think of us, why don't we \"nuke\" the Palestinians.\n\nEvery Israeli native, and many foreigners obviously realize why this is a bad idea, but the \"nuke-em\" perspective(which represents many people from around the world, mostly north-to-Central America) are both less educated and louder than the median, which tends to send everything into uproar and cast a bad light about the whole discussion.",
"Netanyahu has been calling for negotiations without preconditions for years now. It's the Palestinians who keep demanding preconditions and refusing to negotiate without them.\n\n",
"Because the Muslim political movement is aggressive and chauvinistic at the very core; they simply do not want to co-exist with anyone else.",
"It may not be popular on reddit, but I think [this explanation](_URL_0_) is a perfect answer: Most Israelis want to live in peace and are willing to accept a neighboring Palestinian state. And most Palestinians do not want Israel to exist. "
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3iteh7 | how does using a throwaway account protect your identity on reddit? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3iteh7/eli5_how_does_using_a_throwaway_account_protect/ | {
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"It's to prevent people in your life who know your reddit username from knowing that the stuff posted by the throwaway is from the same person.",
"A throwaway account is a new account that have no connection to your main account or real identity (if your real identity is known).\n\nSo obviously, there is no way for someone to know who the throwaway is. So you are anonymous. ",
"Well OP, a quick look through your Reddit history, I see several pictures of the same cat which I can presume belongs to you or your family, I see you've posted some marijuana purchases, and I see that you have been active on /r/NoFap. \n\nMaybe you can imagine wanting to post a *really* embarrassing secret to Reddit. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to post that to the same account where you posted pictures of your face. Someone could look at your post history and they might know who you are in real life!\n\nThat's the kind of situation where some people might make a throwaway account. They can still reveal the secret, and there's no worry that an outsider might look at their post history and be able to identify them.\n\nThat being said, a throwaway account likely still logs IP access. In theory, any admin of Reddit could easily correlate a throwaway with a main account if accessed through the same IP address. You could work around this by using a different network, perhaps a cafe with wifi; or you could use Tor."
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qtbdj | the process of brewing | More specifically, the process of home-brewing please | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qtbdj/eli5_the_process_of_brewing/ | {
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"Yeast eats sugar and excretes ethanol and carbon dioxide as a waste products. Eventually there is so much alcohol in the solution the yeast dies off and you have an alcoholic beverage.\n\nFor beer, the sugar typically comes form a specially prepared malted barely. Most homebrewers start with a kit that has all the grains prepared. You basically mix everything together and put it in a large bottle that lets the CO2 escape, and let it set for days or even weeks until all the yeast dies. If everything went right, now you have beer. Yay, beer! ",
"In my experience, most people do the \"partial mash\" method. Meaning, you get a lot of your sugar from extract, and then add some specialty grains.\n\nExtract is the sugar and byproducts of grains that have germinated, and then baked - a process called \"malting.\" You need a lot of grains to homebrew a typical 5gal batch of beer. Extract simplifies this because you don't have to by many pounds of malted barley.\n\nThe specialty grains are used to give unique flavors to your beer, and you typically use about 1.5-2.5lbs per 5gal homebrew batch.\n\nHops are used to 1) add flavor, and 2) \"cancel out\" the excess sugar flavors after the fermenting process is done.\n\nYeast is used to convert the sugar from the extract and specialty grains into carbon dioxide and alcohol.\n\nNow, with all that - here is a simple explanation on how to brew beer at home\n\n- Start by filling a stock pot with about 2.5gals of water, and place it over a burner on high\n\n- While the water is heating up, you place your specialty grains in grain bags (think large tea bags), and you steep the grains while the water is heating\n\n- Just before boil, you remove the steeping grains (because it they get too hot, your beer will end up tasting a bit nasty)\n\n- At boil, you add your extract - bits at a time, as to not \"boil over\" the stock pot.\n\n- Now, recipes call for different types of hop additions. One is call \"boiling hops\" - meaning you add them while you are boiling your beer (which typically lasts for an hour). The other is called \"finishing hops,\" and are added just before you complete boiling.\n\n- After boiling is over, you cool down the \"wort\" to the temp required for the yeast (about 70F for ales, and 30-40F for most lagers).\n\n- You then transfer your wort to a 5gal glass bottle (\"carboy\") and \"pitch\" your yeast.\n\n- Wait for a several days while the yeast makes beer, and blows off CO2\n\n- After the beer has settled down, you \"rack\" it to another container. This lets you get rid of all the dead yeast cells and left over \"junk\" that may have been in your beer.\n\n- You can then age your beer as long as you want, or get ready to bottle/keg as soon as it clarifies.\n\n- Bottling: you add a bit of sugar to the beer, and bottle it. The left over yeast will consume the new sugar and carbonate the beer in the bottle.\n\n- Kegging: dump all the beer in a keg, attach a CO2 to the keg, and carbonate for several days.\n\n- LAST BUT MOST IMPORTANT STEP: drink."
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b4jtsq | why does screaming relieve physical pain to an extent? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b4jtsq/eli5_why_does_screaming_relieve_physical_pain_to/ | {
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"The theory is that the the part of the brain used for pain and the part of the brain we use for talking or yelling kind of “overlap,” so we can’t really use both at the same time. The brain is quite interesting, but sometimes it really sucks at multitasking, so we’re able to use one part or the other, but not at the same time. Screaming can even be used for pain management, although others around you may not appreciate it very much. It’s an interesting area that’s still being studied.",
"Evolutionary response. Part of the pain is purely psychological. Pain means that danger is nearby and the primal part of your brain wants you to warn the herd. You shout out conforming to instincts and the satisfied brain settles down for a while.",
"Screaming helps trigger our brain's \"fight or flight\" response. In the response the brain releases loads of adrenaline which helps our heart speed up, gives us maximum strength, and numbs our response to pain. This is why people talk about not even feeling being shot. The adrenaline is so high your response to pain is little to none.",
"Multiple doctors have told me that, if you have the urge to cry or scream, to do so. The reason why; bc it supposedly relaxes your body and eases the stiffness and tension, which then relieves some of the pain. ",
"The body has two basic modes of being: rest/digest and fight/flight. This allows us to respond to a changing environment and accidents. Pain is a signal that encourages us to rest/digest. However, if we face immediate danger then the body will create natural painkillers that temporarily relieve the pain, since our brain is telling our body that it needs to be in fight/flight mode: \"No time to rest/digest now!\"\n\nWhen we scream, we can activate our fight/flight response mode. Many warrior cultures used screaming to prepare for battle. This would make sense as a way of activating the body's natural painkillers.\n\nDepending on the context, screaming can also be intended as a signal to others. Humans are social creatures with brain chemistry that feels pain more strongly when we feel disconnected. Since physical pain is such a personal thing it is natural that the experience of it also triggers a feeling of disconnection, which is itself painful. Screaming as a signal to others could lead to social rewards that in themselves trigger natural painkillers.\n\nEdit: fixing autocorrect...",
"Alot of the top comments have really smart responses, but they ignore that when you scream, youre releasing more CO2 than normal, and in turn your heart will be pumping more oxygenated blood through your body. ",
"Additionally, why does yelling and swearing relieve stress in most people?",
"My psych professor explained the \"pain gate\" hypothesis to us: basically, the amount of information that is able to pass up and through to the part of the brain that processes pain is limited. By yelling, or rubbing your belly, or concentrating on something else or any number of stimuli or a combination of stimuli, you are giving your brain enough extra info to process that the raw \"pain\" data that gets through is limited.",
"In addition to the physiological responses shared, there is also a psychological one - our society has evolved toward altruism where our natural instinct is to help those who alert us to pain or danger. Screaming is your brains way of sending a distress signal to others around you who might be able to help. ",
"Not an expert, but it's mostly due to your brain focusing on something else. Like if you have a headache, watching a interesting movie or playing a video game makes your brain \"forget\" the pain (no loud sounds or bright lights of course)",
"I majored in sensory psych and among the course load I took “pain and suffering” and “sensory perception” and it has to do with giving your brain something else to process. The pain receptors are a more visceral, primitive system and so is auditory perception, than say your neocortex or outer layer brain processing of reasoning. The brain has limited bandwidth so when you give a good hard scream it is focusing on processing the yell and the scream and if it’s real good, the physical sensation of the primal yell. So it temporarily numbs you.\n\nThere are a lot of interesting things that numb pain. For instance capsaicin activates pain receptors and after several days of overloading pain receptors, the brain will “turn down” the pain signal in the same area so it is useful in chronic surface pain management. \n\nObviously screaming ain’t a long term treatment though. ",
"There is a theory that ties this together with endorphins and to a lesser extent adrenaline. This connects the \"kia\" (shouting while striking) in karate, the valsava and scream in lifting, and screaming / growling / cursing when you stub your toe on a table leg.\n\nThe temporary excitement kind of tells pain to quiet down so you can focus on the matter hand. In sport, it reduces natural inhibitions to allow for maximal effort. In toe-stubbing it basically gives you a break to run from or attack your table.",
"I honestly don't know the direct answer but it reminds me of a fantastic NPR show where an anthropologist discovers a word in a native tribe that makes them want to decapitate people. The word \"Legit\" seems to be a composite of intense emotions for these people. After his wife dies in an accident he says he finally understood the meaning behind the word as his only way of coping with the pain is through an intense wailing. I would say this is closely related. \n\n_URL_0_",
"I asked in college and my professor said “My understanding is that yelling or screaming release adrenaline and endorphins which are natural at creating euphoria or masking sympathies of pain.”\n\nSo, screaming creates a catharsis , which is pleasurable psychologically, hence endorphins released. \n\nBut screaming is a subconscious response to pain, which releases adrenaline to survive. \n\nThe two mix together to temporarily remove “feelings” of pain. ",
"Put in simple words...When you scream you exhale the air within your body which relaxes you and pain fades away a bit.",
"It’s actually quite simple. Screaming is linked in our brain to aggression and pain response. Both trigger a release of endorphins, such as adrenaline and cortisol, that result in a decrease of pain reactivity. Learned this in my anatomy class when studying fight or flight response.",
"“We found that the amygdala—but not auditory cortex—is specifically sensitive to temporal modulations in the roughness range (Figure 4B). These results demonstrate that rough sounds specifically target neural circuits involved in fear/danger processing [27, 28] and hence provide evidence that roughness constitutes an efficient acoustic attribute to trigger adapted reactions to danger.”\n\n_URL_0_",
"Screaming causes a feeling of rush inside you, and that feeling will temporarily override the feeling of pain.\n\nThere’s only a few feelings you can self generate inside you by your self, the ones I’m aware of are screaming as you’ve mentioned, speeding to cause a rush feeling of adrenaline (my favourite) and then self inflicting pain - which is not necessary if you’re aware of the other 2.\n\nThese work with both physical and emotional pain.",
"Limited understanding of the brain here, but working on the gate theory of pain and signal transmission between neurons it’s like; neurons are roadways leading to your brain that can only handle so much traffic, once a lane is full another gateway opens and signal moves forward. If you experience pain and utilize your senses; sound, sight, touch, smell, equilibrium, taste you can flood the lanes causing a traffic congestion. Pain takes a priority in the traffic lanes, like an ambulance or fire engine, but the more congestion there is the more information the brain has to process and so....yelling/screaming engages another sense organ/pathway causing ‘traffic’ which slows everything down. This, the activation of gateways along the pains path are already occupied, slowing down the signal of pain. Your not minimizing/relieving pain, just working the system)))))",
"Muscles store tension, and in most animals they have a natural deactivation mechanism (body tremors) that release this tension. In humans though due to our higher brain function and us being highly social we can override this deactivation mechanism because it's not always convenient at the given time to go through it. The problem is we tend to do it so much we can get stuck in the \"on position\" for the tension and our muscles get locked in place, this is trauma.\n\nSo when you scream you are activating multiple muscle groups, particularly in your core muscles and neck, common muscles that get locked in. By activating them you are actually releasing tension built into them and triggering a tremor that causes them to heal. There is also a hormonal release associated with it that floods your system with pain dampening hormones.\n\nIf you want to learn more about this look into **Polyvagal Theory**",
"TL;DR: Pain is encouraged by a disruptive event in your body, such as stubbing your toe. This sends a signal upwards in the nervous system to your brain. Pain is produced within the brain itself. When the brain determines that a certain sensation is unimportant, it will send a signal downwards to 'block' the upward signal. This is called the descending pathway (DP). Screaming encourages your fight or flight response which will cause your brain to filter out the unnecessary pain signals by activating the DP.\n\n\n\nI know this post is a little old, but I think I can shed some light. I am a physical therapist and currently the field is heavily influenced by pain science, the study of how pain is produced, modulated, and perceived. I think the best way to answer this question is to first understand how pain is produced. Contrary to what you may think, the 'production' of pain does not occur in the painful area. Let's use a stubbed toe as an example. When you stub your toe, dedicated nerves from your toe send a signal to your spinal cord that an event has occurred at your toe. Another nerve then sends the same signal to your thalamus (part of the brain) stating the same thing, \"an event has occurred at your toe.\" From here the thalamus has to decide if this \"event\" is bad or not based on a lot of life experiences you already have and context of your surroundings (this is a simplified statement, the real process here is likely very complex).\n\nSo, if the thalamus determines the \"event\" is bad, it then sends a signal to your sensory cortex (another part of your brain) and pain is finally generated and perceived. This final step is the only thing that truly produces pain. If the thalamus had decided the event was normal and not dangerous, you would not perceive pain because the signal would stop there.\n\nNow that we understand the production of pain, we can talk a bit about how pain is modulated. This refers to our bodies ability to influence the intensity of the pain signal as it travels from your stubbed toe to your sensory cortex. There are many components to this, but I will just speak on one that is important to the question above: the descending pathway (DP). The DP is a series of nerves that travels from the brain to the spinal cord. When this is active, it sends it's signal to the same place in the spinal cord as your stubbed toe first did. However, it acts in the opposite way. Your stubbed toe encourages your spinal cord nerve to send the signal up to the brain. The DP tells that nerve not to. In a way, the DP says that this stubbed toe signal is not important, please ignore. This is a super important pathway and is actually similar to how opioids work but they come with some unfortunate side effects. I won't get into this too much here because I have already written a lot.\n\nThe DP is the pathway that most likely plays a role in how screaming alleviates the pain. As people have noted, screaming encourages the fight or flight response in you. This is called a sympathetic state of your nervous system. A sympathetic state will cause your brain to prioritize only the most important sensations to encourage survival. In that process, the DP will activate for any unimportant pain signals such as your stubbed toe. Running from a potential threat is more important than your toe, so your brain dampens that signal with the DP.\n\nEdit: formatting"
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7kgamb | what makes something “music”? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7kgamb/eli5_what_makes_something_music/ | {
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"It's a bit like asking what makes something art. There's no one definition that everyone agrees on. Personally I believe something is art when it is called art by its creator. By extension, something is music when it is art (by the definition above) and it is sonic in nature.\n\nPeople who say you don't make music are elitist dickholes, don't pay any attention to them. "
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3t5n5k | why don't refugees, if they have to pay up to 1000 dollars in order to get crammed on a sketchy boat, use that money to arrange their own, less sketchy boat with fewer people? | In essence, pooling the money of 20 people would pay for a safer journey. Why do they pay the smugglers instead? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3t5n5k/eli5_why_dont_refugees_if_they_have_to_pay_up_to/ | {
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"They use smugglers because that is their only option. Legitimate travel methods are not allowing them out of the country and buying their own boat would cost far more than what the smugglers are charging if there are even boats available for purchase and people who know how to operate them for hire at this point in time. ",
"This is a classic economic question, I suppose.\n\n1) Information. Refugees might not know how much it would cost to pool these resources themselves. They might not be able to find a boat or captain themselves. They might need help when they get there.\n\n2) Would it really be cheaper to do it that way? What would the refugees do when they get their? Sell the boat? To who? Well the smugglers don't have to buy a new boat or hire a new captain every time. So that saves money.\n\n3) Is this some sort of strange victim blaming?\n\nEDIT: grammar and typos"
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4fj2if | why are divorce rates so high in america where people can choose their spouse but low in india where it's arranged? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4fj2if/eli5why_are_divorce_rates_so_high_in_america/ | {
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"Research shows that \"love marriages\" and \"arranged marriages\" end up with similar levels of happiness.\n\nSo the difference in divorce rate can't be attributed to differences in happiness.\n\nDivorce became common in the USA in the last 50 years because (1) the social taboo against it faded, (2) women gained greater rights, and (3) women gained greater career prospects so they could more easily live without a husband.",
"Isn't it frowned upon if people get divorced there? For all I know they aren't allowed to.",
"To say the least getting a divorce in the US is way easier than in India. Womens rights, social acceptance of divorce and financial independence in some parts of India are decades behind, so this is like asking \"Why have there been less divorces in the 50's than now?\" - \"Because now, they can\".",
"Divorce rates in the U.S. have fallen in recent decades [se chart](_URL_0_), after all those wishing for them but not doing so because of the taboo finally did so, and because people are waiting longer to get married and have a better idea about who they are, what they want in a spouse, etc.\n\nBut in reference to your question, presumably the types of cultures that would arrange marriages would also be the kind that would look down upon divorce very strongly, and probably would be the kind in which the woman would have little means of support were she to leave her husband. And some cultures, arranges marriages are more of a business transaction than about love and personal fulfillment."
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zlla8 | why do (uk) car insurance prices vary from week to week/month to month? | I finally landed a decent paying job, though i have to commute 80miles a day to get to it. I've been looking into car insurance since i first found out about the possibility of this job, and some weeks it seems reasonable, other weeks its a little excessive. For instance, i've found a car i want, and my insurance when i looked it up 3 weeks ago was 2300 for the year. (Yay previous convictions), then when i looked it up today, its gone down to 1900. I looked at another car i liked the look of, and when i did it originally the price was 2200. Then it went up to 2800. Now its down to 2000. Why does it seem to vary from time to time, and is there any kind of 'sweet spot' to buy it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zlla8/eli5_why_do_uk_car_insurance_prices_vary_from/ | {
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"Insurance companies try to get the very best price that you (or people like you) are will to pay. This involves the company using data analytics to find the perfect price point for every kind of customer.\n\nSource: I work in the industry. I build the rules that optimise prices."
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62lrpk | how is it that the us pay more taxes towards healthcare than most countries with universal healthcare, but majority of the citizens don't receive the benefits? where does all of the tax money go? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62lrpk/eli5_how_is_it_that_the_us_pay_more_taxes_towards/ | {
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"THe US does not pay more TAX MONEY towards healthcare. They do pay more money towards healthcare. That is a major distinction, because it introduces a private party that has a vested interest in collecting profit.",
"Well, there are various reasons.\n\n1) The US, by and large, does not price control it's medicine. That means that corporation can ask people and the governement to pay their price, rather than having to negotiate.\n\n2) High healthcare costs cause the poor to postpone visiting a doctor untill it gets really, really bad. This causes costs to go up. A small infection that could have been treated with a bit of antibiotics can turn into a lifethreatening condition if ignored for long enough.\n\n3) Overtreatment. Caused by defensive medicine and the way healthcare payments are made. In order to get more billable (and profitable items) or in order to avoid lawsuits, doctors often order unnecessairy but expensive tests.",
"Insurance companies salaries, costs and profits and the costs for people that process insurance claims in the docs office/hospital siphon off 30% or so. If we got rid of them costs would go down but there would be a huge number of newly unemployed.",
"One major factor in the UK's health system being relatively [cost-efficient per capita](_URL_0_) compared to the rest of the world is that NHS attempts to standardize purchase costs for medical items across all their hospitals, with the overall volume of orders being so large that there is significant leverage available for pricing negotiations.\n\nSecondly, the fact that the healthcare system is government funded means that there is a direct link between drug prices and the cost of funding, which gives the government a great incentive to keep the prices down.\n\nIn the US (as I understand it) there's a disconnect all the way along the chain. Looking just at medicine, drug companies sell drugs to healthcare providers. Healthcare providers \"sell\" them to patients, but healthcare insurers are often paying the bills. \n\nAs the healthcare provider is effectively a middle-man, the financial distress in this system is born by the healthcare insurers (ignoring people going bankrupt over medical bills, which is another entirely disgusting matter). The healthcare provider has no real reason to make the effort to decrease their bills for consumable items, as the cost is shunted on to the next party in any event.\n\nThe healthcare insurers have two options: press for lower prices to be provided by medical providers, or increase premiums. One of these is difficult to do as they're not party to purchasing contracts, and I'm unsure if they'd ever intervene in this way. The other involves passing cost along to a semi-captive market making a distress purchase.",
"Health care is very expensive in the US. Tax supported health care goes mainly to those over 65 and desperately poor people. ",
" > Where does all of the tax money go?\n\nTo the insurance companies, whose CEOs and senior executives are paid exhorfbitant salaries and bonuses in compensation.\n\n**Edit:** Downvotes by those in denial or disagreement (or insurance company trolls) in no way refute or impugn the statement."
