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ygso8 | why is north considered up? is there any practical reason why north won the right to point towards the top of the page and not the south? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ygso8/eli5_why_is_north_considered_up_is_there_any/ | {
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"North is a direction, before maps there was no up, just four directions, we just happened to draw it as up and it stuck. [This should help too.](_URL_0_)",
"A major factor is that compasses point to the magnetic north, so it followed that maps would too. Also varies in who made the map and what they consider to be most important being at the top of it.\n\nAlso sometimes put down to an Egyptian bloke called [Ptolemy](_URL_0_) who did early map work with north up.\n\nIt used to be in the middle ages that east was at the top (orient being latin for east, hence 'to orientate yourself')",
"all_421 is spot on, but don't forget that the North Celestial Pole is visible from the Northern Hemisphere, while the South Pole is not.\n\n(Edit: If you don't know what the North Celestial Pole is, imagine the sky as a sphere around the Earth. Take the Earth's axis of rotation and make it infinitely long. There are two points where the axis touches the celestial sphere, and those are the Celestial Poles.)\n\nBecause of the Earth's rotation, the stars seem to move across the sky in circular paths around the Celestial Poles. The farther a star is from the Pole, the longer its path is. So if you had to travel by night, you had to find [a star that was close to the North Celestial Pole](_URL_0_) and use that as a point of reference, because it wouldn't move far from the North during the night. At Ptolemy's time, it was a star called [Kochab](_URL_1_). Since the Middle Ages, it's [Polaris](_URL_2_).\n\nThis is not *the* reason of this cartographical choice, but it may have helped.",
"Here is a very detailed description of why it is so:\n _URL_0_\n\nTo sum it up, the tradition comes from Ptolemy's works which are considered to be the first scientific geography work. Ptolemy chose North because:\n\n1) the known world of that time (the Mediterranean and some bits of Asia) would fit well on a wide horizontal scroll, hence you have to put either north or south at the top;\n\n2) the known world was in Northern hemisphere (closer to the North than the South) and the common means of navigation was using the Northern Star which was, obviously, up, so the overall world orientation was pretty much bound to it.",
"Fun fact: T and O maps were all oriented so that the east was at the top. In fact, the word orient means \"east\" and that's where we get the word orientation from. ",
"Most answers are good here but let me add one more thing. There are far more people in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern Hemisphere. When European explorers travelled south, and eventually dominated the Southern Hemisphere, they would fill in their maps with themselves at the top. ",
"That's where the map makers live. ",
"I recently turned the world map in my classroom \"upside-down\" and the students (keep in mind these are *high-schoolers*, fifteen to eighteen years old) just couldn't handle it."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%92_Ursae_Minoris",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris"
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"http://www.geographicus.com/blog/rare-and-antique-maps/the-arrow-points-north-directional-orientation-in-antiquarian-cartography/"
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9r9f8n | does sound get louder when multiplied? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9r9f8n/eli5_does_sound_get_louder_when_multiplied/ | {
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"Sound waves carry energy that physically makes the air particles (or any medium that it travels through) viabrate as the sound moves. If you have more things making noise the total amount of particles viabrateing in the air is a lot more thus a louder noise."
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6dumq9 | how is the pattern on a key chosen? and how are they all different so that two keys cannot open the same door? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6dumq9/eli5_how_is_the_pattern_on_a_key_chosen_and_how/ | {
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"A lock is made up of pins. Each needs to be lifted a certain height to allow the lock to open.\n\nNow let's say that height is set to a digit so there are 10 unique possible heights. You multiply the number of pins by the possible heights to get the different possible combinations of locks that can be made.\n\nWhich answers your last question: they aren't all different. The key to your front door will probably open some other door. But if there different enough, the chances of finding a matching door are slim to none. There are easier ways to get through a locked door than trying every potential key.",
"In mass produced locks, there might be, say, five pins in the lock. A key will open that lock if each pin is at the right height when it rests on the key, and the key is turned. For each of the pins, a manufacturer will have a set number of lengths that they make. They are numbered 1 to 6 or 1 to 7 for common locks. These are called bitting numbers, with 1 being a short pin and a shallow cut in the key, and 6 or 7 being the longest pin they make and the deepest cut in the key.\n\nTo make a lock, then, they pick a sequence of numbers like 34125, put pins of those lengths in the lock, and dial that number into a machine that cuts a key with the right depths in the right places. The convention is that the number is read left to right, and the first number (3 in the example) is closest to the part of the key you hold when using it. Now, they can't choose just any number. If you had 34**16**5 you might not be able to get the key in the lock because the slope between the 6 and the 1 is so steep. Nor could you have 3**61**25. The key would go in just fine, but it might never come out.\n\nSo, how do they choose these so that keys don't open multiple locks? They don't. They just make enough that it's somewhat unlikely that the key to your house is~~n't~~ the same as your nextdoor neighbor's. It helps that there are different shapes to the keyways, that is, the wiggly shape of the hole the key goes into. A key might not even go in to a lock it wasn't made for.\n\nHere comes the bad news: it's cheaper to make identical locks and identical keys. Many manufactures do. Have you ever seen those little beige cash boxes with a black handle? The ones you've seen probably all have the same key. Electrical panels in a business with a little lock on them so that kids and bored customers don't fiddle with them? Same key as the cash boxes. Locks tend to be a really good psychological deterrent to the average Joe, but terrible at ~~supping~~ stopping someone who is reasonably determined to get past them.\n\nEDIT: double negative, oops.\nEDIT2: I have got to stop posting from my phone. Supping? Seriously, autocorrect?",
"Related question: How do locksmiths make 'Master Keys' so one key that can open say, a dozen locks, but also create a dozen keys that can only open one of those locks?",
"Related: few days ago in the Netherlands it was news that a retailer sold cheap bicycle locks that apparently were all identical. So every key would unlock every lock from that brand. Customers could get their money back."
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6ki81y | - why do some plants, tomatoes for example, almost immediately droop when transplanted? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ki81y/eli5_why_do_some_plants_tomatoes_for_example/ | {
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"Their roots get damaged, and they can't pull enough water to remain stiff. Sometimes they droop because they aren't sure what to make of the new environment yet too. But if you transplant carefully enough, they won't do that.",
"Be gentle on roots and give a deep water when transplanting. Also, be aware of the best conditions for that particular plant. Amend the soil and be aware of how much sun it will get in certain locations.",
"Compost, huh? Now their in the real world. Water them regularly for a week or so. Be patient."
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4epbte | why are so few low-wage service sector workers unionized in the u.s.? | There are clearly many workers who are dissatisfied with pay and working conditions in the low-wage service sector. What is keeping workers at companies like Walmart, McDonald's, Starbucks, Subway, etc. from forming unions? Do they not want to unionize? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4epbte/eli5_why_are_so_few_lowwage_service_sector/ | {
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"Unionization works when the workers have the threat of going on strike. And that's only a threat if they are hard to replace. \n\nIf a fast food restaurants workers go on strike, management can easily replace the striking workers. All of them. \n\nThis is why entry level jobs aren't usually unionized. ",
"A couple of reasons, sneak into the Walmart break room and say the word \"Union\" a couple times. Watch everyone on break get fired at the end of that shift.\n\nThe other reason being that collective bargaining hinges on the ability of a worker to strike, not only can entry level workers usually be replaced rapidly;\n\nOdds are if you are working at McDonald's to pay the bills, you can't afford to work sane hours let alone go on strike for a week without pay.\n\nAny raise you got would disappear in an avalanche of late fees and levies.",
"The idea of unionization is that you get *enough* people within a certain skillset in the union that you can really fuck up an industry if they go on strike. That's where the bargaining power of unions come from.\n\nWith fast food, there is 1 hour of training required. It's not skilled labor. Literally anyone can do it. You would have to get functionally *everyone* into a fast food workers union for it to be effective. And that includes other minimum wage people and the unemployed. And if there's anything unemployed people and minimum wage people don't like its additional bills (I.e. union dues.) \n\nSo companies will never have issues replacing fast food workers. So they can't unionize. Because it won't have the benefits of unionizing. \n\nTldr: scabs are too easy to find for unskilled positions.",
"US labor laws are much more employer-friendly than in Europe. It's much easier for businesses to prevent unionization in the US than in other countries. ",
"Anti-union orientation dissuades some workers from even attempting to form or join a union, and threats or reprisals from management ensures that an example is made of workers who do actively organize. "
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1mx3pi | why do music artists usually have 1-2 "singles" per album? why don't they just make 10 singles | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mx3pi/eli5_why_do_music_artists_usually_have_12_singles/ | {
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"Because you'd start ignoring them if they released too many singles. They release a couple leading up to the album with the hope that it will entice you into purchasing it.",
"I guess with i-tunes and the like they do. You can now buy any individual song\n\nReturning to your point though: They were originally a way of advertising the album with the assumption being that the album was where the money would be made. As time went on the singles became the main sellers rather than the album. A lot of albums actually do end up having 4-5 singles these days because single sales became a more lucrative product for some artists.\nOn the other hand, Metallica never released any singles until their fourth album. ",
"Singles are a particular kind of song. Its generally limited in tempo and length, as well as topic, harmony, melody, and every other way you can imagine. They're not the best songs necessarily. An artist is not just trying to produce the catchiest most popular song, but to express themselves artistically. For the record company, the single was like the ad to buy the album and they pressed the artist to write something the general public would like and to include a song like that on every album. But that's the price an artist would have to pay to show his or her other work.",
"Many of what has been stated here is true. But I'd like to offer a bit of additional clarity. \n\n1) I'd venture to say in less than half, if not even 25% of the time, its not the artist making the decisions on single release, but rather their management or label. \n\n2) Because releasing a single is an expensive process, and most of the time the band or artist simply doesn't have the budget to make their effort worthwhile more than 2 or 3 times per album. Aside from completely indie projects that just release the track online, and artists with a big name and following already that also just release stuff for free online... usually, the process of releasing a single is a gamble with many factors to consider (summer/holiday? any similar artists or sounds? whats trending in popular music, etc). There is artwork to be commissioned, vinyl/tape/discs to be pressed (back in the day), music videos to be paid for, promotion and marketing, photo shoots, hair and makeup needed for basically every public appearance, press and promo which has to be paid for not only for the artist or band but their stylists, managers, handlers etc. Because the singles are usually treated like the ads that would entice listeners to buy the album (although nowadays money is basically made strictly from licensing or touring)... think of them like trailers to the movie. You wouldn't want to show the entire film to entice users to go and pay for the film, would you? Nah, just show them the most interesting and cool bits (the singles) then hopefully they bite for purchasing/supporting the rest of the project. \n\n3) Because often, the singles don't represent the true depth of the album/project. And also because it's not really that easy to write a true smash hit. Sure its easy to write a song, even a good one, but to write an album of 10 or more bonafide undeniable \"hits\", is something even the greatest of artists among us find hard to do. \n\nEDIT: Clarity",
"I've been working in the music industry in Nashville for a little bit of time and I think I can help with this. Singles in the \"pop\" world are almost always completely geared towards radio play. Publishers and record companies see you as potential consumers and assume that you get most of your influence on which product to buy from listening to the airwaves. Think of the radio as a giant billboard where thousands of artists are fighting for advertising space. The more radio spins a band/singer can get the more album/tour sales they will achieve. Because the radio will be playing in a song to song format, a single is the best way for them to promote an artist. It is easier for them to promote one song, a \"single\", then to promote an entire album because radio is their marketing medium. They are condensing their product into a smaller package which is always easier to sale than a larger one. Traditionally, a single is not necessarily the best song on the record but the one that best represents the sound of the record while at the same time being the most easily digestible to fans and listeners who have never heard of the artist. There is a team of guys at a record company who decide on which song to release as a debut single. A first single often times is released somewhere between one month to two months ahead of an album while the second single, if there is one, is released after the album is already on the market. The first is an attempt to generate radio play exclusively thereby attracting attention and awareness to the upcoming album. Remember radio play is assumed as achieving more billboard space. The second single is promoting album sales after initial release (in case you missed the first go round ie the first single) and promoting an upcoming tour. As you've most likely noticed, shortly after an album is released some kind of tour will be announced. Once an artist has hit the road there is no longer a need to release singles because the tour will promote the album that is \"for sale\". The industry assumes that radio play and album sales will promote the tour then the tour sales will promote the album so there is no longer a need for further singles. The \"single\" part of the marketing scheme is done. Singles are a way for promoters to focus on selling one condensed product that will influence the sales of future products, the album and concert tickets. Indie artists work a bit different but their \"singles\" often times are in the form of webisodes and viral marketing. Same idea though, condensed product promotion. One song versus ten songs. One thing is always easier to sell and once you've bit the hook you'll probably want more if theres more to consume, the album in this case. Its all based on marketing inertia and the single is the igniter. "
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cs5li6 | what is the use of the brush-like thing on the side of the escalators that we use to "clean shoes" ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cs5li6/eli5_what_is_the_use_of_the_brushlike_thing_on/ | {
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"They're to make people less likely to stand close to the edge of the step and to keep clothing, laces, and such away from the gap between the step and the skirt guard."
]
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||
767cz5 | why states don't have perfect borders? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/767cz5/eli5_why_states_dont_have_perfect_borders/ | {
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"text": [
"Sometimes the borders follow rivers. Sometimes they are arbitrary lines created by surveyors. Occasionally they follow some other natural feature."
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6gy8j3 | why do we have to restart our pc after uninstalling an app? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gy8j3/eli5_why_do_we_have_to_restart_our_pc_after/ | {
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"Popular question.\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_0_",
"In my experience, only the OS itself applies to this statement, meaning updates etc.\n\nAny other program I've used asked me to restart after installing/uninstalling and not once have I",
"Depends on the OS, most times, a restart is unnecessary, but in some cases it may be required.\n\n###Windows:\n\nOn windows, applications are stored as files and registry keys. Registry keys are never cleaned properly, and an unnecessary large amount(talking a hundred uninstalled apps) may slow down your PC a bit (not by much though, it's just that windows loads every registry key on startup, even empty ones).\n\nA restart is necessary if :\n \n- The app has a daemon running, as executables that are currently run on your machine cannot be deleted\n- the app has stored data in protected areas of your system (system32 for example)\n- The app installed shared DLLs that are currently run by the system\n\n###Unix:\n\nUnix based operating systems use only files to store app data, and the executable files, restarts are only necessary if a daemon is running, even though linux kills pending processes to not interfere with the uninstall.\n\n###And in general :\n\nIt's always a good idea since it may free up some RAM, and don't forget to defragment your HDD afterwards."
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n0kii/eli5_why_are_we_encouraged_to_restart_our_devices/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pxzbm/eli5_why_do_i_need_to_reset_my_computer_after_i/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2r8w1w/eli5_when_you_install_a_piece_of_software_why_are/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2q1sf5/eli5_why_do_some_computer_programs_ask_me_to/"
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33ns1s | what ever happened to kony, and the #stopkony2012 movement? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33ns1s/eli5_what_ever_happened_to_kony_and_the/ | {
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"The filmmaker took some drugs then took his clothes off then took a stroll down a public street and got arrested.",
"Joseph Kony was already pushed out of Uganda long before the film was made, so he was basically already stopped.",
"The scandal with the filmmaker did contribute, but do remember that the Kony2012 movement was ultimately about fashion, and fashion changes. If you look at the touchy-feely movements that go around college campuses, you will notice that they move in cycles. People have a good time demonstrating how strong their character is with meaningless displays of solidarity, then it's been done so much that it no longer sets you apart from your peers, then people look for a new cause. It was a fad, fads go away."
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2mfzoa | why is the ending of a tv show or movie suspenseful even if i know the ending? | I was watching an episode of [Criminal Minds](_URL_0_) and I found myself wanting to yell "OH MY GOSH COME ON GO FASTER SHE'S ABOUT TO DIE" and getting all worked up, even though I know exactly how it ends. Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mfzoa/eli5_why_is_the_ending_of_a_tv_show_or_movie/ | {
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"Good shows, movies, books, etc, craft themselves in such a way that the spectator becomes emotionally invested in the characters. This is why conclusions to such things end up being rather satisfying, or perhaps disappointing, depending on what you might have come to expect."
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Minds"
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[]
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fd0bbu | difference between apy and apr? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fd0bbu/eli5_difference_between_apy_and_apr/ | {
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"So say you have a 12% interest rate per year.\n\nOn the surface, that would seem to indicate that if you owed $1000, you would be charged 12% or $120 per year because of interest.\n\nBut generally, that 12% per year is split into 1% per month.\n\nNow, if you imagine that you didn't actually pay anything, and just let that build up over a year, then on month 1 you would be charged $10 dollars, an exact 1% of $1000.\n\nBut on month 2, you would be charged 1% of $1010, or $10.10, because you are now paying interest on not only the initial $1000, but also the additional $10.\n\nMonth 3 you are charged 1% of $1020.10 or $10.20.\n\nSo on and so forth.\n\nIn the end, what you end up paying is the same as 12.7% interest applied all at once at the very end ($127), rather than what seemed to be 12%.\n\nAPR is that tricky way of doing things, where you have to break payments into months and then compound the interest each month. APY is the \"honest\" way of displaying how much interest you'll actually be paying.\n\n-----Side Tangent------\n\nThe actual formula for this compound interest is P x (r/n)^nt\n\nWhere P is the initial loan or investment\n\nr is the interest rate (1% = 0.01)\n\nn is the number of times the interest is compounded in a given time period (12 times for once per month for one year)\n\nand t is the number of times the compounding occurs.\n\nSo for example, 2 years of month compounding at 12% annually would appear as\n\nP x (0.12/12)^(12 x 2) or P x (0.01)^24\n\nThe interesting thing I find about this is that if you decrease that month down to weeks or days or hours or minutes, all the way down to *continuously*, the total interest does not approach infinity, but instead approaches\n\nPe^rt\n\nWhere e is Eulers number, or about 2.7.\n\nThis also appears *everywhere* in science and in the natural world when describing how things grow or decay over time.",
"APR - Annual Percentage Rate, the interest rate that is being used to calculate interest each period. For example, a 12% APR with monthly interest accrual breaks down to a 1% interest rate each month. \n\nAPY - Annual Percentage Yield - that actual interest accrued by the APR over the course of a Year. So, let's invest $100K at a 12% APR. \n\nMonth Amt\n\n1 $101,000\n\n2 $102,010\n\n3 $103,030.10\n\n4 $104,060.40\n\n5 $105,101\n\n6 $106,152.01\n\n7 $107,213.53\n\n8 $108285.67\n\n9 $109,368.53\n\n10 $110,462.21\n\n11 $111,566.83\n\n12 $112,682.50\n\n & #x200B;\n\nWe earned $12,682.50, so our APY would be 12.68% \n\nIf our interest accrued quarterly instead of monthly, we'd end up making $12,550, for an APY of 12.55%\n\nIf our interest accrued continuously, the APY would be 12.75%\n\nAll from an APR of 12%"
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31imz1 | why does the u.s. lottery offer a lifetime annuity or an upfront payment which is less than the value of the winnings? coming from europe if i were to win €10m i would receive €10m. no questions asked and it's not taxed either. what is the thinking behind the u.s. system? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31imz1/eli5_why_does_the_us_lottery_offer_a_lifetime/ | {
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"Because US tax laws consider it to be income and thus is taxable. After all it is money that you received during the year. Why shouldn't it be taxed?",
"The value of the lottery is actually the lump-sum payment. If someone takes the annuity option, that annuity is purchased with the lump-sum amount.\n\nSo, the lottery authorities advertise the annuity amount because it's a much larger number. It's marketing, that's all.",
"Keep in mind that a large number of the lottery winners in the US who take the lump sum end up being bankrupt within a year or two.\n\nPeople who play the lottery often are not very good at making financial decisions and unfamiliar with handling large sums of money.\n\nGetting a nice steady income will serve many people better in the long tun than just handing them money and having them try to invest it wisely themselves.",
"you really think you're not taxed on a 10mil euro lottery winning?"
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f2k6s9 | how have people not discovered this massive super volcano that’s 30x worse than yellowstone until just now, and is it positive there’s a worse monster out there? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f2k6s9/eli5_how_have_people_not_discovered_this_massive/ | {
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"It's not new, that article is misleading.\nIt says the eruption was 30 times bigger than Yellowstone, but that it was a long time ago.\nBroadly Yellowstone is seen as more active and more likely to erupt again sooner or later. Wah Wah is less active now, but was definitely bigger in the past and was a big eruption in North America."
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4l6cmf | when thousands of animators are working on the same animated film, how are they all able to draw/animate in the exact same style? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4l6cmf/eli5_when_thousands_of_animators_are_working_on/ | {
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"As befitting such a giant effort, it's a multi-stage process. It typically starts with a small group (including the director, chief animator, and some concept artists) defining what the 'style' is going to be. From there, they'll create 'style boards' that show the main characters from as many angles as they can, along with facial expressions, details of important items, and clothing.\n\nFrom there, a team of key frame animators will draw every 10th (or so, really depends) frame of animation, working from the style boards and the script/storyboards. After the key animations are done, they get sent to 'tweeners (in-between artists). They get to do the grunt work of all the frames that create the actual animation. \n\nWhile all this is happening, the director and senior animators will be watching the output to make sure it matches what they were expecting, and sending frames (or, more likely, entire scenes) back for revision."
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7ehqvm | how can a person be in "critical but stable condition"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ehqvm/eli5_how_can_a_person_be_in_critical_but_stable/ | {
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"\"Stable\" just means \"Not getting worse\"\n\nIf you're in a coma because you stuck your head in front of a moving bus you're in critical condition, but not currently dying and therefor stable.",
"They mean two different things. The \"critical\" part means \"they're in really bad shape\", while the \"stable\" part means \"but they're not getting any worse\". ",
"Since this is an ELI5: critical and stable are two different things.\n\nIf your dog is ill and needs a plaster, that's critical for him.\nIf your dog is ill and is not getting worse, that's stable.\n\nSo your dog can need a plaster and still not recover, being critical and unstable, or can only need a bend-aid being non-critical and stable."
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7bcu4y | how does a non-contact voltage tester works? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7bcu4y/eli5how_does_a_noncontact_voltage_tester_works/ | {
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"All current moving through wiring create lines of magnetic flux. \n\nThe voltage tester uses a coil of wire and a small power source to create a magnetic field. Once the field created by the voltage detector is disrupted by another field, the detector alerts it's presence."
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1jl6ac | the "super senses" of animals | What does it mean that a dog has a sense of smell more powerful than humans? Can they smell things we can't? Are things we smell more extreme to them?
Same with their hearing... Are things we hear that are loud deafening for them? If so, why are they not in pain?
I'm not asking about just dogs, but all animals with "extreme senses."
Another example is hawks... Apparently they have super vision, and can pick out a rabbit on the ground hundreds of feet below. What actually happens? Can they "zoom in" in a way, or what? I have heard these things for years and never really thought about what it actually means. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jl6ac/eli5_the_super_senses_of_animals/ | {
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"They are more sensitive to things. Consider these examples.\n\nFor smell, imagine your neighbor is having a barbecue. Of course, you can smell it from your house. But, if you walk up the street a bit, you'll stop smelling it. A dog would probably still smell it, because its sense of smell is more sensitive. Even though only very few molecules from the barbecue are making it to its nose, it can still pick it up and recognize it, while our noses don't.\n\nFor sight, draw a dot on a piece of paper and tape it to the wall. At some distance away from the wall, you'll no longer be able to see it, because the white of the paper sort of blurs it out. But a hawk could probably still see it, because its vision is sharper than ours.\n\nSound, I believe, works both volume-wise and frequency-wise. That is, some animals just hear things louder than we do, while other animals can hear things we can't (things at very high frequencies).",
"Other animals have to compensate for things they don't have in order to survive. Humans happen to have large brains and thus the ability to construct tools. Our bodies, compared to other animals, seem ill-equipped because we dont use them to survive. "
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1qwopb | why is it that most of dogs bark when someone is knocking at the door? | Basically, what is it about someone knocking on your door or ringing your doorbell that makes a dog go crazy? Is it because of something to do with the sound or what? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qwopb/eli5_why_is_it_that_most_of_dogs_bark_when/ | {
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"Most dogs are going to retain some level of that natural protective instinct of 'home', or at least the people inside of it.\n\nThe 'home' becomes that dogs territory, and they will guard it accordingly.\n\nWhen someone knocks on the door, or rings a doorbell, or (in the case of my dog) begins to walk up the driveway, they go apeshit because *someone is on their territory*. \n\nDogs have an excellent sense of smell as well, so they can likely tell who is on the other side of that door - there is a distinct difference between my and my siblings dog's \"Hey mom/dad are home!\" bark and \"Who the fuck are you!?\" bark. Their behavior is different in each case as well.\n\nThe sound might be somewhat Pavlovian. Someone knocks/rings doorbell, dog investigates, finds people being let in through the door. Happens several times, dog now learns that the knocking sound or a doorbell is a sign someone is trying to get in.\n\nThat said, dogs also have excellent sense of hearing - knocking, doorbells, glass breaking, footsteps late at night - all of these are not usual. Dogs are animals of patterns - they can learn what is normal and what is not. When something happens that is 'unusual' they can react, either naturally or based on how they are trained.\n\nThis may not be true of all dogs, but it should still hold some weight."
