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239170 | why can't i have a wild bird like a cardinal or a jay as a pet? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/239170/eli5_why_cant_i_have_a_wild_bird_like_a_cardinal/ | {
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"You can, but they are relatively rare and prefer being in the wild as opposed to other birds that you can buy at a pet shop that are happy in a cage. ",
"Being undomesticated, they retain the wild, primitive instincts of their velociraptor forebears. Eventually, the impulse to roam and horrifically mangle secondary characters without actually appearing in-frame will prove too much and they'll get loose. After that, it will only be a matter of time before they learn to work your doorknobs and you wake up to them eating your face. So basically what was already said.",
"Because your post isn't asking a simplified conceptual explanation, but rather for an answer, it has been removed. \n\nYou should try /r/answers, /r/askreddit or even one of the more specialized answers subreddits like /r/askhistorians, /r/askscience or others too numerous and varied to mention. \n\nRest assured this doesn't make your question *bad*, it just makes it more appropriate for another subreddit. Good luck! "
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608bfy | the concept of light: its speed, how it travels, what it means to be "# light-years away", etc. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/608bfy/eli5_the_concept_of_light_its_speed_how_it/ | {
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"So, light travels at a speed of just about 300k km/s.\n\nLight is photons, which are particles that have zero rest mass, and therefor moves at the speed of light (only massless objects can travel at the speed of light). Those particles travel like all other particles travel.\n\nWhen something is a number of light-x away (so light-year, light-minute, light-second etc.) it's the distance light travels in that time. For example, the Sun is about 8 light-minutes away from the Earth, because it takes light 8 minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth."
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2mli2k | how did us mammals evolve into having emotions and specifically love? | It can be a theory since I don't think this has been explained. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mli2k/eli5_how_did_us_mammals_evolve_into_having/ | {
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"Emotions evolved from communication. For example wolf who was able to bark when danger occured saved its pack members thus increasing it own chance of survival. Wolfs who didn't react / understand to react to danger more likely perished.\n\nI think love is more primitive thing. It is just feeling that one should mate with another one.",
"Certain animals reproductive strategy require parental cooperation. Humans call both the urge to create a relationship, and the urge to maintain relationships, \"love\". All of our emotions are essentially simply our way of perceiving instinctual urges, or at least urges that are strong enough for us to notice them.\n\nedit: Animals that do not form mating bonds have different chemical receptors. The hormones that correspond to lust/love would have no effect on animals that don't bond. Those hormones are related to pleasure/reward. So, for instance, if a prairie vole (which forms bonds) *either* mates or has the hormones injected, they will bond. A montane vole (which does not bond) could mate, and it doesn't do anything. Inject the hormones that a prairie vole produces from mating, and it has no effect. They simply will not form bonds. Presumably, this bonding process is pleasurable, since the hormones are essentially providing a reward.",
"[Affective neuroscience](_URL_3_) is a very interesting area of study which examines \"the study of the neural mechanisms of emotion. This interdisciplinary field combines neuroscience with the psychological study of personality, emotion, and mood.\" It also examines how our own neural mechanisms are mirrored in animals (and especially mammals) because of shared ancestry. The study of motion is definitely a very active area of science that permeates many different fields - evolutionary biology, animal behaviour, human behaviour, animal communication, human communication, origin of communication, psychology, psychiatry, neurobiology...each look at different questions concerning emotions.\n\nIn ELI5 words this means that animals are certainly capable of feeling emotions because the neural mechanisms that produce emotions are conserved through evolution, and are similar to the neural mechanisms that produce emotions in ourselves. All mammals, being related through common ancestry, have even more similar and conserved mechanisms - humans are of course mammals too!\n\nBut a few things to note:\n\n1. The way animals express a particular emotion may differ from the way humans express that emotion. For example, humans often smile to exhibit happiness. But for the rest of the primate order smiling is either a signal of submissiveness or fear. This does not mean that other primates are incapable of feeling happiness, but that they very likely express it in different ways from ourselves. We also have to be very mindful that other animals, even cognitively complex ones, may be physically constrained and incapable of complex facial expressions. For example, we know dolphins are capable of a lot of complex cognitive tasks, they are able to identify themselves in the mirror and they may even have names for one another...but they don't have the facial musculature to make the expressions that are, well, as expressive as ours. Their emotions may not even be obvious for this reason, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.\n\n2. Humans like to make emotions poetic, like love. But love is simply a kind of attachment emotion. Humans become attached to each other and objects, sometimes to the point of obsession. Animals also become attached to each other. Mothers and their infants, bonding pairs of adults...all forms of attachment exhibited in the animal kingdom. Again if you were interested in studying *love*, as a scientist you would actually study *attachment*. I recommend the book [affective neuroscience: the foundations of human and animal emotions](_URL_0_). It can be rather technical, but it is very good read. In any case, if we want to objectively study emotion and their origins, we sort of need to take the \"humanity\" out of emotions and look at them in a more universal way.\n\nEdit: For something a little more directed towards the layman, [the moral lives of animals](_URL_2_) is a very good read, as is [age of empathy](_URL_1_)."
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"http://www.amazon.com/Age-Empathy-Natures-Lessons-Society/dp/0307407772/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416077593&sr=1-2&keywords=empathic+ape",
"http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Lives-Animals-Dale-Peterson/dp/1608193462",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affective_neuroscience"
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bgm9ai | what makes people smile/frown or do any facial expressions connected to how they feel the same way everywhere? is it biological or just years of people doing that with their faces? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bgm9ai/eli5_what_makes_people_smilefrown_or_do_any/ | {
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"Both. \n\nBiologically, the human brain is well-adapted to notice, understand, and use these physical cues. The human body is well adapted to actually displaying a smile/frown (and other common expressions).\n\nWith that said, our instinct to do this is reinforced by other people we’re around— this is actually a method of communication and using body language in a way that feels “natural” and is easy for other people to understand takes practice, just like spoken language does.",
"Physical expression is a great way to convey emotional state to other people, and knowing emotional state is a great way to ensure effective communication between humans. And since humans evolved specifically to utilise language and communication as much as possible, clearly its important that our communication is optimal. Thus, we are biologically programmed with certain instinctual responses and facial expressions - that's why everyone, no matter your culture, smiles when happy and laughs when entertained in a comedic fashion. It's why crying looks the same in every culture, and why anger is so recognisable across huge distances. They're so innate to our ability to function in a society that they're highly conserved traits."
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46si60 | what is the difference between homeopathy and naturopathic medicine? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/46si60/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_homeopathy/ | {
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"Homeopathy is an alternative \"medicine\" that involves taking a substance that causes a symptom, diluting it in water until zero molecules of the original substance remain (for the standard \"30c\" dilution, you would have to drink enough to fill the entire volume of the observable universe to get a single molecule).\n\nSomehow this is supposed to cure the symptom the original ingredient caused. So if you had a headache, you'd use a substance that gives you headaches.\n\nNaturopathy is a blanket term for a variety of alternative medicines, including homeopathy but also acupuncture, herbalism, and other stuff that isn't pills and doesn't work.",
"Homeopathy operates on the principle of \"like cures like\" where a poison, diluted to nothingness through a series of magical shaking maneuvers, can cure any disease that has symptoms similar to what a dose of that poison may cause. It is, of course, complete nonsense.\n\n\"Naturopathic medicine\" is just sort of a huge nebulous realm of \"natural\" things that ranges from the completely ridiculous (healing crystals, chakras, etc.) to the somewhat less totally ridiculous (herbal remedies).",
"Homoeopathy is a specific technique that involves diluting some material repeatedly, in a particular way, until there is nothing of the original left. The idea is that the water itself is only imprinted with the memory of the substance in question. It originated in Germany and is still quite popular there for some reason. It's politely described as \"pseudoscience\". \n\n\"Naturopathic\" medicine isn't simply defined by the use of natural materials, since \"conventional\" medicine also uses natural materials when they're effective. Rather, it's a belief that \"natural\" is *always* preferable to the \"artificial\" \"chemicals\" in \"conventional\" medicine. It's \"alternative\" as a reaction to the \"conventional\" or \"big pharma\". "
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1nlffl | why does a rope..etc break when pulled suddenly(when hauling heavy weights),but holds if gradual force is applied? | My towing cable broke while accelerating sudenly :( | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nlffl/eli5why_does_a_ropeetc_break_when_pulled/ | {
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"F = ma, or Force equals mass times acceleration. \n\nWhen you apply an acceleration to the rope by jerking it, it creates a force. The harder you jerk the rope, the greater the force.",
"Impulse. Force x time = mass x change in velocity. Ft=mv. Rearrange to get F=mv/t (aka F=ma). You are greatly changing the velocity in a short amount of time so there is a large acceleration which means a large force. Gradually applying force means that the velocity is changed over a longer period of time, decreasing the force."
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83k66d | what would happen to your eyes if you don't blink for 24 hours, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/83k66d/eli5_what_would_happen_to_your_eyes_if_you_dont/ | {
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"I think the underlying question here is: why are eyeballs wet? \nThere are living cells on the surface of the eyes, and just like any other living cell they will die if the proper fluidity is not kept. Because human eyes aren’t hard, the surface must also be kept moist and smooth to avoid distorting the light that comes through it. ",
"....they dry out and you become blind? \n\nThat's like sayind what would happen if you kept driving without using windshield washer fluid and wipers."
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3o40g0 | are there known evolutionary reasons that humans have a sense of aesthetics? ex. thinking that trees are beautiful, puppies are cute, art is beautiful, music sounds good, etc. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o40g0/eli5are_there_known_evolutionary_reasons_that/ | {
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"Several. The art and music builds group cohesion. You are attracted to your own group's art and music which makes you feel connected to other members of your group. Young animals and other \"cute\" species have facial proportions similar to our own young. We find our young cute so that we, you know, like them and that reaction is non-specific enough that it gets applied to other species. The tree thing isn't as well established, but generally speaking people feel more comfort/less stress in natural settings. This may have less to do with the natural settings per se and more to do with the fact we only started living in industrial settings very recently, which means they are lesd familiar to us than traditional natural settings. "
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4282yj | can someone out there please explain to me what's the difference between a metaphor and an analogy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4282yj/eli5_can_someone_out_there_please_explain_to_me/ | {
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"**Then**\n\nYou can use it as a sort of \"well in that case!\" Like if someone's a jerk to you, and you say \"Then piss off!\" You're saying \"Well, in that case, piss off!\"\n\nBut more appropriately it's used as a time reference, and it can be done in two ways: sequentially or contextually.\n\nIn sequence: \"I'm going to do this. Next I'll do this other thing. Then I'll do that.\"\n\nIn context: \"When I was nine years old, blah blah blah. I was living at that address, then.\"\n\n**Than**\n\nA word used to introduce the next part of something you're comparing. \"I'm smaller than you.\" You're the second piece of my \"compare these two things,\" where I'm the first.\n\nIt's also used to follow some other word when trying to offer some \"exception to the rule,\" such as in \"I like women other than your mom.\" As your mom was bad in bed, I wanted to exclude her from the women I like.",
"Analogies are more like similes, but for academic works. For example, if I wanted to use an analogy to explain how a computer character talks to you, I might use the 'Chinese Room' analogy. That is, you can imagine a man in a room with a book of instructions. Notes are written in Mandarin and slid under the door, he checks the book, then writes another note in Mandarin, but he doesn't actually speak Mandarin. The book tells him how to answer, but he doesn't know what he's talking about or why - that's like a computer delivering dialogue to you that's been pre-programmed.\n\nMetaphors are poetic language used to convey emotions. If I say my heart is a maelstrom of winds blowing every which way and achieving nothing, that's not an analogy - that's a set of words that create an emotion in you.\n\nSo where analogies use 'like' or describe a complex situation to help you think about something differently, metaphors are used to convey an emotion.",
"Metaphor, Simile, Analogy are similar in the sense that it makes some form of comparison to something else. They differ in the way it works and its intended usage.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**Metaphor** is used as a figure of speech, to symbolically represent something without the literal meaning of it. Example: Tom's *dying* of hunger. Tom is not really dying, but the the use of dying shows how hungry he is. Another example: Jenny is a *walking encyclopedia*. Jenny is a girl, not an encyclopedia, but this phrase is used to show her knowledge.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**Simile** is another figure of speech, similar to metaphor but has a more direct comparison. Example: John's hands are cold *like ice*. John's hand is not actually ice, but this serves to show that its very cold. Another example: Kate's hair is *as black as coal*. Kate's hair is not actually coal, but this shows how dark it is.\n\n & nbsp;\n\n**Analogy** is a way of comparing things, in a way that shows the relationship or to explain things in a simpler manner. Example: If the Earth is the size of a basketball, then the Moon is the size of a tennis ball. In this case, this analogy serves to help illustrate the size difference between the Earth and the Moon. Another example: The immune system functions like the *police force*, patrolling the body and making sure the *bad guys* get caught. Here, the analogy is used to help explain what the immune system does to prevent us from getting sick.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nHope this helps. :)"
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2f1t89 | if the troops in ukraine are not officially russian, why can't nato attack them and defend ukraine? | Surely if Russia is denying that the troops, tanks and so on are theirs, then why are they not fair game for attack? Doesn't Nato have an obligation to help them due to the treaty after they removed their nuclear weapons? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2f1t89/eli5_if_the_troops_in_ukraine_are_not_officially/ | {
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"Ukraine is not a NATO nation.",
"There are three major problems with this line of thought. \n\n1: Why should NATO defend Ukraine exactly? Ukraine isn't in NATO, and there's never been any reasonable expectation that they'd be protected by NATO's umbrella. How do you justify sending men to die, and billions of dollars to fight a war in which we have no stake?\n\n2: There's no way of knowing if a NATO intervention would actually help the situation. NATO's record in stabalzing countries has been a bit hit and miss. It's entierly possible that a peacekeeping force would make things much, much worse.\n\n3: Most importantly, while we're pretending that the troops aren't Russian, everyone knows that they are. By this point, Russia's only barely making token efforts to deny it. If we start shooting them, Russia will simply come up with some ridiculous explanation about how some NATO troops crossed the Russian border and started killing innocent Russians. And then we've got a war, which probably isn't a great thing.",
"NATO doesn't have an obligation to assist because they didn't actually join NATO or the EU (yet). Russia engaged them right after they rebelled for the right to join the EU, which means that they're still in limbo between leaving the Russian sphere of influence and joining the EU's. \n\nIt's not a good idea to attack Russian forces directly, because that would mean war. \n\nUkraine currently has to rely on its neighbors for support, as European or North American intervention would be seen as aggression by Russia and they would probably respond with similar force until it escalated past the point of diplomacy. Right now, NATO can do nothing until Russia stops playing the 'large-scale covert operation' game and properly IDs their soldiers with the Russian flag. "
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2ct4k0 | how does the universe have a predictable nature if all subatomic particles that constitute matter are completely random? where exactly does predictability come from in a physical sense? | I was inspired by [this part of a vsauce video](_URL_0_). The part about the randomness of quantum mechanics.
Is predictability a property of macroscopic systems, even if the systems are built on a fundamental randomness? Doesn't macroscopic predictability imply that **the macroscopic laws of physics we experience at our level of existence do not apply to the microscopic level** of quantum mechanics? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ct4k0/eli5_how_does_the_universe_have_a_predictable/ | {
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"Over a large enough scale, patterns emerge. For example, if I flip a coin, I have no idea if its going to land heads or tails. It is complete random if it is the only coin I look at. But if I flip 10 quintillion coins, I'm pretty damn sure 5 quintillion coins are going to be heads, and 5 quintillion coins are going to be tails (or its going to be close enough to 5 quintillion that it won't practically matter). "
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2dlssc | how did words such as fuck, shit, etc. originate? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dlssc/eli5_how_did_words_such_as_fuck_shit_etc_originate/ | {
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"Those are both words with very old Germanic roots. They are related to the Dutch words fokken/fok (to breed/breeding) and schijt (poop). Yes they were probably normal words before they were curse words."
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1fp9qs | how cotton has different quality. | Why is Walmart cotton not as good a quality as say Brooks Brothers? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1fp9qs/eli5_how_cotton_has_different_quality/ | {
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"I work in Ag and just visited/toured one of the USDA cotton grading facilities. So I think I can answer this. \n\nThe cotton is graded based on standards set by the USDA. it is measured by color, fiber length and strength, and the amount of trash (plant debris). \n\nThese standards come from various facilities in the USA. I witnessed the process and it was quite interesting. They take samples of cotton and form them into squares called biscuits. They place 9 biscuits of the same grade in a box, where they are ordered from the lowest end of that grade's spectrum to the highest. These boxes are purchased and used as reference by cotton producers. \n\nMost of the difference, when it comes to textiles, is because of thread count and brand. \n\nOn a cool side note: the actual variety \"Sea Island Cotton\" from Georgia is extinct. All cotton produced under that name now is a different variety, but is still called Sea Island Cotton due to a legal technicality. I got to see a sample of *actual* Sea Island Cotton on display at the facility. "
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7pvzmu | what does ios do differently to android for iphones to only need 1-2 gb of ram? | Edit: Should have specified; *only need 1-2 GB* compared to flagship Android models, which usually have around 6 GB. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7pvzmu/eli5_what_does_ios_do_differently_to_android_for/ | {
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"I'm not sure your question is correct. Even the latest Android os can run on as little as 512 Mb and only recommends 2gb (but obviously will take advantage of more if available).\n\nTherefore asking what iOS does to only need 1 or 2 doesnr make a lot of sense.\n\nThey both do similar tasks and require the same amount of ram. ",
"Apple just has control over the entire software and hardware aspects of their phones. \n\nThis allows them to standardize their code across a small set of devices. This standardization allows them to optimize their code to run on very specific hardware configurations. \n\nAndroid (google flavor specifically) only barely controls the software, and doesn’t control the hardware, given their open source strategy. \n\nAndroid has to work well on a myriad of hardware, and to some extent, a myriad of different software flavors. The carriers and vendors can make enhancements to the software. Because of this fragmentation of the hardware and software, it’s not cost effective to have to optimize 100% for every possible application of the software and hardware. Android’s promise is that it will run almost awesome all the time. It does this by throwing more resources from a hardware perspective (more ram, better processor, etc.) these hardware changes also allow the different vendors to differentiate themselves amongst each other, and allow them to prove their phones accordingly. \n\nThis was all more evident in the early days of smartphones. Im am iOS guy myself, but even I’ll acknowledge android runs pretty solidly these days, and the issues are more subtle. ",
"There are several reasons relating to the varying use cases as others have described, but the main reason is this: Android uses a form of automatic memory management that uses garbage collection, while iOS uses a more manual form of memory management. Garbage collection works better if there is always a good chunk of memory free, so the garbage collector doesn't have to run so often.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe reason to use garbage collection is because it saves the programmer from manually having to managed memory. Memory management is tricky, and if you make a mistake, you might begin to leak memory (memory consumption goes up slowly) or create a security hole. Recent versions of iOS use something called automated reference counting, which means that the compiler (technically the pre-processor) will figure the correct memory management automatically. This means that the workload of managing memory moves from the phone to the computer of the developer that compiles the software.\n\nThe reason for this difference is historical. Android uses the Dalvik runtime, which borrows from Java, while iOS uses Objective-C and now Swift, which had a simple manual memory management system (manual reference counting). Apple used Objective-C because that is what they use in their own OS - Google used a Java analogue because it is a modern safe language that was widely by the time they launched Android, and so was easy for developers to learn.",
"RAM on Smartphones is mostly used for multitasking, which means keeping more apps open at the same time. If a windows pc runs out of ram, it just takes the data of a process which isn't actively used right now and writes it to the Hard Drive, which means the process keeps running, but if you are trying to use it again you have to wait for a short ammount of time until it is responsible again. iOS and android dont do this, because it would cause a lot of wear on the integrated flash storage. Instead, when they run out of memory, they terminate a background app, so that if you open it again after that, it won't be where you left off, which is bad for the user experience. E.g. if you play some game on your smartphone, but you switch to whatsapp to write a message and check something on your browser, when the Smartphone runs out of RAM it will close the game, so if you switch back, you have to load it up again and maybe lose some progress. To avoid that, android phones just have a ton of RAM, but iPhones have a very sophisticated compression technique to store more inactive apps in the RAM. Candy Crush takes about 300-500 mbytes of RAM while active on both iOS and Android, but if you switch to another app iOS can compress it to about 40 mbyte, while on android the size does not really change at all. ",
"Could you people please stop with „Android is not optimized”? If you talk about some unknown brand, low-end phone, sure, it might be unoptimized, but don’t compare iPhones to cheap Android phones. [More high-end ones *are* optimized](_URL_1_) \nGetting back to OPs question - [iOS is better in handling background app RAM management](_URL_0_). If you use Android and switch between the apps, apps in the background free some RAM while they are not active and only if there’s no more RAM available, they get removed completely and need to be loaded up from scratch. iOS does the same thing, but better, making background apps use little RAM while still being able to load up fast when you come back to them. The downside of this approach is that when you use a split screen, both apps are active at the same time so they both use as much RAM as they need. Active RAM usage of the same app on iOS and Android is similar and sometimes even greater on iOS.",
"I think most comments are missing the biggest thing and that's what the operating system does with apps in memory that aren't active. In short android keeps it in memory and it can execute tasks in the background (though it is moving to restrict background services), while iOS has only a few specific things that apps can do in the background and may use compression to reduce the ram usage.\n\nMore info:\n\n_URL_0_\n_URL_1_",
"JIT overhead\n\nAndroid apps are Java apps. That run on a runtime. That needs more ram than native compiled code like iOS\n\nAlso, iOS is more aggressive in suspending apps that aren’t in use to free memory. \n\nAnd iOS apps are more prepared to be suspended when that is the case\n\n",
"Eyy I actually know the answer to this one (game & app developer with low-level expertise in power and memory management - lots of iOS and Android experience and knowledge).\n\n---\n\nAndroid was built to run Java applications across any processor - X86, ARM, MIPS, due to decisions made on the early days of Android's development. Android first did this via a virtual-machine (Dalvik), which is like a virtual computer layer between the actual hardware and the software (Java software in Android's case).\n\nLots of memory was needed to manage this virtual machine and store both the Java byte-code and the processor machine-code as well as store the system needed for translating the Java byte-code into your device's processor machine-code. These days Android uses a Runtime called ART for interpreting (and compiling!) apps - which still needs to sit in a chunk of memory, but doesn't consume nearly as much RAM as the old Dalvik VM did.\n\nAndroid was also designed to be a multi-tasking platform with background services, so in the early days extra memory was needed for this (but it's less relevant now with iOS having background-tasks).\n\nAndroid is also big on the garbage-collected memory model - where apps use all the RAM they want and the OS will later free unused memory at a convenient time (when the user isn't looking at the screen is the best time to do this!).\n\n---\n\niOS was designed to run Objective-C applications on known hardware, which is an ARM processor. Because Apple has full control of the hardware, they could make the decision to have native machine code (No virtual machine) run directly on the processor. Everything in iOS is lighter-weight in general due to this, so the memory requirements are much lower.\n\niOS originally didn't have background-tasks as we know them today, so in the early days it could get away with far less RAM than what Android needed. RAM is expensive, so Android devices struggled with not-enough-memory for quite a few years in the early days, with iOS devices happily using 256MB and Android devices struggling with 512MB.\n\nIn iOS the memory is managed by the app, rather than a garbage collector. In the old days developers would have to use alloc and dealloc to manage their memory themselves - but now we have automatic reference counting, so there is a mini garbage collection system happening for iOS apps, but it's on an app basis and it's very lightweight and only uses memory for as long as it is actually needed (and with Swift this is even more optimised).\n\n---\n\n**EXTRA** (for ages 5+): What does all this mean?\n\nAndroid's original virtual machine, Dalvik, was built in an era when the industry did not know what CPU architecture would dominate the mobile world (or if one even would). Thus it was designed for X86, ARM and MIPS with room to add future architectures as needed.\n\nThe iPhone revolution resulted in the industry moving almost entirely to use the ARM architecture, so Dalvik's compatibility benefits were somewhat lost. More-so, Dalvik was quite battery intensive - once upon a time Android devices had awful battery life (less than a day) and iOS devices could last a couple of days.\n\nAndroid now uses a new Runtime called Android RunTime (ART). This new runtime is optimised to take advantage of the target processors as much as possible (X86, ARM, MIPS) - and it is a little harder to add new architectures.\n\nART does a lot differently to Dalvik; it stores the translated Java byte-code as raw machine-code binary for your device. ~~This means apps actually get faster the more you use them as the system slowly translates the app to machine-code. Eventually, only the machine code needs to be stored in memory and the byte-code can be ignored (frees up a lot of RAM).~~ ([This is Dalvik, not ART](_URL_0_)). Art compiles the Java byte-code during the app install (how could I forget this? Google made such a huge deal about it too!) but these days it also uses a JIT interpreter similar to Dalvik to save from lengthy install/optimisation times.\n\nIn recent times, Android itself has become far more power aware, and because it runs managed code on its Runtime Android can make power-efficiency decisions across all apps that iOS cannot (as easily). This has resulted in the bizarre situation that most developers thought they'd never see where Android devices now tend to have longer battery life (a few days) than iOS devices - which now last less than a day.\n\nThe garbage collected memory of Android and its heavy multi-tasking still consumes a fair amount of memory, these days both iOS and Android are very well optimised for their general usage. The OS tend to use as much memory as it can to make the device run as smoothly as possible and as power-efficient as possible.\n\nRemember task managers on Android? They pretty much aren't needed any more as the OS does a fantastic job on its own. Task killing in general is probably worse for your phone now as it undoes a lot of the spin-up optimisation that is done on specific apps when they are sent to the background. iOS gained task killing for some unknown reason (probably iOS users demanding one be added because Android has one) - but both operating systems can do without this feature now. The feature is kept around because users would complain if these familiar features disappear. I expect in future OS versions the task-killers won't actually do anything and will become a placebo - or it will only reset the app's navigation stack, rather than kills the task entirely.",