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2of7qo | how is lizard squad hacking xbox live? | I just don't understand how a multi-billion dollar corporation like Microsoft can be hacked by a few 20 somethings. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2of7qo/eli5_how_is_lizard_squad_hacking_xbox_live/ | {
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"DDOS attacks on their servers. They did the same to EA earlier. Completely destroyed the use of all their online games.\n\nEdit: think of it as someone using up all the bandwidth so that no one else can use the internet. Like powering on a torrent at full speed, while your playing a game of Fifa online. ",
"It's getting fucking annoying that's for sure. I'm thinking they plan to shut down PSN, Xbox Live, and Steam on Christmas.",
"I think we should also explain how to stop these attacks and why even with billions of dollars, it can be difficult to completely negate these attacks. \nOne way to protect a network from DDOS is to just have LOTS and LOTS of bandwidth and spread your information over LOTS of servers. which of course takes LOTS of money. \nAnother is of course proper network security, a firewall looks for and blocks non important or false network traffic, they try to filter out basic attacks and block repeat signals so that you can free up bandwidth and make yourself harder to hit. Of course the big corporations have very expensive and well maintained firewalls, but no wall is immune if the attacker is dedicated, persistent and willing to do the work. \nand the last ability a company has to defend themselves are their network maintainers/defenders. These people are supposed to be able to see the attacks as they come in and modify the firewall to customize it against the attacks coming in. Most hacking attempts, specially BOT nets, use a one size fits all attack. Each computer firing the same type of \"ammunition\" so a skilled defender can see the pattern and tell the firewall to ignore those packets. But it requires a lot of skill and costs a lot of money to maintain a full time skilled network defense. Most companies have an outside source that they can call upon to protect their networks. Once the attack occurs, they can call up the company to have someone come out to fix the wall and stop the attack. \nYou'll also notice that most of these attacks are only for a few hours at most and that's why. It takes time to figure out the attack and patch the firewall to stop it, but it will happen sooner or later. \nBut that's why even billion dollar tech companies can be targeted and shut down. it won't last long, but when you are talking losing millions in sales and such, and also spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to stop it it is sometimes worth just paying them to not hit you. \nHope this clears up some other questions that might come up. ",
"Lizard squad is using a technique called a \"Distributed Denial of Service.\" This isn't a hack or an act of \"breaking into\" a computer-network system. Instead the goal is to clog up the bandwidth available to people to access the system.\n\nYou can think of it as a public pool on a hot summer day. The pool is a service with a maximum number of people who can be in and swimming at one time. On most days it has a fair number of people who are in swimming around and on others it may have fewer. Sometimes it is closed for maintenance.\n\nThen there's that day when too many people are there. You're in the queue to get in but it's hard to establish any kind of order. People are pushing and shoving to get through first and many are frustrated when they do get in because the pool is already full. As soon as one person gets out another two or three fight over the spot. And what's worse is a lot of the people in the pool aren't even doing anything but standing around.\n\n**A DDoS takes a large volume of computers and other devices that can access the internet and continuously sends requests towards a target.** Xbox Live is a service with many servers in many locations, implying that an attack like this has taken some time to prepare and execute. The computers in the DDoS only have to send as many \"requests\" as they can each second. They don't have to wait for responses from the Xbox Live servers, **they just have to send so many requests that the servers cannot keep up, effectively preventing others from accessing this service.**"
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2yhbza | why would putin admit he ordered the annexation of crimea? | What benefit is there for a world leader to say such a thing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yhbza/eli5_why_would_putin_admit_he_ordered_the/ | {
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"I think mostly to show that he can. He is demonstrating his power. Opposing Putin tends to have it's downsides as well....",
"Keep in mind when he claims he said it. \n\nBasically, Putin's position (and you can take this back to either Soviet or Czarist understanding) is to be hyper-concerned with any unstable or destabilising border area. Russia's \"security dilemma\" is one in which its leaders never feel secure unless they can control the areas around them, and then around those areas, and so on and so on.\n\nPutin's orders can be defended from a security standpoint - Ukraine looked like it was about to degenerate into either an anti-Russian unstable state or a completely destabilised state in a civil war. \n\n Beyond the historical claims on Crimea, Russia is not simply going to allow a strategically vital area either fall apart or fall into the hands of either an enemy or an unknown.\n\nSo, at home, Putin can say to the Russian people (and those abroad), \"When it looked like our safety, security, and well-being could be compromised, I acted immediately. Besides this, I acted in such a way as to minimise casualties, maintain stability, and maximise the benefit to our people. Whatever issues the Ukrainian peoples have with their governments, and we are happy to discuss these with the Ukrainian government, must never be allowed to threaten or endanger Russia or her citizens. I acted to protect the Russians in Crimea, and those Russians believed their safety and prosperity would be better served reuniting with Russia.\"\n\nAbroad, Putin can state quite simply, \"This area was ours before the end of the Cold War, it continues to be of vital strategic importance. With the continuing instability in Ukraine which was taking an evermore aggressive outlook along ethnic lines, I acted to ensure the safety of Russians, the continued stability of a strategically and economically vital area, and I did so in as peaceful a manner as possible. There were no massive crackdowns or murders as in the Soviet days, we have not confiscated private property, and a vote of the Crimean peoples has validated our actions. It is very easy to tell a man how to put out a fire when the flames are not licking at your own doorstep, if the West had offered anything other than castigation and criticism of Russia, perhaps we could have worked together. They did not, and so we put out the flames ourselves.\"\n\nSo why admit it? There are a variety of ways he can benefit both at home and abroad which make him look like a wise and pragmatic leader, and by ignoring it he can't take advantage of those factors."
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mdzl6 | fifo & lifo (accounting) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mdzl6/fifo_lifo_accounting/ | {
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"Let's say you buy 10 widgets at $1 a piece, then later you buy 10 more at $1.10. You then sell 5 of them. How much are the remaining 15 widgets worth? FIFO means first-in-first-out, LIFO means last-in-first-out, meaning do you count those 5 you sold out of the first batch you bought (the $1 ones), or the last batch you bought (the $1.10 ones).",
"Let's say you buy 10 widgets at $1 a piece, then later you buy 10 more at $1.10. You then sell 5 of them. How much are the remaining 15 widgets worth? FIFO means first-in-first-out, LIFO means last-in-first-out, meaning do you count those 5 you sold out of the first batch you bought (the $1 ones), or the last batch you bought (the $1.10 ones)."
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2p6bz1 | why are guns legal but switch blade knives are illegal? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p6bz1/eli5_why_are_guns_legal_but_switch_blade_knives/ | {
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"Because laws are not necessarily logical or moral, and in fact are often very arbitrary. I have no idea why people don't understand this.",
"There's no National Knife Association to tell idiot politicians why those laws won't do what they think they'll do.\n",
"[Mostly sensationalism.](_URL_1_)\n\nFor example: \n\n > In The Toy That Kills, Pollack wrote that the switchblade was \"Designed for violence, deadly as a revolver - that’s the switchblade, the 'toy' youngsters all over the country are taking up as a fad. Press the button on this new version of the pocketknife and the blade darts out like a snake’s tongue. Action against this killer should be taken now\". To back up his charges, Pollack quoted an unnamed juvenile court judge as saying: \"It’s only a short step from carrying a switchblade to gang warfare\".\n\nAlso, they're legal to own and even carry in many places, [including a large number of states in the U.S.](_URL_0_)\n\n",
"The law was passed in the 50s when they became associated with criminals on TV and in movies. It scared the public as a whole thus passing the switchblade law in the late 50s. \n\nTo get a better understanding to why the law still stands today i decided to ask a law enforcement officer.\n\nHe basically told me that if you are pissed off or in a fight with someone what are you more likely to use on them? A gun or a switchblade? \n\nA swtichblade is so easy to pull out press a button and just use it when you are in a fight it can actually be more dangerous.\n\n\n\n ",
"A switchblade is a fighting knife, pure and simple. It frequently falls foul of offensive weapons law because of this.\n\nFirearms have many uses including hunting and competitive target shooting up to and including Olympic Games level.\n\nTypically you will find jurisdictions that ban switchblades will also have laws against certain firearms or CCW, only allowing hunting and sporting arms.\n\nIn more open states of the US with open or concealed carry firearm laws, knife laws are also more liberal.\n\nAlso bear in mind firearms and knives are usually covered by different laws written at different times and lawmakers do not always refer back to existing law. They pitch it to what they feel is appropriate at the time, not proportionate to a gun law written a decade back.",
"Some guns are legal, but not all.\n\nSome knives are legal, but not all.\n\nSome states have decided that a switchblade serves no purpose but to make it easier to use a concealed knife to harm someone, and banned them.",
"I had a switchblade once, but it was a modified hairbrush."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switchblade#State_laws",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switchblade#Controversy"
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||
1x4x6m | does cancelling my credit card hurt my credit? or is it better to keep it and not use it? | I want to cancel my credit card with X bank and get a new one with X bank. I've heard people say that cancelling your credit card hurts your credit, while others say not. I've also heard it's okay to not use your credit card and just let it sit there untouched and open.
What's the pros/cons of doing either, and is there really a smarter choice? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x4x6m/eli5_does_cancelling_my_credit_card_hurt_my/ | {
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"Hurts your credit. Just don't use it and let it expire. ",
"The age of your credit history does go toward calculating your credit score. Also the number of credit accounts you have can also increase your score. \n\nYou would more than likely, in the long run, be better off keeping the account. ",
"Banks look at the total of all your credit lines, and the total of all of your debt. What they want to see is your debt to be a relatively low percentage of your total credit line. As the percentage of total debt goes up in relation to the total credit line, your credit rating goes down.\n\nWhen you cancel a credit card you reduce your total credit line by x amount (whatever credit line that card had). That will cause any debt you still have to now be a larger percentage of your total credit line, which can harm your credit.\n\nIf you have no other debt, it may not matter much if you cancel the card. But it's also useful to just keep the credit line open and not use it. That keeps your total credit line larger, and your debt percentage lower which helps your credit rating."
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1uppyo | how do massive cold fronts, like the one being experienced in america right now, occur? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uppyo/eli5_how_do_massive_cold_fronts_like_the_one/ | {
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"The cold front that is being experienced by the United States and Canada right now is known as a polar vortex. Polar vortexes are strong winds found in the upper level of the atmosphere that normally stay over the north pole. On occasion the vortex can be distorted, causing cold air to spill to the south. \n\n[Source](_URL_0_)",
"[NPR had a pretty good explanation](_URL_0_) -- basically, you've got high pressure air to the west, high pressure to the east, and in between the cold arctic air. The arctic air is getting squeezed by the two systems on each side, and when you squeeze something it has to squirt out somewhere. The arctic air is getting squirted out all over the US this time."
]
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"http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/06/us/polar-vortex-explained/"
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"http://www.npr.org/2014/01/06/260265148/powerful-polar-vortex-makes-rare-appearance-in-u-s"
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||
3ldrry | why is it so difficult to not flinch when something jumps out at you on a screen(like a scary movie for example) even though our brain registers that it is fake and expected? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ldrry/eli5_why_is_it_so_difficult_to_not_flinch_when/ | {
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"Reflexes occur *much* faster than rational thought. It's been shown that people reacting to painful stimuli move away from the stimuli before the rational centers of the brain are even activated. This means that your rational brain is not even involved when you flinch - you know it's fake, but that knowledge isn't relevant to the reflexes. "
]
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|
6gmtvd | stop-motion animation | I know you've seen the Shiny short film from Australia. How does someone create something so glorious? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gmtvd/eli5_stopmotion_animation/ | {
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"Conceptually, there's not much to it. \n\n1. Set your camera on a tripod or other device to ensure it stays in exactly the same place\n2. pose your clay figure/doll/paper cutout/clothes\n3. take a photograph.\n4. SLIIIIIIGHTLY move your figure towards it's next position. \n5. Take another pic.\n6. Repeat *thousands* of times. \n7. Take your photographs and play them back at 30 pictures a second. Tada! Motion!\n8. Add in sound effects and music via video editing software, just like you can for a \"regular\" movie clip.\n\nThe secret sauce that makes it look so good is practice and patience. ",
"Videos are essentially a number of still images played in quick succession. Stop motion videos consist of a number of individually clicked still images, each clicked after making slight changes in the subject's position. When they're all put together and played in quick succession in a video, it produces an illusion of movement. \n\nNot to be mistakened with time-lapse video where a number of still images are clicked at equally spaced time intervals and then put together into a video, generating a speedened up version of the captured events. "
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e25los | why did google let microsoft use chromium on edge? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e25los/eli5_why_did_google_let_microsoft_use_chromium_on/ | {
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"[Google is an advertising company, first and foremost](_URL_0_). Everything that they do, they do to further the goal of selling more ads.\n\nChrome, Drive, their MS Office knock-offs: their only purpose is to get people to use them and sink ever deeper into the Google ecosystem. That is why they are \"free\".",
"because it's the defacto standard; atleast for a majority of the mainstream internet now. IE sucked for everyone but especially for developers; i remember the stupid shit you had to do in order to achieve the same result as document.getelementbyid.innertext/innerhtml = blablahblah. hence you can probably defer from that fact that nobody would miss the old IE engine; whatever it was."
]
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"https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-tech-giants-make-billions/"
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||
fdd1pi | how are doctors so sure a person can't regain consciousness once their vitals shuts down? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fdd1pi/eli5_how_are_doctors_so_sure_a_person_cant_regain/ | {
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"They have seen many people's vital signs shut down. When none of those people can be revived after X minutes, they start to think that nobody can ever be revived after X minutes. Nothing is every 100.0% certain, but they make decisions based on most probably outcomes.",
"A heart beat circulates blood carrying oxygen around the body, without oxygen cells rapidly start to die and other organs fail, without a heartbeat and lungs breathing all organs including the brain are going to get worse rather than better.",
"The part of the brain that controls organs is a very basic part of the brain that the earliest organisms used. Higher level of thinking comes with millions of years of advancement. Therefore, certain things shut down in a somewhat predicable order and if *that* part of the brain is deteriorating, then it doesn't look good for the more advanced parts such as conscious thinking.",
"I'm going to assume that by \"vitals\" you mean the two vital organs heart and lungs.\n\nThe truth is we don't know on an individual basis who is going to survive what period of cardiac arrest (which is when the heart stops), but data from group studies enable us to give educated opinions based on systematic experience.\n\nThere are a few key facts to consider: the airways and lungs supply oxygen to the blood, and the heart takes that oxygen-filled blood and pumps it around to the body. Together these two organs keep the body well supplied with oxygen, which is crucial for cells to extract energy from the food we eat.\n\nSome cells can survive longer without oxygen by burning the food in an alternative way, but they sacrifice a lot of energy for this. Our brain cells can't do this because they need maximum energy output 24/7 because they're working so hard.\n\nOur brain is really what we \"are\" - it is where our personality, our consciousness and our memories reside, it is what we use to feel love, joy and all other emotions. Therefore, as soon as the brain dies, we are dead, no matter if the heart is beating or not. The heart is nothing more than a special muscle.\n\nThis means that if we stop breathing, or our heart stops beating, the single-most important organ for survival *is the same organ that is worst equipped to cope with a lack of oxygen*. The brain burns through oxygen so quickly that if it doesn't get a constant supply of it, it will start to die within minutes. And, crucially, brain tissue doesn't regenerate like skin or bone.\n\nThat's why if a heart stops for many minutes, and no one is doing CPR, it is highly likely that even if you can get the heart beating again, the person will never wake up again because too much brain tissue has already died.\n\nThere is a lot of data where scientists have looked at the time between when the heart stops, and when the heart started beating again. For every minute with no heart beat (and no CPR) the chance of a successful recovery decreases about 10 percetage points (meaning that after 10 minutes the chances of recovery are practically zero). Experiments with animals and single cells in laboratories show similar results.\n\n**TL;DR: The heart and lungs supply oxygen to the brain. The brain can't handle oxygen deprivation, which is what happens when \"the vitals shut down\". If the brain is dead, there is no chance of regaining consciousness**."
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37dcdi | why are we able to speak well over 6,000 languages, and yet are unable to effectively communicate with our domesticated brethren? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37dcdi/eli5_why_are_we_able_to_speak_well_over_6000/ | {
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"As far as we know humans are the only animal to use language.\n\nThe sounds other animals make would be more analogous to human body language than to speech."
]
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||
6z9hfu | how do clocks compensate for the fact that a day isn't a full 24 hours? | Wouldn't they eventually be off and start displaying incorrect times? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6z9hfu/eli5_how_do_clocks_compensate_for_the_fact_that_a/ | {
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"It's such an insignificant amount of time that it's not really noticable. That's why leap years are only every 4 years instead of more often.",
"That's what leap years are for but there is also a thing called leap seconds. Every once in a while scientists add a second for instance 4:59:60 then 5:00:00 to compensate for this.",
"Clocks are mechanical and are not 100% accurate to begin with. They become more inaccurate over time. Otherwise, many internet based clocks sync with servers that keep time for them called NTP (network time protocol) servers. ",
"A day *is* a full 24 hours, give or take a leap second every year or two. Until we invented atomic clocks, a day was exactly 24 hours by definition.\n\nLeap years are a separate issue, they correct for the fact that there aren't exactly 365 24-hour days in a year.",
"There's two kinds of days. A solar day is nearly exactly 24 hours. A sidereal day is 23 hours, 56 minutes, and change. There are 365.24 solar days in a year, but 366.24 sidereal days in the same time. ",
"Understood. Thanks everyone!"
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30k413 | is google licensing its fiber optics? | I just noticed today that AT & T is also offering gigabyte internet. Coincidentally they are offering in the same cities as Google Fiber.
First I thought Google was licensing, then I thought that would be introducing their own competitions to the cities. So who owns the Fiber Optics in those cities? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30k413/eli5_is_google_licensing_its_fiber_optics/ | {
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"Google isn't licensing their fiber optics. What's happening is that Google is succeeding in their goal to force ISPs to step up their game. Google believes fast, affordable internet should be available to everyone. The current market is happy for a single ISP to have a monopoly over each area. Google is breaking that pattern by building their own fiber optic network, offering blistering speeds for a relatively low price. This is spurring the competition to make changes to stay competitive, so companies like AT & T are building their own fiber optic networks to compete with Google's."
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duohmk | blue light from screens reduces melatonin, but doesn’t that mean more serotonin? | Wouldn’t it be better to have less melatonin so there’s more brain “space” for serotonin? Thank you! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/duohmk/eli5_blue_light_from_screens_reduces_melatonin/ | {
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"No, it doesnt work that way. Oddly enough dopamine and melatonin are inversely linked (one goes up and the other goes down). But contrary to popular belief that has more of an effect on movement than on mood. But it is thought to be related to why people can get a bit addicted to screen time."