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28w91w | why are hamburgers not called beefburgers? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28w91w/eli5_why_are_hamburgers_not_called_beefburgers/ | {
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"Hamburgers are named after the town of Hamburg, Germany. ",
"Because they are named after Hamburg, not Beefburg. ",
"Steamed hams? I'm from Utica and never heard them called that.",
"It's not just named after Hamburg, Germany. There is already a food stuff called Hamburg Steak, which is world famous and named after the city. This is simply ground beef cooked and served with grilled onions. Someone got the wise idea to serve it open faced (I forget the details of where and when), and thus was derived the hamburger.",
"Side story: When my husband and I traveled to the Dominican Republic we ordered hamburgers from a restaurant at the resort we were staying at. When we bit into them, we noticed they were really pink. Having a good vocabulary in Spanish, I asked the waiter if they were cooked fully. He responded that they have few cows on the island for meat production and the import of beef is so high that they are literally ham-burgers. They were made with canned ham. ",
"Well I say steamed ham personally.",
"In the UK they are called beefburgers.",
"For the same reason Frankfurters aren't called Ratfurters",
"My brother's girlfriend told a cute story about how when she was little, her Bengali father, a young Hindu migrant to the UK, used to take her to McDonald's for hamburgers, presuming they were made of ham. He was devastated to discover later that he'd been unwittingly taking his daughter to eat beef burgers.",
"this needs an ELI5?",
"Hamburgers, as others have noted, are named for a city in Germany called Hamburg. The popular theory is based on German immigrants. There is a dish in Germany, and I'm sure other countries, called hackbraten. It is a beef patty seasoned and cooked like a hamburger. Though the seasonings are different it is a similar concept. The story I was raised hearing goes like this.\n\nImmigrants tried to recreate their favorite home cooked meals, which is why you see such a huge variety of foods in the US.Though access to the same seasonings was limited immigrants continued to make a version of hackbraten. Some industrious person saw the concoction and thought to put it on a bun, much like one would a hotdog. Thus began the crazy explosion of hamburgers and hotdogs being so popular.\nThere are many who claimed to have invented the hamburger, but it's origin definitely dates back farther than a meat patty on a bun. [Here](_URL_0_) is a wikipedia page about all the people who claimed it was their idea.",
"I'm sorry but could you not have just googled this?",
"You could just have googled \"beefburger\" before asking this to find out that it's called both.",
"Is there a way to answer this question that is above a five year old capacity to comprehend?",
"Why is your lake tititcaca not filled with boobs and poop?",
"They were invented in Hamburg, Germany. No other explanation really...\n\n\nYou can also have veggie burgers, turkey burgers, and other varieties. The term \"burger\" is just slang.",
"I don't know about other parts of Asia, but in Indonesia, hamburgers are usually called \"beefburgers.\" I remember seeing this at a few different McDonald's in Jakarta, their capital city.\n\nThis is because 85% of the population is Muslim, and even though their society is not nearly as conservative or religious as many Middle East countries, their is still a general \"yuck\" against pork in general. And calling something with the prefix \"ham\" in it - is generally thought to possibly discourage sales. Hence, \"beefburger.\"",
"They're made out of cow ham duh. ",
"Explain like I'm five questions, c'mon people, google it first...",
"Now make them all explain the cheeseburger.",
"Don't ruin this subreddit man, just google it, this isn't something people need to explain like your five.",
"For the same reason frankfurters aren't called pork-furters.",
"It's called steamed hams. "
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b069gx | how worthless was soviet union's ruble? | So ive watched several documentary on western companies inside soviet union, particularly pepsi back around the 70s and 80s, and how USSR settled on an agreement to trade pepsi syrup for russian vodka, because of how valueless ruble is. But like how valueless is it to the point where barter is more viable than to use other currency/valuable materials as mean of transfer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b069gx/eli5_how_worthless_was_soviet_unions_ruble/ | {
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"The problem was that there were no trade between the US and USSR. So in the USSR the Ruble were worth a lot as you could use it on any corner store. However if you had any Ruble in the US they were almost worthless as anyone would accept it as payment and buying things in the USSR and importing them were almost impossible. So for PepsiCo which is a US company with western owners the Ruble were not worth the ink it was printed with as they could not use it to pay their suppliers or owners. So when they set out to export syrup to the USSR they also had to set up an import route in order to gain anything from the deal. It did not really matter what it was but they ended up with vodka. This was an acceptable deal to the governments of both US and USSR so they were allowed to continue with the deal. If they had accepted the Ruble then someone in the US would have to set up a separate trade deal importing something from the USSR in order to get the value from their Ruble and this would be a difficult political struggle. By settling on importing vodka in the same trade deal as they exported syrup PepsiCo were able to handle the issue once."
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212blf | who's making money when a 20 year old movie plays on a tv channel? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/212blf/eli5_whos_making_money_when_a_20_year_old_movie/ | {
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"There's always *someone* who owns the rights to a movie... at least until it's public domain (which can bring about things like [this] (_URL_0_)). That someone is always a producer. It's a producer's job to fund and drive the making of a film, so they get to take the most legal/financial credit for it's existence.",
"There are two answers:\n\n1.-Whoever owns he rights and sold some of them to the TV channel. Imagine I (producer/producer's studio)make a movie and I own the rights of how it will be distributed. There are deals made for them to appear on theaters, as well as being sold later on DVD/BD/digital. In this same manner, there are rights for other ways of transmission such as a TV channel. Usually those are cheaper compared to the deals made for movie theaters (which are way more complex than just money changing hands).\n\n2.-TV channel itself. Usually those movies have commercial breaks. All of those pay their share for the time they are using and they pay it to the TV channel.",
"A 20 year old movie is new enough to likely not be public domain, and likely not sold \"Cash\".\n\nMore than likely the station needs to buy a license for the movie, either each broadcast, or a package of licences.\n\nIn any case the studio gets paid their share, of which the they pay necessary cast/crew residuals.",
"The original [Manchurian Candidate](_URL_0_) was not seen on TV nor released to video/DVD for quite a while because the rights to the movie were so complexly shared among multiple people, trusts, companies, inheritors and so on.\n\nIt finally got all worked out, and the movie was able to be seen by new generations of viewers, essentially all of whom will agree that it was way, way, way better than the Denzel Washington [POS remake](_URL_1_), which other than having some good acting should have been flushed as a screenplay.",
"The copyright owners typically receive the payments and then distribute money according to a bunch of contracts that were signed around the time the movie got made. \n\nSome actors just take cash up front, some get \"equity\" in the movie, which means that they get portions of the profits. \n\nFor reference, copyright term is nearly a century (at least in America, and lets be serious - the only IP laws in the world that really matter are American ones) so 20 years is really not that long. I mean, the fucking Matrix was made in the late 90s, and that is already nearly 20 years ago. \n\nSource: IP Lawyer from family of actors. "
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bd78vx | silicon strips are recommended to use on surgical scars to help with healing. when you remove the silicon strip, the skin looks almost stippled, with tiny craters that wear off over a couple of hours. what is that? why does silicon do it? why does it go away? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bd78vx/eli5_silicon_strips_are_recommended_to_use_on/ | {
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"What you’re asking about might be pressure sores which are usually caused by wearing tight things on your body or are a result of putting mild pressure on your skin while it is moist for a long period of time. They can be caused by tight clothes, (swimsuits for example) band aids or maybe silicon strips (not 100% sure but it would make sense). So it won’t be exclusively silicon that does it, it just depends on the texture of the object (patterned socks for example) and the tightness. They go away naturally at different speeds depending on how tight the object was and how long you had it on. Age and blood flow can also be factors in how quickly they go away. \n\nI hope this answers your question."
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1rwe9n | why do so many people consider older instruments better sounding than newly made ones? | I've heard everywhere that the way instruments were made many years ago can't be beat. Many people say that sound-wise, older and more "classic" instruments can never be beat.
I have two main examples of this. First, violins. I've heard so much about Stradivarius violins, and how no other violin can beat its sound. How is it that even today, with all our technology, and more knowledge on acoustics and sound, we cannot make a more structurally and tonally "perfect" violin. What about Stradivarius violins makes them so unbeatable and worth millions, when the level of precision we can make our instruments with doesn't seem to compete.
My next example has to do with a smaller time gap between then and now. Regarding electric guitars, so many guitarists praise the electronics and sound of "vintage" guitars. Something about guitars that was present ~30-60 years ago makes them sound so much more "praise-worthy" than a guitar made this year. Why do I see so little love for electric guitars made in more recent years, when I would think that they would have better pickup systems, better designs, and just better construction. Can't the sound of a 1960's vintage guitar be easily replicated and even improved with the more advanced equipment we have today? If so, then why would someone pay so much money for the "vintage sound?"
Obviously, these are two very different examples. But my main question is why it seems to be that we cannot recreate the quality of instruments made so many years ago. Is the praise they receive purely because of how rare it is to own such an old instrument? Or is there a quality of sound that 300 year old violins or 30 year old guitars have that today's instruments cannot recreate? And what prevents us from recreating such quality if this is the case? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rwe9n/eli5_why_do_so_many_people_consider_older/ | {
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"First of all, there is very little about the \"tone\" and \"feel\" of an instrument that can be looked at objectively as long as the instrument is properly built and set up. In blind listening tests, people usually aren't able to differentiate between maple and mahogany guitars (generally considered to be at opposite ends of the tonal spectrum). Same goes for the tone of a 300 year old strad and a new high end violin. \n\nWhere instruments set themselves apart is how they feel in the hands of a player and how they play. Something about 30+ year old guitars just seems to *feel* better.\n\nScarcity also has a lot to do with it.\n\nAlso, this whole argument is only really relevant to high end instruments. Entry level and mid range guitars are better built now than at any time before by a fairly wide margin.",
"Last year, top violinists tested Stradivarius violins alongside modern ones in a blind test, while blindfolded. Most of them did no better than chance, and the top violin to be picked was a modern one:\n_URL_0_\n\nNot that this is anything new - a similar test in 1935 came to exactly the same conclusions...\n\n_URL_1_",
" > What about Stradivarius violins makes them so unbeatable and worth millions\n\nWell, the answer is either nothing or nobody knows.\n\nThat's to say, as others have said, blind tests show there is nothing unbeatable about them (and they weren't particularly considered the best at the time they were made)\n\nBut, it's simply the case that modern technology cannot say what the difference is, although there have been people creating theories that it's something special about the wood or the varnish and CT scanning them to see their construction in detail.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAs for electric guitars I don't think it's valid at all. Perhaps you're confusing this with people wanting the sound of tube amplification rather than using modern semiconductors?\n\ne.g Here is Guthrie Govan extolling the virtues of his [new prototype guitar](_URL_1_)",
"I am no expert in violin making or playing, but I am a huge guitar nut and the whole \"vintage\" thing is a big deal in the guitar community. I have played a lot of vintage guitars of different brands, and they are generally very inconsistent. I think the explanation lies more within the field of psychology than actual instrument manufacturing. People tend to prefer what they are often exposed to. For instance, if you grow up listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin you will tend to like Led Zeppelin more than another band. Especially the things you are exposed to during your childhood/youth are going to make a bigger impression on you. \n\nIn the guitar community there are a lot of people who grew up during the 50s, 60s and 70s. They were born and raised with certain music and certain bands, whose members played certain kinds of instruments. The guitar \"heroes\" are associated with certain guitar models. Some of the guitar heroes were responsible for breaking new grunds soundwise and musicwise. Concrete examples of this are Eric Clapton (playing the GIbson Les Paul through a cranked Marshall amplifier, creating a loud singing distorted sound), of Jimi Hendrix (mixing lead/chordal work with whammy bar usage).. the list could go on!\n\nBasically the demand for vintage instruments is fueled by different generations of musicians who remeber the \"good old days\", remember their sources of inspiration, their heores and their youth. They prefer the look and the sound of these guitars because they associate them with \"larger than life\" personas and events from their past. \n\nOne of the most valuble vintage guitars is the 1959 Gibson Les Paul (with a certain finish color). These guitars are extremely valuble and are auctioned for thousands of thousands of dollars. The more \"original\" in spec, the higher the value. It has nothing to do with sound or playability - just basically historic value fueled by a market of people who \"thinks\" these are the best guitars in the world. Either bcause they have been told so by others or either because they like the music that was created on these instruments.\n\nBack in 1959 the Gibson guitar company made about 1500 of the Les Paul with sunburst finish. The guitars were soon to be discontinued in 1960 because of lack of demand..."
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2f5wpf | why is the ukrainian army struggling so hard to subdue the rebels? | As perthe wikipedia page on the military of Ukraine, they have 126,000 active personnel and 1,000,000 reservists. I appreciate they have to remain stationed around the country, numbers may be a bit exaggerated and they don't have the best equipment; but how is a rebellion of 'a few thousand' (as per media reports) holding them off from blockaded positions?
I know Russia recently stepped up support, but this situation has been persisting for weeks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2f5wpf/eli5_why_is_the_ukrainian_army_struggling_so_hard/ | {
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"In one word: Russians.\n\nIn more words: A good deal of the Ukrainian separatists are Russian troops who, if you take the Kremlin's word for it, decided to vacation in Ukraine and fight in a rebellion.\n\nPlus some training from these Russian \"tourists\" and possibly some military gear covertly brought in. I don't know if this was ever confirmed, but the missile battery that brought down MH17 a while back was possibly Russian-provided.",
"The separatists have about 10-20k personnel and are augmented by Russian mercenaries, special forces, artillery, and intelligence working in conjunction with them. They are also receiving training, arms, ammunition, and medical treatment by the Russians. \n\nThe Ukrainians can handle the separatists (they were winning recently) but are poorly equipped to deal with the influx of Russian controlled troops. The nature of warfare in Ukrainian right now values quality over quantity which gives the more highly trained and often combat experienced Russian forces an advantage. \n\n",
"Apart from what others have written here, I think a country would go slow if its own people have taken up arms. You won't like to go in and kill, that'll increase resentments and be a PR nightmare. You try other means (buy them off, break them, divide them etc) till you can.",
"One of the key points that often goes overlooked is that if the Ukrainian army was to exhibit a large show of force Russia would likely use this as a reason to invade in the interests of 'protecting Russian friendly civilians'. \n\nThis same reason was cited when Russia quite recently invaded and annexed the Crimea.\n\nEvidence in support of this phenomenon that the Ukrainian military faces can be seen in the severity of reports coming from top Ukrainian officials, who are desperate to expose (and possibly exaggerate) Russian involvement before it actually happens. This ensures that they would have the support of NATO and, by extension, Europe and the West. A recent example of this was the claim that Russia had threatened to use a nuclear weapon against Ukraine, or the recent rhetoric of 'we are in an all out war not seen since WWII'.\n\nIt is for the above reason that they, the Ukraine, may currently find a retreat favourable.\n\n[Edit: spellings.]"
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62d722 | so whats up with congress and their browsing data.. why does everyone want to buy them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/62d722/eli5so_whats_up_with_congress_and_their_browsing/ | {
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"Congress were scumbags and sold out the us public. New law says your ISP can record and sell your browsing data.\n\nThey want to buy congressmen browsing data to find gross or encriminating or dumb searches "
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1lr2lx | i'm fairly new to reddit and i see the name "carl sagan" a lot. what made him so popular? | I've tried googling informations about him but I want to know how he became so popular. Was there an incident that made him popular? When did he become so popular? I'm wondering how I have not heard of him before... Thank you. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lr2lx/eli5_im_fairly_new_to_reddit_and_i_see_the_name/ | {
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"he tends [to explain the universe](_URL_0_) in an understandable way, ",
"Carl Sagan was an astronomer who, through his books and is television series *Cosmos* (and appearances on other television shows, such as *The Tonight Show*) popularized science and made it more comprehensible to non-scientists, that is, most of us. He was the previous generation's Neil deGrasse Tyson, in other words. He conveyed the wonder of science without making it dry and humorless.",
"That and he has one of the best quotes on Earth (no pun intended). \nWhen the Voyager space probe reached the edge of the solar system, NASA turned it around to take a photo (_URL_0_) on Sagan's request. This is what he later said about it [Wall of text inbound]-\n\n'From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every \"superstar,\" every \"supreme leader,\" every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.\n\nThe Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.\n\nThe Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.'\n\nHard not to love the man. "
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elt35z | when i’m in a room singing along to loud music at what i think is roughly the same volume, why does someone on the other side of the closed door hear my voice more clearly than the music? those peloton commercials got me thinking about this... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/elt35z/eli5_when_im_in_a_room_singing_along_to_loud/ | {
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"Your brain doesn't render an accurate depiction of your own voice, and some internal ear mechanisms also exist to prevent damage when shouting.\nAlso, your voice might be low pitched compared to the TV commercial, your wall may have attenuated the commercial more than your own voice.",
"I always thought the guy was wearing headphones in that commercial where the young kids hear their dad singing."
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29agmn | when are you legally allowed to hit someone in self-defense? only after their first swing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29agmn/eli5_when_are_you_legally_allowed_to_hit_someone/ | {
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"It depends on a lot of things. You need to talk to a criminal defense lawyer or prosecutor in whatever jurisdiction you're in if you want the right answer.",
"There are dozens of confounding factors to this question, so it's pretty much impossible to give you a good answer. You don't always have to have been physically struck first, but generally speaking, you'll need to be in a situation in which you're facing an inescapable threat. \n\nThat's really the most that can be said without a lot of specific information though. Location, weaponry, number of people, and about a billion other factors come into play. ",
"You should try reading the [self defense](_URL_0_?p=864) section of *[the Illustrated Guide to Law](_URL_0_).*"
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8hesfl | why do food brands not use restaurants to promote their product? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8hesfl/eli5_why_do_food_brands_not_use_restaurants_to/ | {
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"I know they do with alcohol. I worked in a sports bar and we were paid lots of money from beer and liquor companies to promote their products. Normally putting posters on the walls and we always had to offer our guests the products in a specific way.",
"They do - I have found were to buy a variety of vegetarian meat in restaurants from manufacturers websites - Gardien, Morningstar Farm, Gardenburger. But restaurants do not tend to promote how easy it is to recreate their dishes at home.",
"Why would you go to a restaurant that serves Campbell's soup? The whole thing about restaurant service of quality is that it is a small manufacturer in itself."
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24saxn | why do we eat certain foods at certain times of the day? | Like why do we generally associate eating something like eggs or cereal for breakfast as opposed to lunch or dinner? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24saxn/eli5_why_do_we_eat_certain_foods_at_certain_times/ | {
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"Culture and tradition. It varies geographically, too. There are places in Europe where eating eggs for breakfast would be considered very weird; why aren't you having meat and bread for breakfast?",
"Certain foods are more appropriate for other times because of the way our body digests it. Meat requires more work internally to process, so it's best later in the day, while staple foods like bread, rice etc release carbohydrates more gradually, making them great breakfast foods.\n\nThe latter is especially important to me as I'm type-1 diabetic, so knowing what foods release carbs at what relative rate can mean the difference between a normal day and one frantically struggling to regulate my blood sugar.",
"Breakfast foods will vary by region, but they are generally quick to prepare. Lunch foods tend to be easy to carry or eat on the move, catering to workers on breaks. Dinner foods tend to be more elaborate and can involve several courses because people tend to have more free time in the evenings. And then it becomes a matter of familiarity and tradition."
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a0d3qw | why is it that according to _url_0_ my download speed is 50mbps, but my download via the windows store is averaging 2mbps? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a0d3qw/eli5_why_is_it_that_according_to_speedtestnet_my/ | {
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"Downloads are measured in *bytes* per second. Each byte is 8 bits, so 2 MBps equals 16 Mbps (capital vs lowercase B).\n\nAs for 16 compared to 50? Maybe the server is slow.",
"_URL_0_ tries to be a shortest path test as going to the other side of the world to do this test would give you, as you can see with the Windows store, way lower number.\n\nWhy shortest path? So you can see what the speed is you can get over that part of the network, so you can see what your ADSL/cable speed is.",
"As the other comment says, don't mix bytes and bits.\n\nIt's not just your download speed, it's the upload speed on the other end and they likely limit it either per person or they're under too much load to exceed that amount right now.\n\nIt's like trying to download a game on Steam on the first day of a big sale. It's slow because the other end can't upload fast enough to keep up with the demand ",
"Try every test you can. Certain providers give test sites more bandwidth to trick us.\n\nWindows store should not be that slow.",
"Simply put, your test is downloading from a _URL_0_ mirror server, not the Windows store server, so your test is mostly invalid.\n\nYour connection may be capable of 50mbps but that doesn't mean the Windows store can upload to you and everyone else at the same time with that kind of speed.",
"Your isp will be allowing test traffic from _URL_0_ and restricting downloads from Microsoft. Choose different servers on Speedtest to be certain and use a vpn so your isp cannot know what your download is. ",
"Your location means a lot depending on what you are trying to do on the internet.\n\nWhen you used _URL_0_ it locates a server that is close to you to to the test, most of the time it's even hosted by your ISP which is the first hop after your home.\n\nIf you hop in your car and you want McDonalds (_URL_0_), there are typically many of those for you to pick from and you can get there quickly . However if you want Indian food (Windows store), depending on your location you may need to drive a ways to get there.\n\n\n"
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d4vidt | why are clapboards necessary when filming movies? | I'm talking about the black and white board that someone has to clap and say the scene, take number, and "action!" while rolling the camera. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d4vidt/eli5_why_are_clapboards_necessary_when_filming/ | {
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"They have been used to synchronise sound and picture. \n\nI'm not sure, if they are still necessary.",
"Helps the editor know what scene they are dealing with afterwards. Especially important when they were recording onto film as rolls might get lost and or misplaced. Recording that information with the shot made things easier to work with.\n\nOh and the ‘clapper’ bit is used to help sync the sound and the picture.\n\nIt was such a critical job that I heard the director usually fired you on the spot if you got it wrong. Not sure how true this is though.",
"The final, released sound in a movie or television show is not captured at the time of filming - lot of sound work is done in post production and added to the video afterward. The clapboard gives an easy way to sync the sound to the video when it's ready.",
"They are easily identifiable \"markers\" for an editor. Traditional film ended up being a long reel, and finding out where to cut and splice together the clips that actually \"went to print\" was a process that clapboards made more efficient because they took up the whole frame, and also gave the actors a queue for when to begin. Now with digital film and editing, its still useful to find and label the takes one wants to use out of the raw footage, even if they may \"keep rolling\" in the case of a blooper.",
"Back in the day the picture and sound were recorded separately and this gave a visible/audible point to synchronize them afterwards.",
"It's an easy way to attach the metadata, and the clapper part itself makes it easy to synchronise the video and audio components.",
"Helps the editor sync sound and video. Also displays I do such as act, scene and take. The editing process begins by sorting through everything on the camera roll or hard drive in a process called \"logging\". This info is essential to the logging process, which is essential to actually being able to edit without looking through a million random files to find the version of the scene you want to use.",
"one of my first jobs in film making was 2nd AC, who is the person who clacks the slate.\n\nthey're used for a few reasons, one is because the clack is so sharp and causes such a spike in audio that's how you sync the audio with the video. notice the slate also has the scene and take number on it and other things as well, one of the reasons that stuff is written on it is so that the editor can see this and immediately know which take it is. and another reason is for the script supervisor, the scriptee, so that they can keep track of it and write all of the information about the scene and the take down, again to help the editor. :) to walk you through it step by step, the 2nd AC writes on the slate the date, director, title, take number, scene number, roll, filter, and MOS, (we always joked it stood for Mit Out Sound cause it means you're shooting with sound from a boom or LAVs instead of from the camera) and the scriptee writes down all of these things as well, they also take note of every detail of prop placement, wardrobe, director's notes, etc. so that the editing process is easier, you have all of the information right there, and you look at scriptee's notes and the first frame of the take and know immediately if that take is no good, or if just the last part is, or if one line is just slightly off, etc. honestly, although this isn't what your question is about, script supervisors are the real heroes of film making. I'm amazed by how organized they are and how much rides on their shoulders. one time we tried to skirt by without one and shot an entire day of close ups with part of the wardrobe missing on an actor and never even noticed.",
"They do a bunch of important things.\n\nThey provide a synchronization between video and audio, with the sudden clap noise being the same no matter how far away the microphones are. In real life, a mic can be three or more frames difference between video and audio. (Sound travels about 1.1 feet per millisecond, or about 18 feet in one visual frame).\n\nThey provide color calibration and white balance. They aren't just random blobs of color. Cards have a gray scale from pure white to pure black, which allows for fixing color differences between sensitivity on different cameras. Even tiny lighting differences can result in different video results (like aperture differences to let in more/less light, white balance differences, sensitivity differences, etc). Variations between cameras can affect color in subtle ways. Since the boards have well-established values, it is a quick calibration for the software to make all the cameras produce visually similar results.\n\nThe shot information (scene number, take number, etc) on the board help editors know exactly where the clip belongs. They also say the information aloud before a shot.\n\nModern digital clapperboards have a fast-moving clock, which can be used to help correct (very slight) differences in recording speeds on different cameras. Like color correction, it's a feature that software can take advantage of for correcting variations between cameras.",
"Hey there, I mix sound for film and tv. This is a part of my job.\n\nThe clapboard, which is called a \"slate\" is the old fashioned tried and true way of synching sound to video. The slate also has a lot of useful info regarding take, roll (if shooting film), frame rate etc on it which is displayed at the beginning of a take.\n\nThere are also 'smartslates' which are ubiquitous these days. The slate itself is synched to the audio timecode, and then displayed to assist with synch at the beginning of a take. With digital cameras, we also send timecode to the cameras when possible. \n\nIt's all about rendundancy. There's so much money on the line during production that rendundancy can save your ass. If you get into post and have to spend a shitload of time synching audio you may even be replacing with ADR after the fact, it can be a huge waste of money."
