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2sm2nd | why can't i re-tighten a fizzy drink bottle as tight as the factory does? | Ok, when you buy a bottle of any fizzy drink (pop, soda, whatever you call it) the lid is tight but not so tight that my girlfriend cant open it. However I can put the lid on it so tight, she cant open it. Like really really tight.
Yet the drink in the bottle invariably goes flat eventually. Surely if its on tighter than factory, it should remain fizzy?
My theory is that the drink is bottled warm & as it cools it sucks the lid down, like a preserve can. Can anyone confirm this or explain why this is?
TIA | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sm2nd/eli5_why_cant_i_retighten_a_fizzy_drink_bottle_as/ | {
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"Two things here, the factory doesn't go crazy and tighten the cap. It's on there good, but also held on by that ring that you break to prove it's been tampered with. Try an experiment, before your girlfriend opens an unopened bottle of soda, tighten the lid more. \n\nNext, you lose fizz because when you buy a soda it's pressurized with CO2 gas. IIRC those bottles can withstand about 90lbs PSI. But are typically shipped at 30-40 PSI. When you open it, that pressure is gone. The earth's atmosphere is 1 PSI. So when you close the bottle, you now have 1 PSI inside and the CO2 wants to escape the liquid."
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czl8hg | a software application i use for work says it is version 11.0.5.7.1378212. why would the version # have such a high degree of precision? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/czl8hg/eli5_a_software_application_i_use_for_work_says/ | {
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"Usually version numbers are based on the size/significance of the patch, so the first number is the major version, the second is a minor patch, the third is a maintenance version, fourth is a build, etc., where each section changes less overall than the one above.",
"The version is likely just 11 .0 .5 .7 and the 1378212 is likely the build number of the code.\n\n The 11 .0 .5 .7 is a version set by human so you can track changes in groups. The longer 1378212 is automatic It is a number that is generate when you commit the code to the code management system increased for each change or a build number that increased each time you compile part or the while software. So it is there to know exactly what code was used\n\nSo if there is a bug in testing or when developed they can know exactly what code was used. When the developers write changes for 11 .0 .5 .8 or what is will be there is a lot of changes in small steps between when a human determine that a new version number is appropriate. The human part of the version number likely only changes when it is released to the users away from the developers.\n\nSo the high number is there so you can know exactly what code was used and as it is automatic it is not reason to not include it because it might be relevant some times.",
"In software development, we like to keep track of *every* code change. We do this for the same reason scientists keep record of all their notes and observations, even if they're incorrect. It's important to be able to go back and see what's working and what is not. It's also important to keep everyone working and using the same version, especially if you have a lot of developers working on one project and a lot of customers using it.\n\nSoftware versioning tends to follow the same conventions (in my experience), something like this:\n\n[Major Version].[Minor Version].[Patch].[Revision (optional)]\n\nIn your example, the version 11.0.5.7 could mean (totally extrapolating):\n\n* Main version **11**\n* Minor version **0** (could be an alpha/beta or maybe they just start their minor versioning at 0)\n* Patch **5**\n* Revision/Hotfix **7**\n\nThe last number, 1378212, could be many things. My first impression is that it is a ***build number***. A build number is just a number that increments every time the source code changes and a new 'build' is made. A build is literally just a tangible instance of a program that has been compiled and can be used/tested.\n\nSo, in this case this might be the 1378212 build of this particular piece of software since they started making builds. This number is important because it gives you an exact number (independent of the version) that you can reference if needed. If two programmers are working on the same code, and they both create builds, each of their build numbers will be different even if their versions are the same.",
"Just to add onto the other answers here, the version number is purely arbitrary. What has been described is purely convention, something people do because that's how it has been and makes sense to the most people. If I wanted to, I can make my version numbers count down or have 50 groups of numbers in them. Ubuntu for example uses the month and year the software was released on. Chrome uses only one number and counts up with every release. \n\nThis version number looks like it holds other important information that is likely really only meaningful for the developers of the software. Which is useful for them but not really for anyone else. But it's perfectly valid for them because it serves their purposes.",
"People who make software have a hell of a time working out what’s causing the problem when you say something isn’t working.\n\nModern software has many, many changes made in a very short time (what I’m working on has had something like thirty changes today alone and we’re a small team). Most of these changes are kept private and are kept only as a “diary” of how things changed to get to where we are now. That “diary” might include things where one developer changed stuff, and another changed it back because they knew something the first one didn’t. \n\nSome changes are outright rejected; they’re ignored but remain in the “diary” as part of the history so things can be checked in the future when someone says “oh, I did that in July but it was rejected”. That way, we can go back and look at whether it *was* useful after all.\n\nAt some point someone has to decide that something is ready to be made public. But we don’t all down tools and wait while that happens; instead, they look at the diary and decide how everything was yesterday morning is good enough. So they pick that entry in the diary; instead of being labelled with Tuesday April 26th, 9:04am, it’s got a number that (usually) doesn’t mean very much except that it’s different to every other label in the diary.\n\nThat then eventually ends up being used by you, but in the meantime we make many, many more changes. Then you discover that sometimes when you press a certain button, it stops working. We can’t work out *why* that happens unless we try to make it happen on our system too. If we try it with the latest version, things may have changed so it doesn’t happen any more (we may even have taken that button out). So we kind of “look up” your version in the diary, get our computer to make that version, and try to recreate your issue. If we can, then we can check everything that’s changed since your version and see whether what we’ve done in the meantime has fixed it, or whether it still needs fixing.\n\nThe long number helps us get the *exact* entry in the diary that matches what’s on your computer, rather than one of the thirty or more that we’re done that day, or the hundreds between 1.1.3 and 1.1.4...\n\n(To software developers out there, I know I’ve glossed over a lot and bug hunting isn’t really as smooth as that but hey, ELI5)"
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3y9zs5 | why is it that when you lift a long object from an edge it appears to be heavier as opposed to lifting it from the middle? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3y9zs5/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_you_lift_a_long_object/ | {
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"Think of your hand as the teetering point (fulcrum) of a seesaw. Half lf the seesaw is on one side and half is on the other (50/50). Now imagine you put one of the ends of the seesaw on that teetering point so that most of it (99% for example) is on the other side of the fulcrom (instead of 50/50). Try to push your 1% side down to lift up the other side. You'd need a lot more force, wouldn't you?"
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44rdzc | in my 5th grade understanding of economics, if someone loses a dollar, someone else gains it. if this is remotely true, how did the world collectively lose a trillion of dollars in 2016? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44rdzc/eli5_in_my_5th_grade_understanding_of_economics/ | {
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"If I buy a thing for $10 then several years later I sell that same thing for $9, I have \"lost 1 dollar\" but no one else has gained the dollar.\n\nStock markets are places where people buy and sell things. Those things change in price. So if you sell the thing for less than you purchased it for you have lost money. The person you are selling the thing to has not gained the money you have lost.",
"Because no one literally lost the money, but rather the things they owned lost value. \n\nIf you have a pipping hot pizza you could probably sell it to someone for $10. If you dropped it on the ground, no one will buy it. The pizza lost value. ",
"Another way to think of it is, we thought we had an extra trillion, but it turned out we didn't. Value is just how much a good or service is worth to someone. Say, a few years back, you bought a house for $200k. If now you have a house you could sell tomorrow easily for $500K, you could (and ought to) consider that you have $500k. Just last week your neighbor sold his for a similar price, so it's a reasonable expectation. If something happens to the market tomorrow and no one will buy it for over $200k, you \"lost\" $300k, but who gained it?\n\nTo address your zero-sum understanding of economics, imagine you go to the woods and find a fresh branch on the ground. You go to the market and try to sell it. No one wants a branch. Then you spend some time and effort to sand it down, etch some designs, and turn it into a quality, unique walking stick. Now you go out and easily sell it for $10. When someone decided to give you the $10, they did it because, to them, the stick is valued more than $10 (they'd rather have the stick than $10). You'd rather have the $10. You both gained value, but where did that new value come from? You created it with effort.",
"Your understandings are wrong... sometimes, things have an expected value, but that is just theoretical until you actually sell for that price. \n\nRemember the Beanie Baby craze in the 90's? And there were some of those $5 stuffed animals that were \"worth\" $100's to collectors? It was only actually worth that when somebody gave you that stack of 100 dollar bills and you hand over the animal. Until the transaction took place, then the value was theoretical, or in stock market parlance, an \"unrealized gain.\" When the market for Beanie Babies faded and that toy was again worth $5, that money didn't go anywhere... the value people placed on it just changed."
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rxypf | why did it take scientists so long to figure out pesticides were killing honeybees? | I'm glad [scientists have figured out](_URL_0_) pesticide(s?) are behind the decline of the honeybee population, but I don't know why this took six years to figure out ("...the cause behind the decline, known as Colony Collapse Disorder, has eluded scientists."). It's the least surprising result *possible*.
Why wasn't pesticide one of the first things studied (or was it, but it didn't get these results?)? Were scientists *that* confident in the safety of our pesticides?
Now that we more or less officially know the truth, what will actually happen? What's the procedure for quickly regulating or banning something like this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rxypf/eli5_why_did_it_take_scientists_so_long_to_figure/ | {
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"Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta and the other companies that produce neonicotinoids have huge influence over US ag, including what studies get funded, what gets published, and what the general public is allowed to know about their products. The connection between neonicotinoids and colony collapse disorder has been well known in Europe for years, and they were [banned in Slovenia as early as 2003.](_URL_0_)",
"That it was caused by pesticides is only part of the proposed story, though. The other part is *how* the pesticides got to the bees.\n\nIt's not as if beekeepers deliberately spray pesticides on their bees, after all. And when farmers and beekeepers put a beehive in a field to pollinate the plants, they make sure not to put pesticides on the plants at the same time.\n\nThe interesting thing about the story this research tells is that the pesticides got to the bees as a contaminant in the corn syrup that the bees were being fed.\n\nBear in mind that the CCD problem is only 6–7 years old. And doing research takes time. This study alone took 23 weeks to show such dramatic results; that's half a year. It might have taken several months to come up with the experimental protocol — to plan the experiment.\n\nSo part of \"why did it take so long?\" is \"it's a new problem\", another part is \"the answer is a little more complicated than just 'pesticides'\", and another part is \"science takes time!\"",
"I lost one out of 5 colonies to what I believe was ccd.\n\nAt the time, it was thought that the problem was caused by veroa mite and indeed there were signs that my missing colony was infected by veroa. In hindsight, I believe the veora took advantage of what was a weak colony. My other colonies were thriving without signs of veroa infection. \nAt that time the British beekeepers association denied the existence of ccd in the uk.\n\nPart of the problem was a lack of bees in the hive. There were no bees to study. ",
" > *Why did it take scientists so long to figure out pesticides were killing honeybees?*\n\nDo you mean American scientists? I dunno, but it could have something to do with the protection time of the patent applications.. \n\nThe imidacloprid is definitely not a vitamin, but I will still keep [my theory of food allergy](_URL_0_) of bees, induced with GMO pollens. For example, the bats, which are suffering with white-nose syndrome by now in similar way, like the bees are consuming pollens too - but they're not affected with imidacloprid being mammals. IMO imidacloprid is the step in the right direction and it can even contribute to the poisoning of bees significantly - but the real origin may be even deeper. We cannot believe in anything here."
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1nhou6 | why do college football stadiums have a "capacity" limit if they regularly go over that limit? | I understand the need for fire codes and such, but why list it as "capacity" when it really is just number of seats? I also understand standing room only. I guess i just came up with a second question, how many tickets over the capacity is a stadium allowed to sell? For example my school Kansas State has a listed capacity of 50,000 (Bill Snyder Family Stadium) but the record is well into the 53's. Is a good match up the only thing needed to break the record? Would they sell 55k if they could?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nhou6/eli5_why_do_college_football_stadiums_have_a/ | {
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"It's 50,000 seats. It ends up being 53k when you have extra people in for standing _URL_0_ essentially there's only 50k seats but 53k in the stadium"
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3o81av | what are the advantages of 70mm film over digital? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o81av/eli5what_are_the_advantages_of_70mm_film_over/ | {
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"It has a higher resolution than the digital cameras available today. It's also film, so the standard film advantages like greater latitude also apply. ",
"Regular 35mm film has a digital equivalnce of ~4K, 4096x2160. 70mm is just 2x as wide a 35mm, so about 8192x2160. 70mm IMAX (The Dark Knight, Interstellar, etc.) is 2x as wide and 2x as tall, so about 8192x4320. \n \nThis of course doesn't deal with the aspect ratios, The Hateful Eight is 2.76:1 (Ultra Panavision 70), so about 5961x2160."
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4lpbkq | do humans get any nutritional value from foods that seemingly pass straight through us like seeds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lpbkq/eli5_do_humans_get_any_nutritional_value_from/ | {
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"Nutritional fiber is listed on nutrition facts but does not get digested by our systems. Fiber helps add bulk to the food we eat so that it gets pushed through our digestive track in a timely manner. There are some other effects such as slowing down how fast we absorb carbohydrates and reduces cholesterol.\n\nHuman bodies cannot digest fiber because we cannot break down the chemical bonds that make up fiber. Other animals like cows have much longer intestines that hold bacteria that slowly breaks down fiber into nutrients. This is why they can survive eating grass while we cannot.",
"If you chew the seeds, your teeth will crack the hull open and when the seeds enter your stomach your body can begin extracting nutrition. Seeds are an amazing source of protein and vitamins, so eating seeds is a good way to stay health. If you don't chew the seeds, instead swallowing them whole, you might lose out on some of the nutrition they offer. When this happens, they just become part of the bulk in your intestines, pushing things along."
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ai9jy7 | difference between oxobiodegradeable plastic bags and normal plastic bags | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ai9jy7/eli5_difference_between_oxobiodegradeable_plastic/ | {
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"Biodegradable ones break apart into small pieces that are not harmful to the ecosystem.\n\nNormal plastic bags don’t break apart so easily and when they do they cause harm to animals and the ecosystem.",
"\"Plastic\" bags are made from polymers - very long molecules, that consist of repeating parts. The discovery of polymers and ways to produce them from oil led to apperance of many new materials, that were able to replace wood, metal, fabrics in many spheres of human life, because there were durable, lightweight and corrosion resistant. This was achieved by making the structure of this polymers fairly simple and uncommon in nature, so that various bacteria have difficulty trying to eat them. Nowadays, polymers are designed with biodegradability in mind, so their structure is made similar to natural polymers (like cellulose) or contains predesigned weak spots, where it can break under influence of oxygen."
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2qs9je | why is it sometimes it's faster to reenter a web address than backing out of a previous page? | Example: If I click on a link on the front page, sometimes it's faster to get back if I click on my bookmark to reddit than hitting the back button. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qs9je/eli5_why_is_it_sometimes_its_faster_to_reenter_a/ | {
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"I'm an electrical engineer and I have a bit of a knowledge gap on networking and web stuff in general, so don't take my word for this but I assume that when you click \"back\" there may be some excess process going on, such as checking for forms that have data previously entered in them, or perhaps other statuses/flags/states that things could have been in when you were last on the page. Whereas when you click the bookmark or type _URL_0_, you're really telling your browser, hey I want to go to reddit, rather than I want to see reddit exactly in the state it was when i recently left it. \n\n\n\nPerhaps also some data related to the state (when you hit back) is not cached in the same way as the base site is and it has to spend more time loading that data.\n\n\n"
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359qn8 | what if anything are the police not allowed to lie to you about? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/359qn8/eli5what_if_anything_are_the_police_not_allowed/ | {
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"They have to tell you if you are being arrested/detained or if you are free to go. Beyond that, there is nothing that I can think of.",
"Things They May Not Lie About:\n1. If and why you're being held under suspicion (detained) 2. If and why you're being accused of a crime (arrested) 3. What your rights are in these situations (Miranda rights) 4. That something illegal is actually legal (form of entrapment) 5. Evidence found (this one is tricky, they can pose hypothetical but not outright say they found something that isn't there)\n\nEdit: Format. Silly mobile. "
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pcvqb | why the u.n. intervened in the korean war. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pcvqb/eli5_why_the_un_intervened_in_the_korean_war/ | {
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"In 1950 the Soviet Union was boycotting the U.N. Security Council because they wouldn't recognize the Communists as the legitimate government of China. Since the Soviets weren't present to veto the intervention resolution America was running the show, and had the Council pass a resolution legitimizing our involvement in the war.",
"Because of the U.S. government. \n\nThe Korean War was the first armed conflict of the Cold War era, with the North being pro-communist and backed by the Russians/Chinese and the south being pro-capitalist and backed by the United States. The U.S. administration at the time saw all communist states basically as puppets of the U.S.S.R and was terrified by the idea that many of the troubled post-WWII states in Asia might decide that communism was the way forward and spark off a communist revolution on a global scale. \n\nIt was therefore imperative that Kim Il Sung's North Korean army be defeated as quickly as possible in order to maintain stability and the pro-capitalist disposition of governments in the region.\n\nEDIT:just realized that this post contains far too many big words for a five year old to understand. I'd simplify it but I'm at work and I think my boss is giving me funny looks.\n\n"
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53mg79 | how was cocaine discovered/invented? | I've lived in Peru and know very well about la hoja de coca....but how did we get from that to white powder up ya nose? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53mg79/eli5_how_was_cocaine_discoveredinvented/ | {
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"This is one of those cliff-notes history questions designed as ELI5, so I suggest you check out Wikipedia's page on cocaine, specifically the history section.\n\nThat said, here's a quick rundown:\n\nIndigenous people knew about the effects of chewing coca leaves, Spanish explorers were skeptical about its supposed effects, but realized the claims were true and started taxing it, chemists isolated the cocaine chemical compound, cocaine was used as medicine in the 1800s, people realized cocaine wasn't a very good medicine, and now the main use was as a recreational drug.",
"Three thousand years before the birth of Christ, ancient Incas in the Andes chewed coca leaves like goats. But cocaine was first isolated (extracted from coca leaves) in 1859 by German chemist Albert Niemann. It was not until the 1880s that it started to be popularized in the medical community. ",
"The coca plant has been used for centuries by people in South America as a relatively mild stimulant. Consumed the traditional way it's not a lot more powerful than coffee. Western scientists figured out how to extract & purify the active ingredients, making it a much more powerful & potentially harmful drug."
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1drbj7 | why is fox news calling benghazi a scandal, but no one else? | Perhaps Fox is simply louder about it, but I really haven't heard any other networks call what happened in Benghazi a scandal. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1drbj7/eli5_why_is_fox_news_calling_benghazi_a_scandal/ | {
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"text": [
"Because it's not actually a scandal. I hate to sound like I'm not being neutral, but... well, there objectively is not a scandal there. People died, it was unfortunate, but there's no good reason to believe that it was the government's fault.",
"Because Fox news assumes that something that was unfortunate in which Americans died, was obviously the fault of Obama. ",
"The way I look at it from a neutral prospective is that something bad happened, people died, and the POTUS is an easy target to blame. The people calling this President Obama and co.'s fault are parallel to the people who claim 9/11 was President Bush's fault. It's easy to pin things we don't fully understand on a person of power, because he's the president, the most powerful person in the nation. He should be able to stop it right? The reason FOX is calling it a scandal is the same reason that liberal based media (Id call it a fair shake to say FOX is mostly conservative) would say the same had Romney won the election. Because either side of the coin wants to demonize, and make the other look bad or try to prove that they are bad. So in pursuit of making the Obama administration look bad and incapable, they are holding on to Benghazi as a scandal. "
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cf0dys | do amputees with bionic appendages become less fatigued from physical activity? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cf0dys/eli5_do_amputees_with_bionic_appendages_become/ | {
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"text": [
"usually the opposite. the rest of their body still has to bear the load of whatever they push or carry, and the lack of fine control usually means they have to work harder to accomplish the same task."
]
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7nk8dn | why does letting water drip from your faucet keep pipes from freezing in the winter? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7nk8dn/eli5_why_does_letting_water_drip_from_your_faucet/ | {
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"text": [
"Because the source or the water (pipes underground) is warmer than freezing. It takes time for the water to cool down to freeze, by letting the faucet drip, you are not giving it the chance to cool down.",
"When the water in the pipes freezes, it expands, and if it has nowhere to expand to, the pipes break. If you leave a faucet on, the freezing water can expand within the pipe, as it can push water out of the faucet to make room."
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||
3xpxz1 | why do we attribute some quotes to characters, while others to the author? | For example, I would never dream of attributing, "You shall not pass!" to Tolkien. But other quotes seem more often attributed to the author. I would not attribute
"If you do the job badly enough, sometimes you don't get asked to do it again." to Calvin, but rather Bill Watterson.
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xpxz1/eli5_why_do_we_attribute_some_quotes_to/ | {
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"text": [
"The difference lies in whether or not the quote is representative of the ideals and opinions of the author. Is it something the character just says, or something the character believes (but the author doesn't, necessarily), or is it something the character said because the author was deliberately using them as a vehicle for expressing that idea?\n\nAlso, it could just simply be an incorrect citation.",
"It probably has something to do with how memorable the character is. When you have a fantasy story with deep character background and which is also quite memorable — as is the case with Gandalf — it feels much more natural to think of the character as a real person rather than as pen on paper written by the author, especially when you also have film adaptation with said characters. \n\nOn the other side, when you have less character depth and focus, you tend to think of the text you read as coming from the author rather than the character itself.",
"Usually, at least for me, if it's a character's dialogue, I'll attribute it to the character (or maybe put the author's name following the character's). If it's in narration, I'll say the author.\n\nI can sort of agree with your choice to quote the author rather than Calvin in that instance, but I think that's slightly different than quoting from a large novel. Calvin can be seen as a stand-in character for Watterson to express his philosophical and playful thoughts. Gandalf was a character in an epic tale, so anything he said would be his voice, not necessarily the author's."