"General optimization. Apple knows exactly what parts go into each iPhone so they can program iOS to work as well as possible with the iPhone’s specs. Android runs on countless different phones and the developers have to program an OS that works with each and every one, thus making it harder to optimize.",
"While we could get really detailed talking about memory management here, it's more about what was more important to the set developers as there are benefits to both approaches. \n\nSimply putting it, most of this has to do with what each OS did with apps in the background. iOS puts the app into a kind of \"sleep\" function. Due to this it uses less memory, bit the trade-off is it can only perform certain tasks. Android, really just puts the app in the background running, meaning it can perform most tasks. Both will kill apps of they need to open memory for something else. \n\nSome of the decisions for this are based around that iOS is a much more closed off system while Android is an open system. What I mean by this is that iOS really comes with some things pre-installed that can't be deleted or replaced (keyboard, sms viewer, etc), while you can on Android. \n\nIt really comes to different approaches the operating systems take and what they prioritize as important to the user experience.\n\n\n",
"Has already been answered, but to simplify during the early days of Android they wanted it to run on a wide, wide range of hardware from ARM to x86 architectures.\n\niOS was designed for ARM, and ARM alone. \n\nTherefore Android uses virtual machines to maintain compatibility across platforms, whilst iOS doesn't and they run natively.\n\nVMs need more memory than a native application. The very nature of JAVA is to run in a VM, so Java applications on PC and all other platforms are interpreted on the fly, C-based applications and other applications are not interpreted, and run \"natively\".",
"ELI5:\n\nAndroid was made to be universal, iPhone is heavily optimized and a unified architecture (opposite of universal) ",
"I believe the true answer to this question is fascinating, and that it's actually just one piece in a bigger scenario (playing out **right now** that started in 1993) and that all of us are about to witness a transformation in the personal PC space that a lot of people wont see coming.\n\nFirst, lets focus on why the history of apple as a company put them in the position they're in today where they build everything in-house and it seems to work so well for them. Apple has the upper hand here when it comes to optimizing the software and hardware in a way that Google can never have, because Apple is calling all the shots when it comes to OS, CPU design, and device design. Google doesn't have that luxury.\n\nGoogle builds one piece of the handset (OS) and have to make it work in tandem with many other companies like Samsung, Qualcomm and Intel (for the radio). This is a very difficult task and is why OEMs like Samsung often have to also contribute a lot on the software side when building something like the S8.\n\nThe reason Apple is in this position (where it can control the entire hardware/software creation of the device) is twofold. On the one hand Steve Jobs always wanted to control the software and hardware aspects of the Macintosh because he saw that it made it easier to provide users with better UX this way, and also the more control he could exert over the users the better.\n\nThe other fascinating **and often overlooked but incredibly important** reason why Apple can do what they do with the iPhone has to do with IBM, PowerPCs and a little known company called P.A. Semi. You see, up until around 2006 Apple used PowerPC CPUs (by IBM) instead of x86 (by Intel). It is believed by most that Apple switched to Intel because Intel made more powerful chips that consumed less power. This isn't actually completely true. IBM is who made PowerPC design/chips and by the time 2006 rolled around IBM had sold off thinkpad, OS/2 had failed and they were almost fully out of the consumer space. IBM was completely focused on making large power hungry server class CPUs and here was Apple demanding small power efficient PowerPC CPUs. IBM had no incentive towards making such a CPU and it got so bad with Apple waiting on IBM that they ended up skipping an entire generation of PowerBooks (G5).\n\nEnter P.A. Semi. A \"startup for CPU design\" if there ever was one. This team seemingly came out of nowhere and created a series of chips called PWRficient. As IBM dragged its feet, this startup took the PowerPC specification and designed a beautifully fast, small and energy efficient PowerPC chip. In many cases it was far better than what Intel had going for them and it was wildly successful to the point where the US military still uses them in some places today. Anyway, their PowerPC processor was exactly what Apple was looking for, which came at a time when IBM had basically abandoned them, and Apple NEEDED this very bad.\n\nSo what did Apple do? they **bought** P.A. Semi. They bought the company. So at this point if you're still reading my giant block of text you're probably wondering *but if Apple bought the company who could solve their PowerPC problem, why did they still switch to Intel?* And that's where the story goes from just interesting to fascinating: Apple immediately put the team they had just bought in charge of creating the CPUs for *the iphone*. See, people always ask *when is Apple going to abandon the Mac?* well the real answer is that they abandoned the Mac when they switched to Intel, because this was the exact time when they not only gave up but *abandoned a perfect solution* to the Mac's CPU problem, and where they instead re-purposed that solution to make sure that they **never have** a CPU problem with the iPhone.\n\nSo what lessons did Apple learn here? That if a critical component to your device (i.e. CPU) is dependent on another company then it can throw your entire timeline off track and cost you millions in revenue lost (the powerbook g5 that never happened). Apple was smart enough to know that if this was a problem for the Mac it could also be a problem for the iPhone. When a solution arrived for the Mac they instead applied it to the iPhone instead, to make sure there was **never** a problem.\n\nAnd that team from P.A. Semi has designed Apples ARM CPUs for the iPhone ever since, and they're at least two generations ahead of the chips Android devices generally use, because they were first to market with a 64bit architecture, and first to allow the use of \"big\" and \"little\" cores simultaneously.\n\nAnd as for Mac users? Well, the switch to Intel allowed the Mac to keep living, but MacOS now comes second to iOS development, and new Mac hardware is quite rare. Apple has announced plans for app development that is cross compatible with iOS *and* MacOS. Apple has started shipping new Macs along with a *second* ARM CPU. The iPad Pro continues to gain MacOS like features such as the dock, file manager, multi-window/split support. All signs point to MacOS being on life support. When Steve Jobs introduced MacOS he said it was the OS we would all be using for the next 20 years, and guess what? Time's almost up.\n\nAnd the irony of it all is that history has now repeated: Apple now has the same problem they had with IBM, but now with Intel. Intel is now failing to produce chips that are small enough and that run cool enough. Apple will have to redesign the internals of the MacBook to support 8th gen chips due to changes intel made. Even the spectre/meltdown bug. The Mac is yet again dependent on a CPU manufacture in a way that harms Apple.\n\nSo yes, the iPhone **is** something to marvel at in terms of its performance. You might be thinking Android is the big loser here, but really it's the Mac and it's Intel. I believe we at the cusp of an event that will make the IBM/PowerPC drama seem small. In five years from now we likely wont even recognize what MacOS and Windows are anymore, and Intel will either exit from the portable consumer space, or they will have to go through an entire micro-architectural re-design and rescue themselves as they did in '93 with the Pentium.\n\nIn '93 Intel almost got destroyed because their CISC chips weren't as powerful as RISC chips such as PowerPC. Intel then released Pentium, which is essentially a RISC chip (think PowerPC or ARM) but with a heavy duty translation layer bolted on top to support CISC instructions that every Windows PC required. This rescued Intel up until *right now* but the industry has evolved and Intel's \"fix\" in '93 is now their biggest problem for two reasons: 1) they physically can't compete speed/heat/size with ARM now because they have to drag along this CISC translation layer that ARM doesn't need; and 2) Windows is about to introduce native ARM support with a **software translation layer**. Remember, Microsoft has the same CPU dependency problem that Apple has. And Microsoft's software solution allows them to throw away Intel for something better. Users wont notice the switch to ARM because it's transparent, but they will notice the 20 hours of battery life and thinner devices they get in the future once Intel is gone.",
"They use different ways of programming. The android one is called Java which runs on many types of devices but is what is called an interpreter, which is a program which runs another program and in so doing runs slower and uses more memory. IOS runs a type of compiled C from the NeXT days called Objective C, which is compiled directly into machine code and does not involve an interpeter, so it is faster and takes less memory.",
"Google has also made incredible effort to optimize Android to perform smoothly on lower RAM devices. 7.N Nougat and onward, even 2gb devices tend to perform smoothly. This is increasingly less an issue as even $200-300 no contract Android handsets - like the fantastic Moto G series- come with 3 or 4 gb RAM, and most $600+ premium Android phones come with 4-6gb. \n\n \nThe visible performance of any Android handset costing over $250 in 2016 onward has become impossible to distinguish from an iPhone as smoothness and performance has become excellent across most manufacturers and models. \n \n",
"Google is more focused on diversity than memory management. It's also evident in their other products like e.g. Chrome.\n\n",
"There are already some really good answers here. And to add to that with a hopefully easy ELI5 that covers another important part of it...\n\nApple makes the software and hardware, so they only have their ecosystem to worry about. That means they have a handfull of resolutions, CPUs etc. That they can fully optimize for. They don't need to protect the system against bad drivers etc.\n\nAndroid on the other side runs of thousands of devices with tons of different hardware configs. And every damn manufacturer adds his own extensions, drivers and whatnot. So Android is build with flexibility and additional stuff for protection and addons in mind. That always needs more performance. \n\nIf there was only windows for one type of hardware per year, that thing would be glorious optimized for ram and CPU usage. Fast as hell. But that's not how the world runs.\n\nApple has it way easier with iOS then google with android",
"In addition to /u/xilefian mentioned about architectural differences, there is one other oft not known thing. There is a bunch of bad ass ninja engineers (~20 of them) that are Guardians of the Performance Galaxy at / iOS. Seriously, these men and women are bar none, the best engineers I've ever worked with and seen work.\n\nThey can see the matrix, they can massage, cajole, coax -- and if needed -- judo your code to eek out that last few frames per second, prevent that UI/scolling hitch, and most importantly, be very efficient precious precious memory for your benefit.\n\nI've seen these performance ninjas re-write whole messaging subsystems, optimize memory management, and even work with the Silicon Wizards at Apple to add specific instructions that will help with compression, image de/encode, and various other sorcery.\n\nThey hold office hours where I've gone with some colleagues and I'm floored at how they can open debug traces and ask you intimate questions about your architecture and code that they haven't even opened up Xcode yet, as if they divined the problem from looking at these trace files (which open up in a visual profiler, not Xcode) and told that performance problem \"you might as well come out unless you want me to drag you out by your ankles.\"\n\nAll of this to say, the Apple Performance Team are a rare breed of Seal Team Six engineers which are a LARGE reason why iOS devices are so efficient with memory, not just that Apple the vertical SW and HW stack or their architecture.\n\nsource: was a former engineer at ",
"People think Apple is a software company (Apple vs Microsoft). They’re not. \n\nApple is a hardware company. They’re a hardware company who designs their own OS specifically for their hardware. \n\nGoogle is more of a software company. Samsung, HTC, etc make the hardware and use a software that is designed to run on various hardware. Same for MS. MS makes the OS and design it to run on various hardware. ",
"Simply put, it’s because iOS is developed better to run on a specific set of hardware. Android is written and then expected to run on a shitload of devices that are all completely different than one another. ",
"Android is open source and has to work on hundreds of devices where iOS is closed sourced and only on what Apple wants it on. And because of that Apple can spend more r & d time optimizing it for each device. Also there is a difference is processor types and are different architectures.",
"In short.. Because androids are better and more capable of needing the ram and iphones are way behind technologically while simultaneously being more expensive.",
"I can't explain it well, so instead I'll link you to the video that I used to help me: _URL_0_\n\nBasically, iOS compresses apps stupid small when they're in the background (still in the recents menu), iOS \"freezes\" the app. When you go back to the app the app's ram usage goes back up, It's some strange magical compression that apple refuses to tell us. The videos a year old so maybe things have changed since them."
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20vf7y | why do people (even i) think that extremely attractive women are dumb? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20vf7y/eli5why_do_people_even_i_think_that_extremely/ | {
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"For a long time intelligence in women was not considered an attractive quality, because of the shitty way that they were often treated in society. Intelligent women were often pissed off about being restricted from engaging with many roles or aspects of society, which meant they were less likely to be 'fun', so a lot of intelligent women hide the fact they are smarter than a large portion of the population (male and female).\n\nYou could also say a lot of men are intimidated by women of intelligence out of feelings of insecurity, so women who they felt intellectually superior to were considered attractive (even if they were faking it).\n\nThere's also the theory that extremely attractive women are handed everything from a young age and are never given the impetus to develop their intellects, and as such end up having limited education/critical thinking skills. Watch almost any interview with a famous model/actor/singer/sportsperson of either sex who made it big before the age of about 20 or so and cringe as they say the stupidest things imaginable.\n\nAll of these things set up cultural associations linking the idea that attractive women are unlikely to be intelligent.",
"Some people probably think that a person can't be good at everything, so they might assume that if a person has beauty, they probably lack intelligence."
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9s1sbs | how do stealth planes & drones actually work ? | So I was watching this little gem of a talk [_URL_0_](_URL_0_) .And suddenly got me thinking about stealth drones(from minute 21).I know there are some tricks in building them so they don't get detected by all the technologies.But how is that done, what material do they use? And are stealth drones just unmanned stealth planes ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9s1sbs/eli5_how_do_stealth_planes_drones_actually_work/ | {
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"Stealth aircraft use two main techniques for avoiding radar detection: Using radar-absorbing materials and having certain angles of outer surfaces to reflect radar waves away from the receiver.\n\nRadar works by sending out an electromagnetic signal out into the air. Those electromagnetic waves hit aircraft and are bounced back to a radar receiver. The size and location of that aircraft is calculated based on the waves that are reflected by the aircraft from the emitter to the receiver.\n\nIf you build an aircraft out of material that absorbs rather than reflects radar waves, those waves can't return to the receiver and give information on its whereabouts. Also if the radar waves hit the surface of the aircraft and are deflected upward or anywhere other than the direction of the receiver, the radar station does not have any information on where it is.\n\nSo using visible light as an example. Let's say you have a searchlight looking for aircraft at night. What you would do is build an aircraft that is black so a lot of visible light is absorbed and not reflected. Then you also design the surface of the aircraft to reflect what light isn't absorbed away from the eyes of the searchlight operator. No light returning to the eyes of the searchlight operator means he cannot see the aircraft. The same principle works with radar."
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2i8zqc | - if foxes are canines too, can dogs theoretically create offspring with them? why or why not? | Had a weird dream that I was mating Golden Retrievers with foxes and creating hybrid tame puppies and that got me wondering if it was really possible? They are both of the canine family, but is that the only requirement to create offspring? I know some wild cats (Bobcat/Lynx/Serval/etc) can be bred with common house-cats to create semi-tame cats (Savannah, etc.) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i8zqc/eli5_if_foxes_are_canines_too_can_dogs/ | {
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"From Wikipedia:\n\n > Members of the dog genus Canis: wolves, domestic dogs, dingoes, Ethiopian Wolves, coyotes, and golden jackals cannot interbreed with members of the wider dog family: the Canidae, such as South American canids, foxes, African wild dogs, bat-eared foxes or raccoon dogs; or, if they could, their offspring would be infertile.\n\n > Members of the genus Canis can, however, all interbreed to produce fertile offspring, with two exceptions: the side-striped jackal and black-backed jackal. Although these two theoretically could interbreed with each other to produce fertile offspring, it appears they cannot hybridize successfully with the rest of the genus Canis.\n\nSo, no. They're too genetically different."
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9fydsm | how does the united states have such a high gdp per capita relative to other developed countries? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9fydsm/eli5_how_does_the_united_states_have_such_a_high/ | {
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"Well, not having their infrastructure and economies devastated by the carnage and destruction of two world wars happening right on their doorstep within 20 years of each other probably helped a little..."
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||
jl2zm | what do these terms mean: p/e ratio, dividend, yield? | I'm thinking about investing in stocks but I don't know how these values translate to whether or not I should buy a certain stock.
Also, I looked up a random stock, AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN), on Google and Yahoo! Finance, and the yield/dividend values were different. Is there a reason for this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jl2zm/eli5_what_do_these_terms_mean_pe_ratio_dividend/ | {
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"P/E ratio: Price to earning ratio. Price of the share vs what it is earning. Literally, Price / Earnings. If my company's shares are selling for $5, and it is earning them $0.25 per year, I have a P/E ratio of 5/.25 = 20. If your company's shares are selling for $10, but is also earning $0.25 per year, your company's P/E ratio is 10/.25 = 40.\n\nDividend: Let's say I have a lemonade stand. In order to get more money to buy lemons and sugar, I sell 10 shares of my company. If you own 1 share, that means you own 10% of my company. Let's say that I earn $100 more this year than last year, and I want to share it with you. I declare a dividend of $10 per share, and give you $10 (and $10 for every share. If you have 4 shares, you get $40)\n",
"P/E ratio: Price to earning ratio. Price of the share vs what it is earning. Literally, Price / Earnings. If my company's shares are selling for $5, and it is earning them $0.25 per year, I have a P/E ratio of 5/.25 = 20. If your company's shares are selling for $10, but is also earning $0.25 per year, your company's P/E ratio is 10/.25 = 40.\n\nDividend: Let's say I have a lemonade stand. In order to get more money to buy lemons and sugar, I sell 10 shares of my company. If you own 1 share, that means you own 10% of my company. Let's say that I earn $100 more this year than last year, and I want to share it with you. I declare a dividend of $10 per share, and give you $10 (and $10 for every share. If you have 4 shares, you get $40)\n"
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y5e25 | what physical property of our brain allows us to think to ourselves? | What-in my brain- allows me to talk to myself in my head or have coherent thoughts? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/y5e25/eli5_what_physical_property_of_our_brain_allows/ | {
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"Disclaimer: I am not a neuroscientist.\n\nAs far as I'm able to tell, this is not a question that neuroscience has been able to answer beyond simply, \"you have a whole lot of neurons\". Neurons are the cells in your brain which send and receive electronic impulses to other neurons. This firing and passing on of impulses forms intricate patterns, some of which seem to form something greater than the sum of its parts.\n\nThis is certainly not a scientific or rigorous explanation, but [the dialogue entitled *Ant Fugue*](_URL_0_) from [my favorite book](_URL_1_) presents a theory of how firings arise into consciousness by forming an analogy to an ant colony, each atomic part of which (that is to say, each ant) is completely oblivious to the grander structure to which it is a part, but where structure emerges through simple loops looping on top of each other, and loops of those looping on top of further loops of those. It's a pretty good ELI5 read (the dialogue, that is—the book is more ELI18-or-so?).",
"That's extremely difficult to answer.\n\nNeurons are pretty complex in themselves, and adapt all the time to the signals coming in, and the networks between them are constantly changing (though much more slowly in adults).\n\nThe patterns and networks that are created by billions of them are by far much more complex than so. Essentially the only answer I can give to your question is \"patterns\", and we can't really give you a more precise answer. "
]
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[
"http://themindi.blogspot.ca/2007/02/chapter-11-prelude-ant-fugue.html",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach"
],
[]
] |
|
zqywp | why would someone have a caymen or offshore bank account if they weren't doing something illegal or had something to hide? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zqywp/eli5_why_would_someone_have_a_caymen_or_offshore/ | {
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"text": [
"Well they don't tax in the same way. Keeping money offshore isn't illegal, it's also extremely secure.",
"If you are trying to hide a sudden influx of money from the tax authorities, it is best to put it in an offshore location (in reality, those accounts can still be monitored).",
"Three main reasons why an honest person would have offshore accounts come to mind:\n\n* Taxes - If you do business internationally, you have to pay taxes on money you bring into the US...even if you move it out again. By keeping it outside the US, you avoid taxes you are not required to pay.\n* Jurisdiction - If you have a dispute with the IRS, they can freeze your assets. Even if you are in the right, you might not be able to defend yourself if you can't pay your bills. Keeping money outside of US jurisdiction allows you to deal with the IRS on your own terms. \n* Privacy - Your political causes, your wife's plastic surgery, your plans for a corporate takeover, there some thing you want to keep private, and they can be traced by a money trail."
]
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[],
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||
7fxp66 | how can a member of the commonwealth be considered independent but still have a constitutional monarchy with queen elizabeth ii as the head of state? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7fxp66/eli5_how_can_a_member_of_the_commonwealth_be/ | {
"a_id": [
"dqf3pfc"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"You are thinking about this all the wrong way. She is not the “queen of the Commonwealth”. She is the queen of the United Kingdom. But she’s also the queen of Canada, which is a completely separate job. Then, she’s also the queen of Australia, which is a completely separate job from the first 2.\n\nSo, each country that she’s the head of state of is independent. Their queens just happen to be the same person."
]
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[]
] |
||
5cfiuh | how ice does this in the freezer sometimes | [This](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cfiuh/eli5_how_ice_does_this_in_the_freezer_sometimes/ | {
"a_id": [
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Water near top of cube freezes first. Lets say it all freezes except one small hole at the top, so you have a thin layer of ice with a hole in it floating on the top of the cube. As water continues to freeze under the surface, it expands out the hole in the top and causes the spike to grow.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [
"http://imgur.com/lQrxDdn"
] | [
[
"http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~smorris/edl/icespikes/icespikes.html"
]
] |
|
1w97a4 | information retention when asleep | I was wondering, when you're asleep, do you take in information at any level? Movie/documentary/podcast/music? Does being intoxicated when asleep make a difference to the intake of information? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w97a4/information_retention_when_asleep/ | {
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"text": [
"Omelette du fromage?",
"Nice name.\n\nI think you do. Subconsciously, anyway. I don't think it's anything like what you see in the movies, though. I listen to self esteem and relaxation tapes when I go to sleep sometimes, and even if they don't work, they do relax me and help me get to sleep. A big deal, considering I normally lie awake for hours."
]
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[],
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|
1sdpdo | my glasses fog up when i drink hot coffee on a cold day, but why don't my eyeballs fog up when i take off my glasses? | I did a bit of reading on the fog posts, and it seems that no one has asked: could your eyeballs fog up? Seriously hot coffee is super hot compared to your body temperature so we got the whole temperature thing going for us, what about the fog?
I guess our eyes aren't dry to begin with, so are we looking through fog (water) all the time? What about contacts? How could we model lenses (glasses, goggles, etc) to be like eyes and never fog up? Water lenses... muhahaha!
Edit: formatting because posting from phone | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sdpdo/eli5_my_glasses_fog_up_when_i_drink_hot_coffee_on/ | {
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"text": [
"It's not just temperature difference that matters, the surface still needs to be fairly cold otherwise the water vapor won't condensate on the surface. I don't know what sort of temperature's you'd need though, so this may not actually make a difference in the case of your eyes.\n\nThe main reason though, is that your eyes are already wet. Human eyes are designed to be moist at all times, that's why we blink and why we have tear ducts, to keep them moist. I bet you have at some point had really horrible felling eyes, it will have been because they were dry. It's not that this means we are always looking through fog, the condensation that fogs up glasses isn't a single sheet, it's loads of tiny little droplets, that's what makes it hard to see through. Even if water did condense onto our eyes, it would just spread out across the film of water already there, and so we'd still see through it.\n\nAs for contact lenses, they are going to be just as moist as your eyeballs would be, so they are protected int he same way.\n\nThere are a couple of ways we could stop glasses from fogging up. Most glasses do already have an anti-fog layer on them to help prevent it happening all the time, without this coating it would happen with lower temperature differences and less water vapor. One way to improve this layer would be to make it perfectly hydrophobic, so any water would just slide straight off, or we could integrate some sort of pump so that your glasses are constantly covered in a thin film of water. In either case, It think it's easier to just wipe the condensation off once in a while."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
l5abz | why do we have the tendency to fall when you look down from height? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/l5abz/eli5_why_do_we_have_the_tendency_to_fall_when_you/ | {
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"text": [
"Vertigo--you lose your balance.",
"Vertigo--you lose your balance."