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aj7de7 | how do video games like cs: go handle the direction and the intensity of gun fires? | Clarification:
I am sorry that the question is ambiguous. I understand that the relative position of the sound origin can be calculated, but given that information, how to produce a sound could be heard that way?
For example, player A shoots player B at an angle of 45 degrees from B's left at 10 meters away. How can I make a sound that B can tell by hearing it?
Further clarification:
My confusion rises with 2 facts:
1. Music artists have limited resources to produce so many sounds in games. I guess they only record sound right at the muzzle.
2. Sounds, like gunfires, can be produced at any direction and distances relative to the player.
So, how do they manage to produce all the sounds that accurately represent its origin? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aj7de7/eli5_how_do_video_games_like_cs_go_handle_the/ | {
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"Alright, so the sound of any particular gun is recorded in a way that leaves the game devs with a high-quality piece of audio with which they can do any sort of processing they want. Since people have two ears (usually), there is a left and right channel to most audio. By controlling when a particular sound is played in each ear, the game devs can imitate how real-life sound works. Your brain interprets any delay between your ears hearing a sound as a direction the sound came from. That's one part of it. The second part, distance, is just adding other effects to reduce the loudness of the sound so you think it's further away, as well as things like echo or reverb to simulate the environment you're standing in in-game to make you believe it's somewhere else."
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1yxvhd | how is verizon and comcasts speed throttling no t illegal? | I paid for a specific product. In light of the 'net-neutrality' judgment my provider (Verizon) *changed* the product I originally bought. How is this not an illegal bait and switch? I am now receiving a *different* service than the one I paid for. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yxvhd/eli5how_is_verizon_and_comcasts_speed_throttling/ | {
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"You signed an agreement about limitations and their liberties with the service. ",
"The service you are paying for clearly (or maybe not too clearly) states \"up-to\" a certain speed."
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4pnaqo | how much of professional poker is based on luck, if everyone plays "perfectly?" | That might sound like a stupid question at first, but rewatching Casino Royale got me thinking.
A lot of people know that being able to play poker professionally takes a lot of time and skill and a wealth of knowledge of the game, which is why a lot of the same people show up in the final tables a lot.
However, since they are very good at poker and know what hands should be played and which ones should be folded (and when), wouldn't the game start being more about luck?
With perfect (or even very, very good play), where most players make the most logical choice most of the time, wouldn't a lot of the game then come down to luck?
In Casino Royale, for example, none of the players in the poker game seem to make any poor poker decisions, so Bond pretty much wins out of pure luck. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4pnaqo/eli5_how_much_of_professional_poker_is_based_on/ | {
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"Poker isn't about having or playing perfect hands. It is about making others think you can beat them without saying anything. ",
"First of all, statistically speaking, amateurs are fairly represented in final tables. Its a common myth to think the same guys are always on top. \n\nPoker can be 100% about luck.\n\nIf both players just sit around and play every hand to the river, they can flip a coin for who will win.\n\nbut when you introduce betting, folding, bluffing, ect. the cards become less relevant.\n\nThe act of winning at poker is largely about winning more losing hands than your opponent, and winning bigger on winning hands. That has nothing to do with the cards. but that doesnt mean it still isnt luck. Bluffing into a guy with the nuts is still bad luck.\n\n",
"Assuming everyone played 'perfectly' - it would then be 100% luck.\n\nBut, no one can play 'perfectly' nor is there even really a definition of what that would be since its a hidden information game. \n\nThe problem is the choices go beyond a simple logic structure because there's so much bluffing, slowplaying and misrepresentation on all sides, and if you knew other players were playing with a certain set of logical rules, you'd then change how you played etc... so it becomes impossible to solve for perfect play.\n\nSo given that no one is playing perfectly, or even close to perfectly, the skill and decision making tends to over-ride differences in 'luck' over time. \n\nWhen you look as something like the WSOP, you play so many hands by the time you hit the final table, luck as a factor should be dwarfed by the skill portion of it, and If I remember Casino Royale it was also a multi-day or very long event. \n\nMovies tend to do silly stuff like give people 4 Aces vs a Straight flush...but in the real world that's so rare that there's often a 'bad beat' jackpot set up at Casinos that hits once every few weeks. \n\n"
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5hnvqj | how to make youtube work like i want it to? example; i want to watch a series in order, but i have to backtrack, backtrack, shut down, restart, up, up, left, right, left, right, ab, start just to watch the next video. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hnvqj/eli5_how_to_make_youtube_work_like_i_want_it_to/ | {
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"There is not a way. Use a youtuber's playlist. Youtube does not care any more for regular consumers, they are pushing for a more viral platform which means more money for direct ads, less for youtubers, and no more sequenced vids. ",
"Whenever I watch a clip from an episode, as long as the episode number is in the title or description, YouTube has the next episode in the recommended section 80% of the time. \n \nThe easiest way is do it beforehand, if it's like a tv show search \"S#X Episode), if should show all the episodes for that season, then make a playlist."
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19iu0h | why do radio stations censor words like sh*t but not the n-word? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19iu0h/why_do_radio_stations_censor_words_like_sht_but/ | {
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"Because it's \"nigga\" not \"nigger\", and that makes it okay somehow.",
"Depends where you live and who's got a sandy vagina about it.",
"The FCC fines radio stations (and can revoke their license in extreme cases) for saying specific vulgar words. The N-word is not among the words that trigger this fine."
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5flxiy | the difference between a national park and a national forest in the us. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5flxiy/eli5_the_difference_between_a_national_park_and_a/ | {
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"Generally, in national forests, structures can be built and resources can be used by non-government entities with permission. In national parks, this is strictly off limits. \nIn other words, national forests are more usable versions of national parks, but the usability depends based on what region of the US they are located in.",
"National forests are land that's owned by the government for the people's use in various ways. With the appropriate permits, you can hunt, cut trees, pan for gold, camp, graze pigs, etc.\n\nIn national parks, the park *is* the use the land is put to. They're places come come and look at and spend time in, and the rules are stricter, to make sure they stay nice to look at. Hunting and logging permits are not issued.",
"A national forest is managed by the United States Forest Service, a division of the United States Department of Agriculture. A national forest's primary goal maintain the land for multiple uses, recreation, timber, wild habitat, watershed, grazing, etc.\n\nA national park is land that is specifically set aside to act as a preserve. it is managed by the National Park Service, which is part of the Department of the Interior (aka department of everything else)\n\nThe NPS's goal is to maintain the park as it is. With minimal disturbance."
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5aei7k | how do free online stream websites finance their operations? is it somehow similar to how corporations like skype function? | I guess legal free providers if they are legal, such as putlockers, 123movies etc. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5aei7k/eli5_how_do_free_online_stream_websites_finance/ | {
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"Can you give a specific one you're thinking of? Do you mean legal free streaming pages or pirate ones?",
"Mostly ads, there is a reason when you go to sites like that you are bombarded with spam and pop ups."
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30khr1 | how come it took ~8 hours for soyuz to reach the iss which is about 250 miles from earth, yet the apollo missions took about three days to reach the moon, almost 1,000x farther away? | In light of the recent Soyuz launch | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30khr1/eli5_how_come_it_took_8_hours_for_soyuz_to_reach/ | {
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"docking with the ISS is a very delicate procedure, you dont want to come in too fast. they approach it much more slowly, whereas the Apollo missions, they had a trajectory and blasted off towards it at full speed and slowed down at pretty much the last second. ISS is also moving quickly and so catching up to it, approaching, and docking is a delicate, slow procedure that takes a long time, compared to shooting off as fast as you can towards a target a long distance away. ",
"Because the Apollo missions went much faster, at least for the Earth to moon transfer orbit segment of its journey. (Which was most of it.)\n\nGetting to the ISS by the currently available means takes a lot of dicking around in orbit to get a good, safe intercept course and you spend a lot of time going very slowly relative to the ISS. (Crashing into the ISS would of course be bad, so the chase after it is very slow.)\n\nApollo had targets for getting to the moon, sure, but it had a better margin of error and nothing to worry about physically crashing into within a reasonable margin of error.\n\nAlso, of course, it's a big deal to keep people alive in space, so you want to limit how long they're up there, but it's also the case that to a certain extent the weight of life support is already being used so you might as well just add some more supplies for more life support time and take it slow. There's a sweet spot between them.\n\nFor the ISS missions that sweet spot gives you time to dick about and be very careful because it could hypothetically be a very short mission. It's not that hard to justify adding in an extra few hours of life support when your trip is still going to come in at less than a day of mostly sitting around for the astronauts.\n\nFor the Apollo project you're talking about many days vs weeks. The sweetspot favours extra fuel to get you going faster, especially when considering the Apollo missions had a lot more manual control by the three astronauts, so them spending a very long time in the strenuous environment of their small capsule is a big concern. "
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oo149 | why everyone seems to think music piracy is morally okay. | As a musician who wants to start putting music online soon, this is something I've been wondering about. On one hand, I want more people to enjoy my music, even if they never pay for it. On the other, I would like to make a living off of it, which won't be possible if there is never a sale.
Is there a way to support the artists I love, but not the industry I hate, all with a clear conscience?
There are plenty of arguments that seem common that I don't understand.
* It's okay because the there is an infinite amount of copies. Someone, be it the artist or the label, is entitled to their money in exchange for a copy, even if they have unlimited copies, right? That's the whole point of being for sale.
* Most of the money goes to the label, rather than the artist. I believe that should be the other way around, but that doesn't change the fact that someone released it with the intent to receive compensation. Even if the artist doesn't make the money, they still get your "vote."
* Why buy something when you can get it for free? *Seriously?* Isn't that the definition of stealing?
I'm still on the fence as to how I feel about it, so could someone help me to make an informed decision? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/oo149/elif_why_everyone_seems_to_think_music_piracy_is/ | {
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"Lets say there's a guy, and he has two options for getting his music:\n\n* Buy tracks or albums from label-supported services such as itunes. End result: occasionally buys albums that he is fairly sure he will like.\n* Pirate everything he's remotely interested in. End result: pirates massive amounts of music, but actually ends up buying more than he would otherwise due to being able to get a better understanding of what he likes.\n\nNow, I'm not saying that this is actually the case (though I find it very plausible), but if a model like this is correct then the piracy option works out best for everyone. Including the labels, since they don't lose any sales, but by whining and suing about it they can potentially make a little extra money on the side as long as they don't spend too much. They also don't lose control of the major distribution outlets for legal sales. I'm not sure what the actual statistics are. With all this together, you can put together a good case for piracy being 'moral' in terms of maximising profits for the labels and artists.\n\nAs anecdotal evidence of an example where something like case 2 turns out to be correct, I bought almost no music before spotify appeared - I didn't pirate either, I just didn't have much interest. But when an easy way to quickly listen to all sorts appeared, I started buying because it was great to own the tracks I liked the best, both to support the artists and to use on an mp3 player. Since spotify became pay for, I've bought a couple of albums from artists I turned out to like, but other than that I more or less stopped listening to new stuff again. If many cases are like mine, everybody loses out...except that piracy may replace spotify.",
"i came here to say, that the label company gets most of the money, and artist gets near to nothing, well in the uk, it's legal to have a copy of a CD if you own the original, some people do this, pirate then buy because the music was good. street musicians are quite popular in the uk, in smaller cities, people just give them money, if they can draw in a big crowd, this means pop, drums, double bass, guitar, violin combinations are very popular in my city. you could also try free music with donations \n\nedit: if you have time, look up jon gomm, he's a great guitarist, he puts his songs on youtube and then you can buy them for X amount, some are even \"pay what you want\"",
"I don't think there is one answer to your question. Some think it's ok because \"record companies are evil.\" Some think it's ok because no one is stopping them. Some think it's wrong, but they do it anyway. Some think it's ok if they buy some music, because they wouldn't have found out what they like if they hadn't pirated. Some think it's ok because, traditionally, artists don't make much money from records, and they would rather support the artist by buying merch/attending shows. Some think it's only ok to pirate music that you wouldn't have bought anyway.\n\nThere is no one, all-encompassing answer. However, infringement is definitely against the law. It's not theft, though. It's copyright infringement. ",
"I'll say it in a way that'll make me unpopular but whatever: Humans are not rational creatures, they are rationalizing creatures. We think its right because its easy, we get away with it and no one we know is directly harmed. Every reason offered on top of that is just a rationalization for our existing behavior.",
"Once you ask about morality, the conversation becomes a question of \"what is morality?\", and obviously we're not going to come to a consensus on that, nor should we be able to. Besides that, I don't think it's a very interesting question.\n\nWhat I do think is very interesting to consider is the ramification piracy has on media, and how artists and business people react to those ramifications. \n\nPiracy is a fact of our modern digital lives. It's a consequence of the uncontrollable nature of the internet. The old saying is that the internet interprets censorhip as damage and routes around it. That's not just a pithy aphorism, there's truth there. \n\nThat said, there are still effective enough restrictions in place that finding copyrighted material takes a modicum of effort. Not a lot of effort, but SOME effort. That is an important fact to keep in mind. Why? Because eliminating a consumer's need to put forth effort in procuring their wares means they will be willing to pay you for it. \n\nI think the future for most content is streaming services. Streaming services eliminate the psychological barrier that prevents us from plunking down $10 for that new album that we kinda liked the one single from, but aren't sure about the whole thing. The only barrier that prevents streaming services from becoming truly successful is copyright holders holding out because they think they're media is special. There is no place online I can download \"Jurassic Park\" legally, for instance. Joe Consumer doesn't know why and he doesn't want to know why. He just wants to watch Jurassic Park, and he doesn't own the damn DVD. What's he gonna do, buy the $25 Blu-ray on AMazon and wait two days? No, he wants to watch it right now. \n\nOnce streaming services become all-inclusive (that is, a single music streaming service, a single movie streaming service, etc.) then piracy becomes a non-issue. Think of how straight-forward and simple it would be. If you have a hit show, it makes money. If no one streams it, it doesn't make money. The studio pulls it. Simple. And because the cost of distribution becomes neglible, the cost of production ebcomes flexible. Low-budget comedies that don't draw huge crowds can co-exist next to crap like Two and a Half Men, and monetization happens automatically. \n\nThere. I solved the entire media and piracy problem. Have users subscribe to a service fora single price per month that is carefully set to average out. Then pay content creators when their shit gets streamed. Find a balance. Everyone wins. \n\n",
"Everyone's answers are probably going to differ on this, but here's how I look at it: yes, I've pirated music. Without doing so, there are literally hundreds of bands I never would've heard of, let alone heard their music if I hadn't. \n\nI also avoid the trap of hearing one or two songs on the radio by an artist, buying the album, and discovering that I hate the other 10 songs on the album. \n\nIf I like a musician, I will go out and buy their CDs, because I actually like having official copies and album art and an actual physical copy of it. Thanks to pirating music to taste test it - a lot of stuff that would never be played on the radio, too - I own probably 6-7 *times* more CDs than I would've owned otherwise. ",
"You should be putting your music online so people will listen to it. Not to make money. It's time people stopped trying to make a buck out of something that relies on others to willingly buy rather than pirate. Your revenue needs to come from gigs and you need to be a nice enough guy to say. Okay I would really appreciate it if you bought my CD but if you can't afford it then I'm okay with you pirating it. This is when people will truly respect you and think. Okay he has a passion and he wants to get his music out there. I'm willing to pay for that.",
"Because I wouldn't have paid for it anyway. What is the huge difference between me listening to an album on Youtube/Spotify/other streaming services and me downloading and listening to it on iTunes?",
"If you put your music up as pay what you want, I promise you you'll make more money than any other way, if it's any good. You won't have to worry about piracy that way.",
"If you wanna support artists and not record labels go to their concerts. Artists make the majority of their money from performing live rather than record sales. \n\nAlso, if you honestly wanna make a living off music you're going to have to get off your ass and put on shows for people.",
"Something of a sidebar question -\n\nAmong those who think piracy is OK, why is anyone motivated to *upload* it originally? I can't say I've never downloaded any pirated music - but who is it that acquires a copy in the first place and then makes it available online? What are they getting out of it? They don't have anything better to do then give away music?",
"**Older music** \n\nThe Constitution, which is the basically the 'master laws' that no 'non-special' (amendment) law can violate. This 'master law' says that your right to make money off of something is supposed to be limited. Certain mean companies have passed laws so they can make money on things forever. Your limited right to make money is supposed to help make the world a better place so that we have things like Fairy Tales we can all enjoy and retell. These evil companies broke the 'master law' by bribing the people to make the law and tricking them to look the other way. So anyone making money off something more than 14 years old (the original length at the time of the 'master law') is violating our 'natural' rights. The 'master law' was giving these companies a privilege that they have abused. When a company abuses their privileges we can ignore their abuses.\n\n**The nature of the internet**\n\nThe internet and computers in general are copying machines. By putting your work on them and trying to sell it, you are asking for special rights. You don't have to, you can sell tapes or records. But when you digitize your music and put it on the internet, you are asking the internet to give you special rights. This is like a concert pianist who makes a recording and only wants one person to hear it. It's too bad, but that's not how recording works. A book online is not the same as a paper book. Your special rights only extend out of consumer desire to follow them. The internet makes copies of things and spreads them, right or wrong, it's what it does, if you don't want to play by those rules, leave the house, the internet made the rules clear from the start. The internet does not care about how important you think your information is, information is information.\n\n**The Way Things Work**\n\nYou cannot regulate or make money off something everyone can do for free, except by their desire to pay you. For example, if a farmer spends 60 years making a 'super crop' and gives it to me, I can take a seed and grow it and eat it. He can stop me from selling it, but he can't, without violating my natural rights, stop me from growing it and giving seeds to everyone. To do so is to try to regulate a natural right and this literally will never work. (Ask the War on Drugs HA!) However, I can choose to pay him for 3 reasons, 1. I think he deserves it for his hard work. 2. I think he adds value (growing it for me). 3. He gives me resale rights with his crop.\n\nThe same applies to music, you can stop me from reselling it, but you can't stop me from copying it for free. You might say this means the death of the music world as we know it, and it might. But that means the music industry CANNOT exist in the world that is real. If the music industry has to try to limit bits to survive, it does not deserve to survive. The same applies to music, video games, and anyone else who wants to world 'to be like it was' so they can keep their industry up. Limiting natural rights for some industry's protection is wrong on a very deep level. If this means we have to revert back to the day of folk art, where people make music for each other in their free time, then that's what happens.\n\nAnd yet, people still make money doing things that are given away for free. Many musicians make maybe not a living, but enough money that they can make music part time, webcomics are free, people make movies on Youtube channels, news websites give it away for free, and Indy game developers do pretty good. How do they do this? They ask people to pay a reasonable amount for their product. The majority will just steal, many will pay a little as an act of keeping good things coming, hopefully enough people do this that the content makers will have resources to make more. (Especially if you make it easy, one click shopping, Non-DRM, high quality, re-download rights, and no spam. Steam does a great job, consider getting your work on Amazon, Amazon takes 30% but they are fucking great.) Some people and companies make money off of advertising. This is how youtube artists make money. Webcomic artists make money off of merchandise, funny t-shirts and quality gifts. Jeff Jacques talks about this [pretty often](_URL_0_).\n\nThe thing to realize is even in the world as it used to work, 99% of people made no money off their work. (Shocking but true.) The world hasn't changed that much, maybe 90% will make no money and 10% will make a little without that 1% making millions, but is that really that bad?\n\n(Gah, sorry I lost my tone halfway through and this was exceedingly unbiased, but the question is pretty biased.)",
"First point I want to make is that piracy is not stealing. Stealing requires that you deprive the owner of something; piracy is making a copy, so now you both have one. I'm not saying its morally right, but its certainly not on the same moral plane as stealing. \n\nI rarely pirate any more, but when I do its due to being fed up. Back in the Napster days, you literally could not get music in mp3 format online. Its largely thanks to 'pirates' that services like iTunes exist today. You needed to go to a physical store and buy a $20 CD that contained the 1 song you wanted to listen to. Napster proved this was not a technology problem, but rather an unwillingness of record labels to give up their ridiculous CD profits and properly service their customers. This kind of busniness model - where an enterprising computer programmer shows them how to improve their paradigm, and they dig their heels in and start throwing lawsuits around - makes me angry. Even today, why buy an iTunes song loaded with DRM encoded in a lossy codec when I can get FLAC audio with absolutely no restrictions for free? I **want** to be able to pay for something like this.\n\nFurther, many songs I 'pirate', I have already bought in one form or another. If I buy a Queen album on cassette tape, as far as I am concerned, I have paid for the rights to listen to that song. I think it is exploitative to have to pay for the same song on CD, DVD, mp3, etc, besides the cost of the media. \n\n ",
"Ok, young one, I'm gonna' break it down for you. Keep three things in mind though.\n\nYou have a service (people that do things for you for a charge), you have the artist (people that create), and you have the creativity (what the artist wants you to enjoy).\n\nSo let's say I'm an artist. I make some awesome music that you really like, and I just happen to live in your neighborhood. So you really like it and show it to your friends. Your friends like it but that is as far as it goes. You may *really* like it, but you're not going to dedicate your life to it.\n\nThis is where the service comes in. People work (dedicate their life in some way or another) to get people, like yourself, to experience this music. Now you found it on your own, you love me, you tell everyone about me. The service likes me even more than you do; more than you ever could because it puts food on their table. So it makes it more pretty. What was good becomes great in the eyes of your friends that just kinda' liked it.\n\nThis is where the creativity doesn't mean anything anymore, because you think people like it because they see it on commercials and movies. You still buy by music but you want other things too. Other things costs just as much... Once you liked to go to the store and buy my new CD but you're in there for my CD not *Remote Control Lizard's* CD. You'll never hear their CD, because it costs money and time. You want to experience more than me. I'm still great, you buy everything that I put out but the only way to experience more is to hear it for free.\n\nThe service doesn't like that because you feed them. It's sad because these people have families and are just like you (maybe). That doesn't matter though because they have to eat. Suddenly, something became easier. You look up clips of other bands/singers and you like them. You learned how to find **ALL THE MUSIC**. You realize that a lot of it is a product of the service. All the bands/singers just happen to be beautiful and perfect (Because of the service). That makes you hate the service because you can find it by yourself now for free and they were charging you for it. \n\nYou can sit in front of a box and have everything you want if you put time into it. There is so much music that you don't want to help people even if it's optional. It's easy to click one song to the next. You get used to it. You don't buy my new CD next year. You don't understand that you're not supporting/helping me; and I can see why. It's easier to click... You think you're a fan by JUST listening to me and telling people about me.",
"The main issue as I see it is market efficiency. Due to copyright law, the artist (read: record label) has a monopoly on his work, which prevents competitive forces from driving down cost. And due to the negligible cost of producing copies of the work, the supply is infinite. Therefore you have a situation where the laws of supply and demand are not in effect, where the price of the work that is most profitable for the artist (read: record label) is not efficient: far fewer people have access to the work than should (a lot of people want to buy the work, but can't, for no good reason, and the sum of capitalization on that desire is not maximized). \n\nSo obviously the system is broken. There are a number of ways of fixing the system. One way is to allow some piracy. This drives the price of the work to a more efficient value. Think about it. Would you buy a song for 2$ a pop like it was when you had to buy CDs in the 90's? But a lot of people are willing to buy songs at 1$ a pop. And even more would be willing at 50c a pop, which is probably getting closer to a more efficient price, one that would still be very profitable for artists.",
"Many consider it revenge for the RIAA screwing both artists and customers for so many years. \n\nOthers justify it by saying they can either get songs they can not find in stores (which is rather moot now as there is the internet) or that it helps them find new bands they've never heard of before.\n\nThe above justification however holds some grounds as there are many new artists who have seen their music become quite famous via pirating in conjunction with presenting their music for free online.\n\nOthers really do not see anything wrong with it, even for the small independents who rely on every last sale to make any money.\n\nThose points aside when an artist puts something up for sale and it gets pirated the artist isn't really LOSING money, just not gaining it. And the conversion of pirates to owners in some cases is pretty high. \n\nThat being said there are many who download large numbers of a bands music to see what they are like, and if they like their music they proceed to buy it when they can.\n\nDoes all of this mean it is okay to pirate? Of course not, but it certainly is being approached in the wrong manner and with very little understanding.",
" > It's okay because the there is an infinite amount of copies. Someone, be it the artist or the label, is entitled to their money in exchange for a copy, even if they have unlimited copies, right? That's the whole point of being for sale.\n\nNo, and this is why I am for piracy and against intellectual property. Nobody is entitled to any kind of sales or profits people are not willing to give him. It does not matter if it is selling something immaterial or something physical like shoes. What the shoe vendor is entitled to is to nobody come and steal as shoe because then he has one less shoes in inventory and NOT because that shoes could be sold. It is one's own inventory and not one's own sales which one is entitled to from a correct property rights point of view.\n\nThis is the point to get through. No entitlement to sales whatsoever, only an entitlement not to suffer a reduction of stock.\n\nTo put it more simpler: a violation of property rights means someone imposes a cost on you, it does not mean someone deprives you of potential sales.\n\nAnd yes it could mean nobody can make a living through music. Still doesn't matter. Nobody is entitled to make a living if others are not willing to pay for it. Perhaps music will become a hobby and musicians will need to have a day job to pay bills, like everybody else has hobbies that don't pay bills and thus one has to have some other kind of job. So what? Why would that be a huge problem? There would be less energy invested in music, but that energy would be invested in genuine stuff and not commercial crap. I think it evens out. For the customer it is not necessarily bad. For the musician it sucks, but not that much I think that it justifies such legislation.\n\n > Why buy something when you can get it for free? Seriously? Isn't that the definition of stealing?\n\nNo, just like masturbating doesn't equal stealing sex from a prostitute. The definition of stealing is a reduction of someone's stock without his consent. It is a cost imposition, not a reduction of sales.",
"Most people who argue for the issue aren't arguing that it is morally right to download illegally. They are arguing the semantics of \"stealing\" vs \"copyright infringement\". People say downloading illegally is \"stealing\", but stealing is defined as taking something away from another person. By downloading a song, unless you can prove that I would have purchased it otherwise, I'm not taking anything away from anyone.\n\n#1: Yes, the creator is entitled to their money. But unless you can prove I would have purchased it if I had not downloaded it, the creator has lost nothing by my downloading.\n\n#2: Kinda, but by doing that your reinforcing the bad business practice you disagree with. By downloading it illegally, you're still voting for that person, but voting against the method. Many artists acknowledge this and then begin to offer their music directly, which has been very successful in the past.\n\n#3: No, stealing requires you to take something from someone. It is copyright infringement. And honestly, this question completely contradicts question #2's point. Everyone knows that if everyone stole, then the artists wouldn't continue to make music. If I like an artist, I want them to continue making what they make, and therefore I will \"vote\" for them with my money. That's the basics of our entire society, and the argument could be made about anything. Everyone could steal food from my grocery store, but that would send the store out of business and I would starve.\n\n\nI support piracy for one simple reason: Every time I consume entertainment, I feel I'm being ripped off.\n\nA CD of 20 songs at 2 minutes a piece is 40 minutes of entertainment. A CD costs 20$. That's $0.5 a minute.\n\nA movie is 120 minutes of entertainment at about $10 for a ticket. That's $.08 a minute.\n\nWhereas my $50 a month cable bill is (24hrs a day = 1440 minutes a day X 30 days in a month) 43200 minutes of entertainment, comes out to .001 cents a minute. But even that's a ripoff because I'm advertised to for half that time.\n\nYes, they have the right to make money, and I think they should and want them to because I want to consume entertainment. But their prices should be reasonable. If a loaf of bread at my store was $10 instead of $2, theft would drastically increase as well.\n\nThe best real-life example of this is \"Steam\". It is a video game client that frequently holds radical sales, which is never done in the video game industry. When the prices drop, their sales skyrocket to almost ridiculous levels, which prove that price is a HUGE factor in consumption of entertainment. They've had record growth over the last few years. Plus Steam has an amazing reputation, so people want to support their service.",
"Is there a way to support the artists I love, but not the industry I hate, all with a clear conscience?\n\n-\nWhy not just go and see the artist live? That way most /if not all/ goes to the artist.",
"Watch an episode of MTV's show Crib's. You won't feel guilty anymore either."
