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1hmxtd | why is it when you jump straight up you move with the earth, instead of it moving under you. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hmxtd/eli5why_is_it_when_you_jump_straight_up_you_move/ | {
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"The earth does turn under you. And the ground is moving really fast. So why don't we notice?\n\nLet's think about three things in the time of a jump, 1 second: The whole earth, you, and the point on the ground right under you. \n\nThe whole earth is turning or spinning. That means that it turns all the way around in one day. If one turn is 360^o and a day is 24x60x60=86,400 seconds, in 1 second the earth turns 0.004 degrees. \n\nNow let's think about the point right under you. That point has to go all the way around the earth in 1 day. The earth is 40,000 km around at the equator so every second the point under you has to go 40,000,000m/86,400s = 462meters, about a half a mile each and every second. \n\nNow let's think about you: When you are standing still you also have to go around the earth once every day. At the equator you also are going 462m every second. When you jump up, all the momentum doesn't disappear. there is nothing to stop you from keeping up that speed so when you jump straight up you are actually still moving to the side at half a mile per second. If this part doesn't make sense to you just let me know and I can explain Newton's First Law in more detail. :)\n\nWhat we have so far: You and the point under you are moving at half a mile per second. There is no reason for either of those to stop. The ground under you is tilting but it only tilts by 0.004 degrees, not enough for you to notice. ",
"Put a sticker on a tennis ball. Now spin it around.\n\nYou'll see that the sticker is moving left to right as fast as the ball.\n\nNow imagine looking at the earth from space, and realise that the people are moving around (left to right) as fast as the earth.\n\nNow imagine one person jumps up. Instead of just moving left to right, they're also now moving up. \n\nAdd together their left to right movement and their up down movement and you'll see that they actually move diagonally, up and to the right.\n\nThey end up moving left to right at almost the exact same speed as the ground beneath them, so they land back where they started.\n"
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40x3y5 | why must i enter a captcha to pay a bill? are they afraid a robot is going to enter a credit card on my behalf? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40x3y5/eli5_why_must_i_enter_a_captcha_to_pay_a_bill_are/ | {
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"Yes, captchas are generally used to prevent automation by using (ro)bots. However, there are a couple of side effects. One would be that you can not \"accidentally\" pay the bill because you would have to enter the captcha first. A bot would also not just enter \"a credit card\" but instead do pretty much anything on there - like trying out different card numbers. Using a captcha verifies that you are human. When developers are unsure whether or not to use a captcha then they will usually go for it because you know, better have than not have. \n\nSource: I'm a software engineer and ex webdev",
"Captchas are used by websites to mass automate the process of digitising old books.\nEverytime you enter in a Captcha, your answer is compared to other users answers and once they get high enough level of agreement and done over enough words, you can digitise a book.\n\nWebsites sell Captchas to companies who digitise books, and use this money to help pay for running costs of the website",
"Similar thought: why does a bank verify I am me when depositing money into my account? If someone wanted to gift me millions by anonymously depositing it into my account, I'd gladly accept it. There has to be a reason I'm not thinking about here. ",
"There are some good reasons listed here, but I'll add one more. Making a small deposit is one way that entities verify the validity of an account number.\n\nUsing a bill paying site and automation, it is feasible for a fraudster to stumble upon the correct account information. If the payment for 6 cents goes through, they have their verification, and can then use the information to start their spendng spree. By implementing a CAPTCHA to foil automation attempts, the likelihood of success is diminished.",
"Web Dev here.\n\nWe do it because of the tremendous number of bots that randomly submit forms in an effort to spider our sites, and create junk as a result. A CAPTCHA dramatically lessens the amount of crap data we get.\n\nEDIT - without seeing the site in question, I must also presume the page does not require authentication (username/password) to use, which allows 'bots in, causing the problems (and is likely a poor design).",
"Some explanations here have come close, but none have really considered the whole process. Here's why a CAPTCHA is used for this.\n\nValid card numbers are generated from a standard formula, with different formulas for different card schemes (Visa, Mastercard, AMEX and so on). It is extremely easy to generate a valid card number.\n\nNow a valid card number does not necessarily mean it is attached to a real card that is assigned to a real customer, in fact if you generate one randomly, it is extremely unlikely to have been used at any point in time.\n\nIf a payment form's protection is solely just determining if a card number is valid, then it is quite easy to make repetitive transaction attempts. Now consider these likely statements:\n\n- Merchant likely logs each transaction attempt\n- Upstream payment provider (payment gateway) likely logs each transaction attempt from merchant\n- Card scheme provider likely logs each transaction attempt from payment gateway\n\nSo at the very least, assuming no transaction throttling or any other attempt at stopping fake transactions, a malicious actor could trash their logs and consume log storage, bandwidth and processing power at all parts of this payment process. This would likely lead to the merchant's account at the payment gateway getting suspended and the merchant temporarily unable to process legitimate card transactions.\n\nThat is why they have a CAPTCHA. There are also other means to stopping this, like blocking an account/IP after X attempts, or throttling. A CAPTCHA is a very low-effort solution to this but equally as effective.",
"Also why the hell is my password for paying my student loan more complicated than my SSN? ",
"Some capchas involve you deciphering information for a company. Let's look at google maps, for instance. You know when you see the picture of some address and you have to type in those numbers? That data is for Google maps, and it's WAY more profitable for them to outsource that data entry by letting some other company use it as \"human verification software\" than to pay some guy to sit down and do it. Google could offer incentives to websites to use that software, whether it's financial incentive, or priority listing in search results. Someone is making money off capchas though, and as long as that's happening, count on seeing them everywhere.",
"Bots can solve many captchas today. So they are not there to stop them, there is also many sites that sell captcha solvers very cheap.\n\n",
"No, I do this for a living, let me explain.\n\nThe form on the site is something I'd design. You fill out the form and on the back end a \"ticket\" or series of tickets is created. These tickets are either work for people... i.e. Some billing person punches the data into another system or calls you back... Or, preferably, some automated process enters the data into a billing system.\n\nIf I don't have this form built correctly... Or the systems between it and where it's going aren't updated, or maybe the billing system itself is super outdated, it's possible that putting the correct values into that form could result in the system sending back information that it shouldn't. To read more about these sorts of attacks look up SQL injection attacks. There are many others as well. Exploits in php, java, who knows.\n\nAn attacker isn't sure how your system is built or what you may have forgotten to update. So they have lists of thousands of exploits that they'll try on any particular form to see if any of them work. So they create scripts that hammer forms with all sorts of different inputs to see if anything works. They are almost always unsuccessful, but on the rare occasion that it works the payoff is big.\n\nNow, all my forms are built right. All the software is up to date. We've got firewalls, intrusion detection, the works. So no big deal right? Wrong... That script actually did create thousands of bullshit tickets while it was pen testing us. Last one I saw was 90k records created in 3hrs. I now have teams of people that have to wade through these tickets, sort out what's real and what's fake, etc... Maybe the attacker even submitted virus ladened urls I the notes!\n\nSo we add captcha. It's not a perfect solution. A skilled attacker can bypass it. You can still attack by hand, etc... But it keeps out the highschool kids and eliminates 95% of it. And that's why there's captcha.",
"Stop carders from using the payment field to verify the credit card is active or not. I'm guessing the service is $10 which makes prime target for carders. I worked for a subscription service that was under $10 and we would get hit with botnets verifying cards. Also charities that you can pick you own donation amount get hit a lot. ",
"You guys are spelling it all wrong it is pronounced [CAPTCHKA](_URL_0_)",
"Web developer here: Once you have a website with a contact form, you quickly understand why people use CAPTCHA on their forms.\n\nTons and tons of annoying spam emails.\n\n\"Oh yeah? You're from Alabama, Afghanistan? Never been! Sounds lovely.\" Delete.",
"Putting Captcha on a web form stops low skill hackers from writing simple scripts to pummel false submits through that form 10,000 times an hour. \n\nI run a few sites with millions of visitors a month. Well over half of my web traffic is hackers trying to submit forms with weird information, trying to break in or exploit my websites. \n",
"I've read somewhere... i dont remember where.. that yes it helps to stop bots, but they also use the Captha's to help computer's to turn pictures into writing.. as in they use your responses to turn pictures f writing into actual typed writing. Hard to explain.. but.. to correctly decipher pictures. ",
" since no one knows the answer... here goes. the bots use CC forms all over the Web to run test transactions to validate stolen CC# & /or brute force cv2#s. a single bot might test a million cc#s on 10000s CC forms online. then use/sell the validated cards online or print fake cards and send criminals out to use them or sell them. the poor end of they story is the poor merchant who pays transaction fees for the validated tests and charge back fees when the items are disputed. source was merchant & developer",
"Follow up question...\n\nWhy do some companies NOT use captchas when doing key/code giveaways. Bots always end up nabbing 200k codes in 15 mins.\n\nWould using captchas stop this or am I misunderstanding something?",
"There's a variety of reasons, but one is that it would prevent a hacker from doing brute force attempts to test account data.\n\nA simplified example is if a hacker tried initiating a bill payment to account 0000-0001, then account 0000-0002, then 0000-0003. A script could then test a bunch of accounts and spit back a dozen that are current, valid account numbers. Forcing them to do a captcha inhibits this kind of attack. \n\nAnother is that it could inhibit someone doing \"denial of service\" attacks. That's where they overload your system with bogus attempts to block legitimate users from accessing your service.",
"OP, have you not heard of Skynet? ",
"Robots are frequently programmed to steal things for their masters.\n\nIt sounds like a cliche, but that is exactly what has already happened.",
"How do [these buttons](_URL_0_) work?\n\nTranslation: I'm not a robot.\n\nIs it not possible to make a bot that clicks that button or are bots in a moral dilemma? ",
"Captcha is owned by google. Everytime you solve a captcha, you help them digitize a literary work for free.",
"A popular criminal activity online is using sites that process credit cards to validate card numbers they have are legitimate. Sites that have been targeted for this might invoke such measures to try and slow down these fraudulent transactions in an effort to pass the criminals off to other websites by using captchas to make the process cumbersome and not easily automated.",
"What's wrong with that, they're just trying to CAPTCHA your credit card information?",
"They're not worried that you're using a bot to pay your bill or that you're trying to pay your bill with a fraudulent card because that would obviously only work once and, since it will be reported, you will get caught immediately (they have all your personal information, obviously); they're more worried that a bot will use the site to get a list of card numbers that work so that they can use them again on a different site or make duplicate physical cards.",
"Thanks for all your explanations. Learned quite a bit. My takeaway is if you insist on a CAPTCHA, as my electric bill does, make it in big, easy to decipher letters. Don't make it into blurry little letters that takes me three tries, as my phone bill does. ",
"For goodness sake, those of you who defend this. Have you ever seen a major site that requires CAPTCHA for credit card info? I've literally never filled out a CAPTCHA to pay for something online.\n\nIf you're rollilng your own, and can't implement all the things you need to to make it secure, CAPTCHA is not a solution. If you can't handle all of it, use an already existing solution. If your servers are weak, use something like PayPal or Amazon Wallet or similar.\n\nCAPTCHA's greatly degrade user experience. They are not a bandaid for a poorly designed payment system. ",
"Sometimes numbers are submitted to see if the cards still work. If it goes through they will use them to try buy some big ticket items. They know that the card isn't marked as \"stolen, please report to police\" or anything like that.",
"Yes. For the lulz, someone would write a simple bot that would use fictitious credit cards to pay everyone's bills, causing crazy amounts of havoc as the power company tries to reverse the reverses they gave everyone for overpaying on their bills, and figure out how much interest should have accrued when they mistakenly sent out invoices to everyone that they had a bill for $0 because it was already paid for.",
"I have a captcha on my sites to stop carders that use bots from entering stolen cards to figure out which ones are still valid.",
"More importantly why must captchas be nigh impossible to read?"
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5lsj6f | what causes us to rub our face when we are tired? | Like when you wake up, you rub your face with your hands. Why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5lsj6f/eli5_what_causes_us_to_rub_our_face_when_we_are/ | {
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"Tired eyes get dry, and rubbing stimulates the glands to produce more fluid. Tiredness also closes your eyes, so you may rub to keep them open. Finally, there's a connection between the muscles that move your eyes around and your heart. When these muscles are stimulated, a reflex slows the heart."
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3u7qqw | how does natural selection work for selecting genes for addictive and destructive behaviors such alcoholism, smoking, gambling and other substance abuse? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3u7qqw/eli5_how_does_natural_selection_work_for/ | {
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"In short, it doesn't very much. By the time you become a full blown alcoholic, heroin addict, whatever, you're probably well into your child having years anyway. While some people fall into these problems earlier than that, they're the rare exception. Not too many 19 year old gambling addicts out there. The rest of humanity has organized itself in a way to make up for these failings after the child is born and the genes have passed on, so there's no selective pressure for them to be weeded out.",
"There could be an evolutionary upside to being an addict. The phrase \"I got drunk and knocked up some random girl.\" is one that has the Darwinian seal of approval attached to it.\n\nAlso we didn't evolve to live in the modern world. There were no casino's a million years ago, a billion years ago. There was no heroin or alcohol either. Sure we have had that stuff for a few thousand years but in evolutionary terms that is the blink of the eye.\n\nOn top of that addicts are probably addicts because of a combination of nature/nurture. I might have a predisposition for gambling that (if I was born in 1950's jersey) result in me getting my knees broken by tony sopranno over football wagers, but if I was born in 1970's Maine result in me being the CEO of IBM.\n",
"Usually when there is a \"bad gene\" that stays in the population, there is something good about it too. For example. the gene that causes sickle cell anemia [protects carriers of the gene from malaria.](_URL_0_)\n\nAlcohol is really bad for full blown alcoholics, but is beneficial for other people in moderation. Gambling all your money away on a craps table is really bad, but risk taking is what allows entrepreneurs to push their next idea or inspires people to ask out their crush. Smoking and drug use might cause significant health problems, but the neurotransmitters they act upon are essential for human intelligence. The advantage of having an advanced intelligence is outweighed by the risk of drug dependance.\n\nThe other simple way to look at this is that the environment has changed greatly, very recently. For example, for billions of years, the biggest problem for living things was obtaining enough food to survive. Humans have evolved to save every last calorie that we consume as fat. This was essential so that we didn't starve to death after going a month without food. Over the past 50 years, the tables have turned. We have near unlimited access to cheap, high calorie food. Our genes can't change fast enough to accommodate this change in the environment, and now we face problems related to obesity.",
"Addictive behaviour has advantages. You learn what you like and then pursue it. When you indulge in the behaviour, you are rewarded with pleasure inducing surges of hormones. If this behaviour is something like foraging for juicy berries, building a really warm, dry home, hunting for food, exploring, or finding the mate of your dreams, you can see how it would be advantageous. The types of addiction that you mention are all relatively recent ways of using this trait, which would not have been possible in the recent past (evolutionarily speaking!)\n\n_URL_0_",
"This question reflects a pretty tricky thing to understand about evolution. It's pretty simple to look at a modern trait and say, \"Oh, natural selection did that.\" The thing is that many traits simply aren't a result of natural selection. Summarizing [this wikipedia section](_URL_2_), evolution also arises from biased mutation, genetic drift, hitchhiking and gene flow. There are also atypical \"natural\" selections (i.e. sexual and gametic selection). \n\nA requirement for natural selection to *actually* occur is that the selective pressure (the fitness advantage provided by a trait) is stronger than those other mechanisms. There are plenty of cases where selective pressure exists, but the effects of another (e.g. genetic drift) are stronger, so you'd never actually see a response to that selective pressure. \n\nThis also feeds into the narrative that every single trait is perfectly optimized by natural selection, that everything is done in the most biologically efficient way possible. But evolution doesn't have any \"invisible hand\" that directs it. It's a random process that can only build off of what traits the ancestors have. \n\nSo, while there are some negative traits that are \"explained\" (e.g. sickle cell and cystic fibrosis genes providing disease resistance in heterozygotes) many traits and inefficiencies stick around simply as leftovers. There are undoubtedly better ways we could design our bodies to fight malaria, but given the biochemical starting materials our ancestors had, sickle cell was the most effective solution. \n\nThere are also traits that are simply the downstream consequences of other mutations. As [this ASAP Science video shows,](_URL_0_) a mutation in a dopamine receptor leads to increases in infidelity and addictive behaviors. There's really nothing proving that this receptor mutation was selected for or against. It could very well have arisen randomly and not had a strong enough selective pressure to eliminate it. In that case, infidelity and addictive behaviors wouldn't be a result of selection, more of a random byproduct. Remember that evolution does not have act on the trait level. \n\nTo summarize my main point, you shouldn't assume that just because a trait exists in a population that it *has* to be a result of selection. You really shouldn't be able to come up with a common sense explanation for why *every* trait is there. This can lead to extremely problematic oversimplifications. For example, two men tried to attribute [rape as a naturally selected trait.](_URL_1_) While this argument was certainly provocative and made a degree of \"sense,\" it was an extremely flawed analysis and drew deserved criticism. I'm pretty sure many people still don't respect evolutionary psych as a field because of it. \n\n\n\n",
"Natural selection doesn't make you perfect, just good enough to have viable offspring. Humans have enough social tools in place to compensate for members that would fail to successfully reproduce so when an alcoholic has a child it still grows up and is able to have kids of its own. Wellfare and adoption programs make sure those kids are OK. If we had a super harsh culture this would be different. If for example it was a widely held belief that: \"Anyone with a history of addiction should be sterilized\", after a few generations we would have far fewer alcholics around.\n\nNatural selection only really impacts humans of the developed world when it comes to things like immunity from disease and birth defects. Outside of that most all humans are in a position to reproduce. The larger impact on human development at this point is Sexual/Cultural Selection. This is when a trait is not passed on because it selected against on a societal level or when it comes to the ability to attract a partner to reproduce. Things like height and body proportions are an example of this. The average height goes up over time not because short people are unfit to survive, but because we are more interested in reproducing with taller people."
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1dbyc5 | los angeles traffic | Why is it more discussed than like New York or Chicago traffic? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dbyc5/eli5_los_angeles_traffic/ | {
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"Because its worse than the other two cities. Additionally, LA's public transit isn't nearly as comprehensive and awesome as that of NYC or Chicago, so more people are on the roads than would like to be due to lack of an alternative that's cost and time effective."
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6vyigy | why is it that kids have such a fascination with vehicles and transportation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6vyigy/eli5_why_is_it_that_kids_have_such_a_fascination/ | {
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"I got into mechanical engineering because once upon a time my parents got me a few of those \"planes and trains and things that go\" books, and I loved reading the Eyewitness Books and Incredible Cross Sections in the school library.\n\nThere's something fascinating, perhaps majestic that seems quite magical to a child's mind about the complex inner workings of machines that often go beyond a child's comprehension. As an adult I can see that every machine like steam locomotives, early airplanes, ships, cars, motorcycles and mobile cranes are all made keeping with as few parts as possible, but still needing a great deal of sophistication to accomplish something like \"lifting things up\" when \"things\" can weigh 150 tons.\n\nWhen we think of \"car\" as a mode of transportation, it could be said that a car is like a more convenient and faster horse. But \"car\" today almost always now automatically implies things like radios, automatic transmissions, adjustable seats, hydraulic steering assistance, electronic engine management and many other components which hide in plain sight of \"convenience\". When looked at from a surface level or in a cross section, all these extra bits make something like adventure trying to understand what they all do.\n\nAnd of course thanks to the modern developments of industrial design and marketing, its often all covered in an appealing shell, adding mystery for when you try to crack it open and take a peek at what's hidden inside.\n\ntl;dr because they're fricken cool"
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1t4mt6 | is it more economical to run my car half full of gas due to a lighter vehicle rather than filling up each time? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1t4mt6/eli5_is_it_more_economical_to_run_my_car_half/ | {
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"Yes, theoretically... but consider, a gallon of gas weighs 6.3 pounds, so a 20 gallon tank only weighs around 120 lbs. So, you are talking about maybe a 60lb savings in vehicular weight. May as well just drain your wiper fluid low and toss out your floormats while you're at it.",
"Nope. In theory, driving with less gas would be more fuel efficient, because of the reduced weight, but it's such a tiny difference it's negligible. On the other hand, the extra fuel you spend driving to the gas station twice as often, while still really small, is just enough to be significant. "
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6y3g0e | why do soldiers have their thumb over the barrel/bore of their rifle when engaging a target? | I've always been taught that your thumb should be parallel, not on top. Is there a reason why they do this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6y3g0e/eli5_why_do_soldiers_have_their_thumb_over_the/ | {
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"For accurate shooting it is very important to have the correct grip and techniques. Soldiers are also being trained in this. However in a war there is a lot of things to worry about. Most shots are not even aimed. So soldiers might opt to have a better grip on their rife so they do not lose their grip. So they may extend their fingers around the barrel and also move the hand closer to the receiver. This reduce accuracy but makes it easier to maintain the grip on your gun. It also puts the hand further out of harms way and makes it easier to reach for the controls on the gun. If you have the time to make accurate shots you can change your grip and do all the right techniques required for accurate shots but this makes you generally more vulnerable.",
"Being a soldier myself, I feel like I could give a bit of insight to this. This particular grip is nomally used in specific situations (unless you're one of those guys who serve and just stick to one way of holding your rifle). In most situations, when engaging from a target a good distance away, you'd go for the most stable grip in order to have the most accurate shot possible. However, if you were to engage a target in CQB/CQC (us Canadians call it close quarters battle, others normally use close quarters combat) they would have their pinky, ring and middle finger and thumb wrapped around the elongated body grip of the rifle. Along with the index finger along the length of the rifle, essentially telling us \"Where you point is where your shot goes.\" \nHope this helps."