]
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[],
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twf9i | einstein-minkowski space time | Having a very difficult time wrapping my head around this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/twf9i/eli5_einsteinminkowski_space_time/ | {
"a_id": [
"c4qap68"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Wow! I'm honestly not sure there is a way to explain this to a five year-old. [Relevant](_URL_0_)."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"http://xkcd.com/895/"
]
]
|
|
2w9xd3 | why do babies and young children often have beer bellies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2w9xd3/eli5_why_do_babies_and_young_children_often_have/ | {
"a_id": [
"cop1gb8"
],
"score": [
5
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"text": [
"I was told by my anatomy and physiology teacher way back in high school that kids don’t develop the core muscles needed to hold their GI tract in place until puberty, so that extra baby fat is actually the abdominal cavity being pushed out by their low-hanging guts. Distended stomach is the term. Normal when young, serious medical condition when older."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
6kkv4t | why does christianity have hundreds of denominations while religions like islam only have a handful? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kkv4t/eli5_why_does_christianity_have_hundreds_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"djmun4x"
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"text": [
"There are plenty of \"denominations\" of Islam:\n_URL_0_\n\nThinking that there are only Sunni and Shia is sort of like thinking Christianity only has Catholic and Protestant."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_schools_and_branches"
]
]
|
||
2s161g | how come natives of africa tend to have darker skin then natives of south america who live in the same latitude? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s161g/eli5_how_come_natives_of_africa_tend_to_have/ | {
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"cnl6vv0",
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"text": [
"Because, skin color has nothing to do with latitude, it has to do with ancestry. People in South America are descended ultimately from the same common ancestors as people from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania, and those common ancestors had light skin. ",
"It depends on what you mean by *natives*. I take *natives* to mean persons who are born in the region, and in this case the *demographically prevalent ethnic group of the region*. The explanation below has elements that can explain both.\n\nA prevailing evolutionary hypothesis for why Europeans and northeast Asians developed light skin is that they needed it for vitamin D production. In Europe, as well as in northeast Asia, there is a harsher winter and less sunlight exposure. Vitamin D can be synthesized in the skin with UV light. However, dark pigmentation leads to lack of UV light, so vitamin D is not produced very well for people that have dark pigmentation in areas with less sunlight.\n\nModern South Americans are primarily descended from two groups:\n\n1. Native Americans that came from northeast Asia about 15,000 years ago. \n\n2. Europeans (mainly from Iberia) who intermixed with these native Americans. The isolated indigenous peoples will not have this admixture, but will still have the admixture outline in point 1.\n\nNow, it is reasonable to expect that the native Americans who crossed the Bering strait would have developed pale skin. Later relatives of South Americans would have had to survive in Canada and the United States before coming to Mexico and then settling in South America. In Africa, the dark skin was able to develop over hundreds of thousands of years. In the Americas, a likely pale-skinned population only had about 15000 years (short on evolutionary time scales) to change allelic frequencies to darker skin, and most of this 15000 years was likely to have been spent surviving either the Arctic, Canada, or the northern United States, resulting in an even lesser time scale for the frequencies to change. Then, most of that population received admixture from another pale-skinned population (Europeans)."
]
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| []
| [
[],
[]
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|
||
1zy5or | since all science in the us is done in metric, are there any actual problems/inefficiencies with officially using the imperial system? | I assume it's just a way of teasing Americans, but are there any real, problems with us using the system, which only seems used by laymen nowadays | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zy5or/eli5_since_all_science_in_the_us_is_done_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfy1hlg"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"One expensive (~$700 million) problem was the Mars Climate Orbiter which crashed during orbital insertion because of a mix up between imperial units and metric."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
|
3o4exl | why are mcdonalds prices raising like they are? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o4exl/eli5_why_are_mcdonalds_prices_raising_like_they/ | {
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"text": [
"Franchisees complained that they weren't making enough profit because of all of the cheap prices.",
"Because they are an evil corporation and I do not understand supply and demand. Capitalism has failed.\n\nBut really:\n\nEither the variable cost of doing business has increased or the consumer's willingness and/or ability to pay has increased.\n\nPerhaps beef prices went up. Perhaps variables costs went up. Perhaps consumers have more $ now. etc etc etc. \n\nMaybe the cheap prices in the past was an experiment that is now over.\n\n\n",
"In Europe it is also getting crazy, pay an euro more and you can get yourself a nice Italian or Chinese takeout. I used to go there because it was cheap, but I am not paying 4-5 euros for a shit quality burger.",
"McDonalds in particular isn't doing as well as they used to, sales have been steadily declining for about two years straight now. So part of it is costs of materials going up and the other is loss of sales means they need to squeeze whatever profit they can out of what they're selling.",
"Cheese is expensive. Seriously, when I worked at a pizza place the only ingredient we measured was the cheese. Even cheap kraft chese can really change the price of an item. When I started my job here (run a sports bar) they had a quesadilla that was 2 12\" torillas, 6 oz of cheese, and 4 oz of chicken for $8. Our company has a price line of 35% food cost, which should have made the quesadilla $12. Not wanting to raise the price that much (I work on a millitary base, so we try to keep things cheap for the soldiers), I got rid of one torilla and 3oz of cheese (now it's just folded in half), but kept the meat the same, and hit my price % at $8. The cheese was the majority of that drop"
]
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16hymh | why is france bombing mali? | Haven't done much reading in to it and was just wondering why they're doing it.
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16hymh/eli5_why_is_france_bombing_mali/ | {
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"text": [
"Mali is a former french colony, as such France still has a lot of influence in the region. Mali is amongst the poorest countries in the world and does not have a modern military. The French military are assisting the Mali army is eradicating terrorists in the area.",
"Mali is a country in Africa and it is in the middle of a civil war. The government is fighting against a group of people inside the country who think it would be better if Mali had strict Islamic laws. These laws are very tough, and they control what people can wear, where they can work, what kind of TV and movies they can see, who they can marry, and even ban most music. The rebels say that the god they worship wants these to be the rules.\n\nThe rebels have taken over a lot of land, cities, and people in Mali. The government wants to kick out the rebels, but is very poor, and doesn't have a big army. So they asked France, which used to be in charge of Mali a long time ago, for help. The French have a big army and were willing to send their planes to bomb places where the rebels are hiding and keeping their weapons. \n\nThe French are helping for two reasons. The first is that the French don't agree with the rules that the rebels want, and think they are very cruel to the people in Mali who would have to follow them. The second reason is that Mali has a lot of valuable things underground, called natural resources, like different kinds of metal, and the French people buy them from the people in Mali. But the rebels would not sell the resources to the French people. \n\n\n\n"
]
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[],
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|
2tq3in | why do the miranda rights state that anything you say can "and will" be used against you. if something's not incriminating why would it be used against you? why would cops be forced to admit this up front? | Edit: Thanks for the responses guys. Perhaps giving a hypothetical example will help clarify what I still don't get. Say a guy is arrested who:
1) Is not involved in the crime nor did he have any knowledge of it prior to it taking place.
2) Has information that may help solve the case.
3) Is willing to share that information out of genuine concern for what happened.
Why tell someone in this situation that anything he says will definitely be used against him. Just say anything can be used against him and leave it at that. Then if he says something incriminating use it against him. If he doesn't you say thank you and move on with the case. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tq3in/eli5_why_do_the_miranda_rights_state_that/ | {
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"text": [
"It's a way of saying, Shut the fuck up before you say something your gonna regret.",
"Its just to put emphasis on the fact that *they will* use any and all evidence against you that they can, including anything you say or do.",
"It \"can\" be used against you and if it is incriminating it \"will\" be used against you. Something that is not incriminating will not be used. It is best to use the rights the 5th amendment gives you and refuse to say anything or answer any questions until you have an attorney.",
"The rights are telling you, anything you say , whether you think it is incriminating or not, can be used against you by someone following the letter of the law. This is the warning part. And if it can, it WILL be used, they won't ignore anything. This is the assurance of prosecution part. \n\nIf you are not a lawyer, this story may help you.\n\nA little bird finally grew its wings and decided it was time...it jumped into the air overjoyed as it merrily flapped it's wings.\n\nBut the air was cold , and the little birdy froze and passed out, hurtling towards the ground and landing in a pile of fresh cowdung. \n\nThankfully, the warmth of the fresh cow crap revived the little birdie...and it started chirping loudly trying to free itself from the goo.\n\nA fox heard its chirps, and quickly pounced eating up the little birdie. \n\nWhat lesson did you learn?\n\n1. What you think is good for you, like flying, may not be.\n\n2. What you think is bad for you, like landing in cowdung, may not be.\n\n3. When in deep shit, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!\n",
"If they don't add the \"and will be used quaint you\" part, then they could lie and day they won't. \"I just want you to tell us what happened, I'm not going to use anything against you\" and then when you admit to being an accessory to murder they arrest you. This part of the Miranda rights is to remind the person that the police are trying to build a case, not necessarily to help you.\n\nEvery part of the Miranda rights is detrimental to police, it doesn't help them if the subject calls in a lawyer or pleads the fifth. It's to protect the ignorant from being taken advantage of."
]
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[],
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[],
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20mt3g | airline reward miles | Can someone explain airline reward/ frequent flyer miles to me? No one in my family travels frequently.
For example, a credit card is offering a reward of "30,000 miles" to use on domestic flights. What does this mean? It would be ridiculous to think that I could literally fly 30,000 miles for free anywhere in the country.
Would 30,000 at least get me a round trip ticket to a nearby city? Or is a "mile" basically just an arbitrary name they give to their point system? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20mt3g/eli5_airline_reward_miles/ | {
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"text": [
" > Or is a \"mile\" basically just an arbitrary name they give to their point system?\n\nThat's it. They use miles because it sounds nice, and you accumulate them by flying (ie, a flight that travels 1,000 miles will probably get you 1,000 points/miles). Turning them into free tickets or upgrades is not one-to-one.",
"Miles do not mean that you could fly 30,000 miles for free but rather they refer to how many miles you've flown. Each mile you fly earns you one mile (one point) that you can later redeem for a flight. A reward flight might cost 50,000 miles to redeem, for instance. Airlines also often have a limited number of seats available for low-mileage redemptions. 30,000 miles might be enough points to fly to a nearby city but if they only allow one or two 30,000 mile redemptions on each flight, you might have a hard time finding an open seat.\n\nA lot of airlines are starting to go away from this system and will soon begin tying earned rewards miles to the cost of the ticket rather than the distance flown. The reason for this is that some people would actually take long, cheap round trip flights that they didn't even need just because the flight happened to cover a huge distance and was very inexpensive. I heard a man interviewed on the radio the other day who had spent the weekend flying to the UAE and back to his home in California because the flight was so cheap and earned him a huge amount of reward miles."
]
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[],
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510n9h | why are dolphins able to surface quickly from deep dives without getting the bends even though they are also mammals? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/510n9h/eli5_why_are_dolphins_able_to_surface_quickly/ | {
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5
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"text": [
"They hold their breath under water. \n\nThe bends only applies when you bring oxygen with you underwater and breath it. \n\nIf you go snorkeling. You can go as deep as you like and then surface again as fast as you like. ",
"Yarr, [these previous posts](_URL_0_) will help ye."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[
"https://www.google.com/search?q=eli5%20dolphins%20OR%20mammals%20bends%20OR%20decompression"
]
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|
||
28hzfu | why is depleted uranium used in armored vehicles like the m1 abrams? how else is depleted uranium used conventionally? | Have wondered for a while how this works or why it is so effective alongside ceramics and air pockets? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28hzfu/eli5_why_is_depleted_uranium_used_in_armored/ | {
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"text": [
"Uranium is just really, really heavy. It has no other spectacular metallurgic properties.",
"Depleted Uranium is extremely dense, so it works well as an armor.",
"It is also used for the shells in the A-10 Wart Hog. Being extremely dense, it has tremendous destructive power.",
"DU used to be used on aircraft control surfaces as a counterweight. Some large aircraft had up to several hundred pound of DU attached to them. \n\n[Boeing Use of DU](_URL_0_)",
"\"Depleted\" means that the part that is useful in nuclear bombs/fuel is filtered out. Uranium metal is very dense - it's heavier than lead and way harder.",
"Former tanker here. The depleted uranium you are referencing is used in the rounds fired (big bullets) and not in the armor itself. It's used because it is extremely dense, and you need very little of it to penetrate enemy armor. Going further, because you need so little, you can launch it quite a distance (killing targets at 4 + KM is not unheard of).\n\nIn my M2A2 Bradley, we used to have an APFSDST round (armor piercing fin stabilized discarding sabot with tracer).\n\nPicture a pencil as the projectile, and put it inside a toilet paper roll. When you fire the round itself (the toilet paper roll which is the same size as the barrell) and it comes out the barrel, the toilet paper roll peels off, leaving the pencil projectile (in this case the depleted uranium round) to travel like a dart for a ridiculous distance.\n\nWhen it hits the target, it punches clean through, and most of the damage is done from the vacuum effect created when the round flies through the cabin where the crew sits. The uranium also has a self-sharpening effect on itself, making it really nasty despite what it hits.\n",
"In terms of it's use on the Abrams, DU is used both as Armor and a Penetrator. \n\nDepleted Uranium is really dense and really heavy. When combined with ceramics or steel plates it's fairly effective at stopping most conventional rounds. \n\nA DU round is employed because it's not only dense but it's also self sharpening (meaning it breaks off into sharper pieces instead of mushrooming like a bullet against steel) and pyrophoric (it catches on fire in high air temperatures) making it very effective at dealing damage especially to armor. "
]
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| [
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML0321/ML032180089.pdf"
],
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24ph3b | why is it so unpleasant to breath and blink manually? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24ph3b/eli5_why_is_it_so_unpleasant_to_breath_and_blink/ | {
"a_id": [
"ch9dj63"
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"score": [
2
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"text": [
"99% of the time, you're doing it subconsciously, so your subconscious mind has had much more practice than your conscious mind. When you consciously breathe and blink, you're doing so inefficiently and often breathe/blink too slowly or too quickly to be optimal. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
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|
||
3xawj8 | how did the top 1% get so much influence over our government and economy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xawj8/eli5how_did_the_top_1_get_so_much_influence_over/ | {
"a_id": [
"cy31mot"
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3
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"text": [
"Politicians need money to fund campaigns. People with that money donate it to politicians who they feel will pass legislation that benefits their business interests.\n\nIf they in fact do what the rick people hope they do, they'll keep donating money to their campaigns. If they don't, they'll donate to their competitors.\n\nEventually, you end up with a bunch of politicians who rely on rich donors to get elected, and therefore you end up with politicians who vote in the interest of rich people."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
1pdmsi | bridge around the world problem | I found this question fascinating. Nobody could answer it to me so far, and I'm really curious. The problem is the following:
There is a bridge built around the Earth. What would happen if we destroy all its pillars at the same time?
1. In this case the Earth is perfect Globe.
2. The Bridge is made of an indestructible material. (except the pillars.)
Would it be able to float? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pdmsi/eli5_bridge_around_the_world_problem/ | {
"a_id": [
"cd19a1x",
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"score": [
5,
2
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"text": [
"Because the earth isn't perfectly even in density, it would eventually hit the earth somewhere. Weather etc would probably have an impact on it as well.",
"Just what I am thinking here: assuming know other forces act upon it: yes.\n\nOf course, wind will ruin this, the moon's gravity will ruin this, the sun's gravity will ruin this. \n\nIn theory you are talking about a planet sized Dyson ring, a hypothetical super structure, a ring built around a star. It works the same way as your bridge would, staying put due to the gravity of what it encompasses."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
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|
3ogeca | the recent ankara suicide attacks. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ogeca/eli5_the_recent_ankara_suicide_attacks/ | {
"a_id": [
"cvwxwxu"
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"text": [
"Eastern Turkey has a large population of an ethnic minority called the Kurds which have had very poor relations with the Turkish government for many decades, often resulting in armed fighting. How to handle the conflict is a source of political division within Turkey.\n\nThe attacks happened at a rally for supporters of ending the conflict, likely by agreeing to some amount of autonomy for Turkish Kurds. The Turkish government has assigned blame to ISIS, which controls territory on the southern Turkish border and is officially an enemy of the state.\n\nMany protesters are skeptical of the government's claims as the government has been caught infiltrating and subverting their organization and have already been accusing the government of either directly supporting, or ignoring the activities of non-governmental groups which oppose the peace movement.\n\nUntangling the distrust and dishonesty in this very complex political environment is not a straight-forward task."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
1z7d86 | what is the process a country has to go through to divide into two or more countries? | For example, how could it be possible for Ukraine to split into more than one country. Is it legal for non government officials to propose a split? Who do they have to file a contract/ammendment with?? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z7d86/eli5_what_is_the_process_a_country_has_to_go/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfrb9bc"
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"text": [
"There is no set process. It depends on the countries laws and political situation.\n\nI assume that under Ukrainian law there is no set legal process for part of the country to secede. If someone took control of Crimea and unilaterally declared independence (i.e. without the approval of the Ukrainian government) then you have a breakaway state. If Ukraine is unable to reassert its power there (either politically or by military force), then it would be up to other countries to decide whether they recognise Crimea as a new, independent country or whether they still consider it part of Ukraine.\n\nThere are several places across the world in this situation. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are effectively independent, but only Russia recognises them. The rest of the world considers them part of Georgia.\n\nBut it doesn't always happen this way. Sometimes it happens with the consent of both parties. There's a potential example coming up this year with Scotland. The UK has agreed that Scotland can become independent if the upcoming independence referendum is successful. The UK government is strongly opposed to it, but even so, they have temporarily given the legal right for Scotland to secede depending on the results of the referendum.\n\nOther examples include Czech republic and Slovakia, which had a fairly amicable split.\n\nAnd there's also something that's kind of between the two. If a region of a country is fighting for independence, then sometimes the war will end with an agreement where the original country to recognise the independence of it's former region. That's what happened with South Sudan."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
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|
|
2hqg2e | why is 12:00 "twelve 'o clock" but 12:30 "twelve thirty"? what is "o clock"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hqg2e/eli5why_is_1200_twelve_o_clock_but_1230_twelve/ | {
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"text": [
"It's o'clock, not 'o clock, which makes the explanation much more obvious.\n\no' is a contraction of 'of'. (Yes, what a great contraction. 1 syllable to 1 syllable.)\n\nA more complete phrasing would be it's twelve of the clock. It's specifying what this '12' is in reference too. Over time it naturally become shortened to its current state of \"o' clock\".\n\nSome people do say twleve-thirty o'clock. Some people never add the o'clock and rely on context to make clear they're referring to the time. Especially true of people using the 24 hour clock. ",
"u/praesartus explained what o'clock means. But why don't people say \"twelve thirty o'clock\"? \n\nProbably because the \"thirty\" makes it pretty clear that you're referring to a time. Whereas if you say \"It's six,\" people might not understand that you mean it's 6:00. You might be talking about six of something else. In that case, the \"o'clock\" makes your meaning a little clearer. That's probably why we use \"o'clock\" only when referring to one of the 12 primary hours of the day."
]
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| []
| [
[],
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|
||
4j6xdl | were do bugs go at night? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4j6xdl/eli5_were_do_bugs_go_at_night/ | {
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"d347ct0"
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"text": [
"Some fly around aimlessly. Others just find a comfortable surface or other home like structure to sleep in."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
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1ysz1y | why don't wireless signals, like text messages, hit in midair and mess each other up? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ysz1y/eli5_why_dont_wireless_signals_like_text_messages/ | {
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"They can. Which is why the frequencies that wireless signals run out are heavily regulated so that signals don't interfere with each other. You know the numbers for the radio stations (e.g. 98.5) that tells you which frequency it is running at. In the US the FCC will determine who physically close two radio stations with the same frequency can be to each other so they don't interfere. Things like your home wifi work the same way, except they have a couple of different frequencies they can run on (which they call channels). When you first turn yours on it will scan for other nearby wifi and choose a channel no one else is using. Because wifi is so low powered (compared to a radio tower that can project a signal many miles) you can have a lot more of them in a smaller space. ",
"In general, they can! The reason you don't experience this in everyday life is that that phenomenon, known as interference, will only happen if you and someone else are both trying to talk using the same \"color\" of radio wave. Radio waves come in different \"colors\", just like viable light, although for radio we call them frequencies instead of colors. Have you ever tuned a radio by hand? Each radio channel is on a different frequency of radio signal. When you tune a radio, you're telling your your radio to only look at a single \"color\" and ignore all the others.\n",
"Imagine there are a group of people in the same room all wanting to talk to different people. There are three major ways this can happen.\n\nFirst one is called time division where everyone takes turn talking. Second one is called frequency division where everyone talks at a different pitch. Third one is called code division where everyone speaks a different language.\n\nEven with techniques such as these you still get interference when multiple wireless devices are in the same area.\n\nI don't think any networks still use time division. AT & T and Sprint phones don't interfere with each other because they use different frequencies. Phones on either network don't interfere with other phones on the network because they speak different languages.",
"Wireless signals such as cellphone and Wi-fi data get from place to place as a thing called \"electromagnetic radiation\". A particularly strange and un-intuitive thing you learn in introductory Physics classes is that this radiation can be both described as particles (little bunches of energy whizzing about) and as waves (like ripples on a pond).\n\nThe second analogy comes in handy to specifically answer your question. If you've ever payed attention to multiple ripples on the surface water you will notice that they do seem to bump into each other and affect each other - or \"interfere\" - but only at the very points that they meet up, after that they keep going as if they were the only ripple on the surface; exactly like the electromagnetic waves from a phone.\n\nI had trouble finding a good visual analogy, this particular video deals with a much more complicated topic, though the part from 4:29 to 5:20 is a perfect example of what I mentioned:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nEDIT: I got so caught up in this explanation, I forgot to mention that there are many other mechanisms in place to make sure that each message between a mobile phone and a tower are sent error-free. But this particular reason is why the actual data doesn't \"hit\" each other ",
"They DO, actually, and usually results in packet loss. Packets are like little chunks of binary code (a set of 0s and 1s), and most wireless devices have some error checking to see if a package came across in one piece. If it finds out that the packet came through corrupted, it sends a resend signal, and requests for the package to be sent again. \nIt's one of the many reasons wifi is slower than wired connections.",
"To understand what's going on, you need to have some background on what radio is. Radio waves are a specific type of 'electromagnetic radiation' - which is the same thing as light, or xrays, or gamma rays, or infrared light, or ultraviolet light, or microwaves, among others.\n\nAll of these things are all photons, they are all traveling at the speed of light, and photons are really neat because they don't interact with each other (at least not in this way). If you take a flash light, and you shine it in one direction, and take another flash light and cross the two beams of light, they don't do anything - they just pass right through.\n\nNow even though that is the case - imagine you are trying to communicate to someone with a flash light. They turn the light on and off and use Morse code - three short flashes is an 'S', or whatever. So long as it's just the one guy with a flash light turning it on and off, you're fine, but if someone else comes along and shines the flash light at you (and assuming you can't just see where the light is coming from) - those two signals will overlap each other and you won't be able to figure out what your friend's message is.\n\nThere are a variety of ways that we can allow multiple people to send out signals at the same time. One is by varying the frequency of the light. For example we give your friend a blue light, and the other guy a red light, and then we can tell them apart. Another is by enforcing rules that says who can 'talk' (or shine their flashlight) at a given time, so that only one person is ever talking at once, but we switch back and forth fast enough that we can't really tell.",
"Wireless data is sent via electromagnetic waves, or in other words, light of invisible wavelenght. Since it's really just a wave (or exitacion of a field), and we know waves can pass through each other (interfering constructively/ or destructively) we can see that our data packets just pass through each other without being affected a lot.",
"They do, this is why data packets include a lot of error correcting overhead.\n\nOverhead = extra stuff that is not the data being sent.\n\nThis is the main reason why WiFi routers are switching to the relatively uncluttered 5Ghz band instead of 2.4Ghz.",
"They do.... all the time. Haven't you noticed text messages like \"r u up 4 din l8r?\" This started out as \"Are you up for dinner later\" but do to collisions and bit flips, letters get kicked out of the message. The medium is really unstable to collisions.",
"At a very deep level, this is a fundemental property of waves. Unlike particles, multiple walves can simultaneously exist in the same place and not alter one another.\n\nThink of it like this. When a group of people are sitting around a table, every single person can see every other without any distortion. Even though there are electromagnetic waves (light in this example) going every which way. The image of the person sitting accross from you is not distorted by the light reflecting off those sitting beside you.\n\nMuch of this thread is discussing interference of different radio frequencies, and that is a problem. However, I think the OP was asking a more basic question. ",
"I don't know much technology has changed, but I actually have experienced a mix up like you are asking about. In around 2004 I was calling a friend after football practice, and I used his contact in my phone so I know it was the right number. The person on the other end answers the phone excitedly saying \"Hey Ashley I was just about to call you!\" I reply \"Uh...Mark?\" She says, \"No this is Lindsay, are you on Ashley's phone?\" I will leave out the rest of the uninteresting conversation, but after hanging up I try my friend again and this time get through. When talking with him he tells me that the weirdest thing just happened, some girl named Ashley just called from my phone and was acting like she had no idea who I was.\n\nI have never experienced anything like this ever again, but we had a good laugh about how strange it was.",
"I work as a network administrator for businesses. I decided to mention this question to my co-workers. The best and to the point answer was \"They do interfere. Move on.\"",
"Short answer: They do.\nMedium Answer: We filter the signal to only get the portion we want.",
"What you're describing is a fundamental property of waves, they can interact, but the changes aren't permanent. This interaction is known as superposition, where the waves can approach each other, interact, and than go off again unchanged. [Here is an image that may help.](_URL_0_) \n\nSignal loss is a possibility as all signals are being sent on the same channel and same power, and physically a signal degrades over distance and collisions and etc... and is why wireless connections are typically slower than wired ones. Also text messages can \"hit\" in midair but they can't mess each other up. The reasoning for a messup being impossible is that it all data sent/received from the cell tower is specific to your SIM card (and practically your phone). The only possible way for an error to occur would be if your handset or the cell tower was malfunctioning and your phone does not receive or receives too much or the wrong type of messages/data that it should be receiving.",
"They absolutely can; see: _URL_0_",
"They actually do, and that's why there are protocols to regulate how or when the signals are transmitted over the air. \n\nThings are a lot more complicated than this but for the sake of ELI5, collisions are avoided and corrected by several means. \n\n(1) transmitting on different channels: such as WiFi channel 1, 5, 9, 13 are non overlapping, as well as your radio can \"tune into\" different radio channels (88MHz, 88.3MHz, etc)\n\n(2) modulation and multiplexing: we can't always \"tune into\" different channels because they run out quite quickly, in the digital world we (almost always) share with other devices so you are not the only user on that channel, such as your mobile phone, but since not everyone need to \"talk\" at the same time, methods such as TDMA (time division multiplexing) assign time slots to different phones so they talk at different times. Downside to this is you don't get 100% of the bandwidth (or speed), but many more users can be squeezed into the same resources available.\n\n(3) correction algorithms: even with the above mentioned techniques, collision would still occur, within the modulation specification it would have defined what to do when a collision occurs, one of which being everyone wait for a random period of time, before transmitting again, hoping this time it wouldn't clash. There are also modulations which are designed to work with overlapping signal such as CDMA (code division multiplexing), but I still couldn't understand how it works. ELI5 maybe? ",
"I would love to add my 2 cents to this conversation seeing as how this directly relates to my job. But honestly just thinking about the whole process hurts my brain."