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30la5w | what happens if nobody chooses to run for president in the us? | All the talk of the race starting off with the Ted Cruz campaign has had me wondering about this. What would be the course of action if, unlikely as it is, nobody put their name in the race? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30la5w/eli5_what_happens_if_nobody_chooses_to_run_for/ | {
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"The procedure for all presidential elections is:\n\n1. Each state chooses a number of electors equal to the number of members it sends to Congress.\n2. Each elector casts one vote indicating who they prefer as President, and another vote indicating who they prefer as Vice President.\n3. The person with the majority of \"President\" votes is the President, and the person with the majority of \"Vice President\" votes is the Vice President.\n\nThere is no requirement for the electors to only vote for someone who announced they wanted to be elected.\n\nThe question I suspect you really want to ask, then, is \"what happens if the person elected refuses to serve as President\", and the answer to that comes from the existing framework of laws detailing [the presidential line of succession](_URL_0_). Specifically, the answer is \"the first person in the line of succession who's willing to serve becomes President\" (potentially requiring them to resign any offices they hold in other branches of the federal government first).\n\n(the Constitution is technically silent on this, but gives Congress power to pass laws governing cases it doesn't provide for, and Congress has done that, hence the more detailed line of succession)",
"If nobody ran, everyone would just write in a name. The votes would be tallied and passed on to the electoral college, and they would cast their votes for President. Theoretically, whoever had their name written in the most would win.",
"A very weird scenario to happen, but most likely the State legislators would need to still designate who their electors would be. Assuming that no \"write-in\" candidate won a majority from the electors, the US House would decide. Assuming that the House could not find anybody willing to run, then the Senate would choose the Vice President who would be acting President. Assuming the Senate could not find anybody, then the Speaker of the House is next in line and would become Acting-President until the House decided on a new President."
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2azlou | why do videos that have a really high fps (let's say, 1000 fps) make it slow motion? | I've seen many videos with this type of thing and I was wondering why having a really high FPS make something go slow motion? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2azlou/eli5_why_do_videos_that_have_a_really_high_fps/ | {
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"It doesn't. It _enables you to see things in slow motion and still have it be smooth_. Since 24FPS feels smooth, i you take 24FPS and slow it down by half you get a chopping feeling video. If you slow 1000fps down by half you get 500fps. By 75% and it's still 250fps. And so on....\n\nedit: maths\n\n",
"They shoot it at 1000 frames per second (you can think of it like taking 1000 pictures in one second) and then play it back at a significantly slower frame rate (commonly 24 frames per second). That means that something that took 1 second when they filmed it would take 41 seconds to play those 1000 \"pictures\" back.",
"Because you don't play them back at the frame rate you shot it. 1000 FPS played back at 24 or 30 FPS, which are standard speeds, you get 30-40 times slower without being choppy.",
"FPS is the amount of frames per second you're recording. When you move it into an editing software, you can change that into a slower (more streamable) frame rate (i.e. 60fps, which is what the cinemas tend to use) which will make your video slo-mo.\n\nFor example: If you filmed at 1000FPS, you're capturing 1/1000th of a second per frame. If you make it so it plays back at a \"standard\" frame rate like 60, you'll see 60/1000ths of a second's recording in any singe second.\nThis means that each second of recording time is stretched across 16 and a bit seconds... therefore playing back much slower."
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fn4dmx | with hdr-capable tv becoming commonplace, why can’t we have a hdr format for pictures that takes advantage of this hdr capability? | Please don’t confuse this with the single HDR image that is created post processing. Displaying that image on a ‘HDR’ image will not take advantage of the HDR capability of the TV | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fn4dmx/eli5_with_hdrcapable_tv_becoming_commonplace_why/ | {
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"Such a file format is possible, but not as desirable as you'd think. Using two TIFF files for HDR allows all the code that works on TIFF images to be reused. Since TIFF is a well established standard, the idea of making a new standard doesn't draw a lot of volunteers."
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ej9pci | why do humans get emotional (high-pitched ‘awws’, omg sad faces, pouty lips, etc.) over cute animals/fictional creatures/baby humans? is this reaction instinctual? if so, what is this tapping into? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ej9pci/eli5_why_do_humans_get_emotional_highpitched_awws/ | {
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"Kind of like baby Yoda?",
"Humans think round things are cute... (babies, stitch from lilo and stitch, the dream works dragons, puppies and kittens...) due to wiring in our brains that make us love babies for their roundness. It’s a “parental” instinct. \n\nIt’s also why chibi and fat stuffed animal versions of things considered to be so popular and cute.",
"People are designed to find things which remind us of young children to be cute, as a way of getting us to pay attention to and take care of children. We find cuteness to be fascinating and likeable and we respond with affection to it.\n\nIt turns out that baby animals and some fictional creatires can trigger the same cuteness response, so we end up caring for kittens and puppies in ways similar to how we would care for a baby person.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Just adding onto what others have said - babies are small, they have big eyes, big heads for their bodies and are very rounded and chubby. So you can make something look cute by giving it some of these features - for example baby yoda is small, has softer edges and has huge eyes."
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68gcil | when did human ancestors become apex predators? | What were the major stages in the path of adaptation we took to gain our ecological status? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68gcil/eli5when_did_human_ancestors_become_apex_predators/ | {
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"We never became apex predators. For one thing, we're not true carnivores, we're omnivores. Secondly, we never displaced the apex predators. Wolves, tigers, lions, sharks, and bears all still have ecological niches as apex predators. We can erode their ecology and kill them in defense, but we haven't replaced them in the food chain.\n\nInstead, we are the only species of our type: true agriculturalists. We farm. No other species does this. Some ants and termites do some farming, but they also harvest wild plants to feed their aphid chattle. We do not. We farm the plants, and feed them to farmed animals. We are primarily agricultural, with a dash of hunter mixed in. Similarly, those ants and termites are primarily foragers, with a dash of agriculture mixed in.\n\nThe only ecology where we hunt more than we farm is the ocean, and that is becoming a serious problem, specifically because we're eating apex predators. Both salmon and tuna are ferocious hunters. Tuna intelligence is comparable to that of wolves or lions, as they are pack hunters who plan and communicate. We prefer the meat of predatory fish because of its richer flavor, but we are doing serious harm to the ecosystem by hunting in an ecology where we don't belong. Nothing in the deep sea has had a chance to evolve a response to such technological invasion, and their populations are fluctuating dangerously. In addition, it's not healthy for us to eat apex predators. We evolved to eat herbivorous animals. The fats and oils we crave in predatory fish are too rich for us to eat on a regular basis without serious health problems.\n\nIn essence, we can ACT like apex predators, but it's not in our best interest.",
"ELI5: We aren't apex predators by definition.\n\n---\n\n**Networks and levels**\n\nI would like to begin by explaining what's an apex predator, for that I'll have to explain two things: (a) trophic networks, and (b) trophic levels.\n\nAll the species that live in an environment are interlinked to each other by ecological interactions, for example, a bee uses the pollen from a flower to make honey, two predators compete for food, etc. One of such interactions involves species A consuming species B. If we begin to map all the interactions, we end up with a trophic network [like in this diagram](_URL_0_) (from greek *trophē*, to nourish) .\n\nTrophic networks have two main components: (1) producers, like plants, corals, or algae, and (2) consumer, like insects, fungi, or wolves. The main difference between both is that producers have the capability to create their own food, without the involvement of any other organisms, whilst the consumers *must* take their food from other organism, like a mushroom using decaying wood produced by a plant or a wolf preying a deer.\n\nHere's where the concept of \"trophic level\" appears. Let's say we have three species: A, B, and C. A is a plant, B is a herbivore insect, and C is a predator bird. Species A would be a \"trophic level 1\" species, because it produces it's own food. Species B would be a \"trophic level 2\" species, it consumes directly a producer. Species B would be a \"trophic level 3\" species, it consumes a herbivore.\n\nIn theory, it all works nicely, species are only linked trophically to few species and they always follow the pattern level 1 is consumed by level 2, level 2 is consumed by level 3, etc. But in practice, organisms eat what is available, and we get species that consumes plants and herbivore insects, or herbivore insects and predatory insects, or insects and predatory birds, or predatory birds and fish, or algae and fish, etc., which makes it a little more complicated.\n\n---\n\n**Apex predators**\n\nBy convention, an apex predator is an organism with a trophic level of 4 or greater. To become a level 4, you must include a level 3 in your diet, which means you end up a predator that consumes predators as well.\n\nHere's where we get to a problem with the name \"apex\", that word suggests a pyramid-like structure, not the [actual network structure](_URL_1_) of a common ecological community. Ordering the predators at the top is just a convenient way to show the information, there isn't an \"apex\".\n\n\"Apex predator\" doesn't mean \"single most dominant predator in the area\". Lions and hyenas are both apex predator, they inhabit the same area and even predate each other. Even further, apex predators have a \"controlling\" effect in communities, they always keep in line populations that begin to increase, because they come a more available resource, making it a better decision for the apex predator to consume them, instead of consuming another species.\n\n---\n\n**Are humans apex predators?**\n\nFinally we can come back to your original question: Were our ancestors apex predators? The answer: We weren't. Fossil evidence mostly shows that our ancestors consumed (a) wild plants (like berries), (b) domesticated plants (like rice), (c) wild herbivores (like mammoths), (d) domesticated herbivores (like chicken) but consuming predators wasn't a real part of their ecology. It might have happened a few times, maybe a predator was hunting down members of a group and they had to kill it and decided to consume it, but it's more of an exception.\n\nAlthough we might have an effect similar to that of apex predators (top-bottom population control), we aren't apex predators at all."
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4103id | how mobile apps which are supposed to "extend my battery life" work | I don't understand why I have to click "clean" or "speed up" every time I want it to work | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4103id/eli5_how_mobile_apps_which_are_supposed_to_extend/ | {
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"They typically kill tasks/apps that are running in the background.\n\nDepending on the platform and type of app, the app may be allowed to perform certain tasks in the background (when you are not using the app and potentially even when the app is not open).\n\nBy killing these background tasks/apps, you can extend battery life since this will presumably decrease CPU usage on your device (and CPU time eats battery time). Also, some apps may periodically 'wake' your phone which can also reduce battery life. By killing these apps, you can keep your mobile device in standby mode for longer when you're not using it, ultimately extending the battery life further.\n\nOther ways to extend battery life include:\n\n- Lowering the screen brightness\n- Disabling background data and data syncing (i.e. only allow data/internet access from apps you are actively using)\n- Disabling GPS and Location Services (constant location polling definitely contributes to battery drain)\n- Switching the device into Airplane mode when you do not need network connectivity (optionally enable Wi-Fi after switching to airplane mode if you need internet access but not your carrier's phone/data network services)"
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1zv8e6 | how come when i listen to music at night it sounds faster than during the day? | It fascinates me because it happens every time. Any explanation?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zv8e6/eli5_how_come_when_i_listen_to_music_at_night_it/ | {
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"I'm **NOT** an expert but I'll give it a shot to get a conversation going: \n\nThis is a question of perception so I'm almost 100% certain that the correct answer has something to do with the brain. At night (assuming you're listening to this as you begin to drift to sleep), your brain starts to shift its processes from the things that it does during the day to its nighttime activities. It reduces activity of time perception in order to focus on the things that tired brains do. When you listen to music, your mind can process what it is but not the relative amount of time that passes during the song. I'm stabbing at the same reason that dreams that should only seem to take 5 minutes can take up a lot of time during sleep.\n\nI'm kinda stabbing blindly though.\nFellow Redditors: Correct me.",
"because you're high"
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4i5yxg | what does hawkings discovery, black holes don't have event horizons, mean? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4i5yxg/eli5_what_does_hawkings_discovery_black_holes/ | {
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"The basic paradox of the black hole event horizon is that all \"information\" - velocity and position of the particles going past it, etc. is 'lost' because it can never return past the boundary. So say a meteor heads right into the black hole - once it is torn apart crossing the boundary, we can't predict or say anything about the stuff that got sucked in.\n\nA lot of stuff has been written about possible ways that this information may be retained, or is actually leaking out of the black hole, and things like that. One of these things is called Hawking radiation. Another is this 'soft hair' theory which seems to be what you're referring to.",
"We do not know if they have event horizons. General relativity predicts them, a few but not all attempts to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity predict something else. For all practical purposes, they look like they have event horizons: If something falls in, it is lost for us forever."
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a9i5m0 | brain stroke surgeries | My dad had a major stroke and I’m curious as to the scientific advancement we’re making for major strokes. I’m already understanding as to why and what caused it. Unfortunately, they could not give him the medicine to reduce the chance of it becoming what it was. My question is, other than removing part of the skull for swelling. During life saving surgery (I’m in no way educated in the way of asking this) but why couldn’t there be a process of introducing oxygen to the brain beyond the stroke? Does it carry to much risk during the surgery?
Hope everyone is having a Merry Christmas. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a9i5m0/eli5_brain_stroke_surgeries/ | {
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"It sounds like you're describing thrombectomy. That's the physical removal of the clot so your brain gets oxygen again. Another way is to dissolve the clot which is called thrombolysis. For a thrombectomy we don't cut open your skull, but we go to the clot through your blood vessels.\n\nThe problem is that it's really time sensitive, since you can't revive dead cells. So once the brain cells die, they're gone forever. An infarction typically has a center of dead cells surrounded by the penumbra zone (literally the shadow zone). This zone contains cells at risk of dying, but not dead yet. Restoring flow (and oxygenation) can save these cells and minimize the damage of a stroke."
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1ntry3 | why linux will be good for gaming | Also anything else special about the stuff valve has be releasing info on. (If someone's already asked this just point me to the right link please) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ntry3/eli5_why_linux_will_be_good_for_gaming/ | {
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"The underlying structure of linux is great for speed. The basic decisions made for high speed processing for servers can map very nicely into high speed performance for gaming. All that is needed is solid support from hardware manufacturers.\n\nBut with things like Nvidia deliberately crippling their linux drivers because of a restriction in windows kernel, ever getting good support from these companies is getting unlikely. Maybe Valve has the clout to achieve something! We live in hope.",
"Performance-wise, there's no clear winner. \nYou can optimize your software for Windows just like you can do it for Linux. \nUsually, Linux is lighter than Windows, as there's fewer process running. \nBut Windows as well can be customized to be very light. For example, the Server version of Windows is pretty light. \n \nThe real difference is in the philosophy. \nWindows is a proprietary OS owned by Microsoft. \nThat means that if you want to change something in the core of Windows, you just can't (at least not easily and legally). \nIn the same way, if you want to distribute your system with Windows in it, you will need to get the approval from Microsoft. \n \nOn the other hand, Linux is a free and open-source OS. \nHere, if you want to change something in the OS, you can do it easily. \n As Linux is free, you don't need any approval to distribute it. \n \nFor a console, both points are really important. If it's open-source, you can add/change/remove every functionality you want, making the OS tailored to what you need without useless things bogging the system. \n Obviously, you won't have to share the money you make with someone else since it's free. \n \nFurthermore, Gabe is really not happy with the direction Microsoft is taking with windows ([Windows 8 is a catastrophe for PCs](_URL_0_)). \nIn short : Microsoft will, according to Gabe, push its users to only use the Windows MarketPlace (it's already the case with WindowsRT). The MarketPlace has a very strict policy that prevent softwares like Steam from being distributed. \n \nTL;DR : Linux is free and easily customizable, Windows is not."
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3rwdp0 | what do the number next to the names of stocks mean? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rwdp0/eli5_what_do_the_number_next_to_the_names_of/ | {
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"They are essentially the price. The share price is how much it costs for one share of the company. Owning a share in the company means that you share ownership. You can technically then vote for major decisions that they let stockholders vote on. However, there aren't many companies where owning a single share will give you much of a say in anything. You have to own millions of shares to have a real impact on the direction of a company. But the stock number is the price of being involved. Once you own a share then you can make money by selling it once the price goes up, or lose money if the stock loses value."
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7wux0z | why tickling makes you laugh | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7wux0z/eli5_why_tickling_makes_you_laugh/ | {
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"The short answer is that nobody really knows for sure. The longer answer is that tickling likely evolved as a behavior that teaches humans (and other animals) to instinctively protect vulnerable areas of their bodies.\n\nPeople tend to be ticklish in vulnerable areas of the body -- the neck, the underarm, the belly, etc, (the exceptions being hands and feet, which just happen to have a large number of nerve endings). Thus when children play (think \"tickle fights\"), they learn to protect those areas, which could come in handy during an actual fight.\n\nLaughter is an involuntary reaction, and It's possible that during tickle fights, it functions as a way of calling for help. It's also possible that it's just a biological \"accident\" that tickling triggers this reaction. But nobody really knows for sure.\n\nEdit: Some people have suggested that laughing is a signal that basically says \"everything is fine, we're not really fighting\". I honestly don't know, but it sounds like a reasonable suggestion. Especially since smiling is a rather aggressive act among primates (it is baring your teeth, after all.)",
"Tickling triggers the fight or flight response, the reason it works is a fear that someone is attacking you. However, when it has no effect the whole situation basically becomes a huge anti-climax which is hilarious.\n\nTry this next time, if you are tickling your kids or nieces and nephews - first try it cold, without saying anything just do the tickling motion on a perfectly calm kid - it doesn't work as well but if you start by saying something like \"I'm gonna get you\" or something like that it will cause bursts of laughter. You need to build up the situation: \"the tickle monster is coming\" and then take long drawn out steps towards them, move your hands slowly in an arc like claws, it all builds the tension and increases the hilarity. \n\nThis is the same reason anger is funny, usually, hearing someone yell in anger would cause you to be afraid, but since you are safe their anger is ineffectual and the situation becomes funny. ",
"Also, why are some people not ticklish at all?",
"Ticklishness is an involuntary protective response to sensitive areas that when agitated would cause pain. Typical responses to pain are either crying or laughing. Thus, when you get someone REALLY good, and don't stop, they inevitably start crying...or pee. \n",
"When someone is inside of your personal space, your lower-lizard brain thinks you're being attacked, but your higher brain functions know that there is no danger. Laughing happens because the brain has these two signals conflicting. The brain wants to react to the \"danger\" but not alarm anyone.\n\nThe neuroscience of laughter is fascinating. Brain scans of what happens when someone gets a joke show that the entire brain lights up. So it kinda makes sense that if the lower and higher brain functions are in conflict, laughter occurs.",
"If you can relax and just focus on your breathing, you can become \"unticklish\". It takes some concentration, but I can do it most of the time."
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6aoytf | if the fbi decided that a president/politician had committed a heinous crime, how would the next steps go down? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6aoytf/eli5_if_the_fbi_decided_that_a/ | {
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"The FBI would formally inform congress. The House of Representatives would draft articles of impeachment and send them to the Senate. The Senate would then interrogate the president and any potential witnesses for relevant information on the president's crimes. If the Senate decided that the president was guilty, and if it was politically expedient, they would then vote to remove the president from office and the vice president would take his place. The president might then be pardoned by the former VP of his crimes as happened with Nixon/Ford. If not, the ex-president could then and only then be arrested by the FBI and tried as a criminal. It's deliberately a pretty arduous process to make power coups difficult and unwieldy. ",
"It's unclear whether the President can be charged without an impeachment first. Some schools of thought believe the House and Senate have sole jurisdiction over the President until he's impeached and removed, others believe that may not necessarily be the case. Either way it's never happened before."