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29pja3 | why do humans enjoy having other species as pets? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29pja3/eli5_why_do_humans_enjoy_having_other_species_as/ | {
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"There are many reasons. The most prominent one is probably companionship.",
"Less demanding of social skills, hygiene, appearance & they don't talk back. ",
"I heard of baboons that train dogs as guard dogs. ",
"Because pets are helpful. You going to break into my house? My rottweiler says otherwise. All these mice and vermin constantly want to eat our garbage. Not when there are cats around. Getting bit up by fleas? Here, hold this Pomeranian for awhile. Boom no more fleas on you.",
"Because we are pack animals but no longer live in packs or move in packs. This is why we like having pets as it gives us the sense of being part of a pack again. There you go explained like your 5 :)",
"There was a good segment on the domestication of dogs in the second episode of Cosmos that could help you if you wish.. The episode was titled \"Some of the Things Molecules Do\" .. \n\n",
"Cause they need to feel good about being responsible for the death of countless animals. "
]
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2s3ov1 | league of legends; dota 2; smite | What is the difference, aren't they all basically the same? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s3ov1/eli5_league_of_legends_dota_2_smite/ | {
"a_id": [
"cnlvs1h"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"They are in the same genre of games. They all have their similarities and differences.\n\nJust like quake, counter strike and call of duty are all shooters, buy very different games."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
9vciw4 | how can some employers fire/lay off workers for seemingly no reason but others have to document things like "write ups" to have grounds for termination? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9vciw4/eli5_how_can_some_employers_firelay_off_workers/ | {
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"score": [
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"text": [
"In many states you can fire an employee for \"no reason,\" but not for \"any reason.\"\n\n\"No reason\" means just that. Your boss can just fire you because it's Thursday and he's in a bad mood.\n\nHowever, if your boss tries to fire you because you're a woman, or because you're gay, or something like that (varies by state I believe), that might be illegal.\n\nSo in many cases, even in at will states, if your employer wants to fire someone they might look for specific reasons and document them (employee was late, employee didn't perform tasks, etc), so that the employee can't claim they were fired for a specific -- illegal -- reason.",
"It also has a lot to do with are they unionized or not. Very few union operations have \"at will\" firing policies, which means you'd have to go through progressive discipline of writeups, suspensions and then termination. It also depends on what they're being fired for. If it's something not major (like robbing the place) but still something that can be fought, it'd be good practice to discipline first, in the event you are sued for wrongful termination. Especially around things like continuous lates, substance abuse, or missed time, as they can be a side effect of a protected ground and may give case for an employee to sue for wrongful termination. ",
"Depends on if the company wants to deal with an unemployment claim.\n\nLaid off: You're eligible. \nLet go because you just didn't have the skills or just weren't a good fit: Eligible. \nFired because you sent the secretary dick pics: Not eligible. ",
"Lots of factors: local laws, the company's tolerance for dealing with unemployment, unions, reason for termination, etc.\n\nYou said \"others have to document...\" and I believe that's a flaw in your question. It depends on a lot of things, some of which come down to the choice of the employer."
]
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[],
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||
6vn90x | what is controversial about athletes kneeling during the national anthem (objectivity appreciated)? | From what I remember, the initial outrage was that it was disrespectful to the troops, but then it was explained that it was to show solidarity for victims of racist violence or something, I'm not exactly sure. Can someone give me an objective explanation of what both sides feel about this issue? Thanks | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6vn90x/eli5_what_is_controversial_about_athletes/ | {
"a_id": [
"dm1ivo6",
"dm1j0yd"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Traditional decorum is to stand during the national anthem and face the flag. Some athletes are kneeling during the national anthem as a form of protest, which is perceived as an insult to the nation because it violates that social norm to respect the national symbols. \n\nThe athletes say it is justified because it brings attention to an important topic, police violence against ethnic minorities, and that if it doesn't go addressed then that *should* reduce respect for the national symbols.",
"Flag code dictates that all are to stand respectfully. Military personnel (active or veteran) can salute, civilians are to stand with right hand over heart. Hats are to be removed unless it is part of your uniform and you are saluting. Violation of any part of this protocol set by the flag code save for due to medical necessity (disabled and or elderly and unable to stand) is seen as an insult to the flag, the nation, and the military. "
]
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[],
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] |
|
2b8mye | where does my cash go when i deposit it at the bank? | I tend to make a lot of tips at my job and I deposit them every week along with my regular check. Does the cash just kind of get noted to my account or does it actually stay mine? This is probably a dumb question, but I figured I'd ask you guys. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b8mye/eli5_where_does_my_cash_go_when_i_deposit_it_at/ | {
"a_id": [
"cj2u2il"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Into the tellers draw and credited electronically to your account. Then at regular intervals it will get taken to the banks safe. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
at76er | how were there surrenders in such large numbers during ww2? | So I recently watched WWII in Color, and one thing I couldn't wrap my head around was the POW's taken. They would talk about hundreds of thousands of troops being taken prisoner at various points. I guess I just don't understand how that many people could ever be forced into surrendering at once. They must have known they wouldn't be receiving the best treatment once taken prisoner, so were their positions really that untenable that surrendering was still the best choice? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/at76er/eli5_how_were_there_surrenders_in_such_large/ | {
"a_id": [
"egz3zv6",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"People don't like dying, and obedience is enforced harshly in the military. If you have a bunch of people encircled and out of options the question is either them surrendering or killing them all. When the order from leadership comes down to surrender then soldiers are expected to obey, as if they don't either the enemy will kill them or their own side will. ",
"I don't know if you realize it, but the Soviets had 6,400,000 troops marching towards Berlin. SIX MILLION!\n\nThe Germans only had 1.9 million troops left to defend. \n\nOn the other side, the Allies had 4,500,000 troops marching towards Berlin.\n\nThose same 1.9 million guys had to defend against them also!\n\nSo you can see that even though Hitler wanted everyone to defend to the last man, it wasn't really a winnable situation, under any circumstances. So if you are a General, and you have 100,000 troops and you are facing a very pissed off Russian General with one million troops, what do you do? And if you want to find out why those Russians were so pissed off, read about what the Germans did while they were occupying a large part of Russia, it's disgusting how they treated the locals. \nThe only smart thing for the German General to do would be to surrender his 100,000 men, as he knew they had no way out, they were low on ammo, low on food, and had virtually no fuel, or fodder for their horses, and they would soon be surrounded. \nThe Soviets, however had plenty of men, plenty of ammo, plenty of food, and thousands of katyusha rockets aimed right at them. No brainer, really."
]
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[],
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|
1o2mp5 | why do some cats and dogs get along but others hate each other, how do animals like that decide who they like/dislike? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1o2mp5/eli5_why_do_some_cats_and_dogs_get_along_but/ | {
"a_id": [
"ccoc4bb"
],
"score": [
4
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"text": [
"How do *you* decide whom you like and dislike...?"
]
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[]
] |
||
2vtj8t | why does my hdtv have input lag when playing video games, and what, if anything, can be done to minimize/eliminate it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vtj8t/eli5_why_does_my_hdtv_have_input_lag_when_playing/ | {
"a_id": [
"coktpor"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"TV's do a lot of image processing compared to monitors. \n \nHere are somethings you can do to reduce lag: \n \n* Turn on Game Mode. \n* Turn down/off Sharpness. \n* Turn off Dynamic Contrast. \n* Turn off all Noise Filters. \n* Turn off Edge Enhancement. \n* And for the love of God, turn of motion interpolation."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
4e3rhc | how do wireless speakers work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4e3rhc/eli5how_do_wireless_speakers_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"d1wr0hp"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Just like radio. There is a transmitter and a reciever. In the case of Bluetooth, the transmitter is something like a smartphone. Then the speaker recieves the signal, and amplifies it."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
2tnsi5 | why is it that i can stream a movie fine until it is fully downloaded, then the video becomes lagy and intermittent? | It seems that once a movie is fully downloaded it should run more smoothly, but the opposite is true. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tnsi5/eli5_why_is_it_that_i_can_stream_a_movie_fine/ | {
"a_id": [
"co13p9g"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Assuming you are talking about a youtube -esque player, the grey download bar is a partial placebo, if you start a 1 hour video and wait for it to buffer all the way you likely aren't downloading the entire thing. On your end this seems to be silly but on the companies end there is a lot of users that say open several tabs and have them load, but then close them before actually watching the entire video.\n\nOther case, is that once it downloaded an entire video it senses that your network can handle more and starts downloading a better quality video file instead."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2h26e8 | why my tv signal messes up after turning on my battery charged vacuum cleaner? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h26e8/eli5_why_my_tv_signal_messes_up_after_turning_on/ | {
"a_id": [
"ckoocsg"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"Because the vacuum cleaner's electric motor is emitting an electromagnetic field that interferes with the tv's reception. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
341hk0 | why is it that a part of your body getting hurt enough (like getting kicked in the shin) will sometimes give you a taste of blood in your mouth? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/341hk0/eli5_why_is_it_that_a_part_of_your_body_getting/ | {
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"text": [
"I've never heard of this phenomenon but perhaps you're hurt so bad without realizing it you're biting your lip or inner cheeks or what have you and draw blood?",
"It's a side effect of hitting a nerve. It's kinda like cross-talk. So the nerves that control your taste sensation are being impacted.\n\nEdit: Unless the injury is the head/brain, then it can be something more serious.",
"For me its different happens all the time. When cut myself i get the taste of blood in my mouth. Even if i hadn't noticed that I've cut myself. Weird.",
"It has happened to me as well where I'll \"taste\" metal after getting knocked in the head or something like that"
]
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[],
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||
1vhg9l | why is it both my reading speed and absorption rate are a lot higher when reading stories as opposed other forms of writing? | Regardless of whether it's fiction or not, I can read and absorb stories maybe 5 times faster than I would a textbook for example. I am more interested in the difference in absorption rate, it takes an immense amount of effort for to even absorb 50% of the material read in textbook, whereas I'd say I average around 80% absorption with almost no effort for stories. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vhg9l/eli5_why_is_it_both_my_reading_speed_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"cescc3q"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Think of all the knowledge in the world as a building and rooms contain things that you know or don't know. Every time you learn something new, your brain has to find the hallway or staircase that connects that room to all the other related rooms. The ease with which you can do this depends on the proximity of the new room to all the old rooms.\n\nTextbooks are written at a much higher lexical level than most stories. Textbooks represent a very concise arrangement of rooms within a field, but they don't necessarily share any proximity with the other open rooms in your brain. That's a lot of work to make those connections. Stories on the other hand are not information-dense. A few key details will get you a long way. The story is basically walking you from room to room."
]
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[]
] |
|
21sgrm | why dextrose is considered an artificial sweetener when it is another form of glucose. | I'm confused about sugars and sweeteners. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21sgrm/eli5_why_dextrose_is_considered_an_artificial/ | {
"a_id": [
"cgg2le7",
"cgg2lkr"
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"score": [
2,
2
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"text": [
"Because it is not a sugar that is naturally found in the environment and can only be made under specific conditions.",
"The dextrose is not artificial, it's just added to the artifical sugar as a bulking agent.\n\nThe thing about Splenda and aspartame is that they are EXTREMELY sweet, ten or twenty milligrams of Splenda is about as sweet as a big spoonful of regular sugar. It's impossible to package such small quantity of Splenda and so dextrose (glucose) is added to the mix to give a packet of Splenda more weight.\n\nA packet of splenda is 98% glucose."
]
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27dwdx | when to take asprin, acetaminophen, or ibuprofen | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27dwdx/eli5_when_to_take_asprin_acetaminophen_or/ | {
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"Hopefully I can be of some help :)\n\nAspirin- Has anti-inflammatory properties so it's good for things like toothaches, arthritis and other pains caused by inflammation. Also, it's used to thin out blood so it can help prevent future strokes and heart attacks. Cons: can be a stomach irritant.\n\nIbuprofen (aka advil or motrin) it's a bit stronger than aspirin. Usually used to treat pain for soft tissue injuries or menstrual cramps. Cons: can cause issues with kidneys.\n\nAcetaminophen (aka tylenol) about same strength as aspirin for pains not caused by inflammation. Pros: least likely to cause stomach irritation.",
"Some warnings\nAspirin thins blood, so beware if you're on blood thinners. \nIbuprofen is harsh on the kidneys and stomach, take with food. \nAcetaminophen is harsh on the liver, don't take when drinking alcohol. \n\n",
"Since some of the comments here have answered this, I wonder if I can add a related question. What is aspirin? I know paracetamol and ibuprofen, but I've never taken aspirin nor do I have any idea where you would buy it from. Is it mainly popular in the US? Or does America just use aspirin as a generic term for painkillers? ",
"The misinformation here is a nightmare. It's understandable though, I think everyone has a hard time with it. I'm in medical school and I'm still hesitant to even try to answer your question because *I know I'm going to screw something up myself*. But here goes...\n\n - They **all** lower fever and pain.\n\n - And they **all** have potential bad side effects.\n\n~**Aspirin** ~\n\n - **Pro**—Anti inflammatory (so works well on arthritis), and can also be used in daily, *tiny* doses it helps prevent heart attacks. \n\n - **Con**—Being an anti-inflammatory means it has systemic side effects on your whole body. A dose high enough to treat fever or pain will alter many parts of your body's biochemical balance, which may have interactions with other drugs you're taking and your body's natural inflammation and healing processes. Also, excess aspirin use thins your blood (hence, the heart attack treatment) but that also means your cuts and other bleeds will take longer to clot, which can be a huge problem if you get into an car accident or something after taking a few aspirin for a headache.\n\n - **Overall**— Works great if you take a baby dose to prevent heart attacks. Can also be used for pain/fever, but honestly, there are better options available for pain. \n\n~**Ibuprofen**~ \n\n - **Pro**—Anti inflammatory (so works well on arthritis, just like Aspirin). The pain/fever reduction lasts *much* longer than Aspirin though, which is nice. Also, it doesn't thin your blood, so you don't have to worry about cuts bleeding. \n\n - **Con**—Disrupts your stomach's ability to make protective mucus. Daily ibuprofen use can lead to stomach ulcers and intestinal bleeds. Also, just like aspirin, it's a full body anti-inflammatory. This means that you're sort of affecting your entire body's natural inflammation and healing processes. *Also*, it can cause kidney damage with prolonged use. (Thanks to /u/bard_owland his [reply](_URL_0_).)\n\n - **Overall**—A pretty great drug that helps relieve headaches and aches and pains of all kinds. The fact that it lasts longer than aspirin, *and* doesn't give you problems with clotting make it a preferred pain treatment for most people. *However*, daily use of it can lead to stomach ulcers, so it's not exactly perfect.\n\n~**Acetaminophen**~\n\n - **Pro**— *Not* anti-inflammatory. Acts in a much more focused manner on the nerves. This means it has less systemic effects and interacts with virtually no other drugs. It is favored in many hospitals since it doesn't matter what disease the patient has or what other drugs they are taking, acetaminophen just ignores everything else and acts to lower the pain and fever.\n\n - **Con**—The fact that it's *not* anti-inflammatory means it's pretty useless for arthritis and stiff joints. Also, there's an issue with liver toxicity, though it's slightly overblown. It can harm your liver in two instances: 1) You are an alcoholic. Don't mix alcohol and acetaminophen, it will kill your liver. 2) You overdose and take 10x the amount you are supposed to. Overdosing on acetaminophen happens in suicides or to kids that think the medicine is candy and drink the whole bottle. But if you're not suicidal and take the drug correctly (and without alcohol), the risk of liver damage is null.\n\n - **Overall**—Acetaminophen works great on headaches and fevers, but doesn't work as well on muscles pains and arthritis. It starts to word *faster* than ibuprofen, but doesn't last *as long* (hence the commercials, it takes 8 tylenol to make it though 24 hours, but only 2 ibuprofen).\n\nIn any case, I recommend owning a bottle of both acetaminophen and ibuprofen. If you just have a little headache I recommend acetaminophen , but if you get a sore back or achy muscles (aka, inflammation) I recommend ibuprofen. \n\n----------------\n\n**TL;DR:** Like I said at the start, I'm sure I screwed something up, so take my advice with a grain of salt. But the real truths that you really should know are just the following:\n\n - All 3 treat fever and pain, and all 3 have bad side effects if you abuse them incorrectly.\n\n - Acetaminophen is not anti-inflammatory, which means it's worse at muscle and joint pain, but also means it won't screw up other medicines you are taking.\n\n - Ibuprofen lasts the longest, but don't take it daily or else you are at risk for ulcers.",
"If you're looking for something to keep around for those occasional days where you just don't feel good and need to self-medicate, I've had great success with the pills that contain aspirin, acetaminophen, and caffeine. Two of those suckers will clear up pretty much anything and have you feeling perky and right as rain.\n\nI can't imagine taking too many of those things is all that good for you though, so I'd give 'em a pass if you find yourself needing to take painkillers more regularly.",
"What about naproxen?",
"I grew up in an acetaminophen household and once I moved out discovered ibuprofen. For all round effectiveness - aches, pains, fevers, headaches and more this stuff is gold.",
"Of the 3, I can only take acetaminophen, otherwise I trade the aches and pains for horribly uncomfortable indigestion and heartburn."
]
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3dr54i | why are tracksuits synonymist with russia? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dr54i/eli5_why_are_tracksuits_synonymist_with_russia/ | {
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"text": [
"In russia, poland and other slavic countries, track suits are worn by a group of young people similar to British chavs. You should check out r/squattingslavs for more examples of this specimen.\nEdited spelling.\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
26y82y | why did new york city merge multiple subway companies into one? | It seems strange that a country which believes in capitalism and the free market economy would not choose to have multiple subway companies coexist and compete against each other to provide lower fares, cleaner stations, improved punctuality, and a payment system that's fit for the current millenia. E.g. any other city's subway system.
Bonus question: why haven't there been subway lines underneath 2nd & 10th Aves? Seems like the next logical placement considering they are more or less placed every 2 blocks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26y82y/eli5_why_did_new_york_city_merge_multiple_subway/ | {
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"text": [
"The problem is that if I want to get from A to B, I don't have a choice of which line I take. If company X provides a better service but doesn't run the line that takes me from A to B, that's no use to me. I'm not going to walk half a mile to station C to get a train to D and then walk another half a mile to my final destination.\n\nWhen you talk about \"any other city's subway system\" as being better than New York's, which city did you have in mind? All the ones I know of are each run by a single company.\n\nWhat you want from a city's public transportation system is that everything connects up in a meaningful way. For that, you need if not a single operator, at least an overseeing authority to regulate fares (ideally, the fares should be fully integrated so you don't have to buy three separate tickets for your daily commute) and set timetables and routes.",
"If it were just left to cutthroat capitalism, you'd have five companies competing for business in Manhattan but nobody rolling out to Harlem. Like any other public transit, the social and economic benefits of having it run are considered greater than the purely economic benefit of selling a subway ticket. It's an essential service to move people around d the city and the land they drill the tunnels through is public property.",
"The 2nd Avenue line has actually been under construction for several years now. The first plans emerged in 1929 but the actual construction has seen slow progress due to a lack of funding in the past.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nedit: clarity",
"If I remember correctly, the first 2 subway systems were owned and operated by private companies, and the 3rd was by the city. Eventually the first 2 went out of business, so the government took them over because, well, somebody had to operate them--you can't have major infrastructure just shut down like that. Also, having 3 separate overlapping subway systems is stupidly impractical for commuters.\n\nBonus question: because of money. The economics of running subways along 2nd or 10th are less favorable than on, say, Lexington, 6th, or Broadway because those streets are more central. As someone else pointed out, they've wanted to put a subway on 2nd for 80 years, but it's only happening now. Because of money.\n\nThis article should cover it all:\n\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway"
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[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_New_York_City_Subway"
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1dk7jl | prices of shares go up and down each hour. so why don't people just buy, and sell when the price gets higher and keep doing this until they are rich? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dk7jl/eli5_prices_of_shares_go_up_and_down_each_hour_so/ | {
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"text": [
"How do you know that the prices are going back down? You could buy when the stock is $1 sell when its $2 then it could go all the way up to $5 and never dip below $3 again.",
"They do!\n\nBut it's not quite that simple. You can't buy and sell at the same price. At a particular moment in time, if the quoted price for a share is, say, $20, you may find that you can buy at $21 and sell at $19. This is how your broker makes his money. So if you sold when the price had gone up by only $1, you'd lose money. And the more times you buy and sell, the more money you're giving to your broker, so you're better off holding onto your shares for a bit longer if possible.",
"Because you don't know it'll go up more.\n\nAlso it costs money to buy and sell usually, and the gain over the course of a day or hour probably doesn't cover that fee which the average person pays.\n\nSome people do this though, which is partly why the price goes up and down. Most people aren't able (or willing) to buy at a price then just wait until it goes back up after a dip, they normally get scared and sell. Sometimes this is a good idea, if the stock tanks, but in the long run, for the economy as a whole, it tends to go up. But if you buy one company with all your savings it could fail completely tomorrow and you'd lose everything.",
"Some people do that. It's called [Day Trading](_URL_0_).\n\nThe problem is knowing when it's going to rise and when it's going to fall. At the start of a business day, you know Company X is going to have a press conference at noon and they are rumored to be revealing Wigit 7, the most up to date wigit ever. So you buy a lot of it at 8 am when it's cheap, thinking you can sell it at 1pm when it's really high.\n\nFrom 8 am (or whenever trading starts) to noon, the price keeps climbing higher and higher - you could sell now and make $10 a share, or you can keep it and make WHO KNOWS HOW MUCH!?!?!\n\nNoon comes, the press conference and... they reveal a security flaw in Wigit 6 that they promise to fix with Wigit 7 to be released in.. six months. Not a promising conference, price drops and the shares are now worth even less than they were at 8 am.\n\n...OR they reveal Wigit 7 and how awesome and cool it is, and all the sweet new stuff it has and how it's the best fucking thing ever and oh yeah 6 has some minor issues and the stock price JUMPS and you sell at 1pm and make $200 per share and you're awesome!\n\nWelcome to day trading! It's not gambling because you actually *can* win! And the outcome is determined not only on what you do and when you do it, but how someone else says something! If they say it one way, you lose, and if they say it another way you win **even if they say the exact same information**."
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68z1o5 | the us constitution and its amendments. | It gets thrown about a lot but being a Brit I have almost no clue. Is it literally an amendment to a document or is each one for something specific? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68z1o5/eli5_the_us_constitution_and_its_amendments/ | {
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"An amendment is allowed by the section titled \"elastic clause\" which allows congress to make changes to the constitution by vote. Amendments are a rather big deal, like changing voting rights. And I suck at this type of thing, someone will explain it better.",
"The amendments in the US most often refers to the amendments to the US constitution and not to any other laws. The constitution outlines how the government should work and what other laws are allowed. For example the different bill of rights are amendments to the constitution that specifies additional rights that future and present laws are not allowed to violate. Another example is the prohibition which say that alcohol is prohibited. There is a further amendment that say that alcohol is allowed anyway. When the constitution were first signed there were a lot of problems with it. These problems were discovered one by one and addressed in the amendments. And there is constant talk about further amending it to address new issues. For example the second amendment made a lot of sense at the time when the US were relying on people being able to form a militia to protect their own rights but does not make any sense now that the US have the worlds most powerful military and any soldier have more powerful equipment then is expected from civilians.",
"In United States (and many other countries), there is a Constitution, which is essentially a law for lawmaking. It covers a lot of things, but since whoever is/are writing the Constitution are not omniscient, they allow the future generations to make changes, or \"amendments.\"\n\nSo technically yes, it's literally an amendment, but each amendment make some very important changes, with each having their own purpose.\n\nFor example, 22nd Amendment prevents the same person from being elected President more than two terms in a row. Until then, it was perfectly legal for one person to remain the President until they die, provided they win all the elections until then.",
" > Is it literally an amendment to a document \n\nYes. The amendments change how the Constitution works.\n\n > or is each one for something specific?\n\nYes. The first ten amendments are the [Bill of Rights](_URL_0_), which protect by law certain concepts that the Founding Fathers considered important to the newborn United States. Later amendments deal with other rights eg citizenship or suffrage (13-15, 19, 23, 24, 26) or sovereign immunity for the individual states (11), affect the legislature (17, 20, 27) or the President (12, 20, 22, 25), and in extreme cases even things like the sale of alcohol (18, 21) or an income tax (16). It's all complicated and somewhat redundant, but it's what we have, and it works. "
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2ya37x | how are we legally able to sue for a "negative review" but not legally obliged to pay for positive ones? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ya37x/eli5_how_are_we_legally_able_to_sue_for_a/ | {
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"You can sue for anything, but you are not likely to win many things. Damages for receiving a negative review are one of the things you are not likely to win. In fact news of a company making a lawsuit for bad reviews is such bad press it is most likely to make them lose even more profits. ",
"They can only win such a lawsuit if they prove the review is slander or libel, which means the review contained false information. That's usually what they're claiming in these suits. Bad reviews themselves are protected under freedom of speech, if they're legitimate.",
"Lawyer here. I will do the best to try to explain simply.\n\nThere are three main reasons you can sue someone. Either they broke a contract with you, they interfered with (or stole) your property, or they have committed a wrong, called a \"tort\", against you. This kind of lawsuit is in the third category.\n\nOne tort in many places is called defamation. You may also have heard the terms libel and slander. The rough idea with these torts is that if you say something false about someone, that harms their reputation, you owe them compensation.\n\nFor example, let's say you run a daycare in your home. It's your main source of income. If I start spreading rumours that you were arrested for molesting a kid, even though that is false, and the rumours take hold, say goodbye to your business. Now I have wronged you, destroyed your reputation in the community, and harmed you financially. I should owe you compensation for what I've done. So you can sue me.\n\nIn the context of internet reviews, it's possible that a negative review could harm a business' reputation and cost it money. So a business could sue. The thing is, truth is generally a complete defence to this kind of lawsuit. If the contents if the review are true (e.g. the food really was cold when it arrived, etc) then it seems like there would be no valid claim. The problem is that internet reviews sometimes stray into hyperbole, which potentially opens the door for a lawsuit.\n\nJust to be clear, I'm not giving anyone legal advice here. I'm talking about a generic, hypothetical situation."