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yzl3u | why don't girls ask guys out? | I've never understood it, and in my perspective it's a bit unfair. It just leaves guys to play a crazy guessing game | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yzl3u/eli5_why_dont_girls_ask_guys_out/ | {
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"Because our culture has long been focused on men being in a dominant role. Asking someone out is a dominant action and not expected of girls.\n\nNot that hard really.",
"Traditionally, men are seen as dominant. Men are viewed as the gender which is in charge. They make choices and women accept the choices men make. It's the same reason fathers give their daughters away at weddings. The idea is that the woman needs a man to take ownership/care for her because she's unable to do so herself. Thus, she's under the care of her father until he gives her to her husband at which point she becomes under his care.\n\nPlus, we often look down on women who embrace their sexuality. It's appropriate for a man, like myself, to be willing to sleep with basically any decent looking girl. But it's entirely inappropriate for a woman to do the same. They're cognizant of that (socially acceptable yet objectively objectionable) fact. \n\nI dunno, it's a complicated world. (Irrelevant Childish Gambino quote: \"sometimes the stupid shit is the real shit\".) But please realize that a situation which appears unfair to men can be explained by a larger context in which men are privileged. Don't let your perspective be limited to your own experiences, because when you do that you miss out on a lot. Preaching over; because men are seen as appropriate sexual aggresors while women should be demure. ",
" > it's a bit unfair. It just leaves guys to play a crazy guessing game\n\nSee, you didn't need our help. You figured it out on your own.",
"They've been told not to since they were young. They've been told to wait for the guy to do it",
"It's not that people haven't tried to change the customs, either...\n\n_URL_0_\n\nBut society remains stubbornly set on \"women aren't allowed to ask men out\".",
"Others have answered about the cultural reasons for this but I'm going to talk about evolution.\n\nIn humans (and most mammals) females are the nurturing parent. They have the responsibility to bear young and, consequently are always confident that they are the parent of their own child. By contrast, males potentially can get away with an investment of a few minutes but can also be quite uncertain that they contributed genes to the child produced by the female they have slept with.\n\nFemales therefore want to try to ensure that any male that fathers their child is willing to stick around to assist with child rearing. Whether or not they actually *intend* on having children every time they have sex is irrelevant. Millions of years of evolution have pushed females to want to ensure that males are the \"real deal\" so to speak.\n\nMales on the other hand benefit from spreading their 'seed' far and wide. This gives them the best chance for having their genes passed on to the next generation. Note however that, should the male ever be confident that the child is his (there's an equation for the probability threshold but it's roughly around 50% confidence as the limit) then he should actually want to nurture it.\n\nSo how does this play out in the real world?\n\nFemales don't want to approach males for sex because that doesn't allow the female to test her potential partner for stability, trustworthiness and nurturing potential. Additionally, a male when approached for sex by a female \"should\" always accept as that is a free chance to pass on his genes. Finally, males \"should\" approach as many females as possible for sex - for the same reason.\n\nObviously the real world isn't as black and white as all of this. Males can and do make a conscious decision to be more dependable in order to gain a mate and females can and do sample the male population in order to find the most suitable mate - remember that a promiscuous female is still 100% confident that any child is hers.",
"because girls are cruel. \n\n^I ^am ^going ^through ^a ^dark ^phase ^of ^my ^life ^right ^now.",
"I missed that memo. I ask guys out often. If you aren't gonna make the move, then I will. ",
"It's just because of society's stupid standards and stereotypes. From a personal frame of reference, though, I will say that my current girlfriend actually asked me out...and it's a nice, solid, happy relationship."
]
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5wzpf8 | why can't dc be transformed as easily as ac | It seems cars with their coil packs have no problems doing it with coil packs. As far as I'm aware, the ratio of the voltage increase (or decrease) is the result of the ratio of the turns in the primary and secondary windings.
If AC oscillates at a voltage V 60 times per second and goes through a transformer to step up or step down voltage, what would be the difference between a DC circut entering a coil pack that modulates on\off 60 times per second. There still is on\off periods just like AC. Car coil packs do it way faster than that and last years.
If this won't work, why? And how does one step up\down AC besides literally driving a physical generator with a physical DC motor. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wzpf8/eli5_why_cant_dc_be_transformed_as_easily_as_ac/ | {
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"When you switch a DC signal on and off, you're turning it into an AC signal. \n\nIt's easier to manipulate the voltage and current of AC signals, because with AC we are able to use magnetic coupling as another degree of freedom. Magnetic fields can only create electric fields when they are changing, which requires a changing electric field, which is what AC signals are.\n\nWe *can* do voltage and current manipulation on DC signals themselves using semiconductors. This ends up being less common for high power scenarios.\n\nUsing magnetic coupling on DC signals which switch on and off rapidly is wasteful, because magnetic coupling is most efficient when the signal is a pure sinewave. Otherwise, energy can get lost in all the little non-primary constituent frequencies."
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as54vl | if it takes about 8 minutes for sunlight to reach earth doesn’t that mean that it’s true position in the sky is 8 minutes ahead? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/as54vl/eli5_if_it_takes_about_8_minutes_for_sunlight_to/ | {
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"EDIT: sorry, the first thing you said is not entirely true. The second is fine.\n\nThe sun's position in the sky is due to the rotation of the earth, much more than the orbit around the sun + difference from the speed of light. If the light reached us instantly, the sun would be an imperceptible fraction further forward or back (not sure which, need someone smarter). But it wouldn't be 8 minutes worth of rotation ahead in the sky.\n\nThe other thing you said is still true, yes some or even all of the stars we see could be dead and we won't know about it until the light gets here. The sun could disappear right now and you wouldn't know for 8 minutes.",
"Yes and yes, most of the starts we see are probably dead and or in different point in the sky by now. Also if the sun exploded or just went out we wouldn’t know for 8 minutes ish ",
"Whose position in the sky? The Sun's? We're orbiting the Sun, it's mostly \"fixed in the sky\" as far as position, and its apparent movement (sunrise, noon, sunset, etc.) is because of the Earth's rotation, so our \"Sun position\" observation would be instantaneous.\n\nStars that are far away COULD be dead, yes, but their light is traveling still. We see them as they were billions of years ago.",
"short answer - yes, to both questions\n\nto add a bit more, when the sun goes down, due to the 8(ish) minute delay and refraction in the atmosphere, the sun's position is actually just below the horizon when it appears to be just touching it\n\n"
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yadhz | what are they talking about when they say a room or building has 'great acoustics'? how do you determine if a room has great acoustics? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yadhz/eli5_what_are_they_talking_about_when_they_say_a/ | {
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"When someone makes noise, a sound wave travels from them to your ear, and that's how you hear it.\n\nMaybe you're picturing a laser-beam type wave, shooting from the sound source to your ear. If you could see it though, it would actually look more like a ripple on a lake, traveling outward in every direction from the source.\n\nDid you ever wonder how come you can hear a noise even if you can't see what made it? Sound can travel around corners and such, can't it? That's because sound waves can bounce almost every surface - especially hard ones - and go in new directions.\n\nSo now imagine you're in a room with another person and they make noise. This will all happen very fast - too fast maybe to consciously hear - but first you will hear that part of the ripple that happened to be in line with your ear. Then you'll hear the reflections of the parts of the ripple that hit the wall behind you or to your sides and are coming back your direction now. (And if you're closer to, say, the back wall, that reflection will reach your ear \\*just\\* before the side wall reflections). Then you'll hear further and fainter reflections, maybe a few that bounced off three or four surfaces before reaching your ear.\n\nThis all happens super-fast. But the overall effect is called \"reverberation\" and it can vary a lot.\n\nLet's imagine you're in a tiny tiled room, like a bathroom. If someone makes a loud noise there'll be a LOT of reflections coming at your ear very quickly after the source sound happenes. The reverberation you'll get will be ringy and harsh.\n\nOr let's imagine you're in a big cathedral. The source noise will be far away and by the time it reaches you will be blended with its own reflections, but also some other reflections will only reach you after a long bouncing journey. The reverberation will be blurry and booming.\n\n'Great acoustics' is when the sensation you get is clarity and pleasantness. There's minimal interference and the reverberation has a unique and warm effect on the raw source sound. Room shape, material surfaces, and the position of the source sound (and the listener's ear - that's why some seats cost more in fancy concert halls) all make a big difference to the sound.",
"\"Great acoustics\" can be relative to what you're trying to accomplish. In recording studios, you'll notice a lot of rugs/blankets draped over things, etc. This is to absorb sound so the recording is in its most basic form and you can digitally manipulate it rather than having to have the singer/musician do it multiple times.\n\nSometimes, a lot of echo is desirable. In my high school there was a two-floor staircase that was really narrow. It was made completely of marble (school built in the 50's) or something similar. It echoed a *ton*. This was great in my all-male choir class. ~20 of us would line up in this staircase and sing 8 and 16 part harmonies. The echo allowed you to hear your own part really well and how it interacted with everyone else's part.\n\nIn concert halls there's a delicate balance to this. If the hall was completely dead, the orchestra/symphony/band/choir would sound really small and thin. You can definitely tell the difference as a player, too. If you're really in tune and the hall/room is built well you'll be able to hear overtones (notes created by your notes being in tune) more clearly than you would in \"dead\" rooms.",
"'Good' acoustics will depend on the purpose of a room. The accoustics are considered good if you can hear what you want to.\n\nListening to a choir in a cathedral is good. The acoustics of the room in this case are created by the high ceiling and exposed stone. This means that sound bounces a lot, so you get lots of echo. This is good for choral music; rhe sound of the choir really fills the cathedral and you can't even hear that guy 10 rows forward that keeps coughing.\n\nNow, fill the same cathedral with tables and chairs and serve dinner. It's horrible acoustics! The sound of cutlery hitting plates is bouncing all over the place, and is so loud you can barely hear the other people at you table. You raise your voice to try and be heard, as does everyone else just making it even noisier and more difficult to hear what you want. This does not make for a pleasant dinner.\n\nLet's do the same tests in a big restaurant. The restaurant has a low ceiling, carpet, curtains, and lots of pictures on the walls. The choir sounds 'flat'. They can't make their sound fill the room, and people at the back can't really hear them very well. However, when dinner is served, people are able to hold conversations without raising their voices.\n\nI should point out that different types of music require different accoustics. Set up a rock band in the cathedral and it will sound horrible because all the bouncing sound makes it really hard to actually hear the song clearly."
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1xgzcm | rutherford's nuclear atom | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xgzcm/eli5_rutherfords_nuclear_atom/ | {
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"I can't summarize it better than the Wikipedia article, but I'd be happy to answer any more *specific* questions you have.",
"The atomic model prior to Rutherford was that of J.J. Thomson. Thomson's atom was made entirely out of electrons (the first sub-atomic particle identified) and held together by a diffuse positive force. \n\nRutherford's students Geiger and Marsden did an experiment where they shot alpha particles (a \"heavy\" form of radiation, now known to be helium nuclei) at a very thin gold foil. Most of the radiation went right through — which would be expected with Thomson's model. But sometimes some of it shot straight back again, \"reflecting\" off of the foil. This was incompatible with Thomson's model.\n\nRutherford proposed that this showed that Thomson's model was wrong. Instead of being a more or less homogenous soup of electrons and positive charge, the atom for Rutherford had a small, very dense core around which tiny electrons revolved like satellites. This would explain the Geiger-Marsden results — most of the time the alpha particles were just going through the electrons and thus passing through, but sometimes they struck the cores and were scattered backwards.\n\nThere were problems with Rutherford's model. He understood the rotating electrons in a classical way, which would mean that they ought to be losing energy over time. Bohr's atom rectified this problem by proposing that electrons worked in a quantum fashion. De Broglie gave better meaning to this by showing that the quantum orbits of Bohr corresponded to wave frequencies, meaning that the electron was in fact a matter-wave. Schrödinger worked out the full quantum wave mechanics of electrons and showed how they were in fact probability waves. Chadwick eventually showed that the nucleus contained not only positively-charged protons, but neutrally-charged neutrons as well. And so on.\n\nRutherford's atom was closer to the truth than Thomson's, but still fairly far from the modern understanding of the atomic model."
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2n9ko8 | why do we not use airships nowadays? shouldn't there be a solution to the explosive problem by now? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2n9ko8/eli5_why_do_we_not_use_airships_nowadays_shouldnt/ | {
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"They'd be pretty slow compared to airplanes, cars, trains, basically any other modern method of travel. It would be such a novelty/niche market that it'd probably be hard to turn a profit.",
"There is a solution to the explosive problem, use helium instead of hydrogen. Its less efficient as a lifting gas but only slightly.\n\nThe big problem with airships is thier relative flimsyness, big airships had a horrible habit of breaking apart and crashing, even without going boom. They tend to be very weather dependent, they also need large ground crews to land and take off.",
"Don't listen to anyone here, they're all morons who can't do a cursory google before posting. Search for \"aerocraft\". You'll find a shit ton of companies trying to be first in the market of new rigid frame lighter than air vessels.\n\nWhy? Because they're cheap and extremely versatile. Lighter than air craft have huge lifting power and superior fuel efficiency than standard truck freight delivery. Unlike fixed wing aircraft, you can land a vessel right next to your factory, your grocery store, your warehouse, WHATEVER, and deliver. And while trains are extremely cheap to move bulk freight, they can only go so far as the nearest freight depot, and have to be transferred for local delivery. The cost of building the infrastructure for rail delivery everywhere is prohibitively expensive, and the cost of trains over short distances is actually more expensive than other means.\n\nSlow? An average speed of 80 mph is slow? And let us not forget, trucks are limited as to how they get to their destination because they're at the mercy of where the roads go. An aerocraft moving at 80 mph can travel \"as the crow flies\", point to point.\n\nSo trains, trucks, ships, and aircraft all have their place in logistics, but there is definitely a market for aerocrafts that promises bulk freight delivery at extremely competitive costs and times.",
"There never actually was an 'explosion problem' with airships even when they did commonly use hydrogen. Yes, this had its hazards compared to using the more expensive helium and that had to be managed, but statistically airships to this day retain a higher safety record than fixed wing aircraft. The chief problem for the evolution of the airship was its characterization as a 'terror weapon' after WWI and the systematic dismantling of most of the world's fleet of them, which led to a gap in its technology advance. Aircraft development has long been dominated by military applications and ultimately the airship, despite it's reputation, proved not particularly effective as a weapon because of low speed, weather susceptibility, and carrying capacity. Generally, aircraft technology that doesn't prove to be a good weapon has a hard time being financed. \n\nHowever, it's wrong to say that it was obsolesced because airships retain capabilities impossible for other aircraft, including extreme altitude capability, range, and energy efficiency. A 747 uses as much fuel taxiing on the runway before takeoff as the Hindenburg would use traveling from New York to Los Angeles. Today we have the means to make electric driven airships powered by photovoltaics that can travel non-stop around the world indefinitely at several times the speed of container ships. They can operate in VTOL and reach locations lacking in infrastructure. Their operational economy of scale is lower than other aircraft, which means that you can justify the operation of an intercontinental airship on a fraction of the transit volume needed to sustain the existence of a jet airliner. This makes it possible to provide transportation to places fixed wing aircraft can never hope to support economically. Telecommunications aerostats--airships designed for high altitude stationary use--can compete directly against satellites in cost-performance, supporting vast amounts of on-board solar power and being perpetually upgradeable. Airships have often been suggested for use as skycranes and in the future could take the role of gigantic 3D printers. Though it remains speculation at present, some suggest that future high performance materials may allow the creation of airships using no lift gasses all, relying on simply an internal vacuum for lift like a submarine in air. Its these capabilities that keep interest in airships going despite an ingrained cultural resistance in the aerospace community. "
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2ofzdr | why do we refer the secretary of state as mr. secretary, but never the ceo of microsoft as mr. ceo? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ofzdr/eli5_why_do_we_refer_the_secretary_of_state_as_mr/ | {
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"Because of tradition which was developed to divide society into classes dating centuries back and how that contrasted with the bourgeois revolution in the XVIII century. The titles mean to convey someone's social position and indicate whether the interlocutor is positioned above or beneath in social rank.\n\nAsk yourself why we call monarchs \"your highness\", bishops and ambassadors \"your excellency\" and judges \"your honor\". It is all to do with the notion that position or birth makes someone stand higher or lower on the social ladder. Since republican governments inherited a lot from their monarchical predecessors the notion that state officials get honorary titles was understood as sign of prestige. Consider the famous anecdote about what title the US president was supposed to initially have. That however applies only to officials with a position. Note again that your regular clerk in the local government branch isn't Mr. Government Worker - although in some countries even entry-level staff get titles.\n\nCEO of companies are purely functional titles which describe their role i the company. They are in effect job descriptions and not position titles and as such differ in absolutely nothing from your entry level \"sales assistants\" or \"assistant regional managers\". There is some use for a honorary title during a board meeting: \"chairman\" and \"the board\" and some older companies - especially in Europe - had a \"president\". Modern high-tech companies are *yet* too formally egalitarian to do something like that regardless of the earnings and actual practical hierarchy. Notice I said *yet*. \n\nThose old European companies used to start as little manufacturing plants or shops where a bunch of \"burgers\" (middle-class town dwellers) would set up a company to earn some money. They would go into partnerships with nobles (people with titles) and since they couldn't own titles themselves and most of the were too poor or uninfluential to buy one or marry into a family they insisted on an egalitarian approach. That changed in the late XIX century when after 100 years of capitalist/industrial revolution the balance of power shifted in their favour but the language was already conditioned to the new title-less approach.\n\nHowever that also depended on the society in which the new institution developed. In Germany and Britain where social class was still strong and entrenched the language and social structure was less formal because it still operated in parallel to the old social class system. In Germany the nobility was eliminated from the primary role in society only after WW1 and in Britain only after WW2. In France where the French revolution wiped out most of the nobility by the end of XVIII century the industrialists had greater social and cultural influence and therefore the traditional language and code of conduct in French companies was much more hierarchical because they were filling a void. That's the result of a 100 years of living with or without nobles.\n\nNote also that artisan guilds in the medieval era did have titles for example - again to denote structure.\n\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\nTL;DR: Because of how power used to divide people into social classes. Most state positions were linked with social status and as such were reserved for the nobility or the church. No titles were allowed for the middle-class other than functional titles within the government of towns (mayor, councilor, alderman) and definitely no titles were allowed for functions involved with trade which was considered a disgraceful profession. So it was a formal ban on titles in business that shaped the language for the first few centuries and it carried on to this day.\n"
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1fcsas | when i stand far away from one person clapping i can't hear it, at the same distance i can hear 100 people clapping. why? | I was trying to explain the phenomenon to myself and although I know it to be true, I actually have no idea on a molecular level why this would be.
Each individual clap has the same amplitude, why together are they louder?
Eli5 because I have very poor understanding of physics. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1fcsas/eli5_when_i_stand_far_away_from_one_person/ | {
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"While it is not quite this simple in this case, the wave amplitudes basically add. Actually there will be some canceling, but there will be a tremendous amount of amplitude adding, and that amplitude is the loudness you hear.",
"There are a couple concepts you need to understand to make this a bit easier.\n\n1. Like you said, sound is basically particles vibrating. However, sound is a wave - that is, it's energy that effectively radiates out from a source as ripples radiate from a thrown rock. As the energy passes particles, it causes them to vibrate, which causes the sound you actually hear.\n2. Waves look like [this](_URL_1_). \n3. Loudness of sound is basically the intensity of the vibration. This can be calculated using the formula energy/(time*area). Thus, more energy at any given point would cause an increase in loudness, given the time and area remain the same.\n\nOkay. Given one source - the one person clapping - sound would look like [this](_URL_2_). Add another source, and the waves will start to interfere with each other, creating something that would look like [this](_URL_0_) (forgive the shitty drawing, I'm eating lunch). \n\nAs you can see, there are places where the waves of energy overlap. Now, at some points, it will be the troughs - the low points of the wave - that overlap. This causes \"destructive interference\", which will create points where it will be hard to hear the claps - because there will be very little energy, now, because you're effectively adding energy, so when you plug into the energy/(time\\*area) equation, you get something that translates to being inaudible. Where crests are interfering, however, you get something called \"constructive interference.\" This is just adding the waves, as /u/RandomExcess said. Therefore, the result of the energy/(time\\*area) will be literally double what it would be with just one source - so it's double the loudness.\n\nNow, take this phenomenon and multiply it by 100 (or 50, if you're starting from the 2-source example). All of a sudden, you have points where the amount the particles vibrate is 100 times more intense than it would be from one source. This will translate to your ear as being much louder. \n\nI hope that helped! If you have any questions, feel free to ask, but I am working with a high-school level understanding (as in I just took a final two days ago), so if you think something may be off, let me know and I'll look into it."