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58xs8v | why do people say it's a bad idea to vote third party? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/58xs8v/eli5_why_do_people_say_its_a_bad_idea_to_vote/ | {
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"In America the third party due to both media and the large reaches of the two major ones, hardly stand a chance. Giving them your vote pretty much amounts to nothing ",
"depending on the electoral system. but in places like the U.K. and a US presidential election you have what is called the spoiler effect, where voting for a third party ends up being a wasted vote because they'll never get in and allows your worse choice a better chance of being elected."
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5jflh4 | how does anti-matter give off a light spectrum, and how is it the exact opposite of its regular-matter counterpart? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jflh4/eli5_how_does_antimatter_give_off_a_light/ | {
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"Antimatter acts exactly the same as normal matter in all ways, *except* that its electric charges are opposite. As such, it releases light exactly in the same way that its normal-matter counterparts do.",
"Let us break down regular matter, specifically hydrogen for simplicity, into a simpler concept.\n\nA small, negatively charged (the electron) orbits a larger charged particle (the proton) in one of a set of stationary states, named \"orbitals\" in quantum chemistry. When the electron moves between these orbitals, it must emit/absorb a quanta of energy and momentum in order for it to have the required energy/momentum in order to occupy this new orbital. \n\nThis is what happens when we illuminate a sample of hydrogen with laser light, if the photons have an energy matching a energy difference from the ground state to a higher orbital, electrons will absorb the photon and be elevated to this orbital.\n\nNow, nowhere in this explanation have I been required to say that the electron is negative and the proton is positive, because it doesn't have any bearing on the physics! I could have equally come up with some particle, let's call it a positron, which has the exact same properties as an electron except with a positive charge. Likewise, I'll come up with a particle called an antiproton, with the exact same properties, but a negative charge.\n\nIn fact, excluding energy and momentum, all quantifiable properties of these new \"antiparticles\", like charge, have exactly the same magnitude as their regular matter counterparts, except the sign is flipped! So if we were to add a particle and it's antiparticle together, all of these properties will sum to 0, except for that troublesome energy and momentum. So we need a way to conserve that. What's a physical entity which has momentum and energy, but no electric charge, color charge, spin, etc? Photons! So the combination of a particle and antiparticle emits high-energy photons in order to conserve these quantities. We call this process annihilation. \n\nRegarding the emission spectrum of anti-atoms like antihydrogen, I can create an identical system to my hydrogen atom by combining these two \"antiparticles\", and since they have the exact same properties, they should absorb and emit light in the same way as regular hydrogen. This is the prediction of the standard model of particle physics, and is happily supported by the article you've read about this topic. :) "
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4cosra | why can some cats differentiate between colors, when many argue that they are colorblind? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cosra/eli5_why_can_some_cats_differentiate_between/ | {
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"Cat's are not colorblind they just don't see some colors and some colors they see differently.\n\nThe reason for this is that cat retina is different than human retina and their rod and cone retinal cell amounts are different."
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5e1dac | how do "modern rangefinding" reticles work? | I'm window shopping for moa scopes and I came across [these things](_URL_0_), and they have me stumped as to how they work. Why do the lines change in size as they go down? Why do those two reticles have lines growing in opposite directions? How would you use that style of reticle to get the range on a target, or figure out where you're aiming relative to it?
I'm already familiar with how moa dots and stadiametric rangefinders work, but I'm stumped by these things. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5e1dac/eli5_how_do_modern_rangefinding_reticles_work/ | {
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"I think the size decreasing as the decent in the top helps visually estimate range. If a target takes the full width of the line at a specific range it should take the full width of the smaller line at its designated distance. "
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3q3dov | why watches, weather apps etc. indicate the phase of the moon. why is the moon phase so significant that people need to know? | Is it just an interesting piece of information that is easy to calculate so the designers of these watches throw the feature in or do some people actually use that information for something? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3q3dov/eli5_why_watches_weather_apps_etc_indicate_the/ | {
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"[The phase of the moon relates to the tides](_URL_0_). Near the new or full moon, the tide is especially high. When the moon is in the first or third quarter, the tide is especially low. [Helpful graphic.](_URL_1_)",
"Some people use moon phase, rise, set and when it is directly overhead, or underfoot along with the position of the sun to determine the best times to fish or hunt. \n\nThe moon does have an effect on some animal behaviour, along with affecting tides. Everything else equal, I've found that fishing during a new moon or full moon tend to give better results, so I try to schedule more trips during these times. Also, if I'm camping, I prefer a full moon which rises around dusk. It's just nice.",
"Religious and cultural significance, too. A not insignificant amount of people celebrate holidays related to a lunar calendar. Chinese New Year, etc.",
"I like to know when the best times to watch for meteorites are. Yes, I may be in the minority, but just thought I'd give my reason anyway.",
"I worked in an ER in school as security. Quite frankly a full moon meant people would come in droves with some weird ass problems (old man with his dick stuck in a vacuum hose) and lots and lots of fistfight injuries. Didn't seem to matter the day of the week.\n\nAlso my ex girlfriend in the day would have a big red birthmark on the back of her neck that would only show on full moons. Creepy yet kind of hot.",
"It used to be more important back in the day. Without electric lighting, it is very, very, dark at night, and so most people stayed home. On nights near or on the full moon, this wasn't the case, and meetings and other gatherings tended to be scheduled on those dates.",
"While the modern day calendar is formed around the cycle of day and night and based on the sun called a solar calendar, there are religions and cultures in the world that follow a lunar calendar, wherein important dates and events are based around the phases of the moon. \n\nExample in India many festivals are on days when a particular lunar phase occurs and is irrelevant to the solar day so it happens on different day of the calendar every year but around the same time example. Hence lunar phases are important to a huge group of people.\n\nBut like others pointed out there are other reasons beside this example in fishing."
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1ocwyu | why are hamburgers stigmatized as junk food? | When I see a hamburger, I see a source of protein and vitamins from the beef and cheese.
Yes there is fat and sodium from restaurant burgers but a negligible or comparable amount to foods in popular cuisines such as Greek, Italian, Indian and Mexican.
People have no problem slamming down bacon, sausage and pancakes with a glass or high sugar orange juice for breakfast or munching on kung pao chicken for lunch yet burgers are always the go-to when referencing unhealthy food.
whats the deal? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ocwyu/eli5_why_are_hamburgers_stigmatized_as_junk_food/ | {
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"i think it is mostly used as a synonym for fast food in general",
"Using an iconic burger as an example - Big Mac:\n-42% of your daily intake of salt in one burger. \n-36% of your daily intake of fat in one burger. \n-25% of your daily intake of calories. \n-That sure as hell isn't good food!\n "
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2awuop | why is it that some primetime shows have 20 episodes per season, whereas others only have 10 episodes, or two 8-episode "half seasons"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2awuop/eli5_why_is_it_that_some_primetime_shows_have_20/ | {
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"Because different shows have different scheduling needs and different paces at which they want to put the story out there.\n\nIt's usually the network's decision."
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2dcsz3 | why do i get hungry faster between meals when i'm generally inactive (watching tv, working on the computer, browsing reddit) as compared to when i'm physically active (moving around, exercising, doing manual labor)? | It just seems that physical action would be burning up calories faster, requiring more fuel and making me hungry. Yet, I can go for hours without even thinking of food when I'm active. However, when I'm still for periods of time I suddenly find myself hungry, even after a recent meal. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dcsz3/eli5why_do_i_get_hungry_faster_between_meals_when/ | {
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"People eat when they get bored. If you aren't doing anything stimulating your body sends out the message to start building up energy.",
"/u/Corrosive_Barrel_Guy is kind of right but I'll try and go into more detail. The one word answer is dopamine, a chemical in our brains associated with pleasure/reward. When you want to eat or are \"hungry,\" you might not *actually* be hungry - that is needing more calories. When you're bored you'll want to do \"exciting\" things i.e. things that will increase pleasure. \"But what does this have to do with anything?\" you ask. Eating increases dopamine. This is because eating (building up/storing energy) is evolutionarily advantageous... your brain approves! So when you're not doing anything engaging, you want to eat - you feel hungry.\n\nWhile surfing Reddit or watching something on TV, chances are you are not completely engaged... I know I'm usually not. If you're moving around, you probably have a task on hand and you're concentrated on that task. \nI know it's not exactly a Harvard study but here's some [additional reading.]\n(_URL_1_)\n\nEdit: Here is another [study] (_URL_0_) by Edward E. Abramson, Shawn G. Stinson that indicates a link between boredom and food consumption. (Emphasis mine)\n\n > The results indicate that the obese consumed significantly more food than normals, and that **boredom markedly increases food consumption for both obese and normals.** The predicted interaction between weight and task was not found.\n\nEdit 2: If I (or anyone else) has answered your question, please mark your post as \"Explained.\" This helps others looking for an answer. If not, ask away.",
"Basically we have two divisions of the [Autonomic Nervous System](_URL_0_) which are the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) and sympathetic nervous system (SNS). \n\nThe SNS is responsible for the \"fight or flight\" reflex. This is what is mainly acting while a person is in motion, or doing physical activity. It diverts blood to the organs that are needed to efficiently move the body (i.e lungs, muscles, brain, heart). \n\nThe PNS is responsible for the \"rest and digest\" reflex. This diverts the blood to the gastrointestinal system (i.e. stomach, kidneys, and intestines) and thus causes digestion. \n\nWhen we are in rest the body knows to turn on the rest and digest system, and turn off the fight or flight system. If a bear suddenly shows up at your door, the SNS will kick in and you will stop sending blood to the GI system so that you can flee or fight. If you are chilling on the couch, your body will try to be most efficient at digesting food to make energy and store fat. This causes the body to digest foods and subsequently make you feel hungry while being inactive. ",
"A lot of these answers aren't wrong, but they ignore the main reason for lulls in your hunger cycle throughout the day: satiety, or being satisfied nutritionally. Eating food causes the release of a number of hormones to help your body properly utilize it as fuel and to bring your body back to the same resting state you were at before you ate which is kind of like being in all systems normal. If you eat simpler carbohydrates, sugars, grains, or other foods lacking in significant nutrition or density or dont eat enough, your body releases insulin during digestion which slows or stops the flow of fatty acids and proteins to your muscles and cells. This is bad because those muscles and cells are the original reason you felt hunger, and so you eat again as soon as your stomach has room and your muscles and cells realize they haven't been refueled. Your body keeps making you feel hunger until you are satiated. This video explains it way better:\n_URL_0_\n\nSo while evolutionary social tendencies, dopamine, and whatever ever number of variables do play a part, being satisfied and hormones play the largest in my opinion. "
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f34qp5 | why does light keep us awake at night but it’s easy to nap in full sun during the afternoon? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f34qp5/eli5_why_does_light_keep_us_awake_at_night_but/ | {
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"Your brain uses various signals to decide when to sleep or stay awake, one of them is blue light (which indicates day time). \n\nHowever, this is one of many inputs. If you have a build up on adenosine in your brain then that too can make you sleepy even if its day time. You nap during the day because you are tired. You are tired because you stayed up on your phone all night and didnt sleep well enough",
"Contrast.\n\nWhen everything is illuminated, you don't notice individual bright things, everything is bright.\n\nWhen things are dark, light really stands out."
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1v789g | how is it some people can consume whatever they want and still be lean? | I used to be fat and then I started working out and eating health. I work hard to look the way I do, nutrition is a big part of that. I have friends who can eat whatever they want and they are still fit/lean. Obviously eating pizza and donuts is not health but I am not asking whether it is health or not, just the physical aspect. Most of these guys rarely workout and they have poor diets however, they still maintain a single digit body fat or pretty close to it. With fitness they look even better while still eating like sh*t. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1v789g/eli5_how_is_it_some_people_can_consume_whatever/ | {
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"While there must be some natural variation in the degree to which people process and metabolise fat-- in fact, genetic markers for predisposition to weight retention have recently been identified-- it always comes down to the amount of calories ingested relative to the body's needs and ability to metabolise fats, carbohydrates, etc. It's very easy to under- or over-estimate how much a person is truly eating; a small amount of junk food, while likely poor in nutrients and nutrient-quality, will not enable a person to gain weight as much as an excessive amount of healthy food. Since you're not talking nutritionally, from a purely physical standpoint it's literally all about caloric intake. Regardless of what foods are being consumed, if the calories are there, the body will build muscle and store fat. If the calories aren't available, then people stay slim.",
"It's all about perception. First basal metabolism varies by about 200 calories. So the difference between a \"slow metabolism\" and a normal one is only about 2 tablespoons of peanut butter. \n(_URL_0_)\n\nSo how can an overweight person eat so little and not lose weight? Simple, they underestimate how much they are eating. In the linked study overweight people who claimed to be eating only 1200 calories/day were followed. It was found that they were actually consuming almost double the calories that they thought.\n(_URL_1_)\n\nThe opposite is seen with skinny people who \"just can't gain weight.\" When they eat they eat a lot, but they also eat infrequently. So they overestimate how many calories they consume.",
"You eat more than you think you do. \nThey eat less than you think they do. \n \nNeither you or your friends are biological miracles, you simply have skewed perceptions of how many calories are actually being consumed. \n \nIt sucks that they can eat a piece of bread and be full until dinner, while some of us can eat plate loads of breakfast and be hungry for lunch a few hours later. But if you've been overfed your whole life, it's what your body is accustomed to.",
"The vast majority of people out there have no idea what and how much they really eat. Write down every bite and morsel, and do the total at the end of the day (protein, carbs, fat, calories) and see what the results are. Do it for at least one week, ideally more. But make sure you write down *every little thing*, no exceptions. You will be surprised. I did that myself, and I almost fell off the chair when I saw the numbers.\n\nIt's true that some of those people eat whatever they want, but what they want is not much. They have not developed addictions for sugar, fat and so on. Their appetite shuts down pretty quickly. Calculate the total protein/carbs/fat/calories they eat in every 24 hour period (and actually measure and calculate, don't just eyeball it), and you're in for the biggest surprise of your life. They just don't eat that many calories.\n\nNo calories, no puffy hips (or belly). The nature of the calories (donuts or broccoli) doesn't matter as much as the quantity (1500 / day vs 3500 / day). It's important to eat healthy to stay healthy in the long term, and to not develop sugar addictions and whatnot. But it's entirely possible to stay very lean if you eat a grand total of 1500 calories / day consisting entirely of donuts and pizza, and you're not a total couch potato.\n\nIt is also possible to eat \"healthy\" (according to some naive criteria) and yet carry a good amount of lard on your frame. At 4000 calories per day, even \"healthy\" food is going to blow you up.\n\n > With fitness they look even better\n\nYou need both diet and exercise, for both purposes (being healthy and looking good). Everyone needs both. It just works that much better. Some folks can get away with doing only one of the two, but it doesn't last long."
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bsuer2 | what do anti-histamines do to the body that reduces allergies? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bsuer2/eli5_what_do_antihistamines_do_to_the_body_that/ | {
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"They don't really reduce you allergy, per se, so much as they reduce the symptoms by disrupting complex signal pathways that are responsible for those symptoms. Ultimately, allergies are due to an overactive/ineffective immune system and anti-histamines help offset these issues.",
"It's in the name: they are *anti* (against) *histamine* (a signal your body uses to activate your immune system).\n\nWhenever you're injured or your body senses an attack, the cells around the affected area release histamine. The histamine tells that part of the body to do things like dilate the blood vessels to cause inflammation and, if near the face, to produce more mucus and tears. These are normally good responses, because they help your body fight off harmful pathogens. Allergies happen when histamine is released in response to harmless stimuli like pollen, and the histamine response is overly aggressive.\n\nAnti-histamines block that response in a number of ways. Mostly they fit into the receptors that the histamine normally fits in. When the histamine gets into the receptor, it activates the other chemical signals that cause the symptoms. The anti-histamine gets into that receptor without activating it, blocking the histamine from being able to turn it on. Sometimes the anti-histamine *do* turn on the receptor, but in the opposite way so it tries to turn *down* the immune response. So the stimulus still happens, the pollen is still in your nose and some of your immune cells are freaking out about it, but their signals never get the chance to activate all the rest of your immune response.\n\nDifferent drugs affect different histamine receptors (there are several) and some just block the receptor (receptor agonists) or turn it the opposite direction of histamine (inverse agonists). As a side-effect, histamine is a neurotransmitter that gets used for a number of things, including sleep-wake regulation. Histamines normally wake you up. So an inverse agonist anti-histamine, which does the opposite to the receptors that histamine would do, makes you tired.",
"Okay let's start with what allergies are.\n\nAn allergy is when your body produces an antibody against something that's \"normal\", like peanuts. Not just any type of antibody, but a special type of antibody called an [IgE antibody](_URL_0_). Antibodies bind to things, right? so they make IgE antibodies against peanuts or pollen.\n\nAnyway, your body makes these IgEs and they are picked up by a cell called a Mast Cell. [The mast cell holds onto them,](_URL_1_) using them like a divining rod to look for targets. When something binds to the IgE that the mast cell is holding, the mast cell \"degranulates\", releases histamine. \n\nHistamine is what causes the allergic symptoms. It's a molecule that binds to all the cells around, and causes your eyes to water, it causes the sensation of itchiness, it causes all the things we think about when we complain about allergies. \n\nAntihistamines are molecules that look just like histamine. They even bind to the same receptors as histamine does. The only difference is that when antihistamines bind to these receptors, it *doesn't cause activation* of the response. So this means that the antihistamines basically just use up all the receptors and histamine can't bind to any. This reduces the effects of histamine.",
"I'm mildly allergic to some green plant that blossoms around July. If I go to our summer cabin (very green environment), my nose starts to run a bit. I take one antihistamine and I'll be fine for a week without needing another. Does it affect my system that long or does it give my system the boost it needs to realize the pollen is not dangerous?",
"I'll make this very simple: antihistamine = immuno-suppressor. They fix nothing other than symptoms of problems",
"Ok now like a real 5 year old. Your body sends a message to its soldiers that it’s under attack. Antihistamines tell the soldiers that the attackers are really not a threat and the soldiers can go do something else.",
"Histamines are really just like a fire alarm for your body. The symptoms you feel are because a bunch of responses in your body like little fire fighters are trying to deal with the substance setting of the alarm. Anti histamines really just shut off that alarm so the fire fighters stop responding. This is helpful for some simple allergies that are just bothersome, and severe allergies that could harm you. The histamines are the alarm, and the response is unrelated. Antihistamine medication shuts off the alarm.",
"And how come when I have really bad hay fever and take a anti-histamine, it never does anything for me? The hay fever seems to still last for another 12 hours and I just have to sleep it off?",
"As a follow up question.\n\nWhy do some allergic reactions say to pollen only cause local symptoms, while others can cause anaphylaxis? Is histamine to blame for both situations?",
"ELI5: Histamines are like a bunch of dudes standing in doorways and yelling at you to make you feel bad (allergies). Antihistamines get to the doorway before histamines do and take up the space first. They don't yell at you so you don't feel bad (no allergies)."
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22dsqf | why is it considered ideal to have mild inflation? why not zero inflation or mild deflation? | This regarding the inflation rate that the Federal Reserve targets, not the cosmic kind. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22dsqf/eli5_why_is_it_considered_ideal_to_have_mild/ | {
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"Zero inflation doesn't give the right kind of price signals to grow an economy. Deflation tells you that your money will be worth more tomorrow, why spend it today? ",
"Deflation would cause people *not to buy anything* because it would be worth less in the future, and so they would save money by stalling their purchase decision.\n\nZero inflation would cause people to save too much money, as bank interest rates would be more attractive, therefore slowing spending, and in turn slowing economic growth.\n\nAlso, from a value-based perspective: total \"value\" in the economy increases with time e.g. every time a new car is made, the total value of the economy increases. Having zero inflation would not account for this unless you rapidly introduced more currency into the economy. This would have to be balanced with investment (which would increase if there was zero inflation), and so the federal reserve would become an impractically huge body, trying to match the production of new notes to exactly the level of investment in the economy",
"The Government is a big fan of inflation, because it means that they pay back their debts in money that will be worth less than the money they borrowed, while paying out interest that's also going to be lower than the rate of inflation. Plus, it makes sure that Granny needs to keep working, because she can't afford to retire on her savings that are worth less every day at a time, so they can keep taxing her."