]
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[],
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||
3g372z | i purchase controlling share (51%) of publicly traded company. what happens next? | I don't understand much of the process of what owning stock actually entails. I know companies probably take precaution from letting something like this happen, but what would happen if say, I bought 51% controlling interest in Wal-Mart.
Can I walk into stores and fire people? Can I get the police or some other government agency to enforce my will? What happens? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g372z/eli5_i_purchase_controlling_share_51_of_publicly/ | {
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"text": [
"You get voting rights at annual shareholder meetings. Since you have more shares than anyone else combined, you win any votes. You have to follow the company bylaws though, so what you can do is limited.",
"Basically it only means you have controlling interest in the company but by all means you do not own the company. You cannot walk into stores and fire them. \n\nWith 51% controlling interest you likely have the majority of the voting power so you can vote for some policies here and there and vote on bored of directors, ect. You would be able to vote how you please and since you have so many votes being at 51% you could essentially make those decisions yourself and other peoples votes are moot. \n\nThere are lots of different little tricks to keep people from doing this. One of them is poison pill that changes the voting rights. ",
"1. Nominate slate of candidates to run for board of directors, including yourself as one, perhaps as chair.\n2. Vote them all in with your 51% vote (note most companies require staggered director terms so that it would take years to replace the entire slate)\n3. With your newly elected buddies, pass a motion to fire CEO And other top officials (of course commonly will have to pay hefty severance )\n4. Pass a motion hiring another group of buddies as CEO, CFO, etc.\n5. Tell your buddy who is now CEO (maybe it's yourself) to tell the COO to tell the Retail Sales VP to tell the regional SVP to tell the store manager to fire that rude greeter that triggered all this unpleasantness.\n6. Profit...? Naw, probably not.\n\nNot sure how the police or govt figure into all this. If the employee has been fired and refuses to leave, I suppose you could call the police and say he is trespassing but buying up $60 billion in shares doesn't really factor into that at all."
]
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[],
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|
1ji5dh | why would anyone want to buy berkshire hathaway's stock if they never pay dividends? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ji5dh/eli5_why_would_anyone_want_to_buy_berkshire/ | {
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"text": [
"Lots of stocks don't pay dividends. Dividends are more often considered a nice perk unless you can heavily invest in the stock to get a good amount coming back. \n\nThe reason you'd buy a stock that doesn't pay out is that you expect their value will go up so you can sell it later for a profit.",
"From wiki:\n\n* Berkshire Hathaway averaged an annual growth in book value of 19.7% to its shareholders for the last 48 years (compared to 9.4% from S & P 500 with dividends included for the same period)\n* Berkshire Hathaway stock produced a total return of 76% from 2000–2010 versus a negative 11.3% return for the S & P 500",
"Instead of paying dividends, the company reinvests in itself, so therefore you would expect stock prices to rise faster than a company that does pay dividends. So the value you get from the stock is the increase in the value of the shares you own over time, instead of a cash payout of dividends. As mentioned, Berkshire Hathaway's stock has, historically, performed extremely well so it is a valuable stock to own.",
"Value based on expected future dividends, even is they have never done them. Microsoft never paid a dividend until 2003, and Cisco didn't until 2011 - but they eventually did. Stock price, at its most basic explanation, is equal to the dividend expected *next* year, divided by the market expected rate of return for the company minus the growth (P0 = D1 / (r-g). \n\n\nThere are many other ways to valuate in reality (market cap / # shares, Earnings per Share, etc etc etc), and also external factors that push them up and down (investor speculation). When you get to a company like Berkshire, each share is a piece of the company, so it's valued as a % of the value of the company. Just because they aren't paying current dividends doesn't make it worthless. Whatever happens with the future of the company, you own part of it. Will it get liquidated and you get a check? Doubtful. Will they decide to pay dividends? Also doubtful. But owning a piece of such a lucrative company holds value based on the market capitalization of the company and the idea that one day, it will... so that makes it an investment. Say in 50 years that share finally swaps to cash value at 100M. You buy and own it because you're banking an the valuation and eventual sale to the next investor who will bank on valuation, even if neither of you ever see the actual payout materialize. \n\n\nELI5 version: You and 9 friends pool in to buy a copy of an unsealed Superman #75 (Death of Superman) because you have watched it get higher in value at a constant rate. It doesn't give you actual money back, but it gets more valuable. You can sell your 1/10th of the comic off for more money if you want, or wait. Maybe one day a collector pays you all much more than you bought it for, and you all split it 10 ways, making a big profit. Or you sold your 1/10th to someone else for more money, so you still made some out of it, and now it's their turn to wait. \n\n\n[Warren told me while he had me in a headlock](_URL_0_)"
]
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[],
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"http://imgur.com/HudOy9z"
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||
6dlkqq | why oled display, which are so successful on mobile and tv markets, is having a hard transition into laptop market? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6dlkqq/eli5_why_oled_display_which_are_so_successful_on/ | {
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"You'll note that OLED televisions are *extremely* more expensive than non-OLED. \n\nThis isn't a big deal on tiny phone displays, but there's not a market for that kind of markup on laptops. ",
"Expense, but burn in is probably the big one.\n\nOLED as a technology dims with use, over time. \n\nWhat this means is with a display, elements of the scren that always show the same things can end up leaving that pattern in the screen. \n\nPhones it generally isn't viewed as a particularly big deal, because people have a phone for a couple of years, and get rid (generally). \n\nComputer monitors generally don't have that feature. People will use them until they break more or less. Unless a screen is physically faulty somehow, most don't think about 'upgrading' their monitor until the one they have dies. I've had mine for about six years now, for example.\n\nSo that coupled with things like start menus and various other static screen components increasing the chance of burn in, manufacturers don't bother. \n\nBack when people used big bulky CRT monitors, burn in was addressed with the use of screensavers. A lot now won't even know what a screensaver is actually for, but they were to prevent CRT scren burn in. \n\nThey're almost entirely redundant with LCD monitors. Plasma monitors didn't really get a toe hold in computer displays (unless you count the 1980s orange plasma displays, which I'm not, here), and everything else in the computer market, more or less, has been LCD. People don't know to use screensavers any more, so OLED computer monitors would get damaged pretty quickly. \n\n[This](_URL_0_) is a picture of my 2010 era HTC Desire. That has an OLED screen. Looks great there doesn't it, nice and punchy. \n\nBut if you have to display something plain on it, like [this](_URL_1_) you'll note that the clock, and the alarm symbol are still there. That's burn in. The only way to fix that would be a new OLED panel for my phone. The reason that whole bar along the top is still visible, lighter than the rest of the screen, is because that bar is black when the phone is on. That means those pixels haven't been 'on' as much, and therefore when they are asked to be on, they're brighter than the rest.\n\nThat would get *annoying* on a computer monitor. "
]
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[],
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"http://i.imgur.com/hHnrgm0.jpg",
"http://i.imgur.com/OVZcyyN.jpg"
]
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||
8ivxp6 | why are keyboards arranged in a slanted grid instead of a standard grid? | why are they arranged [like this](_URL_0_) instead of a standard grid that crosses perpendicularly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ivxp6/eli5_why_are_keyboards_arranged_in_a_slanted_grid/ | {
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"text": [
"It helps typists have more of a range for each finger.\n\nContrary to popular belief, very few if any features were made directly to the keyboard to slow typists down.",
"So that no two keys were directly in line with one another. The original typewriters would swing an arm up to an inked ribbon to imprint a letter on the page. Those arms were directly linked to the keys. If two keys were directly above or below each other, they wouldn’t have separate arms. It’s also for the layout of the letters themselves. The pattern of letters is so that you would rarely need to use the same finger, or even the same hand, to hit consecutive letters. This allowed for less possibility of key arms colliding, and sped up the typist. ",
"It is a holdover form mechanical typewriters.\n\nIf you look at the keys you might notice, that the center of each key is fixed so that no two keys have their center in the same horizontal position.\n\nThis is important because mechanical typewriters used to have levers that reached up from the keys forward to then angle towards a position in the center where the actual typing took place. Obviously the two levers couldn't overlap and anchoring the levers anywhere but the center of the keys would have resulted in them breaking sooner.\n\n[This is the best image I could find with a quick google search, but it should be sufficient to illustrate what I am trying to describe.](_URL_0_)",
"It started in order to make the design of a typewriter keyboard easier to engineer and manufacture, and there's something to be said of for aligning the keys with the motion of human fingers, but it's mostly tradition. Among keyboard enthusiasts there's a growing community around \"ortholinear\" keyboards. I know a few people who own one, and they say that it only takes 10 minutes to get used to it and from there it's quite nice both for typing and aesthetically.\n\nThey generally look like [this](_URL_0_) (ignore the funny key labeling. Custom keyboards are a lot of fun if you're into it, but I understand if you think blank keys or novelty labels are dumb)."
]
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"https://imgur.com/PmFUCT6"
] | [
[],
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m9mkn | child porn and internet | Let's say I live in a state/country where the age of consent is 18. I watch pornography or a live feed (Skype or such) of a 16 year old where in their state the age of consent is 16. Could I get in trouble?
What if I swap it? My state/country is 16 and the other person is 16 years old but where they live the consent law is 18. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/m9mkn/child_porn_and_internet/ | {
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"Yes. In both situations. Federal law for pornography is 18 nationwide in the USA. Consent is to actually physically sleep with said person, which generally isn't possible across state lines. ",
"The age of consent doesn't matter so much as the definition of \"child porn\" in your country. If a child in pornography is defined as anyone under the age of 18, then yes on both counts.",
"Yes. In both situations. Federal law for pornography is 18 nationwide in the USA. Consent is to actually physically sleep with said person, which generally isn't possible across state lines. ",
"The age of consent doesn't matter so much as the definition of \"child porn\" in your country. If a child in pornography is defined as anyone under the age of 18, then yes on both counts."
]
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|
9w20vn | how did live tv broadcasts work before the invention of digital cameras? | When video cameras used to work via film, how did they transmit the footage in real time to far away places if the footage is captured on a physical film? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9w20vn/eli5_how_did_live_tv_broadcasts_work_before_the/ | {
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"text": [
"It's not film. The images where captured and sent electronically, in analogue, not digital. Much the same way a VHS tape works.",
"Old TV cameras used a specialized form of cathode ray tube called a video tube to scan the image and convert it into an electrical signal, which could then be broadcast and converted back into video by an image-forming cathode ray tube in the viewer's television.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Live broadcasts on site required a whole lot of equipment. The whole system was called ENG (Electronic News Gathering) and it used an OB-van (Original Broadcast).\n\nOn often used spots (governement buildings etc.) there where high bandwide connections to the main studios. On in promtu spots from the '70s onwards satellite connections could be set up but before the '90s that took really some time (an hour or more) to get the dish proper aligned.",
"The cameras had special vacuum tubes that captured images (one trade name was Vidicon). The first color cameras had a tube for red, green, and blue along with their own electronics section. You'd know which section belonged to which color, they had either red, green or blue stripes on the wires. From there, the signal was sent back through an enormously thick cable (because each color output had its own coaxial cable along with power, sync and control) to a camera control unit (CCU).\n\nThese were persnickety beasts, because the tubes performed and aged differently. Each time the camera was powered up, you'd have to let it get good and warm, and then go through a calibration for each color. The calibration would drift, so it wasn't uncommon to have to touch them up during a show break.\n\nEarlier tubes were especially sensitive to strong light. Accidentally pointing the camera into studio light or the sun would immediately cause a dark spot on the photosensitive coating on the tube.\n\nAs the technology progressed, more of the work was done inside the camera eliminating the thick cable and incredible weight of earlier cameras, but still requiring a CCU and an operator to control the black levels, iris, color sub-phase while the cameraman controlled the shot. The CCU operator not only looked at the video output, they looked at a pair of oscilloscopes monitoring the video signal from the camera. TV camera test charts provided a reproducible scope pattern that would allow finishing calibration of the camera. During the show, the CCU op would spend a lot of time controlling camera iris. For some shows such as live outdoor sports, there is still a CCU operator\n\nTube studio cameras were used well into the 1990's. At the start of my TV career, I worked for a station that used them in one of their smaller studios for a couple of weekly shows. By then the cameras were well over twenty years old and took a lot of time to get calibrated and show ready.\n\nOld TV technology is amazing in that all of that was designed to work initially with vacuum tubes. Everything. But even more amazing are the images coming from tiny cameras dangling from radio controlled flying toys, with the camera and toy costing a tiny fraction of the price of fully digital cameras just 15 years ago.\n\n\n "
]
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[],
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21jyw4 | how do hospitals in the u.s. expect their patients to pay their bills? why are the bills so outrageous? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21jyw4/eli5_how_do_hospitals_in_the_us_expect_their/ | {
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"text": [
"They expect you to have either private or government insurance.",
"They expect you to have insurance (which you're required to have as of the end of this month).\n\nThey also expect you to take everything you read on the Internet with a grain of salt and either understand the full story behind it and the actual outcome.",
"Also one thing to remember is that if you dont have insurance, or you do and your copay/deductible is high you can contact the hospital and see if they can change the bill and put you on a payment plan.\n\nWhat most people dont know is that hospitals inflate their bill so much that if you go to them and say \"I cannot afford this, I can afford to pay XX a month\" they will work with you. Now the process is usually drawn out and a major headache since the hospitals dont want to make it easy for you, but they would rather they make some money than have you default on the payment.",
"If you're going to a hospital in another country, you're paying that much as well... You're just giving it to the government in taxes first."
]
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||
cewrj8 | we often see inter-species friendships in the wild, but it's always seems to be 2 animals. why aren't there entire groups hanging out together? | So, some examples are captured by wild-life photographers between a wolf and a bear as one example. But it begs the question if entire wildlife groups (multiple wolves and bears) with similar ranges have been spotted hanging out together to the point of playful interaction (as opposed to symbiotic relationship). | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cewrj8/eli5_we_often_see_interspecies_friendships_in_the/ | {
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"text": [
"TL;DR: law of the jungle\n\nYou are talking about a Timon-Pumbaa-Simba kind of group, with 3 or more species involved? Starting from the begin, you would need 2 individuals A and B that finds each other to start with, that are already in a stable friendly relationship meaning all basic needs (e.g. eating, drinking, sleeping) satisfied, that could mean:\n\n1. they are in a long time friendly relationship (that is rare because one could be hungry at a time)\n2. The relationship isn't long yet, they are still alerted even between them and adding a third unknown party member C would imply stress level to increase for everyone of them, having their survival instinct to let them run away.\n\nAlso, there are more relationships to guarantee: A and B could be in a mutual friendly relationship, but either of them could be hostile towards C or vice versa.\n\nSupposing 2 individuals you'd have only 2 links (A likes B, B likes A), while they would be 6 for 3 individuals, 12 for 4 etc.",
"It is rare for competitive species to voluntarily share habitats but recently in Israel packs of hyenas and wolves have been seen working together, Hyenas can find prey better than wolves and the wolves can hunt better than hyenas. Normally the hyenas would just take the scraps after the wolves had moved on, and the wolves would fend off the hyenas until they had finished, but in one area they hunt together.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt's not \"friendship\" but its not the usual symbiotic relationship where both parties are getting something they couldn't otherwise get."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0319/In-Israeli-desert-wolves-and-hyenas-cooperate-on-hunts"
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|
dxiso0 | why is it not safe to drink tap water when it's not clean, but perfectly okay to shower in it? | It seems very logical on the surface, because when you drink the water, it goes right into your body. But what about when showering? Or more specifically, what about when you're showering and washing your privates? I imagine it might be a little more dangerous for females than males? The one part of your body you're supposed to keep clean but you're washing it with 'dirty' water. What happens then? Or does the body have ways to protect it? What about your face? When you're washing your pores, wouldnt the dirt in the water go into your pores? Does it work that way? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dxiso0/eli5_why_is_it_not_safe_to_drink_tap_water_when/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Your skin is remarkably resilient and meant to protect you. Some things are too large to pass through your skin into your blood, but when you eat them they can pass through your intestines (their job is to absorb stuff so they’re good at it). This happens especially with heavy metals like lead or mercury. You can hold and touch them and be fine (as long as it isn’t for too long and they don’t touch any open wounds or sores) but once you eat them it’s open season on your nervous system.\n\nMost contamination in water is heavy metals, and they’re in such low doses that rinsing yourself with contaminated water in the shower usually won’t hurt you (unless something is seriously wrong). But if you drink the water you can ingest a lot of the metals, and because it takes a long time to get rid of them they can poison you over time."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
aqrd8b | is ice in the center of an ice cube different from the ice on the outside of an ice cube? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aqrd8b/eli5_is_ice_in_the_center_of_an_ice_cube/ | {
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"Ice cubes don’t actually freeze the way you’re imagining. It’s not like an onion, where it freezes inward layer by layer. There’s a lot more flexibility in the freezing process as water and ice coexist and transform into one another. As the center-most water freezes, it will in fact exert a pressure on the ‘outer’ shells, despite the added flexibility of the freezing process. That force will actually melt the outer shells juuust a bit, allowing them to expand naturally without cracking, or it’ll crack, and then just re-solidify as a normal whole. The ‘dirty’ bits you often see in ice cubes aren’t cracks, but the impurities in the water. If you clean an ice cube tray really well, and fill it with pure water, the ice cubes will be crystal clear. "
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5e1ab4 | what causes libido, and why does it vary so much between people? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5e1ab4/eli5_what_causes_libido_and_why_does_it_vary_so/ | {
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"Well it can be connected to sex hormones but that isn't the entire story. I take medication that kills my libido but I have normal sex hormone levels.\n\nFrom what I've seen hypersexuality manifests in several situations that would indicate that dopamine is a major factor in libido. \n\n1) People who abuse methamphetamine become hypersexual , methamphetamine being a powerful dopamine releaser. In long term abusers the symptoms become difficult to distinguish from psychosis and the treatment for the acute phase is a D2 antagonist. \n\n2) You see hypersexuality in people in the manic phase of Bipolar Type 1 along with other compulsive, disinhibited activity such as excessive gambling . D2 antagonists are the treatment of choice for the acute phase of Bipolar Type 1 until connection to reality returns at which point Lithium is the treatment of choice.\n\n3) You see hypersexuality and excessive gambling in Parkinson's patients who take dopamine agonists like pramipexole. \n \n\nSo although Dopamine may not be the whole picture, clearly libido is enhanced by various drugs and conditions which are dopaminergic. So normal libido would be connected with normal functioning of domaminergic neurons. \n\nThe most likely suspect in low libido would be depression. And up until lately most drugs have been targeting serotonin. However sexual side effects are notorius among the SSRI drugs. Now many psychiatrists will prescribe Ritalin, a dopamine reuptake inhibitor, for sexual dysfunction. Or give Wellbutrin which is a weak dopamine and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. Or give a drug like Effexor which is a serotonoin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor and weakly a dopamine reuptake inhibitor. \n \nSo again it would seem the picture points to dopamine involvement in low libido. and interestingly, one of the drugs on the cutting edge of treating depression is ketamine. Which is a complex drug but does act as an agonist at the D2 receptor. The mechanism of it's antidepressant effect however is unknown. \n \nAs an addendum it should be noted that stimulants such as cocaine or methamphetamine although they may stimulate libido, they also inhibit erections. Gingko Biloba is natural form of Viagra to remedy this or you can go with the real thing, Cialis or Viagra. \n ",
"A combination of different factors including hormonal, psychological, dietary, and biological.\n\nThere's definitely going to be someone with a more informed answer, but seeing as how the current comments here are all for laughs, I'll give you all a list of some go-to foods to put a little more horsepower in your engines;\n\n*(NOTE: this may be a male-centric list because I'm a guy and am unsure how vaginas work)*\n\nOysters\n\nClams\n\nSunflower seeds\n\nPumpkin seeds\n\n**RED GINSENG** (seriously, go to an Asian market, this stuff is like rocket fuel for your cock)\n\nGinko Bilobo Tea\n\nAnything high in zinc or vitamin E.\n\nAlso, Vitamin E tablets are available, but consult your doctor if you have heart or circulatory problems.\n\nAnything good for circulation; workout, stretch, eat higher fiber low cholesterol diet, stay hydrated, get proper amount of salts in your diet (NOT TOO MUCH).\n\nAlso, if we're trying to get a little weird here, a bit of manual stretching of your johnson isn't terrible for you; there are ligaments down there that can be stretched and made more elastic, but they CAN ALSO TEAR so be super careful with all that. Also some heavy massaging (read: not jerking off, proper massaging for the sake of circulation) on the regular can help fill things out.\n\nAnd quit smoking cigarettes. Your dick will thank you after the first 24 hours, and so will your partner.\n\nAll in all, be healthier, eat the right foods, and don't break your weiner.",
"There are some excellent answers in this thread and I won't repeat what they've said, but I do want to add this: A lot of sex drive is psychological. And it's not just mental health issues (depression being one), but also upbringing. For instance, some people who are molested as a child learn to associate sexual arousal with sadness or anger or self-hate, so it sublimates from what would be normal arousal for others into a negative thing for them that repels them from the sex act. ",
"There are a wide range of chemicals that play a role\n\nTestosterone, dopamine, prolactin, norepinephrine, etc. all have an influence. There are probably lots of others too. \n\nAltering levels of these chemicals can increase or decrease sex drive. \n\nThose are just biological factors. There are also myriad psychological factors too. ",
"Doctor here and I want to clarify a point of confusion in a lot of these threads. \n\nLibido and the ability to have an erection are two different things. \n\nI have plenty of male patients who cannot achieve an erection but have tons of libido. The opposite is also true. Many men can have erections but lack interest in sex. \n\nVery roughly, libido is more a product of neurochemistry while erection is a product physiology. ",
"I apologize if someone has mentioned this and I missed it, but oral contraceptives can have a negative effect on libido as well. Not all women have the same issues with it, but is is documented and not honestly talked about nearly enough.",
"Testosteron is also a key factor for increased libido. After two months of power training I became a sexual tyrannosaur. I know some friends who use steroids and it's much worse for them.",
"Sunlight. (Among many other things)\n\nPeople who work outside will often have a higher libido.\n\nEdit: (I can't believe hardly anyone else mentioned Sunlight...it's like the biggest factor)",
"Why is my libido like nonexistent in the day time and insane at night time? Is there biological factors to this?",
"I've been studying the mechanics of this a lot recently. Libido is a function of the brain and spinal cord. The mechanisms of sexual drive and behaviour are studied primarily in rodents however, so this has to be extrapolated to humans. Since humans have all of the same brain regions, the systems are assumed to be similar in most animals, but keep in mind that we don't even have the whole picture in rodents just yet.\n\nArousal is generated in part by nerve cells (neurons) in the lower spinal cord. These form a network called the ejaculation generator, and these become excited both by hormone levels and sexual stimulation. When ejaculation is triggered, this system will both control the muscular movements associated with orgasm and will also send a \"satisfied\" signal to the brain which negatively regulates libido thereafter. Oppositely, it's assumed that the ejaculation generator also sends signals of arousal to the brain which motivate sexual behaviour, though this mechanism has not been identified yet.\n\nLibido is also the product of brain systems. These brain systems send signals down the spinal cord to the ejaculation generator, exciting it and increasing arousal levels. The brain region responsible for this is the hypothalamus (primarily the ventromedial hypothalamus and the medial preoptic area, which is larger in males than females due to testosterone production in males).\n\nSerotonin is one chemical that the brain uses to modify the activity of the spinal cord. In men and women excess serotonin (from taking SSRI's like Paxil) tends to lower libido - this is thought to be in part because Serotonin inhibits the ejaculation generator. Curiously in rodents, drugs activating the Serotonin Receptor 1A excite males but not females. This suggests that there are fundamental differences in the brain structures of male and female sexuality.\n\nNow for the last bit ... why does it vary so much between people? In my opinion, the nitty gritty of the brain & spinal cord mechanisms simply haven't been worked out yet to provide an acceptable answer. We know very little, so we have very little to go on. Maybe a psychologist could give more insight into what other personality traits co-exist with high or low libido.",