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2q2h8m | what is it in the quran that convinces so many extremists to fight in the name of their god? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2q2h8m/eli5_what_is_it_in_the_quran_that_convinces_so/ | {
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" > Why are there no current Christian extremists?\n\n[Does the KKK not count? As well as other Christians who have, for example, blown up abortion clinics in the name of Christianity?](_URL_0_) These people could very easily be compared to aforementioned \"outliers\". For these outliers, you must understand that all religions and belief systems have their own extremists, and in a country like America, you're bound to get a number of people who are willing to kill others (along with themself) in the name of their religion.\n\nThis, however, still doesn't address why we keep hearing about Muslim terrorists. I would think that a small part of this is due to more news coverage, but that still doesn't explain all of it.",
"It's nothing in particular, it's just that telling people they belong to a group comforts people, especially if that group is \"god's chosen group\". \n\nIf the rules of that group happen to be advantageous for them, that's a bonus. (\"you'll get a wife, she has to be obedient an do what you say\") \n\nIf it caters to their youthful adventurous hormones and fighting spirit, that'll do well with the young ones (\"We're going to travel the world ! We're going to conquer ! We're going to kick ass ! In the name of Allah ! \"). \n\nWhen people are not happy with their position in society / life, someone telling them they'll finally get to kick the ass of the group they don't fit in to can feel really good.",
"I think the answer lies in your question. The people are extremists. There opinion or beliefs are not necessarily derived from the Quran. There are many Muslims as well as other believers that would never fight for their religion. I would also argue against the fact that they are all fighting for the same thing. Many extremists although Muslim are fighting for a variety of things land, independence, their clan or community. Bearing in mind the Middle East is the most volatile region i would argue it is not completely down to the religion. Alot of this is ethnic hatred, poverty, power all mixed up and made worse by being stuck together in artificial western derived states. It's a recipe for disaster and often portrayed as crazy Muslims in the media as an easier answer than admitting it was largely the wears fault.\n\nAs for the second part Christian extremism is a very real thing. The ku klux klan is still operating, the killings between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. There is the lords resistance army in Uganda and the most recent case was in the Central African Republic where thousands of Muslims were massacred by Christians. \n\nAnd the Australian guy mental health. I am not familiar with him entirely but it's what it looks like. He acted alone and there are many cases of sieges with mentally ill people both Christian and Muslim. Utoya in Norway was a famous one carried out in the name of Christianity.",
"The sentiment is much the same as that of those who fight for their country. A lot of the people you're referring to don't have a country, or have a country that's a set of arbitrary lines drawn by foreign powers at the end of the colonial era and ruled by a petty dictator, not something grand and inspiring like the USA or some of the larger and longer lived European nation states. In other words, they aren't very nationalistic about their country, but about something on a grander scale, such as Islam, or the restoration of the historical Umayyad Caliphate. \n\nThe methods are different because the means are different. People who have a navy, air force, satellites, drones and ICBM's don't fly hijacked passenger planes into buildings. \n\n",
"I think the main reason is that the leaders of some of these terrorist groups selectively interpret some Qur'anic verses and exploit the ignorance of those who follow them. Although I find it strange how so many succumb to this; generally, more than religious motivation, the fighters are being incentivised by tribal motivations and poverty, and it is these fighters who precipitate a critical mass and achieve enough momentum to create lasting conflict. This is the reason why we see that this doesn't really happen much in developed areas in the muslim world, as such tribal customs have been uprooted long ago, and poverty, while still present, in exceedingly rare. I say 'strange' because it is relatively well known that the conditions for holy war are to stop oppression, self defense and protection of the holy mosque, but in this case, if, and only if, there is an effort to cause it to fall into the hands of non-muslims. And even in martial conflict there are humanitarian guidelines; one is not allowed to destroy houses or temples, to harm women, children or the elderly, to uproot vegetation, or to cause needless suffering to any living being in your surroundings. You will find this to be the mainstream position. Personally I believe that the reasons you hear so much about Islamic extremism are: firstly, the fact that Islam is today the most widely seriously practised religion, with 1.6bn followers; what I mean by this is that although there are statistically more christians, they generally tend to not be as devout. Therefore it follows that the vast majority of religiously motivated attacks are perpetrated in the name of Islam, in accordance with proportionality. Secondly, many muslims live in the middle east. This makes sense because this is where Islam began. Therefore it follows that this will be the location of most Islamically motivated action. Now, the middle east has a lot of oil. Western countries, making up most of the developed world, need a lot of oil. Hence, speaking from an economic standpoint, it follows that the simplest, most futureproof, and cheapest way to provide you country with oil is to acquire an oil producing country - the reason many middle eastern countries are portrayed to us, by our media, negatively is that it favours our governments' oil seeking agenda to do so, so that when they engage in war with those countries they encounter limited opposition. If you want to learn more about this particular point I recommend you watch Robert Newman's rather brilliant History of Oil ( _URL_0_ ) which will help you gain some historical perspective. I hope I have been informative. All of the above is my opinion - I don't wish to get too controversial about anything. Source: I am a practicing, arabic speaking muslim who has memorised the Qur'an.",
"People don't read religious texts and suddenly become extremists and hurt people. They have their reasons and desires for hurting people, then attach whatever they can find that empowers or excuses them. ",
"Not only do you have Christian extremists, you have Buddhists in Myanmar killing and discriminating those of other religions in the name of their own. And you aren't going to find a more peaceful religion than Buddhism. If people want to twist a religion to their own will and interpretation they could do that without much issues, they just need the right religion leaders telling them what they want to hear. See how the conservative Catholics in America are strong believes of pope infallibility when Pope Benedict was in charge and no longer so when it is Pope Francis's turn.\n\nYou hear a lot about Muslim extremists because like it or not Western countries have screwed up the Middle East badly and made life for many people there hopeless. Why do people flock to join the ISIS? Because there's a strong feeling among Sunni muslims that the Shia muslims are conspiring with the Western powers to shallow them up, and the ISIS is their only hope to beating that conspiracy. People joined the Al Qaeda/Taliban for similar reasons. If the Middle East is predominately Christians and the Western countries are Muslims you can be sure you would be hearing about Christians committing suicide attacks against Muslims instead. ",
"I think another point to keep in mind is that the things we call extremism, including bombings, targeting civilians, and executions, have been used by lots of different groups from all kinds of faiths. Today it's the Muslims, in 100 years it could very well be someone else. If the U.S. were (somehow) successfully overrun by a foreign power, I have no doubt that millions of Americans would support using these same tactics in defense. Hell, even the movie Red Dawn shows that we're all supposed to cheer when the football captain ambushes soldiers and blows up buildings with disguised bombs. The only option for a pissed off Muslim teenager in the same situation is asymmetrical warfare, just like Red Dawn.\n\nAlso keep in mind that the Muslim extremists are not all fighting for the same thing. In the news we heard a lot about Al-Qaeda, and then suddenly started hearing a lot more about the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL). The IS broke relations with Al-Qaeda because they thought they were being too passive. IS has declared a new Caliph, which is like a Muslim pope but the position hasn't really been filled in a long time (think 12th century). Al Qaeda refuses to acknowledge the IS Caliph and has said that the IS is too aggressive and too brutal in actually seizing land with conventional armies, whereas Al Qaeda's explicit strategy is to lie low and get occasional flashy international media attention. So even though they are all Muslim, and even all Sunnis (kinda like saying they're all Catholics, not just all Christians), there's a lot of hate and confusion and both sides are convinced that the other guys are idiots. They're not united even though they're in the same faith. ",
"In my opinion, a bigger issue is a largely uneducated population who relies on teachings from the local imam. It's easy to stir up people who don't have the critical thinking skills to think for themselves.",
"I've removed your post for containing a loaded question. You may try to submit it again worded more carefully, but it's possible that the question simply isn't fit for ELI5 at all."
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2u8rut | memory leaks in computer programs. | I understand the whole idea of `malloc` and `free` but I don't quite get why memory leaks exist.
Couldn't the kernel just realize that the program doesn't need it anymore and free the memory?
How do Linux servers run for years without running into this problem? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2u8rut/eli5_memory_leaks_in_computer_programs/ | {
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"1) It *can* but it's not a simple problem. Java has a garbage collector that does this, and it is possible to set up a similar thing in C, but C let's you do memory manipulation on a scale Java doesn't allow so it's harder. \n2) By not having memory leaks.",
"Well java basically does this with its garbage collector. When an object basically becomes unreachable when the gc does its sweep it deletes said object and fees up the space. Problem with that is that though is that the gc has a cost in terms of overhead.\n\nThere's also an issue of control manually grabbing and releasing memory gives you complete control and predictability of how done code will run whereas you can't nail down when or how often the garbage collector will run.\n\nAlso there's still room for human error if you still have pointers to an object but just isn't using it so even that isn't perfect. Overall though it's easier and more efficient to just expect humans to code better.",
"It's perfectly possible to have a program run [garbage collection](_URL_0_) to automatically free up unused chunks of memory. Garbage collection, however, has costs associated with it - it takes both CPU cycles to run & additional memory.\n\nHigher level languages, like C# and Java normally garbage collect. At some level, however, you need a lower level language without a garbage collector because *you need to write a garbage collector before you can use it*. C is this language - it requires you to do these things yourself.\n\nEven with a great garbage collector, all you can tell is if a chunk of memory is reachable by a program - does it have variables that point to it or not? A program can also leak memory by allocating memory that it isn't going to use again but it still *could* use again.\n\nLet's say you've got a warehouse full of shelves full of boxes. When you put a new box in the warehouse, you add it to a master list of warehouse contents. Normally, when you ship a box out, you take it off the list. The problem is that sometimes you have to rely on temporary workers that aren't very well trained & they'll sometimes ship boxes without taking them off the list.\n\nGarbage collection is going down every shelf with the master list of boxes & comparing what you should have with what's really there - it's a labor intensive & time consuming job. Sometimes it's just easier to wait for the client to let their lease expire (a program terminating), so you can throw everything off the shelves without having to check lists.",
"You've answered your own question. Calling `free` is how the kernel knows that memory is no longer needed. \n\nPeople are going to bring up garbage collection in their responses, but the way you asked the question suggest you will be able to understand that garbage collectors are part of the programs runtime environment or framework and not the kernel. In other words, it's just pushing the problem back a level, the garbage collector uses `malloc` and `free` in exactly this way.\n\n"
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5a4nco | how do scientists achieve extremely cold temperatures in labs (liquid oxygen/hydrogen levels)? in order to heat something up, i understand that you can add more energy to it, but how is it possible to make something that cold? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5a4nco/eli5how_do_scientists_achieve_extremely_cold/ | {
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"As you said when something is heated or when something is boiled it requires energy to be taken in. So how do you cool something?\n\nYou simply put a lot of pressure on a gas to make it a liquid. Then when you allow the liquid to expand it will begin to boil and turn back to a gas. This boiling process requires energy which is taken from the remaining liquid cooling it. \n\nBasically evaporative cooling but sooped up by a compressor and an expansion valve. Same process is used in your AC or a fridge. Just the liquid for your AC or Fridge is designed to evaporate closer to room temp than liquid nitrogen.",
"For the coldest temperates on very small particles they use lasers. Heat/energy/movement are all related so what they do is shoot lasers at all different angles to make the particle stay as still as possible. Kind of like squashing a ball between your hands stops the ball from moving. "
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38y1rk | why do laptops preform better when plugged in? | Iv'e always kinda wondered this, and I think this is probably a good place to ask. Maybe it's my laptop in particular, but I see a noticeable drop in performance unplugged. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38y1rk/eli5why_do_laptops_preform_better_when_plugged_in/ | {
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"Well, it's due to the power management profile in the laptop's control panel. Running your computer's components at full power consumes an awful lot of, well, power. Throttling your system down when it's not attached to the outlet means it can extend its battery life. You can always change how it reacts under Power Options on a Windows OS; not sure where it lives on Apple.",
"Look at your power settings (click the battery icon). Many laptops will limit their capabilities to increase battery life by saving power. The performance reduction can be quite noticeable.",
"The default power management settings typically put the processor into a lower performance mode which uses less power when on battery, and switch to maximum performance when plugged in. You could change the settings to get the same performance when unplugged, but the battery won't last as long."
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3ebel0 | why is sepp blatter able to remain untouced in switzerland even though the fbi is actively pursuing him | I just don't get it??? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ebel0/eli5_why_is_sepp_blatter_able_to_remain_untouced/ | {
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"Extradition is a complicated process. Even with an extradition treaty in place you have to prove that you've got a very good case against the person you want handed over before a foreign government will help you get them. If there isn't enough evidence or your argument isn't considered good enough they can refuse to hand the person over. Getting a person transferred when they've already been imprisoned for something is a bit easier since that person is already considered a criminal by the local authorities.",
"Also, Sepp Blatter is (unfortunately) Swiss (from Visp, I believe). Switzerland doesn't extradite it's citizens, so even if he were to be arrested he would remain in Switzerland. He could, however, be punished for crimes comitted upbroad, as long as they're also illegal under Swiss law."
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8ttdvx | how is auto stop-start on modern cars more fuel efficient? growing up i was always told that turning off and starting your car burned more gas than just idling. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ttdvx/eli5_how_is_auto_stopstart_on_modern_cars_more/ | {
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"What you were told was wrong, leaving your car idling for as little as 10 seconds takes more gas than turning it off and back on. \nI was told the same thing, but it's wrong.",
"I would imagine this is just a myth, similar to how people believe it's more efficient to just leave a light bulb on than it is to turn it off and turn it back on (which isn't true).\n\nA quick search shows that it takes about 1/2 teaspoon of gas to start a car. Might take a little more or a little less depending on how cold/warm the car is. \n\nA car idling takes about 0.2-0.7 gallons per hour. Even the most efficient estimate that's 153.6 teaspoons per hour, 2.56 teaspoons per minute or about 12 seconds to run through 1/2 teaspoon of gas while idling.",
"Older cars up to the 80s sometime, they used carburetors and low pressure fuel pumps when ever you turn the engine off the carburetor had to meter out some fuel to restart the engine. New cars use high pressure injection to run the car when you shut it off and restart it the injectors spray a very small amount of fuel to start the engine. The difference is maybe a few cc's of gas and you probably would not notice it unless you were to keep very accurate records ",
"This used to be somewhat true in older cars that used carburetors rather than modern fuel injection systems. The more prescient issue was that of starter motors not being as good as they are now, and those getting worn out prematurely. Even then, idling for more than a couple of minutes in a car that used a carburetor would use more fuel than it'd take to crank it back over.\n\nNowadays, the difference in fuel between starting and running is absolutely tiny, and the tech on starter motors and the like is much better, so you'll save fuel by turning off the car at stop lights, hence auto stop-start"
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27pdln | why are walmart employees notorious for being strange? | I don't mean this offensively, but it seems no matter where I go, the people who work at Walmart are pretty consistently... Out there. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27pdln/eli5_why_are_walmart_employees_notorious_for/ | {
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"They're one of the largest employers in the country, and pay tends to be on the lower side of average. Thus they have a huge sample to pull in the extremes of humanity and pay that appeals to some of them. ",
"1. it's a shitty job. being \"strange\" makes it hard to get a job, but...if you're going to pay shit-wages you can't always being choosey.\n\n2. I think if you worked at wal-mart for a while it'd make you strange, but...please only take number 1 above seriously. ^And ^number ^2.",
"People don't grow up wanting to work at Walmart. When someone does work there it is usually because they can't get a different job. They usually can't get a different job because they are *strange*. If someone who isn't strange does start to work there, they eventually get promoted out of working the floor pretty quickly, or alternatively quit because they landed a different job.",
"Mental illness often leads to poverty. Walmart hires the high-function poor (not homelss yet) because they are desperate enough to take a job with Walmart.\n\nSometimes the mental illness is very treatable, eg. depression, but the state of healthcare in the USA leaves those people to the munificient benevolence of corporate America.\n\nI recommend the following:\n\n* Never shop at Walmart, try Costco\n* Pay your taxes\n* Vote out incumbents",
"I'm fairly certain the strange employees are only their to cater to all the weirdness that wanders in."
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3uv2au | why would japan *announce* that they're going to resume whaling in antarctica? | After seeing this post:
_URL_0_
You'd think they would just try to do it on the sly? Also, why do they not give a shit about the ban? Because the punishment is so minimal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uv2au/eli5_why_would_japan_announce_that_theyre_going/ | {
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"It's their culture. \"We're doing if for hundreds of years. It went fine till now. We don't question it, don't give a fuck\".\rI love Japan as in their historical culture, politeness, etc. But this part... I don't know, they're not in for change or individual thinking. Just be another gear in society and don't question what the big guys say.\rIt's sad, ignorance. But it helped preserve their otherwise rich culture which I personally love, so yea..."
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3uu55d/japan_stuns_world_by_announcing_it_will_resume/"
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[]
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|
4y7cgp | why are glasses still so common when contact lenses and eye surgery are becoming cheaper? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4y7cgp/eli5_why_are_glasses_still_so_common_when_contact/ | {
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"Some people like wearing glasses. Some people don't like putting things in their eyes. Some people are afraid of surgery. Or, if they're like me, they've had the eye surgery but their eye sight regressed and the new shape of their cornea makes wearing contacts pretty much impossible."
]
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[]
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||
11wni6 | why does reddit go down and how do they fix it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11wni6/eli5_why_does_reddit_go_down_and_how_do_they_fix/ | {
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"Like all web sites, reddit is built on top of special computers called servers. \n\nIt happens that the servers that reddit uses are hosted by Amazon. There was a problem with some of the servers at one of Amazon's data centers in Virginia. Data centers are large buildings that house servers. The servers that had problems are named \"Elastic Block Storage,\" or EBS. EBS servers are responsible for storing and retrieving data. When those servers aren't available, it isn't possible for reddit to store or retrieve the data it needs to operate.\n\nBecause the problem was with Amazon's services, it was up to Amazon to fix it. They did fix it, but it took a few hours for the fix to take effect. Amazon has a [status page](_URL_0_) where you can see current and past problems with their various services. \n\nReddit wasn't alone in having problems today. Lots of other sites use Amazon's services, like Pinterest, Foursquare and Minecraft. ",
"They fix it by selling more reddit gold",
"I thought that the whole benefit/idea of \"cloud\" is that if something goes down, it is replicated somewhere else and you have no interruption of service.\n\nedit: this was meant to be under a comment... too late now."
]
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||
6e5knd | why does depression make you gain weight? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6e5knd/eli5_why_does_depression_make_you_gain_weight/ | {
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"People cannot gain weight unless they eat above their base metabolic rate, it's physically impossible, no matter what your third cousin's fat sister might tell you about her condition.\n\nThat said if you are depressed you are definitely more inclined to simply not do anything, so you might not be doing any physical activity no matter how light it might have been, which means you now have a daily calorie increase due to not burning calories the way you used to."
]
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||
2uoli0 | why do we no longer see bench style seats in cars? | I've recent found myself a job at a car dealership and I get to drive pretty much every car we take in and test drive new models on the lot.
I've been watching wheeler dealers lately and I've noticed that a good amount of the cars they restore have a front bench styled seat.
Why have we stopped making cars like this? I'm assuming it has something to do with safety, but are there any other reasons? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2uoli0/eli5_why_do_we_no_longer_see_bench_style_seats_in/ | {
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"Comfort, in part. Having separate front seats allows each to be adjusted to the comfort of the person sitting in them. I'm pretty certain bench seats can't be adjusted (but don't quote me on that) but even if they could, you'd only be able to adjust them as a bench. So if you have a front seat passenger and a driver with very different heights, someone is going to be uncomfortable. ",
"The 2013 Impala was the last car to be made with a bench seat.\n\nThey're not as safe, don't work well with airbags.\n\n"
]
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3mvnsb | what would the short- and long-term consequences of abolishing the stock market be? | To the untrained eye it looks like a place where the rich and corrupt can get richer, and a mechanism that encourages corporations to care about the bottom dollar and nothing else because the reactions of their shareholders and the stock trading world in general is what they value most. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mvnsb/eli5_what_would_the_short_and_longterm/ | {
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"Without a place for the rich to invest their money, what would they do with it? Hoard it? Buy a million mansions? The stock market is one of the most beneficial things a rich person can use their money for, building successful companies that have investments to be able to hire the common people and pay them a wage.\n\nAs far as businesses only caring about there bottom dollar, that applies to private companies who don't participate in the stock market too.",
"The existence of a market for stocks basically means that people can buy and sell ownership stakes in companies. So you're asking: what would the world be like if people were forbidden to buy and sell equity in companies?\n\nThere would definitely be no corporations as we know them. A company would be owned entirely by its founder and no one else would have a stake in its profits. If a company wanted to raise money for expansion, the owner would have to go to a private moneylender, who would also have to be a rich individual. So basically, the economic landscape would look a lot like the 19th century, with extreme wealth concentration among the people who owned the means of production, and extreme poverty among those who didn't.",
" > To the untrained eye\n\nThat's the truth. The stock market isn't only for rich people. There's nothing preventing you from participating. If you have $100 you can own a piece of Apple or Google, and those are the high-priced ones.\n\nWhat are the short term and long term consequences? Well, immediately, corporations would be owned by the current owners and no one else would be allowed to join. They couldn't sell, either, unless I suppose they allow themselves to be bought-out by other owners. Corporations would no-longer be beholden to their shareholders and would be run primarily for the benefit of the owners. The rest would not have anywhere to invest and grow their money. So, actually, abolishing the stock market leads to greater wealth disparity (the rich getting richer) with those locked-out having no way to grow their money, unless they start their own business to compete against those already established. That's one of the greatest \"uphill battles\" I could think of, and would be destined to fail, as the established corp has all the resources to squash all new competition.\n\ntl,dr: things would be much worse for everyone except current business owners."