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36gdbr | this video on missile guidance | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36gdbr/eli5this_video_on_missile_guidance/ | {
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"I'm actually a former Ammo troop from the USAF. I didnt play with the software, but had to understand it. This is a vague video, so I'll try to expand.\n\nActive and passive radar and infrared tracking systems work on a principle of knowing their target. Every second, hundreds of pulses go out and come back providing the relation of where the missile is to the target.(where it is vs where it isnt) Its constantly attempting to get the most change between each pulse, which would mean its approaching the target faster, which means its heading directly for it(the where it is vs where it wasnt). If it isnt, it sends a signal to whatever control surfaces it may have to change that. GPS guided systems work in a similar manner, except the target remains stationary and the missile requires much less input."
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f7mrwk | what's the difference between an emulator and a virtual machine? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f7mrwk/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_an_emulator_and/ | {
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"I may be off here someone with more low level code knowledge might be able to add-on to this but my understanding is:\n\nVirtual Machines only work on machines with the same cpu type because they just forward the actual cpu instructions to the host. This allows them to be fairly seamless when using them cause they can run at a normal speed.\n\nEmulators have to translate the cpu instructions of the device they're emulating since instruction sets vary on different types of cpu (for example a phone (arm) cpu and a desktop (x86) cpu) this means a translation layer has to exist and things that might be a single instruction on original hardware may have to be broken up into multiple instructions on the host machine. This means that your machine has to run harder than the original to get the same result.",
"Virtual machine - It lets you pretend your one machine is two. The two machines will use the same type of processor. If you use an intel processor, both your host machine and virtual machine will be intel machines.\n\nEmulator - Lets you pretend your machine is two, where the second is a different processor. If you use an Intel processor, the host machine is Intel but the emulated machine is PowerPC or ARM.\n\nCommon case of an emulator you will see these days - Many Android emulators will emulate ARM on your x86 based machine. Or a PS2 emulator on your Intel machine (PS2 uses a custom CPU that is very different from your desktop computer).\n\nCommon case of a virtual machine - Bootcamp for Macs. Not really commonly used by everyday people otherwise. But pretty much the entire cloud (AWS, Azure) use virtual machines.",
"These terms are somewhat overloaded, but generally:\n\nEmulator: I write a program that implements a processor in software. I write code to read instructions from the emulated program and execute them myself. This will be slower than the real hardware would have been, but if the original hardware was already slow- perhaps we're emulating a very old machine- this might not actually matter. I can simulate the original machine to any degree of fidelity I need, or simulate machines that are wildly different than the one I'm running on, or machines that no longer exist, or machines that never existed. If better performance is called for, there are techniques to translate the instructions to ones the host processor will run directly.\n\nVirtual machine: The processor I'm running on has a special feature. Using this, it will run instructions from your program (typically an operating system) but, if it ever tries to do something that would normally involve the hardware, it exits and asks my program what to do, so I can fake it, and protect the real hardware. This will run exactly as fast as the real thing (because it is the real thing) just as long as the program isn't trying to interact with hardware too much, because that's still being faked, which takes work. There are techniques to mitigate the performance impact here, too."
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dq1zcx | what is dns encryption ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dq1zcx/eli5_what_is_dns_encryption/ | {
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"When you visit a website the first thing your browser does is to ask the configured DNS server what internet address the domain coresponds to so that it can ask the right server. This process is still in cleartext so that an attacker could potentially see what websites you visit and possibly also hijack your connection by sending you a falsified response. There is currently several projects aiming to secure this part of the connection. One of them is DNSCrype, another is DNS over TLS. However the browsers have currently started to adopt DNS over HTTPS instead."
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1rqfoq | why does the medication i paid $10 for in south africa cost $110 in america | It's the same brand, who's getting the extra money? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rqfoq/eli5_why_does_the_medication_i_paid_10_for_in/ | {
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"I had it explained to me like this one day, so correct me if i'm wrong:\nHealthcare costs, in general, but especially in the US are greatly inflated. The insurance companies refuse x number of claims, which then go unpaid in one way or another; either the company doesn't pay, or the patient can not afford it after the claim is denied. \nBecause of this, X number of procedures/medications/etc that have already been administered are not going to be paid for. So to compensate they raise prices on everything else. Those that do pay are offsetting the cost of those that cannot. \nMainly this applies to hospitals, if you show up in the ER they WILL treat you regardless of your ability to pay. Treatment first, ask questions later. \nIt makes no sense, and it's a horrible system. Medicine shouldn't be a for profit endeavour but thats another story for another day. ",
"Let's suppose that with all costs accounted for, each medication costs the company say exactly $10 to produce.\n\nNow, you go and sell it to more impoverished countries (not that South Africa is completely poor), and because there's a reasonable chance you got into the industry because you believe in improving humanity using medicine, you sell it to those buyers at cost.\n\nThat's great and everything, but you still have to pay all your PhD employees for their top-notch research, plus distributors and support staff, and blablabla.\n\nNow, waaaaaaaay more expensive than all of that is reinvesting that money into further research to make new medications - something that costs millions upon millions.\n\nYou have to mark up the cost somewhere. Americans and their healthcare system can afford it. People in other countries - not quite as much.\n\nPlus there's the additional safety checks that all US products go through.\n\nThe rest of the excess goes to greed - the same greed that motivates people to make the best possible medications in the first place. One of those necessary evils.",
"Because the cost in the US is developing the drug + cost of manufacture + retail markup, while that in poor countries is only the latter 2. In the US you pay for the development of novel drugs (whether Viagra or antiretroviral) while poor countries essentially parasite off the rich because we can afford it and they can't. In other rich countries the government picks up most of the R and D cost, but someone still pays.\n\nTL:DR: in poor countries they pirate, sometimes with permission of the original content creator and sometimes not: in rich countries we pay full price.",
"Because the healthcare industry in the US is run for profit before any other consideration. Ostensibly it is supposed to be a free market, but really it isn't, it is highly regulated. Unfortunately, unlike in many other countries which also have highly regulated healthcare industries the regulation benefits those that are seeking to make a profit rather than those that use the products and services."
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7pyqdb | why do sounds become quieter when one consumes alcohol? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7pyqdb/eli5_why_do_sounds_become_quieter_when_one/ | {
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"text": [
"Alcohol is called a depressant, which means that it hampers or suppresses nerve function. This can result in a perceived loss in hearing due to auditory nerves being suppressed by the alcohol you are consuming."
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aka1zp | how can a barrel create a unique pattern on a bullet? | Seeing this on TV to much so it makes me really wonder. To my understanding barrel rifling is machine made and to me that would make them rather similar. Like one glock would look like another? And the bullet has enough speed passing through (and when hitting something m) that it would be deformed anyways? How strong is this ID method? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aka1zp/eli5_how_can_a_barrel_create_a_unique_pattern_on/ | {
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" > How strong is this ID method?\n\nNot very, and certainly nowhere near the nonsense portrayed on TV.\n\nA well preserved bullet can often be said to be consistent with a certain firearm after testing. Unless that particular gun has some unique defect or wear pattern it is impossible to conclusively link a bullet to a specific gun.",
"More likely to identify the brass casing. Will have marks from the firing pin (somewhat unique) and marks from extractor (somewhat unique) as well as marks from action (fairly unique) ... All add up to pretty unique, if you can find the gun and shoot another bullet from it to compare brass against.",
"It's called bullet fingerprinting. A fired bullet have two type of markings- i) Primary ii) Secondary . \nPrimary markings are specific to the model of the gun e.g every glock has same marking.\nSecondary markings are specific the used gun only. Every gun has its own secondary marking.\nThe marking on bullet are due to land and grooves inside the barrel. Suspected firearm used in crime are confirmed by firing bullets from them in controlled environment and comparing with the bullet found in crime scene under microscope. If the bullets are completely shattered upon hitting a hard surface it's not possible to identify. "
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2xkfsz | regarding the hsbc scandal in switzerland, how does a (swiss) bank benefit from the "deposit" (investments?) of large sums of money? | do (swiss) banks use their (rich) clients' money? is it used for mischievous purposes?
and the most important one: is it a 'tax break'?
merci beaucoup, reddit :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xkfsz/eli5_regarding_the_hsbc_scandal_in_switzerland/ | {
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"text": [
"All banks invest their deposits. That's how they make money. They either invest it or lend it out."
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2moqbc | why do dogs do the head tilt when they hear high pitched noises? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2moqbc/eli5_why_do_dogs_do_the_head_tilt_when_they_hear/ | {
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"I actually looked this up just the other day. So, without verifying what I am about to say, I will say it.\n\nThere are several explanations as to why dogs tilt their heads, one being that because of their superior hearing, they can better pinpoint the origin of a sound if they tilt their head because there is a slight delay in when the sound hits the dogs two separate ears. This tilting has been hypothesized to change the way sound enters both ears, allowing the dog to better understand what it is hearing.\n\n...I... Actually completely forgot the other scientific reasons after typing that marginally-involved reply. But, one possible reason why they tilt their heads *so damn much* is because they realize we think it's cute as fuck."
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9ivabw | why does it feel like you are suspended in the air for an instant when jumping? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ivabw/eli5_why_does_it_feel_like_you_are_suspended_in/ | {
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"Because you really are up in the air, and there really is an instant halfway through when you stop going up and aren't yet going down. That instant, and the time just before and just after it, are when you feel accurately that you're up in the air and almost not moving.",
"because at the top where you stop going up and start going down, you don't feel the pull of really anything, weightless",
"Because for an instant in the air you aren't moving up anymore, but gravity hasn't yet pulled you down so no force is really acting on you. "
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fjuffi | how smart are crows? how impressive is it that they understand water displacement? | I recently saw a video of a [crow using water displacement to retrieve food](_URL_0_). In several experiments, the crow was able to retrieve the food more efficiently by putting rocks into the narrower tube out of two available. It also chose solid weights instead of hollow ones, and discovered which of two tubes affected water levels very quickly. My question is, how impressive is this? What other animals would be intelligent enough to do this? At about what age could a human child figure this out? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fjuffi/eli5_how_smart_are_crows_how_impressive_is_it/ | {
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"Crows are considered to be just about the smartest animals on the planet, aside from humans, thanks to their ability to use creative problem solving, risk-reward analysis, simple tools, and even adapt to new situations and utilize new tools in an **extremely** rapid manner. Heck, they even use traffic to crack hard nuts. \n\nCrows pack in more neurons, pound for pound, than any mammal including humans, and it's generally believed that crows have about the same IQ as the average seven-year-old child."
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3c7990 | why are soap operas/daytime television shows aired at a much higher frame rate than other shows/movies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3c7990/eli5_why_are_soap_operasdaytime_television_shows/ | {
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"Is that the reason the video quality of daytime shows seems do weird? :O I've always wondered, and here's the answer! Thanks!",
"Ok, so here's what happened, as best I understand it.\n\nWhen they first invented motion pictures, they spent a lot of time trying to figure out a good frame rate. Too slow, and the motion looks jerky, too fast and you're wasting expensive film for no good reason.\n\nThey eventually settled on 16 fps as a bare minimum necessary to show motion effectively, while using the minimum amount of film.\n\nSo why are movies shot in 24 fps? That started when they invented movies with sound. Making sure the sound and film synced up when played back was the most difficult part of the process. As a simple solution, they just put the sound information on a part of the film right alongside the picture. But it turns out that our ears are more sensitive to frame rate than our eyes. 16 fps sound just sounded *wrong*. 24 fps was the slowest they could go and get an adequate quality.\n\nThen along came television, and especially video tape. Now, the video wasn't actually being recorded on physical frames of film, but was instead an electrical signal.\n\nWhen they were designing the cameras for this system, there was no inherent reason to design them with as low a frame rate as possible, as there was no film being wasted by recording at a higher rate. They could even just throw away some frames later, if they needed to.\n\nTherefore, they ended up settling on a frame rate based on the common frequency of the electrical grid, 60 hz, so 60 fps. I understand it just made the electronics simpler.\n\nNow, most movies and even TV shows deliberately try to emulate 24 fps film even if they actually record at a higher rate because it just looks right. We've had too many years of getting used to it, so now it's what we expect.\n\nSoap operas apparently just didn't care. They were recording on video tape, not film like most movies and some of the higher production value TV shows. And unlike most of the sitcoms and other medium production value TV shows, they just didn't bother dropping the frame rate later to look like 24 fps movies.\n\nTLDR; Soap operas use 60 fps videotape based cameras, not 24 fps film cameras like the ones used in movies. And unlike most TV shows, they don't care enough to fake the \"film look\".",
"Because they're filmed at a higher frame rate. Soap Operas, being fairly low budget, are filmed on video and not filmstock. Video records at a higher frame rate, but is much cheaper than filmstock, so they used a higher frame rate. Video would be like recording directly onto a VHS tape rather than onto 35 mm film. It's not as high of quality of an image, but it can film faster.",
"Because, in the USA, we use Babylonian math, and movie film is expensive.\n\nPlace yourself in the 1970's a heyday for soap operas.\n\nMost soap opera episodes are/were recorded on video tape. Technologically recording video onto tape at 30/fps is by far the cheapest, most logical, and easiest way.\n\nThe FCC broadcast standard for television is based on 60 fields per second. It is an interlaced signal and 2 fields equal 1 frame.\n\nAC electricity at 60Hz rotates 60 times a second and the video recording head rotates 60 times a second.\n\nThis allowed for flicker free television because the TV camera, the video recorder and the TV are all in sync because they all use the same 60Hz signal from the electricity powering all of the devices.\n\nFilm is and always has been expensive, so you want to use as little of it as possible.\n\nThrough a truly twisted series of events, 24 fps was decided on as a standard in film.\n\nThe now standard 24/fps of film took quite a while to established. Film faced many more problems.\n\nI am speaking of lengths of photographic film, commercially available, shown to the public film, not attempting to answer the first to create moving pictures.\n\nCameras and projectors were hand cranked at the start, so film speed was a huge variable. Film speed had to be standardized with the advent of 'talking pictures.' Before that the director could pick a speed and request the theater could adjust the speed to match.\n\nClearly the most important thing was to make sure that it 'worked' and the motion seemed continuous, but other strange things were also a part of film speed. Early film was nitrocellulose based, and the film needed to move fast enough that the projector bulb did not set it on fire.\n\nIt seems that 19 frames a second was the slowest that could be tolerated, without throwing the audience into a photosensitive seizure, not to be seen again until low budget Japanese animation became popular.\n\nLargely, trial and error resulted in 24 frames per second becoming the established standard.\n\nWhile it was not the final word, Edison had said that the human eye needs at least 48 exposures in a second. This is a current standard, using 24 frames a second and a double shutter.\n\nPossibly interesting note, Edison promoted DC electrical distribution, and he provided some pioneering work in the movie industry. While AC current quickly became the standard for utility electric, the California movie industry relied heavily on DC power until quite recently.\n\n\n"
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3j46f9 | how does laser engraving work? | How do 3d engravings happen without etching the outside?
Example: _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3j46f9/eli5_how_does_laser_engraving_work/ | {
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2z2c57 | what happens when you go to a restaurant where you pay after you eat and the debit/credit card gets declined and you have no cash? | It seems like it would be hugely awkward.
Edit: I couldn't think of the term 'Diner' | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2z2c57/eli5_what_happens_when_you_go_to_a_restaurant/ | {
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"That actually happened to me once years ago. The manager was very gracious and just let it go. I sent them the money later that week. I now go there and eat occasionally.",
"Worked as a waiter in a restaurant for 3 years, so I've seen this happen every once in a while. We usually ask them to call a friend/family member to come and pay their bill for them, or we ask them to leave their cellphone or some kind of collateral while they find the money to pay their check."
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3sn21y | how does desalination work? doesn't it leave us with a pile of salt that potentially makes the rest of the available water saltier? | I mean in the sense of affecting the water cycle, if you take out some ocean water, purified it so that it's not prohibitively salty, you must be putting that salt somewhere. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sn21y/eli5_how_does_desalination_work_doesnt_it_leave/ | {
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"You are correct. The extra salty reside is called brine. The brine can be evaporated to produce crystalline salt or it can be pumped back into the ocean while will dilute it.",
"Yeah, you can easily sell the salt. I mean, we use it everyday in most food products... \n\n\n\n\n."
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36j2kd | why is green not a popular colour on cars? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36j2kd/eli5_why_is_green_not_a_popular_colour_on_cars/ | {
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"It goes back to an old superstition about green race cars being unlucky. This goes back to an [incident in 1911](_URL_0_), when a green car crashed through a barrier and killed 9 people in Syracuse, New York. \n\n[Snopes](_URL_1_) has pretty detailed info on how the superstition developed. Anecdotally, I've owned two green cars. The first one was totaled when it got rear-ended by a drunk driver, and the second was the only car of mine that's ever been stolen. ",
"The superstition of green race cars being unlucky. Like Teotwaki69, I have had one green car out of 14 cars and that one was the only one that gave me severe mechanical issues to the point where the company (Ford) fixed it for free out of warranty.",
"Green is associated with many negative things in our culture. Green face represents sickness, vomiting, nausea, etc. Green foods are considered healthier but taste bad. Notice very few restaurants utilize the color green.\n\nThere are plenty of cars that use subtle shades of green, like the standard color of the [Toyota Prius](_URL_0_), British Racing Green cars, etc.",
"Our visual system can distinguish more shades of green that any other color. This makes green an easily passed over color when not specifically looking for it and when contrasted against backgrounds of other colors. People like cars to stand out from the crowd and green is easily lost. This combined with green race cars being considered unlucky since a racing accident in the early 1900s.",
"How many people today really dont want a green car because of a racing accident 100 years ago? It's a free market, if there was demand for green cars, more would sell. We like green in nature, but typically its not a very popular color outside of that.",
"Green comes and goes. It was popular in the 70's and again in the 90's. I will forever remember taking my Honda Civic into a shop for repair, walking up to the counter, explaining the problem to the mechanic, telling him the car was green, and having this grizzled old mechanic ask in his gravelly voice, \"Teal or forest?\" Green was popular enough then that mechanics were getting lessons in the color wheel to distinguish them all. "
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9zqf1f | how is it that a console doesn’t need to get its hardware updated for new games? | So for example, some games might not work on a computer built at the same time as the console (let’s say a PS4) how is it that the PS4 would be able to run new games that came out recently perfectly fine, but a computer built during the time of the PS4’s release may lag behind and require new hardware? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9zqf1f/eli5_how_is_it_that_a_console_doesnt_need_to_get/ | {
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"Because a game is specifically designed to work with that hardware setup. A computer may have hundreds of different combinations of processor, graphics card, etc, so pc games are designed to work for a generic baseline of what they expect a majority of players to have at their disposal- they won't ever be designed specifically for the best of the best components, because that would severely limit their market. But a console doesn't have to limit themselves like that, because they know exactly what equipment it will be played on and can fine tune it for that build. "
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9qs21k | why are bad “rappers” like lil pump, lil xan, etc. getting more attention than actual talented rappers like joyner lucas, etc.? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9qs21k/eli5_why_are_bad_rappers_like_lil_pump_lil_xan/ | {
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"Because bad and good a subjective terms. What one person thinks is bad some other person might think it great. For instance this is a bad ELI5 post, but might be a good askreddit post. "
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90k93t | why aren't shaving razors made with carbide or industrial diamond? wouldn't they stay sharp almost indefinitely? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/90k93t/eli5_why_arent_shaving_razors_made_with_carbide/ | {
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"The very nature of razors means they **have** to wear out quickly. Razor edges are **microns** thin, which means they're prone to corrosion and wear very quickly, there's literally no other option; and all razors are about the same. It doesn't matter if it's a $0.99 Bic disposable or a $30 a pack five blade vibrating number. The 5 Bladed one might stay sharp longer (less use on each blade per shave).\n\nYou can make your razors last longer by thoroughly washing and drying them after each use (oil on skin and moisture corrodes them faster). \n\nUltimately, the best option is to grab a well made straight razor and a stropping strap. A single straight razor can last literally a lifetime, and when stropped correctly will retain its sharpness indefinitely.",
"My rotary electric razor is probably ten years old and still on the same set of blades. They cut by shearing rather than relying on an extremely sharp blade. That sharpness means it wears out faster. Even diamond knives need resharpening and they are very fragile. Plus they cost too much. Carbide is cheaper, but very brittle. ",
"Diamond that thin would be incredibly brittle. The material needs to be hard enough to maintain an edge, but it also needs to be tough enough to not chip. Same goes for carbide.",
"\"modern\" razors are disposable razors. Before that people used a straight razor. If you make an incredibly sharp razor it will be incredibly brittle, if you make it of something sharp and not brittle it will be incredibly expensive. If it rusts, it'll rust in the bathroom and oxidation dulls a blade far more than use will. \n\nThe other option is to have a blade head that you can use a few times and get a new one. If you chip a carbide razor, it's expensive trash.",
"Also most people don't clean out their razors well and hair gets stuck underneath the blades. Properly cleaning them out makes it to where you can use them for much longer. ",
"It absolutely matters what kind of material razor blades are made out of. The bulk material can be different, and you can put very hard wear resistant coatings on that material.\n\n For example, The Mach 3 kind have something called diamond like carbon on them (bonded like carbon but amorphous, and easy to deposit.) This used to be advertised. This really helps with reducing corrosion and improving wear. I have found that at least rinsing them and isopropyl alcohol to make sure they are totally dry really helps keep them alive. It absolutely matters what materials these are made out of, and the highest rated comment on here right now is totally wrong.\n\n I stick with Mach 3s because I have found them to be the longest lasting, and it's probably because of that coating. No I do not work for that company :-). But I am a materials scientist and I used to work on DLC and diamond thin films.",
"Diamonds are *hard*, but they're not *sharp* in the way razors need to be.\n\nCarbide steel won't last any longer - as others have noted.\n\nHowever, if you want to escape the expensive razor blade gimmick (which you may not - a Mach 3 is a good razor that will almost never cut you), you can get a traditional double-edged razor. The blades are about 10-15 cents each if bought online in bulk, and you can usually get 10-15 shaves out of each one. More, if you're careful about the blades. Much easier than a straight razor, and much less maintenance. I've used one for six or seven years now for shaving at home. I keep a Mach 3 for travel or when I'm in a hurry.\n\n/r/wicked_edge can help you. There's no real need to spend a fortune (although you can, if you like, and the fancy stuff sure is nice). A basic kit of razor, blades, brush, and shaving soap can be had for under $50 if you're trying to economize, and it will last you for a long, long, long time. Seriously: I bought a sampler pack of 50-100 blades (somewhere in there, can't remember) to try different brands when I started double-edge shaving, and I still haven't used them all. I've used maybe five blades on my Mach 3 in that time for travel or quick shaves.\n\nI did switch from shaving in the morning in the shower (shaving as necessary task) to shaving in the evening at the sink (shaving as pleasant grooming experience).",
"Razor manufacturers are trying to make money. Not much money in a product that lasts forever, ask Singer. Like the story about the two guys and the bear, you only need to be better than your next best competition and everybody only needs to be good enough.",
"Disposable razors have really come a long long way. High end ones ($3-$8 per cartridge) should last you a month now and use higher quality steal that won't rust quickly. Low end ones ($0.10 - $1 for 10 pack at local dollar store) are really only good for one or two shaves and will rust overnight. \n\nThin metal strips are used because they are flexible and easier to contour to your face. It also means less metal is being used there by driving down the cost. Diamond is brittle and much more expensive.\n\nThe industry is highly competitive and they're constantly trying to come up with new and better razors in order to pitch them to the market.\n\nI've personally tried every razor on the market that I know of. this includes everything from what I can find in dollar stores all the way up to the highest price razor. I tried old-fashioned methods and new methods and I'm always willing to try something else. My facial hair is really thick. My personal conclusion is that different razors have different advantages. For day to day shaving before work I shave in the shower with a Gillette Fusion. However, if it's the end of the day and I have sunscreen on my face I will use something a lot cheaper with 3 blades because the Gillete will get clogged and become useless. This is because the blades are too close together to handle thicker pasty materials. I've used other five blade razors, but find they rust faster as I leave them in the shower. Im a really hairy guy and I'll use other razors for different body parts. For example, I'll use a woman's razor with guide wires when I shave my balls. My back does well with the Hydro.",
"Something like this?\n\n_URL_0_"
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4pb2jh | why tunnels that go underground don't flood when it rains | There's a tunnel in Mobile, AL I drive through often. At the start of the tunnel, you're above ground, but by the time you get to the bottom of the tunnel, you're underground and well below the water table. I don't see where the water can go when it rains to keep it from flooding.