"I just want to throw out there that we have /r/deadbedroom that is pretty great outlet source of support for those of in a relationship having these issues with conflicting libido ",
"To add another question on to the llibido topic, why is it some people have absolutely 0 drive? Like, sex doesn't do it for me, no boner, no interest at all. I use to love it and have all kinds of crazy kinks, but it's completely gone.",
"It's weird because I have depression, I don't take any medication for it at the moment(whole other story) but libido is off the charts. I could have sex multiple times a day, everyday. I have a friend who isn't depressed but he can only do it once a day. Anymore then that and he just doesn't get off. \n\nCan confirm that Zolof did completly destroy my sex drive though. Welbutrin did not, in fact it gave me more energy so. ",
"Can jerking it to porn to much really kill your libido? Or is that a modern day \"masturbating causes hairy palms\" kind of thing?",
"Is there a way to completely kill libido? Goodness knows I want it.",
"Like many of the top commenters have said so far, \"libido\" is the cause of many different things.\n\nDopamine is a major factor. Drugs and activities whichc change the regulation of dopamine will alter libido. Dopamine agonists (pramiprexole), dopamine reuptake inhibitors (wellbutrin, cocaine, methamphetamine) will all cause increases in reward seeking behavior including but not limited to libido. Dopamine blockers such as antipsychotics are often considered libido killers.\n\nDopamine is counter-regulated by prolactin which is released after male ejaculation, so increases in prolactin cause dopamine and libido to drastically fall off. The other name for dopamine is prolactin inhibiting hormone, or PIH. Males who are able to ejaculate multiple times in a row with no refractory period tend to have a reduced production of or response to prolactin.\n\nTestosterone is a huge factor in libido for men and women. Testosterone acts as a neuromodulator and potentiates dopamineric activation of the sex drive. Interestingly, testosterone is decreased in men after drinking alcohol and increased in women.\n\nCholinergic function can also play a part. Anticholinergics can cause sexual dysfunction, acetylcholinesterates inhibitors can increase sexual function. The mechanism is thought to have something to do with activation of the parasympathetic nervous system.\n\nMany people mention SSRIs. Since dopamine is generally excitatory and serotonin is generally inbihitory within the brain, it would make sense that SSRIs inhibit sexual function. The longer-term sexual side effects that come with SSRIs like post-SSRI sexual dysfunction probably have more to do with downregulations of tyrosine hydroxylase, the rate-limiting enzyme for the production of dopamine in the brain.\n\nThere are a whole host of other psychopharmacological factors, but there are physical factors too.\n\nAerobic exercise increases heart rate, which in turn causes the body to produce vasodilators to reduce blood pressure. This causes better circulation which leads to more blood flow to the genitals and makes it easier to become aroused. If your body produces enough of these vasodilators, one of the main vasodilators, nitric oxide, can cause even more increased blood flow to the genitals. Nitric oxide is what ultimately gets altered from the use of viagra.\n\nAnaerobic exercise can do the same thing through the vasodilation mechanism. It also tends to boost testosterone. I'd imagine that the cascade of events which causes muscle to be built also includes some other things helpful to sex drive (BDNF, other growth factors).\n\nErection is mediated by oxytocin in the brain which activates the appropriate spinal nerves. If there are problems or alterations in the function of oxytocin then this can impact erection.\n\nPC muscle and bulbospongiosus tone/size/strength are also important factors. You can easily increase this with PC exercises. They are called [Kegel exercises](_URL_0_) and the pubococcygeus (PC) muscle is the main target. The more space is taken up by those muscles, it seems the less blood flow it would require to cause any given level of arousal.\n\nHigh doses of vitamin C can cause increases in arousal, but those are probably mediated by increases in norepinephrine which increases blood pressure, causing vasodilation in response. Other little things such as stimulant based asthma medicines likely have the same effect.\n\nThere's also the Coolidge effect, i.e., the effect of novelty on sex drive. Sex drive goes up dramatically with the addition of new partners and can take a dive with the same partner over time.\n\nThe quality and quantity of both sleep and food will have dramatic impacts on your sex drive as well.\n\nExcitation in the brain tends to increase sex drive. Inhibition tends to decrease it. This explains some of the effects of trainquilizers (GABA-A allosteric modifiers) on sex drive, as well as the effects of changes in progesterone, an allosteric modifier of the GABA-A receptor in women, across the menstrual cycle and its effect on sex drive.\n\nMany of these factors are altered in men vs. women.\n\nThen add in the psychological factors and people's life histories. The mind can change almost any reaction of the body. It gets very complicated very quick.\n\n**To answer your question** There are a lot of different factors that cause or are associated with libido changes. These neurochemical and lifestyle factors are dramatically different among different people. If you are having trouble with your libido, it could be any one of these factors or a host of others. Maximizing all of them is likely to make you insatiably horny all the time, minimizing all of them is likely to make you about as horny as a eunich,",
"All I know is that heroin completely removes it and I love that effect. As bad as opiates are, when you're a lonely Virgin cursed by the male libido, opiates are a god send. You could put the hottest actress on earth in a thong in my room and I'd rather just chase the line. It's pathetic in one way and glorious in another.",
"As a person who had a drastic drop in Libido recently, this is a very interesting thread.\n\nI'm less scared now. ",
"I am a 41 year old heterosexual divorced white male. I suffer from low libido, depression with anxiety, high blood pressure, and sleep apnea. All of these conditions can effect the sex drive and like some bad cosmic joke, each other. \n\nMy testosterone, however, is completely in the normal range. I tried testosterone patches and became a very irritable guy with headaches and a short temper. It had zero effect on my sex drive. \n\nWhen I am able to get a good night's sleep with my apnea machine a few nights in a row, it makes some difference, I can tell because I have sex related dreams and erections (morning wood). This rules out a plumbing problem, though I have been to a Urologist just to confirm it. It does little for my low sex drive. \n\nI have spent almost a decade trying to find the right combination of anti-depressants and blood pressure medicines to bring back any sort of libido and I am still looking. I seem to have had the 'best results' with a combination of Wellbutrin XL (anti-depressant, but that can cause anxiety as a side effect) and Paxil (anti-anxiety/anti-depressant), and Paxil which helps with the libido somewhat but is notorious for causing anorgasmia (difficulty reaching orgasm). \n\nThis is where the blood pressure comes into play. I take Lisinopril, which treats my high blood pressure (runs in the family and is exacerbated by my sleep apnea) but effects the ability to sustain erections long enough to have a chance to reach orgasm. Paxil can make that take a long time. This worked out in my favor when I was 22, now it is just frustrating, tedious, and troubles my very patient yet somewhat insecure girlfriend (caused by past relationships, I make it very clear that it is my problem and definitely not something she is doing wrong). \n\nI say all of that because I am uniquely aware of the difference between the depression (a possibly debilitating mental illness that can be chronic), erectile dysfunction (which is related to various combinations of cardiovascular factors and hormone levels, and low libido (which is neuro-chemical in nature). \n\nMy current status is this: depression, treated; blood pressure, relatively controlled with medication; sleep apnea, getting better as I slowly lose weight (around 27 BMI currently); libido, almost non-existent.\n\nWhat is it like to have no sex drive? It sucks. I love my girlfriend, she has a healthy sex drive for a 29 year old. I feel awful that my indifference to sex makes her self-conscious. I am very honest with her and that it has nothing to do with her. \n\nI am currently trying alternatives to Paxil but they seem to only have made things worse. I predict that my best choice is to return to Paxil which would at least bring back some level of my libido so that she can at least experience a more healthy sex life than what I am currently capable of giving her. She will just need to accept that my difficulty reaching orgasm has nothing to do with how I feel about her. \n\nTL;DR: Libido, attraction, erections, relationships, and sexual performance can be complicated and often separate factors in sexual health. They can be caused by many different medical conditions and treatments. Also, having no libido sucks, no pun intended. ",
"In men, low prolactin levels causes libido! I know this because I had high prolactin levels caused by a prolactinoma (tiny pituitary tumor). Libido was crap for a long time before I found about the prolactin. \n\nThe cure? A magical drug called Cabergoline. It's used primarily for Parkinson's disease but in small doses it lowers prolactin and shrinks the tumor. I noticed an almost immediate return to a very high libido after my prolactin levels dropped way down. ",
"people have given answers that pretty much cover the whole of it; it's a lot of different factors, to be sure. As a personal anecdote, I had my libido fixed around the time I turned 20. I (male) had really low testosterone, didn't have a lot of the symptoms, I had a lot of muscle mass could squat 3 plates easy but my levels were on the high end for a female. (73 ng/dl, male range is ~300-1050 ng/dl and is normally upwards of 500 for young, physically active men.) I started on TRT in march and have since had a much healthier sexual appetite. I've been with the same girl for 4 years, she was my first girlfriend and a seriously good looking little number. I had found myself not being interested for a couple years, she had a very active libido and was always the one to initiate sex. I had coped by saying I thought she was too interested in sex and I wanted to focus more on the emotional side of our relationship, I said I loved her and wanted to spend more time with her but didn't feel we could do that when she always had one thing on her mind. It was really hard on our relationship, she felt rejected by me and was becoming self conscious about her looks. I always saw myself as the reversed role in a relationship where the guy is always hounding his girlfriend for sex, it felt unfair that I was burdened with the amount of guilt and inability to firmly say no like a woman would be able to. To compare the feeling of sex though, when I was a kid I hated going to the beach, I never wanted to go. But when I was at the beach I had a great time and never wanted to leave. The same was kind of true for sex, it's not that I didn't enjoy it during or after, but that I didn't want to start.\n\nAfter I've started TRT we've had a much better sex life, but even that isn't enough. I've mostly stopped masturbating, when I do I don't watch porn that often. People too often equate libido to sex life, there are certainly chemical issues that can block you, but as a young man I can tell you the biggest thing was to stop jacking it to Internet porn and get more exercise. ",
"I think the easy access to internet porn is partly to blame for some peoples low libido.\n_URL_0_"
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2s6hzn | if i cannot fall asleep, but i'm laying in bed: comfortable and relaxed, is my body still getting a healthy amount of recharging time? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s6hzn/eli5_if_i_cannot_fall_asleep_but_im_laying_in_bed/ | {
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"Your body does, your brain doesn't. After some nights you end up going crazy. It happened to me, it was pretty serious. ",
"No. Nearly all of your \"reacharging\" comes from the REM cycle of sleep. Obvioulsy, you need to be asleep to acheive REM."
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1j9m8j | what is going on when we pop our backs? | What is going on structurally, and is there a difference between doing it yourself and having a chiropractor do it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j9m8j/eli5_what_is_going_on_when_we_pop_our_backs/ | {
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"Releasing built up pressure bubbles from strain or stress from joints in your back. Same thing thing when you pop (crack) your fingers."
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20wkag | eli 5: why do cells all look 2d under the microscope , how or when can you see a 3d cell? | I was wondering about this, through the microscope you see a 2D cell while in some books they have a 3D diagram of the cell , how do they achieve this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20wkag/eli_5_why_do_cells_all_look_2d_under_the/ | {
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"Try Confocal laser scanning microscopy.",
"To add on to the previous comments, when you look through a simple light microscope the dept of field of what you are seeing is very narrow so it looks like a cross section of the whole slide. By adjusting the distance of the slide from the lens you can see that cross section at different depths, assuming of course that the sample is transparent/translucent. \n\nThere are other types of microscopes that will let you see things that look 3D. [Stereoscopic dissecting microscopes](_URL_0_) with two eye pieces will allow you to see things in 3D since you maintain stereovision via seeing with both eyes. These microscopes also use reflected light, which is how your eyes view things most frequently, instead of light that has passed through the sample. A [phase contrast microscope](_URL_1_) heightens details in a sample by allowing you to see the outlines of things that cause light to pass through them at slightly different speeds from one another. In addition to the increased level of certain details, this type of microscope makes the cells in a sample look like they cast shadows thus looking 3D.\n\nSauce: Worked in a biology lab while in college and used many types of microscopes. [Confocal Microscopy](_URL_2_) was my favorite because all the pretty fluorescent colors.\n\n",
"You see a 2D cell because the cell is so small and the cell membrane is so thin. Light easily passes through it and you can clearly see the insides of the cell. \n\nThere are a couple techniques to view a cell is 3D. Confocal microscopy is a common one. This type of microscopy takes images of 2D slices of the cell and put them together. It you are familiar with CT scans or MRIs it's kind of like that, just the process for generating the slices is much different. \n\nOther ways to see 3D that you might have seen in text book is electron microscopy. Black and white images of microscopic arthropods, or of cell membranes is what I remember from my experiences. \n\nSource: biology major. Took cell biology class. "
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36b3lh | does everyone hear their own accent and just consider it normal, or is there a universal set sound for people hearing those who sound the same? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36b3lh/eli5_does_everyone_hear_their_own_accent_and_just/ | {
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"Accents are all about perspective. Anyone who speaks a certain way that is from their point of view \"normal\" and \"default.\" You too have an accent but just consider it normal yourself."
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7wolff | how the brain combines the information it receives from both of our eyes to form a single "instance" of the world? how it knows which information is seen from single/both eye/s and it combines it to see every thing only once? | Hi, I was just wondering that while we have 2 eyes, what we see is just a single "screenshot-instance" of the world that COMBINES what we see from both of our eyes and we don't see things twice as someone may expected.
I come from some computer science background and from my point of view, putting it simple our eyes are just some sensors that everyone delivers its own view of the world, then brain needs to put this pictures/instances together and form a single one, which is what we see.
Question is how does it know, that some things/information may be seen from both of our eyes and some things not and then it removes the 'duplicate' information and to output what we see? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7wolff/eli5how_the_brain_combines_the_information_it/ | {
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"It’s probably a too complex and still not a fully understood concept of neurosensorics. \n\nFor one, the brain does not “remove” any duplicate images, these are effectively used for spatial perception. \n\nAlso, some of the neurons in the optic nerve change their position at the chiasma opticum and follow to the other side of the brain, so collectively neurons originating from one eye actually go to both sides of the brain. So in most cases of healthy functioning visual analysis from both eyes is done as one rather than two discrete images. \n \nThere’s also the fact that one eye is usually dominant and provides the bulk of detailed visual information while the other adds additional info for spatial perception. So effectively there is one dominant image from one eye while the other provides additional details (maybe something like bump-maps). "
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33z67x | what does it mean when hawks and eagles have better eyesight than us? does it mean they can literally zoom in on creatures on the ground, or do they just see things in a higher resolution? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33z67x/eli5what_does_it_mean_when_hawks_and_eagles_have/ | {
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"They can see more detail- they have the equivalent of 20/2 vision, they can see clearly at 20 feet away what a normal human needs to be at 2 feet away to see clearly. They also see a broader spectrum of light than humans, so they can see more colors than we can.",
"Just imagine that Humans see in a resolution of a bad video camera and hawks can see in Full HD. if you play both videos on the same TV, \"Hawk HD\" has much much more information per area and can you can pick up smaller details",
"The fovea of the eye is where our sharpest vision is located. It is the area where we focus on what we are looking at. Humans have one fovea. Hawks have four. Thus they can focus on the small prey on the ground, the ground itself, the horizon, and any trees or objects that might be their way as they dive toward their prey.",
"Very ELI5 answer here. They have more contrast in colors as they are more sensitive to light. In example, we may see the difference between two shades of white and black right next to each other as a tad bit grey, whereas they might see no in between color, and simply black and then white with no transitional color."
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3j2mt3 | what about canned spaghetti makes it taste so different? | I've had spaghetti all around the world but nothing tastes remotely like chef boyardee or the stuff they used to feed us in the lunchroom. What exactly made the canned stuff taste so ....off? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3j2mt3/eli5_what_about_canned_spaghetti_makes_it_taste/ | {
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"So the big ingredient differences between [chef boyardee spaghetti sauce](_URL_1_) and [Prego spaghetti sauce](_URL_0_) are (references to all in one products are things like spaghetti and meatballs or ravioli that include pasta, sauce and meat or cheese in a single product):\n\nIngredient|Chef Boyardee|Prego|Impact\n:--|:-:|:-:|:--\nCarrots|Has them|doesn't|not in most Boyardee all in one cans\nSweetener|Corn Syrup|Sugar|Less sweetener in Boyardee\nOil|Soybean|Canola|0.5g less oil in Boyardee than Prego (but Boyardee adds 2g of fat in meat\nsalt|40% more salt|N/A|Most of the all in one products have different types of salts--potassium chloride aluminum chloride\nonion and garlic|no extract|both dried and extract|onions follow salt in both lists so likely similar amounts excluding extracts\ncheese|Romano|none|there are cheese varieties of Prego\nother|see impact|NA|The sauce doesn't but many all in one products include lactic acid or yeast extract likely to boost vitamin counts, Boyardee includes unnamed spices\n\nI would expect the difference in sodium (and any other salts used in the pasta and sauce products) play the largest role, but the difference in onions and garlic, and nutrient ingredients in boyardee (yeast extract, lactic acid) could be playing a role in the flavor differences as well. "
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"http://www.wegmans.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10052&catalogId=10002&productId=676755",
"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001684OTS?*Version*=1&*entries*=0"
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3as9co | when people do coke in movies, what are they actually sniffing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3as9co/eli5_when_people_do_coke_in_movies_what_are_they/ | {
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"Lots of different recipes. For snorting they use powdered lactose, or a vitamin b power if there are lactose intolerance issues. Also, if the actor is using a straw or something to snort it, they will coat the inside with Vaseline so very little will actually go in the nose. Snorting anything will cause congestion. ",
"In a summer school class, we were broken into groups to do any interpretation of a scene from Romeo And Juliet however we wanted, and my group chose to make the priest a coke fiend. We used powdered sugar, and instead of snorting, the priest blew out his nose to make it disappear. We were in highschool, and this stunt was made up the day before we were to perform (for the class).\n\nNot quite movie-world, but this might be how its done on stage.",
"What I really want to know is if there are any documented cases where the actors actually snorted real cocaine for one scene/one take ???",
"now the smoking......is it tobacco or something else?"
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49vosd | why do we have tonsils? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49vosd/eli5_why_do_we_have_tonsils/ | {
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"Tonsils are lymphatic tissue, meaning tissue that is responsible for capturing, sequestering, and destroying infectious agents. The places in your body that have the most lymphatic tissue are the places that are the easiest to infect through. Your mouth is what you use to eat and breathe, daily, and so your tonsils are located right there at the back of your throat, as prisons and death rows for anything that tries to infect you through your mouth and throat. \n\nBy the way, the tonsils that we think of as \"tonsils\" are actually not the only ones. Those are the palatine tonsils. There are also lingual tonsils (which sit on the back of the tongue and look like really big taste buds) and also pharyngeal tonsils (which are at the top of the throat, where the nasal cavity ends). Those guys typically don't get as swollen or infected as the palatine tonsils, and so they're almost never removed. "
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bpndyd | how is it that water increases friction in small amounts, but decreases it in large amounts? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bpndyd/eli5_how_is_it_that_water_increases_friction_in/ | {
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"Are you talking about surface friction vs submerged resistance?",
"Water is both cohesive (it sticks to itself) and adhesive (it sticks to other things) but these effects are relatively weak and more noticeable on a small scale. When you lick your finger to turn a page, there is a thin layer of molecules which is adhering to your finger and the page, making them sticky. \n\nWhen you have a larger amount of water, like on a water slide, the molecules are still adhering to your butt and to the slide, but there are now bazillions more water molecules in between. The fluid dynamic of them sliding over each other, amplified by gravity pulling you downhill, overpowers the weak forces of cohesion and adhesion."
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8yx341 | how did the first explorers navigate the oceans? | Nowadays we have GPS and all sorts of technologies, which makes navigating really easy. But for the first people who sailed to the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, etc, how did they know how to find their way back ? How do you measure distance, direction where they were headed, etc? To me it's just an endless water desert in any direction you look at.. How did they navigate that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8yx341/eli5_how_did_the_first_explorers_navigate_the/ | {
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"Actually, stars were used to navigate in nearly every regard, including distance and location on sea. This is why stars and constellations have been categorized and named. The North Star was also very important as it was the “north” of traveling. Compasses, once invented, assisted this use of stars too. Stars were a literal lifesaver for navigators in the past. ",
"In the early days of European exploration, you'd make note of the latitude of your destination, head out into the ocean until you reached that latitude, and then sail along that line until, you hoped, you reached the place. There was no way of keeping track of longitude until relatively recently."
]
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4jl7x7 | why trees produce different shapes/sizes of leaves. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jl7x7/eli5why_trees_produce_different_shapessizes_of/ | {
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"Sometimes nature just does stuff because some component of an organism's genetics (its instruction book, if you will) changes due to a mutation and that mutation carries on to its descendants. If it's a mutation that adds some advantage, odds are a little better that it'll be retained in the long term than if it's a mutation that doesn't convey any advantage because the organisms with it are a little better off than the organisms without it. But the \"harmless\" mutations can still occur, and can still get carried on.\n\nTree leaves are like this. Sometimes their leaves have become adapted to specific circumstances that are best for their environment (example: conifers, that put their needles to sleep for the winter rather than losing them), and sometimes their shape isn't really part of some grand survival strategy to work better than other leaves. \n\nSo a maple leaf has lobes but an elm leaf does not. And a birch leaf has teeth around its outside but a lilac bush does not. And an ash tree will have compound leaves with lots of leaflets but a beech's leaves are simple. Each might convey SOME advantage or other, but regardless of whether or not that's true, each does its job and the customized shape isn't enough of a disadvantage to cause that tree to die out. ",
"A thing to remember about evolution (that I often see is either forgotten or never realized) is that so long as a trait works well enough, and doesn't kill an organism or weaken it to the point of applying direct evolutionary pressure, it will remain.\n\nLeaves are a balance between energy expenditure (to grow) and energy production. Trial and error from mutation and different plant branches of the evolutionary tree will lead to variety."
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3jycjh | how come warm water tastes so bad? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jycjh/eli5_how_come_warm_water_tastes_so_bad/ | {
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"Are you boiling fresh water, or using hot water tap? Is it a water bottle left in a car? \n \nEither of those would affect the taste. Boiled fresh/filtered water would taste pure compared to plastic tasting hot car water. \n \nTo me, cold fresh water tastes basically the same as boiled fresh water... just hotter.",
" > cold actually suppresses 'bad actors' that alter (or add to) the taste of water. Any slight impurities or anything that could make the water taste a little 'off' is easier to taste when it's warm. Drink a shitty beer sometime at room temperature vs icy cold. You can drink just about any swill at 4 deg C, not so much at room temp.\n\n\n_URL_0_",
"People register more tastes more when it's closer to our own body temperature. For example, if you ever tasted warm ice cream, you would notice it is a lot sweeter and more flavorful than when it was cold. That's at least how it goes with tap water, there are more dissoluble chemicals and minerals, so your body can register those non-flavorful tastes when it's warmer.",
"Same reason all the crappy macro beer companies want you to drink their beer as cold as you can get it. Up to a point, the warmer something is, the more you can taste.",
"off topic: is there anyone that HATES cold water and prefers warm water? For me, i can drink warm water all day any time and hate hate hate cold water ",
"This is just an assumption:\n\nI believe we evolved to prefer cold water because warm water from a stream or other natural source is likely stagnant and will probably cause illness of some sort.\n\nCold water is more likely to be clean."
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2bzzjz | if ebola is a virus, why can't we just make a vaccine out a weak or dead version of the virus like we do with other vaccines? | I thought flu shots and vaccines are weak/dead versions of the actual virus and our body learns to fight it. Why can't we do this with the ebola virus or any other virus? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bzzjz/eli5_if_ebola_is_a_virus_why_cant_we_just_make_a/ | {
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"text": [
"Many viruses mutate too quickly or have too many different strains to create an effective vaccine, since vaccines generally only work against the precise virus used in the vaccine. I don't know if that's the case for Ebola specifically, but it is for many other viral agents like HIV."