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2mmx5x | how do airline rationalize exorbitant prices when there are many empty seats? | I frequently travel on a low traffic route. One way ticket prices on the low end are $110/one way and $220 round trip when booked ~4 weeks in advance. However when I travel this route the plane is anywhere from 50-80% empty.
How do airlines rationalize taking such a loss? Why are there not more flexible ticketing options: discount standby tickets? Why does the fare rise to $200+/one way a week before the flight? This route is never sold out and the airline is going to have less passengers traveling than as opposed to having a $110/one way fare up until the day of the flight? A
Essentially I am confused as to how they rationalize this loss. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mmx5x/eli5_how_do_airline_rationalize_exorbitant_prices/ | {
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"They raise the prices for exactly the same reason that you said, not as many people booked the seats.\n\nOut of all the expenses that an airline has for a flight, most of them are fairly static, that means that they dont rise that much or at all when the amount of passengers increases. This means, it is within the airlines best interest to fill up as many seats on the plane as possible to get the most profit. However the kicker is, if the flight is not full then you will need to raise air fares to make up for the lack of passengers. \n\nIn your case the airline probably found that the amount of customers that it would gain by lowering the prices would not make up for the loss of revenue per person. \n\n ",
"1) flying full planes is best so the faster you can fill a plane the better (start with lower prices) \n\n2) people buying tickets a week in advance usually don't have any flexibility and therefore will pay the higher price to get what they need. (rase prices as the flight gets close) \n\n3) if you make a habit of dropping your prices a week before a flight then no one will buy until that last week leaving you with empty planes scheduled months in advance with no way of knowing if you can cancel or merge the flights until the last moment \n\nPeople who buy late and are flexible can buy standby sometimes but that could easily mean spending a whole day in the airport. \n"
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9o0eoc | how does mcdonalds make such a huge profit from franchising out its restaurants? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9o0eoc/eli5_how_does_mcdonalds_make_such_a_huge_profit/ | {
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"Watch the movie \"The Founder\" with Michael Keaton, its a very good movie!!! Explains all of this",
"If I remember correctly McDonald's provides almost everything to the franchise. Essentially they have to buy everything they need to run a McDonald's from McDonald's then they have to share profit with McDonald's as well on top of franchise fees.\n\nCorporate stores have to pay overhead like payroll and utilities which eats into profit. They don't pay that at franchise store, franchisees pay that.",
"McD is not a food company. They make their money in real estate. Watch the recent movie that came out about their rise in the corporate world. It explains everything. ",
"So the main corporation runs enough stores to keep some skin in the game. They use the corporate stores for market research and procedure refinement, and to demonstrate things for franchisees. but not really for profit.\n\nNow a franchisees store has to buy the supplies, equipment, marketing etc from the main corporation. The main corporation doesn't have to worry directly about sales, labor, waste etc. That complicates and reduce income. This means they get profit from the sale of the raw ingredients ( buns, beer patties, nuggets, fries) without much risk. Great deal for them.\n\nThink about how a company like Pepsi makes a profit even if they don't run the grocery store and you'll have a bit of an idea how McDonald's makes it's profit.",
"With out reading the franchise agreement, it's hard to discuss specifics, but in general this is what McDonalds used to do. \n\nMcDonalds corporate used to find a location and build a restaurant there. Then find a tenant, and make running it as a McDonalds restaurant a requirement, so there's a monthly profit of the rent. So part of their revenue comes from being a real estate company. I think they are moving away from this model. \n\nSecond there's an annual franchise fee that the franchisee has to pay the franchisor. Plus possibly a marketing fee for the production and distribution of ads. \n\nThird the franchisee has to buy all their supplies, like cups, lids, straws, the food, from whatever food & supply distribute company McDonalds choses, so again McDonalds gets a profit from that. \n\nFinally when a customer buys a hamburger, a percentage of that gross profit is also paid to McDonalds. This is why most franchise businesses have to use a company approved point of sale system. So McDonalds corporate knows exactly what a location has sold."
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5x44tz | school vouchers in the us | what do they do? Is it a system of government subsidizing for schools? What for? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5x44tz/eli5_school_vouchers_in_the_us/ | {
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"I think the basic objection is that under a voucher system, shitty schools get even shittier for those who are still stuck there. Plus you'll get rich folks complaining about why poor kids get to attend their schools, poor to middle class folks complaining about why they have to pay taxes to schools their kids don't even attend, and so on. ",
"So in the American education system, a child is generally locked into the schools around where they live. You cant try to transfer to a different school, but priority is given to the students who live closest to that school. The problem is that some neighborhoods have bad schools, which means that kids in those neighborhoods are kinda doomed to a lifetime of bad education.\n\nVouchers are essentially a coupon from the government to the parents that lets the parents choose a private school. Instead of the parents then having to pay private school tuition, the government covers the cost. The benefit is that that child now gets to go to good schools.\n\nBut the reason many people oppose vouchers is because the money spent on them is taken out of the public school system, so those kids left in the public system get less funding. Additionally, the vouchers are too expensive to give to everyone, so there's lotteries for who gets them. Which means only a few students get help and not everyone. "
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6vz36c | why do you sometimes not feel a cut when you get it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6vz36c/eli5_why_do_you_sometimes_not_feel_a_cut_when_you/ | {
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"Two things:\n\n1: your body has a limited number of nerves, and the cut needs to affect one of them for you to feel it. If the cut is clean and misses the nerves, you won't feel it.\n\n2: hormones in your body can dampen pain receptive nerve signals to the brain. So if you're full of epinephrine (adrenaline) for example, due to heavy physical exertion or a flight response, you may not notice the pain signal as being all that different from the other nerve signals your skin is sending your brain.\n\n3: it takes time for signals to get to your brain and be properly attributed... this is why contact with a really hot object may not register right away but eventually get really painful; if the nerves at hand are burned before they send their electrochemical signal to the brain, the brain will never receive the signal. It's not until the surrounding area starts to react to the burn that the nerves in those areas are triggered and the pain begins.",
"Pain really is all in your head in a manner of speaking.\n\nSo when a body part is damaged, nerves at the site of injury send signals up to your brain where it is processed and interpreted as pain.\n\nNormally this serves as a warning system to bring our attention to what is being injured so as to prevent it from being injured more.\n\nHowever for things like very minor injuries (small cuts, bruises and so on) if the brain is already preoccupied with a task, these signals basically get ignored.\n\nThe more concentrated you are on the task the more likely you are to ignore the signals.\n\nIt's why a lot of the time we won't feel the pain until we actually see the cut, because it's only at that point our focus becomes the injury."
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4ynemr | when you have to pee really bad and it burns, what exactly is happening inside you? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ynemr/eli5_when_you_have_to_pee_really_bad_and_it_burns/ | {
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"If you feel a burning sensation when you pee, you should see a doctor, not post about it on Reddit."
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] |
||
2w8dxw | would there be any effect on earth if we terraformed the moon? | Assuming the technology to suddenly turn the moon into a lush green life supporting mini earth complete with atmosphere existed, would it do anything to the way our little buddy orbited around us or to things like tides here on the homeplanet? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2w8dxw/eli5_would_there_be_any_effect_on_earth_if_we/ | {
"a_id": [
"cooh4hy",
"cooh4s9",
"cooh84c"
],
"score": [
2,
3,
4
],
"text": [
"Doesn't sound like any of that would significantly affect the mass or angular velocity of either body, so I'd go with no.",
"No real effect on the Earth, except for the political/economic/social ones. But unless we drastically change the moon's orbit/mass it wont change anything down here.\n\nGetting an atmosphere to stick to the moon would be a neat trick, though.",
"Nope. It would not have a significant enough impact on the mass to alter these factors. It might make some nights a bit brighter, if the cloud cover raised the albedo of the moon (which is fairly dark, despite its apparent brightness in our sky)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
5vblhu | car guys, what's the draw to e85 gas? | Is it really beneficial to performance gains? Is it only worth it with a tuned car or would something that is stock still see the same results? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vblhu/eli5_car_guys_whats_the_draw_to_e85_gas/ | {
"a_id": [
"de0u4c2"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"In a performance application the benefit comes from it's octane rating. Most e85 is between 100 and 105 octane, quite a bit higher than premiun fuel. The downside is that it can eat up fuel system components thay are not designed to handle it.\n\nA higher octane fuel is more resistant to pre-ignition so more agressive tuning is possible. For example, I had a little VW that I put a VR6 and turbocharger on. Using premium fuel (93 octane) I could only run 23 degrees of ignition advance and it made roughly 340hp. I had a separate fuel map for track days and 115 octane fuel that made 412hp because I could increase my ignition advance to 34 degrees.\n\nThe thing to consider with e85 is that the density, as Numbbskull mentioned, is lower. This means you may need larger injectors depending on application. Most stock cars have injectors sized just big enough for full throttle to make it easier to tune a nice smooth idle at all temperatures."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
zfrvj | why are comic books published date set in a future date? | I have been collecting comic books for a while now and this has always bothered me. As an example, I just bought DC's Earth Two #0 that came out today. The bar code has a date of Nov 2012, and it says 'Earth 2 0. November 2012.' inside the book, which will be interpreted by people who aren't into comics that this particular comic came out in November 2012 which isn't the case. Marvel does the same thing as well as other smaller publishers like IDW and Dark Horse. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zfrvj/eli5_why_are_comic_books_published_date_set_in_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"c647oqj",
"c6495yd"
],
"score": [
6,
14
],
"text": [
"[Relevent (?) wikipedia link](_URL_0_)",
"The date on the cover isn't actually when the comics come out. Instead, the date signifies when newsstand owners / store clerks should remove them from the shelves!\n\nIt's sort of an outdated practice, as most comic stores just put them in a box somewhere, but there you go."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_date"
],
[]
] |
|
6sab5x | [technology]how does mobile data consumption change when watching a video vs downloading it? | I understand that higher quality=higher 'information' that needs to be uploaded to be able to see the video = > higher data consumption.
And i think the same way goes for the video duration.
Would there be a difference in mobile data consumption if(for example) i were to see a 5min video (360p) instead of downloading that same video?
*Edit: ANSWER
So there wouldn't be much difference in both cases. When you stream a video it is temporarily stored in RAM storage where it can deleted due to overwriting it with other files ( that doesn't make it long-term accessible). Meanwhile when you download it it is stored on a storage device/hard drive/ whatever. That makes it "permanently" accessible.
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6sab5x/eli5_technologyhow_does_mobile_data_consumption/ | {
"a_id": [
"dlb8j8w"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"No. There's no difference in the data-rate between streaming and downloading a video. When downloading, all you're doing is taking the exact same video and storing it locally. The same information has to come from the video's host either way."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
3mw3y6 | how can the brain make you sleepwalk, but not turn you on your side if you are choking on your vomit? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mw3y6/eli5_how_can_the_brain_make_you_sleepwalk_but_not/ | {
"a_id": [
"cvin7wb"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"People who are vomiting in their sleep are either very sick, or (much more likely) intoxicated. Their brain is therefore in a state of reduced effectiveness."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
bjbt1d | what is the difference between being found guilty and being convicted? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bjbt1d/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_being_found/ | {
"a_id": [
"em719ia"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"A conditional discharge is a type of plea deal. Essentially, you admit that you committed the crime in question and, in exchange, the judge agrees that if you fulfill certain conditions (typically completing a rehabilitation or therapy program) then the charges will be dismissed. If you don't fulfill the conditions you agreed to, then the you're re-arrested, formally convicted of the crime, and sentenced to jail.\n\nWikipedia's phrasing on it is really bad. If you get a conditional discharge then you have not been *found* guilty. You've *admitted* to guilt, but a court hasn't actually made any official judgement on your guilt or innocence. Essentially, the court has just said that if you fulfill the agreed upon conditions then its not actually worth prosecuting you for the crime."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
crqvqq | why is some glass not allowed near open flames or it shatters (display candles, etc) yet some glass like scientific beakers can withstand flames directly on then when all glass is made with heat? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/crqvqq/eli5_why_is_some_glass_not_allowed_near_open/ | {
"a_id": [
"ex8c2nd",
"ex8h56o"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Different ingradients basically. Boron included glasses can withsand much more heat than non-included ones.",
"Some glass is scientific / pyrex (boron + silica ) It has a low coefficient of expansion over a thermal range, thus it does not crack.\n\nMost ordinary glass is Soda Lime ( silica + soda ash + limestone ) It has a lower melting temperature and has a greater coefficient of expansion, the glass cannot locally tolerate the expansion caused by heat, so it cracks / shatters."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
3j5klz | why is data still compressed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3j5klz/eli5_why_is_data_still_compressed/ | {
"a_id": [
"cumgwrv",
"cumgz5w"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Most cameras now allow you to save uncompressed (\"RAW\") photos.\n\nCompression lets you download photos much faster, and use less of your data plan if you have limited data.\n\nCompression for videos is still a necessity if they are to fit onto standard media, and allows one cable or satellite to carry far more channels.",
"Bandwidth costs money. Bigger corporations deal with terabytes of data _daily_, compressing data saves them a great deal of money."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
2q6ixx | why are rockets launched from places like cape canaveral and not high up in the mountains? | Wouldn't it save tons of fuel to not have to punch through the atmosphere? Besides cost of fuel rockets could reach even higher velocities and therefore reach outer planets much faster. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2q6ixx/eli5_why_are_rockets_launched_from_places_like/ | {
"a_id": [
"cn3b5d7",
"cn3b64d",
"cn3b84h",
"cn3bokc"
],
"score": [
2,
3,
17,
2
],
"text": [
"I believe that it's because of the issues related to building everything so high up.\n\nEverything you see on the ground would have to be moved up to the top of mountains (Or simply just re-built on a mountain), and subsequently, all materials used for rockets will have to be taken up the mountain, and construction implications would arise, as bringing an entire rocket up a mountain would be very inefficient and possibly dangerous.\n\nAnd, the freezing effect the temperatures would have on rockets while they wait to be launched -might- be enough to make something go wrong. It's possible the calculations would get screwed up because everything got colder, depending on how high up the mountain is. A few degree different probably wouldn't mean much, but -10'C (Sorry Americans) difference would probably be enough to see changes.",
"Mountaintops are high, but the outer atmosphere is much higher. The benefit is quite small.\n\nThe advantage to launching rockets from a cape is the cape itself. Rocketry has a history of unfortunate accidents, and coastal placement can ensure that a cascade of flaming debris lands safely in the ocean.",
"Cape Canaveral has two very large advantages for launching rockets.\n\n* 1: It's near the equator, the spin of the earth gives a boost which helps get the rocket to orbital speed\n* 2: It's near the sea, so any debris or stages that fall back to earth dont hit any populated areas. It is also easy to deliver large rocket parts by sea, as opposed to getting them up the side of a mountain",
"The main benefit of Cape Canaveral is that it's near the equator; well, just about as near as you can get in the continental US. If you launch towards the east, then the spin of the earth at the equator adds over 1000mph to your speed. This is a substantial help when you need to accelerate to 20000mph to reach orbit.\n\nAlso, having an empty ocean down-range is a good safety feature. Since you're launching to the east then an east coast launch site is best.\n\nOf the energy (read fuel) required to reach low earth orbit, you need 1 part to reach the height plus you need at 40 parts to reach the speed you need. That's what makes the job of Virgin Galactic and Space Ship Two so easy; they just go up for the height and then fall straight back down again."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
3inec1 | how does the nordic model of economy work? | It seems like socialism and capitalism just shouldn't work together. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3inec1/eli5how_does_the_nordic_model_of_economy_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"cuhymca",
"cuhyqw6"
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text": [
"In Norway, things which everyone needs, like food, shelter, and medical care, are provided to everyone via a robust social welfare system. Things which people want, but do not need (basically all consumer items) get provided by the capitalist markets. There are some distinct advantages of this, including (but not limited to) vastly superior healthcare outcomes for a little over half the cost seen in the US, very low poverty rates and attendant very low violent crime rates, and, in general, happier people. The advantages of this to a capitalist market are huge. People spend way less time off sick, as they actually get quality healthcare and will not fear a bill until whatever they are sick with kills them. Happy people also buy more stuff, and people with money they can afford to spend can also buy more stuff. Capitalism gets along just fine with socialism.",
"Strictly speaking, socialism is social ownership of the means of production in the society. \"Means of production\" are the things (excluding humans) that generate wealth in the society. Social ownership means either collective ownership by the workers, social cooperations or state ownership. This is the direct opposite of capitalism, the idea that means of production are owned by private entrepreneurs. \n\nNordic countries largely don't have social ownership of means of production, so in this sense Nordic countries aren't socialist, so the conflict between who owns the means of production (socialism vs. capitalism) does not really exist in Nordic countries. Nordic countries are mixed economies with strong welfare sector and following that, a large public sector with a lot of people working for the government and municipalities offering welfare services. Outside these sectors it's largely a free market where private entrepreneurs largely own their means of production, so there exist a capitalist economy outside the public welfare sector. \n\nOne *could* say that public education and public health care are \"means of production\", but the Nordic view is that their purpose isn't to generate wealth to the owner (the government), as they actually cost to the government instead of generate wealth, so they are not means of production. They are governmental public services like the army, infrastructure, judicial system and so on.\n\nHowever especially in the US political discussion \"socialism\" is often understood to mean a strong welfare state with higher progressive taxation than in the US. Strictly speaking this isn't socialism in the proper sense. The use of \"socialism\" in the US developed during the Red Scare of the Cold War, when the socialist Soviet Union was the adversary of the United States. Accordingly many political ideas about more government (public education and health care system) and wealth redistribution (heavier progressive taxation) which were opposed by many classical liberals and capitalists were labeled \"socialist\", which was pretty much labeling them as anti-American, even though those things strictly speaking aren't socialist.\n\nEDIT: To add: a common view, at least in Finland, is that the public services like tuition free education and small fee health care produce a lot of educated and healthy individuals who can then work in the \"capitalist\" market economy of the society, which in turn creates wealth in the society. This wealth is then progressively taxed to guarantee that more people are educated and healthy to be able to work."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
cxxlvx | if i'm in a coma for x years, am i x years older? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cxxlvx/eli5_if_im_in_a_coma_for_x_years_am_i_x_years/ | {
"a_id": [
"eyo5nie"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"You're physically 16 but mentally still 5.. Idt you would be capable of driving in that case.."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
4uwr6w | how were metal chains made before we had welding machines? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4uwr6w/eli5_how_were_metal_chains_made_before_we_had/ | {
"a_id": [
"d5tgs1r"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Blacksmiths would heat the metal, and then hammer weld. You beat two pieces of metal with a hammer, and they will weld together. Lot's of info on Youtube about this type of welding."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
eh7fiy | how rough seas come about. | Like you see in the movies, where boats are way in the air then like down in a valley. What makes the ocean do that? Wind? If so how? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eh7fiy/eli5_how_rough_seas_come_about/ | {
"a_id": [
"fcg3qu2"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Wind adds energy to the sea by pressing on it, which makes the waves we know and love at a perpendicular angle. Like sticking your hand in the water and the waves radiate out. Harder winds mean more pressure in the water mean higher waves, especially when the wind is constant. There are also a number of forces that make water naturally more turbulent like temperature and salinity differences in the water\n\nThe sea doesnt usually get THAT bad like in movies with the 100+ foot waves but rogue waves are a real and present danger in some areas, like the horn of Africa"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
1ptvie | why is this baby crying? | I know it seems trivial, but I don't understand what's happening [here](_URL_0_). If something scared a baby it would cry or yell, if the baby is amused it would smile and laugh. But here it's crying out of emotion and pleasure, almost out of the appreciation/emotion of the singing... can babies at that age have such a complex understanding of emotion or beauty? Or is there another explanation?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ptvie/eli5why_is_this_baby_crying/ | {
"a_id": [
"cd67tow"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"i would think it was the subject matter of the song (kinda sad song) and the kid knows that based on either the mother's facial expressions/body language or by the tone of voice. Kids react to the mother's emotions very easily."