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rkp51 | why everybody hates
hipsters? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rkp51/eli5_why_everybody_hates_hipsters/ | {
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"Most hipsters don't like the word hipster. It is a sort of counter-culture, individualistic type of mentality, so the thought of thousands of people just like them doesn't sit well with them. None of them want to be called hipster because they don't want to be classified like that. They call other people hipsters as a sort of diss so they can feel better about themselves. Even hipsters hate hipsters, so of course everyone else does too.",
"People dislike those who are hypocritical to the point of trying to be individual and different, while conforming to a rather large subculture at the same time. Example - Hipsters buy Apple products to be 'different', yet they all have the same stuff. They all drink 'rare' coffees, yet all the blends they drink are the same. They'll say they hate corporate culture, but will buy Apple products and drink Starbucks coffee and not complain.",
"Judging by what reddit deems 'hipster' I'd say it's because they hate what they don't understand.",
"Because in an attempt to be non-conformist, they have all conformed to the idea that they are different. So the drink bad beer because it's so lame. They ride bikes because they are different. \n\nThey are not different, and if me and all of my friends do the exact same thing we are a clique, not a group of individuals. ",
"[Short, not safe for five-year-olds](_URL_0_) explanation. (YouTube, 2:43\")\n\nAlso: epilepsy warning.",
"They don't. Reddit is an insular community built of generally similar people. To Reddit, a 'hipster' is anyone they are not, and ipso facto holds a grudge against the other. ",
"I got Beats headphones as a gift. Now fucking everybody has them. Naturally I don't use mine anymore. ",
"people mostly hate the elitist stereotype connected to hipsters. it's similar to all those people posting \"first!\" in comments everywhere, only hipsters would be the ones that would say \"zero!\" or \"meh, i've seen that before it got posted here. lame!\". \n\nby chance everyone can feel like a hipster. if you like some lesser known band, and it suddenly gains in popularity you can brag that you knew it before it became mainstream (or just keep it to yourself, and feel happy about their success). a pure hipster thinks that when something becomes mainstream it automatically becomes garbage, and moves on to something new and obscure. all this in order for that moment of condescendence when the given band is mentioned.",
"the thing is, Hipster basically means a quirky person under 30 so the definition means Jack shit, and in real life they are shockingly normal people trying to be interesting somehow. ",
"Because they are annoying and trying to hard to be unique and not to fit it. Instead of actually being their self, they are more concerned with not being like you and I.",
"They are an exclusive group whose merit depends entirely on being the first to embrace new or overlooked trends in music fashion and beverages. Anyone who \"comes to the party late\" is chastised for not being there when it originated and those who were, are imbued with an smug sense of undeserved accomplishment.",
"Cuz its the hip thing to do.....::thumbs up and a wink::",
"\"Hipster\" is one of the most overused and poorly defined terms on the internet today. I think the hatred towards them stems from a certain attitude of snobbery (the \"oh you like mainstream stuff?\" hipster archetype), which is of course an intolerable attitude for a person to have, but the hatred has spread to ANYONE that subscribes to a particular fashion or listens to a particular kind of music. \n\nThe word \"hipster\" is just another in a line of umbrella terms people use to hate on a particular kind of person. It's just trendy right now, like \"emo\" or \"scene\" was a few years ago.",
"I think it is like anything else, we just hate the extremes. A couple of my closest friends could be considered hipsterish, but they aren't throwing it in peoples faces and proclaiming what a rare snowflake they are. So long as they just act like normal people most of the time and don't tell us how much better they are then us then I'm sure most of us don't really have a problem with them. At least I dont.",
"My contempt was inspired by a quote once:\n\"it's not about being different, it's about making a difference.\" If I see a hipster who tries really hard to look unique, I think he's actually very insecure and the furthest thing from a true leader. Dude, your appearance defines you? C'mon!",
"I don't hate hipsters, what I hate is now being apparently unable to say \"I liked X before Y\", regardless of how true it may be.",
"Hating hipsters is hip.",
"[](/b09) Because they think they're better than someone else because \"you conform to society\", when they do the exact same thing.\n\nAnd people don't generally *hate* hipsters, they just make fun of them.",
"In the 90's I was heavily into punk, ska / punk, swing, stuff like that.\n\nI knew a lot of goth kids, skaters, kids who were heavily into rock, thrash etc just a lot of subcultures.\n\nOne thing that unites those subcultures is that they're generally outcast by society.\n\nWeirdly, those subcultures are split into 2 types of people though.. the people that just love punk or whatever and are just really into it and dress that way and are being themselves and people that seem to be into it because it's cool to not be mainstream, this second group of people are always quite.. like.. anti mainstream stuff.. I never gave 2 fucks about mainstream stuff and accepted that occasionally there were pop songs that were decent and that there were decent people that loved pop music.\n\nscenesters and then later when they evolved into hipsters love not being mainstream. that's what it's all about to them, the second something becomes mainstream they've lost interest.. they also get quite anti mainstream.. which is all kinds of fucked up to me because like I said, a uniting concept in those subcultures is that mainstream society by and large think that you have issues for being into that kind of thing.. this to me is just escalated by scene kids that take the 'fuck me? well fuck you and everything you like' approach.\n\nThere's great punk music, there's great pop music, there's great country music.. hell.. there's just plain great music out there.. same with movies.. same with clothes.. whatever.. my taste in stuff is not superior to your taste in stuff just because it's my taste.. but the hipsters out there have it in their heads that it is.",
"I don't know. It's so mainstream to hate hipsters.",
"Here's an [interesting article](_URL_0_) that appeared in Adbusters a few years back. \n\nBut the short answer, as many others have pointed out, is that it's just a current trend to hate on, like emo, etc. ",
"Because it's cool",
"the fact that they think that they're better than everybody else. this applies to any stereotype which involves snobbery (hipsters, douchebags, frat boys etc.) ",
"I hate hipsters because I'm not cool enough to be one.",
"You know your classmate Bobby. Yeah the one who doesn't like Power Rangers Yugi-Oh, he likes reruns of My Little Pony. Well you know how kids make fun of him for liking something different from them. \n\nWell when Bobby grows up, and he's going to keep liking things you think are weird or \"goofy.\" And that's ok, but Bobby may be mad from all the years of being teased and picked on for what he likes, and now he picks on and teases others for what they like. \n\nYeah, I know, it's sort of fair that Bobby gets back at us. But the thing is, most of us grow up and realize that all that teasing and being mean because people don't like the same things is a silly way to act. And we get mad when people start doing it when they get older, because we expect them to have grown up too. \n\nBut Bobby's feelings are still hurt after all those years and he still wants to get back at all those \"mean\" kids, so some people hate Bobby for it, when what they should do is tell Bobby, that they're glad he likes his music so much and just ignore his attitude and eventually Bobby will grow up too.\n\nNow, you see why I give you a time out when you make fun of someone for liking something different.",
"I honestly haven't seen all that much hatred towards them. Humor and making fun of them? Yes. Overused meme? Yes. Hatred? Not so much.",
"Hipsters are bad, mkay? They're bad. Don't be a Hipster kids, cuz...they're bad.\n\n-Mr. Mackey",
"I'll re-post some copypasta that I found a while ago, don't know the original source, but it should be interesting in this thread:\n > “Hipster” is a term co-opted for use as a meaningless pejorative in order to vaguely call someone else’s authenticity into question and, by extension, claim authenticity for yourself. It serves no conversational function and imparts no information, save for indicating the opinions and preferences of the speaker. Meanwhile, a market myth has sprung up around the term, as well as a cultural bogeyman consisting of elusive white 20-somethings who wear certain clothes (but no one will agree on what), listen to certain music (no one can agree on this either), and act a certain way (you’ve probably sensed the pattern on your own). Suffice it to say, no one self-identifies as a hipster; the term is always applied to an Other, to separate the authentic Us from the inauthentic, “ironic” Them. You can’t define what “that kind of behavior or fashion or lifestyle” actually is, nor will you ever be able to. That’s because you don’t use “hipster” to describe an actual group of people, but to describe a fictional stereotype that is an outlet for literally anything that annoys you. The twist, of course, is that if it weren’t for your own insecurities, nothing that a “hipster” could do or wear would ever affect you emotionally. But you are insecure about your own authenticity - “Do I wear what I wear because I want to? Do I listen to my music because I truly like it? I’m certainly not like those filthy hipsters!” - so you project those feelings onto others.",
"I admit to being a hipster in my style, therefor I could not possibly be a hipster. Divide by zero.",
"Because the 'Hip-Hoppers' are getting old and dying out but they won't go down without a fight so they'll make fun of the new generation.",
"Pretentious\n\npre·ten·tious/priˈtenCHəs/\n\nAdjective:\t\nAttempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.",
"Because Reddit is a bunch of anti social losers who hate anything that makes them seem more out of sync with modern day culture or more dorkish then they are.",
"ITT: Closet hipsters trying to defend themselves.",
"You see, son, most Redditors are insecure. When someone is insecure, they attack everyone around them. They don't have the self confidence to lift themselves up, so they bring everyone down around them so that they can feel better about themselves. \n\nRight now, an easy way to do that is to call someone a hipster. The term's been around for about a century, but is popular again today. The insecure folks will say \"hipster\" like it's a bad word so that they can tear down the people around them. Everyone gets called a hipster if they are part of the same generation as most redditors. If they are well dressed, they are a hipster. If they look homeless, they are a hipster. If they have a smart phone, they are a hipster. If they are popular, they are a hipster. If they are into something obscure, and therefore not popular, they are a hipster. If they like jazz or classical, they are a hipster for liking something uncool. If they are into pop music, they are a hipster for liking something uncool. If they are into trendy music, they are a hipster for liking something cool.\n\nIt all comes back to the fact that this generation doesn't feel very good about themselves, and since they don't know how to fix that, they pull down the confidence of others.",
"I was questioning why everyone hated hipsters before it was cool",
"People don't hate hipsters, they hate arrogance.",
"I think the show [Portlandia on IFC](_URL_0_) covers it well enough.\n\nIt's okay to like nice things, unique things, or different things from everyone else, but acting like you're better than everyone else because you have found those \"unique little flower\" things before they find mainstream acceptance makes the \"hipster\" person intolerable.\n\nRather than pretentiously portray your (a hipster) experiences as what makes you special, go through a process of defining and promoting, rather than consuming and the \"hipster\" label is far less applicable.\n\nE.g. A person who made 'zines versus someone who simply reads them.",
"By my definition, a 'Hipster' is someone who likes something purely because it's cool. They subscribe to this ideal publicly (fashion, etc) rather than personally, giving the impression that they enjoy the counter culture image rather than the culture itself. Therefore, Hipsters are seen as fake and narcissist.\n\nReddit's definition of a hipster is purely on appearance. There is difference between a chillwave musician who dresses like a chillwave musician and a kid a school who used to like Rhianna who now dresses like a chillwave musician. \n\n\n",
"\"Hipsters\" are today's **fashion victims.**\n\nAnd \"fashion victims\" have always been disliked.\n\n*(note: by \"fashion\", I do not simply mean clothing, but whatever it is that is \"fashionable.\")*",
"because they're not them and neither are they",
"The term [hipster](_URL_0_) is about 70 years old. It was seemingly rather straightforward in its original definition. Now everybody attaches their own revised, modern definition to it and bickers about differing technicalities that they or someone else imposed on an existing word to disprove someone else.\n\n",
"For lots of reasons you've probably never heard of.",
"Because Emo's are gone...",
"[Here's a good idea why.](_URL_0_)",
"[This](_URL_0_) should give you an idea.",
"I don't \"hate\" them, I just have no respect for them. When I think of hipsters, the key element for me is they tend to judge the merit of anything based on what others think of it. So they don't even have to listen to a band to determine if they like it. If the right sort of people like it, it's good. If the wrong sort of people like it, it's not good. But they can never explain why something is good or bad in terms that I care about.",
"Insecurity.\n\nSecure people don't give a fuck what other people do with their lives.",
"Hipsters are hated for several reasons. They pride themselves on being innovative when, in fact, they are simply regurgitating past styles. They wear clothes that were in fashion decades ago, perhaps to show that they are so fashion daring that they will wear clothes their grandparents wore.\n\nWhile they may consider themselves new and fresh because of this, in fact they are doing exactly what their parents did. If you watch news footage or documentaries from the sixties and seventies. You will see people that dress and act exactly as they did. If you take the hipster of today and put them next to the beatnik of the 40s and 50s, as well as the burnouts of the 60s and 70s, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. \n\nThe same could be said of their music tastes- they are all rehashed folk or punk rock done badly. Don't tell that to hipsters though. It is *indie* to them. They have little or no knowledge of the people their favorite bands are influenced by. \n\nSince they pride themselves on innovation, but are unaware of the orgins of their own fashions, it makes them look foolish and no one respects them. \n\nFrom my own experience, I have known a number of hipsters that talk a big game but ultimately do nothing. They want to act concerned without putting in the effort. Many of them are interested in many causes but their involvement extends to talking about it on Facebook and that's it. Arty, creative people that they like to think of themselves as should be more involved in their community and world. The hipsters I have known are nothing but drug addicts and alcoholics. Alcoholism is rampant in the hipster community, despite their advanced educations. \n\nLastly, despite their need to be seen as different and wild, they all end up as married yuppies. Unfortunately, they don't move to the suburbs but stay in the cities and complain about their neighbors playing music too loud, though they were guilty of that exact thing just a few short years ago. \n\n",
"I'm going to explain how I and people I know use it. \n\nImagine you have a passion for rock climbing, and you move to a new area that doesn't seem to have a lot of enthusiasts like yourself. Now you still go rock climbing whenever you can but it kinda sucks that you go by yourself.\n\nImagine one day you spot someone else sporting rock climbing gear and you get excited and approach them, you strike up a conversation and it *appears* they go rock climbing but the more you talk to them the more you realize they've never gone and just find it interesting; but you don't give up hope!\n\nYou convince them to go rock climbing with you and the day arrives, the two of you hop in a car and you go rock climbing, within minutes your new rock climbing buddy is struggling and quickly gives up telling you this is much harder then they thought and are going to go do something else; literally leaving you hanging.\n\nNow take this encounter and repeat it a few times in other hobbies and you'll start to see a pattern, people take a passing interest in something and that's about as far as it ever goes. Perhaps you go to a big rock climbing meetup and find that a good chunk of the attendees are like this causing the meetup to be failure as none of them *really* want to go climbing with you.\n\n**tl;dr** hipster interests are skin deep.",
"I hated hipsters before it was cool...\n\nWait... DAMNIT",
"The hipster mentality (as defined by most) is to favor something not for its intrinsic value but for image it confers upon a person. They're hypocrites because they follow trends as closely as the \"mainstream\" people, as well as claim to eschew conformity when they clearly practice it.",
"Because they're arrogant",
"The way I explain it: hipsters are not people that listen to indie, buy macs, drink coffee, etc. All kinds of people do that.\n\n**Hipsters are people who do things, and then look down on other people because they do not do those things.**",
"because you act like you know. but you don't know shit",
"It's the same thing as hating emos or scene people. In fact, many people who were previously 'emo' are now hipsters based on how they dress themselves and act. They're really neither. What they are is a sheep.\n\nSpecifics aside, it all boils down to one thing: sheeple (sheep people).\n\nFor me at least, it's about hating people who shift and alter themselves entirely to whatever is trendy while maintaining no sense of individuality. That is what most hipsters of today are. The fact that the hivemind is leeching off of that type of style and personality currently means nothing as that will always change. 'Hipster', 'emo', 'scene', 'punk' or even 'beatnik'. It all means the same thing. People with no identities trying to stand out by conforming.\n\nIt's the product of a society conditioned to avoid free thought and personal identity and it's a dying mentality as more people develop their sense of individuality and break free from the social machine.",
"I happen to live in the Mission district of SF. Probably one of the most \"hipsterfied\" places in America.. just like Williamsburg, NYC or Silverlake in LA. \n\nThere is a huge difference between the hipsters and people who just like cool stuff. Pretentious people come from all types of life and that's really what \"everyone\" is hating on.",
"So when you are 5 and some kid in your grade gets a bike, and is like CHECK OUT MY BIKE NOONE ELSE HAS ONE, but right down the road someone else has that bike. In fact millions of people have the bike, but all the kids who have it, think they are special. Thats why people hate fucking hipsters.",
"I don't know the difference between a hippy and a hipster but i do know i like watching them both get beat up. -Norm Mcdonald",
"Because they *insist* upon themselves.",
"There's no such thing as hipsters. Just ask anyone who is one.",
"I used to hate hipsters back when no one really knew what they were, but then everyone started hating them and I pretty much lost all interest.",
"I can never speak for anyone but myself obviously, but I personally dislike them because of the impression I've gotten from them. Follow my train of thought here:\n\nHipster - > Did things 'before it was cool' - > Boasting about it - > Trying to overprove you and do things better then you - > Like someone else said, snobby attitude. \n\nI hate people that try to intentionally prove to me that they are better overall, and I assume I'm not the only one about that. Sometimes it's just better to be happy for someone, even though you've got it better. ",
"Any ignorant, pretentious, closed-minded, or condescending, etc. person annoys me.",
"I think they are seen as pretentious, which no one likes ",
"I think they're real. I came back to my college after graduation and found my college overrun by what used to be a smaller crowd. They really do wear the big frame glasses, listen to obscure music, and have a pseudo intellectual tone to everything they say: \"the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a fascinating example of lah blah blah.\"\n\nI really don't mind the style, but the pseudo intellectualism is what grates everyone. You're a 20 something year old kid. You don't know shit about shit, and not knowing that makes you dumber than the rest of us. I had heard al these opinions when I was in college, but they were said with the understanding that we only understood a tiny fraction of what was going on. And that any claims made about society or culture were largely unfalsifiable and thus meaningless bullshit. \n\nBack in my day, we just called them pussies. "
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41bed9 | why do analysts claim the stock market is tanking because of the glut of oil? (more in comment) | I'll admit my macroeconomics class was back in the early 70's. I enjoyed it a lot, and it has been useful in understanding any number of economics ups-and-downs over the years. But I'm having trouble seeing the causality between *cheap oil* - > *stock market drop*, as claimed by so many "knowledgeable" market pundits.
It seems to me that far more companies / consumers *benefit* from cheap oil than are "somehow" injured by it. I'm sure that the Dow 30 Industrials is heavily weighted by Big Oil, but the other indices are also falling.
Explain to me the cause and effect; help me connect the dots.
Note: I personally think that fear of China goings Tits Up, or of the Middle East getting into some sort of 6-way religious clusterfuck is driving the market down, rather than anything so simplistic as oil overproduction. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41bed9/eli5_why_do_analysts_claim_the_stock_market_is/ | {
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"China has been the price setting buyer of oil for more than a decade, so the price of oil dropping is seen as the best predictor of how rapidly or severely China is going tits up. ",
"Lower oil prices are good for most American companies, and therefore good for the stock market. They mean lower energy and shipping costs for companies, and put more money in American consumers' pockets to buy more stuff. The main exceptions are companies involved in the energy industry somehow, or that depend on consumers in a part of the country that is highly dependent on that industry (e.g. Texas, Oklahoma, Alaska). Those companies and regions will do badly with lower oil prices even if most companies and most of the US population are doing better. But overall, American stock market does generally rise as oil falls.\n\nHowever, oil is a truly global market, and the US is only one part of it. When world oil prices get too low, that's considered an ominous sign of a global slowdown. There wouldn't be so much oil on the market at such a low price if there weren't serious problems in China, Brazil, Russia, and other countries. If those countries' economies were doing well, they would be consuming a lot of oil at this low price, but they aren't. So the fact that low oil prices benefit American companies doesn't outweigh the fact that the global oil glut is a sign of major economic problems across the world, and that is more of a negative for investors than the low oil prices' effect on the US companies and consumers are a positive."