]
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[]
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|
3sbim3 | offensive starbucks cups | I'm really confused about what is offensive about the red cups at starbucks. They seem plain and normal to me, can anyone explain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sbim3/eli5_offensive_starbucks_cups/ | {
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"We live in a society where people can somehow become a frenzied crowd offended by the most mundane things in life. ",
"Snopes has the best explanation of where it came from _URL_0_\n\nThere was some rabble about the more christian neutral cups then Joshua Feuerstein posted a video where he told them his name was \"merry Christmas\" so they would have to put something explicitly christmasy on the cup. \n\n\nThen people got angry about people supposedly getting angry, then other people got angry about people thinking they were angry. then rumors started and people were picking sides of a debate that didn't actually exist until people believed it did. "
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41jetg | why do people like to romanticize monarchies, but then look at dictatorships in the worst light possible? | They seem incredibly similar as systems of government. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41jetg/eli5_why_do_people_like_to_romanticize_monarchies/ | {
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"Monarchies are the product of long tradition. Most people see some inherent value or at least charm in maintaining tradition. When people romanticize monarchy, it's not because they themselves would like to have one.\n\nDictatorships, however, are usually relatively recent governments; with no tradition to back them, they are examined in the ordinary rationalist light that people from republican societies apply to government, and rationally considered dictatorships are pretty awful.",
"There is no difference between an absolute monarchy and a dictatorship. Almost all surviving monarchies are Constitutional Monarchies with a firm democratic presence, where the monarch is little more than a figurehead or spiritual leader. \n\nIf you mean 'why do we romanticize them in literature', it's a simpler answer. The very worst people to place in charge of a country are the people who desire power. In romanticist literature, there is someone who does not desire power but upon whom power is thrust - a Good King, or Prince, or even Princess. \n\nWe like fictional Kings and Queens for the same reason that we like our superheroes to be the products of accident or birth. We view ambition with contempt, and want to believe that only those who do not desire power are fit to wield it.",
"Depends on the Monarchy. For example, as a Brit, I love our Monarchy. Our Queen is great, and the royal family are fantastic people (and great for Tourism). That being said, Politically, they don't do anything. They make no decisions, and we're not at their mercy. Monarchies are often subject to Rose-Tinted Glasses, seen as graceful, fair, and chivalrous.",
"Monarchies tend to go hand in hand with the feudal system, which meant that the King was to some extent limited in his power by the nobility - and it was the nobles which had the most direct influence over the smallfolk. Nobles could also easily raise their own armies if the king got out of hand\n\nDictators tend to be the head of the army, and therefore have no reason to share power with anyone but their nearest and dearest - this gives them complete control over the country and everyone in it."
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73as4n | why do tendons take so long to regrow even though they are non complex and completely internal so no need to get rid of bacteria? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73as4n/eli5_why_do_tendons_take_so_long_to_regrow_even/ | {
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"They're very tough and dense, without any blood vessels within so it's really difficult to get nutrients where they're needed for the repair.",
"Usually the healing process involves blood flowing to the affected area, bringing with it platelets which release growth factors under certain conditions. \n\nTendons do not have a rich vascular supply, and to add to the issue - they're made up of thick strands of collagen which have to get repaired. It takes a few days for blood to reach the area. The blood brings inflammatory cells which stimulate proliferation of tenocytes (tendon cells) to produce collagen. Since you need a lot of collagen, by the time it produces enough, it would have already been weeks.\n\nThe more collagen produced, the less cells are present so healing gets slower and eventually fibrous tissue is formed. \n\nThe entire process takes months and even up to a year.",
"Thank you for these answers! I tore my ACL in May and opted not to have surgery since I don't do many impact based activities and we're hoping it will heal on it's own but it's frustrating to be 6 months in and still have my knee give out. \n"
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4gwoks | why isn't mens clothing as skin-tight/revealing as womens clothing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gwoks/eli5why_isnt_mens_clothing_as_skintightrevealing/ | {
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"Oh my dear young person, you should have been around in the 60's, 70's and 80's. You could count the hairs on each testicle, the clothes were so tight !",
"The objectification of women is strong in the world. So much so people will deny it exists "
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1m5rg4 | why do people go to private universities in the united states | As a Canadian with two degrees this makes no sense to me. There are private universities here but I've met all of three people who have been to them (super-religious folks). However, in the states it seems to me there are lots of Private Uni's which practically do the exact same thing as Public post-secondary institutions for the most part but cost a massive amount more. What's the appeal? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m5rg4/eli5why_do_people_go_to_private_universities_in/ | {
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"It depends. The biggest is prestige/education/career prospects (e.g. Harvard versus State U). Second, the costs are sometimes not that much different, especially if you are an out of state student or have a significant scholarship. Or it could just be because you want a specific experience, which could range from paying the extra bucks to go to a small liberal arts school or a religious university. ",
"It's usually not about religion. I can think of four typical reasons. First, private universities often advertise having better student/teacher ratios, meaning smaller classes and more individual attention. Second, some private universities have very strong alumni networks, which may give graduates better career opportunities after graduation. Third, private universities are often more attractive and have nicer (often more intimate) campuses. \n\nThe final reason is probably the most significant: it's relatively easy to get (non-dischargeable) loans for higher education, and teenagers often have little understanding of debt and the consequences of spending $100,000 on a B.A. degree. \n\nOne final thing to point out: public universities in the U.S. aren't that cheap anymore. Undergraduate tuition at UC Berkeley is over $15,000 per year, and that's if you're a California resident. If you're from another state, you're looking at nearly $40,000 per year. Remember, public universities are only really \"public\" if you're from the same state. And if you're from a state that doesn't have a good public university system, then you're out of luck.",
"First, not all public schools are inexpensive (William & Mary comes to mind as a very pricey public school) and not all private schools are more expensive so instead of replying in terms of public vs private I'll assume you mean more expensive vs less expensive.\n\nThe most common reason is name recognition, which is associated with, but doesn't always mean better quality education (think MIT and Harvard/Princeton). These places have better facilities, more accomplished professors, etc. They also have a large number of successful alumni that show favoritism to fellow alumni. In fact, a very few students get full academic rides to the most famous schools funded by alumni and corporate donations. \n\nThat leads into the other major reason, jobs. A lot of schools are know in industry as a good place to hire new graduates for particular job sectors because of some unique program or other factor. This is especially true of the private engineering schools. While the big defense contractors (Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, etc) may pick up a handful of Georgia Tech or Purdue grads, they will snap up as many Rose-Hulman or Harvey Mudd grads as they can. What good is saving $20k going to a cheaper school if you can get a job with $10k higher starting salary (or a job at all) by going to a higher quality school.\n\nAnother reason often sited for attending more expensive schools would be smaller class sizes. This definitely leads to better education experiences and is supported by countless studies. You won't find small classes at every pricey school though, the most famous schools have too many people that want to go to them. For instance, MIT's undergrad program isn't that great because it is crowded and designed to weed people out (it's their graduate programs that are famous), while the previously mentioned Rose-Hulman and Harvey Mudd have very small class sizes and are constantly ranked in the top 5 undergraduate programs in the country.\n\nFinally, some people do it to attend a religious school.\n\nPersonally, I would guide my children to do Liberal Arts at an inexpensive school and math/science at a small, high-quality institution. I don't see the point in paying a lot to get an English major, but you need a good school to get a quality engineering education.",
"I'll use California as an example. The UC's are obviously awesome (with the exception of Riverside and Merced) so everyone applies to them, but they have really high standards so not everyone gets in. Other than the two I mentioned, all the UC schools are top 100 USNWR which is the go to gauge on schools. Stanford, USC, and Claremont McKenna are also incredible schools, but they're private so no brainer as to why people would want to go there. \n\nLet's say you didn't get into the UCs or USC or Stanford. You now have three choices: \n\nOption #1) go to a Cal State; this a solid option but only SDSU, Fullerton, San Jose State, and detestably Cal State Long Beach are good for Business (some people would throw Chico in purely based on networking), but none of those schools break the top 100. \n\n#2) Go to a private school that isn't necessarily ranked high but has a solid alumni network. In Southern California there are a bunch of schools that rich kids that couldn't get into a UC go to, and they also give scholarships. This option is usually seen as preferable to the Cal States if you can afford it because the respect they get. Examples would be USD, Loyola Marymount, Chapman, Occy, Point Loma, USF, Santa Clara, and some other ones I'm probably forgetting. These schools aren't necessarily ranked better than the Cal States for academics, but pride themselves on alumni networks that the CSUs lack. \n\n3) Go to a community college and transfer to a UC. This is the most cost efficient route barring scholarships (and what I'm doing right now), but you miss out on some traditional parts of the \"college experience\" and it's fairly easy to lose your way at a CC. \n\nTl;dr: Some Private schools are phenomenal and elite (USC, Stanford, and Claremont McKenna) so it's a no brainer, and some are just better than the alternative options available given GPA. ",
"In general I would say that state school students are looking for an education. Those who go to private school are looking for something beyond that = willingness to pay more money (although a lot receive scholarship). \n\nSome attend religious universities for the community and unity and possibility for growth and discovery.\n\nIvy League students are hoping for the top-of-the-line education and a degree that is note-worthy.\n\nIt all depends on what you're image of \"college\" is. And a lot is dependent on the parental's opinion.",
"People attend private universities here because some of them offer the same or better services at the same or better prices than public universities those people can get into.\n\nMy question to you is: why do so few people attend private universities in Canada? I'm guessing a lack of funding versus well-funded public schools.",
"Prestige at many private univerisites that cater to a specific area(s) of study(ies). Also, job prospects through alum connections. You also have higher quality professors who can teach there due to private universities having more enticements for them. "
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27bdqt | programming, how does it differ between different architectures? | ..between x64 and x86 more specifically. I'm aware of the physical differences, and the need to accommodate those within the code.. But I suppose I'm looking for more of an example where a programmer would need to do something different in his/her code to do so. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27bdqt/eli5programming_how_does_it_differ_between/ | {
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"It varies between different programming languages and compilers. Anyway, this sub really isn't this place for this kind of questions. Try /r/Programming or /r/learnprogramming."
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7hfqw5 | why is it that if you refresh/go back/etc. on some websites it will save information you entered but not on others? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7hfqw5/eli5_why_is_it_that_if_you_refreshgo_backetc_on/ | {
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"Its generally really bad form for it to remember stuff like registration information. You want that stuff deleted so if someone steals your laptop they can't just hit back a bunch of time (if you happened to have stuff open at the time) and get all your person info.\n\nBut it depends on the people who coded the website. It should not save sensitive information though...",
"It all depends on the site but it has to do with cookies. Cookies are temporary stored information that are saved within the web browser. Some sites make it so if you’re on a certain page (like a sign up one) it will save the information that was assumed entered correctly. It’s mostly used for convenience but when sites don’t use it, it’s because it can be a security risk.",
"Could be one of a few reasons. Firstly, you have to understand the difference between a standard web form post and the way a \"single page app\" navigates/routes. Many modern sites use these single page apps (or SPAs) for snappier and more responsive applications. This is because rather than posting an entire form and then navigating to a new page and reloading all of the assets again (like the header, footer, etc) it can use JavaScript to dynamically load only what it needs to continue the flow of the user experience. It's called a single page app because technically you never leave the page from a serverside directory standpoint. In these cases, the browser can not perform its normal caching procedures to save values entered into inputs on previous pages because as far as the browser is concerned a previous page does not exist. Now, depending on the power if the framework used to create a SPA, some workarounds may be used to remember model states of each route and repopulate those inputs. It all comes down to how the developer implemented things. \n\nOther than that, cookies can be used to hold session data per domain. A popular method of repopulating data on pages is to use a cookie value to identify the user in some way, pass that to the server, and query a known session for previously entered values. This is more often used for \"continue from where you left off\" systems more so than what your question asks however.",
"Simple answer: it depends how they are written. On a webpage every time you load a page from scratch is a totally new transaction and you've effectively started again. So, by default, when you load a form up again, it will have forgotten, unless the website programmers have explicitly saved what you wrote in last time and filled it in when drawing the page back again.\n\nImagine a conversation between 2 people, one of whom, the Server, has severe face blindness and/or short-term memory problems.\n\nCustomer: can you please get me the info for _URL_0_ please?\n\nServer: yes, here you go.\n\nCustomer: OK, thanks. Hmm... Can you get me the info for _URL_0_/interesting-news-story please?\n\nServer: yes, here you go.\n\nok that's fine, it doesn't matter he can't remember who you are because everyone sees the same stuff.\n\nCustomer: I want to log in so I can demonstrate to these idiots how correct my opinions are. Server, can you please send this username and password to _URL_0_/login please?\n\nServer: Yes. Here you go.\n\n[Server sends back a custom page with a delicious cookie]\n\nCustomer: OK now send this comment to nytimes,com/speak-your-brains \"lol no libtard wtf\"\n\nServer: can't sorry, I need to know know who you are.\n\nCustomer: OK now send this comment to nytimes,com/speak-your-brains \"lol no libtard wtf\" - here is my cookie.\n\nServer: [looks at chart of photos of cookies and recognises yours (this is a weird metaphor)] Ah yes, Customer. I will post this and return a page.\n\nso actually you need to send the server who you are every time you make a request (that's what's in a Cookie). This won't contain your username and password but it will contain some kind of identifier, so they server will know who you are each time, and will look up and see that you logged in a bit earlier. OR it will see that you filled in part of a form earlier. To complicate things even more, you'll have a cookie given _every time_ you visit a website so you can be identified whether you logged in or not.\n\nEr rrr this got really rambling, I'll leave it to others to clarify my incredible mixed metaphor\n"
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2rytka | why does google offer so many services for free? | Some I understand, like ads on the search engine/youtube make it profitable, but things like Google Earth, the maps app on iOS, and Google translate seem like extremely useful services you could charge for, but they're free, how come? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rytka/eli5_why_does_google_offer_so_many_services_for/ | {
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"I wouldn't say I know for sure, but I imagine it has to do with their analytical division for data collection and also because they can plaster their own ads on everything. Double money for ad revenue AND being the ad service. I'd also imagine they're pretty keen on building the image of their brand through offering free professional services, then charging if you want to take that service to the next level.",
"If you are not the customer you are the product.\n\nGoogle makes tons of money from ads, the more they know about you the better they can target the ads you see. The more things you do with them or through them the more they know about you.",
"One reason is that if they charged for these services, people would balk and move to a competitor that offered a similar service for free. Most people would deal with a slightly altered/suboptimal experience to avoid paying for something they only use occasionally .\n\nSecond, they aren't making money directly from those products, and probably never could. They are making money from the adds served in (some) of the products, as well as the \"free\" positive advertising. You use G Translate, and think, \"this is great, I'll use other google services too\" allowing to google to make money on the ads served up. \n\nThird, they are making money on the data you are collecting. This is basically the facebook business model. They collect a ton of data from all the people using their services, then use that data for various means and/or sell it to interested parties. ",
"There are also some services they create that look like products, but create data or test technology for non-obvious purposes. Google Voice voicemail transcription service was hugely useful, but its true purpose was to learn how to do voice recognition, which is now used by Google Glass and Google Now, etc."
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1voodr | the differences between heavy cream, whipping cream, evaporated milk, half-and-half, etc. | There are so many milk based products out there. How are they different chemically and what are common recipes that use them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1voodr/eli5_the_differences_between_heavy_cream_whipping/ | {
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"milk is quite a fatty substance. they're healthy fats though. whole milk is mostly as it is when it comes out the cow, except it's boiled and homogenized. homogenization is blending it so that it doesnt separate like it would naturally do. \n\ncream comes out of the cow at the same time as the milk. heavy or double cream is just that. when it has a high percentage of butter fats in it, it's suitable for whipping. whipped cream is simply made by bashing air into little fat pockets. if you keep beating it for long enough, you get butter.\n\nthe cream that doesnt have the right percentage of butterfat in it to whip, is used for half and half. that's half cream and half milk. \n\nevaporated milk is just that. the water's been evaporated and it's been sterilized so it can last a lot longer. condensed milk is basically very similar but with a lot of added sugar, which increases it's shelflife. \n\nrecipes..there's hundreds. they mostly add a touch of luxury and smoothness to whatever you're making. thicker cream is better when you want to use just a extra little liquid for that purpose, thinner cream when volume doesnt matter so much, and spreading it out is more important.\n\nsource: dad's a dairyfarmer."
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9uvpqx | why are the senate and house so different? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9uvpqx/eli5_why_are_the_senate_and_house_so_different/ | {
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"Congressional districts are smaller, which can lead to more frequent change if a large push from one side turns out. Running for Senate is a much bigger undertaking, and it’s harder to push out an incumbent that is well known through the entire state.",
"The main reason is that the entire house is elected every two years (such as today), but only 1/3 of the senate is elected.\n\nSo it's not that the senate \"went red\" it's that most of the senate seats that were up for reelection were democratic seats, so it was very difficult for them to have not only held their seats but taken over republican seats. 65 senate seats weren't up in this election, of those 42 were republican. So the worst technically possible outcome for republicans was a 42-58 split. \n\nAlso, the house has seats based on population, so big states will have more seats. But the senate has two seats per state regardless of size. Low population states tend to be republican due to being more rural, and so rural areas (and so republican areas) tend to have more republicans.",
"There are a few dynamics at play with this. The most significant is the fact that, regardless of population, each state gets two senators. This leads to rural states (which are more likely to vote conservative in recent times) being over-represented. A “ruby red” state like Wyoming provides little opportunity for Democrats as it has only one House Republican but still two senators. \n\nAlso, while you may have a district or two that is competitive for Democrats in a traditionally red state, they often get out-voted by the surrounding red districts. Texas tonight is a great example where you have multiple blue districts in urban areas that are simply not enough to off-set the numerous red, rural counties in a state wide senate race. \n\nIt’s important to remember too that many of the senate seats up for grabs today were held by Democrats, and therefore the party had very limited opportunities to increase their advantage. \n\nHope this helps!\n\nEdited: errors from typing on mobile\n\nEdit2: I have to hang ‘em up guys. I’m tired. I’ve answered the same question several times below about senate representation, but I’m starting to get the impression that people are looking more to pick a partisan fight than talk about how each house of congress can be affected differently in an election (which was OPs original question, badly rephrased). ",
"The districts are different. A senator represents the *entire* state and therefore *all* of the state votes for their senators. Majority wins, simple as that. Congressional districts are sometimes wacky-looking districts based on population. ([Gerrymandering](_URL_0_) or the movement of congressional districts to benefit one party play a part in this, too). Take a look at [Illinois’ congressional map](_URL_1_). It’s (supposed to be) fair so that one ‘little’ district’s congressman has the same vote in the House of Representatives as one from a ‘big’ district so that everyone’s voice is heard on the ground-floor of Congress, where most legislation begins. Chicago-area’s priorities, concerns, and frustrations are different from the more rural areas of the state. It’s human nature.\n\nWhat you’re seeing and reading with regards to the Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives is a variety of districts across the country collectively stating they want a change.\n\nOther things play into this. Apart from gerrymandering, Senators hold their seats for a longer period. It takes more time to ‘vote them out’ than a State Representative. Couple that with a simple ‘majority rules’ for a Senate seat (In Illinois, Chicagoland gets their way with Senators), with a more dynamic Representative system.",
"Non American here and don't want to make a whole new thread but can someone ELI5 how the whole system works? Does the house introduce a bill/law and then if it passes it goes to the Senate? I feel like I knew how it worked at one point in my life but haven't really thought about it for years.",
"The Senate is the more stable chamber of Congress. What I mean by that is that Senators serve a 6 year term while House members serve a 2 year term. The instability comes in with the entire House being elected every 2 years . All 435 members up for grabs. However, the Senate only elects one-third of its members at a time. This means it takes several election cycles for the Senate to change party.",
"Just adding my 2 cents\n\nThe house is supposed to be rash and quick to change. They are elected every 2 years so it can change quickly with the population.\n\nThe senate is Supposed to be level headed and stand back and say , not so fast lets think this over.\n\nAnd its set up so that every state can have a say. Small states would just be pushed a side if it was just the house. going back to the founding of america the small states didn't want to join if Virginia was just going to push them around. So if you have the house you can have your power in numbers and you equalize it in the senate",
"The source fundamentally came down to a compromise when the US founders drew up the Constitution. The little states didn't want to be bullied around by the big states, so they made one house of Congress based on population, and in the other, the same amount of votes (2) per state.\n\nCurrently, folks from the city overwhelmingly vote blue, and from the country vote red, so the Republicans have an advantage given how many states are low-population and rural.\n\nThere was also just kinda of an accident that a bunch of Senate held by Democrats were up for reelection, so they had to defend several more seats than the Republicans.",
"It seems the main power is held by the Senate, those are the real key holders. The Senate has 2 Senators per state regardless of population. The House is like a counterpart to give some power to the people. \nNot all Senate seats were up for a vote, but only a part which happend to be mostly Democrats. \nIt's a very interesting system and a very well working one, the success of the nation speaks for that. \n",
"There are 100 Senators. Of these, 2018 saw elections for 35 seats. So the majority of Senate seats were not in contention tonight. This left a narrow path for the Democrats to flip the Senate and they came up short.\n\nMeanwhile, all 435 House seats were up for grabs today. This gave the Democrats much more room to hold their solid districts and pick battlegrounds to focus on in their much wider path towards flipping the House.",
"They are different because they have different functions which are defined in the US Constitution. But why they are going different ways in terms of who is getting elected is because Senators are elected every 6 years, and Congressmen are elected every 2 years. Therefore not every Senator runs in every election. In this election, more Democrats defended their seat than Republicans, so there is a greater chance for them to lose because they are exposed. And Congresmen are elected *directly* by the people of their district. So a state with a lot of Republicans can elect a Republican Senator, while a district can vote for a Democrat. ",
"The House is up for election every two years. So the candidates contesting are those that were elected in 2016. Mid-term elections tend to see a backlash against the party of the sitting president (2006, 2010, and 2014 all saw this), so it's not a surprise that the House would swing towards the Democrats. \n\nThe Senate is a different story. Only one-third of the Senate is up for election every two years, with each individual Senator up after six years. So the Senators up for election are ONLY those that were elected in 2012. \n\nWell, 2012 was a great year for the Democrats. It was Obama's second presidential victory, and a number of Democratic Senators in swing or GOP-leaning states were elected on Obama's coat-tails. The problem is that there is no 'Obama Wave' helping these Senators in 2018, so especially in the Trump states, it is much harder for these Senators to be elected.\n\n(Any Democratic House representatives who were swept in on Obama's coat-tails in 2012 had to face re-election in 2014 and 2016, so would have been 'swept out' already)\n\nSo it's not really that the Republicans did super well in the Senate today. It's more that the Democrats did super well in 2012, and this is just reversion to a more 'normal' voting pattern. The Republican victories were in traditionally pro-GOP and pro-Trump states; IN, ND, and MO.",
"The key difference is that there simply weren't that many republican senate seats up for election this year.\n\nDemocrats winning the Senate was always going to be extremely unlikely simply because only a 3rd of the seats were up for election, and 26 of those were democratic seats, and included a few like North Dakota, and Missouri which are traditionally red states. Meanwhile, the remaining republican senate seats up for election were mostly in seats that are usually pretty safe.\n\nIn the House though, the entire House is up every 2 years, and while most seats on both sides of the aisle are fairly safe, there were a lot of Republican seats deemed up for grabs because they had representatives in a lot of districts Hillary Clinton won in 2016, or they had Republican incumbents retiring, or their district lines had been re-drawn.",
"I don't really know what's been said here so far, but I'll just throw in my two cents.\n\nThe Senate and the House are different in two fundamental senses. One is who they are meant to serve and represent, and the other is their role in legislation (the processes of creating laws).\n\nThe House and the Senate represent two different powers in the U.S. legislative process. The House represents the actual population of the United States. There are 435 seats in the House which are distributed based on population, which is why California had a shitload of house representatives, and states like Alaska and Wyoming have only like, one. In this way, the priorities of the general population are being represented in legislation.\n\nThe Senate has two senators present per state, and each state has the same amount of senators. In this way, the states are being represented in the legislative process. Because the number of sentors is the same for each state, this is a mechanism by which states like Alaska and Wyoming can have an actual voice in the process, instead of being way, way underrepresented in the policy-creating process.\n\nWith regard to the actual duty of each body, bills are created and then have to be passed by the House first. Once they pass through the house they are handed to the Senate. If they pass the Senate they are then given to the president, who can either sign them, or veto them.\n\nThat's the basics of the whole thing. I honestly don't know a whole lot more than that.",
"The senate doesnt have proportional representation and gives states 2 representatives regardless of their population. The house is broken into districts proportionally according to population as collected by the census. Republicans benefit from being minority of the population in overrepresented areas. ",
"Also, in the Senate, California (pop: 40 million) is equal in representation to North Dakota (pop: 750 thousand) - each with two Senators. In the house California has 53 reps vs. 1 for North Dakota.",
"The House is meant to be more fluid, fast-acting, and in line with the immediate thoughts of the people. \n\nThe Senate is meant to have less shifting ideology and more free from any current populist desires of the people . Originally Senators were not elected, but appointed by the state in order to further remove them from the current wills of the people. \n\nThey balance each other, but the Senate is meant to have more power.",
"It important to realize that the senate is more important than the house. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies next year (she is hanging on by a thread) trump will nominate a conservative judge, probably a woman. As long as the dems don't try to stall it with a \"she raped me when I was 15\" it will cement the Supreme Court in red country for decades. ",
"If I understand your question correctly, it's because each state gets two senators no matter what the population is. But the number of representatives is based on population.\n\nRed states tend to have lower populations than blue states. So a state like California has two Democratic senators and 53 representatives (39 blue), and a state like Wyoming has two Republican senators and only 1 representative (red).\n\nThat's how the Senate can be more Republican than the House. \n\nAlso, as others have pointed out, we vote for representatives every two years, but we only vote for senators every six years. Elections for the senate are staggered so that only 1/3 are up for election each two years.",
"There are a number of congressional districts per state. The majority of the state's population may vote republican while a few districts are heavily democrat.",
"Once upon a time, the Senate was appointed by Governors and the House was elected by the people. This meant the Senate represented the interests of the Government and wasn’t beholden to the whims of the people, while the House represented the people. \n\nSince bills have to pass through both the House and the Senate, this meant that laws were in the best interest of the Government and the people.\n\nWith the passage of the 17th amendment, Senators became directly elected by the people as opposed to appointed. This means both Houses of Congress pander to people rather than long term stability in the government. \n\nI credit the passage of this amendment to massive increases in the National Debt as well as the Senate becoming more polarized. \n\n#repealthe17th",
"The house was supposed to represent the people's interest directly. the Senate was supposed to represent the states interest directly.\n\nAround the civil war, states rights got swallowed up in the two party system and the separation basically went away. ",
"you really, really need to understand this.\n\nThe compromise that created this country's form of government was to have two chambers. One chamber represents the people and is derived of representatives (that are supposed to be) based on the population of the several states. They have terms limited to 2 years. They can run for re-election as many times as the people want to elect them. The more populated the state, the more reps there are from that state. They are supposed to be the direct reps of the people, this is why there are rules like the one that says any and all spending bills must originate from the House.\n\nThe Senate is based on equal representation of the states. 2 senators per state, regardless of population. When the govt was created, state govts selected their senators because the senators dont represent the people, per se, they were intended to represent the states. Which is why they have 6 year terms and the terms are staggered with 1/3 of the Senate terms expiring every 2 years. \n\nThis is how the framers and builders of the Constitution, being from vastly different states with vastly differing goals and populations came to an agreement on how equal representation would happen.\n\nedit: why is the voting going the way it is? Look at Texas map of votes. Overlay the House map and look at districts. Some are red some are blue. Each House district has only the two, or however many, reps eligible for that district. But the entire state votes for Senate, so all districts have the same choices. In a statewide race in Texas there are slightly more R voters than D voters. So, while Austin voted for a D rep, the entire state voted for a R Senator.",
"Well, The Senate controls the Republic but is actually a Sith Lord and his main aim is to turn it into a Galactic Empire. House is just a doctor.",
"Parties tend to forget that it's about the Candidate more than ideology in many cases. Whem you run bad Candidates, you lose.\n\nThe other issue is that House of Reps are smaller districts and there are more of them. The Senate Elections are Statewide Races.\n\nThe reality is that BOTH of the major parties want to steal your property and your labor, just in different ways. They love to control peoples lives (or at least for their own gain).",
"Most voters don't vote for ideas. They vote for candidates. They vote for who they like, not for who they think will legislate effectively."