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIsCs9_-LP8"
] | [
[]
] |
|
f8lxmq | why is it so hard to sleep in silence once you get adjusted to a white noise? | I’ve always wondered this. I use a fan every night even if it’s freezing cold and it’s for the white noise. I literally can’t sleep without it going and I start getting paranoid about the house creaks and deafening silence. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f8lxmq/eli5_why_is_it_so_hard_to_sleep_in_silence_once/ | {
"a_id": [
"fim6b93"
],
"score": [
13
],
"text": [
"Your environment has changed, so you become hyper aware. It's the same concept as when you first move out from your parents or get a new job. It's different from the norm so your mind pays more attention to it's surroundings as a survival mechanism."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
7kbk4z | why do episodes of animated shows take so long to make? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7kbk4z/eli5_why_do_episodes_of_animated_shows_take_so/ | {
"a_id": [
"drd1agi",
"drd38zr"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"You need to draw those characters, animate it per frame per scene. Afterward, quality check to ensure it follows the script; otherwise repeat the process again; then only voice over with voice actors / actress.",
"Keep in mind that we're talking about an assembly line here.\n\nIt might take 9-10 months from the time somebody first starts talking about an episode until it airs but that doesn't mean that everyone involved is spending that whole time working on a single episode.\n\nIn many of the stages of production, you'll have people working on multiple episodes at a time and bouncing ideas back and forth to get feedback & reworking things."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
35cst4 | why does it feel so orgasmic when you insert a cue tip into your ear? | Second favorite hobby after sniffing sharpies. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35cst4/eli5_why_does_it_feel_so_orgasmic_when_you_insert/ | {
"a_id": [
"cr380iq",
"cr387vs",
"cr38r9x"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Do you mean queue tip?",
"Because its something that doesn't often get touched, so it's incredibly sensitive.\n\nI love it too...I also love itching the inside of my eyelids. And my taint",
"Everytime I put a q-tip in my ear I cough. What's up with that?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1rc91e | if i die in a car accident alone, how is my next of kin identified and contacted? | I live in the US. I commute to work alone everyday. I'm married but my wife does not share my last name. Sometimes my phone has a pass code. How do responders or the morgue find and contact my wife if I die unexpectedly? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rc91e/eli5_if_i_die_in_a_car_accident_alone_how_is_my/ | {
"a_id": [
"cdlqsbk",
"cdlqu72"
],
"score": [
2,
4
],
"text": [
"They would start by looking in your vehicle for identifying information, including your vehicle registration and cellphone, and contact those at an address best determined to be your home. Many people put a contact in their phone \"ICE\" (In Case of Emergency) so that emergency personnel know who to contact. ",
"There are a lot of ways they could work it out.\n\nFirstly, your car is going to be registered, most likely to yourself or your wife. Whilst your numberplates may be damaged, they're unlikely to be completely unrecognisable (especially if police use extra information such as make/model). Also, at least where I live all cars also have the same details on the engine block, which would be bloody hard to destroy. I'm not sure about your particular state, but where I live car registration will give an address as well as a name and next of kin details once they look up my license.\n\nSecondly, you'll likely have at least some form of ID on you, credit card, drivers license, gym membership, whatever. If your car is unidentifiable, they can use these to at least get your name. They'll probably call the bank or gym and get an address from them if your ID doesn't have it. \n\nFor both of these points, first responders will now have your name and address, or at least your name. Your name may well be enough to find links to your family which they can then follow.\n\nFinally, if you, your car and your wallet are all destroyed beyond recognition, your wife is probably going to notice when you don't answer her calls, and you don't come home. She'll then put in a missing person report, which will describe your normal day. Police will then follow this, (eg, normal route to work, any car crashes? Did he show up at work, lets ask his boss, when did he leave? etc) and will be very likely able to link the missing person report your wife filed, and the car crash on the I-35 with John Doe.\n\nThey will then call your wife in to identify you, and provided that you didn't get T-boned by a petrol tanker which then exploded your remains will likely be recognisable. Certainly things such as your wedding ring, key chain and others may well be largely undamaged.\n\nI'm not a police officer, so there may well be some other avenues which I've missed. Certainly, the car rego and the ID in your pocket will be the first steps."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
5vv8j8 | how does sweden get things done if they have 6 hour work days, 25 vacation days per year, etc? | I live in Canada, and in order for construction crews to get their work done they usually work 10-12 hour days 6 days a week during the spring, summer and early fall. How does Sweden manage to build and maintain infrastructure if they can only make their employees work 6 hour days? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vv8j8/eli5_how_does_sweden_get_things_done_if_they_have/ | {
"a_id": [
"de55dhs",
"de55f1o",
"de57x4w"
],
"score": [
16,
3,
5
],
"text": [
"It's been shown that the longer and harder someone is made to work, the less work they actually get *done,* because they get tired and work slower, get sick more easily, miss days, etc. If you let people rest more often and take time off, they become far more productive.",
"It comes down to efficiency, if you overwork your workers productivity goes down. Having the most time doesn't always mean being most productive. Giving them less work hours allows them to rest and keeps them motivated. ",
"We don't . It's 8 hours office time here for the most. Then you have other proffesions with different shift as in Canada. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
3a8huj | why does porn stream better on my phone over 4glte than it does on my home internet with 50/50/mbps? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3a8huj/eli5_why_does_porn_stream_better_on_my_phone_over/ | {
"a_id": [
"csa9z57"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"I doubt you have a symmetrical home connection. But even if you do, well.. are you using WiFi?\n\n\"Standard\" WiFi (802.11g) can only obtain a maximum link speed of 54mbps whereas 4G LTE supports up to 100mbps. WiFi has many variables that may affect performance -- notice how 4G cell towers work for kilometers while WiFi works at maybe hundreds of feet. 4G is an expensive technology which requires a much more advanced infrastructure. \n\nIf you are talking about using a desktop computer, make sure your router, switches, and wiring support gigabit. There could be congestion on your home network caused by other devices as well. If you have VOIP phones or HPNA TV, that could degrade QOS as well.\n\nBackground: I work for a managed service provider and have had advanced experience with technology for over 10 years."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
4duo4k | how do "safe spaces" relate to the first amendment? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4duo4k/eli5how_do_safe_spaces_relate_to_the_first/ | {
"a_id": [
"d1uhqlc"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"You might need to add more context.\n\nRemember that the first amendment essentially says you won't be arrested for saying something (with a few exceptions).\n\nIf you're talking about censorship, and it's not happening from the government, they are free to censor. If it's happening from the government, it could be a first amendment issue if they can't prove something like obscenity or public safety."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
a7w5b9 | / why do baby animals have different fur than adults do? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a7w5b9/eli5_why_do_baby_animals_have_different_fur_than/ | {
"a_id": [
"ec690vx",
"ec7l3k3"
],
"score": [
4,
2
],
"text": [
"The smaller animal has a higher surface area to volume ratio so would lose more heat and possibly needs better insulation. It also probably doesn't need the sort of tough fur able to withstand hunting prey through undergrowth etc. Adult animals still have soft fur layers for insulation but more durable hairs growing through to provide a tougher outside layer.",
"Newly born creatures have different needs than fully grown ones. Kittens don't go off hunting or running through bushes or grasses, so they don't really need tough and durable fur yet. Newly hatched birds don't go off immediately and start to fly, so they don't need flight-ready feathers yet. What do they need? Nice fluffy feathers to help keep them warm. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
4dd1ph | why do professional basketball games often end with close scores despite bigger gaps earlier in the game? | There are lots of games where one team grabs a big early lead, followed by the other team staging a big late comeback and a final few shots that decide who wins. Is this the natural consequence of rules designed to keep both teams scoring? Randomness giving way to steadier performance over time? Teams giving and losing ground as starters get fatigued and replaced? Or just a made-up phenomenon because close games with big comebacks stand out more in my mind? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dd1ph/eli5_why_do_professional_basketball_games_often/ | {
"a_id": [
"d1ptuwd",
"d1ptxwk"
],
"score": [
4,
3
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"Some might say it is because there is score fixing going on whereby individual players/refs are paid to keep the score close to the betting line. They might accomplish this by intentionally missing free-throws, calling fouls on key players, or playing shoddy defense. If you are a conspiracy theorist (or perhaps a realist in this case) your answer might be found here. Disregarding that however...\n\n1) Players who generally spend much of their time on the bench might get to play...they are fresh and are trying to impress their teams management as well as managers of other teams so they perform well against the other teams starters who know the game is well in hand.\n\n2) Teams who are up by a large margin know that they can give a bit of that lead back and still win. They are more interested in keeping the clock running than in scoring or playing lock-down defense so they do not foul or risk charging fouls which stop the clock and prolong the affair. The winning team will also tend to wait as long as possible in the shot clock before shooting which may result in them taking a lower probability shot. But again, they have spent valuable time.\n\n3) Many NBA teams are fairly equally matched and basketball is a momentum game. Sometimes scoring comes very easily for a team and then, often for no reason that is obvious, that momentum switches and that same team can't find a bucket. If you assume a player makes 50% of their shots, you can substitute flipping coins as an analogy. Flip a coin 100 times and record your results. While you will probably end up somewhere around 50/50 heads/tails, there will likely be some stretches where you got several heads in a row and then later a period where there was a run of tails. Obviously, in basketball this would be akin to a large lead evaporating.\n\n",
"Basketball has an endurance component. You want to keep you top players in as much as possible, but they eventually get tired and accumulate fouls.\n\nSo at some point, you might have a 12 point lead. That might be because you are that much better, or it might be the other team was resting their stars, and is about to put them back in fresh, ready to trounce you and get those points back.\n"
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1dqxua | why do some websites and programs seem to not be able to process apostrophes and instead replace it with a series of nonsensical characters. for example: instead of "john's", the site would show "john’s". | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dqxua/eli5_why_do_some_websites_and_programs_seem_to/ | {
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"Issues like this are usually due to mishandling of character encoding.\n\nInside computers all data is stored a series of numbers. Basically, the old way of storing text is to use exactly one byte (eight bits; each bit is a 0 or 1) for every single letter. This is what ASCII is; in ASCII the numbers from 0 to 255 each correspond to a letter, for example the number 97 is lowercase a.\n\nThe issue with this is that there are a lot more than 255 different characters that people want to use in text; even many Western European languages didn't have some of their symbols available. Asian languages, Eastern European, Hebrew and so on don't have any of their letters available in ASCII.\n\nThis problem is solved by having a much larger range of letters called [Unicode](_URL_0_). Using this scheme they have an extremely large space for symbols, which allows them to have characters for silly things like smiley faces and snowmen. There are different ways for storing the Unicode characters; some of them just always use 16 or 32 bits for each character but that ends up not being very efficient for most Western-biased usages where almost all of the letters are from ASCII and only a few are \"special\".\n\nThe most common way of encoding the charaters is called [UTF-8](_URL_1_) which is the same as ASCII for characters numbered 0 to 127, but the other characters use multiple bytes. UTF-8 has some nice properties that are beyond what I will mention here, but the important thing is if you accidentally try to read UTF-8 text as ASCII, any of the simple letters or numbers will look normal.\n\nThe particular issue you are seeing is usually because they didn't use the actually ' character, they used what is called \"smart quotes\" that are curved in one direction or the other (it looks like this: ’ or ”, it is more obvious in a different font). \n\nSo the server tries to tell your browser to show a curved quote, it uses a UTF-8 encoding that is 2 or 3 bytes. Due to some sofware misconfiguration, the browser thinks that it is ASCII so it takes each of those bytes and tries to show them each as letters, which ends up with the weird unrelated symbols.",
"I see this often in titles in imgur albums in RES. Is there some way to prevent this from happening?",
"This is a classic problem with people typing in Microsoft Word and then pasting it online. It's not limited to Word, but try it on some sites. It has already been explained fully so I will leave that part out.",
"bad character set encoding",
"SO IT ISN'T JUST ME?",
"One of the most annoying things about this is that there are no definitive ways to figure out what character set an arbitrary text file is holding. You have to display it with one encoding and look for any gibberish before trying again.",
"This error is known as mojibake. It's when a page tries to use a character encoding and ends up using another.\n\nIt's usually an error in the database (showing the characters in one encoding, like ISO-8859-1 while the page shows in another one, like UTF-8). You may try to change it yourself on the browser to fix but sometimes the mess is so much on the server that you simply can't.",
"There's some misinformation here. \n\n1. Encoding. An encoding translates the bits a computer has (1010110) to a number. This generally determined implicitly or explicitly depending on the application, document and protocol being used. Sometimes something sent in UTF8 can get confused by a receiving application as another encoding such as ASCII and the text becomes unreadable. \n\n2. Character set. These translate a number to a character. Typically everything these days use Unicode or ASCII, some still use outdated ISO 8859-1. \n\n3. Font glyphs. Once a character is found the font used must support the character requested. If the glyph isn't available usually nothing or a square will appear. \n\nTo further confuse things standards and industry confusion have mixed up character sets with encodings. And character sets and encodings have other definitions in computer science that make it more difficult to find accurate documentation on it. To confuse things even further ASCII is both a character set and an encoding.\n\nLong story short if the information you received was in a different encoding than the application implicitly (or explicitly) understood it as, you'll get garbled characters. If the character set is not available for the font glyph requested, you get the wrong letters. If the font glyph doesn't have the needed letter. You'll get a wrong character.\n\nWhen you see one character translated into multiple characters, its usually because the encoding got mixed up. If you see a character that's just a block or missing, it's generally because the font can't support the request character.\n\nMostly all systems now standardize on UTF8/Unicode/Unicode Supported Font. The combination of the three generally ensure all characters are supported.",
"Computers only store 1s and 0s. The problem is, you want them to store letters. There are different systems for converting letters into 1s and 0s (and back to letters, obviously). Sometimes, these systems get mixed up, and a sequence that would make perfect sense in one system turns into gibberish when converted in the wrong way. Luckily, these systems are identical for the most common letters, so your average letter will still be displayed properly - but apostrophes (and many other letters from other languages) turn into gibberish. As a german, I can tell you that this used to happen a lot with our ä, ö, ü and ß letters, which makes some things a real pain to read. Luckily, people generally have their character encoding figured out these days."
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8r5i2t | what happens in our brain, when we forget what we wanted to do while starting to do the action? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8r5i2t/eli5_what_happens_in_our_brain_when_we_forget/ | {
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"Our brain reinforces pathways we take more than once. Often what happens when we forget what we wanted to do while starting to do something is that a more reinforced brain pathway is triggered when we start the action, causing us to forget the rest once it leaves short term memory.\n\nSort of like the challenge of patting your head while rubbing your stomach.",
"Related, but only applicable in certain cases, the doorway effect is a real thing, and probably why you spend so much time looking in the fridge not remembering what you came to get. \n\nThe short version is that doorways are memory erasers. This comes from the idea your brain works event based timeline, the specific idea being that doorways(both real and imagined) serve as a marker for when one event ends and a new one begins, so you brain dumps the buffer and starts loading the new event. "
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9w3dl9 | when dry clothes are hanging on the radiator, what happens to all that heat energy? | I just feel that the room doesn’t heat up when I forget to remove the dry clothes from the radiator.
In fairness, I don’t even know the process of drying clothes on a radiator, either. (My school didn’t teach physics at all but I’m trying to learn) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9w3dl9/eli5_when_dry_clothes_are_hanging_on_the_radiator/ | {
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"Some of the heat is used to convert the water in the clothes to water vapor drying the clothes. Some of the heat is simply blocked by the insulating factor of the clothes. ",
"Radiators rely on air being able to pass through them to most effectively heat a room. Your clothes are essentially stopping good air flow up through the heated plates (warm air rises and draws more air from below) and therefore the amount of heat transferring from the hot water to your room is reduced. ",
"The energy will only move from a hotter to a cooler place, so you need a temperature difference. The radiatior heats the surrounding air. \nAs you can imagine the closer the air is to the radiator the warmer it will be. Naturally, the hot air will move up and will be replaced by cooler air and the hot air fills up the room. \n\nIf you cover the radiator the hot air will not move and will be heated up. The temperature difference between the air and the radiator will decrease and therefore less energy flows from the radiator to the air. Eventually the air near the radiator is hotter but in total you have just a very small amount of hot air. \n\nThe energy flows faster the bigger the temperature difference is.\nIf less energy flows from the radiator to the air your room will be heated slower.\n\nPeople already pointed out what will happen to the heat in the radiator. Energy is not lost but conserved, so either you need less energy to reheat the water because it is still very hot or another room will be heated more because there will be a greater temperature difference between the air and the radiator and therefore more energy flows from the hot water to the air in another room. \n\ntl,dr: The temperature difference between the air surrounding the radiator and the hot water in the radiator will be smaller because the air heats up, and therefore less energy is transfered to the room, which means that the room is heated less.\n\nEdit: Formatting ",
"This isn’t as precise as some other answers but more of an ELI5 answer. The heat is trapped inside the radiator, in the same way that your heat is trapped inside when you wrap up warm on a cold day.",
"Okay, so imagine the air is a bunch of tiny little guys with balloons. \n\nIf those tiny guys touch something warmer, their balloons fill up, if they touch something colder their balloons deflate. \n\nNormally when your radiator is on; the little guys with balloons that are touching the radiator will float away pretty quickly because their balloons made them lighter and new guys with smaller balloons take their place. \n\nBut when you put clothes on your radiator those guys can’t float away. Their balloons get really big though but are trapped under the clothes. \n\nThe clothes will eventually get warm and little guys on the outside of those clothes will be able to float away, but the clothes aren’t as hot as the radiator and can’t fill those balloons as fast as the radiator can. \n\n\n-\n\n\nIn not ELI5 speak, by adding clothes you are reducing convection as a mode of energy transfer. The air can’t freely move until the clothes warm up, but they will never be as hot as the radiator and can’t give the energy to the air as efficiently as steel can. \n\nEnergy in == energy out still, but much of that thermal energy is stuck in a high gradient near the radiator and not being transferred into the air efficiently. \n\n",
"The drying already takes a significant amount of heat, so once the clothes are dry, the room will be colder if evwrything else is the same. After that, the main effect is going to impeding the convection flow of the air.",
"A lot of what people have said is very accurate, however there are multiple things in play when you observe this. Something you should know about is heat capacity of substances.\n\nHeat capacity is the amount of energy it takes to raise the temperature of a mass of some substance. It has typical units of J/gK. That means the amount of energy (Joules = J) per gram per Kelvin (which is a measure of temperature).\n\nThe heat capacity of water is pretty high. 4.184 J/gK means it takes about 4 Joules of energy to raise 1 gram of water 1 Kelvin (which is also just 1 degree Celsius). We observe this every time it takes 20 minutes to get water to boil.\n\nThe heat capacity of the \\[cast iron\\]([_URL_2_](_URL_0_)) in your radiator is 0.4605 J/gK, a fraction of that of water.\n\nIf we dump the same amount of thermal energy into a piece of cast iron and a pool of water of equal mass, the iron will be a higher temperature. This is kind of obvious, as we know metal gets hot quickly, which is why touching your car in the summer or the brownie pan out of the oven is a bad idea.\n\nThe heat capacity of the (cotton)\\[[_URL_1_](_URL_3_)\\] in your clothes is about 1.3-1.5 J/gK. This is higher than the metal in the radiator.The heat capacity of air from that same source is about 1.005. This is higher than the metal, but lower than the cotton.This all means if you dump the same amount of energy into iron, air, and cotton, the iron will be the hottest, followed by the air, followed by the cotton. Typically, iron will transfer enough energy to the air to raise its temperature, making the room hot. However, because there is cotton receiving that energy first, it absorbs more energy that normal in order to heat up enough to heat up the air that touches it. Heat capacity works two ways - it's harder to heat something of high capacity up, but it's also harder to cool it down.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThink of it like this; you have cup placed inside a bowl. You want to pour water in to drink it, but you can only drink from the bowl, not the cup. So you fill up the cup with water, and once it starts to overflow you can drink the water that falls into the bowl. You're used to the cup being pretty small, so it doesn't take a long time to start drinking from the bowl. However, I take that cup and make it taller and wider at the base. Now it takes a lot longer for the cup to overflow.",
"Clothes on the radiator block the airflow through the radiator, preventing air from flowing through prevents the transfer of heat from the radiator to the air in your room and your room feels cold.\n\nWhere does the heat go? If water/steam heat: the radiator is insulated, so the heat just moves down to the next radiator. If electric: the radiator will heat until either: the thermostat is satisfied (sometimes it's built into the unit), or a thermal limit switch opens, breaking the circuit and allowing the radiator to cool before your house burns down.\n\nEither way, any heat that successfully transferred to the air and clothes will dissipate in the room, but at a much lower rate than if the radiator wasn't being choked by your tighty whities.\n\nIf possible, you can get the best of both worlds by hanging your clothes over the radiator on a rope or bar: warm room, better humidity, and toasty, dry clothes.",
"it stays in the system, mostly. the radiator circulates the steam back to the boiler, which doesn't have to work as hard because the fluid coming in is still hot. \n\neither that, or it sits in your radiator until it turns back into water. in which case the heat is just entering more slowly, and isn't quick enough to keep pace with the heat the room is losing to the outside. "
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1w9m65 | what are collateralized debt obligations (cdo) and how do they work? | Asian here. I have been told to watch the film "Inside Job" for my upcoming exam. I can't understand the movie, since I am having trouble grasping some core ideas which all seem arcane to me. I have searched the internet for hours, and most websites assume you already know the term and their explanations include words that require explanations themselves!!
* So what are collateralized debt obligations and how do they work?
It would be great if you could also explain what are derivatives, credit default swaps and commercial paper market and how they work. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w9m65/eli5_what_are_collateralized_debt_obligations_cdo/ | {
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"To break it down by terms, you have a **debt** that someone is **obligated** to repay, and this debt is secured by some kind of **collateral**. This is a fancy way of describing a very common situation like someone buying a house. When you buy a house, you take out a loan (the debt) and you must repay it back with interest (the obligation) or else you lose your house (the collateral). \n\nNow the term CDOs usually refers to when a bank takes a large number of mortgages and groups them together. The reason they do this is because it should average out the risk. If you have a 1 person paying a mortgage and they default, you are in a bind. If you have 100 people all paying mortgages and 10% default, you are still making money off of the other 90%. \n\nNow here's the trick -- people take on debt to buy a whole lot more than just houses. You might have a business take out a loan to buy new machinery, you might have students taking out loans to pay for college, etc. If you properly group all of these things together, you can make a diversified, lower risk investment. The idea is that while some people might struggle to pay for their homes, those same conditions might make it easier for certain businesses to pay off their debts. \n\nThe problem is that during the housing boom a huge number of these *weren't* diversified this way, they were simply a whole lot of mortgage debt. This meant that when people were unable to pay their mortgage, the investments were no longer a steady source of income. Likewise once the values of houses dropped, the collateral these loans were based on was also not worth as much as you would hope. "
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394mji | what is this white fluid covering my knee scratch | i just got my wound and this white stuff covered it. its like a lube trying not to get my wound dry | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/394mji/eli5_what_is_this_white_fluid_covering_my_knee/ | {
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"Its probably Lymph.\n\n > Lymph is a clear-to-white fluid made of: White blood cells, especially lymphocytes, the cells that attack bacteria in the blood. Fluid from the intestines called chyle, which contains proteins and fats.\n\nBasically its stuff that prevents infection."
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cz8f09 | how do videogame textures work? | I understand that a mesh is the shape of the "object" and the texture is applied on that mesh.
When viewing texture files they seem to be the images of the texture but jumbled up.
How is the texture file applied to the mesh and how is it decided which part of that texture image goes where? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cz8f09/eli5_how_do_videogame_textures_work/ | {
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"There's a thing called UV coordinates. Each triangle on the mesh has coordinates associated with each point. These coordinates correspond to a point on the texture, and all 3 together determine which part of the texture is applied to that triangle.",
"You know how before you recycle a cardboard box, you have to flatten it out?\n\nSame idea in a 3d mesh; you take all of the faces and lay them out on a flat surface where the textures get added on.\n\nThe difference being that with a box, the goal is to get them flat, but with a 3d mesh, the goal is to get everything in a certain area, so with the box you probably don't cut one side off and put it over by an unrelated side where you have some room on a 2d plane.\n\nIn the 3d meshes I've made, you didn't *have* to keep everything connected (ex: if you were modeling a human skin texture for a body mesh, you could put both arms in the lower-lefthand corner of the file, then the backs of those next to them until you got to the lower-right, without regard for where it would normally go if you tried to wrap it back together (the program would mark where each part of the 3d model got its coloration/texture from and pull from those coordinates of the image file), so in a way it's not *quite* a stretchy piece of plastic, but more of a cut-out sheet of stretchy plastic that you can glue to your surface to add coloration to it in more detail than just choosing 1 color for the whole bit."