]
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r4ypb | how come animals can eat off the ground? does germs not effect them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/r4ypb/eli5_how_come_animals_can_eat_off_the_ground_does/ | {
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"Not all germs cause disease. You can eat off the ground, too, and (depending on what ground you're eating on) getting a parasite is very possible, but most bacteria and viruses don't survive outside a body for a very long time. People ingest more germs than they think they do, and for the most part, its unavoidable.",
"Heykittums answered this well, but I feel like it should be included that by spending their lives eating off the ground, animals also expose their immune systems to the parasites, bacteria and viruses that live there, which helps prevent infection later in life.",
"The floors you find in wealthy countries are not good places for germs to live. Dirt floors, common in most countries, are a completely different story, the ground has tons of parasites and bacteria. The Mexican government had a big program recently where they covered the floors of the poor with concrete, in order to improve their health, and they had pretty good results (_URL_0_).\n\nFloors of finished wood, linoleum, vinyl and carpet are not good places for germs to live. I don't eat off the floor regularly because I don't like eating dust and hair, but if I drop a cookie or something I'll brush it off and eat it (mom can't stop me now!)",
"You are assuming that eating from the ground would make you sick. Are you sure this is true?"
]
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"http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/03/10_floors.shtml"
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||
353at9 | what happens when you press the elevator button more than once? | Does that signal go anywhere? Are you helping, hurting, not affecting the outcome at all?
What about the old cross walk buttons? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/353at9/elif_what_happens_when_you_press_the_elevator/ | {
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"The signal goes to the controller, which has already registered your request for a car. It doesn't speed things along at all. Same with crosswalk buttons.",
"Especially crosswalk buttons are often placebo buttons that do nothing at all. Imagine if all the crosswalk buttons actually would have an effect - all the carefully planned traffic routing would be messed up constantly because traffic lights are suddenly out of sync etc.\n\nBut modern humans love to think that they control a given situation so you give them a button to press that starts glowing or beeping so you get the feeling that you're in control.\nAnother lovely placebo button: the 'close doors' button in elevators. They do nothing in most elevators.\n\nAs for the button to call an elevator car... press it once and your request is registered. Subsequent presses do nothing."
]
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3ps14m | why don't toilets have an overflow hole to keep them from overflowing all over the floor? (like sinks do) | We can land a man on the moon but can't figure out a way to keep toilets from draining shit water all over the floor when some asshole uses too much tp | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ps14m/eli5_why_dont_toilets_have_an_overflow_hole_to/ | {
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"Because it wouldn't do any good. If a toilet is clogged, an overflow isn't going to magically allow the water to drain around the clog.\n\nIf you stuffed a bunch of toilet paper down your sink's drain, the overflow hole wouldn't help in that case either.",
"Toilets don't use a P-trap in the below floor plubming since you don't want fecal matter and urine sitting still.\n\nTherefore there can be no overflow mechanism to just drain to the piping because you would expose toxic fumes out of the plumbing drain stack into the habitable area. It's a safety concern.\n\nUpon thinking a little more though you could technically make a toilet with a liquid overflow but you would need the toilet to have two build in flush mechanisms which would just be overkill. \n\nMoral of the story, don't flush tons of toilet paper at once.",
"What other commenters haven't explained is that the drain at the bottom of the toilet is literally an overflow hole already.\n\nThe way a toilet works is that the S-bend in the pipe behind the toilet rises higher than the water level in the bowl. This is a \"hill\" that the water can't get over. But if the water level rises in the bowl, it rises in the S-bend as well, until it rises enough to get over the hill. Once it starts flowing over the hill, the flow itself creates a [siphon](_URL_0_) effect that sucks the water behind it along. This pulls all the water out of the bowl and over the S-bend down into the sewers, draining the bowl. It's the same principle as [Pythagoras' Cup](_URL_1_).\n\nWhen you flush a toilet, all you're doing is draining the water from the tank into the bowl - the raised water level is all it takes to start the siphon effect. You can flush a toilet yourself just by dumping a bucket of water into it. In other words, the entire flush mechanism is to intentionally overflow the bowl, and the exit pipe is a glorified overflow control.\n\nSo to get back to your original question, why can't we put an extra overflow hole on the side, just in case the main hole is clogged? Because that would add needless complexity, and it wouldn't be efficient. The extra hole would get clogged more easily than the main hole, and it would end up being near-useless.\n\nClogs happen when some part of the flow (say, TP) gets snagged on the wall of the pipe. For this reason, they're much more common in skinny pipes than in fat pipes. In skinny pipes, any random part of the flow has a higher chance of contacting the wall and thus getting snagged than in fat pipes, where most of the flow never touches the wall.\n\nAs a result, if you want your toilet to stop spilling shit water on your floor, the answer is not to get a toilet with an added skinny pipe to try and control overflows. The answer is to get a toilet whose main pipe is wider, and thus harder to clog in the first place.",
"One thought.. if a toilet is clogged, the flush will only put a limited amount of water into the bowl (to then overflow).\nIf a sink is clogged, and the faucet is running, a virtually unlimited amount of water will overflow from the sink, causing a way more serious problem if it is not noticed right away.\n",
"You can use a European Toilet instead, I've never seen one overflow onto the floor. They work on a different principle, you siphon the water out of the tank at the top, which flows into the bowl, pushing all the waste round the U-bend. This is different to adding water to the bowl under it then siphons out, resulting in much higher flushing force (so it rarely clogs) but the lower water level means sometimes you need to use a brush to clean off some fecal matter.\n\n[There is a diagram here](_URL_0_)",
"Sinks are *meant* to be plugged sometimes so you can fill it. The overflow hole in a sink just circumvents the intentional plug if someone gets careless. The overflow hole only circumvents an inch or two of drain.\n\nIf a sink gets obstructed by a clog in the pipe, the overflow hole does no good because it's blocked by the same clog."
]
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[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphon",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_cup"
],
[],
[
"http://kuysen09.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/toiletscomparing-washdown-with-siphonic.html"
],
[]
] |
|
a3gqx1 | why is it so important to keep global temperature increase under 2°c until 2100? where did this number originate from and what happens if we cross it? | I read the recent report by UNE saying countries were not on track with their NDC's. But I also asked myself where the aim of keeping temperature rise under 2°C came from | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a3gqx1/eli5_why_is_it_so_important_to_keep_global/ | {
"a_id": [
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"Above 2 degrees and you start to trigger feedback loops such as ocean acidification, release of methane trapped in Arctic ice etc. The idea is that 1.5 - 2 degrees is bad but can be mapped whilst even 2.5 degrees could quickly become 3, 4 or 5 with no possibility to reverse the process. I'm sure you'll get some better and more scientific answers."
]
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[]
] |
|
3lft69 | why do we care if iran gets a nuclear bomb? they would be insane to try to use it against us, even if they had one. so why is this such a ballbreaker for us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lft69/eli5_why_do_we_care_if_iran_gets_a_nuclear_bomb/ | {
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"The absolute simplest answer is we have to look at allied nations as well.\n\nNot just for matters of imports/exports and business, but we're in a position where for many countries we've agreed to back them up if they go to war. \n\nSo if they nuke an allied nation such as Israel, its going to effect us as well",
"Certainly Iran isn't going to bomb us, and take credit for it. What we're afraid of is that they'll supply it to a terrorist who then smuggles it into the US (or another \"western\" nation). Can you imagine a terrorist detonating a small nuke at the Superbowl or World Cup?",
"Nobody is afraid of nuclear weapons actually being used, aside from a few loud-mouthed fear-mongers who say that Iran will bomb Israel or some shit. \n\nThe true story is that, a nuclear Iran will mean a new Cold War between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Those two nations are at each others throats, desperately vying for political and economic influence in the area. If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, then Arabia will rush to get one too, and then we'll have an arms race on our hands, and that can't lead to anywhere good. \n\nIt will fundamentally change the nature of diplomacy in the Middle East, a region that is also absurdly hard to conduct diplomacy in already. ",
"I have a gun. My neighbour has a gun too. I won't pick on him, because he will shoot me. He won't pick on me, because I will shoot him. However, I will pick on you because you don't have a gun. You can try to punch me, but I will shoot you. This means, I can tell you what to do.\n\nI see you going to the gun store. I don't like this, because if you get a gun, I can't push you around any more! My neighbour, who also likes to tell you what to do, doesn't like that idea either. So we tell you, *no! You are not allowed to buy a gun, you'll hurt yourself! Or other people!* If I was really concerned about the guns, I would get rid of mine. But I like to have the ability to tell others what to do, so I won't.\n\nNow, it's more complicated than that, but that's how I'll tell a 5 year old how it works politically.\n\nNow, when it comes to actual usage, one nuke doesn't mean shit. One nuke isn't even minor-leagues. What would really scare the US, China or Russia is [*Second Strike Capability*](_URL_0_). If Iran can get one, they can get another, and another, then we'll have the Cold War all over again once Iran has had enough of being told what to do."
]
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||
9vjfgb | movie soundtracks: is there a particular order/way the songs are put on the cd? if so, how does it work? | I apologize for the bad English !
I've noticed the main theme is often the first track of the CD ( in the ones I own anyway), but apart from that, I have no clue.
Are there rules ? Guidelines to make the songs flow better one after the other ?
Thank you in advance to anyone who's taken the time to read/ answer this post !
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9vjfgb/eli5_movie_soundtracks_is_there_a_particular/ | {
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"I would've assumed it was chronologically according to where in the film they were? "
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kjez9 | the nhs reform bill that has been passed in the uk | Could anybody be sweet and explain what this Health and Social Care Bill is changing, what that means for doctors and patients.
Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kjez9/eli5_the_nhs_reform_bill_that_has_been_passed_in/ | {
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"The Conservative government so far has been going around talking about their 'big society'. This has meant 'making work pay' (reforming welfare), 'putting parents and teachers in control of schools' (reforming education) but healthcare is more complicated.\n\n1. They want to put GPs all together in a big pot (consortium) which sorts out stuff. This replaces 'unnecessary quangocrats'\n\n2. Restricting the role of the Health Secretary. He will have a more 'overwatcher'-type role.\n\n3. “A move away from centrally-driven process targets which get in the way of patient care; and a relentless focus on outcomes and the quality standards that deliver them\". This means fewer 'targets'.\n\n4. Watchdogs for patients - except these won't be government-funded, and will be local and community-based. In fact the local authorities will be handed a larger role overall.\n\n5. 'No decision about me, without me': the reform bill is a bit vague about this, but it's basically about changing the attitude of the staff (I think)\n\n6. \"Liberate NHS providers\" - NHS trusts will be 'liberated' and more detached from the state. It removes the cap that certain trusts can receive from non-NHS (private) patients. This is because the cap is, according to the bill \"arbitrary and unfair\".\n\n7. According to The Spectator, 'The government will strengthen the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) role in ensuring “essential levels of safety and quality” from providers.' Again, this is just further distancing the NHS from the government, finance-wise and management-wise.\n\n8. Cutting a load of admin costs\n\n9. Different ways of budgeting. Again, a lot of it is freeing up loads of ways that the NHS can use 'third party arrangements' or where money is handed directly to the patient to buy their own services.\n\nThis is controversial. Some people think that the necessary behind-the-scenes work is being only cut down for reasons like typical Conservative beliefs or simple cost-cutting. They might think that it is not being done because it is better. Also, it is seen as being too complicated and would actually increase the inefficiency in the NHS.\n\n\n\n\n",
"The Conservative government so far has been going around talking about their 'big society'. This has meant 'making work pay' (reforming welfare), 'putting parents and teachers in control of schools' (reforming education) but healthcare is more complicated.\n\n1. They want to put GPs all together in a big pot (consortium) which sorts out stuff. This replaces 'unnecessary quangocrats'\n\n2. Restricting the role of the Health Secretary. He will have a more 'overwatcher'-type role.\n\n3. “A move away from centrally-driven process targets which get in the way of patient care; and a relentless focus on outcomes and the quality standards that deliver them\". This means fewer 'targets'.\n\n4. Watchdogs for patients - except these won't be government-funded, and will be local and community-based. In fact the local authorities will be handed a larger role overall.\n\n5. 'No decision about me, without me': the reform bill is a bit vague about this, but it's basically about changing the attitude of the staff (I think)\n\n6. \"Liberate NHS providers\" - NHS trusts will be 'liberated' and more detached from the state. It removes the cap that certain trusts can receive from non-NHS (private) patients. This is because the cap is, according to the bill \"arbitrary and unfair\".\n\n7. According to The Spectator, 'The government will strengthen the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) role in ensuring “essential levels of safety and quality” from providers.' Again, this is just further distancing the NHS from the government, finance-wise and management-wise.\n\n8. Cutting a load of admin costs\n\n9. Different ways of budgeting. Again, a lot of it is freeing up loads of ways that the NHS can use 'third party arrangements' or where money is handed directly to the patient to buy their own services.\n\nThis is controversial. Some people think that the necessary behind-the-scenes work is being only cut down for reasons like typical Conservative beliefs or simple cost-cutting. They might think that it is not being done because it is better. Also, it is seen as being too complicated and would actually increase the inefficiency in the NHS.\n\n\n\n\n"
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9920n1 | why boiling water becoming vapor (gas) doesn't separate its atoms and become air? | I know that water can have 3 states: solid (ice), liquid (simple water H2O) and gas (vapor). I know that air is made of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxigen and %1 others. So this means that 1% contains other gases and water vapors?
Humidity means water percentage (%) within 1 cubic meters? So water can't became ever air? Can you convert/extract water from air? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9920n1/eli5_why_boiling_water_becoming_vapor_gas_doesnt/ | {
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"Yes, you can extract water from air. Every time you get drops of water on a cold drink, that’s what’s happening.\n\nYes, you can split water to get oxygen and hydrogen, but it requires much more energy than you can find on a stove",
"I think percentage means amount of water in air compared to the amount of saturation, so ir humidity is 80% it doesn't mean that 80% of molecules in air are H2O, it means that air can only fit a bit more water before it's oversaturated",
"It depends on what you mean by \"air\". Air is a mixture of gases, like you said, and water vapour is one of those. So when you boil water, it does become part of the air, there's just a greater content of it in the region it was boiled. \n\nAnd yes, you can get water from air, that's what dehumidifiers do. They could dense water in the air to reduce the humidity. L",
"Air does contains some water (about 1%). \n\nThe humidity percentage represent how much water the air contains compared to how much it can hold, so 100% humidity doesn't mean that the air is pure water, but that it holds all the water it can (even if in some case it can go a little of 100%).\n\n\n > So water can't became ever air? Can you convert/extract water from air?\n\nWater and air are two different things, you can't convert one into the other. But since there is a small amount of water in the air you can extract a bit of water from it (that's what condensation is).",
" > Humidity means water percentage (%) within 1 cubic meters?\n\nSo under particular conditions (temperature, air pressure, etc.) there can only be so much water vapor in the air before it starts condensing into a liquid (i.e. before it starts raining). Humidity says \"how much water is in the air relative to that maximum amount?\"\n\n > So water can't became ever air?\n\n?\n\n > Can you convert/extract water from air?\n\nYes, by cooling air off you can force water to condense out of it. This is evident when you leave a cold surface (i.e. a glass) out on a table and see water droplets form on it."
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1uueet | how a vegan diet would reverse evolution. | I've read in multiple places that eating meat is the main reason that humans are so intelligent compared to other apes. I have also read that because of this, if everyone were to go vegan, our intelligence as a species would begin to devolve.
1. Is this statement that our intelligence would devolve even true?
2. If it is true, what exactly did eating meat that made us intelligent offer that wouldn't be possible to replace with a vegan diet?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uueet/eli5_how_a_vegan_diet_would_reverse_evolution/ | {
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"Now that we have a global economy, you can find the essential amino acids (protein), fats (ω-3 and ω-6), vitamins, and minerals that you need in all kinds of food. Being vegan at this point would have little to no effect on your metabolism or biochemistry, as your liver will break down most of the plant derived products to the same compounds you would find in a meat eater. \n\nIf you were a caveman and a vegan, depending on where you live, you might not be able to achieve the essential nutrients required to sustain all of your body's needs. The only reason being a vegan would decrease your intelligence is if there is insufficient proteins and lipids required for mental development, which you would be more likely to come across in a more diverse diet. Now you can just take supplements and eat a balanced vegan diet to compensate for meat consumption. \n\n**Edit:** Oh, and when it comes to apes evolving due to a meat diet, I can read more into this, but from what I remember, early primates that still lived in trees did no have sufficient protein consumption to increase the size and complexity of the brain. Meat did help these animals evolve larger brains, but we don't really *need* meat anymore. You can live a completely normal life and get plenty of essential amino acids just from eating a vegan diet. I am not vegan, and I'm not trying to sell anyone on being vegan, but it seems legit! ",
"Just... no.\n\nEDIT: I looked up what you are talking about and it appears that the theory is that herbivores need large guts, both for digesting vegetables and to get enough energy from relatively low-calorie food sources, which requires energy. This energy = less energy for brain development.\n\nBut today things are different. As the poster above me said, we can get all of our nutrients and calorie needs through our foods, vegan or not. Our digestive systems would work the same either day.",
"It's not true. \n\nThere is considerable evidence that learning how to eat meat was what gave us a way to get enough energy to fuel big brains (brains use a LOT of energy). This helped us get where we are now. But now that we're here, we don't go backwards if we stop eating meat.\n\nIf you're vegan you still need enough protein and energy to fuel your big brain. We know more than enough about food and agriculture to do that today without meat (that wasn't necessarily true tens of thousands of years ago). ",
"* There is no such thing as \"reversing evolution\".\n\n* The sole nutrient identified in meat that isn't readily suppliable via vegetarian diets is vitamin B-12. B-12 has a role in the development and normal functioning of the brain and nervous system and blood cell formation. However, it does not originate in the meat, it is just readily absorbed by humans from meat. Only bacteria and archaea can synthesize B-12 naturally, and we don't absorb it readily from plant sources, which have it in low amounts and locked up in cell walls that we cannot readily digest. We may be able to absorb it from algae, however - but scientific studies on that are still out.\n\nSo, it's not a question of the diet, *per se*, but of B-12 acquisition and availability from the diet.\n\n"
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2n0v8o | is it normal for members of the american government to sue the president? | Has this happened before? What will happen because of it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2n0v8o/eli5_is_it_normal_for_members_of_the_american/ | {
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"It's not exactly what I'd call common, but it's not impossible. You can basically sue anyone at any time for anything. \n\nThis doesn't mean that the judge won't just throw your case out of court though. I'm fairly certain that's what's going to happen here. Nothing will be accomplished except for a waste of time for the sake of a publicity stunt. "
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6qux1g | how has the u.s. economy changed since the 1970s? | I keep hearing how it was easier for our parents to make a living without a college education back in the day and that work was worth more in terms of money, I would like to know how the economy has changed allegedly to where now it is more difficult to make a living without college as to where you could afford a house, a car, and decent food.
Thank you. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qux1g/eli5how_has_the_us_economy_changed_since_the_1970s/ | {
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"That is a hell of a question with a million parts to it! \n \n\nSociety has changed a lot, as has science and technology for countless fields and professions. Thus, more specialization is required for the highest levels of education due to so many fields existing. This means expansion and growth of more colleges/universities. \n\n'back in the day' many professions and technologies simply did not exist, so less education was required overall. \n \nAlso, it becomes more and more culturally pushed that you must go to college to be successful as a young person. A hotly debated subject. \n \nThat is as much as I can speak on when it comes to the college education aspect."
]
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|
2nl4h6 | if i store 1 gb of files in the cloud (dropbox, google drive, etc.) how many gb on servers is that for the provider? | For sure Dropbox must have multiple copies of my files on several servers. In addition they provide additional services like reverting to old versions of files. So how many GBs is my 1 GB for Dropbox? And how much does my 1 GB cost Dropbox considering that the one GB is multiplied X times. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nl4h6/eli5_if_i_store_1_gb_of_files_in_the_cloud/ | {
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"It's probably 3GB, plus backups- storing data in 3 locations is pretty standard to keep it safe (the primary, a backup, and somewhere offsite). Which costs them next to nothing to store because hard drives are dirt cheap."
]
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|
4xvnj1 | why do springboard/platform divers sit in a jacuzzi after their jump? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xvnj1/eli5_why_do_springboardplatform_divers_sit_in_a/ | {
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"To keep their core temperature up after being in the cold pool water. This allows for maximum circulation around the body and therefore maximum flexibility.",
"The water in the diving pool is cold, and when you're cold, your muscles tense up a little, and your circulation gets worse, especially around your extremities.\n\nDivers need to be very flexible and very precise with their movements, so they need to warm back up before their next dive - the jacuzzi warms them up so that they don't have any of the problems that come from cold water.",
"To keep their muscles loose and warm. It balances out the damage the pools did. You'll also see swimmers wearing heavy winter coats, etc prior to swimming to keep their muscles loose."
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15m6sa | stock values | I searched, and perused some of the previous questions about stocks and the stock market, and nothing really hit what I'm looking for.
When something happens to a company, for instance, say, the death of Steve Jobs, or any other person who is considered vital to a corporation, why does that affect the stock? I understand that this affects shareholder confidence, but what actual, financial processes are undergone that lower the actual value of the stock? Or raise it, if there's good news, etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15m6sa/eli5_stock_values/ | {
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"A stock is like any other product and its price is influenced by supply and demand. People buy stocks to either: participate in the company's earnings in the form of dividends and capital gains (which is more often the case) or gain control of the company (which is rarer, but could massively influence the stock price).\n\nWhen a company announces, that it is going to release a breakthrough product, for example, people's perception of the company's earning power changes. More people consider the stock a good bet. People wanting to buy the stock will accept higher prices, since they are competing against more buyers (like in an auction) and people who already own the stock would be more reluctant to give it up, unless they get an additional incentive (i.e. more money).\n\nThe same applies for bad news, when more people want to dump the stock, than buy it.\n\nTL;DR News affect the supply and demand of a stock, which in turn affects the price. Whether the price is fair and you are getting your money's worth is a totally different subject. :)"
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2csyu3 | do hallucinogens have the same effect on reptiles that they have on humans? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2csyu3/eli5_do_hallucinogens_have_the_same_effect_on/ | {
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"I don't think a reptile can have an existential crisis, followed by a period of self-discovery and then settle on a period of emotional nirvana. \n"
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5z2dk5 | for the digits of pi (that we can calculate) is there a trend of certain digits being more common than others. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5z2dk5/eli5_for_the_digits_of_pi_that_we_can_calculate/ | {
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"I don't believe there is. But check out this video. If you're into math it's pretty interesting and I believe it may answer your question.\n\n[Mile of Pi - Numberphile](_URL_0_)",
"From [this article on _URL_1_](_URL_0_)\n\n > Are the digits of pi random?\n > Researchers have run dozens of statistical tests for randomness on the digits of pi. They all reach the same conclusion. Statistically speaking, the digits of pi seems to be the realization of a process that spits out digits uniformly at random.\n > \n > Nevertheless, mathematicians have not yet been able to prove that the digits of pi are random."