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1lj4nn | different kinds of therapies (cognitive, behavioral, etc). | What are the main ones, and what is the difference among them? When each is one is recommended?
Also, do therapists specialize in one or few types, or can they do any kind? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lj4nn/eli5_different_kinds_of_therapies_cognitive/ | {
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"Cognitive therapy aims to change your thinking processes so that you can rationalise problems and anxieties better. Behavioural therapy aims to change your actions to break out of a cycle or get into a better routine and making you feel better/more productive as a result. Therapists are trained in both and choose which one to focus on based on what they think the client would benefit from most."
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3mvsgc | would a "universal basic income" lead to communism? | Seems like the two are second cousins. Yeah, a basic income structure is not a form of government but my rudimentary understanding of Marxist communism was this was pretty much a fundamental tenet [of it]. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mvsgc/eli5_would_a_universal_basic_income_lead_to/ | {
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"Communism is a means to an end. Basic Income is a different means to a different end. About all they have in common with each other is that they are contrary to the principles of Capitalism. For some folks, that's enough.",
"Basic income was advocated for by Milton Friedman; after Adam Smith, he's probably the most influential free market economist.\n\nCommunism has nothing to do with basic income, which is completely compatible with capitalism. Communist is an economic system in which all property is communally owned and manufacturing depends on need rather than profit. Basic income is a policy in which all people are given a small amount of money to ensure they have just enough to live on.",
"Socialism more like it. Think of basic income as just another thing the government provide for all of societies benefit. For example everyone gets free roads, free schools, free police service, free healthcare(if you live in the civilized world). And we already have programs to help people that are out of a job and poor. Why shouldn't we make sure no one starves and has a roof over their head?\n\nA basic income would be a livable wage, but hardly a life of luxury. People would still want to work to increase what they get. And people working and earning a fair bit would be taxed to essentially give back their basic income, as they no longer need it.\n\nAnd really, we have to make changes to our economic system as there will simply be fewer and fewer jobs available. Robots and computers will be able to replace a big part of the working force, and then a lot of people will be out of a job by no fault of their own.\n\n[I think you might find this interesting](_URL_0_)",
"The big difference is that communism goes far beyond sharing of income, it also requires you to share the products of your labor and really every aspect of life. Under basic income, an entrepreneur can still make a lot of money and keep it to himself (after tax of course ;)"
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80dfht | why and how does full moon affect tides? how is full moon any different to the other stages of the moon? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/80dfht/eli5_why_and_how_does_full_moon_affect_tides_how/ | {
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"Because the sun also affects the tides as well. When the moon is full (or new), the Moon, Earth, and Sun are all lined up, meaning the gravitational effect the Sun and Moon have on the tides are combined and at full strength. These are called ~~\"neap\"~~ \"spring\" tides.\n\nThis is contrasted when the Moon, Earth, and Sun form a 90 degree angle (First or third quarter) and the Sun and Moon's gravitational pull work against each other."
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3u33s3 | how come a mother's mother is called a grandmother, but a mother's aunt is called a great aunt and not a grand aunt? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3u33s3/eli5_how_come_a_mothers_mother_is_called_a/ | {
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"according to [this source](_URL_0_) Grand aunt is also acceptable. In this case grand and great are synonymous but grand is derived from French where great is derived from Old English"
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19rlwm | why aren't polygamist rights treated similarly to gay rights? | Alright, I'll first start this off saying I am a supporter of equality for the LGBT community and support the legalization and recognition of gay rights.
So, I was wondering, why isn't polygamy given the same treatment, where people should be free to multiply marry if they would like to. I'm guessing it is because of the sexist, usually male-centric, and cult-religious association to polygamy, but if it allowed a woman to have multiple husbands, or for homosexual/mixed polygamic relationships (5 guys, or 5 chicks, or 3 dudes and 3 chicks, for example), then why isn't the issue given similar treatment. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19rlwm/eli5_why_arent_polygamist_rights_treated/ | {
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"I don't have a definitive answer, but I get the feeling that it's usually a mix of those reasons:\n\n1. (some) supporters of LGBT rights don't get polyamory just as your average opponent of gay marriage doesn't get how two dudes or two chicks can love each other or would form a stable relationship. In the mind of a lot of people multiple partners means wild orgies on drugs and a lot of drama.\n2. practicality. If we allow marriages between 3 people, why not 4 people? What happens if some folks get super freaky and want to form a 100 person marriage? How is child support calculated in this marriage? Is divorce some kind of vote between the persons? How does divorcing from two other people work?\n\nedit: clarity",
"If you accept (as most do today) that sexuality is something you're born with rather than learned behaviour, then it's fairly easy to see that discrimination against the way you are is very different from discrimination against the way you want to live your life.\n\nSo telling gay people they can only marry if they do so with someone of the opposite sex is effectively asking them to deny something that's part of their genetic makeup. Telling people they can only marry a single person at a time is a restriction on their lifestyle choice. The two are not really at all analogous.",
"Theoretically, the same argument could be made: if it happens between consenting adults, why should society have a say in that?\n\nBut in practical termps, polygamy is not always balanced. You don't just have the rare polyamorous people getting together, you often have peer pressure towards an imposed model (typically one man with several wives). So even though the wives may consent to that, they might be doing so because of societal pressure rather than by preference. The law is a way to protect such situations where one gender has an upper hand. But it raises serious issures regarding freedom of choice.\n",
"It is a legal spaghetti mess.",
"Polygamy is a far more complicated change - to make polygamy work, you have to rewrite every law about what a marriage is, what the rights connected to it are, and so on.\n\nFor example, if A, B and C are all married to each other, what happens when they divorce? Does each get 1/3 of the household income paid to them in alimony? What if C wants to divorce B but stay with A? What if C wants to marry D as well as A and B, but B doesn't want to marry D?\n\nWho gets the visitation rights in hospital? Or healthcare benefits? Or child custody? How do you tax them?\n\nWith gay marriage, all you're doing is changing the list of people who can get married, you're not changing the nature of the legal relationship as you would if you add more than two parties.\n\nNote, that doesn't mean that we _shouldn't_ do it, or that it's morally wrong or right to have polygamous marriage, only that it's not the same as allowing gay marriage and it's much harder to actually implement the changes.",
"Polygamy has a long history of a patriarchal system of female subjugation and near enslavement. \n\n\nWhile some people may practice this as a relationship of equals it is hard to separate from the many groups that use this practice to abuse women. \n\n\nAlso we must remember the central purpose of the legal institution of marriage is to lesson the burden on families through tax incentives and to create a method to legally create new core families/bloodlines. Polygamy muddy’s the water here as the bloodlines are vague and the you have more adult (in theory) able to contribute to a family unit so tax incentives are less needed. \n\n\nThe historical side is that Polygamy is a very non-western family model one that was rarely embraced compared to partnerships and all traditions of it come from singular men and multiple women in a harem-like state. It lacks appeal from women's groups (for obvious reasons) which make up a large part of the liberal base which would be the largest voting block to push for legalization.\n",
"It is pretty much a cut and paste job to include gay marriage into the existing legal framework for marriage.\n\nPlural marriage is a lot trickier. Divorce, property rights, parental rights, not only are they inherently more complicated, but they lack the centuries of legal precendence that produced the modern marriage framwork. Plural marriage is just plain hard to work out legally.\n\nIn addition, there is a social harm case to be made. Granted, this argument has been wrongly applied to gay marriage, but I'd say the case against plural marriage is much stronger. I don't deny the possibility that more than two people can enter into a loving, equitable long term relationship, but my experience tells me it is pretty rare. Most examples of plural marriage are from male dominated cultures that grant women few rights, and force them to seek the economic and often physical protection of a man. Abuse, forced marriage, and underaged marriage are the norm. It also increases economic disparity, as every extra wife a rich man has is another poor man who has to stay single. So the question is, are the rights of a few legitimate polygamists worth the social harm legitmizing the practice will cause?\n",
"Discrimination is legal.\n\nThere are a few well-defined exceptions, including sex/gender, religion and race.\n\nMarriage as it is now defined (legally) violates one of these exceptions since it clearly discriminates based on the sex/gender of the people wanting to get marries:\n\n\"gay marriage\" is perfectly legal right now, so long as a gay man marries a gay woman. A heterosexual man cannot marry another heterosexual man, however. This is important! (It is also blatantly illegal, and I have yet to see a convincing argument to the contrary.)\n\nIf a man can marry a woman, but a man cannot marry a man, then that is discrimkinati0on based on the sex/gender of the people, just like it is racial discrimination if a black man who was allowed to marry a black woman could not marry a white woman.\n\nMaking poly-marriages illegal does not violate any of the well-established categories that the law may not discriminate against.",
"Sorry, but I'm currently covering Windsor v. US, the DOMA case, in law school and these \"But the laws will change!!!\" argument is kindly said, bullshit. It sounds like the garbage that BLAG pulls out of it's butt in justifying why Congress should strip federal marriage rights from state approved marriages.\n\nLogistics are NOT the issue. I'm sure all these arguments existed when blacks got votive rights. When Title VII was passed to prevent women from workplace discrimination. When the first states were enacting gay marriage.\n\nComplications in the law could be an issue, but don't say that is the reason that polygamy isn't legal. That's the cheap answer. The real reason is because it's not socially acceptable and I don't see it changing in our lifetimes. I applaud the people with the balls to admit this side of the argument."
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2b6744 | the hierarchy of the catholic church: pope, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests, deacons | ... As well as any others I forgot (patriarchs?) what are their individual responsibilities? Who do they report to? When and what on? Are there checks and balances? How do they raise their status? How many are there? Someone please explain the positions and politics of the ranks of the Carholic Church to this agnostic. My dad is a non-practicing Catholic so he can't explain much to me and I want to better understand how this all works. Thank you all! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b6744/eli5_the_hierarchy_of_the_catholic_church_pope/ | {
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"Deacons aren't ordained, which all the others are. They are member of the congregation that help out.\n\nPriests are ordained in the church and run a church/chapel alone, or with (an)other priest(s). They number approximately 400 000. The requirements are being a man, being unmarried, remaining celibate and a college degree in catholic philosophy and divinity.\n\nBishops are still priests, but they are like the regional management, and operate out of cathedrals. They number about 5000. To be a bishop, you must be a man, be at least 35, have a PhD in Theology and wait for one of the current Bishops to die, or retire at age 75. But there is also a secret list that you must be on in order to be eligible.\n\nArchbishops are like Cardinals. Both are appointed by the pope, both are technically still bishops. Except that the Cardinals (who under under 80 years of age) also have the added responsibility of electing the new pope.\n\nThe Pope is the head of the Catholic church and the head of the Holy See, which is the corporation that is the catholic church. Technically, any Catholic man can be elected to become Pope, but the last time that happened was 600 years ago. More often one of the Cardinals is elected.\n\nThis video should help _URL_0_",
"This is going to be confusing -- > \n\nFrom the bottom up:\n\n* Deacon: A deacon is some Joe Smoe who was trained to read the bible, and preform mass. Usualy only for rural places where a priest isn't always available.\n\n* Priest: Front line of the church. Preforms mass, confers **most** sacraments (eucharist, marriage, baptism, reconciliation, anointing of the sick. Must have a masters in theology and go through a \"training program\" with the church\n\n* Bishop: the bishop is the \"commander\" of the priests in his dioceses. They report to him. The bishop leads mass in a cathedral, and can confer **all** the sacraments. (There are seven, the bishop can confer Holy Orders and Conformation while a priest cannot) A short list of possible candidates is maintained by bishops in the area, and it is sent to the Apostolic Nuncio, who picks who he thinks is the best 3 candidates(or rejects them all, and tells them to start over). That is then sent to the Vatican council who selects one(or tells the apostolic nuncio to start over)\n\n* Cardinal: Bishop with more to do. They technically aren't hirer than bishops (and Bishops do NOT report to cardinals), but pretty much are. They reside in there cathedrals around the world, but travel to the Vatican to vote in the Vatican Council. This is the body that elects the new pope. To become a Cardinal, the current pope needs to appoint you as one.\n\n* The Pope: His Holiness is the head of the Catholic Church. Literately his word it Theological Law. The Pope is elected by the Vatican Council, with some ridiculous electing rules i don't care to get into.\n\n[CGP Grey's *How to Become Pope*](_URL_0_) is the best explication for not reading\n\nSource: I teach CCD"
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3gpdtp | what happens to my old memories and skills after a brain transplant? am i the new persons brain now? do i have their memories and skills? am i still me? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gpdtp/eli5_what_happens_to_my_old_memories_and_skills/ | {
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"Everything that is you, is in your brain. So if we took out your brain from your body and put someones else's brain in. \"You\" would be dead and the other person would now be in your body.",
"Isn't this question literally unanswerable at the moment? Brain transplant has never been done",
"You are a lump of sentient jelly piloting a bone mech. Everything about you that is \"you\" is your brain, your thoughts, your memories etc. If you switched with someone else you would still be you but in a different body. It might help if you think of your body as a vehicle and your brain as the pilot."
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2y8955 | what is continuous compounding? | Its supposed to be compounding when the time periods are infinity small, but wouldn't that instantly make the amount become infinity as long as interest > 1?
Edit: Thanks guys :D | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2y8955/eli5_what_is_continuous_compounding/ | {
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"The effect your describing is misleading. If my bank account gives me 6 cents per dollar I have in the bank in interest, you might say I get 6% interest. How often this is compounded(figured out and added) is important. \n\nIts always 6% per year, but what if it's calculated annually? Dec31st roles around, my dollar is now 1.06. Gravy, right? Now let's do it monthly. After January I get my interest, 1/12th of 6% interest is .5% interest(remember I get this twelve times). .5% of my dollar is half a cent, now my bank has 1.005 in it. \n\nThis where things start to compound. That .005 attached at the end is now used in February's interest calculation, so I'm making interest on my interest! So on Feb 28th, I get to add my .5% interest and its .5% of 1.005 which is clearly going to be a bigger number than .5% of 1.00. \n\nThis is compounding interest and it has ramifications in tons of fields. What's important to note is that you can't just say \"Well I want it make interest on my interest so fast its going to spike to a infinity\". Think about what's added.\n\nWhen we went from annually to monthly, our calculation dropped from 6% to .5% because I broke my interest up into 12 pieces. What happens if I do my calculation every day? My percentage daily and is going to plummet. Yes, it will always be a higher amount, but due to the interest rate being so incredibly small that after a certain point we plateau and by compounding every minute or second or millisecond we just can't seem to get much higher. Its always higher, just not by very much.\n\nIt just so happens we have a constant that describes the relationship between the plateau and the interest rate when compounding, as its an important number in mathematics and that's Euler's constant, also known as e. I'd heavily encourage you to go check the wiki article for this if your generally hateful towards letters in your math, its actually quite straight forward if you followed my explanation.\n\n_URL_0_\n"
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3m2gg1 | what's up with the cern drama, what are they trying to do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3m2gg1/eli5whats_up_with_the_cern_drama_what_are_they/ | {
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"What CERN drama? I can find nothing significant about CERN in the news. Are you sure you didn't find a five year old fear-mongering website about how \"oh the LHC will destroy the wooooorrrrlldddd!!!!1!\"",
"It's business as usual. With the LHC, specifically, collisions are continuing at 13 TeV with 25 ns bunch spacing. This has been the case for the last few weeks.\n\nThe [schedule](_URL_1_) is public, the [morning meetings](_URL_2_) are public, and the [online monitoring plots](_URL_0_) are public. That doesn't stop certain people from completely making stuff up, presumably in order to draw views to their nutty YouTube videos."