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1mc25h | can police pursue you beyond their jurisdiction? city lines, county lines or state lines....any difference? | Out of curiosity, I live on a lake that is divided by a county line - and both Sheriff Depts occasionally patrol the waters...if they see me doing something wrong across that county line, can they cross over to pursue me? If they chase me into a new county (Dukes of Hazzard style!)..what then? I don't plan on being in this situation, was just curious as to what the answer was. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mc25h/can_police_pursue_you_beyond_their_jurisdiction/ | {
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"Police from one jurisdiction do have the legal authority to follow you into another jurisdiction. However, this is relatively uncommon, since they typically would have alerted that jurisdiction when approaching the boundary and that jurisdiction would have their own police waiting. Also, just because they CAN pursue, doesn't mean they WILL, depending on the situation.\n\nThe only time this doesn't apply is borders between countries, e.g. the USA-Mexico border. In this case, the police cannot follow you but, again, will typically have the other jurisdiction's police waiting for you anyway.",
"Historically, no, the cops from county A (or state, or nation) have no particular authority in county B. So if they're chasing someone, they'd either have to hand off the chase to county B's cops, or stop at the border. Hence Dukes-of-Hazzard shenanigans.\n\nHowever, there is a legal [doctrine of hot pursuit](_URL_0_), which lets police chase people into places they wouldn't be able to go if they weren't already chasing someone (across a border, into a private house, etc). It doesn't apply to all crimes (eg. it might have to be a felony), the pursuit usually has to be continuous, etc., but the doctrine is there.\n\nIn your case, IANAL but I suspect that if they see you doing something wrong *on their side* of the lake and start to pursue you, they can follow you across the boundary. But if they're looking across the lake and see you doing something, but you're doing it outside their jurisdiction, they don't have authority. They might call the other county's boats, of course, or the two departments might have some legal agreement about cooperating policing the lake, or the local courts might be in the habit of ignoring such legalities…"
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az5pey | how much money do jewelers make knowing they have to stock their entire store with gold and diamonds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/az5pey/eli5_how_much_money_do_jewelers_make_knowing_they/ | {
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"The rule in the jewelry business is \"triple key\", meaning if the wholesale price is $1000 the jeweler will usually start the price at $3000. This helps deal with the extra costs of running a jewelry store, which are quite high. This may sound like a large markup, but consider most retail markups are 5x or higher compared to wholesale.\n\nAs opposed to what another commenter said, most jewelry on display will be considered \"memo\" merchandise, meaning it is not owned by the shop but by a wholesaler, it is being held by the shop until it sells or the memo expires. When sold, the jeweler pays the wholesaler for the merchandise and keeps the difference.\n\nSource: nearly 10 years in the business"
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29q4a6 | do we really need to spend 8 hours a day for sleep? can we found a way to not sleep and still be healthy? | Is it possible to have a pill or a machine that will decrease the amount of speed to 1 hr or no sleep at all? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29q4a6/eli5do_we_really_need_to_spend_8_hours_a_day_for/ | {
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"You don't really need 8 hours of sleep. There are ways to get the rest you need, but to sleep less. You can read about it in this article:\n\n[Alternate Sleep Cycles](_URL_0_)",
"When you are awake you brain creates trash to operate. This trash needs to get cleaned up and can only be removed during sleep. The brain cells open up and brain fluid washes the trash away.\n\nWhen you don´t sleep at all you brain will fill up with junk until it cant operate anymore. \n\nSome would say when you dont think much you dont need to sleep much. :)\n\n",
"In actuality humans really only need something around 2 hours of sleep. But that's REM sleep- the restful, restorative part. In a typical individual, the sleep stage moves in cycles- oscillating between less deep NREM sleep and the deep, restful REM stages.\n\nI have heard of instances where through brain training and hypnosis some individual's have been able to get to the point where upon going to sleep, they immediately reach the REM state and stay there. Then they only require a few hours as it is all REM stage sleep.",
" > Is it possible to have a pill or a machine that will decrease the amount of speed to 1 hr or no sleep at all?\n\nThere's tons of drugs that'll keep you awake and alert. Adderall, speed, cocaine. Doubt you'll be thinking too clearly after a while though. I have bipolar disorder and one of the symptoms is insomnia. I made it four days straight without sleep, and I started having hallucinations and was literally falling asleep while I was walking down the sidewalk. The human brain isn't designed to go without sleep.",
"I sleep about 3/4 hours a night. I can go 2 or 3 days without sleep and still feel fine and healthy. it varies for each person."
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73uuvs | why does drip coffee make me much more jittery than espresso, even when using the same amount of coffee beans for each? | For the exact numbers:
Espresso: 18g beans -- > ~2oz
Drip: 18g beans -- > ~10oz | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73uuvs/eli5_why_does_drip_coffee_make_me_much_more/ | {
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"Espresso is extracted fast so not as much caffeine gets transferred to coffee from the bean",
"Caffeine is water soluble, in general the more water and the longer it stays in contact with the ground beans the more caffeine is extracted from the beans. BTW, French press has something like 3x the caffeine of regular coffee owing to the long time the beans are left in contact with the water.",
"Espresso actually has less caffeine than drip coffee, because the water is in contact with the beans for less time and doesn't absorb as fast.\n\nFor reference, a 12-oz cup of drip coffee usually has between about 150-250 mg of caffeine, depending on roast and type. A single shot of espresso (which is how much most coffee places will put in a 12-oz) is usually around 70-90 mg. So the amount of beans isn't the deciding factor - the type of brew is."
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2v30hd | can you develop diabetes from just drinking a lot of alcohol (separate from eating loads of sweets)? | From what I know, alcohol breaks down into sugars, but I dont hear of many alcoholics getting diabetes. Mostly just cirrhosis. Does that just tend to manifest first? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2v30hd/eli5_can_you_develop_diabetes_from_just_drinking/ | {
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" > I dont hear of many alcoholics getting diabetes\n\nIt's a pretty widely recognized link - heavy drinking can lead to diabetes. I can't speculate why you haven't heard about it.",
"Im an alcoholic... amd was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in october... tho i..sure it has to do with eating horribly amd drinking like a fish",
"I am a dietitian and work in a county hospital of a large city- So first off, eating a ton of sweets is not going to cause diabetes. \n\nType 1 diabetes is caused by a lack of insulin- your pancreas stops making it. You have to take insulin or else you'll die. \nType 2 diabetes is caused when your body becomes resistant to the insulin you make. So your pancreas still works, just your cells can't use the insulin you are making. A lot of time these patients can control their blood sugar with diet, exercise, and oral medication. However, sometimes these patients eventually require insulin as well. \n\nSeveral things can cause insulin resistance including: obesity, stress, inactivity, pregnancy, illness, steroid use, and metabolic syndrome (high blood pressure, high triglycerides, high cholesterol, abdominal obesity). \n\nOne consequence of excessive alcohol consumption is high triglycerides. Typically, people with chronic high alcohol intake don't have the best diets and tend to be overweight/obese and don't exercise regularly. They have a lot of risk factors for developing type two diabetes. So I see a lot of alcoholic patients that have diabetes, but I think the main concern in the damage it does to your liver."
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6jugpl | why do we have to "wait" for our eyes to adjust? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jugpl/eli5_why_do_we_have_to_wait_for_our_eyes_to_adjust/ | {
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"Eyes adjust by deforming the [lens](_URL_0_) in your eyes. The shape of a lens change the path of the light that goes through it. By changing the shape our eyes makes so that the light has a path that makes the image of what you are seeing form exactly on the back of you eye, thus making it good (otherwise it would be blurry).\n\nWhy do we have to wait? There literally are muscles to deform the lens, so you have to wait for then to move and then to adjust, based on what your brain tells them. In the same way as when you want to raise your arm you have to wait for your muscles to actually raise it.",
"Im going to try and explain this from a system engineers perspective.\n\nLets say you are in a dark room and the light turns on suddenly. Your eyes adjust. What actually happens though? Light from the bulb hits sensors in your eyes that convert the light signal into a voltage; then that voltage travels through your nerves to your brain.\n\nOnce your brain hears this signal indicating a lot of light, it determines that your eyes need to adjust. It sends a voltage signal through your nerves to your eye muscles to contract your pupil; and it takes time for your muscles to tense up and for your pupil to actually adjust. The pupil can't move very fast, and I would venture to guess that most of the time is spent actually moving the pupil.\n\nBasically, every little step in the process takes time. Not sure if this is at all what you are looking for, but there it is."
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3utm3d | why do certain things smell nice, even when they're not edible? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3utm3d/eli5_why_do_certain_things_smell_nice_even_when/ | {
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"text": [
"Like jet fuel or 100LL? I love those smells."
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||
28xebn | what would happen if charging interest on loans were to be made illegal? | How would it affect economies and distribution of wealth? Would it be different if it happened:
In a small country?
In an economic superpower such as the US?
Worldwide? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28xebn/eli5_what_would_happen_if_charging_interest_on/ | {
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"If a lender could not charge interest on a loan, they would have no incentive to ever give out loans because they would be essentially throwing away their money. Even though they would get back the exact amount they lent out, the present value of it in a few years would most likely be less than it was when it was first lent out due to inflation. Basically, lenders would stop lending.",
"Then there would be no motive for people to lend out their money. They'd only lend money to family and friends. \n\nPeople who don't have wealthy relatives or friends would be shit out of luck. The distribution of wealth would get dramatically worse because poor people would lack the ability to start businesses, go to college, or buy houses. We'd basically be reverting back to feudal-era wealth distribution. ",
"You could look at Islamic banking, as Sharia Law forbids usury. Islamic banks get around this pretty easily though.\n\nAt a bank in the western world, if you want a loan to buy a house, the bank gives you the amount of money needed to buy the house and you keep paying the bank interest on the outstanding amount you owe them until you pay the bank off.\n\nOne example of an approach Islamic banks will take to get around not being able to charge interest is to buy the house, then sell it to you for more than they bought it. You pay the above market sale price back to the bank in installments. So, technically, no interest. And the bank literally owns your house until you repay them all of the sale price.\n\nThere are other more complicated ways around not being able to explicitly charge intrerest as well. In any case, even Islamic banks don't just lend money without turning a profit."
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56tcjx | how do dry cleaners avoid spreading lice and bed bugs? | Considering how insidious they are, dry cleaners must get clothes infested with them pretty often. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/56tcjx/eli5_how_do_dry_cleaners_avoid_spreading_lice_and/ | {
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"Dry cleaners use perchloroethylene to clean your clothes, it's a pretty aggressively anti-bug chemical. Now those new \"environmental cleaners\" might be a problem. Similarly, they launder shirts and dry them at super high temperatures (because it's faster) and bugs can't stand those temps.\n\nThis is not excuse not to tell them that you're having things cleaned because of an infestation, there are people working there. However, if you tell them they can handle it."
]
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2o87h1 | what makes someone professionally good at fishing? | I assume that there are rankings in professional fishing. What qualities makes one person consistently better than another? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2o87h1/elif_what_makes_someone_professionally_good_at/ | {
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"Probably experience and perception. I'm sure a good fisherman can tell where the fish will likely be in the lake, or how deep to go to get certain fish and what patterns they follow",
"A big portion of professional fishing is simply dedicating plenty of time to the sport and attending events. Nobody can make the fish bite and pros will be unlucky somedays. Statistically attending several events a month will earn you a few big wins over the season.\n\nFishing is also a very political sport involving who you know in the upper-divisions and having the money to cover airfare and other expenses (rental fees, licensing, equipment, etc.) Fishing is a sport where once you've \"made it\" you are pretty set in the sport. Often times this includes sponsorships to cover every type of equipment you can imagine and waived entry fees from past qualifications/notoriety. \n\nThis sport also has the benefit of being low-injury so aged players in the industry still remain competitive."
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74eczr | how do certain drugs cause you to see things in high detail that aren't actually there? | It's mindboggling to me. In one of my experiences, I saw little green dots covering one of my walls. I could walk up and touch each one and they never moved. It was as if I painted them there and could only see them under the influence. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74eczr/eli5_how_do_certain_drugs_cause_you_to_see_things/ | {
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"_URL_0_\n\nHallucinogens work by shutting down neurons that have the effect of calming other cells in the visual cortex (the bit of the brain that works out what you are seeing). So these cells start firing as if they are really dealing with real visual information. \n\nHuman eyes are actually not that great and the brain has to do A LOT to make the partial information from the eye into a proper picture. Mess that with slightly and not only does weird stuff visual stuff happen, the brain acts as though it's all real."
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97kp02 | why is it in the west hiv infections are still primarily related with homosexual activity and drug use but in africa where the vast majority of worldwide cases is it primarily spread through heterosexual transmission? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/97kp02/eli5why_is_it_in_the_west_hiv_infections_are/ | {
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"\nBetter access to contraceptives in the West. Less contraceptives are used in homosexual activities because no risk of pregnancy, drug use because sharing needles. ",
"Intravenous drug users and people who have anal sex are at the most risk for being infected with HIV, but with enough time, it can spread to even people who are at low-risk for infection. The HIV virus originated in Central Africa, most likely making the transition from monkeys to humans via the consumption of bushmeat some time around the turn of the 20th century. It has had more than a century to spread across Africa, whereas the first known cases *outside* of Africa occurred in the 1960s. After it's reached a critical mass of people, it spreads very easily through mother-to-child transmission and heterosexual sex transmission.\n\nOutside of Africa, it has mostly only affected those who are the highest risk. Inside of Africa, it has had enough time to affect almost everyone. ",
"Drug use is actually the far minority - less than 10% of new HIV cases.\n\nIt is true that more than 2/3 of new HIV cases are in homosexual/bisexual men in the west - this is due to a couple of factors:\n\n1) Anal sex is one of the most reliable ways to transmit the virus due to the physiological makeup of the involved tissue. This is non-gender specific, but male homosexuals generally have more anal sex than heterosexual couples. \n\n\n2) Stigma - gay men are more likely to avoid getting tested for HIV to avoid the stigma associated with it, which makes it a self-reinforcing problem.\n\n\n3) Condom use is far more common in the west, which reduces transfer of the virus. Condoms are often used by heterosexual couples to prevent pregnancy, which also reduces the rate of HIV infection. \n\n\n4) Condoms are LESS common in under-developed countries, so heterosexual sex more frequently spreads the virus. Generally speaking as well, even in western countries - those demographics that are generally economically disadvantaged (and thus less likely to be able to reasonably afford condoms) have higher rates of heterosexual HIV transmission.",
"So, what's not commonly discussed in relation to HIV is that it's actually pretty hard to transmit. Through straight vaginal sex, it's something like a 1 in 1,250 for the women to catch it from the man, and 1 in 2,500 for the man to catch it from the women. Assuming that no condom is used and the man ejaculates inside the women. \n\nHowever, that's not the case with anal sex, where the chances are around 1 in 70 for the \"bottom\" and 1 in 170 for the \"top\". Again, assuming they ejaculate inside.\n\nAnother thing to consider is that the overall immune response of the body. In lower-income countries, they don't have the immune resistance that higher income countries do. Immune systems might be lowered because of other infections in the body or because of poor nutrition or just general poorer health.\n\nSo the rate for a man/women infection in a lower income country is actually much higher, at 1:160 and 1:260 respectively (depending on the direction or transmission, with men having better odds).\n\nI got those numbers from here: _URL_0_\n\nNow, don't go running around having sex without a condom because the odds are not that bad. Human brains are REALLY bad at thinking about the odds of something happening to us. The way statistics feel vs the reality of the situation is often mishandled by the human brain. So just use a condom."
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3kglel | how can median household incomes in an area be ~$50k but average home price be $5m? | Namely, Southampton: _URL_0_
How does this work?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kglel/eli5_how_can_median_household_incomes_in_an_area/ | {
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"If you read that page, you will see that the $5M home price was for a specific *part* of that area, and the average income was for the city.\n\nSo, basically, that area is a very upscale part of town that also has other, less affluent neighborhoods.",
"I was raised in the Southampton area. I can say that a large part of it has to do with people summering in the area. Most wealthy people who live in the Hamptons only visit on the weekends and summertime and live in New York City the rest of the year. Those who live there often struggle to get by and live in smaller, more modest homes making a normal salary. Business owners also generally make all their money in July and August and the wealthy are spending a ton at local establishments. \n\nAnd as another poster mentioned, Sagaponack is a small part of Southampton town near the ocean that has one of the most expensive houses in the country, [see it here](_URL_0_). So the average of the entire town is much lover than the 5 million number, but there is still a big difference for the reasons previously stated. "
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6apbpc | what is the difference between being depressed and being bored? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6apbpc/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_being/ | {
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"Depression is a sort of relentless apathy. If you're just bored you can dispel the boredom through some form of entertainment easily enough. It's not a constant base state of your existence. Depression on the other hand saps away pleasure as well, leaving just emotional numbness. "
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2ing8z | why do people still use yelp, even though they manipulate reviews? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ing8z/eli5_why_do_people_still_use_yelp_even_though/ | {
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"This post is not asking for a layman-friendly explanation to something complicated or technical, so it doesn't belong here and it's been removed. Entirely subjective questions generally belong in /r/askreddit."
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1lqpka | what makes oil, natural gas, and coal sources of energy when other materials aren't? | We pump barrels of thick black oil out of the ground and eventually this turns into electricity and heat in my house. How does that happen? What makes oil, natural gas, and coal such great sources of energy when other things that come from the Earth are not? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lqpka/eli5_what_makes_oil_natural_gas_and_coal_sources/ | {
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"Hundreds of millions of years ago, because our atmosphere had less oxygen in it, things did not break down as quickly as they do now. You see, nowadays, pretty much anything that is 'organic' is food for something or another. The coal, oils, and gases is the result of all this past uneaten \"food\" being collected and trapped underground where nothing could eat (nothing could utilize its energy); the type of fuel it becomes is heavily dependent on the storage circumstance.\n\n\nNow, why do these things have energy, while rock doesn't? It comes primarily from how we harvest electricity. The most conventional methods include heating up water, which turns into steam, which rotates a turbine, and that creates electricity (it's the spinning motion of the turbine that creates energy). The fuel that we collect primarily goes into heating this water. The reason coal, gas, and oil are used is because they can be used in what is known as a combustion reaction. This is similar to the type of reaction in our bodies when we eat that gives us energy. Notice how these power plants release carbon dioxide (CO2) just like us!? Anyway, this reaction release a lot of heat to boil the water.\n\n\nThis isn't to say 'rocks' cannot be utilized for electricity, however. While a lot of hard rocks like granite are stable, and rarely involve themselves in chemical reactions, some (for instance, uranium in nuclear power plants) still react and can release quite a bit of energy.\n\n\nELI3: Those things are food that weren't eaten millions of years ago. We're digging them up and using them for energy to generate electricity. "
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4ngsv7 | when people read text, do they "hear" it in their minds? | I've been telling a certain joke to people. When I tell it verbally, everybody gets it and laughs. but when I text or msg it to them, only half of the people get it. It relies on a verbal /audio pun.
Q: What do Australian astronauts eat when on a mission?
A: Spice rice!
This makes me think that when people read text, some people process it audio-like and some don't. Is there a basis in science for this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ngsv7/eli5_when_people_read_text_do_they_hear_it_in/ | {
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"Yes. It's called [subvocalization](_URL_0_). Some people \"hear\" words as they are reading them, while others don't. I know I am a subvocalizer because if I try to listen to music with words and read a book at the same time, I can't understand what I'm reading because I'm \"hearing\" two things at once.",
"In this case in particular, it would have to do with accents and word play.\n\nAlthough I do sound out the words in my head as you described, I ***don't*** put accents on it. I use my own (which is a East Coast type) so the joke makes no sense to me. I am also terrible at accents, so I wouldn't know what was trying to be said."
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20tjku | the nonsense behind the hip-hop illuminati conspiracy theory | While I don't doubt for a second that several powerful people gather to make global decisions, I can't imagine what benefit a secret organization would have from leaving clues to their existence in art, especially hip-hop. Well there's a simple answer that it is to brainwash the masses, I don't understand what exactly an all-seeing eye triangle is really suppose to mean if flashed at me in a music video or rumored hand gesture made on stage on a concert. It seems more like creating awareness than brainwashing to me which would be the opposite of what they would want in my eyes. So my question is how did this whole ridiculous thing get started and why do people continue to believe in such a far-fetched idea? Or am I missing some bigger connecting piece? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20tjku/eli5_the_nonsense_behind_the_hiphop_illuminati/ | {
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"In a nutshell rappers keep mentioning it to make them seem more important than they are. I'm a huge Hip Hop fan, and you can see a lot of rappers are desperate for people to think they are successful (see: huge gaudy chains etc). When you see these images in videos, it's often rappers trying to show they are so powerful, they are in the illuminati. Then people keep talking about it so it never goes away.\n\nKid Cudi actually did a video like this for a joke and the comments were still as ridiculous"
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28i8w2 | why does cat food and dog food smell repulsive while the meat i eat smells delicious. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28i8w2/eli5why_does_cat_food_and_dog_food_smell/ | {
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"Because dog and cat food consists primarily of ground corn and other fillers which are formed into kibble, baked, and then sprayed with fat to make it palatable. Unless you're talking about canned food, which usually consists of water, fillers, and offcuts. There's no comparison between a handful of kibble or a can of dog food and your steak.",
"Because yours is cooked.\n\nSeriously, a can of unheated chili smells a *lot* like a can of dog food.",
"Speak for yourself, I love the smell of the soft, canned cat treats! But 10 year old me found out that I do not enjoy the taste of soft, canned cat treats. ",
"I actually love the smell of dog food...\n"
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8n0k2o | how do scopes work? (firearms) | Might should like a stupid question but I guess that’s partly what this subreddit is for. How do scopes accurately portray where the gun is targeting despite being situated above the barrel?