]
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3ubzim | how are claw machines - a game of chance - legally allowed to present themselves as games of skill? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ubzim/eli5_how_are_claw_machines_a_game_of_chance/ | {
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"Are you sure you seen them marked as \"game of skill\"? They probably don't."
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1j5bi1 | why can't evolution just be a part of creationism's plan? | Not looking for pro or anti opinions but rather literally the reason for why evolution can not be a part of creationism, like eli5 why evolution can't be explained as a part of a determined plan? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j5bi1/eli5_why_cant_evolution_just_be_a_part_of/ | {
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"It can and there are groups out there that agree with that theory.",
"The bible has nothing in it about evolution, most of the people who deny evolution believe the bible word-for-word on the topic of how god created the world. \n\nJust speaking of the Christian creationists though. ",
"Simply put, you can, if you want.\n\nSome people do just that.\n\nWhether or not to believe that an intelligent creator guides a scientific principle like evolution does require a lot of justifying, as evolution relies on random mutations that are usually NOT beneficial to the organism in question. I would be left with the question of why, assuming an overseeing creator, would there be so many failures, or so many things about our biology that really don't make much sense (sex organs and waste organs being mixed together, vestigial organs that serve no current purpose, etc) if someone is tailoring them?",
"Biblical Creationism does not allow for enough time for evolution to also be true... \n\nIf you believe that the evolutionary timeframe is true then the bible is wrong...\n\n",
"That's how most people who believe in evolution view it, since most people who believe in evolution also believe in a deity. In science class they aren't really supposed to mention god. When I was growing up there was no mention of god in schools when we learned about evolution. It is your job to weave what you learned into your religious worldview.",
"There are two reasons, one from Christian creationism, one from evolution.\n\nScience and scientific facts tell us that humans evolved from a common ancestor with other primates, and from another common ancestor with other apes (all apes are primates; not all primates are apes). This is and was determined first by examining morphological similarities and differences - bones, brains, organs, muscles, nerves, functioning. It was determined second, after the discovery of DNA, by comparing the DNA of modern apes and modern primates. The relationship tree derived from morphology agreed with the relationship tree derived from DNA analysis.\n\nNow, the Christian Bible has an account of the creation of human beings, which account says that a deity created humans. This excludes the possibility of *homo erectus*, *homo neanderthalensis*, and *homo sapiens* evolving from a common ancestor that was not human. The Christian bible cannot even accommodate the existence of Neanderthals, or the other hominids. So, Christian Creationists reject evolution, because it overwhelmingly denies that a deity created the \"first humans\" as their texts claim happened, as well as the rest of the diversity of life on earth. \n\nThis is because of their theology. According to their theology, In short: \n\n* Deity creates Man\n* Deity creates Woman\n* Woman feeds Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to Adam, thereby committing Original Sin\n* Original Sin taints all mankind\n* Jesus the Son of the Deity dies on the crucifix as a sacrifice to cleanse all humans of sin.\n\nIf there was no Adam, and no Eve, there could be no Original Sin, therefore there is no sin tainting all mankind, therefore the sacrifice of Jesus on the crucifix to cleanse all sins is meaningless, thus Christianity as a whole is a mistake. \n\nThis is highly offensive to Christians.\n\nThe second reason comes from evolution. Evolution is a scientific concept - and the methodology of science involves asking a question, called a hypothesis, and then gathering data in support of that hypothesis and running experiments to attempt to falsify the hypothesis. If you have a lot of supporting data and can't falsify the hypothesis, it's provisionally accepted as true - so long as nothing comes along that falsifies the hypothesis.\nThere's nothing in Christian creationism that can be considered a hypothesis. There are no experiments that can be run. Creationists do not consider all the evidence, but they cherry-pick only the data that seems to support their claims (claims, not hypotheses), refuse to attempt to test their claims to see if they might be false, and so, there's nothing in creationism that evolution or science might work with.\n\nAs far as a \"determined plan\", all the available evidence shows that evolution doesn't have a plan, rather that organisms try out different genetic profiles from generation to generation and, if they're lucky, a new genetic profile produces an organism that survives and thrives in a particular environment better than the previous generation did. Or a changed environment offers a static genetic profile an opportunity to thrive and survive better than the previous generation. There is no plan — just what works the best from what's available.\n\nThis offends creationists, too, because of their theology.\n\nSo, to recap, \n\nEvolution gives us facts that, if accepted, cause the entire basis of Christian theology to collapse as a mistake, \n\nAnd\n\nThe methods of Creationism provide nothing that is amenable to the scientific method, of which evolution is a part.",
"It can, despite the answers here. It's possible that God created an evolving universe. To believe this, you don't have to reject the bible or parts of it, you just have to not take it literally. 6 days doesn't really mean 6 human days as they are presently."
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1pgf83 | why doesn't soil's "usefulness" run out? | It was my understanding that plants take essential nitrates and things from the soil, but how do massive trees live for centuries? Surely the soil would soon be drained?
Obviously I'm wrong, because they do survive; but why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pgf83/eli5_why_doesnt_soils_usefulness_run_out/ | {
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"It does run out, that's what fertilizer is for.\n\nSometimes people will plant legumes (beans and stuff) every few years because they help put nitrogen back in the soil (\"legume nitrogen fixation\").\n\nThis is part of the reason that the Natives of the American Southwest frequently grew the [Three Sisters](_URL_0_) together - corn, beans and squash were planted in the same field.",
"It doesn't run out in nature because the soil is constantly being replenished by rotting vegetation, animal poop etc. Worms and other little creatures take that stuff, process it and boom...\"new\" soil.\n\nSource is long but gives you your answer:\nBiological: In many soils, earthworms play a major role in the conversion of large pieces of organic matter into rich humus, thus improving soil fertility. This is achieved by the worm's actions of pulling below the surface, deposited organic matter such as leaf fall or manure, either for food or to plug its burrow. Once in the burrow, the worm will shred the leaf and partially digest it and mingle it with the earth. Worm casts (see below) can contain 40% more humus than the top 9\" (23 cm) of soil in which the worm is living.\n\nChemical: In addition to dead organic matter, the earthworm also ingests any other soil particles that are small enough—including sand grains up to 1/20 of an inch (1.25 mm)—into its gizzard, wherein those minute fragments of grit grind everything into a fine paste which is then digested in the intestine. When the worm excretes this in the form of casts, deposited on the surface or deeper in the soil, minerals and plant nutrients are changed to an accessible form for plants to use. Investigations in the United States show that fresh earthworm casts are five times richer in available nitrogen, seven times richer in available phosphates, and 11 times richer in available potassium than the surrounding upper 6 inches (150 mm) of soil. In conditions where humus is plentiful, the weight of casts produced may be greater than 4.5 kg (10 lb) per worm per year.\n\nPhysical. The earthworm's burrowing creates a multitude of channels through the soil and is of great value in maintaining the soil structure, enabling processes of aeration and drainage. Permaculture co-founder Bill Mollison points out that by sliding in their tunnels, earthworms \"act as an innumerable army of pistons pumping air in and out of the soils on a 24-hour cycle (more rapidly at night)\".[22] Thus, the earthworm not only creates passages for air and water to traverse the soil, but also modifies the vital organic component that makes a soil healthy.(See Bioturbation.)",
"Soil in forests is constantly replenished by animanls, plants, leaves, etc. \n\nThis is why farmers rotate crops. If a farmer has a big square plot, he might divide it into fourths, plant different crops in 3 of the 4 quadrients, and rotate the placement of the crops next season. This keeps the soil nutrient rich. ",
"Plants return nutrients to the soil when they die, or when their fruits (and less-often their seeds) decompose.\n\nMany animals that live in the forest, or that can be brought in to the forest (such as fish from a nearby stream), return a great deal of nutrients to the soil when they decompose. Insects are particularly significant examples of this.\n\nAs ameoba and PixieNurse pointed out, some types of plants will return specific nutrients to the soil while living. It's worth noting that any one type of plant dominating an area has the potential to render soil useless, by effectively poisoning the soil with an excess of certain nutrients, which is the basis of the argument *against* monocultures.\n\nExpanding on ameoba's and PixieNurse's point, there are certain types of fungus and plants which actually render (over an incredibly long period of time) sand and rock in to soil. Lichen and certain types of moss are examples of this.\n\nIt's also worth mentioning that, basically, hot wind can strip away the organic material in soil, leaving behind little more than sand and rock. This is why in certain regions, particularly those near or in the tropics, logging industries are generally not self-sufficient.\n",
"It does!\n\nLong before modern fertilizers were invented, people invented crop rotation, where you plant different crops in every field every year, and sometimes let them lay fallow, because different plants deplete the soil in different ways, and some even replenish it. Sometimes they would plant something like Alfalfa and plow it under to fertilize the field. Manure, both human and animal, is a fertilizer that has been used for a long time.\n\nThe soil can be replenished in other ways, too. People kept living on the Nile river flood plain for 6000 years despite the yearly floods because the floods refertilized the soil every year; it would bring nutrient-rich volcanic soil down from the mountainous areas in Ethiopia and Tanzania, but since it was dammed in the late 1800s, it no longer floods."
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5ul28b | why is happening leidenfrost effect? | I found this interesting video but I don't know why is happening.
_URL_0_
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ul28b/eli5_why_is_happening_leidenfrost_effect/ | {
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"Pan is so hot that bottom of water drops evaporate immediately and form a vapor cushion for the droplet to hover around on abs insulate the drop from evaporating. In other words the steam below the drop isn't hot enough to evaporate it, even tho it's vapor itself. "
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2fup95 | why do my previously broken body parts hurt when it rains. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fup95/eli5_why_do_my_previously_broken_body_parts_hurt/ | {
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"no one knows for sure. but some theories..\n_URL_0_",
"I have also always heard my parents and complain about old broken bones etc getting incredibly painful when it is cold. And even though I am not \"old\" by any social term, I have started getting pains in fractured bones etc when it is bitterly cold. But I am talking minus 7 cold. So maybe as you age, your resistance to what level of cold you need to ache weakens? Who knows? "
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376yu9 | why does coke in a glass bottle, or in a can, taste noticeably different from coke from plastic bottles? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/376yu9/eli5_why_does_coke_in_a_glass_bottle_or_in_a_can/ | {
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"my take: studies suggest that plastic (or: PET) bottles release certain chemicals over time, like antimony, phtalates or acetyldehyde. the latter is said to (ever so slightly) influence the taste, which most people only realise when drinking bottled (tasteless) water.",
"The polymer that lines aluminium cans might absorb small amounts of soluble flavor from the soda. Conversely, acetaldehyde in plastic bottles might migrate into the soda. The FDA regulates this kind of potential chemical contact, but even minute, allowable amounts could alter flavor. Glass is apparently the best for keeping its true flavor.\n\n[Source of this theory and my wisdom.](_URL_3_)\n\n & nbsp;\n\nThis has been asked before btw:\n\n* [ELI5: Why Coca Cola in a glass bottle tastes better than in a plastic bottle?](_URL_1_)\n\n* [ELI5: Why do drinks taste different when drunk from metal cans, glass bottles and plastic bottles?](_URL_7_)\n\n* [ELI5: Why will the same drink from the same company taste noticeable different depending on the material of the container they put it in?](_URL_6_)\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**Best edit EVER:** THANKS /u/fatcatfromspace. Sorry guys I massively messed up I forgot about the whole ELI5, [so I made this to make it easier to learn and understand.](_URL_5_)\n\n**[Here's my best attempt (its hard to colour between the line).](_URL_0_)**\n\n & nbsp;\n\nEdit 2: Guys I spent a couple of minutes looking on google for an answer that I've always pondered about and when I found an answer I was happy with, I went with it! Mine probably isn't the right/final answer but I was sufficiently happy with it. Especially after I coloured it in, it really helped me get my head around it.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n\nEdit 3: Thank you /u/rkp1923 for your [comment](_URL_2_) and contribution. \n\n[This is just for you and everyone else on reddit under 5.](_URL_4_)\n\nAnd here's my attempt **[Damn those lines, it's so hard trying to stay inside!](_URL_8_)**",
"Official answer from the drink production and research company that I visit:\n\nthe plastic in PET bottles is not as 'airtight' as aluminium or glass, so anything put in a PET bottle will leak a tiny bit of air over a period of time.",
"not to mention you might be buying coke made in mexico, 'hecho en mexico' where they still use real sugar.",
"And by 'noticeably different', you mean 'noticeably fucking amazing'. \n\nI basically live for glass bottle coke.. yeah, I should probably get some help. ",
"Its possible you've had Mexican cokes in the glass bottles, they sell them all over the place. They're much better because of how the soda is distributed. Here in the states, coke makes the syrup and distributes it to different bottling/canning facilities around the country (along with bars/restaurants for their bar guns). Mexican coke however is all made at the same plant and distributed from there. It makes for a much much less syrup-y soda and is 500x better",
"Glass is what is referred to as an \"absolute barrier\". Pretty much nothing comes and goes through it, except for energy.\n\nPlastic is, relatively speaking, porous. The same goes for aluminum.\n\nOn top of that, you can have plasticizers leaching into the beverage from the plastic bottle or the lining of the can. In the case of the can, small amounts of metal ion, as well.\n\nIn the other direction, small amounts of gas can diffuse through/out and the smaller and/or more fat soluble molecules can migrate into/through the plastic.\n\nAlso, things like phosphoric acid can chemically work on the container.\n\nThere is sooooooooo much science going on in those little systems that it boggles the mind.",
"Part of the problem is because the plastic is permeable to carbon dioxide, so the drink is never as fizzy as a glass or aluminium container. This is why PET bottles have much shorter shelf lives. ",
"Some of the soft drinks in the UK have this taste difference between types of packaging too. I was once told that this was because it was different factories producing the drink for different containers so plastic bottles were done in one place and cans in another. The base syrup was always the same but the main difference was the water that was added. The UK especially has varying regional water tastes due to different minerals contained in it.",
"As a secondary question/followup:\nCoke a Cola from Mexico, or Mexicoke is it is often called, is regarded as the best tasting by many because 1) the water and bottling procedure provides a different flavor. and 2) it is always in glass bottles, which provides the least amount of chemical contact to distort the flavor. \nEDIT: As mentioned by several others, and I clearly forgot about out this somehow, the big difference is Cane Sugar being used instead of corn syrup.\nTry for yourself one day, a coke that was in a plastic bottle, a coke in a can, a coke in a glass bottle, and a coke from mexico (you can get them at Home Depot and Lowes). Each does taste slightly different.",
"Here in the Dominican Republic coke in glass bottles is made with sugar while the plastic bottled version is made with HFCS.. I prefer the glass ones very much over the plastic.",
"Genuinely curious: can most people taste the difference? I've always assumed that people just imagine they taste a difference due to placebo effect. Then again, I've never done a blind taste test.",
"Rather than think chemical, think where it was made. Each factory make the syrup with small differences that will affect taste. Normally a factory only makes one type, canned bottled glass bottled or syrup. ",
"It's not some chemical or light related matter - it's just because soda in glass or aluminium mixes with air as it goes from the vessel to your mouth, whereas plastic bottles flex so most people tend to just suck them in as they drink, voiding said chance for beverage to aerate.\n\nWhen you pour soda from a plastic bottle into a glass, it tastes better than drinking the same soda from the plastic bottle. If you pour all three materials into glasses, the difference is negligible. ",
"I have a different take on this, but my take on this is based on a lot of guesswork and my pre-college chemistry education.\n\nI think it really is because of the carbon dioxide in the soda accounts for the difference in taste. In a glass bottle, the surface of the glass bottle is detrimental to the formation of bubbles, so you keep more carbon dioxide in the drinks. And glass, the material and its thickness are great insulators of heat, helps keep the drink cool. The solution of carbon dioxide in the soda is a chemical equilibrium, the hotter the drink, the less carbon dioxide dissolves. More importantly, the dissolved carbon dioxide changes the pH of the solution and I think that would affect taste, maybe texture and other chemicals in the soda.",
"A plastic bottle is never really airtight, stuff is evaporating out of it and into it, this is why a glass bottle's contents taste \"fresher\".",
"In Australia it's because the cans use different tap water, quality varies from state to state. Might be the same elsewhere...",
"If you think that coke from a can and coke from a glass bottle taste the same, whereas coke from a plastic bottle tastes different, what you're probably tasting is chemicals leaching into the coke from the plastic in the bottles or the bottle caps. Glass is neutral to just about every chemical that exists, which is why it's used so frequently in chemistry glassware. Aluminum cans have a thin plastic lining to protect the aluminum from the acid in the can, but it's a different type of plastic than is in plastic bottles, and it's also much thinner.\n\nMy parents used to store water in empty 2-liter bottles for if there was ever a power outage, and drinking water from those bottles after they'd been sitting for over a year, they had a distinct plastic taste.\n\nIf you want to be sure that the taste isn't based solely on the experience of drinking from different types of containers, try having someone pour you coke into glasses from the different types of containers, and see if you can tell the difference without knowing.",
"There's a lot of engineering that has gone into the aluminum beverage can aka coke can - this video is cool if you haven't seen it - \n\n_URL_0_\n\n",
"I worked for Coke one summer. Usually a huge batch was made up and of course transported via pipe to the machines. It was just a flick of a switch to move it from the bottle side to the can side.\nWe wondered why it tasted different and we figured it was because glass was thicker and insulated better. \nThe best tasting coke comes in the six ounce bottles and they have the thickest glass.\nBut, I am willing to bet the acid in the soda works on the cans and plastics and changes the taste.",
"I grew up drink cokes in bottles. I still remember the first time I saw one an a can. It looked so exciting and modern. It tasted terrible. I stuck to cokes in bottles as long ac I could find them. Yes, I'm older than dirt. ",
"What? Am I not tasty enough for you? \nToo flashy?!\n I know you've been looking at those other bottle's glass...",
"A family friend works in the Coca-Cola factory in Huddersfield (U.K). Just asked him and he said that simply it is because each of these different containers require that the coke is bottled at different temperatures, but that this altered the taste and fizz very slightly. (He didn't go into any more detail over a quick phonecall, sorry guys).",
"/r/HailCorporate \n\n\nEvery day since reddit got onto how this company is sponsoring the world cup, thereby sponsoring human rights violations, there has been front paged coke related posts. ",
"When I was at the Coca-Cola Factory in Sweden they told me that they made it more concentrated when it's a smaller amount of coke.",
"Coke in glass bottles still uses real sugar that comes from the sugarcane plant (the original recipe), as opposed to aluminum can coke that uses corn syrup as a substitute.",
"I've ascertained in my pursuit that cans maintain the cold temperature longer than plastic bottles then glass last. If the palatability is caused by the temperature or the convection distributes the ingredients infintessimatelly your guess and mine",
"As a former hardcore Coke drinker, I also noticed that it tastes different depending on how long it's been since you've had one. When you wait a week after having one almost daily, the taste is SO much better. When you're drinking one everyday it gets very bland",
"Have you ever tried eating burger king on a plate with a knife and fork? tastes far better than with the hands.",
"A lot of people will tell you it's because you're talking about Mexican Coke, which uses \"real sugar\".\n\nHowever, [lab analysis showed NO sucrose in any Mexican coke.](_URL_0_) Sucrose is just a 50/50 glucose and fructose weakly bonded together, HFCS is a nearly 5050 mix of unbonded glucose and fructose.\n\nIt's possible they did USE \"real sugar\", but the phosphoric acid breaks the bond (inverts) in the sugar yielding essentially HFCS again.\n\nIt does seem to taste \"different\", but any number of changes in the recipe will do that.",
"I actually wrote to Dr. Pepper a little over 10 years ago when I was in college with exactly the same question. I far prefer dr. peoper in a 20 oz bottle as opposed to a can or 2 liter.\nThe company wrote me back and told me that there are different preservatives used based on the container it's packaged in. Sounds like you're able to differentiate them very well.",
"Glass bottled coke also uses cane sugar as opposed to artificial sweetener as well iirc. Wouldn't be surprised if the ratio of ingredients was altered a bit as well.\n\nPair that with all the complex science going on in those little aluminum cans and it has a noticable impact on flavor.",
"When you're getting coke in a glass bottle, chances are it was brewed differently in its region than the stuff you can get in a plastic in somewhere else. It has nothing to do with nefarious plastics breaking down inside the coke. Plastics take thousands of years to become chemically altered.\n\ndifferent regions warrant different brewing techniques. For example, here in Canada coke is brewed with normal white sugar. However Mexican coke is bottled in glass bottles still in some places but is brewed with sugar cane. Which gives it a distinctly different taste. ",
"To add a little, the bottlers themselves actually decide what to sweeten the soda with before bottling. Most choose HFCS, but I think there is actually one bottler left in the U.S. that still uses real sugar. Same as how some are now saying not all Mexican Coke is made with sugar now. ",
"Perception of taste varies depending on what you're drinking out of or eating off of as well as from other visual stimuli:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n...which is based on this: _URL_2_\n\n_URL_1_\n\nNo chemistry. Just psychology.",
"Isn't it just because coke in glass bottles is typically imported from Mexico where they use real sugar instead of High fructose corn syrup?",
"In Texas it's because (from my experience) the comes and what not come from Mexico in glass bottles. Down there they still use real cane sugar so they taste uber sweet.",
"Lick glass, lick aluminum and lick plastic. Glass just has a better mouth feel and it gets cold. Pour that pop into a glass glass and it will taste better. ",
"Is this why Capri sun and other juice box drinks taste different when you pour them into another container?",
"Serious eats did a really good experiment that a five year old could understand.\n_URL_0_\n",
"Hi I work at a Coca-Cola and the formula we use is the same for PET, glass or metal. In fact we are usually filling Coke in 2 or 3 production lines from the same tank no matter the packaging material. So like others have said, it's mostly the volume of CO2 that makes the difference. CO2 escapes trough plástic bottles super fast, while glass and metal are hermetic. ",
"A lot of people have mentioned that the containers are the cause, which they are for the most part. I would like to point out that their ratios of sugar to carbonated water vary based on medium. The difference is mostly in fountain style vs bottles. The put more syrup in the fountains because they know ice will dilute it.\n\nFun fact, McDonald's has a deal with coke to have their fountains run at a higher ratio of syrup than other stores. So McDonald's coke is always the best a little sweeter.",
"I know the normal theories about this, but I would like to add one additional element: temperature. The glass Coke's are smaller and the glass holds the cold a bit better than just plastic. So, what you are getting is a colder beverage. This could be tested Mythbusters style by putting regular Coke and alt-Coke in the same bottles and see if anyone could tell the difference in a blind taste test.",
"The coke that comes in glass bottles often comes from Mexico. In Mexico they use real sugar, rather than corn syrup. ",
"The Coke in glass bottles contains pure sugar (It's imported). The plastic and aluminum cans uses High Fructose Corn Syrup. The BPA in the plastic bottles and liner in aluminum cans also effects the taste.\n\nThis is the reason people buy the glass coke which is typically imported from Mexico. We call it Mexican Coke.",
"I've worked for two different soda companies for a total of about 8 and 1/2 years. \n\nThe simple answer is this. The drinks lose carbonation the fastest in plastic bottles. There are microscopic holes in them which is why they go out of date more quickly than other products. \n\nAluminum packaging suffers from a similar problem but not as drastic. As such, it's shelf life is longer. \n\nGlass bottling as far as I remember doesn't have this problem, or it's significantly less severe, and retains carbonation far longer than the other two. \n\nWe had to rotate product annually to guarantee consistency in taste. Look for the colors of the caps on 2 liters. When they change its a visual cue for rotation. \n\nThe dates aren't expiration dates but actually freshness dates. It's the date that the product has lost enough carbonation to taste flat. \n\nPro tip diets in plastic containers have the shortest shelf life. ",
"Not sure if that has been mentioned before.\nThe polymer plastic bottles are made of can be penetrated by gas. So the CO2 in the coke can escape quicker than in glass or metal. Not only does the CO2 influence the drink experience but also the taste, it makes it more sour. It might not be the difference you notice but it is one notable difference. \nAlso plastic doesn't feel cold in your hand or on your lips which also influences how you experience drinking it. \n",
"Can anyone explain why pouring coke from a plastic bottle into a glass also makes it taste better?",
"Atomic diffusion is a lot easier through plastic (polyethylene) than through aluminium or glass. So drinks in plastic bottles with time take the taste of what is around and lose bubbles. \nThis depends very much on the temperature and the thickness of the bottle.",
"Don't forget Coke started making their plastic bottles with 30% plants to make them more environmentally friendly. Which is a joke. I find that the plant/plastic bottles have a little bit of a bitter taste. I don't like it. I prefer the cans.",
"I used to visit my uncle at his mechanic shop and it had the old timey glass bottle machine for a nickel. They were so good.",
"Soda Bottles are made with Polyethylene Terephthalate known as PET. It's used because it's an excellent vapor barrier allowing for a longer shelf life and is also highly resistant to acids. Unfortunately PET really likes to absorb Coke's flavor. Source: I work for a company using PET that's working with Coke.",
"Because of the materials used- plastic bottles affect the flavor slightly because of the plastic, the liner in an aluminum can does the same to a lesser effect, but glass doesn't.\n\nBut lets be honest here, coca cola from the McD's drive-through is best coke. ",
"I'm not 100% convinced that it does, or at least if it does that it has anything to do with the container. Sodas taste different to me all the time, even when drank from the same source. \n\n",
"There are so many nuanced answers here that I want to state one simple possibility. If your glass bottle Coke is the kind you get in the international section of the supermarket then it's made in Mexico. They are using real sugar, instead of corn syrup, and less carbonation. This is closer to the original recipe which made it so popular world wide. The Coke in plastic bottles and aluminum cans is made with corn syrup and is much, much more carbonated than the original recipe. I hate how carbonated modern soda is. Coke from the international section of the supermarket is by far my favorite soda.",
"Glass bottles come from Mexico. Mexican Coke still uses the original recipe that uses real sugar. American Coke that comes in cans and plastic bottles uses high fructose corn syrup.",
"As someone who has worked in CSD (carbonated soft drink) bottling plants, I can say that the integrity of the container and its seal play a significant part in this. The better the seal, the longer the container will maintain pressure, giving you the \"fizz\" that characterizes this beverage category.\n\nFor instance, a PET (plastic) bottle with a 2-piece closure (cap + liner) will generally be labeled for about 1/2 the shelf life that an aluminum can will be, since the can has a mechanical seal, and aluminum is not semipermeable like PET is. (I never worked in a plant that produced glass bottles, so I can't speak to that.)\n\nThe next constraint is the sweetener used in the beverage. Even though an aluminum can may maintain its pressure for a year or more, the HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) or Aspartame within the beverage won't last. In fact, Aspartame breaks down significantly faster than HFCS, which is why you're more likely to find that \"off\" flavor in a diet beverage, in a can. ",
"Old-school Coke will naturally taste better than regular Coke due to real sugar vs. high fructose corn syrup (glass bottled Coke made in Mexico with real cane sugar is what I find sometimes at the grocery store and it's heaven)."