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3i6tvr | why are modern superhero comics more darker than the classic ones? | Usually in DC and Marvel, the old comics are so cheerful and bright, but as they progress through the years more blood and deaths happen. Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i6tvr/eli5_why_are_modern_superhero_comics_more_darker/ | {
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"The medium changes to fit the audience. A lot of the main audience were kids/young teens when they first started and now they've grown up and demand more mature content, which usually equals darker and grittier. It also seems to be what the average person wants these days, it's why the Batman movies got a super gritty reboot in The Dark Knight and why super dark action movies are all the rage. ",
"People wanted darker stuff, back in the older days we wanted more hope. But today we prefer to see our hero's struggle and feel worse than we do. "
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1irada | the practices/beliefs of the jewish religion. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1irada/eli5_the_practicesbeliefs_of_the_jewish_religion/ | {
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"Judaism is a monotheistic religion - i.e., we believe in \"One God\", indivisible. The foundation of Judaism is found within the Torah (a.k.a. the old testament) wherein you will find every law (halachah) that a Jew must follow. These are referred to as \"mitzvot\". There are 613 Mitzvot. \nThese concern everything from dietary law, to dress, to marriage and death. A significant portion of mitzvot concern laws related to the Sabbath.\n\nThe hebrew calender is neither lunar nor solar. Technically, it is a combination of both. There are 13 months but sometimes there is a leap month.\n\nJews are huge on life cycle celebrations (birth, bar mitzvah, marriage, death) and have many, many holidays. There is only one Jewish month without a holiday.\n\nThe most important holidays are pesach (passover) and yom kippur (the high holy days refer to the 10 day period before yom kippur).\n\nPassover commemorates the exodus from egypt (moses and the israelites) and Yom Kippur is the day of atonement - supposedly, when God writes in the book of life your fate for the following year (this is why you atone).\n\n\n\n",
"As Scloam said, Judaism is a monotheistic religion, as in one God. There are a few different subdivisions of Jews; the major ones are as follows:\n\nAshkenazi = Jews from Central and Eastern European \nSephardic = Jews from Portugal and Spain\n\nYou'll find that the majority of Indian and Chinese Jews are Sephardic. There are some cultural differences between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, especially in observing the holidays.\n\n\nReligious observance breakdown: \nReform Jews - least observant. Probably attend synagogue for the high holidays (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur). Probably get bar/batmitzvah'd. \n\nConservative Jews - Definitely circumcised. Definitely attend synagogue for the high holidays. Probably observe Sukkoth, Hannukkah, Purim, and Passover as well. Probably observe Shabbat rituals. Possibly keep kosher all the time, definitely keep kosher for Passover. Might go to synagogue consistently.\n\nOrthodox Jews - Definitely circumcised. Strictly attend synagogue consistently and take part in the service (well, males do, at least.) Strictly observe all holidays, including Shabbat. Strictly keep kosher all the time.\n\nUltra-orthodox Jews - Everything from the Orthodox list, with the addition of customary dress (like payos, the sidelocks/curls) and separation from general society. Strict observance of the religious texts to determine day-to-day activity and societal structure.\n\n**Here is how I was raised as a Conservative Jewish girl (Ashkenazi, born in America) :**\n\nMy brothers were all circumcised. I had an official baby-naming, and was given both an English and Hebrew name. My dad raised me with stories from the Old Testament. Girls usually get Bat Mitzvah'd at 12 while boys get Bar Mitzvah'd at 13, but my dad had an Orthodox upbringing and thought it was strange for me to get Bat Mitzvah'd, that I was inherently incapable of leading a synagogue service because of my gender. So I didn't do it until I was 13. Like most American Conservative Jewish girls, I could read Hebrew but couldn't speak it, so my Bat Mitzvah was mostly memorization.\n\nWe keep kosher in my household in a Conservative way. That means we don't eat pork or certain seafood (no bottom feeders). We can eat poultry and some fish, but the only meat we can eat must chew its cud and have cloven hoofs. So for example, deer are fine but rabbit is not. Additionally, we don't mix meat and dairy in the same meal or the same dish. We have two separate sets of dishes, silverware, tupperware, the works. (but only one dishwasher, although we do separate loads).\n\nShabbat starts at sundown Friday night and ends an hour after sundown Saturday night (this 25 hour span that starts at night is typical for Jewish holidays). Unlike the Orthodox, we feel free to use electricity, to cook, and to do day-to-day chores like loading the dishwasher. However we try to abstain from work, and we don't spend money. \n\nShabbat starts with dinner Friday night. My dad sings a prayer/song to gather the family. He blesses my mother and tells her how wonderful she is. We light two Shabbat candles, which goes with a prayer. My dad blesses each of his children. The boys wear Kippot (plural of Kippah, which is the Hebrew word for the Yiddish Yarmulke. It's the circular head piece.) Before eating dinner, we pray over the wine and the Challah (covered ceremonial braided bread). Right before the Challah, we pray over washing our hands. After the Challah, we eat. The meal itself is not particularly special, although it tends to be the best meal of the week. After, we do a series of prayers (Birkhat Hamazon) to thank God for the meal. Shabbat (Saturday morning especially) should be spent at synagogue, which my family fell out of once all the kids got Bar/Bat Mitzvah'd (typical for suburban Conservative Jews). Shabbat ends the next night with Havdallah, which unfortunately I know little about because my family never observed this. \n\nI feel like I'm going on and on. Let me know if you want to know more about the holidays (Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Hanukkah, Purim, Passover, etc.) I have a somewhat typical American perspective of my generation, in that I'm involved with the customs but don't believe in a God. I can answer any questions as open-mindedly as possible from my somewhat biased corner. I could talk for ages about the holidays, I'm sure. I love discussing this stuff!\n\nedit: formatting",
"The comments so far have been accurate, but I don't think they've placed enough emphasis on the Talmud, which is THE major law book of Judaism, which is a religion rooted strongly in law. Here's an overview of the Talmud:\n\n\nQuick historical overview:\n\nAfter the Romans destroyed the second Temple in 70 AD, the predominant form of worship, sacrifices, was no longer possible. Rabbis first convened in Yavneh (on the coast of modern Israel, a bit south of Tel Aviv) to discuss and formulate how Judaism was to proceed. These rabbis, and their counterparts in Babylon (as the result of a much earlier exile) and, later, in Jerusalem shaped much of modern Judaism. One could argue that these rabbis had a greater influence than the Torah.\n\n\nThe Mishna:\n\nRabbis spent the next hundred years or so writing the Mishna, a series of law books which expounds on the often vague Toraitic \"laws\" and makes them applicable to contemporary life. There are six books of the Mishna, on topics like women, agriculture, legal damages owed, and holidays. The Mishna was codified in 220 AD, meaning that it could no longer be amended.\n\n\nThe Talmud:\n\nJust as the Mishna expounds on the Torah, making its sometimes vague laws applicable to contemporary life, the Talmud expounds on the Mishna. Much of the Talmud is written as dialogue of the legal arguments between rabbis, and there are some funny gems in there hidden among the legal stuff. Individuals came in with questions, or the rabbis invented scenarios, and then solved them with Jewish law. These cases later set precedent for Jews law. There are two Talmuds, one written by rabbis in Jerusalem, one written by rabbis in Babylonia. Both were codified in the 500s. The Babylonian Talmud is more commonly studied. \n\n\nPost-Talmudic stuff:\n\nMany many many rabbis and commentators have expounded on the occasionally vague dictates of the Talmud, making them applicable to modern life. There is a pretty clear pattern here. There are law books that distill the argument, dialogue, and nuance in the Talmud into very clear laws. \n\n\nExample of Jewish legal exposition (this is actually pretty cool):\n\n1. The Torah says you must pay damages for any loss incurred by your actions or your animals' actions. To make it more confusing, the Torah sometimes says you should pay for damages in money or goods, and sometimes says that you should follow the \"eye for eye\" rule.\n\n2. The Mishna splits that payment into five categories: lost wages, embarrassment, pain, cost of treatment, and a weird category which, in practical terms, means the victim is also owed his worth in the slave market. \n\n3. The Talmud spends a lot of time arguing over whether \"eye for an eye\" should be followed or they should use a payment system, Eventually the payment system is adopted, except for a few dissenters who publish a minority opinion. The rabbis then go through each of the five categories and set rules for how the amount of payment is to be determined. \n\nFormat of the Talmud:\n\nA section of Talmud begins with a quote from the Mishna, which quotes a line or two from the Torah. Then the next few pages contain the rabbis' argument in the center, surrounded by later commentary.The pages are very large. Here's an example: _URL_0_\n\nThe Talmud is the main focus of study in Orthodox Jewish yeshivas (schools for boys/young men).\n\nHit me up with any questions! I love discussing this stuff. \n\n**TLDR: Between ~70 - ~500 AD, Rabbis expounded on the laws of the Torah in a series of law books called \"the Mishna\". Then rabbis expounded on the laws of the Mishna in another series of law books called \"the Talmud\". The Talmudic laws are (pretty much) followed today and the Talmud itself is extensively studied. In unrelated news, many modern American lawyers are Jewish.** \n",
"I just moved to an area with a ton of Jews. On saturdays I noticed there are never any of them at the grocery store and their kosher meat section is closed. So no shopping on saturdays or?",
"I watched a movie once where a Jewish woman was about to get married so she shaved off her head and had to wear a wig...why do Jews have to do this? Do men have anything similar? What particular Jewish category observes this? I don't know much about the religion and am curious to know more, the comments on here have helped so far but don't explain some of the rituals too well such as the shaving of the head. ",
"I'm guessing that most of the commentors are american or european jews. I'm from israel... So if you have any questions about how a jewish country is run or about the content of the old testament which we learn about in school as part of our mandatory educational program or any of the jewish law/philosophy books feel free to ask :). Or about how atheists (like me) view judaism and the old testament... ",
"Most of the comments shed a lot of light on Judaism. but I would like to add a few footnotes and anecdotes.\nJewish religious streams are not black and white.\n\nI was raised conservative, ate pork and non kosher, did not keep any religious laws and behaved as any other agnostic would. and was accepted in my synagogue (which i almost never went to) the same as other conservatives who followed all the Jewish laws and observances as equals.\n\nGranted conservatives are the least religious stream that still accept all the talmud. but even ultra orthodox sects have major disagreements on many issues, so there is no true Judaism\nonly 50,000 shades grey. \n\nand there is one famous anecdote about A man who came to two famous rabbis. he told the first one, I would like to convert to Judaism provided you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot. \nThe rabbi promptly kicked him out for mocking his religion. \nHe put forth the same condition to the second one. to which he received the following answer:\n\"That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn it.\"\n\nIt is the second rabbi's rulings that are mostly followed from that time period. and in my opinion that is the true spirit of Judaism.\n\ntl;dr - be nice!\n",
"I'm a reformed Jew (brother and I bat/bar mitzvah, attended hebrew school from ages 3-13, once we \"came of age\" family pretty much stopped going to temple, don't observe shabbat anymore really, but do still go to temple for high holidays, Ashkenazi born in america, parents born in ukraine). \n\nOne thing i don't think anyone mentioned is that Judaism is passed down through the maternal line and that judaism is the only religion that you can truly be \"born into\", or so recognized by birth. So as long as the mother is Jewish then the children are recognized as Jewish as well (even if not brought up as so). Some details I could be wrong on but that's my understanding. And like someone mention below, there isn't really a heaven or hell in Judaism, just a \"better place\". \n\nI was also raised learning how to read hebrew but I can't speak it or really understand it much on a speaking level (though i wish they taught us considering the amount of time you're in Hebrew school, you could probably learn it!).",
"A summary of many Jewish holidays:\n\n\"They tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat!\"",
"Some etiquette to keep in mind when talking to people of the Jewish faith:\n\n1. It would not be the \"Jewish religion\". It is Judaism. I would not call followers of the Christian faith the \"Christ religion\".\n\n2. The language of our ancestors is Hebrew, not Jewish.\n\n3. As Jews, most will feel a strong connection to the state of Israel and the situation Israel is currently in. You should probably go educate yourself on the issue before conceding to the idea that \"the middle east is just a bunch of radical, fear-mongering people who are fighting a thousand year old war.\" It is extremely complicated and there is lots of work to be done before peace can be an option.\n\n4. \"So what do you think of Jesus?\" is an inappropriate conversation starter. Most Jews won't have much to say on the subject of Jesus, as the idea of G-d does not manifest in a physical being.\n\n5. The Jewish people have been put down all throughout history. We know the Holocaust was extremely traumatic. No, I will not comment on Hitler's abilities as a public speaker/leader. Yes, I know how many Jews you can fit into a Volkswagen. Keep those little things to yourself unless you're having an adult conversation with someone who is willing to talk about it in the moment.\n\n6. There are varying levels of how one practices Judaism. Not all Jews have \"weird curly sideburns\" and large beards. Try your best to sound educated, as opposed to borderline offensive, when getting information from someone (assuming you're genuinely interested in the first place).\n\n7. If you are a member of another faith, don't slam your ideologies on us if we're having a discussion of faith. You're already losing a downhill battle and being aggressive will not help your case, nor will it make me want to drop all of the traditions I've been brought up with to join yours. Respect goes a long way.\n\nThis may seem like I'm ranting about frustrations I have with non-Jews, but it always surprises me how the general public approaches Judaism. It may be unfamiliar to the majority of people, but remember that is has been built on thousands of years of history and tradition that bring us to our current time. The fact that Judaism has survived as long as it has is amazing and a source of pride for many Jews.\n\nBeing Jewish is not just a religion, but a lifestyle and a set of rules to create functioning and compassionate people. Judaism teaches how to live a healthy lifestyle with positive relationships between each other and to create a better world through Tikkun Olam (\"repairing the world\"). There are many other pieces to this, obviously, but at its core Judaism is about learning the teachings of the Torah, acts of love and kindness, and benevolence.",
"It's simple. Don't be a douche."
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4pbom9 | how can computers just be a whole bunch of "1's and 0's" when they can seemingly do many more things than that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4pbom9/eli5_how_can_computers_just_be_a_whole_bunch_of/ | {
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"You are just a whole bunch of carbons, oxygens and hydrogens. But here you are reflecting on the nature of computers. \n\n",
"The same way our alphabet with only 26 letters can become every book ever written. Computers use a system of switches that either hold an electric charge or not. This is a binary system. It is *very* quick and easy for the computer to read whether the transistor is on or off, it's so easy that it can do it billions of times per second, across billions of transistors. That is a LOT of information even though each individual transistor only is capable of binary.",
"a computer engineer built circuit boards that perform tasks based on patterns of 1's and 0's. A simple task might be if it receives a specific pattern of 1's and 0's the video card sets a specific pixel on your screen to blue. Now if your video card receives thousands of these bits of information it can display an image. Good work video card!\n\nThe other hardware pieces perform there own tasks, the sound card (generally built into the main board) is going to receive information and produce sound.\n\nNow we have covered two of the more obvious outputs a computer can make. Fortunately it also takes input.\n\nWhen your mouse moves or you type a key a signal is received and is converted to 1's and 0's. \n\nSome smart software engineer developed an operating system, this piece of software is essentially a fancy interface that allows you to better communicate with the computer, within it other programs will run such as games. Ultimately it all comes down to inputs/outputs based on rules. \n\nIt might sound like a computer couldn't possibly do enough things with these tiny simple off/on operations but when you take into account that the processor can run trillions of operations a second you can see how it works. ",
"Every single thing a computer does can be broken down, at the lowest level, into simple binary math operations (like addition and subtraction) and hardware operations (like store this number at this location).\n\nThe ones and zeroes represent whether or not an electrical voltage is applied to a given circuit or logic gate. By manipulating what circuits and logic gates have electrical voltage and current passing through them, you can control how a piece of information (i.e. a string of binary digits) is processed and what types of instructions get sent to other hardware components.",
"_URL_0_\n\nIt's all about abstraction. (It works by establishing a level of complexity on which a person interacts with the system, disguising the more complex details below the current level.)\n\nIf we know how to do binary operations, on 0's and 1's, we can write a program(like an assembler on the picture) that just simply translate that higher language (like assembly language on the picture) to binary. \n\nSame goes for the assembler language. If we can do operations in assembly, we can write our own abstractions and a program that can read and translate a higher programming language into a lower programming language like assembly. In the end, everything gets translated in a few steps, just to ones and zeroes."
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27lwo5 | the differences (jurisdictional, logistical, cooperative, etc) between law enforcement off and on an american indian reservation. | I'm interested to learn how law enforcement on indian reservations is different than off - I wondered this after watching an episode of Banshee where a police officer mentioned not being able to step foot on the reservation without a federal warrant. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27lwo5/eli5_the_differences_jurisdictional_logistical/ | {
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"Kind of a broad topic, and hard to generalize as there are hundreds of reservations and each one is handled differently. \n\nTribes have a high level agreement with the federal government and another for the state they are in that says officers can come onto the reservation under special situations i.e. with a warrant, but for cases that don't fall under a predefined condition, they can request to be allowed on (i.e. to question someone) from the high council.\n\nThe council can also request police presence if things get out of hand.\n\nIn states, there are special courts that decide which jurisdiction should try the victim. For example, a special court may be consulted in custodial/visitation proceedings where a child has divorced parents where one of the parents is a native american. This is to ensure that child is exposed to both cultures if possible."
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6mc07h | i read that heisenberg's uncertainty principle is often confused or conflated with the observer effect. if they aren't the same thing, then what is the uncertainty principle? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6mc07h/eli5_i_read_that_heisenbergs_uncertainty/ | {
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"The more accurately you measure position, the less accurately you can measure velocity. There are other relationships, but this one is the easiest to visualize.",
"It use to be thought by some that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle was an example of the Observer Effect but that's not current.\n\nThe OE is basically that observation itself can *interfere* with what is being seen. The HUP doesn't involve interference but refers to compromises that must be made in some cases to accurately *measure* characteristics. ",
"The uncertainty principle is a consequence wave mechanics. Take the probability density of a wave with a single well-defined frequency. That wave exists everywhere, so you can know the frequency but you have no idea of the location of a particle represented by that wavefunction. Any wave function that is localized (confined to a certain area) is going to contain many different frequencies. The extreme case is a delta function (particle is at exactly one location). The frequency space representation (Fourier transform) is uniform across all frequencies. Now you know the exact location but talking about the frequency (which can be expressed in terms of energy and momentum) doesn't make any sense."
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6be2rd | wanna cry malware and how a system acquires it. | Everyone is doing a great explaining what the hell it does, but no one has explained how computers are being infected in the first place. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6be2rd/eli5_wanna_cry_malware_and_how_a_system_acquires/ | {
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"It's self replicating, once it's on one computer either by user download or other means, it scans the network for other computers and tries to remote launch on them and continues from there. Atleast that's the last explanation I saw for it. ",
"Long story short, the ransomware utilises two main exploits in Windows systems, known as EternalBlue and DoublePulsar. These were leaked by a Russian hacker group known as 'The Shadow Brokers' in April this year and most likely originated with the NSA.\n\nEternalBlue is a method of exploiting a legacy file transfer protocol in Windows known as 'Server Message Block' or SMB. EternalBlue can be used to install the DoublePulsar backdoor - which is a memory based payload that allows an attacker to execute virtually any malicious code they wish to.\n\nMicrosoft patched the vulnerabilities in 7 and 8 earlier this year, however neglected to do so for XP. As it happens, a number of government agencies (including Britain's NHS) still utilise XP and are vulnerable to the aforementioned exploits.\n\nMy understanding is that Wannacry utilises traditional phishing methods (e.g. fake emails) as an initial attack vector and then scans the local network for vulnerable machines to which it will remotely spread.\n\nIts progress has currently been halted because one security researcher accidentally found a kill switch but that's another story entirely."
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1vdqyi | why do some devices need huge, clunky transformers to go from ac to dc, while others (like usb) are just a tiny plug? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vdqyi/eli5_why_do_some_devices_need_huge_clunky/ | {
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"Transforming power from AC to DC is a relatively simple task if you only need a little bit of power. However, if you need lots of power then you start worrying about the amount of heat that you are producing.\n\nSomething like a USB plug is not going to have to supply more than a few watts. Such a device is never going to have to worry about how much heat it produces. However, something like a laptop power brick can provide over 100 W (mine is 135 W). The more power a device needs to draw the more power it has to waste as heat, generally.",
"Transformers only work with AC. To do AC to DC conversion you need a [rectifier](_URL_0_). \n\nTransformers *do* change the voltage that comes into your device. If your wall voltage is 120V AC, and your wall charger needs 5V DC you'll need something closer to 3.5V going into the recitifer. To **step down** the voltage like that you need a transformer with a particular number of loops on each side ( a transformer is just two coils of wire really close to each other). The physical size of the transformer will be based on how many loops of wire are on each side, and how thick (*[wire gauge](_URL_1_)* is the term for wire thickness) that wire needs to be to carry the appropriate amount of current.\n\nOnce you design for that then you can take heat into account. "
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7mossy | is the universe loosing density? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7mossy/eli5is_the_universe_loosing_density/ | {
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"Yes, this expansion will ultimately lead to heat death unless something happens in the interim."
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66atno | why we can't immunize against the bacteria that causes tooth cavities | TIL that tooth cavities are caused by bacteria that we are not born with, but we aquire from others just like a communicable disease. So why can't we immunize for it or treat it with medication in the same way we treat other bacterial infections? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/66atno/eli5_why_we_cant_immunize_against_the_bacteria/ | {
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"First of all, I read that same post on Reddit and it's BS. Yes, you aren't *born* covered in bacteria but it's very true that you depend on bacteria to live. Bacteria are on your skin. They are in your intestines. If you're a girl, they are all up in your vagina as well. And while they can sometimes make you sick, some of them are quite helpful to you. Bacteria are ubiquitous in the environment and they will colonize you no matter what you do. Yes, you might get your mother's when she kisses you the first time but you also get covered in bacteria climbing through the birth canal. They are on practically everything you touch to the food you eat to the air you breathe.\n\nNo, you do not get cavities like communicable diseases. While they can cause some diseases (endocarditis, abscess, certain types of pneumonia under the right conditions, infections from being bitten by other humans) brushing your teeth works pretty well just as bathing does.\n\nDeveloping vaccines against them would not only be a waste of resources it would do very little to prevent cavities since your immune system isn't protecting your teeth. When you brush/floss and you bleed, your immune system handles them just fine on its own unless you have certain risk factors--and those *do* get antibiotics before dental procedures. And if you do get sick, endocarditis or pneumonia or otherwise? We give you medicine.\n\nYou also have to keep in mind, what would the medicine do? Antibiotics are in you blood and the bacteria on your teeth are not. If you want to kill the bacteria, you brush your teeth, but they are just going to come right back. Also keep in mind that antibiotics don't just kill the bacterium you want--they kill lots of other bacteria, too. And when you kill off the good bacteria, really bad bacteria can take up residence in their place and make you sicker. Additionally, frivolous use of antibiotics also selects for drug resistant bacteria so not a good idea.\n\nTLDR: Cavities are not communicable diseases. The bacteria that cause cavities are generally handled by your immune system just fine, but your immune system is not protecting your teeth. Brushing your teeth periodically to get rid of them is a better solution than medication in a similar fashion to bathing regularly.",
"While not quite immunisation, there were reports last year that [a newly–discovered strain of Streptococcus (called A12) may be able to impede the ability of Streptococcus mutans to form dental plaque](_URL_0_). The university involved received a five–year grant to further study the new strain, so it's possible that it could (eventually, someday) develop into some form of medical treatment to prevent tooth decay."
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2hfi2l | why can't reptiles regulate their bodyheat but mammals can? | More specifically what is it that allows us to produce heat and them not? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hfi2l/eli5why_cant_reptiles_regulate_their_bodyheat_but/ | {
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"Because they never evolved the necessary organs/glands/nervous system/bits and pieces to regulate body temperature. They've never needed because being cold-blooded does grant certain advantages in the environments that reptiles have evolved in. While dependent on ambient temperature, they possess a greater degree of control over their metabolic rates, which means they can better conserve energy during periods of hardship where food might be scarce. ",
"A reptile requires about 1/20th the energy of a similarly sized mammal.\n\nThat low of a metabolism just doesn't produce enough excess heat to drive thermal regulation. On the upside, it means they require a lot less food."
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86poab | anthropic selection | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/86poab/eli5_anthropic_selection/ | {
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"I will explain with another question:\n\n\"Why do we only get motivational speakers who overcame cancer, rather than those who didn't?\"\n\nObviously you don't because people who died from cancer can't attend speaking engagements. This is the basic idea behind the anthropic principle, the idea that observations of the universe must be compatible with the existence of the entities making the observation. For example we can never observe that the development of life is impossible because then we wouldn't exist to make that observation"
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7dhgx7 | why do so many coups occur in africa? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7dhgx7/eli5_why_do_so_many_coups_occur_in_africa/ | {
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"Development is going to be the primary cause.\n\nThe main reason countries fall behind in development is political instability. Economic growth comes from investing in the future, and that requires people to believe in the future. If thugs, criminal or government, are going to just take whatever you produce, your focus isn't building for the future, it is surviving until tomorrow. That leaves a country stuck in poverty it has little hope of escaping.",
"In Africa you can blame the fact that they are mostly young nations which only achieved independence in the last century. They don't have a long tradition of democracy and what they have is often a system imposed by the hastily departing colonial power. This means that the locals lack respect for their constitutions and are too ready to violate them, or to support others in doing so.\n\nIn South America it's slightly different since much of the continent gained independence around 200 years ago now. The problem there is that the colonial powers themselves (Spain and Portugal) didn't have a stable history of democracy."
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38n9fp | what exactly is vector data in the context of gis? | I am finding it hard to understand it conceptually and imagining it in my head. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38n9fp/eli5_what_exactly_is_vector_data_in_the_context/ | {
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"There are two types of data in gis: raster and vector. Basically, raster is represented by pixels which have a different value and are continuous so an entire map will be taken up by these pixels. Vector data is comprised of points, lines, and polygons. Which might be a road, a tree, or a lake for example. With raster data there is no empty space; there are pixels on every space of the map and the number of pixels will depend on the map resolution. Vector data does have empty space between the features. Vector data would be more useful for a topographic map displaying features like roads (more useful for the average person). Raster data would be more useful for environmental workers or mining companies (stuff like soil maps)."
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e4lfs5 | how is music able to be unevenly distributed through headphones? | You know when you’re listening to layered music and you hear the drums on your left ear, and guitar in the right ear......seems like I don’t notice this when playing old time music, so I assume it’s something that has to be programed? in. Would this mean it takes longer to produce music today than before the widespread use of headphones? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e4lfs5/eli5_how_is_music_able_to_be_unevenly_distributed/ | {
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"text": [
"Stereo music has existed since the 1950s, and became increasingly common throughout the 60s and 70s. You don't need headphones to hear stereo sound, you can hear it with a good speaker system.",
"its called stereo sound. before it was mono phonic sound. the technical aspects is witchcraft created by pink .\n\nfun tip. if one of the earpieces on your head phone breaks. you can change your phones settings to mono sound, you wont miss any music to the loss of stereo until you can get new headphones.",
"My parents have a old vinyl record of a train going from left to right, which demonstrated the stereo effect quite well.\n\nI suspect that recording left and right separately is a lot easier in the digital age. You can edit and synchronise the two streams quite easily, unlike the magnetic tapes they used to use.\n\nBut I've definitely heard old recordings with stereo, specifically orchestral works, where you can hear violins on the one channel and cellos on the other. I imagine a studio recording might have been more likely to record to a single channel.",
"So others have mentioned that this is called stereo sound, and no it doesn't have to be programmed. There is one channel for each headphone, so each ear is getting slightly different audio (surround sound works similarly, there are just more channels). \n\nWhen mixing, each input (microphone or instrument input) can be panned, meaning you are sending different levels of the signal to the right and left channels. Because our brains locate sounds based in part on the difference in volume received by each ear, the stereo effect makes it seem like that instrument or voice is coming from a certain direction. It is one of the ways to create separation in a mix. The effect is more pronounced when wearing headphones because the speakers are angled wider than say the speakers in your car.\n\nAlso, there are stereo recording techniques that are used to create the stereo effect. These are used often when recording ensembles (such as a choir or orchestra) as well as grand pianos or acoustic guitars (in certain circumstances). These techniques use two microphones on the source instead of one. The left microphone is panned hard left and the right microphone is panned hard right. This attempts to recreate what it would sound like if you were actually present."
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6qnuce | why do our stomachs 'get full' based on the mass of the food we eat, rather than the food's calorie content? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qnuce/eli5_why_do_our_stomachs_get_full_based_on_the/ | {
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"Actually appetite is controlled by *both* of these things. If you eat something bulky but low in calories, you'll be hungry again in two hours. And if you eat something extremely rich, as long as you take your time, you'll feel satisfied before your stomach is actually filled up.",
"There's basically two forms of \"fullness\" here. The first is your stomach *physically* feeling full; as in nerves in your stomach can tell that there is no more room for more food, and this as a result feels uncomfortable and you don't want to eat any more.\n\nThe second is more like *satisfaction*. This isn't quite so physical. But your body knows when it needs more calories and when it doesn't, you get cravings to eat and you know when you're not hungry any more even if you haven't eaten to the point of physical fullness. But this can't happen automatically. Your body doesn't know how much energy is in food until you've already eaten it and started digesting it. Whether you filled your belly with simple sugar like soda or with a dense fiber like broccoli, your stomach would feel equally \"full,\" but your body won't know that it's had sufficient calories until it can start to break down what you ate and convert it into energy. ",
"Your stomach is just a sack. It can't magically determine the caloric content of what is inside the food you ate before it was digested."
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26jbkp | how come atms spit out crisp dollar bills when people put in wrinkle money? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26jbkp/eli5_how_come_atms_spit_out_crisp_dollar_bills/ | {
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"The money that you put in an ATM generally does not go right back out to the next person in line. Old money goes through a whole process of checks and examinations to determine how fit it is to go back into circulation. If it meets those criteria, then after a while it will be sent back out. If it is too damaged to continue on, then it is destroyed and replaced with brand new bills, which you will often find coming out of ATMs at banks.",
"I once was doing work in a bank where they were bundling $11k for destruction. I offered to do it for them, they declined....",
"the ironing elves. \n\n(all of the money that goes into an ATM is collected and processes. all money that comes out is put in \"freshly\" by the ATM armored truck dudes)",
"who puts money into atms?",
"I have serviced ATM's for several years and I think I can answer this for you. When money is deposited it goes into a separate container than the bills being dispensed. When loading ATM's the money is put into several containers that apply pressure to the stack of bills via a spring. This compresses the bills and makes them appear more crisp than when they went in. The bills are inspected before hand and any that are mutilated are replaced. The ATM also has a process of checking the bills before they are dispensed and any that are questionable will be sent to a reject bin inside of the ATM."