Edit : Thank you for all your responses! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8n0k2o/eli5_how_do_scopes_work_firearms/ | {
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"The scopes reticle/crosshairs arnt parrell with the barrel, it aim downwards slightly and meet the travel of the bullet at certain distances. So if you zero your scope for 200 meters. The bullet will travel lower than the point your aiming at untill it hits 200 meters, then it will travel higher untill it drops back below. Here's an image of this._URL_0_",
"The focus point can be adjusted on a scope depending upon the distance that you are attempting to shoot, so that the line from the scope and the line from the barrel crosses at the target.",
"[Copied from another post about this](_URL_1_)\n\nThe scope is set to only be precise at a set distance. You have to adjust it for different distances or expect the misalignment.\n\n[Another, but basically the same picture ](_URL_0_)",
"You don't just slap a scope on top and call it good. Scopes need to be calibrated, called \"zeroing\", making them point slightly downward for how far away you're shooting.",
"Short answer: They don't.\n\nSlightly longer answer: Scopes are \"zeroed\" to particular ranges. This means that the scope is angled slightly down so that when the reticule (The image inside the scope) is pointed at a target a particular range the firearm will be angled upwards just enough to arc the bullet the correct range. \n\nThis is why in some scopes you see multiple horizontal lines, each of those lines is zeroed to a particular range so a shooter just needs to align the appropriate line with the appropriate range and the shot should be angled correctly for that range.\n\nHave a look at zeroing on bow sights, because of the lower projectile speed the sight needs to be more dramatically angled so it is a bit easier to understand, with guns the adjustments are quite small so it's hard to see.",
"The bullet drops while in flight, you align the scope to point slightly downward so it intersects the bullet's path at a given distance. That means the scope is going to be inaccurate at all other distances.\n\nAlso, for most purposes, the inch or two between the scope and the barrel is going to be much less of a factor than the shooter's steadiness and skill. Unless you are a competitive target shooter, getting the bullet within 2 inches of the spot you are aiming for from 100 yards away is going to get the job done.",
"The sights are not parallels to the barrel because the bullet don't fly in a straight line but drops because of gravity. So the barrel point a bit up.\n\nIt looks a bit like [this](_URL_0_)\n\nSo you have to zero the sights at a distance. So rotate the optics or move the reticle so it intersects with the path of the bullet at that distance.\n\nSo for longer distances you have to set the range and change the sights so the barrel point more and more up to hit the target. \n\nIf you fire at a targer closer then the set distance the bullet will be below in the beginning and above the sight for most of the distance. But for a rifle at distances of 100-200 yards the difference is not that high so you will hit the target if it is closer to you. a 5.56 round have a path that is 1 inch from flat and 150 yards. So a sight set to 100 or 200 yards will result in a hit at closer distance\n\nAt longer distances you might start to miss it and have to set the sight as a the same bullet at 500 m start to drop closer to 30 inches at that distance.\n\nSo the offset of the sight is not a problem. That is except for the just after the barrel. If you lay on the ground it is possible that there is a rock in front of the barrel that is not visible in the sights but it is easy to see if you look outside the optics.\n\n\n\nIt is more of a problem if the distance between the sight and barrel is large like in a tank. If you have a hull down position and hide behind a hill and expose as little as possible you have to make sure that the barrel is above the hill to. Early US M4 tanks in WWII only had a sight on the roof so it was hard to determine if they was blocked by the ground so a sight behind the barrel was added in part for the reson to make sure the barrel is clear from the ground."
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1x6b5x | how come you can "spot increase" muscle (by doing isolation movements) but you can't "spot decrease" fat? | As per title. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x6b5x/eli5_how_come_you_can_spot_increase_muscle_by/ | {
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"As your question implies, if a muscle is isolated then that is the one that will grow. There is no analogous way to isolate fat for consumption. Fat loss occurs throughout the body at equal rates.",
"Different control mechanisms, basically. Muscles respond to a local signal from the nerves, while fat cells respond to global signals found as chemicals in the blood. That allows muscles to work independently of one another but fat cells tend to all take up or release fat together. ",
"When you're doing isolation movements, you need that specific muscle in that specific part of your body to do the work. No other muscle will do. When you burn more calories than you eat, either through diet or exercise, those calories can come from any fat cell. They all provide the same amount of energy.\n\nPerhaps you're asking, though, why our bodies don't build up muscle all over when we do isolation exercises? Muscle takes a lot of energy to grow. Energy that our bodies could have been using for other things, like reproduction. There's evolutionary advantage in not building muscle until you need it, and then not building muscles larger than you will use, in the places you will use them.\n\nThere is no evolutionary advantage in only building fat in specific places. You need the energy in the fat, but it's placement isn't important to that. Fat cells in your face and your butt provide the same amount of energy. In fact, I suspect that fat distribution is optimized for a different task: locomotion. I don't have any scientific literature to support this, and it's just a hypothesis on my part, but I think fat is distributed in such a way as to keep people moving efficiently. People can have a huge variety in body shapes, from almost no body fat on the low end to having as much fat as other body tissues combined, and they can still move around pretty well. No one has all their fat concentrated at their legs or at their head, it's all pretty evenly distributed, and people can still move around pretty well, minus a bunch of other health consequences. That's what it seems fat is optimized for, and if you could spot remove fat, you'd be likely to make yourself unbalanced in various ways.",
"When you're lifting something from the table to your face, the only muscles used are the biceps in your arms. Muscles grow when they are stimulated by a workout. In this case, you are only stimulating the biceps. All the other muscles are idle and are not getting any stimulation. It's only the biceps that grow.\n\nWhen you run or cycle for hours and hours, and you're low on energy, your body sends signals to the fat-storing cells to release the stuff they have in storage. The signals are chemical in nature, and via the bloodstream they go to your whole body. Fat all over your body is decreased."
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85ktca | why are some plates and cutlery not dishwasher safe? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/85ktca/eli5_why_are_some_plates_and_cutlery_not/ | {
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"Pots and pans are usually excluded because they are made of materials that react with the harsher chemicals used in a dishwasher (Just like a human hand would be damaged). As a result, they will be damaged.\n\nOther things, like some glassware, are so fine that rattling in the dishwasher is enough to make them bump against something and crack and break.\n\nKnives will rattle against their rack and dull themselves out from repeated blunt impact to the side."
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1srpqh | after giving blood, is it harder to gain and/or maintain an erection? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1srpqh/eli5_after_giving_blood_is_it_harder_to_gain/ | {
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"No, our bodies very quickly compensate to keep blood pressure the same despite a loss of volume. One way is to just increase the fluid content of the blood, thinning it out until more blood cells can be made. Another is to constrict the blood vessels, decreasing the total volume of the circulatory system.\n\nBut ultimately gaining an erection is performed by your body restricting the flow of blood out of the penis's tissue. That works pretty well if you have a strong heart regardless of a slight blood pressure drop."
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2o8jk8 | why am i "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law", but only found "not guilty" and not "innocent"? | Presumption of Innocence is "a principle that requires the government to prove the guilt of a criminal defendant and relieves the defendant of any burden to prove his or her innocence." So by definition, I am relieved of any burden to prove my innocence...not my 'not guilty-ness'.
**EDIT**: Not sure what all the down-votes are for; I thought my arguments were reasonably stated. In any case, thanks to everyone who contributed something positive to the conversation. It was a fun discussion! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2o8jk8/eli5_why_am_i_innocent_until_proven_guilty_in_a/ | {
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"You (and your lawyer) are under no obligation to prove your innocence, nor your \"not-guilty mess.\" The onus (burden) is on the prosecution to prove that you are guilty, and your job is to refute their accusations and show, if possible, that they can't be true.\n\nThat's what presumption of innocence means. If nobody shows that you're guilty, then there's no reason to believe guilt; you're \"not guilty.\" The prosecution has to prove you are guilty well enough that you can't poke holes in their accusations, otherwise we default to our presumption.",
"To add to what others have said already - if we find you \"not guilty\", we *treat* you as if you're innocent. That's what the phrase \"innocent until proven guilty\" means.\n\nThat doesn't mean you *are* innocent, and we'd never *say* you're innocent, because you haven't proven that, nor is there any requirement for you to prove it.",
"You aren't innocent, you are *presumed innocent\", mean the burden is to prove your guilt.\n\nIf the prosecution fails to do this, they didn't find you guilty. They didn't find you innocent, because you were already presumed innocent, and because the proceedings didn't prove your were innocent, just that there was insufficient evidence to prove your guilt.",
"You aren't taken to court because you are not innocent. You're in court because you are accused of being guilty. The court sees that you are being accused, and places the burden of proof on the accuser.\n\nThe accuser shows the court why he/she/it thinks you are guilty, and the court makes the decision whether or not you are guilty based on his proof.\n\nBeing told to show up in court is not being treated as guilty, it is simply where the accuser shows his proof, and you show why he is wrong."
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63hdi6 | growing up my mother always told me to never start a pot of boiling water from hot tap water only cold. what's the logic behind that if any? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63hdi6/eli5_growing_up_my_mother_always_told_me_to_never/ | {
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"In the past, hot water was stored in a separate holding tank where it was kept heated. This water was not necessarily \"safe\" for drinking as the same water could be sitting for days at a time. \n\nI've also heard that old lead pipes leach lead into hot water, but not into cold water. This explains why hot water would be fine for bathing, laundry, etc., but not for consumption. Can anyone verify this? \n\nIt's safe now (unless you live in a very old house), but in the past people had to be careful of these things. ",
"The logic is hot water is more likely to have lead from your pipes (back when people thought your water pipes contain lead). Since the water is hot, it would be more likely to have a little bit of lead that came off the pipes due to the heat of the water. \n\nToday, plumbing pipes can't legally contain lead but the logic still remains that in case the hot water is hot enough to attract pieces of your pipes in it then cold water is a safer bet, but overall isn't an issue nowadays AFAIK.",
"Hot water comes from a tank that can be full of scale/rust/dust that constantly gets topped up whenever you use the hot tap so just from that standpoint it doesn't seem like a good idea.",
"Answering from a British perspective, traditionally only the kitchen cold tap got water directly from the supply. The supply also fed a cold water storage cistern in the loft that then fed the bathroom cold taps and the hot water storage cylinder, which in turns feeds the hot water taps. Sometimes instead all the cold taps got a direct supply and the storage cistern was just for feeding the hot water cylinder. Now that storage cistern isn't sealed airtight, although it should have a lid. That means that dirt, insects, and so on (even a rat, in one reported case) can get into the cistern especially if the lid is missing and that means that any tap fed from it isn't properly safe to drink. It's *probably* fine, I drank from the bathroom taps all the time as a child and never got sick, but better safe than sorry.\n\nIf the kitchen cold tap is noticeably forceful, whereas all the other taps flow more gently, then your house probably has a system like this.\n\nEDIT PS: I don't know exactly why that system became the most common, but an advantage is you probably have about 300 litres (80 US gallons) of water stored, useful if the mains supply is cut.",
"The water at my house gets so hot it'll literally burn skin, even if it has added sediment it's so hot it boils faster ",
"Pipes tend to pick up sediment over time. Hot water is better at dissolving that sediment then cold water, so if you run the water hot it might pick up junk from the sides of your pipes that can affect the taste of whatever you're cooking. Cold water doesn't do that as much.",
"If you've ever seen an old hot water tank drained to the bottom, you'll understand why she wanted to use cold water. It's a thick, rust coloured sludge by the end, and I live in a place that doesn't have hard water.\n\nCold water = fresh from the water supply, less sediment, less risk of bacteria from sitting around nice and warm.",
"It's a psychological or folkloric holdover from older plumbing systems that offered both cold and hot water, indoors. [Here's a video](_URL_0_) with an explanation of the system and the reasoning.\n",
"Since when does cold water boil faster than hot water?\nWhat hair-brained school did you people go to?",
"Here in Iceland we got natural hot water and it has silica in it which tastes awful so if you need hot water for drinking, you heat up the cold water ",
"There are a few reasons.\n\nModern homes now have \"pex\" piping which is a type of plastic, hot water dissolves more of the bad plastic stuff.\n\nVery old piping used to contain lead, which again, dissolves more rapidly in hot water.\n\nWater tanks can hold water for a long time, this is not an issue for bacteria since the water should be warm enough to effectively be pasteurized but it does give it more time to dissolve chemicals.\n\nThe difference between hot and cold tap water isn't poison vs safe, hot water simply contains a tiny fraction more of chemicals you do not necessarily want in your water.",
"If you're referring to speed of heating, it's not scientifically correct. I don't have an in depth knowledge, but have read about it. And think about it logically. If you have a pot of water at 0° and a pot at 50° and heat them both, eventually the water that was 0° will rise to 50°. So how is that different than using water starting at 50°? \n\nThis is an excerpt from Scientific American Magazine:\n\nTakamasa Takahashi, a physicist at St. Norbert College in De Pere, iWis., attempts a definitive answer:\n\n\"Cold water does not boil faster than hot water. The rate of heating of a liquid depends on the magnitude of the temperature difference between the liquid and its surroundings (the flame on the stove, for instance). As a result, cold water will be absorbing heat faster while it is still cold; once it gets up to the temperature of hot water, the heating rate slows down and from there it takes just as long to bring it to a boil as the water that was hot to begin with. Because it takes cold water some time to reach the temperature of hot water, cold water clearly takes longer to boil than hot water does. There may be some psychological effect at play; cold water starts boiling sooner than one might expect because of the aforementioned greater heat absorption rate when water is colder.\n\n ",
"The hot water picks up minerals and, worst of all, lead from the solder in the pipes. Cold water picks up less of that",
"Cold Water = Water coming straight from the source through PEX pipe. \n\nHot Water = Water coming through the source, into a hot water boiler via some copper piping, from there it could sit in that tank for a couple days depending on how much you use your hot water. ",
"If you are from Britain, this seems like a good answer: _URL_0_\n\ntl;dr: Cold Water used to be directly from city, while Hot Water used to have a separate tank that could've gotten contaminated.",
"_URL_0_\n\n > The claim has the ring of a myth. But environmental scientists say it is real.\n\n > The reason is that hot water dissolves contaminants more quickly than cold water, and many pipes in homes contain lead that can leach into water. And lead can damage the brain and nervous system, especially in young children.\n\n > Lead is rarely found in source water, but can enter it through corroded plumbing. The Environmental Protection Agency says that older homes are more likely to have lead pipes and fixtures, but that even newer plumbing advertised as “lead-free” can still contain as much as 8 percent lead. A study published in The Journal of Environmental Health in 2002 found that tap water represented 14 to 20 percent of total lead exposure.",
"This actually comes from the fact that lots of older homes didn't use potable water systems for their hot water. Particularly in Briton, where the radiators also rand from the same boiler as the hot tap.\n\nThis is also why older systems had left-and-right taps and spigots instead of a combining valve or tap.\n\nSo in modern times in modern homes it probably doesn't matter.\n\nThe tales of old wives will, however, last forever.",
"There's a very simple reason not to drink hot water: Hot water may contain higher levels of lead than cold water, since the hot water dissolves more lead from old pipes and solder than cold water does. There may also be a reservoir of lead precipitates sitting in the bottom of the water heater, which will (potentially) increase the amount of lead even further, depending on the kinetics of dissolution.\n\nSource: am chemist, deal with lead in water nowadays (among other things).",
"This has got to be nonsense. Someone with some actual scientific knowledge please set this straight. The lining of a hot water tank is ceramic. There shouldn't be anything dissolving into it. It should be exactly (or nearly exactly) identical to cold water only it's hotter. I'm no physicist but my rudimentary high school and college science classes have given me enough knowledge to know that hot water should boil much faster than cold water.",
"In most cities, municipal cold water supply coming into the house. \n\nIt gets split off in two in the house. One to the cold water pipes, the other to a hot water heater.\n\nUp until 1986, hot water heaters and the copper pipes have lead solder joining things together. Hot water can leach the lead out faster especially so if its sitting in pipes and a tank for long periods of time in contact with it.\n\nEven if you grew up in the 90s, you likely were in a house that was older and built before the mid 80s. ",
"Everyone already answered, but I'd like to add that this advice doesn't apply if you have a tankless water heater. Since that water also comes straight from the service and hasn't been sitting around in a tank, it's perfectly fine to use that, and will speed up the process since it needs less energy on the stove. Just make sure it's straight tankless and doesn't have a recirculator.",
"It's cheaper. Notice how when you use hot water from a tank, you have to run the water for 20 seconds before it becomes hot. That water is effectively wasted hot water even though it is now cold. This is because it came out of the hot water tank as hot but it was cooled by the pipes that brought it to your tap. You are paying the electrical bill for heating that volume of water that came out before the water out your tap turns hot. You can see how it is wasteful and expensive to frequently use small volumes of hot water.",
"It's the mistaken belief that cold water boils quicker because the molecules are in a denser state the colder the water is. They are conveniently forgetting that you have to warm the water to the same point the other(hot) water was before continuing on to boiling.\n\nI've seen this amazing logic at work, so I could see others doing the same thing.",
"The only reason I am personally cautious about using hot tap water is because [there may be lead in your water supply.](_URL_0_) \n\nIf your pipes or the solder connecting them contain lead, hot water adds to the corrosion that increases lead levels in the water.\n\nYou may think that it is unlikely your pipes contain any lead, but you are probably wrong. \n\nFrom the link above:\n\"While homes built before 1986 are the most likely to have lead plumbing, it can be found in newer homes as well. Until two years ago, the legal limit for \"lead-free\" pipes was up to 8% lead.\n\nAs of January 1, 2014, all newly installed water faucets, fixtures, pipes and fittings must meet new lead-free requirements, which reduces the amount of lead allowed to 0.25%. But that doesn't apply to existing fixtures, such as what is found in many older homes and public water suppliers\"\n\nWhether or not your mother was aware of this concern, I think it's a compelling one and a good thing she taught you not drink the hot tap water! It may be one of the factors why we have to explain to each other like we're 5 all the time!",
"[Tom Scott did a great vid on this topic.](_URL_0_) Not sure what part of the world you come from though.",
"My mother told me it is unsafe to drink from hot water storage because of Legionnaires' disease. Legionnaires' disease is caused by Legionella bacteria which can contaminate hot water tanks and hot tubs. \n",
"Something everyone else overlooked: The water heater probably has (they have been this way for decades) a Sacrificial Anode which is a metal rod designed to dissolve to reduce the charge of other metals, thereby inhibiting rust inside the tank parts and rest of the system. When it dissolves, where does it go? \n \n_URL_1_\n \n_URL_0_",
"The water comes into your home drinkable. How it gets from that drinkable state, to your faucet and into your glass, matters. Water is a solvent. Put it in contact with many different materials like copper, lead and tin and it will tend to leach those elements into the water. The ability to do this goes up with temperature. \n\nIn addition to that the hot water heater is a place where sediments and minerals are deposited and over the years they build up until the hot water has large amounts of dissolved metals and minerals in it. \n\nIt's not exactly unsafe to drink, but it affects the flavor of anything you make with it and over time you are going to get a lot more exposure to metals and minerals in your food. \n\nA hot water heater is not a coffee maker. It does not heat the water up so that you can enjoy a cup of tea. It is not a clean system, it is there for utility like clothes washing, showers, and other non drinking uses. \n\nYou could also choose to drink water from a garden hose, but it is a little more apparent there, that what the water moves through imparts a taste to it. Namely the taste of garden hose much like the taste of water heater. ",
"I'll attempt to sum up all the reasons:\n\n1. Lead and other contaminants dissolve much more easily in hot water. This can lead to unwanted tastes, and could possibly build up to harmful amounts of chemicals in the bloodstream if consumed routinely.\n\n2. The hot water tank isn't necessarily a clean place. A sludge made of minerals and bacteria can easily form. Additionally, in Britain, [the hot water from the tank isn't rated as potable water.](_URL_0_)\n\n3. The old myth that cold water heats faster.\n\n4. Water heaters are less efficient than heating water on the stove because of all the water that gets pulled out of the tank and just sits there cooling in the pipes.\n\nIf you want to make your water boil faster, boil some of it in an electric kettle or the microwave while letting the rest heat on the stove.",
"This is if your house has a big water heater tank. In order to keep the hot water tank from corroding an anode rod is placed in side as a sacrificial component. The anode metal, magnesium or aluminum most likely, that dissolves from the rod is now floating around your tank making the water taste funky and making you ingest metal particles that you most likely wouldn't get from your cold water supply",
"Hot water can be dusty due to storage or other things depending on the heating system. Cold water usually has a shorter path with less stagnation",