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"http://imgur.com/ks5j1Re",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h9n4m/eli5_why_coca_cola_in_a_glass_bottle_tastes/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/376yu9/eli5_why_does_coke_in_a_glass_bottle_or_in_a_can/crkff9z",
"http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-07/why-does-coke-glass-bottle-plastic-bottle-and-aluminum-can-taste-different",
"http://imgur.com/bEWiBHs",
"http://i.imgur.com/XREDExl.jpg",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j5x4c/eli5_why_will_the_same_drink_from_the_same/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pt3f0/eli5_why_do_drinks_taste_different_when_drunk/",
"http://imgur.com/pKnjyYT"
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"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1038/oby.2010.255/full"
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"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/06/30/196708393/from-farm-to-fork-to-plate-how-utensils-season-your-meal",
"http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/12/what-you-see-is-what-you-taste-says-scientist/",
"http://www.flavourjournal.com/content/pdf/2044-7248-2-21.pdf"
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"http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2011/09/the-food-lab-drinks-edition-is-mexican-coke-better-than-regular-coke-coke-taste-test-coke-vs-mexican-coke.html"
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5mosgo | why do the drawstrings on sweaters and hoodies always try to come out of the hoods when they are run through a washer and dryer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mosgo/eli5_why_do_the_drawstrings_on_sweaters_and/ | {
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"My guess is that one of the drawstring ends can easily get snagged by other garments or other parts of the hoodie, then as the washer or dryer turns the clothes are tossled and the string is pulled. Imagine the drawstring end getting sandwiched in some jeans then as the washer spins the jeans move away from the hoodie and the string pulls away with it.\n\nSide note: As an infrequent redditor, why does my view (using \"reddit is fun\" app) say 2 comments but show no comments?"
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1us8hh | why does my congestion move from nostril to nostril with gravity? | Up with a nasty sinus infection, just started wondering about it. I get that gravity moves it, but why does it move at all? What even is it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1us8hh/eli5_why_does_my_congestion_move_from_nostril_to/ | {
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"My best guess (I don't really know) is all congestion is is a mucus/fluid build up in your nasal cavity, not exactly in your nostrils so I kind of imagine it as water in a bottle. It moves around based off gravity but if won't just drip out on its own. "
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5pmw8h | what makes fruits taste different from one to the next? | If I had two glasses one was full of pure orange juice, the other was full pure of mango juice. What chemical structure is it that makes mangoes taste like mangoes , and oranges like oranges? Or any sugar based compound for that matter ?
Bonus question: Is it possible to completely mimic a fruit juice without including any actual fruit ? example combining vitamins A/B/C/D with sugars fibers and fats to make it taste like mango juice ?
Tried to google with no success in what I'm trying to learn. Thanks!
I love mango's
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pmw8h/eli5_what_makes_fruits_taste_different_from_one/ | {
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"Not sure on the chemistry behind fruits but as for mimicking a fruit, flavours have been mimicked for years without actual fruit extracts. Strawberry milks being a common one. ",
"aromatic compounds, essential oils and some other chemicals like tannin are what gives fruits different flavors. It is currently not possible to mimic EVERY fruit but some fruits are easier to mimic than others. The problem is that we do not know the exact ratios and chemicals that exist in some fruits. The measurement of such trace aromas is very difficult because they tend to easily get destroyed in many processes used to analyze them. Up until a few years ago scientists also had problems to create real cherry aroma. They did not know why their aroma mixture did not taste like cherry even when they used exaclty the same mixture as in real cherry. Then they found out that there is a mold on the outside of cherry that they did not analyze at first because they washed the cherry with alcohols to get the \"pure flavour\". In the end traces of the mold were what was missing for the cherry flavour. \n\nTl/dr: We still have not \"decoded\" most flavors completely thus are unable to recreate them in a lab. "
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1w2w44 | the social construction theory in feminism | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w2w44/eli5_the_social_construction_theory_in_feminism/ | {
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"Different societies have different roles for women. The social construct theory in feminism states that you cannot generalize a gender. ",
"People act the way they do because it's been taught to them both consciously and subconsciously. In other words, teachers and parents actively enforce the roles, and observation of the way the world works and looks reinforces them. \n\nIt is not only for men and women but for races, too. Different races only exist because society says they do. There is no inherent biological difference between a black man and a white man besides outward appearance. And yet, we put them in two socially distinct categories (for better or for worse) because such categories have been \"constructed\" over time due to historical and cultural circumstances.\n\nThe idea of the theory is that we could hypothetically live in a world in which different identities were constructed in place of our own, that there is nothing innate about the identities that exist in society, and that if we were to suddenly become \"colorblind,\" race would no longer exist as an identity. No one would ever say, \"as a black man, I think x\" because there is no special difference to being a black man in that society, it is a completely arbitrary characteristic. There is no God that says, \"black people are to be subjugated,\" no rulebook that tells you who is black and who isn't. Humans just like putting things into categories for convenience sake, but we ignore the possibility that there are people who don't fit neatly into these boxes. What about a black person with skin fair enough to pass as white? Are they black? How about a black person raised by white people who doesn't understand anything about street culture and has no values traditionally associated with African-Americans?\n\nWe have so much faith in our categories that we treat them as if they're natural or God-given, but they can't be because they don't always work, and they come from social and historical factors rather than from nature.\n\nAs for gender, even if a woman is a raging butch lesbian, she is still living in a world in which there is a single socially accepted version of a woman she is being compared to. The identities exist and shape other identities. \n\nThis is a controversial theory because a lot of scientists have demonstrated innate differences between the sexes. However, even if that's true, the idea here is meant more to discourage the \"Men are from Mars, Women from Venus\" fantasy. In reality, men and women are biologically more identical than not. Male and female genitals are made from almost the same tissues and structures; males in the womb actually start as female. Both men and women produce estrogen and testosterone, have breasts, etc. Feminists would prefer that we stop thinking as men and women as two different breeds that are \"supposed\" to behave a certain way; to stop thinking of things as \"for\" girls or \"for\" boys. Those things are almost certainly not biological and are in every way socially constructed.\n\nIt is also, true, however, that the very fact that we as humans socially construct things is itself biological. But queer theory/feminism/postmodernism would have us believe that we are smart enough to think beyond our constructions. So, even if you could prove somehow that men's brains are on average more stimulated by violence and therefore demonstrate that guys should scientifically prefer playing video-games over girls, we as human beings should be intelligent enough to subvert those expectations because we have free will, and not every single male/female is wired exactly the same way, otherwise we'd all be the same person.\n\nThe danger is falling into the trap of saying girls CAN'T like video-games. Nothing is ever CAN'T, SHOULDN'T, or DON'T. "
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1hsh5f | how the united states is in so much debt, but day-to-day life seems completely normal. | I'm a college student taking economics, so not a complete dumb person but it is just hard for me to grasp how we are in so much debt and life seems completely normal. Any help? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hsh5f/eli5_how_the_united_states_is_in_so_much_debt_but/ | {
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"What consequences do you expect that the United States would face for having \"so much\" debt? Because standard economics doesn't predict earth-shattering consequences for anything near the current level of debt.",
"The same reason you can be 10s or 100s of thousands in debt from college loans, car loans, mortgages and credit card debt, and still live \"normally.\" Debt doesnt matter, so long as you are capable of paying it back (with interest). \n\nThe US has debt by issuing bonds and treasuries, and eventually people cash them in. And so long as the US is capable of honoring these bonds, they will continue to be able to sell them in the future. \n\nTo put it in perspective...the current US GDP is 14.99 Trillion, and current US debt is 16.7 Trillion. Of course, this means we crossed over past 100% in Debt:GDP ratio, but \"only\" by 1.8 Trillion, which isnt too much.\n\nIn simple terms: lets say you have an annual income of 150,000$ per year, and you have outstanding debt (credit cards, student loans, etc) that is a total of 170,000. Now...could you still live \"normal?\" absolutely, because you dont have to pay that debt back in a single year, and with your salary, you are more then capable of paying it off at some point. Also, would you still be allowed to take on MORE debt, say for a new car? Again...with your salary, a bank would have no hesitation in giving you a loan."
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2hlohs | is there any consequence to the increasing number of illegal immigrants (primarily and specifically, hispanic) in the united states? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hlohs/eli5_is_there_any_consequence_to_the_increasing/ | {
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"Yes. Their children will be American citizens, and they will be voting in about thirty years from now. And they have a *lot* of children.",
"There are consequences of keeping them illegal, it's complicated to say the least. A country that experiences changing demographics can have a tough time with that. Immigrants bring their own culture and understanding of politics and sometimes that can clash with the existing culture in the immigrated country.\n\nSo a high level of immigrants can create strains between populations since all humans are basically very conservative, we are resistant to change. It also complicates matters that the existing population believes their culture is superior to the immigration population (They want to come here because everything is better).\n\nHowever, if you look over time you'll see that any nation reaches equilibrium after a few generations, trouble is, that takes a few generations. Just look at how Irish were treated when they started to come over en masse, they are all integrated now and part of the cultural identity of US. Nothing says that US wouldn't do the same with the Hispanic immigrants coming now.\n\nThen of course there is the humanitarian principle of helping and also the founding principles of US. ",
"There are hundreds of different angles, positive and negative. One of which is that *illegal* immigrants are good for the economy, whereas *legal* immigrants can (but not necessarily) have a negative affect (if they don't pay taxes and claim benefits, etc.).\n\nThe reason illegals could, hypothetically be positive is because they do jobs citizens won't and then spend that money, stimulating the local economy. Cheap labour lowers business costs, businesses do better. It's more complicated than that and it's only one side of the debate. I'll try to find the article.\n\n\nOn the other hand, immigrants (legal or not) often send money back home, out of the county.\n\nImportant misconception: illegal immigrants don't steal benefits. They're here illegally, how can they possibly claim?\n\n\nThis is all economical. There are arguments on both sides for all sorts of other areas from cultural differences to affect on voting patterns to crime statistics to straight up ignorance in the form of racism or \"share the world\" hippy bullshit. It's a debate that'll never be settled.",
"The big issue is that they don't pay taxes, because reporting income outs them as illegals, so that's why they usually get paid under the table for service jobs, like being maids, mowing lawns, doing light construction or renovations, roofing etc. They also end up using things that taxes pay for, like public schools, social welfare programs, etc. Generally they're seen as a cost to the American public. Those are just some basic ways they affect things. Not taking one side or the other on this issue but those are some points.",
"I'll try to opine on this from the perspective of a Swede. The main problem is proper integration into the society. Like - you want them to have the language and education of the culture and society they live in. And at a measuread arrival rate, or with financial backing for an integration system, this isn't a big problem.\n\nBut I think realistically speaking, those systems will never have popular support from people. And since they are \"bad for business\" (short term it's a purely charitable system) they will never have enough support to be effective enough for large amount of immigrants to have proper integration into society.\n\nThis leads to new, desperate arrivals to take on unfairly paid jobs, live in \"first best\" places and sometimes end up resorting to survive by making money illegally through no fault of their own. Sure there are bad eggs, but most immigrants come to a new place with the hope to find a job and have a decent apartnent. With no outside support/only theoretical support - the success rate is depressingly poor.\n\nJust what I heard in debates and stuff. Don't know how true it is.",
"How serious are you in wanting to learn? Are you posting this question for karma, or are you willing to read through accredited articles on this subject? If you are willing to actually read and understand the positives and negatives of the increase of illegal immigrants then it's best you read on this subject yourself. The only reason I say this is because a year ago I did a research paper on this very topic, and I came to a number of conclusions on my own through reading 10+ different scholarly articles.\n\nIf you're serious about this topic and realize this isn't just a quick answer then stop reading these posts. I'm sure these comments were posted by intelligent people, but they have their own views. If you're going to school I highly suggest using: _URL_0_\n\nIf you're a student this service should be free through your college. The reason I suggest this search engine is because you can make it to were your search only pulls up scholarly article accredited by the writers piers in the same field. I'm sure there are other search engines you could use, but make sure that the articles you read are pier reviewed, and not just something someone wrote up.",
"Consequences depends on you're particular standpoint. If you don't have a college education and you work in the low to mid skill range mass immigration, legal or illegal is bad for you. An increasing number of people competing for low to mid skill jobs raises unemployment and lowers wages on the bottom spectrum. Also basic tech jobs, or anything you can teach mass groups of people to do in 6 months or less suffer in wages and employment. If you're in the upper range more labor is good, it lowers costs. But this also matters where you are in relation to density. Most Mcdonalds workers make state minimum wage, those in most of North Dakota make 22+ an hours. Another problem someone mentioned is social services, your local schools are payed for by local taxes. If a larger and larger portion of students come from homes that don't pay taxes that raises the costs to those homes that do. You also lose a great deal of money from immigrants as they send a goodly bit back home. So you have local wages going down unemployment going up, Schools and other social services suffer and money leaving the economy. People like to say that immigrants do jobs other people won't do, that's not necessarily true. offer 15 dollars an hour and see how many people will go pick fruit. most times illegal immigrants are forced into exploitative labor practices. It really is a balancing act of how many immigrants an given country can take on at once.",
"Illegal immigrants are counted towards the state's population. This also affects electoral votes and members in congress. \n\nFor example, California gets 5 more electoral votes and US representatives because of its illegal population. \n\nSo if more are increased, they are likely to settle in places near the border (California, Texas, Arizona...), and those states get more representation in congress and more say in who gets to be president. ",
"A massive cultural and by proxy political shift. The reduction of educational standards to accommodate non English speaking children, the reemergence of previously eradicated diseases and a colossal burden on roads, schools, and other municipal services. For starters "
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2cj9xn | when i am woken briefly in the night, i often have no memory of it by morning, why is this? | Occasionally my girlfriend says that she has had a coherent conversation with me when I have been briefly (15 minutes last night) woken up for some reason in the night and then gone straight back to sleep. By morning, I have no memory of this happening, why is this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cj9xn/eli5_when_i_am_woken_briefly_in_the_night_i_often/ | {
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"When you fall asleep, your hippocampus, the area of your brain responsible for learning and memory, sort of switches off, or into \"sleep mode.\" Most likely, you're still in a dream-like state, or experiencing a parasomnia, and the hippocampus hasn't kicked back into gear.",
"That never happened. Your girlfriend is a Jedi and she is practicing her mind tricks."
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2gn3nv | if mass production and automated efficiency lowers the cost per item, how do podunk smaller grocery stores sell their own (lower volume) products for far less $? | I understand that there is advertising involved, but the power of mass production surely overcomes this expense, right? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gn3nv/eli5if_mass_production_and_automated_efficiency/ | {
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"Could you give some examples? I'm not sure whether you're talking about mass-produced store-brand goods, bulk goods, or what.",
"Let's say Green Giant owns a factory that can churn out 20 million cans of green beans per day. But they only sell 10 million a day. They can either close the factory during the hours it isn't needed or they can produce green beans for generic brands while only having to change out the labels. If they don't produce the generic brands, someone else will. So they're going to have competition either way. If they do produce the generic brands, they will make some profit off of their competition. \n\nSo small no-name grocery store brands do benefit from mass production. It's just that their products are made alongside others often with only the label being changed."
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cpe7t1 | is it fact that frequent readers are smarter, and if so, what happens in the brain during reading to cause this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cpe7t1/eli5_is_it_fact_that_frequent_readers_are_smarter/ | {
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"That's a lot like observing that frequent runners are agile. Frequent reading builds focus, making it faster and easier to recall what you've read and integrate it into your understanding. When you do something over and over, the brain strengthens those pathways. When you don't do something much, the pathways get recycled to learn something more important.",
"Reading is exercise for the brain just like physical exercise is exercise for the muscles. Reading strengthens your memory and increases your vocabulary. It also increases your ability to focus and analyze, as well as improves your imagination - which helps creativity.\n\nHow does it strengthen memory? Well, you have to be able to remember the different characters in a story as well as what happened to whom and where if you want to follow a story.\n\nHow does it increase your focus? In order to understand the story, you have to be able to drown out the outside world and focus on the words on paper (or e-book). Dividing your attention between reading and doing something else isn't helpful in understanding what you're reading. So most readers learn to focus really well.\n\nHow does it increase your powers of analysis? Well, in order to understand the plot in a story, you'd have to analyze the events using your logic. Repeated use of logic strengthens your powers of analysis. This is true even reading non-fiction. In order to understand the message of non-fiction literature, you'd have to use analysis. Constant use of analysis makes you a better analyst.\n\nHow does it help improve your imagination? Well, books are just words on paper. Unless you're reading comics, there are little to no pictures. You have to create imagery on your own using the words you read on paper. Constant use of imagination helps improve creativity - which leads to better problems solving skills - since creativity is required to solve problems. \nTLDR; reading is exercise for the brain. constant exercise = stronger brain.",
"I bet it's the opposite. It's not that frequent readers are smarter. It's that smarter people are frequent readers."