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7qxcrt | why do led lights look jittery or like they're strobing when you look at them quickly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7qxcrt/eli5_why_do_led_lights_look_jittery_or_like/ | {
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"They're often dimmed using PWM(pulse-width modulation) in cheap applications. Basically they're turned on and off really quickly and by changing the ratio of on time to off time you can change how bright it appears to your eyes.\n\nThe problem with this is that when they move through your vision(you turn your head or they move) or you wave something in front of them you'll get weird results because its not on all the time. There is a distinct image that only appears at specific locations on your retina instead of being a blurry smear across it like your brain expects from a continuous source.\n\nGood applications will instead provide constant power and control how much current is flowing through the LED. Providing constant power means they aren't turning on and off and don't leave you with the weird jittering effect.",
"It must be noted that this is not always true. Having played with the Saturn model of the 2000s toy astrojax, I can attest that it is entirely possible to have LEDs that don't appear to strobe when you shift your vision that quickly.",
"They look like they are strobing because (for most of them) on mains power they actually are! Much like when whatching TV, however, something called ”persistence of vision” smooths it all out for you. When blinking or looking away quickly your brain \"preserves\" what you saw in that instant and you can spot it. You can also see it when something is moving quickly across your vision. \n\nSimilar stuff happens when you dim LEDs (like LED car taillights when the brakes aren't on), though much, much faster through something called PWM. The LEDs are switched on and off really quickly - when they are on for half the time they look half as bright. \n\nIn theory PWM is too fast to be perceivable (when done right) but it seems a lot of people are actually sensitive to it!\n\nYou can also get strobing from HID headlights because they often use AC to get the thousands of volts they need to ignite.\n\n*This bit goes a little beyond ELI5 but hopefully still helps. My inbox kinda exploded and I've tried to answer repeated questions in the edits.*\n\nStrobing is (historically) very common with LEDs driven from mains AC. You can often see the effect if you wave your hand back and forth while focusing on a stationary spot - instead of smooth motion blur you can see a series of hand images, like stills from a movie. Cheap camera phones also sometimes show it. So why does this happen with LEDs but not other lights?\n\nIn your mains AC, the voltage alternates from positive to negative and back again 50 or 60 times per second. That means that 100 or 120 times a second the voltage is exactly **zero.** Zero voltage, zero power.\n\nIn traditional incandescent lights there is a fillament which is heated super hot to provide light. This fillament takes time to cool down - much longer than the mains supply takes to go through zero - and so it can stay hot, keep putting out light, and there is (almost) no flicker. \n\nIn LEDs, there is no fillament to heat and they react *very* quickly. When the voltage to them starts to drop towards zero, the lights dim and turn off, coming back on again as it voltage goes back up. As this is happening at 100 or 120 Hz, most people wont notice it.\n\n Cheap or traditional triac based dimming can seriously exacerbate the issue with mains strobing.\n\nIn higher quality power supplies for LEDs, they use \"smoothing capacitors\" and/or purpose designed LED drivers to help the LED stay lit through the low/zero volt bits and this reduces the strobing effect.\n\nIncidentally, flourescents also strobe (though to a lesser degree) and most video cameras have special software to help hide this.\n\nObviously with battery (DC) powered stuff, excluding dimming, there is no AC and so no strobing. \n\n**E:** typos\n\n**Late E2+:** Some battery powered things can use DC to DC transformers which can in turn cause strobing, so the above has caveats. LED car headlights may fall into this category.\n\nI have assumed above that we are talking about incandescent replacement globes which almost always have a full bridge rectifier. For single diode lights (Christmas lights, dim indicators, or other decorative lighting) it is half the frequency and more noticeable.\n\nThe flicker many people mention in slow motion footage of car LED taillights is almost certainly PWM dimming for combo brakes/running lights. Brakes on, full power, running lights, dimmed.\n\n **Regarding strobing headlights**, chances are they are HID lights not LED. HIDs need thousands of volts and have transformers (called ballasts) to get this, in turn meaning almost certainly an AC voltage being produced. Much like flourescent tubes, or arc lamps, there is no fillament to help it ride the zero crossing in the AC signal and they strobe. If it is absolutely LED then I would suspect it has to do with being a fancy matrix LED configuration which automatically controls the beam pattern (PWM?). Might also be DC to DC transformers at play.\n\nI also found it really interesting how many people have issues with PWM lights. Common wisdom used to be anything above 1 kHz was impossible to see with the naked eye... the exact frequency used in PWM is kinda arbitrary though, apart from lower is easier. Nothing stopping someone using PWM at say 200 Hz instead, which might be where the issue lies.\n\nIf strobing bothers you the good news seems to be that a lot of newer high quality LED globes have switch-mode and/or smoothing built in, however it's not clear how to tell from the box. I did a search on Amazon and I couldn't find the right magic words. YMMV. If you have the chance to use them in person, at least one variety will stay on for a fraction of a second after you turn them off, so you might be able to look for this. Dimmable sorts might also be better.",
"If you’re referring to Christmas lights, they’re usually directly driven from the AC power in the wall through a diode (like a check valve for electricity, one way flow) and a resistor (to drop the voltage to something the string of LEDs can handle). AC current flows back and forth, but LEDs can only operate in one direction. The diode allows the flow one way, so the LED’s only work half of the time. In the us, AC power changes direction of flow 60 times per second (60Hz, funnily because it’s a pleasing tone to hear hum, and for that reason alone). The LEDs can only use half of those cycles, so they flash 30 times per second. When you’re looking at this flashing LED string, it appears like they’re solid ON, but dart your eyes and they’ll flash! Your persistence of vision is what fills in the gaps, because it takes a second for your eyes to refresh their electrochemical reactions. \n\nTry recording these LEDs on a slow motion camera, like some phones have. You’ll see the flashing. Even without a slow motion feature, most phone cameras will mix in and out of sync with the LEDs flashing, so they could fade from on to off slowly. ",
"Would LED bulbs be something that a person with epilepsy would want to avoid? Or is it too high a frequency to trigger seizures?",
"The first step is to understand what a LED is. It's a Light Emitting Diode. A diode is an electrical device that only allows current to flow in one direction. The reason this is important is because the power out of your walls is typically AC power, or alternating current. The alternating current refers to the fact that the current flips from positive to negative very quickly. Because I diode prevents current from flowing in one direction this means that the diode actually turns off for a split second, every time the current goes negative, causing the flickering.",
"As others have mentioned, cheap light strings powered by AC mains power will turn on and off 60 times per second. It is also worth mentioning that these bulbs may only be on for 30% of the time. That also contributes to your ability to perceive the strobes. ",
"They are. I took a slow mo video of my Christmas tree that has white LEDs and it looks like they're flashing.",
"Try looking at LEDs while using an electric toothbrush... Or like, hold a vibrator against your cheek.",
"The short answer is that it is a relationship between the frequency at which the driver operates and the visible flicker that the human eye can see from an LED light source.\n\nLEDs are DC components by nature. Apply a DC voltage and current, and voila! Light. \n\nCommercializing such a device requires extra components, specifically an LED driver, which takes the AC that your home provides and coverts it to DC that can then power a series of LEDs. These drivers have an operational frequency, the rate at which they cycle the power to the LED. In modern LED lamps, these frequencies are well north of 2000 Hz. However, a driver that is compact enough to fit in a retrofit lamp comes at a cost. So some manufacturers will still use drivers that operate at 100 Hz to save money/cut corners.\n\nThat's all well and good, however research in the past 20-some years has shown that the human eye can detect LED flicker at an average of 100 - 120 Hz in LED sources.\n\nWhy is this not a problem with the old tungsten lamps, you ask? Well, LEDs turn on and off instantly in response to the power supplied to them, on the order of microseconds, while tungsten lamps operate by heating a filament to a peak temperature. 50 or 60 Hz is not perceivable by the human eye when the rate of change is so slow, in this case hundredths of seconds. Filament heats up, cools down, rinse, repeat, but that change is slower than the power cycle of your house. \n\nIn general, most modern LED lamps/retrofits don't have this issue anymore as the cost of components has dropped precipitously to the point where practically anyone can compete in the open market with LED products.\n\nDimming, specifically PWM dimming of LED lamps using residential wave form chopping dimmers, is an entirely different matter. Mostly because cross-manufacturer standards are slow to solidify.\n\nSource: M.S. from the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and years of developing LED lighting fixtures for commercial applications.",
"I'm surprised no one has mentioned multiplexing yet, which is the other reason they can appear to flicker. To save on wiring and output pins, it's often the case that the the voltage for each segment of a digit is applied to all the digits at once, and then only the intended digit has that current sunk. So 12:34 would go:\n\n**1**1**:**11\n\n2**2:**22\n\n33**:3**3\n\n44:4**4**\n\nWhere the bold digit is the only one that's lit. It happens quickly so you don't notice it usually, but your peripheral vision is more sensitive to it.",
"Gonna jump off this because it's slightly related.\n\nDoes anyone else get an odd feeling like they lack depth perception when looking at those blue Christmas LEDs?",
"Cheap LED power sources is using the frequency of your AC power to power them, 50/60Hz, and then clipping this signal giving a very rough duty cycle control of the brightness (pulse width modulation). With microcontroller controlled pwm which can output a much higher frequency, 500++ Hz, you wont get this effect.",
"You already got your answer. I'm just piggybacking so I can rant about PWM LED tail lights. I hate 'em. And they've probably caused accidents, because since the eyes perceive duplicate tail lights rather than just a single blurred one, that certainly can't help in a split-second traffic incident.",
"Pull out your iphone and record the lights with the slow motion camera. Watch the video and be amazed",
"Ooo something I can actually help with. I'm currently working for a company investigation the health risks to this strobing and trying to develop better LED lighting for the world! But seriously, most LED lights are flickering, especially ones that dim. It's all due to the conversion from AC electricity to the DC required for the light. This conversion is never perfect and the companies who make the drivers in the LED lamps are more concerned with making them ever so cheap that they couldn't care less. There's some papers I can dig up by a lighting group who've been looking into, not only normal flickering, but also the 'stroboscopic' effect you see when either you or and object you're looking at is moving quickly under one of these lights. There's some really cool article online about some sports arenas not checking for this and having some real trouble.",
"Just yesterday I held a presentation about OLED's and someone asked me why they don't flicker. I told him that the response time is way shorter and it OLEDs operate uniformly. It still ruined my presentation, because I stuttered ",
"Our brains overlap our eye input when we are in motion to make our surrounding seem less blurry. an side event of this is that when we turn towards an analog clock very quickly our brain uses that first look at the clock and places its over the view when you head was in motion to clear it up. basically editing our memory. The first second will feel longer than any second that comes after. even if we did not see this first second fully on the clock.\n\nBird brains can not cleanup this blurry view as we do. It will move its head forward and keep it there for +-2/10 of a second to let its body catch up and move it head forward again. this way its head will stay motionless for most of the time.\n\nI am not sure if your LED strobing is caused by the same thing. you are the only one that can decide that. but it at least sounded like it is.",
"So I've noticed this as well. [Here's](_URL_0_) a long-exposure shot of our LED-lit Christmas Tree while I zoomed in for an effect. If you look closely, you'll see each bulb on the tree was blinking, but to the naked eye they are always lit. This picture was a .3 second exposure.",
"Because they are.\n\nLEDs do not produce a constant intensity when operating on AC power like they do on DC. In AC power, the flow of electricity reverses 120 times per second (in the US). And the LED can only produce light when the electricity is flowing in ONE direction. So particularly inexpensive LEDs are only producing light at MOST half the time 1/120th of a second at a time, with 1/120th of a second of producing zero light in between. Better LEDs (read: more expensive) have what's called a bridge rectifier, which converts the AC power to DC (direct current, only flowing in one direction), but the voltage, and thus the current, is still zero 120 times per second (it just comes back in the same direction instead of reversing). This isn't quite enough for your eye to catch when you're looking directly at the LED, but enough to pick up peripherally or when your eye is moving (due to how your brain processes visual signals). Even better LEDs (read: even more expensive) also have components to smooth out the power so it's closer to a constant voltage and current, which eliminates this flickering.",
"What are you all talking about? I don't see this."
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bju7v2 | does a leaf stay alive right after it is severed from the main plant body? if so, for how long? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bju7v2/eli5_does_a_leaf_stay_alive_right_after_it_is/ | {
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"Yes, cell chemistry continues until the cells run out of energy or water. Plant cells (especially leaf cells) do most of their energy production locally so the greatest concern is water. How long they survive depends on ambient moisture, in wet conditions they can often last for days.\n\nThere's still some cell chemistry going on in the lettuce in your refrigerator.\n\nMany plants can regenerate entirely from small stem cuttings as long as they have water access. Their cells are not as complex or specialized as animal cells and they can drop new roots and grow new leaves.",
"Unfortunately, the term \"alive\" isn't really a well-defined term. Generally, something is \"alive\" if it has the following properties:\n\n* Regulation of an internal environment;\n* Composed of one or more cells;\n* Converts food into energy, fuel into building blocks, and gets rid of waste;\n* Converts more fuel into building blocks than the amount of waste it gets rid of;\n* Changes over time in response to the environment;\n* Responds to stimuli;\n* Ability to reproduce;\n\nFor a leaf, the answer to this lies in the last one. Many plants have the ability to reproduce asexually via a process known as *vegetative reproduction.* Basically you can snip off a part of the plant and use that part to grow an entirely new one. If this plant you've taken the leaf from is one of those kinds of plant, the potentially you could say that the leaf is still alive.\n\nIf it is not, and the ability to reproduce has been eliminated, then the leaf technically isn't \"alive\" any more.\n\nYou raise a second sticky question with the \"how long\" which is basically \"at what point is something that was alive considered dead?\" This is also a hard question to answer. Technically anything that fails to meet the above requirements would be no longer alive (and therefore dead) but those properties aren't hard and fast.\n\nTo be safe, we would could say it is dead when it has *none* of those properties.\n\nSeparated from the main plant, we lose the last one and it can no longer reproduce. It will suffer from a lack of sufficient nutrients and can no longer convert fuel into building blocks faster than the rate its cells are dying. As key nutrients are used up, the ability to convert food into energy and fuel into building blocks is further interrupted and cell death speeds up.\n\nCell function will decrease until internal regulation and ability to adapt and respond to the environment is inhibited.\n\nOnce the leaf is no longer functioning, it will quickly fall prey to chemical breakdown by the elements or consumption by other organisms, and will cease to be composed of one or more cells."
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7tv2jj | how are street address numbers decided upon, if they apparently don't refer to an agreed upon distance unit? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7tv2jj/eli5_how_are_street_address_numbers_decided_upon/ | {
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"In US cities, some central intersection is designated as 0. The first east-west cross street north of that is 100N. The first block south is 100S.\n\nSo if your address is 6407 N State Street, you're on State street 64 major cross streets North from the 0-0 intersection, and the seventh house north from the 6400 cross street.\n\nIn heavily gridded cities like Chicago these are pretty straightforward, but some curvier roads in curvier cities get sloppy.\n\n"
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3d573x | why can 50 cents declare bankruptcy to avoid paying the woman even though he's got the excess money to give to her? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d573x/eli5_why_can_50_cents_declare_bankruptcy_to_avoid/ | {
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" > even though he's got the excess money to give to her?\n\nWell, his argument is that he _doesn't_ have excess money to give her. He is claiming that all of this debts are greater than his assets and he can not afford to pay everyone back.\n\nHe can't just declare bankruptcy and not pay anyone. If you declare bankruptcy, it basically means that you can't afford to pay your debts. This will get the courts involved, who will take most of your assets and liquidate them to repay your creditors. Some debts get paid first and almost in full (priority debt) and some get paid less or not at all because you ran out of assets to liquidate.\n\nShort answer is he still has to pay her, he just may not pay her as much as she is asking for.",
"Is he pulling a Trump?"
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9iv0ga | what are the aggressions of iran that make the super powers want to isolate them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9iv0ga/eli5_what_are_the_aggressions_of_iran_that_make/ | {
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"InB4 the conspiracy nuts arrive and blame ze Jews lol.\n\n\nThey are essentially an Islamic Fundamentalist Dictatorship. Their leader threatens to revive the medieval crusades and they are actively seeking to develop nuclear weapons (topic that should be discussed in a dedicated thread because there have been false flags) \n\nThey are also a proxy state for Russia who funds them and supplies arms to them because the cold war never really ended ",
"They have been at odds with Saudi Arabia for religious reasons, and most of the west is allied with Saudi Arabia be cause the west hasn't tried to mess with the Saudi government for more than half a century as they have with Iran. "
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38oak0 | what is it about guns that makes americans so worried? is it some eventual uprising that will sweep the nation, or what? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38oak0/eli5_what_is_it_about_guns_that_makes_americans/ | {
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"Europeans seems to fear guns (as they are small death dispensers), Americans seems to think of guns like a protection (as they are small death dispensers).\n\nGuess it's a cultural thing.",
"As time goes on, the concept of the \"outdoors\" and true wilderness is vanishing within major populated areas, rendering long guns as a unnecessary item in the eyes of people who are against guns. The concept of a handgun isn't used for hunting, but rather as something to deter or to attack against another human being. When we look at guns, there are really two camps with the issue of owning firearms. One side abhors it and says it's completely unsafe, the children will hurt themselves or others; etc. The other sides say that having guns on you is a way to deter the actions of people who are willing to harm or take what you have. Unfortunately, they are only semi-right. \n\nMost children and a very good amount of the adult population are not gun trained. I think, if we did free gun trainings for most populated areas, America would be more pro-guns if everyone learned the concept of gun safety. However, most people are not willing to learn how to shoot or to handle or to understand the concept of gun safety. They'd rather just pick up and shoot like in their movies. Within that group, you have a very good population who are unsafe, show some ideal pathology for crime. It all boils down to self control in that issue. Americans have always used guns as a form of conversation, myself included. A lot of people are comfortable with me owning guns, as I don't ever bring them out unless if I'm ready to use them. \n\nFor instance, I went to a (now ex) friend's house and met her boyfriend. He had a .45 on his waistband like a \"gangster\". He had the gun fully loaded and cocked. He kept dropping the gun, which seems like a way to blow off your testicles. I would have recommended buying a holster or to just put the gun in a pocket, but I didn't. He is a mentally unstable fucktard. \n\nNow, because I like guns and can talk guns like a pro doesn't mean I'm a fanatic of guns, people who carry them every second and are card carrying members of the NRA. When we look at ideology in democracy, two heads will always butt with each other. ",
"The extreme gun nuts have a fantasy that they're going to rise up against \"government tyranny,\" with their constitutionally-guaranteed guns and overthrow it, just like their ancestors did in the Revolutionary War.\n\nThe only catch is, all that is fantasy.\n\nIn the US today, the government is frequently VERY wary about going up against some heavily-armed Christian cult whacko compound. In many cases, they just ignore them until they can't any more. But that's not because the government is afraid they'll be outgunned, it's because they're worried it will result in a public bloodbath, like Waco or Ruby Ridge, which is bad PR. \n\nShift your sights over to a dozen other countries in the world, and the government has no qualms whatsoever about pushing a button in a trailer in Nevada that fires a hellfire missile from a drone half a world away into a building full of possibly well-armed Muslims and wiping it from the map. And if the building happened to be full of innocent women and children instead, well...oops. Shit happens, ya know?\n\nIf there was ever a *real* fight between \"patriots\" and the \"evil, oppressive government,\" the beered-up, self-appointed citizen's militias with their AR-15s would last about two seconds. In 1985, the Philadelphia *police*--not even the Army, FBI, or National Guard--decided they didn't like the attitude of a bunch of uppity negroes, so they DROPPED A FUCKING BOMB on their building, destroying damn near an entire city block, leaving 250 people homeless, and killing about 11 people, including five kids.\n\nAnd then there's the whole \"patriots throwing off the shackles of British tyranny\" thing. Yeeaaahhhh...didn't really happen like that. The British government wasn't really *that* tyrannical towards the colonies. All those \"excessive taxes\" that were forced on us? In reality, it happened a bit more like this:\n\nThe Crown: Here's a new tax on you, colonies.\n\nThe Colonies: Feck off, we're not paying it!\n\nThe Crown: Oh...dash it all, we REALLY wish you'd reconsider.\n\nThe REAL reason that revolution got whipped up was because rich guys in America wanted the whole pie for themselves, without having to beg for scraps from the King. So they made up all kinds of stories about tyranny to stir up the Common Rabble. And it worked. Kinda. See, during the Revolution, about 40% of the population was STILL quite staunchly Loyalist, they had no problems whatsoever being British colonists. \n\nThe claims made by the noted historian Sarah Palin that Paul Revere rode through the towns \"ringing a bell and telling the British they weren't gonna take our guns away, you betcha!\" has one or two teensy problems with it, *besides* the fact that Revere only made it to one town before he was arrested. If any of the Minuteman riders had blown into town yelling \"the British are coming!\"--which, oh yeah, makes no sense, because EVERYONE was British, the message they actually delivered was \"the regulars are coming\"--they would have been arrested in short order. Rather, they slipped unobtrusively into towns and quietly informed a handful of pre-arranged sympathizers.\n\nBut THEN the loyal patriots took up their guns and overthrew The Best Army on Earth, right?\n\nUm, no.\n\nSee, not THAT many people owned guns. Somebody living out in a rural farming area would probably have one, but what use would a worker in a barrel factory in Boston have for a gun, even if he could afford one? What actually happened here was the French. They saw a dandy opportunity to fight a proxy war with their old enemy the Brits, so they sold fucktons of arms and supplies to the colonists, and even provided significant numbers of professional troops. MOST of the powder and arms the colonists fought with came from France.\n\nAnd the Brits didn't send their A Team to fight, they couldn't. They were too spread out trying to conquer the rest of the world. And truth be told, they were getting just a little sick of all the colonists' shit anyway, and the loss of America (which, as you might recall wasn't paying all its taxes anyhow) just didn't seem like that big a loss in the big picture.\n\nBut, well, OK, there's STILL the Second Amendment, right? It *guarantees* the right of the people to unfettered private ownership of arms, right?\n\nNot as such, no. See, the notion that the *purpose* of the Second Amendment is to guarantee the unfettered right of gun ownership is actually quite a modern interpretation, thrust into the mainstream by the gun manufacturers (who, of course, want to sell more product) and right-wing loons who have moved into the mainstream. If you go back to the 1960s, the consensus among *actual* constitutional scholars (not to mention SCOTUS) was that the purpose of the second was precisely what it says up front: to guarantee the right of \"well-regulated militias,\" and thus, was kind of an antique, kind of like the Third Amendment, which prohibits the quartering of soldiers in private homes. That's just not a real big deal any more, and neither is the concept of militias.\n\nThe NRA at that time was an organization of gun OWNERS, mainly hunters, and they frequently fought for *stricter* gun laws. For example, when lifetime NRA member John Kennedy was killed by a gun, the NRA led the charge to seriously restrict the way guns could be sold.\n\nBut sometime around the late 70s or thereabouts, the tide began to change. The NRA was quietly co-opted by gun *manufacturers.* So quietly, in fact, that most modern NRA members probably don't realize it even happened. But after that, the NRA started lobbying to UNDO many of the same regulations that it had fought FOR in the past, because they were cutting into gun profits.\n\nAnd the notion that the Second Amendment was about unfettered gun ownership, which had always been a prime theory of far-right loons, began to slip directly into the mainstream. None of this is supported by current SCOTUS rulings, though it's quite likely that will change in the future.\n\nSo there we are: armed to the teeth and nowhere to go.\n",
"Guns can be used to easily kill someone from a distance. This worries anyone who doesn't want to be easily killed from a distance. \n\nGuns are super easy to get in this country and cheap. All agree that people who are previous felons and/or have mental health issues shouldn't have access to them. However, there's very little that actually stops these people from getting them. This worries anyone who doesn't want felons and mentally unstable people having things that can kill people from a distance easily.",
"Because its part of our constitution, if the second ammendment got nullified, what is there to stop the others from the same fate.",
"I think that the Americans that fear guns are the ones that don't see the need for them since we have a police force. However if the police (government) has weapons that can cause harm you must also allow the citizens to arm themselves in case of a tyrannical government claiming power (Second Amendment). \n\nAfter seeing so many events unfold recently I would not doubt that some sort of event is coming in the very near future that will pin the citizens vs the government in the United States.",
"Its been part of our culture since the days of the frontier, where guns were as essential to daily life as car keys are to the daily life of modern people. Our culture (and especially the south) praises being self sufficient, and independent, and not relying on the government for things like protecting yourself. Especially southerners have a sort of \"don't tell me what to do\" attitude. Also, a lot of conservative people generally distrust the outside world. They want to be able to \"defend their family.\" This is also why conservatives tend to be against immigration, and encourage support increasing the size of our military. They are distrustful of outsiders.",
"No serious scholar has ever claimed the 2nd was about self defense. It was always (just like the other nine) about controlling the government.\n\nAnd we can. There are 300,000,000 armed Americans. A lot have been trained in the army. More have access to books like Che Gueverra's \"A New Kind of War\", etc. The US government fears the 2nd just as bad as the English, Australian, Viet Nam, etc.",
"At least in the US, lawmakers like to put on \"band-aids\" to fix problems. Since people kill people with guns, take the guns away. Surely it couldn't be social problems or systemic failures that need addressing. ",
"I think the fear comes largely from a lack of understanding.\nSome gun myths and truths:\n\nMYTH: If you drop a gun, it can go off. \nFACT: By law, all guns have to be able to withstand \"drop tests\" to ensure that this exact thing *never happens.*\n\nMYTH: Guns have \"hair triggers.\" (They go off very easily.)\nFACT: The vast majority of guns have trigger weight pulls of 5-8 pounds. That means that your finger has to apply 5-8 pounds of pressure on the trigger before the gun will fire. Law enforcement personnel are required to have even stiffer/slower triggers, often 12 pound trigger weights. If you have a five pound weight at home, pull it across a smooth surface using only your finger-- that's the effort it takes to pull the *easiest* standard gun trigger.\n\nMYTH: Having a gun is like having a hungry, deadly snake around.\nFACT: Guns are certainly dangerous tools, but they are not alive. They do not react spontaneously. Cars, chainsaws, circular saws, electrical wires, knives, and lawnmowers are tools with similar destructive capabilities. Training and safety precautions are necessary when using them, but none are inherently evil.\n\nMYTH: Gun owners are either crazy rednecks or gangsters.\nFACT: About one-third of Americans own a gun or guns. Gun owners probably include several of your neighbors, co-workers, former teachers, and friends. Most gun owners are hobbyists who pay money to spend time shooting at a \"range,\" a safely enclosed designated shooting area with strict rules. \n\nMYTH: Gun culture encourages reckless behavior.\nFACT: While \"gangstas\" on TV and in rap music do handle guns recklessly, people who actually behave this way make up a very small percentage of gun owners. When gun enthusiasts gather, they are usually very quick to enforce safety rules amongst themselves, including:\n\n* \"The Gun Is Always Loaded\" is a highly respected maxim which means that you should always treat a gun as if it is loaded. Even if it's a fake plastic gun. Even if it's a gun you've taken apart to clean. Even if it's unloaded. *It's still treated as a loaded weapon.*\n\n* \"Trigger discipline\" is the idea that your finger should NEVER be near a gun's trigger until the very second you are ready to fire at a target.\n\n* \"Muzzle discipline\" is the idea that you NEVER point a gun at anything you're not willing to destroy, even for a second. Even when a gun is unloaded, or being cleaned, or is a squirt gun.\n\n* \"Eyes and Ears\" are required. Eye and ear protection is required at all ranges. In addition, the instructions of the RSO (Range Safety Officer) must be obeyed at all times-- and you must respond to his voice prompts, for example, \"Range clear?\" ",