"It's simply because in some water systems your hot tap sits in a tank (in the loft usually) whereas the cold tap is 'fresh' water. \n\nsource: have asked lots of old people why they say this",
"There is no scientific explanation which says that using cold water is better than starting with hot water if you want to boil it. If you start with hot water it will boil sooner. If there are more solutes in the hot water from the tap they raise the boiling point of water by a fraction of a degree so they do not matter. However the electric water heaters we use have a sacrificial anode made of either one of these metals: magnesium, zinc or aluminium. They dissolve slowly thus protecting the main structure of the heater from corrosion. They end up in the water from the hot water tap. Their concentration is very low but zinc and aluminium might cause some people to be worried.",
"Because hot water + gas required to boil it costs more than cold water + gas required to heat it.",
"Historically in England the hot water tanks were not sealed so nasty stuff could get into the tank (insects, rats, dirt, etc). The cold water came straight from the pipes so was safe.\n\nFor this reason the English (some still now!) are hesitant to drink water from the hot tap, and even tend to have separate hot and cold taps (instead of a 'mixing' tap that combines the water).\n\nIt could be an actual concern that the hot-tap water is tainted, or a cultural memory from when that was in fact true.",
"Added sediment/particulates/chemicals from the water heating system. Stuff that raises the boiling point, and also things you may not want in your food.",
"They tell you on every Alton Brown episode like ever! It sits in your water heater and gets all manky and gross while it's waiting to be used. Cold water, not so much. People are really over thinking this.",
"TL;DR: You are filling your pipes with hot water that you paid to heat but will never get to use. \n\nQuestions of chemistry and water freshness aside, there is a reasonable energy waste consideration here. \n\nIf your water heater is not located at your faucet, you need to run your hot water until heated water reaches the faucet. That means you need to fill all of the pipes in between your hot water heater and your aucet woth heated water. Right when those pipes are filled you start to feel warm water. Its not hot elyet because the cold pipes it travelled through cooled it off. \n\nNow if you are like me you wait until the really hot water comes out. This is essentially running more hot water until the pipes are heated and no longer cool the water. \n\nNow you fill your kettle. And leave your pipes full of hot water that will cool over time unless used relatively soon. \n\nIf you held a bucket under the faucet from start until when you begin filling the kettle you would be able to measure the amount of heated water that is wasted in this transaction. \n\nThe money you spent to heat all of that water is lost unless you use the heated water that is left sitting in the pipes for some other task you would normally do this avoiding that beginning filling and heating of the pipes waste.\n\nIf you fill the kettle with cold water, you only pay to heat the water you put in the kettle. \n\nThere are some other things to think about like efficiency of your hot water heater vs that of your stove, but I have always made the assumption that the potential efficiency difference would not counter the cost of the waste.",
"Just anther theory...\n\nMany homes with water softeners don't connect the softener to the kitchen cold line for drinking purposes. \n\nSoftened water has less essential minerals such as calcium, it tastes a lot worse too. So ideally, you wouldn't want to drink softened water for taste and nutrition.\n\nThis carries over with cooking. It makes a surprising difference with drinks like coffee. But to that end, the hot-water is always connected to the water softener, because that's what you use to wash dishes. Hard water leaves nasty water spots.",
"Hey /u/blank8855, Tom Scott made a great 3min video on this subject:\n_URL_0_\n\nTL;DW - hot water storage tank may not be drinkable in the UK.\n\nAlso explains why there's no mixer taps in old UK houses.",
"Holy Jesus I only made it through the first 100 or so comments and all of them were people who have no idea what they're talking about acting like absolute authorities (and karma whoring on the top comment to reiterate the same wrong points of course). Makes me really question believing anything I read here.",
"Well the Idea is that the heat from your burner transfers to the cold water faster as the difference in temperature is greater. So at first heat is transferred faster to the cold water. It is not actually faster. I am sure that someone told someone that cold things rise in temperature faster than hotter things, and then promptly tuned them out.\n ",
"\"Clean with hot, cook with cold\" is something our manager used to say often at a restaurant I worked at when I was a kid. Not much to add to the explanations already given, but just a simple and relevant anecdote that has stuck with me.",
"Growing up my mother told me someday I would buy. galley with good oars, sail to distant shores. Stand up high in the prow, noble barque I steer. Steady course for the haven, hew many foe, hew many foe. ",
"This happened to me...\n\nI was doing a freezer repair at a customer's home and needed hot water to melt the ice built up inside the freezer. Lady puts a pot on the stove and its taking for fucking ever to get hot. I asker her if she used cold water or something and she's like \"Of course! Everyone knows you can't boil hot water\". What the fuck kind of logic is that?! \n\n"
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n5sn6 | how the eurozone is facing economic crisis yet the euro remains stronger than the dollar. | Could exchange rates be used as a yardstick for which economy is growing faster or which one is stronger? I ask because the news I read seems to indicate that the Eurozone crisis is more dire than the US's economic problems. Is that more of a legal crisis than economic one? Boy, I'm just full of questions. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/n5sn6/eli5_how_the_eurozone_is_facing_economic_crisis/ | {
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"When an economy is doing badly, governments have two common answers: make their money worth less, so people from other countries start buying their stuff, and borrow money to spend, to make sure people in their own country have jobs. Governments can afford to borrow this money, *because* they are also devaluating their currency (when you borrow 100 Euro's, and the Euro becomes worth less, you end up with less debt, despite the fact it's still 100 Euro's).\n\nWhat the Euro does, however, is take away from governments the possibility to devaluate a currency by giving this responsibility to the European Central Bank (ECB). The ECB hasn't been devaluating the currency, mostly because countries like Germany don't want it to (they're doing fine, so they *want* a strong currency).\n\nSo now investors are getting scared that countries that would usually handle their problems by devaluating their currency, cannot do this, so might end up not paying their debt. This is what is causing the trouble.",
"When an economy is doing badly, governments have two common answers: make their money worth less, so people from other countries start buying their stuff, and borrow money to spend, to make sure people in their own country have jobs. Governments can afford to borrow this money, *because* they are also devaluating their currency (when you borrow 100 Euro's, and the Euro becomes worth less, you end up with less debt, despite the fact it's still 100 Euro's).\n\nWhat the Euro does, however, is take away from governments the possibility to devaluate a currency by giving this responsibility to the European Central Bank (ECB). The ECB hasn't been devaluating the currency, mostly because countries like Germany don't want it to (they're doing fine, so they *want* a strong currency).\n\nSo now investors are getting scared that countries that would usually handle their problems by devaluating their currency, cannot do this, so might end up not paying their debt. This is what is causing the trouble."
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3sybb4 | as seen in movies, can you actually run and jump on top of and across moving train cars? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sybb4/eli5_as_seen_in_movies_can_you_actually_run_and/ | {
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"_URL_0_\n\nof course you can. Its just hilariously dangerous and theres never a reason to actually do it"
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76r86o | today in britain, the sky went really orange for a few hours - why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/76r86o/eli5_today_in_britain_the_sky_went_really_orange/ | {
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"Not sure if related, but Portugal and northwest Spain are having a huge number of forest fires going on causing a lot of ashes and smoke, turning the sky orange in most places nearby. are you south of Britain? \n\nedit: _URL_0_\n\nedit2: this was Spain, not Britain, just in case ",
"I understand it was something to do with dust picked up by the hurricane in the Sahara desert, carried into the air and the sun shining through this dust cloud that caused the yellow hue.",
"I've found out what it was - orange-ish dust has been picked up by Hurricane Ophelia and spread across the atmosphere.",
"Yeah, it’s been gooin’ t’same up er in t’north anarl me ol’ frock. Reet unnervin’ it’s been too!!",
"I noticed this in scotland. I wondered what was causing this but the hurricanes seem plausible.",
"So you're really going to post this question and not post a picture of the orange sky? ",
"No expert, but I did do some googling because it was pretty freaky out the window. Best explanation I got was:\n\nThere's large amount of particulates and water-vapour in the air before a storm, carried with it from where ever the storm was last. This causes the light passing through it to be filtered, and short-wave light from the blue end of the spectrum is filtered out more than longer wave, redder light, so the sky gets more yellow/orange.\n\nThis is why we get red skies at sunset and sunrise. The light, by virtue of not being shone from directly above us, has to travel through lots more air before reaching your eyes, passes through more particulates, and ends up redder."
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1wkwwb | how do antibiotic pills work? if there's an infection say in the mouth, how does the body know to send the medication back through the bloodstream to fight the infection? how does the body know that the medication is made to fight infection? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wkwwb/eli5_how_do_antibiotic_pills_work_if_theres_an/ | {
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"Your body doesn't have to \"know\" anything for it to work. It's absorbed into the bloodstream and then kills any bacteria it comes in contact with, as long as they're not too resistant. ",
"The others are correct, though I'll expand a bit. Antibiotics are absorbed (generally) through the small intestine where they enter the blood stream. As they permeate the blood, they are dispersed to all tissues in the body (except those that cannot cross the blood-brain barrier). So, if you have an infection in the mouth, the infected tissue there is receiving the same antibiotic exposure as the healthy tissue of the foot. (this is a generalization of course as different tissue types have different vascularity).\n\nTwo short things to add:\n\n1. Many antibiotics are NOT effective against all bacteria. For example, penicillin works by disrupting the the thick peptidoglycan walls of Gram positive bacteria and therefore is only effective against those organisms (though there are exceptions such as Pasteurella multocida which is sensitive to penicillin but is a Gram negative organism). As most of the normal enteric flora of the gut are Gram negative, they are unaffected by penicillin use. \n\n2. Not all antibiotics are designed to kill bacteria. Antibiotics come in two categories: bactericidal and bacteriostatic. Bactericidal antibiotics actually kill the organism when coming into contact with it (usually by disrupting its cell wall or inhibiting the activity of its ribosomes) while bacteriostatic antibiotics only prevent the organism from replicating, giving the host immune system a chance to not be overwhelmed and therefore do its job.\n\nSource: I'm a medical microbiologist.\n\n**TL;DR Antibiotics go (almost) everywhere there is blood and the body plays no role in their action.**"
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8yxeg7 | why is compulsive hoarding so common among baby boomers? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8yxeg7/eli5_why_is_compulsive_hoarding_so_common_among/ | {
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"Baby Boomers are the children of those who went through the Great Depression where all supplies and food were hard to get and you had to save every scrap of everything that could potentially be useful. They were raised by people who developed these habits as a matter of survival and many passed on the tendencies to their children. But since the baby boomers were raised in an era of surplus and prosperity these tendencies tended to focus in on random things rather than that which could be useful. ",
"In cases I’ve seen or god forbid had to clean or otherwise deal with, I can tell you it wasn’t necessarily spending but just holding on to anything they ever got. It could’ve been literal garbage to anyone else but “that might be useful one day” and then it just kept piling. Whole storage buildings full. “Free/found stuff” gets hoarded just as bad as stuff they buy if not even exponentially worse. Sometimes it had to do with the fact they didn’t have the opportunity to buy things and so had this belief they had to do that to have anything and that if they threw that out then they wouldn’t have it when they needed it sometime down the road. Some of them were deprived as children early on so take every chance to make up for it, only it gets out of hand. And sometimes it came down from their parents who lived through the depression or around that time and kept everything they ever got to use it for whatever purpose they could, starting the hoarding trend by potential accident. I’m trying to keep this anonymous but it’s hit awful close to home and when you have to pry a twenty year old box of defunct bills from their hands then it’s…not even something I can explain. They just keep things because they can’t bring themselves to throw it out. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard “I might need that!” when no, they likely never will very realistically speaking just on basis of what the thing is.",
"Hoarding is an obsessive-compulsive disorder. One way to look at it is to ask why when baby-boomers have this type of disorder it tends manifest as _hoarding_. What I don't think is true is that baby-boomers are more likely to be obsessive-compulsive, but it's reasonable to suggest that cultures and times will influence how the need to _control_ is exerted by those who are obsessive-compulsive.\n\nI don't know of any research, but it would make sense to me that the child-generation of those who experienced the depression and WWII would be attached to _things_ as expression of security.\n\nSecondly, you're sure to run into some confirmation bias here as hoarding has a characteristic of commonly being caught as generations get older - e.g. children find out about their parents having this habit because they get more involved in their elderly parents lives.",
"The rise of the self storage industry with Boomers being the wealthiest generation of Americans.\n\nThroughout most of human history, most people couldn't amass rooms full of clothing. Clothing was more expensive because they weren't massed produced until the 19 th century. You could also make the case that humans are lonelier than ever before. You don't have to see people if you don't want to see people. "
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72m04o | how can the government involve itself with sports-related issues? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/72m04o/eli5_how_can_the_government_involve_itself_with/ | {
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" > What is illegal (by national laws that fall under FBI jurisdiction) about a company giving individuals money?\n\nBribery of a government official is illegal. You will note that state universities are controlled by the government and the employees are state employees. If you bribe a state employee that is a crime.\n\n > Another incident that points to my question is where Roger Clemens had testified in front of Congress to speak on doping.\n\nCongress has broad powers to demand testimony in order to investigate pretty much anything they want. It doesn't even need to be illegal; if Congress thinks they need to look into it they can call people to testify and they *must* comply."
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18kc8l | the differences between a nation, a state, and a nation-state. | As many times as I've had this explained, it never sticks. I'm unashamed to ask for a simple explanation. Knowledge is power!
Thank you. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18kc8l/eli5_the_differences_between_a_nation_a_state_and/ | {
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"A nation is a group of people with several factors in common like land inhabited, religion, ethnicity, language, or culture.\n\n\nA state is the government over an area of land\n\n\nA nation-state is a state that governs an area that primarily consists of one nation.",
"A nation is an identity. A nation does not have to correspond with a geographical or political entity. Under this definition, for example, the Colbert Nation is just as valid of a nation as America. \n\nA state is the political entity that exercises sovereignty over a defined region with a population. \n\nA nation-state is when a nation and a state coincide. That is, the population under the sovereign identifies with said sovereign. Of course, this is a bit blurry since surely not the entire population identifies with the state. \n\nAmerica might be an example of a nation-state. Although not everybody agrees with the government, most Americans identify themselves as, well, American. The Colbert Nation is not a nation-state because there is no well-defined state to go with the nation.\n\nAnother non-example of a nation-state might be Nigeria. The borders of the state were drawn with little regard to the identity of the people, and as a result, the people of Nigeria might prefer to think of themselves as members of their individual regions (e.g. Yoruba, Igbo, or Hausa Fulani) rather than as Nigerians. \n\nAlso, this wasn't a part of the question, but it's somewhat relevant. The definition of State requires the existence of a geographical region where the state is sovereign. The word \"Country\" refers to the geographical region itself. ",
"Think of a nation like you and your buddies in a club. You guys all get together to do things that you all have in common. You can do it anywhere, the thing that makes the nation is the commonality between the members.\n\nThink of a state as your house. Your family all lives there, but you don't really have much in common with everyone in the house. But it is all one unit that your parents are in charge of.\n\nThink of a nation state like your club house. It is all one unit and your club is in charge.",
"A nation is a group of people that have a language and heritage in common. The Japanese are a good example of a nation. The concept of a nation can change over time. For example, a few centuries ago we had Sicilians, Neapolitans, Sardinians, etc. Now these people usually consider themselves part of the Italian nation. Nation is often used as a synonym for ethnicity.\n\nA state is a government that controls an area of land that has set borders. \n\nA nation-state is a government with a territory that is usually dominated by one nation/ethnic group. Most nation-states are home to minorities from other nations. For example, Germany is a the nation-state of Germans. But there are other people living there (Poles, Turks, Sorbs, etc.) that are not part of the German nation (but are still citizens). \n\nNations aren't restricted to borders. Syrians, Iraqis, and Algerians all live in different countries. But they all consider themselves to be a part of the Arab nation because they speak Arabic."
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8dc29l | why are semi-trailer trucks so deadly in crashes? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8dc29l/eli5_why_are_semitrailer_trucks_so_deadly_in/ | {
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"The weight difference is the biggest factor. Cars, SUVs, and pickups weigh less than 10,000 pounds. The average loaded semi weighs 80,000 pounds. Cars are also built to transport their own weight and the weight of their passengers, meaning that their frames, bodies, and suspension parts are designed for lightweight service. Trucks must be designed to carry 80,000 pounds, and are therefore built much sturdier with heavier materials. ",
"Simple physics. Force = mass x acceleration. If a 1.5 ton car hits you at 40 miles an hour... 60 whatever the unit would be. Take a semi with 15 ton total mass between rig, trailer, and cargo at the same speed it’s literally 10x the force hitting you. More acceleration of your body == > more chances of trauma to internal organs as they slam into your skeleton and you die.",
"They are bigger, taller, and much heavier than the other vehicles on the road. Their greater mass means they deliver more force into the other vehicles they hit and that increases the chances of death. Their chassis also tend to be at or near head height for people who are in a sedan or smaller car and so you get a lot of decapitations when a car runs into the trailer portion of a semi. "
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3r58t8 | where did all the cereal prizes go? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3r58t8/eli5_where_did_all_the_cereal_prizes_go/ | {
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"Down some toddler's throat. Now we have stickers and website codes which are much more difficult to choke on and far less expensive to package.",
"Just bought a box of honey nut O's with a minions toy inside.\n\nIt's definitely not as popular as is was 20-30 years ago but it still happens. (And imo the toys aren't nearly as cool anymore but hey, they're not marketed to my age bracket) ",
"Hell kids get iPhones at 5 now. It's hard to bribe them with wacky wallwalkers in cereal nowadays.",
"You are not allowed to advertise gimmicks to kids (at least in Canada). Because companies could no longer message the toy on the packaging, most companies stopped including the toy all together as it no longer drove sales. ",
"Remember back in the late 90's/early 2000's when they would put cd-rom games in cereal boxes. I remember begging my mom to buy lucky charms (pretty expensive at the time, still is), just to play roller coaster tycoon or who want's to be a millionaire. ",
"Maybe you can't see them anymore as you're all grown up?"
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6p57dz | why do we have to pasteurize cow milk but not breast milk? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6p57dz/eli5_why_do_we_have_to_pasteurize_cow_milk_but/ | {
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"The difference is that Brest milk isn't generally kept for long times where bacteria and pathogens can get in and start multiplying, Its almost always ingested teat to mouth. As opposed to cow or goat milk.",
"Milk is sterile when it comes out of the cow or human. But as soon as it touches anything it becomes contaminated with bacteria. Milk is also an amazing growth medium for bacteria, its impossible to keep the milk totally sterile and even a small amount of bacteria will very rapidly multiply.\n\nWhat matters for the consumer of the milk is how long it will take those initial bacteria to multiply until the milk is no longer safe to drink, which is itself a matter of the type and quantity of bacteria that get into the milk.\n\nIf you're talking about a woman pumping breast milk and storing it in the fridge for a day or two, its fairly safe to assume that the equipment she's using is relatively clean and that the woman wasn't rolling around in her own feces moments before milking herself. Because of that, the initial quantity of bacteria in the milk is going to be low and there isn't going to be anything too bad in there. As long as the milk isn't being stored for more than a few days the risk it poses is negligible.\n\nBut neither of those things is safe to assume with a cow. And in your worst case scenario where the cow was rolling around in feces and milked using dirty equipment, the milk you get is going to be filled with large amounts of listeria and other pathogens. Which is ultimately why we pasteurize cow milk - its a simple, low cost method of completely mitigating against a serious health risk.\n\nThat being said, its entirely possible that you could find a dairy that follows extremely high standards of cleanliness selling unpasteurized milk and that milk will last just as long as your average woman's breast milk (and there are certainly small dairies out there that try to do just that). The problem you have in drinking milk like that is you're relying on everything with the dairy being perfect - which is something that you have absolutely no control over. And all it takes is no one noticing a cow shitting all over itself a few hours before getting milked for anyone drinking that milk to develop a serious illness."