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44s1jy | why is "boohoo" a word used to represent crying? | I've never heard someone enunciate the letter "b" while crying, so where did this phrase come from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44s1jy/eli5_why_is_boohoo_a_word_used_to_represent_crying/ | {
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"I'm guessing it's a sort of onomatopoeia. Like \"buzz\" for insects or \"meow\" for cats. When people cry, sometimes it sounds like \"boo hoo\", so it sort of stuck. Same with \"wah!\" ",
"If you're trying not to cry, you might press your lips together. When you do the crying part, your breath might come out as a series of stops and starts due to trying to stop it with your tongue. The first breath makes a \"boo\" sound because your lips are parting and making the \"oo\" shape. The next chunk of breath makes the \"hoo\" sound because your tongue is trying to stop it unsuccessfully and your lips are in the same place.",
"What comes to my mind is Shirley Temple. So I guess it represents how a child would cry to mock an adult. What doesn't make sense to me is \"Bang\" to represent a gun shot. Because the sound is nothing like it. It's more like a loud \"Tahh!\"",
"Crying is, quite often, an involuntary response which people are often afraid to do in the presence of others. The act of trying to hold in the sobs is what could cause a plosive B sound at the very beginning, as the sound bursts out of a tensed mouth which is trying to hold it in. "
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83usln | what do best men, maids of honor, grooms men and bridesmaids do in a wedding? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/83usln/eli5_what_do_best_men_maids_of_honor_grooms_men/ | {
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"The best man holds the ring until the vows, the maid of honor holds the bride's bouquet during vows, and the others just stand up there awkwardly watching the ceremony ",
"Besides what has already been said, the best man and maid of honour also tend to plan and organise the bachelor/ette parties and give a little speech during the dinner after the wedding ceremony. Those two are not supposed to hook up with other people during the wedding. ",
"Couple of things, in chronological order: \n\n* Prior to the wedding, the maid of honor and best man are responsible for organizing the bachelorette and bachelor parties, respectively.\n* The day of the wedding, the bridesmaids and groomsmen (including the maid of honor and best man) help the bride and groom get ready. This is more important for the bride; the bridesmaids will help her get into her dress, do makeup do her hair, etc (though frequently they'll hire people for makeup and hair, in which case the bridesmaids will have theirs done alongside the bride). Simultaneously, the groomsmen and groom will get into their tuxedos.\n* In some weddings, the groomsmen will act as ushers, showing the wedding attendees to their seats before the ceremony starts. \n* The bridesmaids and groomsmen stand up at the altar during the ceremony. \n* In the wedding itself, the best man holds the rings until the appropriate moment in the ceremony. \n* During the vows, the bride will hand her bouquet to the maid of honor so she can take the groom's hands. \n* After the wedding, during the reception, the maid of honor and best man are expected to each give a toast. \n* Throughout all of this, the bridesmaids and groomsmen are there for moral support. Maybe the groom has cold feet, or a guest is making an ass of themself and needs to be removed, or simply that the bride can't get away from all the guests congratulating her to grab a drink, the wedding party is there to see to their needs and make sure they have a wonderful day. "
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ei3t2x | why do you change from breathing perfectly normal, to snoring when falling asleep? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ei3t2x/eli5_why_do_you_change_from_breathing_perfectly/ | {
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"Snoring is usually caused by some sort of obstruction in the upper part of your airway. During sleep, your muscles start being relaxed and they may collapse a little to block your airway which results in snoring.",
"My jaw slides back and blocks my airway. I choke and pop. I got an oral appliance fitted. I feel SO much better when I wake up. I use it each day! AMA!",
"Multivariate issues at play here\n\n- Physics of sound depend on vibration which depends on size, shape, and coating of the fluid\n\n- Size of the chamber, lungs, changes based on tidal volume required to keep you alive while sleeping. \n\n- Shape of the organ is based on your relaxed tongue, position which you are sleeping, gravity effecting your internal parts while asleep\n\n- Coating of the fluid literally means are your mucous and saliva being produced at optimal viscosity\n\nSleep Apnea machines aim to adjust your posture as well as humidity and force you to take in larger quantities of air while you sleep"
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2b5qmv | viruses - can i get them only by running executable files (.exe, .bat, .com, .jpg.exe), or are there other ways? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b5qmv/eli5viruses_can_i_get_them_only_by_running/ | {
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"Yes, and the gist is that it comes down to interactions. When two different types of \"things\" interact, it is an attack vector and can be exploited. Two different kinds of things can be \"a browser displaying some media\" or \"a viewer executing a macro\" - where a container attempts to perform an action that isn't necessarily native to its core. \n\nYou have often heard of flaws in Flash which are sometimes fixed by Adobe, and sometimes by the browser creators. Flash is its own 'thing' but the browser is hosting it.\n\nSpecially crafted [images](_URL_0_) could execute arbitrary code on certain servers. \n\nThere's PDF itself; to view a PDF file you need a PDF reader. The way the PDF is rendered may have vulnerabilities and is another attack vector. \n\nJavascript is another favorite; a browser needs to execute Javascript to make it 'do things', however it uses engines. Those engines are the attack vector and people look for ways to exploit them, often by hoping to execute a command on the user's machine. \n\nUltimately - as long as the vector allows them to execute commands, they can then use it to download the actual virus, or execute the script directly. ",
"A Virus needs to be run in order to infect a computer. There are ways to trick a computer into running things that would not normally be considered \"runnable\" files. Things like web pages and word documents can, for example, contain things that get run, and malformed data can 'accidentally' be executed."
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1aysbe | black circles from lack of sleep | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1aysbe/eli5_black_circles_from_lack_of_sleep/ | {
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"A lack of sleep can make your skin more pale, which in turn makes the blood vessels under your eyes more visible."
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e3s157 | how come turning wifi/data on and off again makes it work better? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e3s157/eli5_how_come_turning_wifidata_on_and_off_again/ | {
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"Like pretty much anything computer related, resetting fixes an abundance of issues. By starting something over it is forced to run all it's code from the beginning, refreshing anything that might have gotten out of whack. \n\nI don't have a specific technical answer because it could be a whole number of things making your wifi or data not work well in the first place, but in short, it's like when you're in a conversation with someone and you get confused and say \"woah woah hold on let's start over.\"",
"One potential cause can occur if you are on some sort of extended network system where many access points (APs) are all broadcasting the same SSID (that is, a bunch of antennas all pretending to be the same network that shows up on your device). You'll usually find these in large offices or school campuses. Even though these APs are all the same network, most basic configurations can only let you talk to one of these APs at a time, so your device can still tell them apart. To that end, when you connect your device to one of them, it will do everything in its ability to stay connected to *that* AP in particular, no matter how bad the signal gets, even if a better connection to a different AP is nearby. That is, if you're walking about and roam out of the zone of the first AP you connected to, your signal will get worse and worse, even if there are other APs in your area to cover you. Your device will only break the connection and start over on its own if the original connection outright times out. Cycling your network connectivity forces your device to drop the old connection and look again, which will presumably select the strongest signal in your area.\n\nNewer network equipment is being made that can address this by giving the central router the ability to detect signal strengths of clients and dynamically route traffic through the best AP possible, making the switch seamless. These are marketed as \"WiFi mesh\" systems.\n\nI'm not at all versed on how the cellular network system operates, but I think it has some parallels to a Wi-Fi mesh system, with towers dynamically trying to shift you between one another seamlessly as you roam, but due to their greater distances and higher volume of clients this can be unreliable. Turning data off and on can easily shift you to a new tower if you are in range of more than one. You can often verify that this has happened by checking your public IP address before and after cycling.",
"There are probably many more reasons, but maybe one is that the WiFi changes the channel being used which might have been being jammed by noise. \n\nIt's like if many people are speaking English in a room, so to make things a little clearer you switch to German. Sure, the noise remains the same but because you're talking a different language you don't get confused by the English words.\n\nIn the same way WiFi has different channels it uses, which are basically bands of frequency.",
"Maybe someone can tell me why I can be sitting in my house in the same spot on the couch for 2 hours on my iphone and lose all signal multiple times, but turning air plane mode on and then off will yield a good signal again. I never had to do this on my android phones but it happens all the time in all kinds of places on my iPhone in a major city. I’ve even switched carriers recently and it’s the same issue. Friends with iPhone report the same issue as well."
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30nfcf | why do a lot of song recordings fade out instead of ending like a live version would? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30nfcf/eli5_why_do_a_lot_of_song_recordings_fade_out/ | {
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"They were designed to be played on radio or in clubs, where one song would be smoothly overlapped and transitioned to the next song without a clear stop in the music.\n\nSometimes in popular music the artists just didn't have a creative way to end the song."
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8fylaw | how did we as humans collectively decide on the location of the international date line? | how did it get decided that the day starts from japan and ends at north america. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8fylaw/eli5_how_did_we_as_humans_collectively_decide_on/ | {
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"you'll notice the exact opposite longitude goes through London. \n\nwhen they started timezones etc, Britain was basically the Great Power. They decided that all longitudes, and, later, timezones would be counted from there. And nobody really argued with them, because they had less boats.\n\nFortunately the 180 degree longitude that (more or less) the date line falls on is in the middle of the pacific so it worked out quite well since people wouldn't be constantly crossing it on their way to work (it'd be daft if it fell in the middle of, say, the US)",
"It didn't.\n\nThe date line is the opposite side of the globe to the Prime Meridian (roughly).\n\nThere were multiple Prime Meridians throughout history, typlically countries with large a large navy or merchant shipping fleet would have their own. Eventually they all lost out to the current PM.",
"The decision to put the Prime Meridian through Greenwich, England was made at at the International Meridian Conference, held in Washington DC in October, 1884. But each country has traditionally decided what time zones to use and where it sits relative to the date line. \n\nNote that the day doesn't begin in Japan, it begins in Kiribati, where the time zone is UTC+14 (14 hours ahead of the meridian), so that the country is all on the same day. The Philippines used to be on the *east* side of the date line until 1844, so as to be on a common day with Spain and Mexico."
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13696f | when movies make hundreds of millions, whats an accurate picture of where this money comes from and where it ends up? | For example: Skyfall has already made over $ 500 million around the world. Where do they get that figure from? Where does this money come from? How much do the studios get? What about the theaters? The advertising agencies?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13696f/eli5_when_movies_make_hundreds_of_millions_whats/ | {
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"Typically, a writer/producer develop the idea for a film. They take this idea and 'sell' it to a studio for, let's say, 10 $.\n\nThe studio will now hire actors, writers (maybe even the same one), producer/directors, sets etc etc etc and spend 50 $ on this all to make a final/finished movie. Since they've spent (50+10) 60$ now, they sell this finished product for a 150 $ to the distributors. \n\nThe distributor will now market the hell out of the movie, do ads, trailers, sponsorships, interviews etc etc and will make it look like 'The Next Big Thing'. This cost them 100$. Now cinemas and theaters and 'showers' want the film. They all pay 50 $ each to the distributors to get a copy of the film. Suppose the distributors manage to sell it to 66 cinemas 'WorldWide', so they earn ((66x50)-100)=3200$ from all the cinemas all over.\n\nThe cinemas now want people to see the film, so they set the ticket price at 1$ and manage to get 300 people to see the film over the course of 3 weeks at their 20-seat cinema, so they've earned (300 x 1) 300 $ from the film.\n\nThe people? They just spent 1 $ and got to see Emma Watson smooching Cristian Bale in IMAX format.\n\ntl;dr\n\n* Idea originator spends effort/time - earns 10. Net +10$\n* Studio spends 10 + 50 - earns 150. Net +90$\n* Distributor spends 150 + 100 - earns 3300. Net +3050$\n* Cinema spends 50 - earns 300. Net +250$\n* Audience member spends 1 - earns a movie.\n\n\nNote: Scales massively distorted for clarity.\n\n\n\n",
"[This episode](_URL_0_) of the Planet Money podcast has a really informative/funny explanation of how movies make money. When I first heard it, I was blown away by how inefficient the whole system is.",
"Saying for sure where all the money ended up is somewhat difficult since the people whose task it is to keep track of that are lying about it.\n\nAccording to what is known as Hollywood accounting most movies, no matter how successful, somehow officially end up not making any money. This happy accident of creative accounting allows studios to not pay anyone and promised cuts of the profits since according to them there weren't any.\n",
"If I can add: \n\nThe Scriptnotes podcast (John August, Craig Mazin, screenwriters) did an episode about \"How Movies Make Money.\" It's pretty thorough, and available for download here: _URL_0_\n\n"
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6iunka | do good gut bacteria fight against each other? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6iunka/eli5_do_good_gut_bacteria_fight_against_each_other/ | {
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"Yes! It's definitely an active area of research, but you can be pretty assured that wherever there is a dense, varied bacterial community, they are fighting each other. Certainly indirectly via competition for resources, and in some cases directly by poisoning each other. When there are lots of bacteria growing together all trying to eat and divide as much as they can, everything is an intense competition.\n\nIncidentally, it's probably not that \"good\" bacteria specifically fight \"bad\" ones. It's more that many \"bad\" bacteria just don't have what it takes to compete in the intestine, or at least the competition limits their growth."
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82hd9r | why do most restaurants/fast food places use foamy soap? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/82hd9r/eli5_why_do_most_restaurantsfast_food_places_use/ | {
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"The soap is the same as normal hand soap. It is the dispenser that makes the soap foam. These dispensers help to reduce waste by making it seem like you have more soap than you really do. It doesn't take a lot of soap to effectively wash your hands either.",
"It's to stop wasting soap. People will often pump themselves a full handful of pure liquid soap when there's no need, the foamy stuff goes further. As /u/AtomicPancake216 says it's a mechanism in the spout of the dispenser that makes it foam up, the stuff inside is ordinary liquid soap. \n\nSame reason you can get those paper ~~tower~~ towel* dispensers that make you crank off a piece of paper at a time with a handle, rather than just spin off ten yards of paper to dry your hands. "
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4dl3pj | why is the default stressful dream "unprepared in high school" for so many people? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dl3pj/eli5_why_is_the_default_stressful_dream/ | {
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"I think it's because school is the first time people are \"graded\" based on effort entirely within their social circle they are immersed in daily.\n\nIt's not just hormones causing you to feel uncomfortable, anxious and stressed, but you also have to compare your worth against people who are your peers, which probably smacks to tribal instincts of not failing the pack and being the weakest link.\n\nBeing prepared for the hunt made the pack like you, not being prepared meant you were a pariah and were an outcast. So effectively it's tribal instincts, bolstered by increasing hormonal imbalances, with a pinch of unrealistic expectations that kids put on themselves when they consider that their entire life is spawning from their grades at school."
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4ao9lf | why does a phone need to be charged above 15% to take a picture? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ao9lf/eli5_why_does_a_phone_need_to_be_charged_above_15/ | {
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"First, phones make some assumptions about the battery. They might know the charge level, but they calculate the rate they are draining at based on current activity. So if you fire up the camera and sees that the drain-rate goes up, the phone might go \"Uh oh, I'm about to lose power\" and warn you. Using the camera means the screen is on, which is the most battery draining thing a phone can do. \n\nI still don't see that a phone would *prevent* you from using the camera. I've used the camera on my phone when it was well below 15%, on quite a few phones. Unless you have an oldish phone with a failing battery and it actually drains enough to shut itself down, it should just put up a \"low battery\" warning you can dismiss and keep using it. ",
"My phone works with everything right down til 1%. I don't know what kind of phone you have, but my 4 year old 4s still has less problems than people with newer iPhones.",
"A camera flash has a high current draw, which might cause the battery voltage to dip too low for a short period. This would cause the protection IC for the battery to trip, resulting in your phone shutting off immediately and involuntarily. "
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44kkh4 | how do wet dreams cause one to cum if there is no sexual pleasure in reality? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44kkh4/eli5_how_do_wet_dreams_cause_one_to_cum_if_there/ | {
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"Sexual pleasure is mostly in the mind. Your dreams are fully capable of providing that. What little contact is needed for wet dreams is provided by your underwear/other clothing, sheets, or actually masturbating in your sleep. "
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e6lsnc | how does picture format conversion work? eg. png to jpg | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e6lsnc/eli5_how_does_picture_format_conversion_work_eg/ | {
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"It's basically the same as translating languages. A program knows how to read and save both formats and remakes the original in the other format."
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38y40s | why is it that every device i own slowly but surely slows down and refuses to work like they once did no matter what i do? shouldn't upgrades and better technology ensure longer lifetimes for gadgets, not kill them off and force me to buy new ones? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38y40s/eli5why_is_it_that_every_device_i_own_slowly_but/ | {
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"I hear this all the time, and it might be because I work in a technology field, but I never run into this problem. It always has to do with some kind of problem that the owner has either neglected or have been unaware of that slowly gets worse as it's not taken care of. It really depends on what kind of gadget you are working with more then anything else.",
"I'll start off with a little anecdote. I was on the train when a woman was talking to her coworker about how \"every company does planned obsolescence,\" and while this is true to a small and shady extent, she used it as an excuse for her phone slowing down and battery life getting shitty which is wrong.\n\nLet me explain by using phones as an example and then we can talk about other gadgets. When a phone is made, it may have say 100 units of processing power. It also has 100 units of battery. The operating system may only take 5 units of processing power, so here's the thing. When the next version comes out, it will require more processing power, but if a manufacturer optimizes it, it won't be too bad a difference. For google nexus phones, google might update my phone to Android M, but will make sure it only takes up 7 units of processing power. Samsung may give their Android M update which takes 12 units. This is called optimization. When you make new software work as best as it can for old stuff. This is why people like Apple and Google Nexus phones, because both companies actually care to optimize for their phones over time to the best of their ability. Samsung may not care because it just motivates you to get their latest and greatest product. For android phones, there are communities that make the latest software available for phones from 2010 since they do the optimizing themselves. That's an example of how long a phone can truly last because they're running lollipop relatively smoothly. \n\nHere's the thing, with batteries, you may start out with 100 units of battery, but after a year it goes down to 70 because of the chemical limitations of the battery itself. You can't fix that with a software update. What you can do is buy a screwdriver, look at a guide online and replace the battery with a fresh one.\n\nIn order to deal with what your question asks, I usually do some research on whether an update slows down on my hardware. This way its better for me to stay on old software, say for my car, because if I updated that GPS system, it would probably slow down so the manufacturer would try and convince me to buy a new car. Most of the time, its software that is your issue with these types of technology. With some research, you can find out the best way to keep your stuff running super fast.\n\nThere is also the issue that most people don't know how to properly maintain their device. For windows think of a computer with tons of startup programs, cluttered folders, and filled registry. For Android, think of a phone with a shitton of useless apps that keep causing random wakelocks. When you add all this crap software that takes away from battery, over time your performance will decrease and so people will blame the manufacturer for making a shitty device.",
"It would depend on the type of device, but in the case of smart phones and computers, over time, you load more crap software. If you reformatted your device and started clean, you might see improved performance.",
"Upgraded software often requires upgraded hardware.\n\nIf you were to continue to use the software purchased with the device and never upgraded, the device would last much longer.",
"Think of software being like a farmer. A good farmer will grow the crops, harvest, then replant the same area next season. A sloppy farmer doesn't fully clean up the area after harvest and instead just plants on new land. Over time, the sloppy farmer needs more and more land for planting but never cleans up land that was used before. This farmer will spend more time traveling from the barn to the crops in order to get the work done. If god (you) comes along and causes armageddon (reformat/reinstall), then the sloppy farmer can start fresh on the land closest to the barn, but will continue to be sloppy and need more resources with each planting.\n\nThis isn't the only reason for age-lag, but can be a significant contributor.",
"I'm computer savvy, but I never understood the explanation that lots of installs slow things down.\n\nIf your disk is clean and organized, and if you have good practice and documentation, you can have a machine running as many roles as it has CPU/bandwidth for, and it won't negatively affect it. \n\n",
"A lot of people are going to respond \"planned obsolescence.\" But let me play Devil's Avocado for a second. If it is as you say \"every device\" you own, then the problem is more than likely environmental or human error. Sand or shifting humidity conditions are known to cause hardware problem, specifically related to length of exposure which goes right along with your \"slowly but surely.\" On the human error side of things, it's easy to unconsciously slow down your machines with crapware, useless or useful files, and fragmentation. \n\nFor instance: If you bought and maintained every piece of hardware within your PC, and bothered to know what's going on with your software, there should never be any noticeable slow downs. At least, that's been my experience.\n\nObviously, this wont be the case with Apple gadgets, but I guess that's what you get for paying for DRM.",
"Because developers are inherently lazy, and newer hardware makes shittier code run better. \n\nAs updates are pushed for newer models the code is written less efficiently for older models because the hardware compensates for their lack of effort.\n\nTldr; as features increase performance decreases",
"RoHS makes tin wiskers more and more of a problem. They form when the solder doesn't have lead to keep it together. RoHS is the most short sighted directive and now MORE electronics are in landfills as a result. Tin wiskers drastically shorten lives of electronics and also has made them less water resistant as well. ",
"I have a relative who work for a company which tests out new materials for phones among other things. A couple of years back a phone company (I think it was Sony Ericsson) came to them and asked them to literally make their phone not last as long. What they did was come up with a way to make the charging input break after a while, and by doing so forcing customers to get a new phone. This means the company ensures they will keep selling phones, even though their old one could technically still do the work ",
"planned obsolescence\n\n_URL_0_\n\ninvestigates companies who engineer their products to fail as part of planned obsolescence. It started with the lightbulb.\n\nEdit:url"
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77ku1e | how does having sickle cell protect against malaria? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/77ku1e/eli5how_does_having_sickle_cell_protect_against/ | {
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"We don't know exactly, but it has something do do with the fact that the Malaria parasite lives in the red blood cells for part of their development. \n\nThere are different theories, but they basically come down to one of two things:\n\n* Either the red blood cells of people with sickle-cell disease are just more difficult for the parasites to live in.\n* Or the red blood cells are more sensitive so that the parasites damage them and the body recognizes them as defective and recycles them before the parasites can complete their development.",
"This goes down to genetics. Sickle cell anaemia is a recessive genetic condition, meaning that you need to have two of the recessive alleles in order to suffer from full blown sickle cell anaemia.\n\nIn malaria stricken regions like Africa, the sickle cell disease actually gives an advantage to those who suffer from malaria. Sickle cell anaemia causes the red blood cells to be misshapen. The malarial parasite is unable to survive and reproduce within these cells, so a person with sickle cell anaemia gains some resistance to malaria.\n\nIf you have full out sickle cell anaemia (two alleles), you probably won't live very long due to your shitty blood cells. If you don't have the condition, you'd probably die of malaria. So the people with only one sickle cell allele get the best of both worlds: enough normal blood cells to live, but also enough sickle-shaped blood cells so that they're immune to malaria."
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c8ohpq | the physics that make the double bounce on a trampoline so effective and at launching kids so high in the air. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c8ohpq/eli5_the_physics_that_make_the_double_bounce_on_a/ | {
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"When you land on a trampoline, the weight of your body landing loads the webbing and springs with potential energy.\n\nMore people landing on the webbing at the same time creates more potential energy on the trampoline. \n\nOnce those other people jump, all that potential is passed to the person in the middle, where most of that energy is focused and boom goes the dynamite.",
"A trampoline works by storing energy in springs. When the trampoline is pressed down the springs extend and will then contract lifting the trampoline back up, launching the person standing on it. \n\nThe double bounce is just a way to store extra energy for an extra powerful launch. So one person press down on the trampoline, storing energy in the springs. Then the other person lands, pressing down further and storing even more energy. Then all this energy is released into the person who just landed who is launched twice as high."
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37gfbl | why the u.s. is going after fifa, but none of the international big banks? | Why is the United States placing RICO charges against Fifa, but not a single person got arrested for the 2008 financial collapse, or the more recent 5 big banks having to pay $5.4 billion for rigging currencies?
Is FIFA really that bad, that they are worse than destroying the worlds economy or rigging currencies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37gfbl/eli5_why_the_us_is_going_after_fifa_but_none_of/ | {
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"With the FIFA scandal, the issue can be traced back to certain individuals who took bribes and against who they have proof. (though it has not actually gone through a court of law yet, so we don't even know what charges they will eventually end up with)\n\nWith the banking crisis, it is much much harder to point at a single individual who was at fault. These issues exist because multiple people are at fault, creating a culture that leads to it. You can put as much fault for the financial crisis with the American government and their policy changes under the idea of 'everybody needs to be able to be a home-owner'. Additionally, while we can say certain policies were at fault for causing the crisis, they weren't actually illegal, just irresponsible. You cannot arrest people for things that aren't illegal, just like we can't arrest you for not studying for an exam. Sure, we can now all say that it was completely stupid to give mortgages to people who were unable to pay back that amount, but it wasn't illegal. \n\n(also, it is not correct to say nobody was arrested for the financial crisis. There were some arrests and convictions when there was actual proof of illegal acts. Michael J. McGrath Jr and Lee B. Farkas are two)"
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6pj79z | how do natural fields exist? (more specifically, ones found in the middle of forests.) | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6pj79z/eli5_how_do_natural_fields_exist_more/ | {
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"It's part of ecological succession. Environments are constantly changing. It's a system that is complicated by an almost infinite amount of factors and conditions. Usually a glade represents an area that recently changed so that it could no longer support the other surrounding plants. This could be because of poor soil, a forest fire, aggressive feeders, disease, strong wind or snow. When an area is cleared, pioneer plants take over. This will include some trees, but it will take awhile for them to grow tall enough to be more permanent fixtures. Eventually, enough trees will grow so that canopy cover is achieved. At that point, the trees might have grown so dense that they block too much sun and the soil becomes poor. This will cause some trees to die. Shade tolerant plants will start to make a significant appearance once the trees' population dynamics even out around their carrying capacity. After the shade plants, more plants will arise, each changing the former glade in some way that allows more species to grow and some to die back. Eventually, climax community is reached or another dramatic change happens that causes a significant portions of plants to die."