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an2pxm | how can boats have holes in the bottom to drop things into the ocean? | I mean like boats that launch submarines or what-have-you. How do they stay afloat when there's a great big hole in the bottom? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/an2pxm/eli5_how_can_boats_have_holes_in_the_bottom_to/ | {
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"They are kept afloat by other sections that *don't* have holes in them. Think of a twin-hulled catamaran: the whole middle is a giant hole, but each of the two closed hulls still floats.\n",
"Water can’t get in when the air is trying to get out. Put a glass in a bucket open end down, you’ll have a giant air pocket in side the glass",
"Two doors. Inner opens and whatnot is loaded. Inner closed. Chamber is flooded and outer is opened. Whatnot is expelled and then outer is closed. Chamber is pumped out and inner is opened. Repeat until out of whatnots ",
"It's called a moon pool, or alternatively, a wet porch. There are a number of different designs that all work a little differently. The easiest one to understand are basically a hole in the floor above the waterline of a drilling platform or ship with multiple hulls that lets gives you access to the water. In this case, the ship is behaving like an inner tube. The inner tube floats because it's still a 100% contained vessel (it has no holes to admit water into itself). A ship with a moon pool at the water level is much the same. The water isn't allowed to flow into the ships hull, so the ship remains buoyant as before.\n\nThere are also moon pools below the water line. Imagine taking a cup, turning it upside down and then pushing it under water. You will have trapped some air inside the cup. The water wants to get in the cup, but it can't make a lot of progress because the air is taking up the space (the air does compress a little, but you can also increase the pressure to push the water back).",
"Because the surface with the hole is above the water line. The simplest model would be a pontoon. Two large tanks provide the buoyancy, and a flat deck is placed on top of them. But the deck is above the water. You could cut a hole in it and it wouldn't affect the buoyancy.",
"Take two small boats. Run a couple of boards between them. Now you've got one big boat with a massive hole in the middle. But it's pretty obvious why this one doesn't sink. \n\nThe area of the hull around the inside of the hole is water tight just like the outside of the hull. The rest of the hull provides enough buoyancy to compensate for that one small patch. \n\nMost military ships are divided into compartments so even if the enemy blows a hole in one compartment, it can only fill that one compartment - the rest of the ship remains watertight (and still floating). "
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1qof5m | why is it important to search for methane on mars? is methane actually present on mars? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qof5m/eli5_why_is_it_important_to_search_for_methane_on/ | {
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"Methane is a by product of life on Earth. If found on Mars it could indicate that there is life. ",
" > Why is it important to search for methane on mars? \n\n\nBecause methane idicates the breakdown of biological material and/or dung/flatulence. In other words life (even if only microscopic life)\n\n\n > Is methane actually present on Mars?\n\n\nI hope so."
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432tyi | if computers have been able to win at chess for years, why did it take them this long to win at go? | Granted the game is more complex, but is it really THAT much more complex? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/432tyi/eli5_if_computers_have_been_able_to_win_at_chess/ | {
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"You answered your own question. Go is considered to be the pinnacle of strategy games, because while it's instructions are easier than chess, there is much skill and little luck involved in winning at higher levels, which the number of options are far larger than chess in the early and mid stages of the game.",
"Just looking at the number of possible legal moves to consider in each position, it's on average around 30 for chess and around 250 for go. So planning ahead 1 step is about 10 times harder, planning ahead 2 steps is about 100 times harder, and so on. A chess program will be looking ahead around 7 steps, so doing the same for go is something like 10 million times harder.\n\nI believe that the rules of go also make it harder rule out a lot of the possible moves as obviously terrible. A chess computer can fairly safely assume, for example, that any move which involves losing your queen is a terrible idea unless it immediately leads to a win. A go computer can't so easily tell that a move leads to a terrible position which is very unlikely to get better five moves later.",
"To \"Brute force\" chess is easier because there are fewer pieces and combinations, and because the pieces are limited in what they can do.\n\nComputers \"win\" by doing two things\n\n1. Seeing \"good\" patterns and responses in games, and using them\n2. \"Looking ahead\" (brute force) by working out all the possible combinations for, say, 10 moves and picking the one that it thinks is most advantageous for the computer.\n\nNumber 2 is easy to do for simple games, but when you get a complicated game there are so many possible combinations, the computer simply can't look far enough ahead. A person, surprisingly, can be better at this, because for one thing we're better at \"filtering out\" bad paths early on, and for another we have a better \"instinct\" (really our brain looking at patterns) for the right path.\n\nFor chess, looking ahead 10 moves, though, is usually enough for a computer to win: people typically only look ahead for 1-3 moves, with better players looking ahead perhaps 5.\n\nWith Go, brute forcing doesn't work the same, though. In chess if I take 3 of your pieces in the next 10 moves while building up pieces around my own king, I'm probably doing well and that's a \"good\" path to take (not always, but typically). With Go, the whole game can \"flip\" in moves. I can look ahead and be winning in 10 moves, but be in a position that makes me lose in 13.\n\nThat means it's almost impossible for a computer to \"brute force\" the game like with chess... it's just not predictable enough in the relatively small number of potential moves that a computer can calculate.\n\nThat's where the pattern matching comes in. The new AI Google made tries to look for patterns and combinations which were present in previous games it (and people) have won, and then copy the moves they made.\n\nIn short, it's \"learning\" rather than purely brute forcing. If it tries a move in a scenario then loses, it may try to copy what the other player did next time it sees that scenario from the other player's position."
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6t390b | why do we have to separate paper from plastics, glass, and metals when recycling? | In my neighborhood we have two separate bins: one for paper only, and another for other recyclables. In middle school I also used to help pick up recycling bins (paper and plastic separate) from classrooms as a leadership project. We always mixed everything into a larger bin in the end anyway, so I never understood the point of keeping them separate. What's the point of separating in the first place? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6t390b/eli5_why_do_we_have_to_separate_paper_from/ | {
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"Because glass is melted and paper is turned into liquid pulp. Can't recycle them together during the same process, and recycling is expensive enough without paying some poor worker to separate them for you.",
" > Can't recycle them together during the same process\n\n > You think cardboard and glass is recycled together?\n\nI think that what everyone's missing here is that local recycling practices depend on local recycling facilities, and what they offer varies from place to place. Where I live, *everything* gets put in the same bin... Though we don't recycle glass."
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3pk1gu | - how the dial lock on a safe works. | Images would probably be helpful. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pk1gu/eli5_how_the_dial_lock_on_a_safe_works/ | {
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"Im too lazy to find pics. Imagine a pizza on a table. Stand the pizza on its edge. Remove one slice from the pizza. Place a metal bar above the pizza. Now as you rotate the pizza the metal bar will fall into the pizza when the missing section is aligned with the bar. Now imagine you had 2 pizzas with 1 piece missing each. The bar will only fall when both empty sections align with the bar. The more pizzas you have the more pizzas you have to turn to get the bar to align with all the missing sections.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nNow theres also a nub behind and in front of each pizza. When you rotate a pizza, the nub on the back of one pizza will eventually touch the nub on the pizza behind it. So you start by rotating right a bunch of times so that each nub on the back of each pizza is touching the nub on the front of the pizza behind it. Lets pretend we have 3 pizzas so we turn the dial 3 times to the right to make sure all 3 pizzas are engaged. When you land on the first number in the sequence the back most pizza is aligned properly. Now we turn to the left 2 times so that we reengage the first and second pizza. Once we land on the proper number the second pizza is in place. So we do 1 full turn to the right to renegage just the 1st pizza until we land on our final number. Now the empty spaces on each pizza are aligned and the metal bar falls. Once the metal bar falls the safe is unlocked.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nTLDnR: locks are made out of pizzas. "
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3al2ag | why do some people cut most of a dog's ears off? | I never understood this | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3al2ag/eli5why_do_some_people_cut_most_of_a_dogs_ears_off/ | {
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"Cropping the ears used to be for working dogs, and unfortunately for fighting dogs. Now it's more for breed standards and stupid owners.",
"I assume you mean [cropping](_URL_0_) a dog's ears\n\nHistorically, it was done on dogs that were used for livestock guard dogs and blood sports, like dog fighting, bear baiting, etc. No ears, means no floppy thing for a rival animal to bite and grab hold of.\n\nIt's done now in modern times, for aesthetics, such as on a Doberman Pinscher. ",
"It's like circumcision.\n\nOnce upon a time it served a purpose.\n\nBut these days, you really only do it because you don't know any better, because other people do it, and/or you think it 'looks better'.",
"Followup: why do people cut their dogs tales when they are puppies? ",
"I would like to point out that ear and tail cropping are becoming illegal (if done for nothing but aesthetic purposes) in more and more countries. It *is* one of those things that has no place anymore. "
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4qr3iy | why do tv shows and films often have their characters using fake social media websites/search engines on screen? | Is there a reason they can't just show Twitter or Google or whatever? Often times they use some stupidly named app with an unrealistic looking UI when it's very clear what they're actually trying to represent. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qr3iy/eli5_why_do_tv_shows_and_films_often_have_their/ | {
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"It is considered advertising and there are a few reason they avoid it. \n\n1) It being advertising they want to be paid for it. Most will not pay so they make imitation products. It is the same reason they invent soda or beer brands, and why apple computers will have the apple logo covered or altered. \n\n2) If the product is being shown in a negative like they open themselves up to lawsuit. "
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2r5ld2 | why is the diamond pattern used so much on metal plate? | I was taking a tour on the panama canal and noticed a steel plate with a diamond pattern. Then I realized that the pattern is everywhere. Why is it so common? Is it for traction? If so, then why use that pattern in particular? [Context](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2r5ld2/eli5_why_is_the_diamond_pattern_used_so_much_on/ | {
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"It's cheap / it's rugged/ it's got grip/ and it looks bad ass. Perfection",
"It's to make the surface less slippery and provide more traction. In many of metal's uses, such as flooring, this is considered a good feature to have. "
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3y7ql4 | why do so many different types of animals have whiskers? i understand their uses, but how did so many creatures evolve to have them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3y7ql4/eli5_why_do_so_many_different_types_of_animals/ | {
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"They didn't all evolve them separately. Every mammal that has whiskers is descended from an ancestor that had whiskers. ",
"Arguably similar to how so many animals have ears. Or mouths. Common ancestors prevailed by using there senses to survive/find food or whatever it is animals were doing back then "
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23pm70 | how did countries joining the euro & issuing euro bonds change the bond markets in countries like greece? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23pm70/eli5_how_did_countries_joining_the_euro_issuing/ | {
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"this is just an illusion. it doesn't change the bond market.\n\nWhat it does change is the expectation of risk:\n\nPIGG country = notional risk = higher returns.\n\nBUT\nEuro = bailout = no risk.\n\nso for the banks we move from high risk high returns, to no risk high return. \nCapitalism at it's best.\n",
"Bond investors assumed (it appears rightly at least in part) that once a country joined the eurozone, it would be backed up by stronger eurozone nations if its national economic policies led to catastrophe. This backing is explicitly forbidden by the treaties that formed the eurozone but when push came to shove, those restrictions were ignored.\n\nSo instead of pricing the risk of bonds from countries like Greece in accordance with the chances that there would be a systemic economic collapse, bond investors only extracted a risk premium slightly higher than that offered to \"safer\" economies like Germany.\n\nThis allowed Greece to borrow much more than it could have if it were paying a more appropriate price for its debt.\n\nWhen Greece's economy imploded, bondholders paid for that mistake by being forced to take a \"haircut\" - a reducing in the value of their bonds."
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6x9iss | when does mass murder become genocide? | So i was reading this: _URL_0_
article i found on /r/worldnews.
Now the title is; "Fears of genocide as up to 3000 Rohingya muslims killed in Myanmar in last three days"
With almost 1000 kills a day, I would say it's genocide already.. I mean wheres the line? 5k killed in less then 24 hours? More then 100.000 in x ammount of time?
Anyone who knows ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6x9iss/eli5_when_does_mass_murder_become_genocide/ | {
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"It's not a question of numbers, either absolute or relative.\n\nGenocide is the systematic attempt to exterminate a group of people based upon some shared characteristic, for example religion, skin colour, or nationality.\n\nThat's why even though Stalin ended up killing more people than Hitler, most historians don't consider Stalin's actions to be genocidal, \"merely\" murderous.",
"I think you're confusing the two.. Mass murder by definition includes quantity.. So you are a mass murderer when you kill lots of people regardless of anything else..\n\nGenocide is different.. if you break up the word you'll see the word Gene in it and that's what genocide is.. It's getting rid of genes... That doesn't mean quantity is applied to it.. It's a genocide if you , with intent, go and kill say a father of a family.. and then to make sure their family doesn't continue you kill the rest of that family.. That intent to wipe out their genes is considered genocide.... you can do this at any scale though... So to sum it up.. A mass murderer is not necessarily committing genocide.. While someone who is committing genocide is also not necessarily a mass murderer.. The term unfortunately has been related to quantity when it has nothing to do with that..",
"Genocide is a form of mass murder targeted at removing specific ethnic group(s) from a region.\n\nWhen Stalin sent political dissidents to die in Siberia, that was merely mass murder.\n\nWhen he continued to export food from the Ukraine during a famine, that could be considered mass murder and genocide.",
"Typically genocide must be a mass murder specifically motivated by racial or ethnic hatred, or sectarian (religious) hatred. If the government murders political dissidents, that's \"mere\" mass murder, but not genocide, because the victims were not chosen because of their race or religion.\n\nAlso, genocide must be a large political project aimed at actual extermination of the group being targeted. For example in the US, lots of people were killed in racist lynchings. That was certainly wrong, but as it was not aimed at the actual extermination of the racial group, it does not fully qualify as genocide.\n\nFurther, you have to realize that lots of places in the world exist in a longstanding situation of constant, low-level ethnic or sectarian violence. There may be years or even decades of occasional murders and massacres, but the level of violence has not escalated to the level we'd call genocide or ethnic cleansing. The US is one example, with its history of lynchings, murders, and occasional race riots. Another example would be India, where controversy is stirred up constantly between Hindus and Muslims, especially when it's reported that a member of one group was raped or murdered by a member of the other group. The tension sometimes explodes into mass racial violence, like pogroms and race riots. Over India's history, thousands of people have died in this \"communal violence\", but it hasn't quite reached the level we'd call genocide.\n\nWhen people say that, for example in Myanmar, it is \"feared\" that the violence might escalate to outright genocide, what they're saying is that they're predicting this sporadic and intermittent violence that Myanmar is experiencing might escalate to a larger scale where armed groups or even the government itself is instituting a policy of mass murder. This happened in Rwanda. There had been murders and massacres for a while, but it was only once a coup took place that a Hutu rebel group seized government power and started massacring Tutsi people, that we would say the actual Rwandan Genocide took place. As for Myanmar, 3,000 people killed in three days is pretty extreme by any measure, so I think a lot of people would say that that's genocide or at least \"acts of genocide.\" The hesitance to officially declare it genocide is probably because since genocide is an official crime under the UN Charter, any country that recognizes this as genocide is essentially admitting they have a legal obligation to intervene in the genocide, and most don't want to do that. "
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383qhw | why do so many english native speakers use double negation when it's grammatically incorrect ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/383qhw/eli5_why_do_so_many_english_native_speakers_use/ | {
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"Double negation is only incorrect in English *formal writing*.\n\nAll languages have regional variations, slang, and informal grammatical rules used in casual conversation. In many parts of the U.S. it's common to say \"y'all\" when referring to the second-person plural, and in other places people say \"yinz\" or \"you guys\". All of these are perfectly correct in casual conversation, as long as everyone participating in the conversation understands.\n\nIn formal writing - for example for a non-fiction book, a magazine article, or an essay - there are more strict rules applied, and most often in those rules, double negation is not allowed. There's nothing magical about these rules, they're mostly just historical, based on the most proper speech and writing of the educated upper class and aristocracy. These rules change as language usage changes, too, but slowly. While there are slight variations in style preferred by various journals and in various English-speaking countries, overall formal writing tends to be more uniform and universal, whereas informal speech tends to vary the most from one region to another.\n",
"Double negation is not grammatically incorrect. ( < --- see what I did there?)\n\nIt might sound strange and it's often used incorrectly, but it's grammatically fine.\n\n\"We don't need no education,\" is grammatically correct and can be parsed to mean that we require at least the smallest possible amount of education. What most people **mean**, however, when they use a double negative is often incorrect. ",
"Usually it's part of the person's dialect. A lot of people really get up in arms about this but there are many languages (like Japanese) which employ negation of more than just the verb in the sentence, it's not some universal wrong. \n\nTo say it's grammatically incorrect is a bit silly in my opinion, especially as it's common in my home county in England, also in Ebonics (\"black speech\" - have a read on the history of it, it's interesting) and many other places. Language is a fractured, infinitely complex and ever changing beast. To say that there is only one way to speak one of the most widely spoken languages on earth is crazy. Maybe at most one could argue the case it's inappropriate in some situations depending on how you want to appear, but that's all.\n\nNot really a fan of language prescriptivists as you can probably tell. To them I'd like to flatly say I don't care.\n\n(Points for spotting my crappy non-eli5 joke)\n",
"Because they are using negative words *emphatically*, thus stacking the words instead of negating them.",
"Along with the reasons that have been mentioned, a double negative can also be used effectively to convey additional meaning or a meaning that isn't expressed with the correct form. \"You have to go\" versus \"you can't *not* go\". They both mean the same thing, but the latter might also convey that you don't have any other options or that not going is unthinkable. ",
"Native English speaker here. There is a word \"litotes\" that means using the negative of the contrary to imply an understatement. For example, if you don't want someone to get cocky, instead of telling him or her that they did a great job, you might say it \"wasn't bad.\" The word litotes isn't common but it's usage is quite prevalent.",
"Grammatically incorrect (which is a relative term, anyway) constructions are common, especially in informal speech. In French it's the other way around - grammar demands double negation, but everyone uses single negation.",
"I think people are not understanding what OP meant by double negation being grammatically incorrect. A double negative can mean something intended, but in cases where people say \"I didn't do nothing\" when they meant the opposite, that is grammatically incorrect. \n\nI can't respond to this question outside of an area I'm familiar with, which is the use of a double negative in Spanish. In Spanish, a double negative is common and means the opposite of the logical interpretation. This results in issues during translation to English. The double negative remains in the structure of the sentence but the meaning does not translate from Spanish in English despite the diction being 1:1. ",
"Grammar is academic. Not all people are acedemic.\n\nIt's how language evolves overtime. The only reason we have the Romantic languages is because various people spoke Latin in a grammatically incorrect way. ",
"Because, first and foremost, language is about communicating ideas to other people. Formality only counts for style. Language, and English, are two separate things.\n\nThat being said, especially with colloquial language, intent and meaning trump propriety and syntactical rules. As long as the person you are talking or writing to understands what you're trying to convey, it really doesn't matter how it's done.\n\nIn a formal circumstance, unless, as others have pointed out, used to add emphasis, they should not be used and can be considered incorrect. Getting hung up on informal or \"incorrect\" grammar when it's not really necessary doesn't really accomplish anything.",
"Because it's a recognised colloquialism. The listener discards the second negative and interprets as emphasis instead.",
"I've found that when people are using a double negative, they're generally trying to put emphasis on what they're saying. \n\nYou could say \"I didn't do anything wrong!\" but you could also say \"I didn't do nothin' wrong!\". I don't know about you but when reading the two, I automatically read the second statement a lot more emphatically ",
"I watch myself when I write to keep it extra clear, but if Im just chatting with friends, as long as everyone understands, there isnt a need to be a smug bastard.",
"It is not incorrect to use double negatives in English. Most of the time it is an emphatic, but sometimes they undo each other. Context will tell you which. ",
"Linguist here.\n\nThe short answer is that it's not grammatically incorrect.\n\nThere are many different dialects of English, all of which are equally grammatically correct. When you speak in a different dialect than Standard English^(1), you are not speaking Standard English with grammatical mistakes, but following a different set of grammatical rules.\n\nMany dialects of English have *negative concord*, a form of grammatical agreement where the negative nature of the statement is expressed in more than one place. Instead of saying \"I didn't do anything,\" you say, \"I didn't do nothing,\" for example. The negatives do not cancel each other out; in some dialects, they are simply *obligatory*, like using feminine adjectives with feminine nouns in Spanish is obligatory. In others, more negatives are used for emphasis.\n\nMany languages, such as Spanish and Russian, use negative concord. In these languages no one is complaining that it's illogical or incorrect--and it isn't^(2). So why is it that people insist it's incorrect when English speakers do it? \n\nThe answer to this is comes down to social factors. English has dialects that do not have negative concord, and it so happens that these dialects are more socially prestigious. This has nothing to do with the dialects' inherent worth or correctness, but is arbitrary. That is, a dialect doesn't become more prestigious because it's better, it become more prestigious because of who it's associated with. However, English speakers are *taught* that the more prestigious dialects are better, more correct, and so on -- and so many *believe* that if you aren't speaking Standard English, you're simply making mistakes. They're wrong.\n\nSo, when you come across a native English speaker who is using \"double negatives,\" they're just speaking in a different dialect of English--one that has negative concord as part of its grammatical rules.\n\n^(1) Standard English is an abstraction, and people do not always agree what its rules are. But, I'm going to sidestep that issue for now.\n\n^(2) A common argument is that \"two negatives make a positive.\" This is clearly false; in languages with negative concord, two negatives make a negative. Grammatical rules have never been based on formal logic, and people only apply arguments based on logic to *socially marked* forms. ",
"Because it's not actually wrong. Grammar rules that you learn in school (don't use double negation, don't split infinitives, don't end a sentence with a preposition, et cetera) are not observations of how the language is used, but rather, a description of how a few people think the language should be.\n\nLanguage is not about showing off your lexical acrobatics. If your point gets across, that's all that matters. A native English speaker speaking English actually never makes any mistakes, grammatical or otherwise, in the eyes of linguists. ",
"A lot of the language is affected by those around them.\n\nLook at the way people speak English in the south of the States. A lot of \"Spanishisms\" have leaked into English there (and a lot of Englishisms have leaked right back).\n\n\"No quiero nada\" \"I don't want nothing\" = I don't want anything\n\nAnother example is \"question tags\". EG: She isn't coming, is she?\n\n\"No viene, verdad?\" \"She isn't coming, right?\" etc.\n\nI've heard a lot of English sounding expressions make their way into Spanish too. Knowing both I sometimes find myself rather amused to hear it translated to the other language almost verbatim... and it would usually not make much sense to older folk, but younger kids with an understanding of both languages won't be caught off guard.\n\nSo why? Because language is a living breathing thing and it is used to communicate. Being grammatically correct or incorrect doesn't mean much to a lot of people, regardless of the language.",
"It's grammatically incorrect in Standard English. In all sorts of non-standard varieties (e.g. Cockney; AAVE; Southern American English) the correct form involves 'double-negation', or as it's more accurately termed 'negative concord'. The qualifying terms take a negative form in agreement with the negator. This is actually standard in Spanish and French. I *think* Dutch and Afrikaans differ from each other in this respect too.\n\n The argument that 'two negatives make a positive' is flawed because sentences aren't mathematical functions. English speakers never question the presence of 'double plurals'. Why doesn't 'two dogs' mean 'two pluralities of dog'? the answer is simply that it doesn't by the conventions of the speech community that uses it, and the same can be said for negative concord."
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b766d7 | why do our eyes strain when we look up instead of down when we're awake, even though they automatically rest looking upwards when we're asleep? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b766d7/eli5_why_do_our_eyes_strain_when_we_look_up/ | {
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"text": [
" > even though they automatically rest looking upwards when we're asleep?\n\nThey don't. Your eyes don't roll back into your head when you sleep, not sure why you think they do.",
"It's not the eyes straining when looking up, but your upper eyelid trying to stay above your pupil."
]
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6kz31l | what do gulf countries have against al jazeera in particular? | What specifically about Al Jazeera news channel do Gulf countries disapprove so much? Was it a particular topic, general disapprovement, or something else? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kz31l/eli5_what_do_gulf_countries_have_against_al/ | {
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"Authoritarian states are usually distrustful of any media they don't control. The Qatari government has allowed AJ to report on corruption and human rights abuses that the other Gulf countries would have preferred not to be covered.",
"Implicit support for pro-democracy movements in those states, and for movements like the Muslim Brotherhood who are anti-inherited power. Also a free(ish) media is always going to be a threat to authoritarian states.",
"Al Jazeera is a professional news organisation that has journalistic standards comparable to many western news organisations. While the news network is owned by the Qatari government, and there have been allegations of meddling, they do enjoy a fair degree of independence.\n\nMany of AJ's personalities and commentators are western educated and have extensive global journalism experience. Many have previously worked for the BBC, Reuters, and other high profile outlets.\n\nAs a result, AJ tends to report critically on middle-east affairs, including corruption, censorship, authoritarianism, oppression, and human rights in a fair and objective manner that often runs contrary to state propaganda."
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