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219h0l | why is "district attorney" in the us often an elected and political position? | In the US, the person who leads the government office responsible for prosecuting crimes is called the "District Attorney" or "DA", and in many areas, this person is elected (rather than appointed by merit) as part of the normal partisan election.
It's heartbreaking how often you read things like "Well, it's an election year, so [despite these other circumstances], he had to file charges to appear "tough on crime"." Or "Well, the prosecutor will probably force this to go to trial, despite the lack of evidence, to avoid losing political face." Shouldn't this be a position about justice, guilt, and innocence, rather than about politics and appearances?
I'm racking my brain trying to figure out why we think it's a good idea to have the district attorney as an elected, political position? ELI5?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/219h0l/eli5_why_is_district_attorney_in_the_us_often_an/ | {
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"How do you suggest they get appointed, if not by election? Who decides what the test looks like? Who administers it for? Who decides what crimes will be focused on? Who decides what crimes won't be focused on?\n\nElecting a person seems like the only reasonable way to answer all of these questions."
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8xfsq1 | why did some animals in the same family become hyper aggressive like geese, whereas ducks are relatively benign? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8xfsq1/eli5_why_did_some_animals_in_the_same_family/ | {
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"Geese have earned their vicious reputation from their behaviour when they protect their nests. They nest on the ground where there are many predators, so they are very protective. \n\n(Some) ducks like wood ducks nest in tree hollows and are not faced with the same pressure and are more docile/less evident. ",
"I'm going to try an ELI15:\n\nSometimes a lot of behaviour is evolutionary. It's a bit of a generalization to say that geese are hyper aggressive and ducks are meek (although anyone who's been in Canada can tell you Canada geese have no fear). Realistically, there's no exact answer (as far as I know), but I can talk a bit about conflict in birds.\n\nHere's the example I'll bring up between two very closely related birds: the blue heron and the great egret. \nBlue herons and great egrets lay similarly sized nests. In herons, most of the chicks coexist alright. In egrets, however, the chicks will often (85%? of the time) kill one another (exemplifying **siblicide**). Parents typically won't interfere with this behaviour - I suppose this could be defined as aggression. In fact, the parenting style was seen as an explanation for the siblicide. On the other hand, heron chicks do not really kill one another that often, since they had a different parenting style (loosely speaking). In the vein of great science, Mock & Parker decided to test out cross fostering (that is, having herons raise egrets and egrets raise herons).\n\nThey found that, in short, when a heron parents egret chicks, they still fight. I'm not going to mention the mechanism that encourages the siblicide in egrets, but the long and short is that egret chicks are vicious and will continue to kill one another, often leaving one chick to grow to adulthood. That is, the siblicide is **obligate** behaviour. When egrets parented herons, the mechanism for siblicide is there (parenting), and siblicide that *wasn't* there previously developed in the chicks, with the largest chick killing the rest of the nest. So, the siblicide (aggression, I guess) was both \"innate\" behaviour (again, *very* loosely speaking) and \"outside\" behaviour encouraged (facilitated) by the parents.\n\n**tl;dr**: even closely related species (birds, for example) can have wildly different behaviours. Aggression is not necessarily environmental. In the case of geese and ducks it's probably many factors. There is, as far as I know, no short answer.\n\nsome sources: \n\n_URL_2_ (Mock & Parker on the herons/egrets)\n\nmore reading\n\n_URL_3_\n_URL_0_\n\n\n\n\nEdit: more in depth about the experiment is here: \n_URL_1_",
"Depends on where they live and what they eat. Many animals have evolved to mooch off humans. Take wolves vs. dogs or tigers vs. cats. \n\nAlso, smaller animals have a stronger propensity toward flight (rather than fight). Wild ducks aren’t aggressive but they aren’t friendly... they’ll get the heck outta dodge if a strange animal approaches because they are easy prey. \n\nGeese on the other hand are large enough that they have the clout to stand up to foxes, coyotes, raccoons, rodents, or anyone who tries to mess with them or their babies. ",
"Rottweilers and collies and poodles and wolves have very different behavior patterns. Some of it is inherited and some of it is learned. \n\nAs another poster pointed out, too, this behavior comes from being able to survive attacks. Ducks rely especially on camouflage while geese rely on more aggressive behavior. They have different adaptations for the same danger. \n\n***ELI5**: In a prison, you can be the guy who keeps his head down or the guy who beats someone up the first day. One keeps predators from thinking of you, the other makes them think twice about messing with you.*",
"One reason is competition over resources.\n\nA couple million years ago the Congo river separated some primates from each other. The ones in the more resource abundant environment became bonobos, which are fairly benign and social.\n\nThe other ones in the less resourceful area became chimps, more aggressive and competitive. ",
"I'll try to answer (as a biology student): \n\n\nThere is no one path to reproductive success. The behavior can be genetically determined or developmentally determined (learned), but overall it must only be a strategy that is stable for a species to reproduce within a certain environment. In other words, any strategy is sufficient insofar as it leads to reproduction. \n\n\nLet's say for example (an example that ignores actual biological realities) that in a geese population, all the male geese are passive and this is the only trait that affects successful reproduction within a non-monogamous population and it is genetically determined. One male goose is born with a mutation that makes him hyper aggressive. He passes on many copies of his genes reproducing successfully many times because he chases off his competitors. This continues until all the male geese within the population are aggressive. If that aggression rises to the level of fatality (the hyper aggressive geese kill each other), then the more passive of the aggressive geese will begin to have more opportunities to pass on their genes. If it does not than the more aggressive goose will mate more. \n\n\nHowever, reality isn't that neat. One goose could develop a weirdly shaped penis that scrapes out all his competitors' sperm and thus not need to be aggressive. Another could develop a strategy that involves wooing a mate with colorful feathers. Another could just mate with the same bird over and over again ensuring that he/she reproduces. Another could be aggressive within an environment in which that leads to death (i.e. an island with a lot of bears). Natural selection is not a razor that inevitably leads to a hierarchical ideal of \"progress\" or \"improvement\" in which one strategy or behavior is \"better\" than another. It is a chaotic process by which the only measure of success is reproduction under environmental pressures. The possibilities are essentially limitless, even for very similar animals in very similar environments.",
"I work at a place with a collection of several different species of wildfowl, and it's not really true that geese are aggressive whilst ducks are benign. There's a lot of difference in levels of aggression between different geese and duck species, and it generally has to do with a couple of factors - the resources available in the environment they are usually found in, and their ability to blend in to that environment to avoid danger.\n\nThe Cereopsis, or Cape Barren Goose, lives on rocky beaches in Australia, and has to defend the scarce resources in its territory. They are highly aggressive at all times, and are built like tanks. Hawaiian geese, aka Nenes, on the other hand, only show aggression towards other Nenes or other species when defending a nest - the rest of the time they're very chill and friendly. They are an island species with few natural predators and relatively good camouflage, so fighting for them is too much of a risk except when defending the next generation.\n\nIn ducks, it works the same way - larger, more conspicuous species originating from habitats where resources are scarcer tend towards aggression, and smaller, better camouflaged species from more abundant habitats are much more chill. Like any generalisation, there are exceptions - Buffleheads are tiny, but they are really feisty little ducks!",
"The short answer is evolution. One behavior pattern is rewarded over another in a given environment.\n\nDucks are very hyper aggressive, though. Geese do attack people more than ducks do, but ducks are assholes.\n\nI would like to bring up the fact that ducks rape more than any other animal on Earth. They rape so much, that the female duck has evolved two vaginal paths. They can choose which one they allow the male to access. They even rape the victim of rape in order to regain their own dominance over them... male or female.\n\nThere are observed cases where multiple mallards were vieing for dominance, and another male duck being chain raped for more than 15 mins.\n\nThere was even an Ig Nobel Prize awarded for a research paper on the observation of one duck flying into a window killing itself. The crazy observation was homosexual necrophilic rape.\n\n\n_URL_0_"
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"https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/14.1.249"
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5sgnao | how does math describe nature so well ? | I'm studying physics at the moment and am astonished at how beautifully interconnected all the equations are and how it all makes sense.
How does math describe physics and all other sciences so well? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5sgnao/eli5_how_does_math_describe_nature_so_well/ | {
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"Well, remember, we designed the math to describe nature. There are tons of theories in mathematical physics that didn't describe natural phenomena all that well, so we discarded them.",
"The subset of Math you are studying, multi-variable calculus, was specifically developed to support physics in pursuit of an explanation of the real world. Lots of other Math, from set theory to calculus of variations to Morse-Bott theory, is just not related to the real world (even though C of V does have some optics implications). Math is a big subject.",
"Math came about and evolved from our attempts to understand the universe. It was not developed independently and then found to describe physical processes. What you are being taught is the end result of centuries of refining the mathematical models of observed phenomena- the efforts of hundreds of mathematicians, all building on what came before. The math was evolved specifically to show the beauty you are seeing now in how the universe operates. Just like a painter mixes colors to match what she or he sees, the mathematician derives formulas to match physical observation. \n \nThey may not be showing you all the false starts and incorrect theories. If this interests you, a couple recommendations: Einstein's own book on relativity is surprisingly accessible. James Gleick's book on Chaos is a fantastic example of how math is evolved to match nature, and it's a great read. \n\n",
"I disagree with most of the other posters. Math was NOT made to understand or represent nature. It is entirely separate. Mathematics is pure logic. There is nothing in nature we could find to contradict any mathematics, nor is there any possible universe where math could be different. Mathematics is the study of implications. If we know X then Y MUST also be true. There is nothing new we learn in terms of the world. Mathematics is usually understood as starting from a set of unprovable assumptions and then deriving what you can from it. Now the history of mathematics is filled with examples of us studying the type of problems we may see in our lives. How much material do I need to construct a fence around my field. How much stone do I need to build a pyramid. So a lot of the things we study are basically the abstractions of these type of problems, but there is nothing that necessarily makes that so.\n\nNow Mathematics is used in science mostly since it is good at showing the implications of structure and our universe has structure. The link to the world is usually grounded in the things which are seen as explaining that structure. Mass and distance are what is important about how an object moves due to gravity. We then know since the world has structure that if we know mass and distance, then we must know the gravity force. It is the same type of things as before. We find the things in nature such that we know some things, then we also MUST know these other things. Math is good at that. In some sense, the world must be predictable and uniform to some extent to even allow things like humans to exist, so predictable and uniform basically means there is structure we can codify in math.",
"This is a serious philosophical issue. Here is Wigner's take on it\n\n_URL_0_",
"In my experience, it doesn't describe Nature that well. Being an engineering student, there are many things that analytical mathematics just cannot do. For example- if you want to know where an orbiting body will be, even for the simplest case of a single gravitating body, a time relation for position is impossible to find. The only way to do this for the two, restricted three, three, or n body problem is repeated iteration, so you get a very accurate approximation, but not the exact answer. Many other things are this way in engineering. Fluid mechanics, turbulent flows, all of these can only be well approximated even though they're a natural process. Coiling honey falling from a spoon? Math can't explain that exactly either!"
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3ixuy5 | the situation in israël and palestina. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ixuy5/eli5_the_situation_in_israël_and_palestina/ | {
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" Please remember to search before posting."
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17stih | how do residential solar panels 'give back' to the grid? | Is there a transducktor involved? I thought power only flowed in one direction and to push it in another direction (reverse) would kill you. How much power could you actually be contributing? Cost effective? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17stih/eli5_how_do_residential_solar_panels_give_back_to/ | {
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" > How much power could you actually be contributing?\n\nDepends on a lot of factors: Where in the world is the house? Is it summer or winter (summers have more hours of sunshine)? Are there a lot of clouds?\n\nA very good soar panel has a power of 16.22 W/ft^2 (175 W/m^2) *peak*. This means if *a lot* of sun shines on the panel, no clouds. Typically you will also lose some power during the conversion from the panel voltage to the grid (my estimate is 10-20% loss).\n\n > Cost effective?\n\nIn my country (Germany), the government decided to make a law, where energy companies are *required* to buy solar power from people at a certain (quite high) rate. This means that you can calculate how much money you will make over the years: usually you will break even after about 15 years (you have to invest a lot of money up front, usually from a loan). After that there are at least 5 years where the installation gives you a real profit. Manufacturers give you a warranty for 20 years, so it might very well be that the panels last longer than those 20 years, this will mean even more profit.\n\nOverall it is an okay long term investment, but only because the price of solar power is guaranteed by law."
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2awwxi | why do humans have such small irises compared to other animals? | I've always wondered this. I can't see the whites of my dogs' eyes unless they're looking to the side. I can hardly see the whites of a cats' eyes at all. Why are humans different?
I mean, I think we would look terrifying with huge irises, but still. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2awwxi/eli5_why_do_humans_have_such_small_irises/ | {
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"There are a few ideas, one being the \"cooperative eye hypothesis\" which suggests that it is easier to follow another's gaze when communicating. We communicate a lot through our eye gaze, and it's easier to distinguish different communicative attempts from one another with the white part (sclera) present. Another idea suggests it's a sign of good health when choosing a partner. "
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np8dp | would it be legal at all for godaddy to be specifically exempt from the sopa legislation? if not... how was that clause worked in? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/np8dp/eli5_would_it_be_legal_at_all_for_godaddy_to_be/ | {
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"When you make the law, you can make anything you want legal. GoDaddy will probably just become a branch of the government, the one that controls domain name.\n\nIt's not like there was something governing what power the state should have over the citizen or how it should behave. \n\nMaybe we should have something like that and call it the constitution, it would help a lot these days. ",
"When you make the law, you can make anything you want legal. GoDaddy will probably just become a branch of the government, the one that controls domain name.\n\nIt's not like there was something governing what power the state should have over the citizen or how it should behave. \n\nMaybe we should have something like that and call it the constitution, it would help a lot these days. "
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3t10gf | when software updates say they've optimised it to run faster, what exactly did they do and why didn't they do it before? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3t10gf/eli5_when_software_updates_say_theyve_optimised/ | {
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"Let's say you have an old PC game. The game is written to run on Windows 2000, but it still works on Windows 7. Sort of.\n\nWell that company might re-release the game *Optimized for Windows 7*.\n\nThey physically re-work the code of the program so it works better with the current system. \n\n____\n\nOther programs may have already been written for that current system, but those systems can go through updates too that might conflict with the program. This would cause the software to need an update so it can run without issues on the updated software."
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1s1jpn | when a large company (typically oil & tobacco) has "lobbyists in washington" how does that actually affect the passing of legislation? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1s1jpn/eli5_when_a_large_company_typically_oil_tobacco/ | {
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"You know how when you want a family portrait *painted* you go to that person with the little cart in your local shopping mall, who has been there since before you were born, and you give that person a commission fee and they paint you a stunning portrait of your family?\n\nA lobbyist is the same thing. They do something for a fee—in this case—they perform civic duties that all citizens can perform. They petition, meet, rally, network, collaborate and organize to pass something through congress.\n\nSo what's with my painting example? Because everyone has the potential to be a painter, but some people are *paid* to paint. A lobbyist is the same thing. A lobbyist is paid to move something through legislation.\n\nAs to the very specific *how*: through all the legal channels, but primarily, by establishing relationships. So lobbyists are kinda like high school popular kids in that respect.\n\nBut there's another big component: lobbyists are researchers too. They know *everything* they can about the issue and make decisions about how to spin things, sell things, and frame things. It's like a chess match meets a high school science fair meets a ad agency.\n\nSource: some good friends in the lobbying biz. I gladly welcome revisions from anyone with corrections as I could be off.",
"The vast, vast majority of legislation out there isn't something the public pays attention to. It's stuff like changing regulations on oil refinement, or making new tariffs on trade in a specific industry. Lawmakers, especially in the House, are constantly campaigning, so they need money. So, if you're willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, they use lobbyists to help them wrap their heads around complex legislation on a subject they've never learned about before. Since a law will have winners, losers, and thus opposing lobbyists, the dueling lobbyists can each plead his case and the lawmaker can make an informed choice. If you're skeptical, they sell their votes for campaign money, especially in the cases where the voting public doesn't really care, and thus neither side of the vote will win them reelection.",
"Lobbying is essentially just meeting with congressmen.\n\nWhat is means when you hear \"such and such company has lobbyists in Washington\" it means that they pay people to be active in meeting with congressmen and talking about what the company wants.\n\nThe reason lobbyists have so much influence is two things:\n\nA. Lobbyists actually talk to and communicate with congressmen. This goes a long way to shaping their opinions. Just knowing about legislation that's seen as important can make them look into things deeper or vote with what seems to be the choice people want.\n\nB. Companies give large donations to political campaigns. Congressmen know that, so when they hear \"Hey Wal-Mart wants you to sponser bill ABC\" they know that might also mean \"Wal-Mart is willing to donate money towards politicians who sponser bill ABC.\"\n\nMoney is extremely important and influencial for political campaigns, and so when they're asked to support a bill and know that money is on the line, they're a lot more likely to support that bill. \n\n____\n\nFor example, consider that you're the senator from some state, and drilling for oil is the big issue that's dividing people left and right. You want to take a stance so that you can seem confident when you go up for re-election in a year.\n\nIf the only people you hear from are big oil companies who are completely for drilling and donate big bucks to pro-oil candidates, there is a strong likelyhood that you will lean towards drilling. All other things being equal, being pro-drilling gives you the backing of Big Oil and their donations. \n\nSimilarly, if you hear from members of your state and Anti-Drilling groups, you're much likelier to be against drilling.\n\n____\n\nAnother example: Consider again your a Senator. You go about your business, and a law comes up in discussion some time. It's some tobacco regulation. It doesn't seem very important, and you don't pay it much mind. You might vote on it but you might just abstain.\n\nLater that week, however, one of the people who meets with you happens to be a lobbyist for a tobacco company. He asks you to vote against the regulation, as it's a very important issue for the companies he represents.\n\nAt this point, you decide to vote against the regulation. You weren't really considering it very much beforehand, but now you have a specific reason to vote on the issue. Not only do you make members of your state happy, but you gain favor from tobacco companies who you can likely rely on for donations in the future. \n\n____\n\nReally, the core of lobbying is that congressmen want to be reelected. Votes are the most important thing to them, and lobbying tells them what will give them votes. Whether it's having people support you with votes directly or with donations, hearing from lobbyists helps them know what legislation to back in order to get votes."
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2yj055 | why are white paints always bluish in color? | How does adding blue tint to a white paint make it more "white"? I hate the painter who always adds some violet pigment to white paint. He says it makes it more white. Sounds like an absolute BS to me, as I can see he turned the paint bluish and left me wanting for pure white.
But just yesterday I purchased a 100mL synthetic enamel for painting my bicycle. It said "Brill White" on the top, and I was too happy that I finally got industry standard "white", and no more bluish crap. But I was appalled to find the "Brill White" had a tint of blue in it too and was not pure white!
What the hell is going on?
**EDIT:** [This](_URL_0_) is what I mean; bluish "white" paint on a sheet of "white" paper. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yj055/eli5_why_are_white_paints_always_bluish_in_color/ | {
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"text": [
"There are lots of colors of white. It sounds like you are looking at \"cool whites,\" but there are also \"warm whites\" which use yellow or other warm colors as a slight tint.",
"blue tint is added to white fabric to make it appear whiter. the blue tint cuts the yellow."
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"http://imgur.com/wk3Ffdt"
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