[Here](_URL_0_) is a picture of the tunnel from above for reference. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4pb2jh/eli5_why_tunnels_that_go_underground_dont_flood/ | {
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"There are pumps. I promise you the engineers who designed it included a pump out system to get liquids out of that tunnel. This includes spills from wrecks.\n\nThe Boston buried freeway system downtown spends forty million dollars a year pumping water out of it.\n\nI am sure your tunnel has a drainage system and redundant pumps to keep the road dry.\n\nIt includes immediate drainage into some kind of sump. The sump pump will start when the liquid level gets high enough. I doubt that any tunnel under a bay will stay dry enough to not require pumping.\n\n",
"They pump it out. First, the highway is designed to divert rain and runoff as much as it can until it hits the down slope just before the tunnel entrance. Basically the only water that is getting into the tunnel is on that small section of road. \n\nThere are grates right at the entrance, seen here in [Street View](_URL_2_) which lead to pumps which pump the water back up.\n\nHere's another [small grate](_URL_0_) further down the tunnel on the right side.\n\nParagraph 9 of this Department of Transportation fact sheet also explains it.\n_URL_1_",
"If there is no convenient lower area to drain water to, the only thing you can do is pump. Historically, steam pumps were a major innovation that allowed for deeper tunnels and mine shafts. Depending on the tunnel design, there are measures you can take to reduce leakage and thus the cost of pumping.",
"ELI5: We drain the tunnel to big basins called sumps, and pump water out of the sumps.\n\n\nELI'm in high school: So I looked in Google Earth at the east portal. Going off of dimensions you can pull with Google Earth, the surface area exposed to rain on the east ramp is probably around 70,000 square feet (sqft).\n\nLooking in a reference called the Uniform Plumbing Code (UPC), the expected maximum rainfall in Mobile, AL is 4.5 inches/hour. Converting units, that's equal to about 0.047gallons per minute per square foot (gpm/sqft). For the ramp on the east side, we're somewhere around 3300gpm of pumping capacity that is needed just for pumping the east ramp dry during rain. (Note: another reference called the International Plumbing Code provides a similar rainfall rate). A design engineer would also usually add a 10%-25% safety factor to the nominal calculated requirement.\n\nIn civil engineering works, 3300 gpm of pumping capacity isn't all that large. There's multiple strategies for providing the pump capacity required (how big a sump do you provide, how many pumps do you use, where do you set the on/off points on the pumps, etc). ",
"Finally someone having a story about my\nHome town! I love this tunnel. Everyone reads the speed limit sign and tries to honor it in the tunnel, but the operators want you to go as fast as you can (reasonably and safely) so that no one gets backed up in the tunnel.\nThey have to end up pumping more oxygen into the tunnel because of all the exhaust fumes. ",
"Also a coastal Alabama resident!\n\nI've gotten to tour that tunnel. There is a MASSIVE second tunnel below where the cars pass. It's big enough for vehicles, and if I recall correctly, there is access to it for vehicles in case they need to bring in bigger emergency pumps. \n\nGot to tour it with boyscouts like 16 years ago. \n\nEven cooler though, that building just on top of where the tunnel goes underground is the \"command center\" and has tons of screens with the camera feeds. It also monitors the bridge. \n\n*edit*\n\nAlso, that is a REALLY old picture! Austal is right on top of that area now, and the Renaissance Riverview (RSA?) tower. I don't see the convention center either. \n\nFound some neat stuff:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n",
"[Drainage!](_URL_0_)\n\nSorry, I couldn't resist. ",
"When I lived in Taiwan the underpasses would fill up and be impassable until it slowly drained out on its own with no help from pumps.",
"Upvote for a fellow coastie. I drive through the tunnel in mobile all the time. I'm just across the state line in Mississippi",
"drainage. drainage my boy if i have a milkshake, and you have a milkshake, and my straw reaches up the bottom of your glass and starts to drain your milkshake, it drains your milkshake, it drains it dry.\n(pumps and/or the storm sewers run lower than the tunnel does to some kind of holding cistern that is then pumped)\n",
"It's all in the design. First off the roof and sometimes the sides of the tunnel is sealed up to be water proof, depending on the water table level they may also seal the floor of the tunnel. If a lot of rain is expecting in the area they will layer the floor of the tunnel so a porous material is under the road, most roads will be layered anyway, this material allows a certain amount of water to rest under the road surface. This will also be done for the approach to the tunnel to prevent a buildup of runoff on the road surface. They may also put pipes under the surface of the road with holes drilled in it to allow the water to enter the pipes and flow into a pooling area to be removed by the drainage system.\n\nNow the water under the road needs somewhere to go so it's not just a standing water pool, this is where drainage comes in. There are two types of drainage used, depending on the properties of the tunnel, expected rain levels, and surrounding environment. These types are passive and active. In passive drainage the water follows gravity to a larger drainage system and I'm active the water is pumped out. \n\nAfter the water is removed it usually gets sent either into an existing body of water or into temporary drainage pools, it can also be stored in underground cisterns to prevent overflow of other drainage systems. ",
"My friends job is to maintain pumps on a few lines of the London Underground. If they didn't, it would take a day or two for most tunnels to fill with water. They're mostly below the water table, and a lot of them go under the river.",
"The first steam engine, the beginning of the industrial age, was built to pump water out of mines.\n\n_URL_0_",
"I know that tunnel. If you are leaving Mobile and in the right merge lane before entering the tunnel that shit can sneak up on you.",
"[_URL_0_]\n\nSpecifically for the tunnel you are asking about, but true generally, the a cross road drains to stop rainwater entering the tunnel, but for water carried on vehicles etc and dropped in the tunnels there are drain points into sumps from where pumps remove it to outfalls on both sides of the river",
"Whatta coincidence that this is on the front page today. I drove through that tunnel at like 3 this morning.",
"Gonna piggyback and ask why did they decide tunnels instead of bridges and vice versa?\n How do they determine which is best?\n",
"Probably way too late for this... but here goes.\n\nThe largest source of water in tunnels are actually leaks, from ground water or from the body of water the tunnel is under. Not from rain. The ambient leakage of water into tunnels will fill them within a few days. Even if it didn't rain.\nIf you're familiar with how most tunnels are round, underneath the road is where these drainage systems are kept. Any water in the tunnel is diverted into this passage through drains.\nA lot of details go into reducing the amount of water entering the tunnel. Diversion of rain water, multitudes of layers in the tunnel walls (roof and floor as well). Such as steel, concrete, clay liners, caulking, and bubble gum. (Jk about the gum)\nThere may be multiple points with pumps, but the most critical location is the deepest point(s). Pumps are redundent meaning there are more than one at each location. They are typically computer controlled. The pairs (or triplets) will take turns with on/off cycles. Should bad things be hapoening, they will all turn on. Should they need to be maintained, they are swapped to manual mode. Should all of them fail and the tunnel floods, a portable pump situation will need to clear the tunnel in order to gain access to the pumps. only then can repairs bea made and get the normal system operating again.\nNow if a body of water engulfs the mouth of the tunnel, there is no way to stop the water and the tunnel will fill. For instance, during hurricane Sandy, many of NYC's subway system was completely filled. It took many weeks to drain them out and return everything to operation.\n",
"I also live in mobile, there is another pair service tunnel underneath that is the same size as the top tunnels. If there is ever an emergency it can be used to evacuate people or they could divert water down to the second pair of tunnels.",
"In Hampton Roads, in addition to pumps, each tunnel also has water-tight doors. They use them when hurricanes/Nor'Easters are heading our way. ",
"I live in AZ, thats incredible! I use the i-10 nearly everyday. Goes all the way from california to florida. crazy to think every road is literally connected.",
"The same way New Orleans (theoretically) doesn't flood. [Pumps](_URL_0_)!",
"Hey I live there too! That thing is a bitch during the summer. All the tourists get to it and immediately hit the brakes lol",
"In addition to pumps and such they use special concrete that is impervious to water, like Xypex. I used some of that for a basement that is below the water table and it is dry as a bone 15 years later. Xypex claims to improve with age, and I have seen nothing to indicate that isn't true.",
"A couple years back during Super Storm Sandy almost (if not all) the tunnels in New York City were filled with water because of how much it rained. It tools several days to pump all the water out of each one.\n\n [A pic of the battery tunnel (then and now)](_URL_0_) ",
"It's all in the raised position to be safe and I'm active the water is sipping up above the tunnel is under.",
"I always wondered this when I made my roller coasters go underground in roller coaster tycoon....",
"Well actually in Egypt last couple of month, there was a lot of raining which resulted of the tunnels being flooded, cars floating hitting the ceiling, underground parkings, just google \"alexandria egypt flood\" or \"egypt rain\" you'll find picture of people fishing, jet skiing, diving. ",
"so if the electricity is gone for long enough time, tunnels would be flooded?",
"Yeah I always wondered about this as regards the London Underground system and the many underground rivers of London as well as the obvious Thames river.\n\nTurns out it's all about pumps. They reckon that a lot of the tube would be underwater if the pumps were turned off for 2 weeks",
"Some tunnels are designed to flood as well. When in Malaysia years back, I was shown the 'Smart Tunnel' which is used to mitigate flash floods. ",
"just to add about the pumps .\n\nHere is some pictures of the pump not working.\n\nThe pump hadnt been commisioned yet on the new road (Main motorway into Belfast, NI)\n\nThis happened overnight , after a big downpour. \n\nFlooded:\n_URL_1_\n\nNormal: \n_URL_0_ ",
"That tunnel never moves quickly, im surprised you have the patience to do that commute so often",
"I've been going under it for years wondering the same thing. Thanks for solving this mystery. "
]
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| [
"https://www.cardcow.com/images/set334/card01024_fr.jpg"
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[],
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"https://www.google.com/maps/@30.6890021,-88.0392217,3a,75y,88.41h,55.26t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s_oX5xlX0sKVPhr9OAfTzmQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656",
"http://alletting.dot.state.al.us/OfficeEngineer/Docs/GeorgeCWallaceTunnelPublicationeditedforweb.pdf",
"https://www.google.com/maps/@30.6887348,-88.0401779,3a,75y,68.21h,70.56t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1suvkPPe5AE_kwTi2Rpk2O1w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656"
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[],
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"http://alletting.dot.state.al.us/OfficeEngineer/Docs/GeorgeCWallaceTunnelPublicationeditedforweb.pdf",
"http://www.mobilempo.org/Newsletter_Links/Mobile%20Tunnel%20Construction.pdf"
],
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bqlaZ55lJQ"
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"http://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/images/9/90/Descending_into_Broadway_underpass_from_Westlink_-_Coppermine_-_18988.jpg",
"http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44939000/jpg/_44939832_-26.jpg"
],
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5o352p | how were small countries (e.g. lichtenstein, san marino, malta, etc.) formed and why haven't they been conquered? | Basically the question. Also, what's their purpose? In Europe only there's Malta, Andorra, Luxembourg, Monaco, Lichtenstein and San Marino. What's their purpose? How come they managed to maintain their territorial integrity to the present days? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5o352p/eli5_how_were_small_countries_eg_lichtenstein_san/ | {
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"There has to be a reason for a country to be conquered you know. Until recently Lichtenstein was poor. It's not like it's sitting on oil like Kuwait. It generally stayed neutral during the wars and so it wasn't subject to getting borders moved at the end as losing countries often are.\n\n"
]
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| []
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19m43h | what is the point of fonts like wingdings and webdings? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19m43h/what_is_the_point_of_fonts_like_wingdings_and/ | {
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"These fonts are part of the [dingbat](_URL_0_) typeface. Traditionally, Wingdings and Webdings have been used as small graphics, especially in the late 1990s, which could be inserted into a word processing document. Such examples include the Star of David, Airplanes and Checkboxes. These days they seem to be relatively redundant simply because they've been replaced with newer alternatives, but there is always the odd occasion where they are still used today.",
"It was a really easy way to get clipart into documents before clipart was easily inserted.",
"I believe it's use was for graphics back in the earlier days.. I could be totally off but I've heard that before ",
"Because they were a computationally cheap way to get common graphic icons into documents.\n\nImagine it's 1992. You need to put a male symbol in your research paper on gender roles. How do you do that? You can't Google image search it. Google image search, Google, and a web browser for Windows haven't been invented. Even if they had been, you probably would have had trouble putting a GIF inline with the text in your document.\n\nBut dingbat fonts were the answer. Just type the right letter or punctuation mark, change the font to Wingdings for that character, and hey presto! You have your ♂. And it is sized the same as your text. And because it's a vector font you don't have to worry about jaggies when you print it out.\n\n**TL;DR** It's a relic from a simpler time.",
"They needed to inform everyone about the 'truth' of September 11th in a discreet yet public way",
" here is a [commercial](_URL_0_) from the 90's that uses Wingdings... you get the idea."
]
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| [
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingbat"
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[],
[],
[],
[],
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1uswz6 | why does my brain see human faces in inanimate objects? | For example: _URL_0_
It is far common in cars, trucks, etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uswz6/eli5_why_does_my_brain_see_human_faces_in/ | {
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"I read somewhere that it's a very basic instinct for humans (and other mammals, I'd guess).\n\nThe idea is that when we are first born, we need to recognize our mother, even before we can fully use our eyes, so there is a 'built in' notion of what a face looks like. (oval shape, two eye etc.).\n\nSo since we have this instinct in our DNA, we tend to recognize or see faces in all sorts of places.\n\nAlso, this could be an explanation of why people who report seeing 'Aliens', always seem to come up with a similar description (oval head, two large eyes). It's because this image is already in their subconscious...so when they go on a moonshine binge and mess up their brain, they remember this instinctual image, but don't know why....\"I'm not saying it's Aliens but.......\"",
"Humans are hard wired to recognise another human. It's a survival tactic so we can discern friend from foe esp in poor conditions ie the jungle for example. ",
"It's called [pareidolia](_URL_0_)"
]
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"http://i.imgur.com/WY0bIfB.jpg"
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bzrg40 | why does elevating an injury, such as a sprained ankle, help with the healing process? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bzrg40/eli5_why_does_elevating_an_injury_such_as_a/ | {
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"Raising the injury helps the body to absorb the tissue fluid that has leaked out because of the injury.\n\nThis also helps with reducing swelling, which can make the injury feel a little more comfortable as well.\n\nIce and NSAIDS (Such as ibuprofen) also help to reduce swelling and reduce restrictions to blood flow."
]
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3wwkhz | so much light hits the earth, where does it go? | We are constantly being bombarded with light, where does it all go? do photons just get absorbed into things or does just all bounce away somewhere else idk? and if it does just bounce of, can we capture it all and store it to save for a rainy day? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wwkhz/eli5so_much_light_hits_the_earth_where_does_it_go/ | {
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"Some are reflected, that's how they took a picture of the Earth from the Moon.\n\nMost is absorbed, it warms the Earth and makes it a nice cozy place to live. If more of the Earth was black in color, less would reflect into space, and we'd be warmer. If you've heard of \"Global Warming\" you might know that is undesirable. There is no way to \"store light\". You can convert it to something else (like electricity) and store that."
]
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| []
| [
[]
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1jz147 | how is aol still a company? | Is it still used as an ISP? I saw something in the elevator at work today (they have screens that have little news blurbs) and it mentioned AOL buying some other company for over $400 million dollars. I haven't even thought of AOL since the 90's, how is it still a company and how does it make money?
Edit: Answered, thanks everyone! It boggles my mind how much they still make on subscribers. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jz147/eli5_how_is_aol_still_a_company/ | {
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" > Is it still used as an ISP?\n\nYes. Believe it or not, there are still places in America without access to broadband. Also, some people cling on out of price or other concerns.\n\n > it mentioned AOL buying some other company for over $400 million dollars\n\nThey acquired the Huffington Post about 2 years ago for over $300M (almost all cash). They've been snapping up media companies for the last few years, essentially reshaping the business from an ISP to online content and advertising.\n\n > how is it still a company and how does it make money?\n\nFrom the 'pedia: \"The company's business spans digital distribution of content, products, and services, which it offers to consumers, publishers, and advertisers.\"\n\nKeep in mind it was part of AOL-Time Warner until 2009, so it wasn't exactly suffering through the last decade on its lonesome.",
"AOL offers paid dial-up and broadband service, plus a lot of free services like e-mail and instant messenger that are supported by ads. Its main business is owning popular websites and making money through ads, or by selling 'premium content.' I'm not sure whether the old AOL software is still used by anyone, but I suspect that some older folks may still use it because it's fairly non-intimidating. ",
"I read an article that most there cash comes from people who still pay for service even though they don't need it. They are under the impression they still have to pay for using the e-mail service.\n_URL_0_",
"It is [still used as an ISP](_URL_5_) and it makes a lot of money on ads sales from the various properties it owns, including (but not limited to) [Patch](_URL_2_), [Huffington Post](_URL_0_), [_URL_1_](_URL_6_), and [TMZ](_URL_4_). AOL actually owns a lot of internet properties that you don't automatically associate with the company.\n\nThis year it had [second quarter revenues of $541 million](_URL_3_), so they are not doing bad. \n\n**edit:** AOL does not currently own TMZ, but it did start it. TMZ is currently owned by Time Warner.",
"Up until about a year ago, I discovered my parents were still paying $24/mo for their AOL service. I told them they could access the internet for free since they already had broadband through their cable provider. I downloaded Chrome for them and showed them how to access their AOL email. Minds were blown that day. A couple hundred bucks were saved that year.",
"They invested shittons of money into other companies.\nThey patented everything they could of the technologies they invented.\nThey never spent their own money.",
"They are actually one of the top 3 \"players\" in the digital media space. They compete directly with Yahoo! and Google.\n\nThey have many brands under their belt: _URL_0_, HuffPost, TechCrunch, Engadget, Moviefone, Patch, AOL Autos, Autoblog, Styleist, Daily Finance, Tuaw, _URL_1_, Mandatory, and many more.\n\n_URL_0_ is the biggest network in the digital space and has numerous Tier 1 sites, targeting and numerous campaigns that they can run.\n\nThey are huge in the digital video space with AOLOn, especially acquiring _URL_2_ yesterday.\nThey are more than a ISP. They still have that, but much more.\n\nThe end user (consumers) don't really know what AOL is. People that work in digital, and in advertising know exactly what AOL is.\n\nSource: I work in digital advertising.\nEDIT - I like words.\n\n",
"I miss SmarterChild :(",
"Was at my dads house last weekend, found a bill for $39.90 to AOL. He's been paying it for YEARS thinking it was necessary to keep his internet. Isn't it illegal to take money from people and give them no services/product in return?",
"I know they own huffington post and mapquest. Once you have a few hundred million dollars to invest, you are probably going to continue to make money in some way.",
"I still have an aol email address that I use exclusively to irritate techies. :)",
"If anyone wants it explained to them like they're an adult: _URL_0_",
"I work at a bank. Whenever I see an AOL charge and an ISP charge on a customer account I tell them that they are paying AOL for access when they already pay for it from cable/phone company. Then tell them to sign on to the master account and change their access method and save them 19.99 a month. ",
"Employee of AOL Here.\n\nAOL still makes about 40% of its revenue via the dialup subscriptions. While 40% is no small number, AOL is trying to get away from this model and have most of its revenue from Advertising. Or more specifically Programmatic Advertising. So far the platform of choice is content. AOL has many content properties, although shrinking, one of them is the behemoth huffingtonpost, add to it the known endgadget, techcrunch, the cash draining patch, _URL_1_, aol mail, aol product subscriptions (for remote computer assistance, some privacy products etc.), _URL_3_, mapquest, the cool _URL_2_, and the programatic exchange _URL_0_. Another part of the revenue comes from the corporate deals it has with other companies.\nE.g. AOL search is just a facade to GOOG and AOL gets proceeds from GOOG for doing that. \n\nNow it seems that the textual content market is saturated, by saturated I am the ad rate per view is dwindling. Therefore, AOL is trying to capitalize on video and sees the futures in IP delivered TV. This is a commendable effort and only time will prove the outcome of this strategy.\n\n\nTBH, One thing I wish my company does is to recycle usernames, getting a new account with us is cool and retro, but the bar to get an account with a meaning username is so damn high! \n\nAOL is a volatile place to work for now, but we do understand that the company is trying to find an long term identity to itself. Some say 'AOL is uncool'? I would like to know that myself. \n\nEdit: Some typos.",
"My grandma still uses AOL because my cousin works there and gets it for her for free.",
"Scary part is as a social media marketer, is when I read reports that AOL search is number 3 to Bing/Yahoo, it freaks me out. Not to mention that 10% of my customer base don't know what a browser is (example - \"I'm using a desktop apple computer to get to your website\"), and I still get a few _URL_0_ emails.",
"anyone in this thread actually using AOL to view reddit right now?",
"I'm an intern at AOL - the company has transformed from an ISP to a brand, like Coca-cola, where there are many (many many) products under the main brand. Unfortunately, the products don't generally say \"Made by AOL\" so people think they've gone the way of the dinosaur. \nI work at their Dulles, VA office, in their engineering team, and they've really adopted the Silicon Valley \"chill out and program when you feel like it\" vibe. Love it. ",
"Me too I still use my aol mail for my mail email..yall want it??",
"There are lots of comments about AOL's lines of business. I thought I'd mention why a sane engineer would be their customer in this day and age. I got in the habit of keeping an Aol account in case I need an emergency dial-up account on the road. I pay about as little as you can, for a tiny number of hours. The odds of needing this have decreased more and more. I have a tetherable smart phone for one thing. So it's like the gym membership that I've had since 1984. I know it's there, but the expense isn't too much.",
"i don't get how they can make any money on advertising with sites like techcrunch. i never click on any ads there nor pay attention to them.",
"My parents still use the AOL application because they don't know how browsers work. We got internet over 7 years ago.",
"They actually make a lot of money scamming old people who pay for their web browser even though they are also paying for high speed internet from their cable/phone company. My grandma (who has high speed internet from Time Warner) called me recently angry, because her best friend has been paying \"significantly less\" for high speed internet from AOL. She was pissed off at me, because I didn't tell her about AOL's cheaper service. I had to explain to my grandma that her best friend didn't know what the fuck she was talking about and was actually getting ripped off by AOL while also paying Time Warner for high speed internet. She didn't believe me... I insisted that her friend look closely at her Time Warner bill and low and behold... she was paying Time Warner for high speed internet while also paying money to AOL for a shitty web browser. Throughout that process, I also found out that my Grandma had been paying $5 a month to Earthlink simply to keep her old Earthlink e-mail address. Scamming old people is an entire industry.",
"Sometimes better lucky than good. ",
"I think they own TMZ, Huffington and a bunch of other sites. They diversified. "
]
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| [
[],
[],
[
"http://gizmodo.com/5982853/aol-earns-most-of-its-money-from-subscribers"
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[
"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/",
"Adap.tv",
"http://www.patch.com/",
"http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/08/business/media/aol-reports-revenue-increase-of-7-percent.html?_r=0",
"http://www.tmz.com/",
"http://seekingalpha.com/currents/post/1009101",
"http://adap.tv/"
],
[],
[],
[
"Advertising.com",
"Games.com",
"Adap.Tv"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1468516/000119312513084847/d466540d10k.htm#toc466540_10"
],
[],
[
"advertising.com",
"aol.com",
"altomail.com",
"gilt.com"
],
[],
[
"AOL.com"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
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zqm4n | how to play craps at a casion? what bets are most lucrative and why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zqm4n/eli5_how_to_play_craps_at_a_casion_what_bets_are/ | {
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"The main bet is called the \"pass line\". If you bet that, you win if the first roll is 7 or 11, you lose if it is 2, 3, or 12, and if it is anything else, that becomes the \"point\" number. After the first roll, you win if the shooter rolls the point, you lose if he rolls a 7, and if he rolls anything else you keep going until he either rolls the point or a 7. So if the first roll is 4, you will win if the shooter rolls another 4 before he rolls a 7, and you'll lose if he rolls a 7 before he rolls another 4. The pass line bet has a casino advantage of only 1.4%, which is one of the best bets in the casino.\n\nYou can also make the casino advantage even lower by taking \"odds\". If you bet on the pass line and the shooter rolls a point, you can make a separate bet on the point - that is called \"odds\", another bet that the shooter will roll the point before rolling a 7. The odds bet is actually paid at the true chance of it coming up - it is the only bet in the casino with no casino advantage. So a point of 4 or 10 is paid 2-1, a point of 5 or 9 is paid 3-2, and a point of 6 or 8 is paid 6-5. The catch is that casinos make you make a pass line bet before you are allowed to make an odds bet, and the pass line bet does have a casino advantage, and they limit how much you are allowed to bet as odds depending on your pass line bet - some allow you to bet odds of double your pass line bet, or 3-4-5 which means 3x your bet on 4 or 10, 4x your bet on 5 or 9, or 5x your bet on 6 or 8. Some places in Vegas even have 10x odds.\n\nThe come bet is the same as the pass line, but you can make it at any time, even if the shooter already has a point number.\n\nDon't pass is the opposite of the pass line - you win on 2 or 3, you lose on 7 or 11, and anything else becomes a point and you are betting that the shooter will roll a 7 before he rolls the point. Since the pass line has a small house advantage, casinos can't make the don't pass the exact opposite without making it in the player's advantage, so they normally make 12 a tie instead of a win on don't pass. Craps players can be superstitious and often get pissed off at people who bet don't pass, since they win when everyone else loses.\n\nThere is also don't come, which is a don't pass bet made at any time, and you can do odds on a don't pass or don't come bet also - you win if there's a 7 before the point - these are also paid at perfect odds, which are the reverse of the regular odds - 1-2 on 4 or 10, 2-3 on 5 or 9, and 5-6 on 6 or 8.\n\nMost of the other bets have horrible odds. You can bet on the numbers 2, 3, 7, 11, or 12, you can bet that a 6 or 8 will be rolled before a 7, you can bet hardways, which is a bet that say, 3-3 will be rolled before any other 6 or any 7, or you can bet the field, which is a bet on 2-3-4-9-10-11-12, with any other number losing, 2 paying double and 12 paying triple. Basically, if you want to have a reasonable chance of winning you should ignore all of those other bets and stick to pass/odds or don't pass/odds.\n\nIf you bet the pass line, and take the maximum odds allowed in a casino that allows 3-4-5, the casino advantage is less than half of one percent. By contrast, the bet on the number 7 has a 17% casino advantage, making it one of the worst bets you can make in the entire casino."