"One of my favorite subjects. Let’s take a look!\n\n\nFirst off, let’s define “worried about guns” in drier terms. The worry comes because of a continuing battle at most levels of government (notably state, with some federal legislation occasionally introduced) between the “Let them own and carry their weapons” side and the “Guns are for killing and we don’t need any more of that” side, commonly abbreviated as pro gun and pro gun control. \n\nNow, let’s look first at the pro gun side of the argument. \n\nThere are folks out there who believe the federal government is gearing up to send the browncoats. They’re gonna take our guns, take our money, take our freedom, and trample our liberty. It’s imminent. These folks have fallout shelters stocked with MREs and lots and lots of ammo. Often these are the folks open carrying ARs to see how the police will react. They’re probably misguided and wrong, but believe it or not they’re statistically harmless. They’re not really part of the discussion as much as they wish they were. \n\nNext, there’s the group of people with whom I identify. Some of us hunt, some of us target shoot or even compete. Lots of us are armed in public, though you’d generally never know it. We’ve got a varied education but a unified respect for the responsibility that comes with carrying a weapon. Lots of us also took a history class or two. \n\nHere’s a high level history of the last 100 years from the viewpoint of gun control, shamelessly copied and pasted to avoid extra typing but easily verifiable: \n\n1.\tIn 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915-1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves against their ethnic-cleansing government, were arrested and exterminated.\n\n2.\tIn 1929, the former Soviet Union established gun control as a means of controlling the “more \ndifficult” of their citizens. From 1929 to the death of Stalin, 40 million Soviets met an untimely end at the hand of various governmental agencies as they were arrested and exterminated.\n\n3. After the rise of the Nazi’s, Germany established their version of gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, 13 million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally ill, and others, who were unable to defend arrested and exterminated.\n\n4. After Communist China established gun control in 1935, an estimated 50 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves against their fascist leaders, were arrested and exterminated.\n5. Closer to home, Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayans, unable to defend themselves against their ruthless dictatorship, were arrested and exterminated.\n\n6. Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves from their dictatorial government, were arrested and exterminated.\n\n7. Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, one million of the “educated” people, unable to defend themselves against their fascist government, were arrested and exterminated.\n\n8. In 1994, Rwanda disarmed the Tutsi people and being unable to defend themselves from their totalitarian government, nearly one million were summarily executed.\n \n\nSo look at it this way. I know we’re not a third world country. We don’t have the financial strife that lead to fascist Germany. We haven’t got the sociopolitical, economic, and geographic climates that led to Stalin’s rise. We don’t have the racial, religious, or regional strife that lead to some of these other conflicts. And we probably won’t. But if you watch 8 people from different areas of the world repeatedly crash their bikes into ditches and break their skulls, wouldn’t you put a helmet on? None of these genocides would be remotely possible against an armed populace. \n\nI will refrain from making any detailed arguments on the topics of personal defense, the prevalence of mass violence in gun-free zones (movies, schools, etc), the recent violent acts with (Finland) and without (the rest of Europe) firearms, and the various other soap box points of the pro-gun crowd. You didn’t ask; I won’t bore. Suffice it to say that guns exist and, on a small / individual scale, those who want them will always be able to get them. Taking firearms away from the law abiding public may reduce overall firearms incidents but it skews the violence towards law abiding citizens every time. \n\nNow, the other side: Let’s look at pro gun control by the numbers. Assume that none of the scary genocides will occur – they probably won’t, not here. Assume also that the control is somehow executed in such a way that sportsmen are not impacted; hunting prevails and skeet ranges keep booming, accuracy competitions carry on, and life is good, but we somehow do eliminated handguns from the general populace. It’s a best case (impossible) scenario, but let’s look at what we’re really trying to accomplish. \n\nI like to do that in terms of deaths. \n\nStraight from the (_URL_1_)[CDC]: 3.5 homicide deaths per 100,000 yearly, or approximately 11,208 per year in all of the USA. That includes accidents, police, mass shootings, and of course, individual violent crime. We’ve excluded the 19,000 suicides by firearm; that’s another debate. I’m on the “death finds a way” bandwagon – better to work on treatment and availability of help than worry about whether they jump off a bridge or pull the trigger, but that’s just me. \n\nMight be interesting to break that down. Who’s killing who with guns in this country? The story is [_URL_0_](here) if you don’t want my summary. According to Wikipedia, the actual number of deaths (vs. the calculated rate) in 2012 was 8855. Well, the police have knocked down 400 people so far this year. That’s not something gun control is going to address. So, we’re down to 8500, assuming steady state.\n\nI’m not a professional researcher so you’ll have to forgive the patchwork here, but we’re going to get close with these next numbers – the number of firearms homicides in a given year in some of our major metro cities. \n\nCDC gives us some interesting data to work with. For example, 60% of firearms homicide occur in just 62 cities and within just 50 metros. Why is this? Population density plays a part – more opportunity for conflict. Gang violence plays a HUGE part. Pull up the wikipedia page on US gun violence linked above and take a look at the age breakdown. 18-24 year olds are doing a vast majority of the killing and the dying, and they’re doing it in DC, LA, Detroit, Chicago, etc. You might say we have a gang problem more than a gun problem, if you were so inclined. That leaves about 3500 firearms murders outside of our major cities. You’re pretty safe out there with the rednecks, contrary to popular (international) belief. \n\nSo what’s killing Americans? Heart disease is number one, with nearly 600,000 of us dropping yearly. Suicide is number 10, with almost 40,000 victims yearly. Wait, you say – firearms aren’t even in the top ten? Homicide isn’t even on the chart, much less the subset involving firearms. You’re 70 times more likely to die from overeating than from a gunshot wound, and that climbs to 176 times more likely if you stay out of the inner city gang turf. Car accidents, kidney problems, alzheimers, diabetus type two, cancer, medical mistakes – these are the killers. Firearms deaths are a dot on a lemma on a theory on a whim when it comes to significance and risk, in the scheme of staying alive in the USA.\n\nSo, why then is it such a debate? Why does the media cover 30 people losing their lives in a shooting but not the 56,000 people who die every year from the flu? Why does the government spend $1.2 BILLION yearly on the BATFE, making sure our guns are regulated, don’t shoot too fast, don’t make too little noise when the damage those guns are doing is so infinitesimal and there are SO many other low hanging fruits out there, so many ways that money could actually save lives? \n\nI don’t honestly know. \n\n",
"The only Americans who are worried about guns are the ones who don't own one. And, of course, the politicians who have bodyguards.",
"I just don't trust the government, everyone should probably have some way to defend themselves. If we were all disarmed the government might actually be worse to us because we wouldn't be able to put up a fight. ",
"I am american so here is my POV\n\nI want my country to have guns so that the normal, good citizens can help protect the country.\n\nA common view is that removing firearms from civilians will lower the crime rates, but as seen with basically all of Europe, it doesn't help at all, and will wind up with more people stabbing others to death. (that's a lot worse than getting shot)\n\nin the current day, people have access to the Deep Web and can get any item they want, for a fee. IF the government took away guns from normal people, only criminals would have them, and that would be counter productive to reducing the crime rate.\n\nMost Americans aren't worried about people owning guns at all, other than the Liberal nut jobs who still think that taking them away is smart, the people who are worried about them are foreigners that aren't even in our country, and have no idea how our gun laws work.",
"People that have lived in stable and relatively comfortable democracies their whole lives may not see why gun ownership is important, but governments can change and fall faster than you'd think. \n\nIt's a lot harder for the fascists to come when the average citizen has a firearm. And on the flip-side, if you end up in economic collapse and no government, you do NOT want to be unarmed. Great article about surviving an economic collapse, Google it if you've got time, believe the specific article is about a former soviet union state collapse in the 90s.",
"Governments can be usurped. Current gov is hitting all time disapproval ratings. Local militias in the US during the independence movement believed they needed to protect themselves from civilian, foreign, and domestic threats. This is true today if take in the global corporate run agenda.\n\nMilitias and the 2nd amendment are to protect citizens in the case of a tyrannical government. At this current moment in time, the us gov has very little interest in popular oppinion. \n\nWhen the economy hits the boiling point in America it will become a useful survival tool. And the idea that the American people can't be subtly fooled into dictatorship is a joke. \n\nFrom time to time, the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants. - thomas jefferson",
"Not American - Canadian - and I'm worried about guns - I'm worried about the guns the government has, not the one's in the hands of the public.",
"The capacity for an uprising that will sweep the nation is the precise reason that the second amendment exists. It's so that the people of America will always have the ability to overcome their government if they need to, because that is the way that America was created in the first place.",
"it was only 10 generations ago, that my ancestors feared their rulers. We were being bullied into unfair taxes, being robbed for the pennies we had come to this new land to gain for ourselves. The rulers were pushing new laws, and regulations upon us. \n\nEnough was enough and we faught the rulers, we fired cannons at their ships, we destroyed their merchandise when they came to sell it on our land. They came into our towns and took houses from our people. we faught them in our streets and in the forests, many died on both sides. It was war for 10 long years. \n\nEventually we had won. We had gained the right to not fear our rulers any more. We had gained the right to make our own rules, ones we decided were fair.\n\n-----------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nJump to 2015...I fear my rulers. I have come to the knowledge that they sent us to war by lying to us about nuclear weapons, I Know they watch my communications, they video record most city streets and listen to my phone's airwaves. They fill the riches pockets with money while i struggle to afford a warm house. They no longer work for me.\n\n**They have even talked about taking away my weapons. And that's when i remember my ancestors 250 years ago. I remember what they had to do to become free from their rulers.**",
"From speaking to American gun owners, here is what I've found: \n\nNo one gets a gun because of the 2nd amendment. They like having the right to have a gun but that's not the reason they get them. \n\nA lot of gun ownership is hereditary. \"My dad had one, so I will too\". \n\nFor rural folk, they want guns for hunting. Most American gun owners I have spoken to, both rural and urban, say they like guns for safety. The worry is that the bad guy has a gun and so \"I need one too\". \n\nThere are a lot of gun owners in Switzerland, Finland, Canada too but crime is much lower in those places. In America, assaults, break-ins, etc. occur more frequently. Also, mental healthcare in America is poorer and gun laws are laxer, a lot of people who shouldn't have guns can get one. This is why there is a certain anxiety of people feeling that they need a gun. ",
"The whole point of the second amendment was to give us the ability to rise up against the federal government once they became to large. No one thinks that the federal government is working against them (fucking idiots) so they want to ban guns. So yes it's about another revolution.",
"The limiting of our access to arms directly contradicts the founding principles of our nation. The 2nd Amendment is directly correlated with the implied ability to resist an oppressive government with physical force; thus the removal of access to arms creates a situation wherein our government becomes the sole protector of our populace, even against government itself. ",
"The 2nd amendment to the US constitution can be interpreted to suggest that gun ownership by citizens is justified in order to prevent the government from becoming tyrannical or dictatorial or repressive.\n\nSo when gun owners answer why they feel the need to keep their guns (as opposed to letting laws pass that would make gun ownership illegal), they often frame their answer to include this supposed constitutional justification.\n\nAs a gun owner myself, it is my perception that this is only part of the reason most gun owners get upset and shouty about the topic of having their guns taken away. The other part of the reason, and perhaps the more significant part of the reason for their protest, is that their guns and gun ownership is a part of who they are. They don't personally experience gun violence because they only ever experience guns being used in a safe manner--it's not that they aren't aware of the mass shootings, they just can't fathom how that could happen in a community near them. I'd say that 99.999% of gun owners couldn't even begin to fathom using their guns in a violent fashion. What they also can't fathom is a politician having the gall to say to them \"you know those guns you use safely and bond with your family and friends over and spent thousands upon thousands of your hard earned money and spare time on? Yeah, fork them over. Because of this asshole who shot up a couple dozen people we can't trust you to keep being a level-headed, perfectly normal person with them.\"\n\nTL;DR: In my opinion, it's not *just* a desire to have that tool of self-defense in their possession, although that is the reason that seems most legally justified. Gun owners also don't want a big part of their hobbies, interests, and time/money investment taken from them. To them, guns aren't a tool for violence because they use them responsibly. And they are representative of the majority of gun owners.",
"So much money on both sides and it's an argument that will never be settled because then the money would stop.",
"It's a political issue.\n\nThe second amendment has a.... Unspoken purpose that no one will tell you about. It was designed to prevent the government from getting too powerful and serves as a safeguard to keep the populace armed well enough to deter the government from turning into a police state.\n\nThe problem is that people are afraid of random lunatics walking into a school and blowing away a class of school children, and thus the weapons available to the populace through legal channels cannot compete with weaponry the government has.\n\nThe founding fathers did not anticipate this, thus we are stuck in political gun limbo",
"Who says Americans are afraid of guns?\n-am American",
"Guns don't make Americans worried. *Losing* guns makes Americans worried. Why? Simply, because the fight for our country's independence was fought primarily by regular people with their personal firearms. When the British got cocky, we used what he had to defend ourselves and we built a nation in which one of our protected rights is the right to own firearms, specifically so that no overzealous government could ever get cocky again.",
"I would like to weigh in and hopefully this will get upvoted to visibility. \n\n\nOwning a gun protects your home from intruders. On your person protects you from people who would try to hurt or take what you have. In general though....\n\nThe U.S. Government has done so many shady things that on a case by case basis no one remembers or really cares. There is a general mistrust though as we move closer to a plutocracy and dictatorship. In a country where what we want no longer matters to the politicians, who is really on your side?",
"I don't understand the question, I'm an American and I do own a gun for hunting and sport shooting. I have many friends who do the same. There's no 'worry' component, it's a piece of sports equipment. Sure it is deadly, but so is your car. \n\nWhat is it with non-Americans who assume all Americans who own firearms are militant whackos preparing for the zombie apocalypse? \n\nI'm sure the answer to both our questions is: cultural differences.",
"Because the only thing I fear more than the punk trying to break into my house and rob me is the government trying to break into my house and rob me with immunity. ",
"As an American I'll try to answer your question. There are two schools of thought here in America about guns. Liberals are want to ban guns and Conservatives want to have guns. When you say \"worried\" I'm thinking you mean what conservatives are concerned about. \n\nThe MAIN reason (conservative) Americans want guns is that they feel it is a hedge against tyrannical government, both foreign and domestic. We don' want King George coming into our house and shoving us around. The second reason is for self defense, if an armed burglar breaks into your home and can get you in 30 seconds and the cops are on average 7 minutes away. You have 6 minutes and 30 seconds to \"figure out\" what to do. Guns make that decision easy and also deter criminals from breaking and entering. The next reason is not necessarily an uprising but more about society collapsing for (Insert any reason here). The food delivery systems are fragile and in many cities once the super markets go, and once all the food in the house is eaten, hungry people do desperate things to survive. Finally, guns are useful for that one in a billion chance a zombie apocalypse occurs. ",
"I've said this many times before, and here it is again. The issue is that the guns are already here. Everybody already has guns. If you outlaw guns, then only criminals will keep their guns as they do not follow laws by default. The last thing we want is just criminals to have guns. Also, fucking police state.",
"America has more then its share of violent racists who worship the military and hate the government. There's been at least 10 right wing Christian terror attacks in the US for every Muslim terrorist, they just don't get nearly the press coverage. The people who are afraid of guns are scared by the sort of people who WANT to have lots of guns, carry them around in public and have huge clips.\nThe issue of gun control is one of urban versus country. People who live 10+ minutes from the fastest possible police officer arrival arguing with living in areas so populated that its difficult to discharge a weapon without endangering someones life. The people in the city only see the downside of gun ownership, the people in the country only see the upside.",
"You know what protects us against violence? It's not more violence, it's goodness, looking out for others, kindness, love, and compassion. Those things are infectious. We need to reduce the cycle of fear and hurt and retaliation by introducing the antidote to fear which is love. ",
"This is very simple to answer:\n\nOur founding was based on freeing ourselves from what we saw as an oppressive government, and when it came time to form our own government, that experience heavily influenced how we did that. It was strongly felt at the time that the purpose of government should only be to run the international affairs of the country, and to intervene in happenings between entities in different states when necessary, not to control the everyday aspects of the lives of ordinary citizens; the intent was to let each state govern their own citizens, with the federal government only being involved if necessary. They also felt that the citizenry should always be able to overthrow a government, if it felt that government no longer served their best interests. This sentiment is still strongly felt by many people in America today; pro-government types often try to portray these people as fanatics, because they see them as \"anti-government.\" In reality, I think the majority of those who support an armed citizenry aren't opposed to government, but are opposed to a government that tries to unreasonably control them.\n\nI don't think that anyone would disagree that if a population was absolutely determined to replace their government, and if that government resisted through force, that the only option left would be to meet force with force. In other words, if that population isn't able to replace the government - if that's what they are determined to do - through peaceful means, the only option left is force. A population that is disarmed no longer has the means to use force. That is the biggest reason our founders included the right to bear arms in the Constitution, so that, if all else failed, we could resist an oppressive government. Of course there were also considerations for one's livelihood and means of providing for one's family (hunting), and for protecting oneself from other individuals, but the ability to resist the government was the biggest reason for including the 2nd amendment. At least one of the founding fathers (I'm pretty sure it was Jefferson, but CBA to look it up right now) advocated regular revolutions in our country, to ensure that the government couldn't enforce and maintain some sort of status quo.\n\ne: spelling/punctuation",
"In America, the police do not exist to protect individuals. See this article: _URL_0_ for more information.\n\nAdditionally, Americans are empowered by their government to actually be -- in grave circumstances -- an opposing force against the government should it become oppressive.\n",
"There's a large portion of the population that are not worried about guns, they are worried about the real problem - guns in the hands of those who shouldn't have them because a.) there is some underlying issue (mental illness, prejudice, hostility issues,etc.) that makes them dangerous to the public in general or b.) they are under educated about guns and use them impulsively to threaten people (because guns are sangerous and instead of educating people about them they are taught to simply fear them - a gun is used kind of like a trump card to make people obey you).\n\nIt SEEMS like a lot of Americans are worried about guns because we have very much become a society of alarmists - while gun crime (and crime in general) has been going down in the recent years, there have been a series of highly sensationalized tragedies that would make an some believe that we are under constant attack from one another in the streets due to guns. Instead of focusing on some of the real problems (gang violence, mental illness, police brutality, etc. - things that would cost money to fix) the news media and politicians have been working hard to ramp up public fear by insisting that somehow the guns themselves are the problem. \n\nNews media need stories to put up because lets face it, that's their job and because of the internet they are really grasping to keep people watching them on TV and reading newspapers. Violence and fear mongering keep the public's eye on them. (Think of the news stories where no new information is out, but the news has hours and hours of 'professional analysts' trying to speculate on what could possibly happen if maybe something else might have happened, although there's no new information.)\n\nPoliticians love using tragedy as a springboard to launch their careers and receive generous donations for terrifying the public. In America we have a firm belief that EVERY problem can be solved - there really aren't such things as tragedies or accidents, because then no one would have to pay and no one could be held responsible. Politicians love to use guns and gun violence as a way of swaying the public because the best way to deal with a tragedy is to put a new law in place that, while restricting the freedom of some and often redundant, will surely protect the public. And at the same they'll get some money out of it. \n\nA good example would be Carolyn Maloney from New York, who was pushing for all gun owners to have gun insurance before they could purchase a firearm and install ridiculous fines if they did not have it. This would not protect anyone, it would simply make things more difficult for responsible gun owners, who are not the problem. HOWEVER The insurance companies who would be providing this limited but expensive insurance became her biggest contributors, so surely they know what is best for us. \n[You can look it up yourself but here's a quick link I found](_URL_0_)\n\nTL;DR - Most of us aren't worried about guns. The news and our politicians don't really represent us anymore so their fear mongering is more a THEM thing than an US thing.",
"[It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.](_URL_0_)",
"Because kids, mainly male, shoot each other over stupid stuff. There are 2 victims right there, one of whom is dead. Add in the moms, dads and little kids who had to see it happen...travesty. You can add in all the erudite blah-blah-blah you want....guns make it easy to kill someone who should still be alive, all because some young brain had a bad moment. ",
"Not a gun owner... But we are accustomed to a world that protects us, however it is not a given. There will probably be a point in time when we need guns again, and we shouldn't give that right away simply because we forgot what we used to need them for.",
"Too wide of a scope to receive and ELI5 answer. Who's worried for what reasons matters quite a lot.\n\n* Some generally dislike potentially dangerous things and want to eliminate them from their surroundings. \n* Some have trouble getting over anxiety. '\n* Some are worried not so much about guns as who is allowed to have them. Going further, some are worried that a near future could exist where only those with guns are those that are effectively above the law(government agencies and subcontractors), and worry about unchecked tyranny.\n* Some worry that gun laws are being written by gun ignorant folks that are narrow minded, naive, and that refuse to admit that gun use is far more than the rare mass shooting, and child death.\n\nUnder the scope of the question there are many more examples. The above are just a few."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States",
"http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm"
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"http://bearingarms.com/house-democrat-backed-insurance-companies-pushes-mandatory-gun-insurance-bill/"
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"http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/n/niccolomac103757.html"
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bl92uy | why radioactive material is dangerous | Why coming in contact with radioactive material is know to have cause cancer. what kind of changes happens in the body for such a outcome... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bl92uy/eli5_why_radioactive_material_is_dangerous/ | {
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"The definition of radioactive refers to the material being unstable at the atomic level and breaking down over time while releasing a spray of energetic subatomic particles. Those particles contain enough energy that they can knock electrons out of place in matter they interact with. And one such material is our DNA. Knocking out electrons causes the chemical bonds to weaken and sometimes break, damaging the genetic material encoded in the molecular structure. Your body has some DNA repair mechanisms but they're not perfect and over time accumulated generic damage can give rise to a mutant cell that divides out of control, thus forming a cancer.",
"Another more immediate effect of radiation is what's known as \"Acute Radiation Syndrome,\" which occurs when an organism is subjected to a massive dose of radiation all at once. The mechanism of the illness is death of mass numbers of cells as a direct result of the exposure. The three body structures most affected are: bone marrow, the gastrointestinal tract, and the circulatory system. The most insidious \"feature\" of this sickness is that it appears to get better (the latent phase), then it comes back with worse symptoms which either result in an agonizing death or a prolonged and painful recovery period.\n\nOne of the most famous instances of someone succumbing to this illness involved a failed critical mass experiment carried out at Los Alamos National Labs by Louis Slotin, one of the predominant physicists who worked on the initial atomic test as well as some of the subsequent devices. He died nine days after receiving a massive exposure of radiation when an apparatus he was manipulating with a screwdriver slipped and went critical. A similar experiment claimed the life of Harry Daghlian nearly a year prior. Incidentally, both experiments involved the same plutonium core, which was known as the \"Demon Core\" after Daghlian's accident. After losing two fine physicists, LANL finally put an end to such unprotected experimenting, colloquially known as \"tickling the dragon's tail.\""
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4k6214 | how do elevator logistics work? that is: what happens to an elevator car after it deposits somebody at their floor? does it stay at floor n until called to another, or immediately go back down to floor 1? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4k6214/eli5_how_do_elevator_logistics_work_that_is_what/ | {
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"That totally depends on the traffic pattern and the predictability of the traffic and the smartness in the system.\n\nFor example, in the morning most traffic is from the bottom to somewhere higher. So when the carriage is empty it might go down to the bottom so that when somebody comes they don't have to wait.\n\nAlso large buildings have different sets of lifts for the higher and lower floors, so the people in the higher floors skip the first say 20 floors before it starts offloading them at floor 21 and higher.\n\n"
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5d5y16 | why is mixing stimulants and depressants bad? | Uppers and downers. Seems a no brainer, but the answers I've been able to find on the web seem a bit unscientific, scaremongering even.
So please tell me why playing hormonal tug of war with your brain is bad. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d5y16/eli5_why_is_mixing_stimulants_and_depressants_bad/ | {
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"Mixing stimulants and depressants isn't inherently bad as long as one is careful with amounts. As they are opposites in terms of their effects on the central nervous system, they tend to cancel each other out.\n\nThe main danger lies in excessive intoxication. The stimulant masks the effects of the depressant, causing you to take more of the depressant than you normally would. The stimulant then wears off, allowing the depressant to slow your breathing to a dangerous level.\n"
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3nyvxw | if bleach is meant to keep clothes white, why does it stain dark clothes randomly instead of altering the entire garment to a lighter shade? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nyvxw/eli5_if_bleach_is_meant_to_keep_clothes_white_why/ | {
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"Bleach works by breaking certain chemical bonds.\n\nWhen these bonds are present, you can see your stains. After you break them, the stains end up only reflecting a wavelength you can't see.\n\nBleach doesn't eliminate stains, it makes them invisible. \n\nThis ends up messing with the dyes in your clothes. It won't make all the dye \"invisible\" like with a stain but since the bonds are broken and won't spontaneously reform, you end up ruining your clothes."
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4vsq18 | why aren't short answers to eli5 questions allowed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vsq18/eli5_why_arent_short_answers_to_eli5_questions/ | {
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],
"text": [
"From the sidebar:\n\n > E is for Explain - merely answering a question is not enough.\n\nThat's the entire point of the sub -- not to give an answer, but an explanation. The idea is not just to answer \"what\", but \"why\" and \"how\".",
"Something the other commenters didn't mention is that sometimes it's the posts themselves that are the problem. If you ask a yes or no question, or something that can genuinely be answered in one sentence, chances are you could either google it or go to /r/nostupidquestions - it doesn't belong here"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
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