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7208pw | how do software updates like ios11 speed up the phone? | How do software updates speed up the app transitions, closure of apps etc. In my very basic knowlede of computing, the hardware, dictates how powerful/fast a .device is | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7208pw/eli5how_do_software_updates_like_ios11_speed_up/ | {
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"The hardware will determine the maximum performance. How fast a app or the operation system depends on hot the program code is written.\n\nThere are multiple ways to write code that do the same thing and it is usually the case. The simplest and fastest way write code often will result in a slow program. If you spend more time on the code you will likely find a faster way to do it that might be more complicate but the program will be faster.\n\n Here is a [BBC video](_URL_0_) that in a simple way explain that that different algoritm can take different time to do the same thin. It it not exactly the same as how speedup of a OS works in most case but is illustrates in a nice way that the the speed of a programs will depend of how it is written. \n\nIt is often the case that the program that translate the code to what runs on the hardware (compiler/interpreter) get faster. It takes time to optimize it for a new CPU etc and the engineer that writs it have now had time to make it faster.\n\n\nThere might also be another reason is that for different reason the phone gets slower and slower over time because of how data is stored etc. It might be the case that a\n\n\n",
"Programmer here, for Microsoft and not Apple, but the basics of programming are the same for all companies and all programs. \n\nIt's all about the tradeoffs. Every team has to decide, for every release, the most important things to focus on for that release. Sometimes there will be a push to improve power (which can often make a program run faster, too!), or to improve reliability by carefully examining the leading cause of failures in the field, or to give their bit of the operating system a better developer experience, or to support some new hardware.\n\nA new release will often include a bunch of \"bug fixes\" where the code was working, but working inefficiently, or where it had been efficient on older systems but isn't on newer systems. (For example, it used to be that memory was almost as fast as the CPU, and so writing code that used lots of memory was OK. Now the CPU is much faster than memory, so you have to have algorithms that use more CPU and less memory).\n\nAnd like the other people said: sometimes there are optimizations for the hardware. This is extra true in networking and in graphics."
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6emer6 | why are the majority of boundaries between us states perfect straight lines? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6emer6/eli5_why_are_the_majority_of_boundaries_between/ | {
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"They tend to be not-straight when there is a significant geographical boundary, like a river, or historical population divide, like language. If there isn't a significant geographical boundary, drawing a squiggle doesn't necessarily gain you much value. It's just unnecessary complexity to keep track of.",
"The early States, like countries in Europe, drew their borders along geographical features. These are things like rivers, lakes, mountains, etc. But as the US expanded they went into regions with fewer features and these regions were designated by drawing lines on a map. ",
"When the US was colonized in the north east, most boundaries were set by geology such as mountains and rivers.\n\nHumans became more advanced and aware as they colonized further west and started creating boundaries using latitude and longitude.",
"There are two types of boundaries: geographic, and and political. If the boundary is squiggly, it's a river. If it's straight, a group of people sat down and argued over it until they agreed, then drew a straight line.\n\nIn Europe, those political boundaries were decided by centuries of war and incredibly detailed political maneuvering...There is so little land, every bit counted, and even the political boundaries are squiggly.\n\nIn the US, especially out West, where the land is flat and featureless, there is no reason not to draw a straight line.",
"The further west you get you begin to notice the states begin to look more like squares. This is due to the fact that this lad was acquired relatively rapidly and thus less consideration was given for natural boundaries and existing land claims. Instead, the U.S. Government did what was easiest and make the boundaries straight lines so they could be made states faster.",
"I'm going to recommend the book _How the States Got Their Shapes_. Even though it can get repetitive it does explain the decision process in allocating land as well as the reasons for idiosyncrasies along otherwise sensible borders.",
"Many western territories including Canadian provinces and US states are drawn using latitude and longitude lines as the borders. This aided in also dividing the land into sections for fair distribution when selling (or giving) the land to homesteaders/farmers/settlers. ",
"To get people to move west, the government gave out \"land grants,\" which were square plots of land. Put enough together and you have square states! Where the states are divided by rivers they squiggle. ",
"Land in the west was set up to be sold and parceled out in standardized sizes in a grid pattern. This giant grid held when parts of this mass of territory applied for statehood. I forgot the name of the system, but the state boundries follow the same boundries set for these plots.",
"The fact that these territories where divided by a single government and not thousands of year of land disputes and wars like we see in Europe. This same phenomenon can be seen in Africa and parts of the Middle East, geographical divides also play a role in the division of decided borders.",
"Because ideally, humans want borders to be straight lines. Often natural boundaries or historical disputes prevent thing from happening. \n\nWhat we see in the United States, especially out west, was a large political entity with very little opposition to expansion (Native Americans often opposed, but they couldn't really stop US continental growth) combined with very few natural boundaries to prevent straight lines from emerging. You had a lot of flat, empty land so naturally, it was carved up into little squares.\n\nWhere you see idiosyncracies, for example, why Nevada has a little chunk missing at the bottom or why Oklahoma has a little panhandle, is largely due to disputes between states. One state wants access to a river, for example, so they draw their border to enclose that river within the state. But for the most part, out West, it was easy to just draw states as squares. And as for why all these little Western states didn't just become one or two big states...it's mostly up to money (settlers want bigger piece of a smaller pie) and the American love for local governance (smaller the state, smaller the government).",
"Straight lines in the Midwestern U.S. came about the same time as two important technological advances: Better Rail-Roads and better Surveying. Before, boundaries were drawn as far as you could go within it's confines, but better railways meant you could go through and over hills or mountains as well as over rivers.\n\nThe better surveying caused quite a lot of intrigue in the gold and silver found in the U.S. Midwest, which made rights to the land a very heated political debate causing several massive redraws of state lines in the areas from the west coast to the edge of the Mojave.\n\nA bit earlier, some even tried to separate from the federal government in order to have better claim over the lands, calling themselves the Nevada Territory, eventually creating the state of Nevada.",
"Boundaries between states can broadly be separated by whether the people responsible for drawing up the lines lived there at the time they were made or not.\n\nBoundaries between states (in the broader sense of the term) where people have lived for a long time tend to follow geographical features -- rivers, mountain ridges, etc.\n\nBoundaries drawn up by outsiders or over unoccupied territories tend to be much less complicated, because there's no one (important) there to care about the conflict. Very important geographical obstacles, like rivers that can't be forded, may be considered, but the \"empty space\" between is often divided by straight lines.\n\nThe eastern US's borders were largely defined by the original 13 colonies, and the borders between those colonies were geographically defined. There was however [a lot of unsettled territory to the west of the initial settlement sites](_URL_1_), and borders more or less turned straight east-west past the point at which people lived and cared. [As states like Alabama & Tennessee were carved out of the territory claimed the Georgia and North Carolina](_URL_0_), their latitudinal borders stayed straight lines extending from established states until they hit a powerful geographical border that could not be ignored -- the Mississippi River. Similarly, Kentucky was defined by the Ohio River to its North and a straight line to the South.\n\nThat began a pattern that followed after territories were gained with the Louisiana Purchase, the Russo-American Treaty of 1824, the annexation of Texas, and the Mexican American War. We'd take large territories that we now owned and largely cut along the latitude east to west. We started making straight lines north-to-south too, except when a river got in the way, because no one lived there to get in disputes over minor adjustments back and forth like they do in densely populated territories.\n\nYou can see a similar pattern in the way that Europe divided up colonial Africa and the Middle East with no regard for the natives living there. Rivers where they were big enough. Straight lines to keep thing simple beyond that. Quick and dirty.",
"Most of these answers make conventional sense, but they don't get to the heart of why this is really true, /u/maphhifi.\n\nHere's the thing: maps differ depending on who draws them, and more importantly, where those people are from. A map that the Haudenosaunee (aka Iroquois) people would have drawn to lay out their territory would look very different than what White Protestants would draw. Generally, when the people who have historically lived in and thrived in one location draw maps, they do so with those considerations in mind: **when locals make maps, they usually try to divide up populations, territory or villages based on culture, economics, politics or language, not simple geography.** Why would they? After all, knowing what village is allied with which tribe, or knowing which town speaks what language or follows which religion, is much more important to everyday life than knowing where a mountain or river is.\n\nNow, look at a map of the world, and count how many countries, provinces, territories and states have borders with straight lines. Notice anything? Yeah: **almost all of those straight-lined borders** are in Africa, the Middle East, Australia, the western and north-western US/Canada. What's the common element here? **These are all nations and provinces that were subject to colonialism and colonization.** And colonialism/colonization, as systems employed by the empires of the world (as well as the US), had one goal: the *extraction of value* from nations, the same way you'd extract value from a mine or farm you own. And if your goal is to extract value instead of show borders between different cultures or towns, you're going to draw that map very differently. More specifically, you're going to draw it with a lot of simple, straight lines so you don't waste time or energy mapping it out or considering what the land is like, who is on it and what they might feel about it. \n\nProbably the worst example of this (and that's saying something, if you've ever read about the tragedy that was the Scramble for Africa) is the [Sykes-Picot Agreement](_URL_0_), which the British and the French formed between themselves to divide up formerly Ottoman territory after World War 1. The map of the area (which encompasses parts of what is now Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and, most importantly, Syria) was almost entirely **a straight line**, with the Brits taking one half and the French taking the other. That boundary was one of the deciding factors that split up dozens of cultures and people who spoke dozens of languages and dialects, believed different religions, and had radically different cultures and political philosophies. It split communities that were probably better off together, and put communities who were enemies together. If you've ever wondered why Africa seems to have so many civil wars in relation to other continents, *this* is one reason you can trace it back to: cultural conflicts that force opposing interests into one space.\n\n**That** is the real reason why there are so many nations with straight-line borders: because they were almost all colonized nations or territories of a former empire, which usually had really bad consequences.\n\nOne of my favourite professors ever in the History department summed this up best: \"Any time you see straight lines on a map, you can bet money that the person who drew that map didn't live there.\"",
"There's a book dedicated entirely to describing [How the States Got Their Shapes](_URL_0_).\n\nThe gist for the western shapes is that when politicians were dividing the west into states, the default position was to give them straight lines a certain distance apart. That's why, e.g., the western border is straight from ND through SD and NE. Same with the CO and NM western boundaries. Only differences are due to geography. Notably, the CA/AZ border is the Colorado River and both the western and eastern borders of Idaho being determined by the Snake River to the west and the Rocky Mountains to the east. The mountains make it too difficult for Idaho to police east of the mountains, so it was given to Montana instead.",
"Look at a map of Minnesota. Minnesota straddles the East and West of the United States. The eastern border follows the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers north then the shore of Lake Superior. The northern border follows rivers and lakes northwest from Lake Superior through the Lake of the Woods. Because of a surveying error the border extended too far north and so goes due south to the 49th parallel and then due west to the Red River of the North. It follows south along the Red and Bois de Soiux rivers through some other large lakes before becoming a straight line south to the Iowa border and then straight due east back to the Mississippi river.\n\nThe border consists of natural boundaries for the most part but where there are wide open plains with few distinct features such as in the southwest and south or the western northern border it is straight lines. Straight survey lines are easy and convenient. They don't randomly change like rivers. Look closely at the western rivers border of Minnesota and you'll see many deviations of the political border from the rivers. Some of this is due to the rivers changing due to floods and some is from trying to control the rivers to avoid flooding.",
"There's an interesting show on... History? TLC? Can't remember, but it's called How The States Got Their Shapes. Pretty neat information and it's hosted by Brian Unger, The Lawyer from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.",
"I'm seeing a bunch of answers here, but a lot of people are injecting politics about Africa and stuff when you are asking about the United States. Apologies if this has been posted here before, I didn't see this covered during my perusal of this post and I wanted to comment on the Western United States, specifically.\n\nThis is a very simple answer, but essentially railroads caused people to settle the Western US along long East-West lines that didn't have too much regard for geography.\n\nThe Western United States entered the Union at the time of the railroad. The advent of the railroad changed a lot about the way territories were settled and later became states. The railroad afforded us the luxury of not being limited by things like mountain ranges, rivers, etc. You will also notice that the Western United States are also longer than they are tall. This is again due to the railroads at the time. The lines went East to West, for the most part. There wasn't a huge demand to move North or South between these territories. People settled along these rail lines and the areas between the rail lines were sparsely populated. Typically, there were no longstanding cultural or political differences between settlers of the West, so state boundaries could be drawn up more simply than along the Eastern seaboard. ",
"If you are looking at The USA specifically you can point to two ordinances that created square and straight line shapes. \n\nThe Land Ordinance of 1784 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. \n\nBoth focused on dividing land speficially into large squares for town and counties. This made selling the pieces to later settlers much easier. \n\nThese ordinances also granted the means of creating a state. Hence when a state combined enough of these squares of townships to generate the necessary population, a state took on a square shape. \n\nThis trend continued along into the American West and with the later Homestead Act continued square shapes. ",
"If you're genuinely interested in how the states got their shapes, I'd recommend the show \"How The States Got Their Shapes\".\n\nSuper interesting.",
"This may get buried, but there's a lot of political nature in here and while politics played a role, the actual act of surveying was in itself not.\n\nMuch of the early United States was drawn up using the old British system. When the Northwest Territories were established in 1787 in order to make sure the British wouldn't encroach upon the US there was a survey conducted and it was done under the US Public Land Survey. Other states had a mish-mash of survey systems, like Ohio's which used a couple of systems including the Virginia Military District Survey. It relied heavily on natural features to delineate territory, i.e. rivers, trees, large rocks, etc. I've occasionally reviewed survey tracts in order to find property lines and once had a tree used as a property marker (this was drawn in the early 1800's I think 1813). The Virginia Survey was done for the purpose of paying it's Revolutionary war veterans with land. The beginning surveys helped map the country and pay for portions of the US's debts and in order to get the debts payed not all the surveys were exactly accurate. Ohio's conglomeration of surveys was for speed and less accuracy, but by the end of much of the survey a system of Town and Ranges was used. This meant that land would be sold in the form of 1 square mile plats. So instead of trying to tell someone in Virginia they just got some land in Ohio and explaining the size of the land using a rock and some trees, they said \"you've got a plot of land exactly ____ size\", usually 1 square mile. This lead to the very angular nature of the States moving west. The sectioning of land still required markers such as large rocks with markings craved into them, but instead of picking something that **could be** immobile (a tree), they would usually make sure it **was** immobile. Eventually survey markers would be placed, usually a cast or carved metal disk set into something very heavy. With the Louisiana purchase in 1803 a series of repeatable survey methods was vital to the growth of the new country.\n\nTL:DR In the start is was more for ease of surveying, in the end it was for ease of sale.",
"You should watch the series, \"How the States Got Their Shapes\" and hosted by the sexy, and Brian Unger that aired on The History Channel",
"Railroads. \n\nBasically, before railroads, rivers/oceans were important for transporting goods which is also why most major cities are located by water.\n\nIf you look at the country east of the Mississippi you'll see a lot of states with small parts that touch water. For example, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Mississippi, and Indiana. \n\nThe country expanded west around the same time railroads were invented so the need to have water access wasn't as important since you could just use a train. That's why the borders in the western sates are basically all straight. \n",
"I have forgotten, but the show How the States got their Shapes addresses this in quite a bit of detail. It's pretty interesting. I think it is/was on History. Idk, haven't been a cable subscriber for mucho mucho tiempo",
"There was a neat History Channel show called How the States Got Their Shapes that addresses some of it. It was a fun watch.",
"Ok there is a show called how the state's got there shapes. Boundaries have been changed over the years due to changes in trade and different dealings.",
"As someone who decided to use my bandsaw to make state cutouts for family and friends, I did not think about the fact that KY only has one flat side to it until I started making them.\n\nI was moderately jealous of people who live in states that are mostly defined by straight lines by the time I finished.\n\n[Imgur](_URL_0_)",
"You can see that historic areas have more squiggly lines that are made over hundreds of years. The western states and colonized African nations have large lines because they were dealt out in large portions by conquerors. There were no significant cultural,ethnic, or political groups that the conquerors considered due to the general view throughout history that indigenous populations were inferior. They just picked easy geographic landmarks to set borders , such as rivers mountains and canyons. "
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"https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/a3/c1/b0/a3c1b01b243391b0334bc9717810f661.jpg",
"http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/shepherd/british_colonies_1763-76.jpg"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement"
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"https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001NLL1I0/"
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||
q44d1 | hypnosis | There was a hypnotist who came to my college and put on a show, during which he made a bunch of students look like idiots on stage. What was up with that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/q44d1/eli5_hypnosis/ | {
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"text": [
"Please do not talk about hypnosis from a Freudian standpoint (ie: subconscious and conscious minds). Hypnosis is a state of selective attention and concentration in which highly suggestible people (10% or so of the population) can exert a lot of control over the processes in their brain using top-down control. For example, have you ever been studying very hard and forgotten how hungry you are for hours? That's your PFC exerting top-down control on the rest of your body, and the same process can be used to convince yourself that you perceive your arms are very light, or you feel/don't feel some sensory information and are being hypnotized.\n\nUsually stage hypnotists are half suggestion, half showman tricks. The performer will use patter talk or some group exercises (magic tricks, for example) to calm everybody down (imagine mimicking spacing out watching TV) and select those individuals that seem to be most affected for further suggestion onstage: usually just turns into befuddling them and making them seem very confused, etc.\n\nYou can determine how suggestible you are with measures like the stanford hypnotic suggestibility scale, for instance.\n\nWiki links!\n\n[Stage Hypnosis wiki](_URL_1_)\n\n[Stanford Scale](_URL_0_)",
"From what I've seen of hypnotists, they use tricks similar to those used by people trying to learn how to meditate. Calm down, clear the mind, that sort of thing.\n\nI've also seen them specifically pick people from the audience who are easy to hypnotize - it doesn't work on everyone! If you very much do not want to be hypnotized, it will be impossible to hypnotize you. On the other hand, if you're already thinking \"well this could be fun, I don't really mind looking like an idiot,\" then you will be more likely to take the suggestion \"look like an idiot on stage.\""
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnotic_susceptibility#Stanford_Scales",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage_hypnosis"
],
[]
] |
|
433ggr | do other mammals (apes, cows, etc.) get high from weed smoke, or trip balls with magic mushrooms? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/433ggr/eli5_do_other_mammals_apes_cows_etc_get_high_from/ | {
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"text": [
"Elephants seem to deliberately go for fallen, fermented fruit knowing full well from experience the effect it will have. An elephant never forgets it really loves you, mate. Nah, really really, OK, like you know, defnally LOVES you. Who you calling big nose...?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
6ycc6c | why wasps and other insects like it exist | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ycc6c/eli5_why_wasps_and_other_insects_like_it_exist/ | {
"a_id": [
"dmma7f7"
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"text": [
"Animals and other lifeforms do not exist \"for a reason\", and while every lifeform inhabits a niche in it's environment, it does not have to be beneficial to that environment, or to other life in that environment- there is no purpose here. \n\nThere is no *requirement* to *contribute*, only life's purpose to perpetuate it's species. Each species of animal exists to perpetuate it's species, and it does so by being successful in it's niche in it's environment. \n\nThat said, the niche wasps occupy, the role they perform in their food web, is the same as foxes or killer whales or other photogenic predators. Wasps are carnivores, they eat caterpillars and other such invertebrate prey. Some solitary wasps hunt spiders. Some lay parasitic eggs inside other living things, etc. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3sxizk | why are multiple car dealerships all clumped together next to each other? | I've noticed that every time I see one car dealership, there's 6 more next to and around it. My bosses house has a Ford, Chevy, Nissan and Lincoln within 100 feet from each other and a BMW is currently being built next to the Nissan one. Why do dealerships do this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sxizk/eli5_why_are_multiple_car_dealerships_all_clumped/ | {
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"text": [
"To fight for customers in key areas. It's like if you have one dealership in the west and another in the east about an hour away, then you're only catering to a certain area of customers each. This can be good if you're in a prime area and it can be bad if you're in a bad area. \n\nIn being next to your competitor, then it reduces the spread of potential customers. So instead of two areas that they can choose to go, they are force to all go to the same place so your potential customers is now \"everyone who's looking for a car\". \n\nThat's when you fight for the best deals, as no one who's looking for a car only checks out one place (unless they know exactly what they want). ",
"City planning done right. Also many dealerships that are clumped like that are owned by the same people. Also works well for trucks that deliver a variety of cars. The entire infrastructure is built for unloading cars.",
"So they can compete with one another. If you want to shop around you can just go down the street, making it easier for dealerships to absorb customers from one another. Both consumers and businesses benefit from location strategies like these",
"You know, I never knew the exact reason behind it until I saw this video: _URL_0_\n\nHe explains why you see no gas stations and then 2 next to each other. Video is only 4 minutes long btw.",
"Theres a lot of zoning laws, too. Towns normally place them all in places where their constant car traffic doesn't bother residents, so they all get placed next to each other.",
"It's called [Hotelling's Law](_URL_0_) and it basically amounts to there being a financial advantage to split up potential customers with a competitor than to risk being too far away from the customer base. "
]
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[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jILgxeNBK_8"
],
[],
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law"
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] |
|
9gg6cp | how do animal claws start fat at the base and grow pointy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9gg6cp/eli5_how_do_animal_claws_start_fat_at_the_base/ | {
"a_id": [
"e64bqor"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"They are getring used up, meaning theyll get pointy. in the case of a dog, they usually get pointy by the dog just walking, In the case of cats (and I assume many other animals too) the claws grow frome inside out, at the same time as as from back to front. Thats why a cat needs something to claw at, to remove the outmost layer of their claws to expose a new, pointy claw layer underneath"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
4xwxu9 | why haven't we been able to discover how to craft very old things, such as greek fire? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xwxu9/eli5_why_havent_we_been_able_to_discover_how_to/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"We can make things like Greek Fire was described. But without knowing what it was we can't be sure what we made was actually the old recipe. It isn't a problem of making the mixture, it is a question of identification of what it was.",
"It's not that we can't make Greek fire, it's just that we don't know exactly what it is, and a lot of the stories about it conflict or are embellished. We can make things that act like how Greek fire was described, and things hundreds of times more destructive.\n\nIt is generally believed that napalm is the closest thing we have to Greek fire.\n\nIn Greece, nobody knew the entire recipe of Greek fire, it was compartmentalized and only individuals knew about certain parts, and then it was all combined. It did a very good job at keeping the exact formula secret to this day. "
]
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[],
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