]
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||
44x4mf | why, when you're congested, does putting pressure on your nose/forehead help alleviate the pain temporarily? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44x4mf/eli5_why_when_youre_congested_does_putting/ | {
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" There are holes in your skull (Sinus) that have boogers when you're congested. Rocking around those bones to open your sinuses helps lessen the pressure and opens 'em up.\n\nBonus tip: Press down on either side of your nose, a bit under your eye socket. While doing that, inhale from your nose. It'll help drain that sinus and make a gnarly loogie. ",
"You're stimulating your sinus and helping break up the phlegm and congestion. True story, there's sinus massages you can do to alleviate pain ",
"Doesn't help much but fun fact...\n\nHold your breath until you can't hold it anymore. Your body jumps into action and opens up your sinuses for maximum air intake. It will clear your congestion fully for the next minute. Then back to suffering :(\n",
"not OP's question but related. When I have a stuffy nose and I plug my nostrils and breath out really hard and then release my nostrils why can i breath clearly for a couple seconds before it goes back to being stuffed?"
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4k0gn2 | mutually assured destruction and its implications on today's world. in the case of nuclear weapons being launched at the united states, how screwed are we? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4k0gn2/eli5_mutually_assured_destruction_and_its/ | {
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"It turns out that if 300 to 500 nukes go off it doesn't matter where they hit, everybody dies anyway. The problem is that that many nukes can put so much irradiated dust into the upper, middle, and lower atmosphere that it radically alters the climate. The food chain would completely collapse starting wherever the bombs hit, followed by the poles, followed by an inexorable progression towards the equator, as non-migratory species (like plants... and anything that depends on them) freeze and or starve to death.\n\nMutually Assured Destruction isn't the right way to think about it. MAD basically works out to \"if you kill me I promise to kill you back out of spite\". A much more accurate phrase is SAD, self assured destruction. Pretend the US somehow had perfect intel and knew exactly where and when a large scale nuclear attack would be launched from, and we (lacking a better option) decided to preemptively nuke all of the launching sites in Russia, and magically all of our missiles perfectly destroy their missiles so they can't possibly retaliate, and for some reason all of the subs were broken and couldn't retaliate. Even in that absurd case everyone in the US dies, because life on dry land nearly (if not completely) dies.\n\nThat's one of the main factors behind the end of the cold war; the research finally started to come in to demonstrate the impossibility of victory under even the most absurd circumstances.",
"It'd be pretty safe to say that if anyone used nukes, it would be over pretty fast and it wouldn't be the global nuclear war that everybody's imagining. Basically the first country to use a nuke is going to be the first one to experience the full might of the rest of the world's militaries. They'd lose allies immediately, they'd be sanctioned to hell, and the UN and/or NATO would be putting boots on the ground. I'd doubt their government would last as long as the 77 days it took the US to get to Baghdad in the Iraq War.\n\nThat's because we all understand how serious the damage from global thermonuclear war would be. Basically everybody would be dead, it'd just be a question of when and how: do they die in the blasts, or of radiation poisoning from the fallout, or of exposure and starvation once the ecosystem damage hits? It'd be possible for some areas that weren't too close to direct hits (South America or Africa?) to survive, but even then they'd see continuous drought and famine, along with massive background doses of radiation. 10 years after a global nuclear war, the number of humans alive would likely be under a million.\n\nNobody wants that, which means anybody who does anything to start that war is going to be facing a very angry world."
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54l1ew | why do some people refuse to talk about who they're going to vote for? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/54l1ew/eli5_why_do_some_people_refuse_to_talk_about_who/ | {
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"Probably because most people on both sides will just berate and bash someone that doesn't have their opinion, without even listening to why. Sometimes it's just easier to keep your mouth shut rather than risking making someone irrationally angry or even in extreme cases losing your job.",
"Because many people judge others based on their political views. If someone tells a far left liberal they're a conservative then many people will take it personal and want nothing to do with other person. Plus most people dont like arguing with others about politics. I find it stupid. People should be proud of their views.",
"The rule of thumb historically in the U.S. has been to avoid discussing religion, politics & sexuality. The reason being that these three topics are divisive and therefore should be avoided in settings where harmony is desired. Workplaces, schools etc. are intended to provide accommodating environments for all people and by bringing in topics that are controversial, those accommodating environments are threatened.\n\nThis historical rule of thumb has been severely challenged with the rise of social media. People's acceptance of these things being taboo to talk about, are being challenged by people's acceptance of social media being a vice for expression and political movement. The conflict between \"let's not create a stir & \" I can't be silent any longer\" are very real in what is perceived as societal norms, and social media has cultivated the environment that has brought out this conflict. Prior to social media people's opinions resided in kitchen tables and locker rooms, now with people's ability to reach an entire globe of viewers, their desire to voice their opinions has greatly increased. \n\nHow the historical environment and the present environment will continue to change is going to be quite interesting to study from a sociological perspective. What we can evaluate with your co workers response is that, even if many of us subscribe to voicing our beliefs, the historical perspective of not talking about those things, still holds true for many."
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7xwzk1 | in the us, with 19 years old, you can't buy beer but you can buy a gun? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7xwzk1/eli5_in_the_us_with_19_years_old_you_cant_buy/ | {
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"The tick isn't that guns are unusual, it's that alcohol is unusual. \n\nWith alcohol, there was a huge push in the 1980s to reduce the number of accidental alcohol deaths, especially those related to drunk driving. Honestly, the effectiveness of the grass-roots lobbying effort was a precursor in many ways to the modern gun rights movements in the United States. \n\nOne of the explicit goals of this movement was to make it harder for teens to get alcohol legally. As a result, though most youth-specific restrictions end at 18 -- the legal age of majority in most the U.S. -- the age to purchase alcohol was expressly increased. This was justified by the especially dangerous proclivities of young drivers, as well as by the idea that by moving it up to an age well past high school, the overall amount of alcohol available to high school kids would drop. \n",
"The drinking age was more variable in the past in the US, as it used to be a state decision, though, generally it was 18. In 1984, a law was passed, the effectively changed the drinking age to 21, everywhere and took power from the states (technically its a more complicated than that, but effectively, its all the same).\n\nSo why was it changed? Well a lot of groups, such as MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) hugely lobbied for the age to change, and won.\n\nGuns were traditionally 18, though in some states, buying a handgun is 21 (long guns are 18 still usually though). There has never been serious realities of changing this, and is still mostly a state thing.\n\nLastly. These are not the same and should not be compared.",
"You can buy a rifle or shotgun, but not a handgun. You have to be 21 to buy a handgun. There used to be no age requirement to buy a gun of any type. My grandfather bought a .22 new in a from a store all by himself when he was 12. You used to be able to buy a gun from a catalog and have it delivered to your house. Some laws changed in the 30's, a lot changed after Kennedy was assassinated. In 1986 the US basically banned civilians from buying fully automatic weapons (you can still own them but there are major hoops to jump through and you can only own fully auto guns made before 1986). A lot has changed.",
"An age limit on guns would be very complicated and hard to enforce, considering in rural communities many kids go hunting in their teens, boy scouts learn to shoot typically at 13 (usually just .22's but still) and most importantly, most first term enlisted military, which comprises the majority of the front line grunts, are between 18-21. It would be pretty messed up to say you could fight in the military but not own a gun.",
"Because they want to be able to recruit naive,\ntestosterone-rich, angsty 18 year olds for the army, where they can be used as cannon fodder. Well, guess what? That means they have to allow 18 year olds to carry guns."
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6gafpp | what are the ups and downs of air vs. liquid cooling in a computer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gafpp/eli5_what_are_the_ups_and_downs_of_air_vs_liquid/ | {
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"Air cooking is less expensive, less risky ( no chance of leaks ) and typically louder. \n\nWater cooling allows for higher over locking, but is more expensive\n\nPersonally I find it's hard to beat the price / performance of the cooler Master hyper 212 air cooler ",
"It's important to note that liquid cooling in a computer still, in a sense, is air cooling. The heat is transferred from the processor die, then it is transferred through the thermal paste, and then it transfers onto the metal block, which then transfers into the water. Because water has a higher specific heat than air, it heats up more slowly than air would.\n\nBut then what cools the water? The air does. That's what the radiators does, it has fins which are meant to maximize surface area. In turn, what that does is spreads out the water and allows the air to quickly bring it back to room temperature before the pump carries it back to the metal block to heat up again.\n\nI like to use a rice analogy. If you have stir fry the rice in the center of a large bundle is really hot. The rice takes a while to cool. If you take your fork and spread that rice around all over the plate instead, it is exposed to more air and therefore cools much quicker. So that's what the radiator does. How effective water cooling is primarily depends on the radiator size, the material of the fins (copper is common), how fast the pump pumps the water, and the fans that blow air onto the radiator.\n\nFans come into play because they blow air on the radiator; those air particles make contact with the fins and cool the water then. So in the end you are still using air to cool it (in a sense), but water cooling can typically be much more effective because of the addition of a pump and water's higher specific heat properties.\n\nIt does cost more money than air cooling. It can also be much louder. Pumps can often produce a lot of noise. The fans that blow on the radiator can also produce a lot of noise potentially.\n\nAir coolers are cheaper and can still be effective. To put it frankly, you should not be concerned of the temperature of a CPU or GPU as long as it is within its allowed range. It is extremely rare for an actual chip to die; you rarely hear about CPUs dying, and when a graphics card dies it's typically not the GPU but the VRM board that fails.\n\nSometimes water cooling a CPU can have a negative affect on the motherboard. Air cooling a CPU will also somewhat cool the area of the motherboard around the CPU, but if it is watercooled the motherboard area surrounding the CPU can get hotter.\n\nI think I can sum this up as **pros of water cooling**:\n\n-Cools better (in general)\n\n-Looks cool and is fun to tell your friends\n\n-Since it cools better, you can probably overclock more\n\n-*can* be quieter than air cooling, if the pump is quiet and the fans are quiet\n\n**pros of air cooling**:\n\n-Cheaper\n\n-Still can cool effective, a hotter CPU or GPU realistically is not going to make it die early\n\n-*can* be quieter than water cooling"
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2jsibd | why does my dog act friendly towards strangers but is nervous/aggressive towards other strangers without provocation? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jsibd/eli5_why_does_my_dog_act_friendly_towards/ | {
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"Most likely because the strangers it meets that it acts in a friendly manner to are either on what it figures is neutral territory or their territory and the strangers it acts nervously to or aggressively to are on what it thinks of as its territory.\n\nAlso, your dog may well be picking up on body language and smells from yourself and other people that you're not even aware of. ",
"Dogs are very driven by mood, energy, and body language. It's likely they feel threatened, or think you/their home is threatened, when certain people are around. Some of this will have to do with your mood, some will have to do with your location, sometimes your dog might have too much energy or be too hungry/tired. There are many behavioral factors which can lead to aggression. I would suggest taking your pet to a proper obedience class, so a professional can advise you one-on-one. ",
"Impossible to know for sure. They detect something they don't like on those strangers even if you can't understand what it is. ",
"I've yet to encounter a dog I couldn't win over. Just takes patience and repetition. From what I've seen with some friends though, 99% of the time, it's either the ones who don't like dogs or are terrified of them that get on the dog's bad side. ",
"Dog trainer reporting in. It's likely that some commonality exists which you haven't yet noticed, because it seems insignificant to you. Perhaps your dog is afraid of tall people, people who move quickly or erratically, men, men with beards, people wearing hats/sunglasses, people wearing bulky coats, etc. It could also be that your dog doesn't like being touched (he may be sensitive to being touched on his neck, head, or ears), and prefers to investigate people who mostly ignore the dog. Or it could be something about the smell he doesn't like (for example, people who work in hospitals or vet offices will carry medicinal or chemical smells on their clothing.) Perhaps he is more friendly to strangers in certain environments (wearing a uniform or medical scrubs, on or off leash, in the home or neighborhood, walking behind a fence so only the upper part of their body is visible, etc.)\n\nI suggest you begin by observing and reflecting on which people your dog likes. What are they wearing? What is their behavior toward the dog? What is the context (meeting place, on or off leash?) That should shed some light on the situation. ",
"I agree with other comments that there's probably something the dog senses that isn't obvious. At any rate, it's pretty common. My Great Dane is never *aggressive* but he is tentative meeting new people. However, sometimes he attaches himself immediately to someone as if he's known them his whole life. Pretty weird but I'm used to it.",
"God, I hate saying this because of how it can be taken, but my dog is racist. He doesn't like Hispanic males or black males. I think this is because the landscapers at our apartment complex scare him with their edgers and leaf blowers. My Black buddy doesn't like dogs, so he's generally very hesitant to be around my dog--this might be why the dog doesn't like Black males.\n\nHe gets a long with Hispanic and Black males at the dog park when they pet him. Yet he barks at them and will even take a more aggressive posture when he sees them outside of the dog park.\n\nI wonder if this is because they all are nervous when being around him. He is somewhat intimidating (Husky German Shepherd mix). However, he never tries to bite at them and generally calms down if they squat down so that they're on his level. \n\nHe's also afraid of my step-father (6'5\" white male, muscular, deep voice). But he doesn't take an aggressive posture towards him. Instead he just avoids him, and generally submits if he can't walk away when my SF tries to pet him. Haven't figured out why this is, since my SF is always very sweet to him."
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f4pb7y | why isn't your student debt wiped out when you declare bankruptcy? (specifically about the us) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f4pb7y/eli5_why_isnt_your_student_debt_wiped_out_when/ | {
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"For one, Joe Biden made it easier to get loans than to declare bankruptcy: From _URL_0_\n\n“In 1978, Biden supported the Middle Income Student Assistance Act, which eliminated income restrictions on federal loans to expand eligibility to all students. Biden helped write a separate bill that year blocking students from seeking bankruptcy protections on those loans after graduation. (The income restrictions on federal loans were reinstated in 1981.) Then he went on to vote to create the Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students, or PLUS, program in 1980 and the Auxiliary Loans to Assist Students, or ALAS, program in 1981, which extended loan eligibility to students with no parental financial support.\n\n“Within a few years, the crackdown [on student debtors filing for bankruptcy] that began in 1978 would extend beyond just government loans. In 1984, as Biden was gaining seniority on the Judiciary Committee, the Delaware lawmaker reprised his role as one of his party’s top negotiators on a new legislative proposal,” the International Business-Times reported in 2015. “Under that bill — which was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan — bankruptcy exemptions were extended to non-higher-education loans like those for vocational schools, according to the U.S. Department of Education.”\n\nEarly in his senatorial career, Biden played a role in making it easier for students and parents to take out burdensome loans.\nThough Biden ultimately missed the vote for the Higher Education Amendments of 1986, he co-sponsored the legislation and said he would have voted for it if he were able to. (According to the Congressional Record, he had to be in Delaware for a family matter.) One of the most significant changes in the Higher Education reauthorization was a provision that prevented students in default under the Guaranteed Student Loan program from receiving new federal assistance. It also imposed new regulations that “helped fuel the development of lending-industry giants like Sallie Mae by creating barriers to entry to smaller, newer companies wanting to enter the field,” the think tank Education Sector wrote in a 2007 report.\n\n“Loosened loan eligibility requirements, together with two new federal loan programs, increased student borrowing from $1.8 billion in 1977 to $12 billion in 1989,” the report said, referring to the Middle Income Student Assistance Act, and the PLUS and ALAS programs.\n\nYears later, as a senator from Delaware, Biden was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the disastrous 2005 bankruptcy bill that made it nearly impossible for borrowers to reduce their student loan debt. The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act raised the bar for families to pursue Chapter 7 bankruptcy protections. It overwhelmingly passed in the Senate at the end of the Clinton administration, over the objections of Warren, then a bankruptcy expert who had tangled for years with Biden over the issue. She lobbied first lady Hillary Clinton, who herself persuaded Bill Clinton to veto it.\n\nBiden came back to the legislation under the Bush administration; it passed the Senate in 2005 on a 74-25 vote, with most Democratic lawmakers, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, voting against it. (Clinton, by then a senator from New York, voted for it.) George W. Bush signed it into law, and private student loan debt skyrocketed in the wake of its passage. The total amount of private student loan debt more than doubled between 2005 and 2011, growing from $55.9 billion to $140.2 billion, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.\n\n\nRelated\nInvestors in Companies Profiting Off Student Loans Are Worried About Democrats’ Proposals to Cancel Debt\nA 2011 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that the 2005 bankruptcy bill led to a surge of foreclosures that may not have happened otherwise, translating to an additional 29,000 foreclosures every three months. To defend his support of the bill, Biden’s campaign told Politico that “knowing that the bill was likely to make it through the Republican-led Congress, he worked to moderate the bankruptcy bill and protect middle class families. He believed that if you have income and consumer debts you can pay, you should agree to a repayment plan that you can afford.”\n\nIn 2002, during an earlier version of the legislation, Warren, who was a Harvard bankruptcy law professor at the time, singled out Biden for his push to make it harder for struggling people to file for bankruptcy — arguing the change would be particularly harmful to women.\n\n“The point is simply that family economics should not be left to giant corporations and paid lobbyists, and senators like Joe Biden should not be allowed to sell out women in the morning and be heralded as their friend in the evening,” she wrote in her 2003 book, “The Two-Income Trap.” “Middle-class women need help, and right now no one is putting their economic interests first.”\n\nETA: Thanks for the silver, kind stranger.",
"Because they are guaranteed by the government to anyone that doesn't have any money and there is no collateral. The only way to do that is to make it almost impossible to not repay. \n\nThe banks are on board because it's a very good bet they will get the interest. The colleges are on board because they get lots and lots of money. Students are on board because they are not that bright.",
"Do note that this might be changing now in the US\n\nSee _URL_0_\n\nIt starts:\n\n > A Navy veteran will have $220,000 of his student loans discharged, even though he is not unemployable, not disabled or wasn’t defrauded. A U.S. bankruptcy judge in New York, Cecilia G. Morris, ruled that Kevin J. Rosenberg will not have to repay his student loan debt because it will impose an undue financial hardship.\n\n > According the Wall Street Journal, Rosenberg borrowed $116,500 of student loans between 1993 and 2004 to earn a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona and a law degree from Cardozo Law School at Yeshiva University. He filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2018 and asked the court last June to discharge his student loan debt, which had grown to $221,400, including interest. At the time of filing, Rosenberg’s annual salary was $37,600, and after living and debt expenses, his monthly net loss was $1,500.",
"How would the rich and privileged keep you in your place if they let you out of poverty?",
"Others have mentioned the ability the scam the system which is one element. The key though is unlike any other kind of loan which is backed by collateral and a good credit history, student loans are only back generally by the collateral of having you be a life long debtor. Otherwise, no one would loan to a student - not just because of the moral hazard issue but because there’s a good chance students will be defaulting during their life and if it’s easily discharged there wouldn’t be a student loan industry - or if there were it would only be for the richest 1% whose parents can cosign the loan with real collateral. Neither of those is a good solution."
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220q3o | generally speaking, why is it more "acceptable" to be a sports fan than it is to be a video game fan, when the two are almost identical? | **Video Game Fans:** like to dress up like their favorite character (cosplay).
**Sports Fans:** like to dress up like their favorite players (jerseys, etc).
***
**Video Game Fans:** obsess over the little details like backstory and character stats.
**Sports Fans:** obsess over the little details like team history an player stats.
***
**Video Game Fans:** attend large gatherings with other fans (cons).
**Sports Fans:** attend large gatherings with other fans (live games).
***
**Video Game Fans:** get very defensive about the games they love.
**Sports Fans:** get very defensive about the teams they love.
***
**Video Game Fans:** enjoy watching others play video games.
**Sports Fans:** enjoy watching others play sports.
***
and so on and so on and so on... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/220q3o/eli5_generally_speaking_why_is_it_more_acceptable/ | {
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"Your comparison is simply describing fans of anything.\n\nBe it sports, video games, movies, TV Shows, Celebrities, Comic Books, Harry Potter Novels etc.\n\nThe issue isn't that the fans are exhibiting different behaviors related to fandom, it's that the thing they're a fan of is less widely accepted or known, so it's perceived as strange.\n\nIt's also only perceived as strange to members outside the community. If you ask a die hard Jets fan what he thinks of an anime convention cosplayer he'll probably say they look ridiculous. And he may say this while having his face painted green and white, his shirt off with a big \"J\" on his chest, while chanting \"J E T S JETS! JETS! JETS!\" with a huge crowd. Ask someone who doesn't follow football to describe him, and they may also call him ridiculous.\n\nBut there are more people who follow sports, than people who follow anime/video games, so they're just less accepted, generally.",
"I'd just like to point out that all of your examples apply to a pretty small portion of both groups of people. For most people, video games are something you play by yourself (more in a physical sense these days). However, sports are seen as a much more social event. Video games tend to be more cerebral, while sports tend to be more physical, so it comes down to the jocks vs nerds cliques.\n\nBut more than anything, it's based on stereotypes that are no longer true. However, old habits die hard.",
"Sports are ingrained in our culture, they've been around a long time so don't seem weird. Video games are gaining ground now that people who game are having kids who in turn know video games their whole life. ",
"Because there is a fairly good chance that a sports fan also plays a version of the sport themselves. Be it back in high school, on the front lawn with friends, coaching their kid's team, etc etc. \n\nA video game fan when playing a game doesn't really actively do much. Hence, they are weirdos in the eyes of the public. "
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31w456 | why do some products that are "made with real fruits and vegetables" seem to contain none of the nutrients of the fruit or vegetable according to their nutrition labels? | I have noticed this a lot lately. For example - My yogurt that is loaded with blueberries has no vitamin C listed, despite blueberries being a great source for it (1 cup has 24% of your vitamin C). The yogurt is much less than a cup, but should at least offer something to my daily nutritional values.
Is it because of the processing? Is "real fruit" one of those FDA phrases that doesn't really mean anything? Is a term like that even regulated by the FDA? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31w456/eli5_why_do_some_products_that_are_made_with_real/ | {
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" > Is it because of the processing? Is \"real fruit\" one of those FDA phrases that doesn't really mean anything? Is a term like that even regulated by the FDA?\n\nBoth, really. Processing takes some of the nutrients out of some foods. Your yogurt, for instance has blueberry jelly and syrup in it - which was made from blueberries but was processed in such a way (sugar + heat) that it destroyed a lot of the nutrients. So when they say \"made with real fruits and vegetables\" they really just mean, \"tastes of real fruits and vegetables because we extracted the flavors from them.\"\n\nSo it's a combination of both the processing and loose regulations for marketing phrases.",
"What does it list? Some abbreviated lists only have space for macronutrients. If you look at, say, Chobani bluberry yogurt online it says 6% DV for Vitamin C. Maybe it just doesn't go into detail; or maybe the fraction of a cup of blueberries in a cup of your yogurt times the fraction of a cup per serving is less than 1/24."
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3oqe9j | why is it that we have emojis but have yet to utilize bold, italics, or underlining in text messages? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3oqe9j/eli5_why_is_it_that_we_have_emojis_but_have_yet/ | {
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"Emoji are in [Unicode](_URL_2_), as are all regular characters so just can be sent and rendered the same way as \"normal\" characters, assuming support on sending and receiving ends. Formatting such as italics need some sort of extra way to signal that certain text is formated (Like [Markdown](_URL_1_) on Reddit or HTML), but the applications have to be the ones to know this and show the text as such.\n\nUnicode has the capability for formatting (as u/mbirth demonstrates below), but many systems don't support this or partially support it.\n\nEmail with HTML can use its advanced formating. Its possible (and has been done) in services such as iMessage and Facebook Messager, which Apple and Facebook can do whatever they want with, but has been dropped or ignored because of lack of demand for it and/or simplicity. SMS, the traditional way texts are sent on cell phones is quite set in stone, so it very unlikely it would be changed to support it.\n\nEDIT: expanded and clarified\n\nEDIT: after some googling I found some very basic formatting described [here](_URL_2__control_characters), but also [Underline](_URL_0_) and [Strike through](_URL_4_).\n\nEDIT: Some more expansion\n\nLast Edit: After coming back to this after several hours I can see there are people who know more about this than me and I'm surprised this went to front page. I will try to correct what information I have. \n\nVery Last edit: I hate typing so much on a phone.\n\nTL;DR: Emojis are \"text\", but formatting is **how** text is displayed, so it's a bit more complicated and messaging platforms usually don't bother with including it or making it well known if they did include it.",
"Before the switch to Hangouts, Google chat used to allow you to specify /italics/, \\_underline\\_, and \\*bold\\* format with just text symbols like that.\n\nI think the main reason it went away was that symbols are difficult to type on a phone, because the keyboards are not optimized for it.",
"Emojis are like a new letter in the dictionary.\nAll companies show the letter U a little different, and all the companies show the Happy face a little different. \nVery little agreement is necessary.\n\nBold and Italics is adding decoration to your letters, for decoration all the companies involved need to agree in the same exact format and people are dumb dumbs who can never agree on anything. \n\nEdit: Going beyond eli 5.\nAll of the suggestions for text formatting are god awful, as they should be, since no one seems to be a a seasoned engineer, and text encoding is a deceptively complex issue. \nAll of the different suggestions, however, do highlight the main point that getting a group to agree on anything goes towards impossibility as the number of people goes up",
"Emoji *are* text (UNICODE, as previously mentioned), bold, italic, and underlining are things you *do to* text. Presently, the mobile messaging and phone technology standards don't account for formatting text. ",
"If you marshal enough vocal support, you could convince the Unicode Consortium to include characters for \"Bold Start\" and \"Bold Stop\" etc.",
"Tom Scott has done a few videos about emoji, and imo [he sums it up] (_URL_0_) better than anyone else could. \n\nIf you cant be bothered to watch the video: essentially it started in japan because they had extra room in their character set, then when unicode came along they had to support *everything* so emoji got added to the standard. Formatting options are not characters, but emoji are. ",
"When you send an emoji via SMS. You are not sending an actual picture of a face through the SMS. You are sending the unicode characters beneath the SMS, and then your phone's application reads these characters and any time it sees the code for an emoji, it replaces the code with the emoji that your specific phone uses.\nHence why a :) looks different on different phones/ OS's.",
"I don't have an answer but I sure wish it were the other way around. Give us tools to enhance our ability to use actual language to it's full potential.",
"Back 7 years ago, bold, italics, font, color, underlining, and strike through we're all available for text messages. I used to ask my friends if they were ready to go by sending them \"E?\" formatted to be red.",
"This doesn't answer the question, but you can send bold text on iPhone. Settings > Messages > Show Subject Field",
"I don't know, but you used to be able to format texts like that and even change colors of your text on cell phones like 6 or 7 years ago. I did it on my LG enV all the time. Or maybe it was the enV 2. I don't remember. ",
"I'd say that besides the underlying technology they serve a purpose. They help us understand each other better and in a fast way, whereas formatting is much slower to accomplish and more ambiguous. Except maybe ALLCAPS! (well, technicall that isn't formatting)",
"Two reasons: We're still on old tech and designers be designin'\n\nBriefly, text messages back in the day needed to work on cell phones that had next to no computing power and less software capacity than my TI-86 graphing calculator. Typography changes were not supported because quite simply there was no way to use them with the giant dot-letters that made up cell phone screens.\n\nAdditionally, the text provider's system was set up to process thousands of messages very quickly. The character limit was improved from pagers and the system used UNICODE characters. UNICODE is a dense character set, so it minimizes the amount of actual data per character while still giving all the possible letters. This stuff was running on pre-Pentium servers, remember, when MHz and kilobytes of RAM were still a thing. Minimizing data transfer was a real concern.\n\nSince then, nothing has really changed except the output devices. However, another reason we don't mess with typography options on our phones too much is that the designers of the operating systems (iOS, Android, Windows for Phones) are very concerned with making a good experience for their users. Honestly, I don't want lime green bold comic sans text messages coming my way. I don't ever want that option on phones.\n\nPlus, your phone has a pre-set typographical style, and reserving larger bold characters for headings is optimal UI design. It's important to guide the user's eye with color, contrast, and familiar elements. Italics and underlining are fairly rare in modern user interface typography, and they are actually just not needed for anything if you think about it. Adding a bunch of tiny buttons on the screen just results in more clutter and a confusing UI. Designers need to get your grandma to understand all the features in the phone, remember.\n\nLet's be honest -- fucking with the type options in your text very often detracts from your message rather than adding to it. More power doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good idea to add more features.",
"DO \n===\nyou *really* ~~want~~ ^^to ^^receive\n**THIS TEXT** \n#?\n##?\n###?\n####? ",
"Emoji = raw unicode text. It fits in the SMS / MMS framework fairly efficiently.\n\nBold, underline, italics, etc, require XML / HTML tags, and would eat up a lot more characters. Example, < b > bold text! < /b > is what might be sent, though those are outdated HTML tags. Newer tags are more complicated and lengthy.\n\nThis means that if you do want to start using those kinds of formatting, it wouldn't really fit well in SMS / MMS, and would instead require some sort of texting application that uses data instead. (aka, TCP / IP)\n\nThere's also the issue that there is low demand for this kind of feature. Plus, any app that wanted to implement it would have to come up with their own solution. That is also hard, considering that any kind of highlighting and copy/paste is typically handled by the operating system itself, in a standard way. Implementing a UI to add those other features would be a little cumbersome, and might take away from the experience.",
"Is it too hard to ask to make a sarcasm font? Must be... **rolls eyes**",
"I don't want to imagine a world where people can simultaneously bold, italicize and underline for ***maximum*** emphasis.",
"When did emoji replace emoticon?",
"without bothering to read comments from people who know what they're on about, i would guess that bold italics and underlining makes colloquial text sound really patronising. my faith in the world leads me to surmise that it didnt become an option because most people would rather ambiguity to what they write rather than sound like dickheads ",
"Emojis are single characters that can be transmitted as a standard code over SMS and MMS. Most devices today are able to interpret these messages in some way, even if they don't see the emoji symbols themselves.\n\nEach character of the text is sent individually as a short code, which is then interpreted by the receiving device and printed on the screen as text. This text is unformatted, and with good reason: formatting would require you to \"wrap\" certain parts of the text in other codes telling the device how to display that text.\n\nThat formatting is simply not part of SMS or MMS standards: messages are sent in plain, unformatted text, one code per character, and the receiving device determines how it should be formatted. That allows the message to be as small as possible, sending only the bare essential pieces of information to build a message.\n\n*Edit: I was corrected: emoji can be sent on SMS, as well*",
"By the time you need rigorous formatting tools like that, you're better off sending an email. Texts are supposed to be quick and no frills like telegraphs. The fact we have emojis now is a pretty impressive little feature of texting.",
"emojis show emotion, whereas bold, italics show tone. I think applying emotion also shows tone. you know - two birds one stone. ",
"Making certain words or phrases all-caps can pretty much serve this purpose. Emojis exist because it's not exactly that easy to get across a picture of a trumpet with just words.",
"I have been a proponent of utilizing italics for sarcasm forever... OR SOMETHING AT LEAST!!! I've said way too many of stupid things when people were just joking with me online and poor wittle me couldn't tell",
"Thank fark we don't have that level of formatting in SMS. The last thing I want is to receive messages from someone who misuses bold, or else imagine someone who insists on underlining the entirety of their message. Fark that, I hope it stays this way. \n\nEdit: can't type",
"Because nobody gives a shit about formatting in a text.. The point of a text is to quickly get a message across.",
"SMS is character only. Emojis are characters. The receiving app needs to support how to interpret it, though. bold, italic, and underline are markups / styles which are not part of the spec. Conceivably styling could gain critical mass but it would take up a bunch of characters of the 160 for little payoff.",
"Thank Unicode, not SMS.\n\nTake a Japanese mobile provider in the early 2000s. They already have (1) tight relationships with Japanese phone manufacturers, (2) a way to encode thousands of characters in SMS, because Japan, (3) a habit of using proprietary technologies (instead of standards) to push a small competitive advantage, (4) zero regard for how much sense their proprietary technologies would make outside of Japan and maybe South Korea, (5) a market that doesn't give a firetruck about italics.\n\nSo they come up with a couple dozen extra, non-standard characters which are not kanji but faces, because why not. Now you can text these funny faces to your friends, as long as you're both using this provider's network. It's a smash hit and makes all teenagers want to switch to that network, for about three weeks, because that's how long it takes the competitors to come up with their own emoji technology. They spend the next decade grudgingly standardizing the palette in order to exchange the emoji between different networks. They spend zero time looking for a way to send italics, again because Japan.\n\nEventually, Unicode wants to have ways to absorb all other reasonably broadly used character sets. The idea is, Japanese phone makers and networks won't switch to Unicode if that means dropping emoji support, so the easiest solution for everyone is to adopt emoji into Unicode.\n\nYou'll notice Unicode has a _bunch_ of other sets of characters that way that you will never ever use - and that's fine, they're there for somebody else, not for you. But of course, emoji turn out to be globally useful, with culturally neutral material like 🕴💩🌾🍱🍙🍚🍣🗻🏣🏯🗾🎎💹🈷️🇯🇵\n\nUnicode does have some italic-like and bold-like characters in the math and symbols areas: ℱƒ𝑓𝒇𝔣.\n\nSorry if this was more like ELI6 material.",
"There's other people who touched on these points, but I think got overcomplicated for ELI5... so short, but sweet:\nThe infrastructure for transmitting SMS uses a standard designed specifically to transfer only characters. Because there's an international standard for characters (Unicode), including international alphabets and emoji, they can be routed through the system. But there is no standard covering formatting of text, so it can't be. \nAny attempt to integrate it now would most likely be done as a different standard, in order for SMS to be (mostly) backwards compatible with e.g. old flip phones. That's why MMS (picture messages) was created, to add functionality that SMS lacked.\n\nIn reality, what's more likely is that Apple would add something to iMessage, Google would add something to Hangouts, 3rd parties would add stuff to their chat apps, and none of them would be compatible with each other *sigh*",
"Because there isn't enough demand for it. Simple as that. There is nothing in the technology to prevent (as long as we're not talking about strictly SMS messages).",
"i think typing in caps takes care of coversational need for bold and underlining. Italics would be cool though. ",
"Bold, italics etc. are states of characters and no standardised mobile format for those exists.\n\nEmojis, believe it or not, are standardized. They're characters in Unicode (basically ASCII on steroids), itself a standard used by all mobile phones.",
"I think that's because emojis can easily show, or get the feeling across, what the bold, italics, and underlining texts are trying to imply... and we can also say that's because of popular demand? I don't know.\n\nOn the other hand, who does edit their own text with bold, italics and underline, right? Those basic edits are usually used to make emphasis... but we have ALL CAPS for that. So, those basic text styles are pretty much useless in texts.. Emojis are fun and cute and in demand. ",
"Yeah, surely you can, but which letters in a sentence are italics and which are not? You still need to mark the ones you want ",
"Because that road leads to the monstrosity that was Myspace profile land. Sure, it starts with bold, with a little italics on the side, but pretty soon you have GIGANTIC BLINKING MARQUEE GLITTERING CRAP. Run away!",
"If you were to watch the evolution of writing you would notice that spelling has gone from an actual message to to short messages. The next step has been to abbreviate. This step had gotten so intense that there are sites that can show what different abbreviations mean. After this step you would notice a large addition of :) and :( . This step had been added with emails but had not been used as much until texting became a normality. This being due to trying to fit as many charactera into a text; if you are old enough you would remeber texts being expensive. With the introduction of MySpace and Facebook you really see a huge leap into emojis. I would think that it was a slow start but now is exponentially a dumbing down of writing intelligence and a lowering stance social communication. I say that due to the amount of people relying on electronics to talk for them that there is less social learning, making it harder for younger people to understand emotions through words. Though i would guess some older people (15 to high 20's) think it is more of a \"my personality\" type of change. A personal note on that, II can not take someone seriously if they use an emoji to spell a word",
"verizon has had underlining, highlighting, bolding and italics- at least it did 10 years ago",
"The actual answer is that these things all come from Asia (mostly Japan) and they don't do underlining and italics and bold. They tend to use katakana when we would use bold or italics. ",
"Because the texting system doesn't use them?\n\nbold italics and underline are all used for emphasis, which is already served by caps, or surrounding the word/phrase in asterisks, etc.\n\nit would be completely redundant.\n",
"we got caps? what more could you really want?"
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underline#Unicode",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_control_characters",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikethrough#Unicode"
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aftpme | are all wild animals helpless to fleas, ticks, and parasites their whole lives? | Aside from domesticated animals or those in captivity, do animals have any way of combating parasites? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aftpme/eli5_are_all_wild_animals_helpless_to_fleas_ticks/ | {
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"Wild animals tend to either try to scratch things off like ticks for example, or they try and clean each other. But they basically never get rid of fleas and parasites when they catch on to them.",
"Monkey regularly pick and eat fleas of each other. Other animals scratches. \n\nOxpecker eats ticks off ox",
"Not much defence against biters, but all animals have entire immune systems with all sorts of tricks to help eliminate internal parasites! Eating them whole, punching holes in them, frying them in corrosive chemicals, or even walling them off to lay siege. \n\nAllergies come from an arm of leukocytes who are supposed to destroy gut worms who get catastrophically confused by peanuts when they don't encounter the worms they were born to fight.",
"No, but many are.\n\nHorses, for example, will get ticks and intestinal worms, but not fleas. \n\nFleas seem to be repelled by horse sweat. Barn cats, at least anecdotally in my experience, seem to really enjoy rubbing and/or sleeping on items like used saddle pads that are covered in horse sweat, preferentially to cleaner, equally soft items. I'm guessing the effect helps the cats with their fleas, probably making for a more restful sleep. \n\n",
"Well, snakes and lizards shed their skin for that reason from what I know - to get rid of parasites etc. So I guess technically not ALL animals suffer all the time "
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980ao9 | whats the role of un soldiers in other countries of war? | Which side does the UN take in countries of war? Whats their role? arn't they supposed to be neutral? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/980ao9/eli5_whats_the_role_of_un_soldiers_in_other/ | {
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"They are basically an armed presence, and they are there as a \"We don't want to fight anyone, but if anyone starts a fight, your fight will be with us as well.\".\n\nThey are there to cool down things. Think of it as rito police standing between two opposing groups of protesters. As long as everyone keeps in line, everything is cool, but when someone hurls a rock, they take him down."
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1ssr64 | why artificial coloring perceived as worse than natural? | Companies point out that there aren't artificial colors present on foods. What is the difference? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ssr64/why_artificial_coloring_perceived_as_worse_than/ | {
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"Some people are allergic to some additives.\n\nA lot of people believe that a lot of additives are in some way toxic or carciogenic.\n\nIt makes food seem more 'natural' which is something a lot of people like. So it's also good marketing."
]
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2mlehv | (don't know if this is the right subreddit) why is isis so much different from other terrorist groups? what is it about them that is causing such an uproar? | I've seen a lot about them on the news. A lot more than other terrorist groups and it seems almost like non-stop coverage of it. What makes them a larger problem than many more terrorist groups that threaten the rest of the world? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mlehv/eli5dont_know_if_this_is_the_right_subreddit_why/ | {
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"This video does a pretty good job explaining it - [Iraq Explained -- ISIS, Syria and War: ](_URL_0_)"
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55ynxl | can multiple illnesses all affect you at once? how would they combine? | I am currently dealing with an awful cold. And I was wondering, can different viruses, bacteria etc affect you at the same time? And how would they combine? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55ynxl/eli5_can_multiple_illnesses_all_affect_you_at/ | {
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"Thanks for the help, it's been a while since I took human biology"
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12o76m | for the 5th of november! why does anonymous use guy fawkes as their symbol? | Why does Anonymous, who once protested Scientology, use Guy Fawkes as their symbol, a man whose attempt to blow up Parliament was to ensure a Catholic would resume the throne? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/12o76m/eli5_for_the_5th_of_november_why_does_anonymous/ | {
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"They use Guy Fawkes mask in reference to the V for Vendetta movie, not because of who Guy Fawkes is.",
"ELI5: Why every ELI5 post I make gets downvoted?"
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6zorxk | while on call, my phone is able to remove music so that the other person can only hear my voice. how does it do this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zorxk/eli5_while_on_call_my_phone_is_able_to_remove/ | {
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"This is the beauty of the *noise canceling microphone.*\n\nA second microphone farther from your mouth detects what sounds are coming from the room rather than from your mouth, and these are subtracted from the signal.\n\nYarr! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: How does the iPhone 5 noise cancelling microphone work? ](_URL_1_)\n1. [ELI5: While on a phone call, how does the other end not hear the video I am playing on my phone? ](_URL_0_)",
"With one or a few extra microphones.\n\nThe idea is pretty simple, but there is a lot of thought out into making it reliable and useful;\n\nIf you place an extra microphone on the backside of the phone, it will catch all the ambient noise around you. But it will not hear your voice very well.\n\nAnd the regular microphone will hear you voice AND all the ambient noice.\n\nSo, in theory all you have to do is to remove all the noise that is heard by the extra microphone, and all that is left should be your voice.\n\nFor extra accuracy, add not one but TWO extra microphones. And place them differently so that they catch different noice each.",
"You mean, removing the music that you're playing through the phone's speaker?\n\nImagine all sound as being waves, like the waves you see on the heartrate monitors in hospital dramas. The phone \"knows\" the waves of the music since it's playing them, so it is able to mathematically subtract them from the waves of the ambient sound around the phone, leaving not much more than your voice."
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17npnn/eli5_how_does_the_iphone_5_noise_cancelling/"
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qhpwv | how to whistle really loud using your fingers. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qhpwv/eli5_how_to_whistle_really_loud_using_your_fingers/ | {
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"Upvote...I wanna know.",
"Here's how someone taught me: \n* Take your thumb and middle finger. Make a circle, touching the tips of those fingers together.\n* Next, take the thumb of your other hand and the two touching fingers like [this](_URL_0_). There should be a space in the middle that forms a triangle.\n* Now, replace that thumb with your tongue. '\n* Relax the tip of your tongue and push it, with those two fingers, about halfway back in your mouth. \n* Now this part is a bit tricky. Flex the back part of your tongue so that the passageway from your throat to your mouth is smaller, allowing the air you blow out to move faster. \n* Blow out.\n* Hear whistle\n* Be an awesome audience member from here on out.",
"This is how I [learned](_URL_0_). Just do as he says. Practice a few times a day and you will eventually start to get it.",
"I want to know how to whistle really loud like Dr Cox does in Scrubs. Now that'd be more handy.",
"One of my roommates and I both waste far too much time on reddit, I have been listening to these odd blowing sounds coming from the other room for about 5 minutes. Then I found this thread... It all makes since now. ",
"Is it normal to be drooling all over yourself?",
"You could ELI(new born) and I still wouldn't succeed. ",
"TIL I can't do this.",
"I got drunk at a baseball game one time and a guy explained it to me, it was awesome. For five hours I could whistle awesomley. Also I was drunk.\n\nWhen I woke up the next day I couldn't whistle. That was almost 2 years ago and have never been able to whistle since.\n\nHope this helps.",
"This is the way I do it.\n\nIf you take your two pinky fingers and hold them up at almost a 90 degree angle and press them together hard. Now take your tongue and fold it so that the tip of your tongue is laying on the top, use your teeth to do this. Now, take your pinky fingers, keeping your tongue folded like that, push it back about halfway into your mouth. Now just blow, move your writs up higher or further down, blowing in small bursts till you start hearing something. At that point just keep messing around with tongue placement and finger placement inside your mouth. \n\nI was never able to do it till I saw this method, and after a lot of practice it is a very loud whistle.",
"No one has explained this way yet, and I think its the easiest to learn and makes the loudest whistle of the few ways I know how, including the circle thumb method. Great for hailing cabs.\n\nTake your index and middle finger of both hands and touch the tips of the middle fingers together, making a V. Then fold your tongue back and touch the middle finger tips to the tip of your folded back tongue, and blow. The extra fingers in your mouth increase air pressure on the way out over other methods.\n\nGood luck.\n\n**Edit:** forgot to mention to curl your bottom lip over your bottom teeth with your fingers as well. \n\n**Edit2:** Here's a little MSPaint doodle to show what it should look like (relationship between fingers and bottom lip), the view would be from inside the mouth. The blue bit is where the whistle fits through. [Picture](_URL_0_).",
"I'm starting to get dizzy :S",
"I'm dizzy as hell.",
"Sitting in my car spitting on myself thanks to this thread.",
"Believe it or not, I leart to whistle hard by searching for tutorial videos in youtube. These may help:\n_URL_1_\n_URL_0_",
"You're the \"reddit switch-a-roo\" guy...",
"I have tried this so many times, and [this just taught me how to for the first time!](_URL_0_) I got it loud enough to hurt even my own ears. The middle finger and index finger on both hand method worked the best for me. I'm giddy with excitement. \n",
" < ==== someone who can whistle dozens of different ways.\n\nSo there are 2 main ways that I whistle with my fingers (there is a third but it was quiet and unreliable)\n\n1: four finger (index and middle on each hand)\n\n2: two finger (middle and thumb on 1 hand)\n\nBoth of them share the same general properties like \n\n-tongue folded backwards with fingers resting on them\n\n-fingers touching together with a natural gap below where they are touching\n\n-lips wrapped securely around so only air escapes from the middle, through the gap mentioned above\n\n-blowing in a \"hehhhhhh\" way, not a \"whoooooooo\" way\n\nOther than that they are the same. Expect to spit a lot and for it to be extremely unreliably as you learn it. \nIE: the first 20-30 minutes of solid practice quite possibly produce nothing but an air-y quiet whistle.\n\nThe 4 finger whilstle for me has a much wider range of whistle-sound.\nlets represent air-only with ..... and whistle sound with OOOO and left be quiet/softly blowing and right being loud/hard blowing\n\n*4 finger:\n*OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.......................OOOOOOOOOO.......\n\n*2 finger:\n*OO..............................................................OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO\n\nSo what I mean is if you have your fingers in the exact correct position and blow gradually soft to hard you will (if you were me, I guess) get the above pattern.\n\nIt won't take that much practice to be able to belt it out within 30 seconds and amuse your drunk friends or something. It will take a great deal more practice (though it needn't be often, like practicing exercise for fitness) to be able to get a loud noise on the first or second blow.",
"This thread is making me feel like an idiot. I'd have better luck drawing [owls](_URL_0_). \n\n1. Do some weird shit with your fingers.\n\n2. Fucking whistle.",
"This is more of an /r/IWantToLearn question than an ELI5 post.",
"Ah... The old Reddit switcheroo guy!",
"This thread made my workday awkward. First I was trying to whisltle, than I started to laugh because of all the spitting and drooling going on in this thread. Now I'm just being stared and judged by my coworkers that are doing the & #3232;\\_ & #3232; face.\n\nTotally worth it.",
"I'd like to see people post videos of their success or failure from this thread.\n\nI am an absolute failure, by the way.",
"I just woke up from passing out from this",
"I'd just like to say fuck all of you because none of these instructions are making me do anything but put my fingers in my mouth and blow around them. And now I'm all mad."
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21laq2 | why aren't coins valued in order of size? from smallest being least valuable to largest being most valuable. | I'm referencing US coins, but it may be this way for other currency as well. It seems it would make sense for the smallest coin to be the smallest value. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21laq2/eli5_why_arent_coins_valued_in_order_of_size_from/ | {
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"Back in the day, coinage had intrinsic value -- meaning the coins themselves were worth their value in the metal they were made of. Each coin was worth it's face value in silver, copper, nickel, etc.\n\nA nickel's worth of silver was deemed to small to handle well, so it's content was changed to copper and nickel, and it's size was increased (because you need more of a less precious metal to equal the same value). A penny's worth of silver was way too small, so it was made out of a penny's worth of copper.\n\nNow that we're off the gold standard, coinage has value really only as currency, and the sizes stayed for tradition.\n"
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2qu8q1 | why bother making american remakes of british comedies with exactly the same script? | Saw this post of TIL about an unaired pilot for an American version of IT Crowd, and wondered why they bother to remake these shows when they don't even change the script. It's exactly the same except with American accents.
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qu8q1/eli5_why_bother_making_american_remakes_of/ | {
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"Revenue generation. By copying a proven formula the network saves a ton of money by streamlining production because they already know what and how they want it. ",
"Another example could be the show \"Shameless\" The US version is roughly 80% the EXACT same plot/storyline wise. It's just a lot easier for Americans to watch an Americanized version because the original shameless actors have VERY VERY VERY VERY THICK accents and half the dialogue isn't even understandable by us americans.",
"It might not be exactly the same; and even if the pilot episode follows the original very closely (which is very likely, since it has to set up the characters and explain the situation they're in), subsequent episodes may not. One reason for doing this is that cultural references can be modified or dropped altogether, and episodes that require an intimate knowledge of the original culture to work changed.\n\nFor example, in the original version of *Life on Mars* (I know this isn't a comedy), a very important recurring character in the first few episodes is the girl from the old test card, who comes to life and speaks to Sam. It's actually quite a significant detail that it is *that* girl, but it would be completely lost on an American. And all throughout the show are references to such mainstays of life in 70s Britain as Morecambe and Wise, *Camberwick Green* and football hooliganism.\n\nGoing back to comedy, an average season for a British comedy usually lasts 12 or even 6 episodes, possibly (if it's a popular show) with an extended Christmas episode. American comedy shows have very much longer seasons. There are all sorts of logistical reasons that explain the difference, but Americans are apt to feel somehow \"cheated\" when a season ends just as they were getting into the show.\n\nAn example of this is *Dear John*, which in its original British version lasted for two seasons of 7 episodes each. It also had a fairly strong story arc, so it only really makes complete sense if you show the episodes in the right order. That's tough in America, where the complications of syndication can mean that the episodes might be aired in a different order, so they prefer to have self-contained episodes if possible. And lastly, the eponymous John is as much a loser as all the others.\n\nThe American version lasted for four seasons with a total of 90 episodes, an average of about 22 per season. The first episode broadly followed the same story as the original, but had all the characters properly set up at the end. Additionally, perhaps because of American sensibilities about sex, Kate is not frigid (or if she is, no reference is made about it), and her relationship with John -- who is no longer a loser -- is much warmer.\n\nPart of the problem is that humour doesn't always travel well. Cultural expectations and the demands of networks may also differ. But gauging whether a series really needs a US remake is sometimes a tough call. I suspect that since the internet has exposed more Americans to British comedy, this has actually helped to break down the cultural barrier -- Americans are more used to British culture now, so are more likely to be able to enjoy the originals, and remakes are probably now more likely to fail.",
"A few reasons. \n\n1. Making a show settings more identifiable with the target audience. No one in the US is going to understand what the \"Chatsworth Council Estate\" is, but a slum on the south side of Chicago? That is **much** more meaningful to a US audience. \n\n2. Having actors with distinctive British accents might be off-putting to some audiences. Even if most people would be fine either way, the studio wants to *maximize* appeal to a US audience.\n\n3. Some aspects of popular culture simply have no meaning in the US. There are institutions, mores, memes and circumstance to life in the UK that simply do not properly translate into the US. A joke about a character from the Midlands in a UK comedy won't have any impact, because what does the average US viewer know of the stereotypes or tropes about life in the Midlands? Make a joke about someone from Idaho or Nebraska... *that* resonates with a US audience. ",
"The UK show Coupling was fantastic, the US version was abysmal. The script was almost identical except two things. They made is a bit more PC and they felt the need to explain the dry humour. \n\nNever watch a US version of a UK show. shudder.",
"I just want to point out that the British do this as well, such as with Law & Order. In that case most episode were the same. Changes were only made in cases where the laws were different. Also wigs.",
"Americans are more comfortable watching shows about people like themselves. It's easier to relate to people like you than it is people with a different accent or culture, even if a lot of the problems that they face are the same as the problems you face.\n\nThe other issue is that there aren't any ugly people on American television, so when people see someone who isn't at least a little bit supermodel hot they just can't deal with it."
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zxjcn | mutual investments and funds | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zxjcn/eli5_mutual_investments_and_funds/ | {
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"Okay, so first a definition: Think of money as a commodity which can be bought and sold. That's a challenging idea at first; commodities are things like heating oil and bread and soup spoon, and money is what you use to buy and sell them, right? Yes, that's true … but money is also a commodity that can be bought and sold. People who buy money are called \"borrowers,\" and the price they pay for money is called \"interest.\" People who sell money are called \"lenders\" — or sometimes, particularly in this context, \"investors\" — and the interest is the profit they make on a sale.\n\nThe place where you buy and sell fish is called a fish market; the place where you buy and sell money is called the *capital market.* (Except it's not really a *place* in the literal sense, but that's getting sidetracked.)\n\nSo remember that: money is a commodity that gets bought and sold on the capital market.\n\nYou have some money that you have no particular plans for. You don't need to use it to pay your rent, you don't need to use it to put a kid through college, it's just going to sit there in your bank account.\n\nBut since money is a commodity that can be bought and sold, an option that's available to you is to sell your money for *more money.* For instance, if you had $25,000 on hand, and I offered to buy that $25,000 from you for $30,000, you'd take the deal, right? I mean, that's pure profit. So since you're not doing anything with your money anyway, the idea of selling it for a profit is an appealing one to you.\n\nOf course, it's not quite that simple. If I had $30,000 on hand, I wouldn't be interested in your $25,000 … and I certainly wouldn't be willing to trade my bigger sum for your smaller one. But what if I *don't* have $30,000 … but I know I can *accumulate* $30,000 over *time* if I have your $25,000 to start with? I might offer to buy your $25,000 today in exchange for a *promise to pay you* $30,000 in a year. Depending on the details — up to and very much including how much faith you have in my promise to pay — you might consider that a sweet deal, or you might decide to pass.\n\nWhich is where mutual funds come in. A mutual fund is a type of investment — a type of sale of money, in other words. It starts with a person with some skill for this stuff; that person is the *fund manager.* The fund manager comes to you and makes you an offer. If you give me your $25,000, he says, I will go *play with it* on the capital market, selling it for a profit, then turning around and selling the profits for more profits. If you just let me take care of things, I'll turn your money into more money through savvy buying and selling of capital.\n\nBut here's where it gets fancy: The fund manager *also* goes and makes the same offer to a *bunch of people.* He doesn't just take your $25,000, but similar sums for *lots* of other people, so he ends up with a *significant* amount of capital — millions at least, and the biggest mutual funds have more than a hundred billion dollars in them.\n\nThe fund manager then goes out and does *many things* with the money in the fund. He sells some of it to this guy, sells some to that guy, sells a bunch of those people over there. Why? Because *some* of those deals are going to turn sour. Not every deal is guaranteed to be profitable, so to minimize the risk, the fund manager makes a bunch of deals, secure in the knowledge that most of them will be successful … successful enough, in fact, to cover any losses that might come with a few of the deals failing.\n\nMeanwhile, you forget about it and go on with your life. You go on vacation or whatever and just ignore it. Your fund manager is *very very* busy, but as far as you're concerned, your share of the fund is just magically getting more valuable over time.\n\nThen the day comes when you decide to withdraw your money from the fund, in much the same way you'd withdraw your money from a bank account. Maybe you want to splurge on a new car for your wife's birthday, or whatever. Point is, you decide to liquidate your share in the fund, which last you checked was worth $25,000. You call up your fund manager and say it's time for you to cash out, and he expresses his regret that he won't be working for you any more, but asks you for a bank account number to wire your money into. You give it … and next thing you know your banker is calling offering you a whole menu of investment services, because your fund manager just wired nine million bucks into your no-fee checking account.\n\nOkay, yields on mutual funds aren't *nearly* that big. But a well-run fund can be very profitable. The catch is this: even a well-run fund can also take *huge* losses. That's the price you pay: maybe big returns, but maybe big losses.\n\nSo from the point of view of you, the investor, a mutual fund works much like a bank account. You open an account — effectively — and deposit a sum of money into it, then forget about it for a while. Later, you can make a withdrawal — again, effectively — and get some or all of your money back out of that account. Odds are, your account balance will be significantly larger than it was when you started, but there's a chance it'll actually be smaller, which would suck for you.\n\nThat's why mutual fund investing isn't really something worth looking into unless you have *significant* cash on hand. If you've got money you don't plan to do anything with for a while *and* you're comfortable with the prospect of waking up tomorrow to find it's all vanished, then mutual funds are an excellent choice. But most people who accumulate investment-worthy sums want to *keep* their money, so they're better off with things like certificates of deposit and Treasury securities, zero-risk options that offer much lower yields but still beat inflation."
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1hmy1e | why is it illegal for minors to send explicit pictures of each other to other minors? | Does it become CP and thus possession is illegal? Is it illegal for minors to share it with just adults or publicly or anyone? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hmy1e/eli5why_is_it_illegal_for_minors_to_send_explicit/ | {
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"It's illegal to have possession of any illicit photographs of minors no matter your age. This is an issue of legislation not being caught up with technology and trends. When those CP laws were passed nobody was considering the potential that kids may be sending photos to each other. "
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btiurv | why do videos from the early internet have such weird audio quality? | Why is it that some media (early Homestar Runner, most Neopets stuff, the old BIC games, etc.) have such weird audio? I can't really explain it but it's like sort of echoed, kind of muted and super sharp at the same time, and sort of digitized. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/btiurv/eli5_why_do_videos_from_the_early_internet_have/ | {
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"Bad, early file compression algorithms. \n\nBack in the day average internet speeds were very slow compared to today, and the need for small file sizes combined with early compression algorithms, leading to a serious loss of detail."
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54quqc | why is so much importance held on the presidential election, but almost no attention is given to congressional elections? | I feel like this topic may have already been covered in r/politics, but I am not a regular there. So my question is, am I crazy in thinking that Congressional elections are more important, and have more of an impact on policies, than the presidential election? If I'm not wrong, then why does the media/general public give little to no attention to them?
Edit: Thanks for all of the responses! I suppose the obvious answer is because it's national and congressional elections are local. Thinking about it, it falls more on the local media than the national media. But as u/Weenie-Hut-General stated, the information is out there, voters just don't tend to look for it. There are many factors at stake, and I appreciate the discussion this topic as sparked. Thanks guys! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/54quqc/eli5_why_is_so_much_importance_held_on_the/ | {
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"Lots of attention is given to Congressional elections -- but not by national media, because they are covering the one national election.\n\nBut if you read local newspapers, you're likely to see quite a bit about the congressional races.",
"Only local media gives attention to Congressional elections because senators and congressmen are representing only one state. On the other hand, the President affects all States.",
"Congress is as a whole more powerful than the President, but each individual congressperson has comparatively little influence individually.\n\nNot to mention that the President is a national election; Congressional elections are only voted in by people in a specific district.",
"The do get coverage, but there are a few reasons why they don't get as much national coverage...\n\n1) Very few races are actually competitive. Between gerrymandering of House districts and states' entrenched political slants, maybe 50 of the 470 Congressional seats are actually races of any kind.\n\n2) The races that are actual races, all that matters is the local voters. So here in Illinois, there is a lot of coverage of the Mark Kirk/Tammy Duckworth race for Senate because it's a close race with the incumbent behind in the polls.\n\n3) TRUMP. His constant antics are distracting the media away from everything else, even the more substantive issues of the presidential election. For example, this AM more coverage is going to Trump calling a former Miss Universe fat/Miss Piggy than analysis of the different plans to create jobs presented in the debate last night.",
"They're not national. So it's going to be covered by local news, not national outlets to much of an extent. If there's 140 seats up for election, even if they gave it as much time as one presidential race, each individual race would receive 1/140th of the attention. Congressional races are more important than the presidential, in most cases. And in most things **you** probably care about, state and local elections are even more important. Your state legislature controls a lot of shit in your area and if you live in a big city, your city councilpeople do, too.\n\nBut, of course, those won't receive as much attention, either. It's on you to get out there and find out about the issues and the candidates.",
"Just a sidenote: it isn't just congress that gets ignored. Every election has tons of races from governor to mayor to school board. There are usually 20 or more offices to vote on, not to mention ballot initiates in many states.\n\nAll those races are very important, and the smaller the district, the more power your one vote has on the outcome.\n\nSo yeah, the media should cover those races more and people should take about them more, but they don't.\n\nI'd guess the reason the presidential race always gets the most attention is its just easier to cover that. It's the one national race, it's the only one we all share, so its easier to just focus on that one thing.",
"To address your actual questions:\n- no you aren't crazy\n- yes, they are more important and impactful \n- the average American is too ignorant of our system to know this. ",
"Because your vote actually counts in congressional elections, and doesn't for presidential ones.",
"It seems like this question was already fairly well answered but I'd like to add to what /u/blipsman said a bit. \n\nMost congressional races are lightly contested if contested at all. Meaning that very often incumbents have such a substantial lead, through name recognition and having an established track record, that their opponent doesn't stand much of a chance. Beyond that, it's not unusual for a strong incumbent to run entirely unopposed simply because any real challenger that would enter the race knows better than to take on a strong incumbent and instead will look for a weaker incumbent in another district or wait until a strong one is nearing retirement. \n\nWhat's amazing to me is that congress, as a whole, has an incredibly abysmal approval rating and has for a long time (I don't know the exact numbers but it usually hovers in the high teens and low 20's). Americans overwhelmingly feel congress does a poor job but they usually like THEIR congressmen. This is partially because of what the incumbent has done for their own district or state but that's also part of the problem. Congressmen largely look out for their own electorate to the detriment of the nation as a whole because it gets them reelected. So what people dislike is OTHER congressmen acting selfishly for their districts and neglecting the good of the nation but when it comes to their own district or state people have no complaints.\n\nThat, IMO, is why congressional elections aren't covered nearly as much. Short of a recent scandal, major policy misstep, or shift in local political philosophy, people love their districts and states incumbent politicians and those incumbents are almost guaranteed to win anyway so why bother covering it?",
"The perception of that depends on whether you go outside or not. :)\n\nWhere I live, there are little signs on wooden stakes EVERYWHERE telling me about Congressional candidates and other local candidates, but there is virtually no signage about the presidential ticket. \n\nBut on TV, it's pretty much the opposite until about 2 weeks before the election. ",
"Along with what has already been stated, I have my own cynical take on this.\n\nMost are too busy in their own lives, cynical, ignorant, or otherwise unwilling to do the 2 hours (or so) of research required to know who your rep is, what their policies are, what their voting history is, or otherwise quantify their legislative impact.\n\nThere is, generally, no emotional, high-stakes, and entertaining political showdown. Most people had parents who \"voted down the ticket\" and simply checked whatever political party they ascribed to. Obviously, many of these people never learned the value of critically evaluating their representatives. \n\nBut mark my words... this is not \"the media's\" fault. The information is out there. I squarely blame citizens and gerrymandering.",
"Here's an example of a 'non race'\n\nGregory Meeks, voted the most corrupt congressman in America, (he took a $40,000 bribe and seems to have lost funds that were raised for Haitian earthquake survivors) has a job for life. He has a group of core supporters in Jamaica and Hollis, Queens (Democrat in NYC) who will vote for him unless he does something horrendous. Often he runs unopposed as the Republicans don't bother to field a candidate due to gerrymandering and NY's high barrier to entry. \n\nSo, I can talk to my friends, family and neighbors about what a corrupt clown this guy is till I am blue in the face, but I need to wait for this guy to retire or die before there is even a small chance for meaningful change in my Congressional district.",
"Congressional elections get a lot of coverage in State when they come up. But they do not get national coverage because people living Texas do not vote on the Senators in New York. \n\nThere is also rarely a lot of competition from our Congressional reps. Most people like their rep, they hate all the other States. ",
"I liken it to how a lot of Americans only watched football (soccer) when we're participating in the World Cup. No one cares really but it's a sure sign of American pride. The president is one person who we use to represent the US in its entirety. \nMaybe that's just a high thought though. ",
"Because the majority of the population has been tricked into viewing the POTUS as a \"king\" rather than simply an executive authority who presides over the military and foreign affairs. The ones who directly represent us are our representatives; and then our senators. They are the ones who are supposed to create legislation, not the POTUS. ",
"I think everyone here is thinking far too deeply about this when really it comes down to basic math.\n\nThere are 435 Congressional Districts with approx 700,000 people each.\n\nThere is 1 Presidential district, with approx 320,000,0000 people.\n\nUnlike in a parliamentary system, we vote for our district. Because of this, there are 435 (mostly non-competitive) races going on just for the house. This could mean there are 870 candidates running.\n\nThere is only 1 presidential election. There are only 2-4 candidates.\n\nJust as you know the biggest stars on your local sports team, and maybe the best player in the league. People will know their local representatives, and then the big star, meaning the nominee for the biggest office.\n",
"People don't know any better. They believe that POTUS holds more lawmaking power than that office actually does. POTUS is the face to the rest of the world, but all policy goes through the Houses. \n\nIf you are in a car wreck, which is going to get you more sympathy? When your face gets messed up, or when your internal organs are injured? ",
"the sad but true answer on this is that Congress holds much of the power. The President cannot do much unless Congress backs him/her. By keeping out of the spotlike, those that hold Congressional seats get to keep their seats forever (and keep the seats in their circle of family or friends for generations) and everybody blames the President for the countries issues...\n\nIt's a fantastic bit of misdirection that the majority of our population has fallen for hook, line, and sinker...",
"Really dumbed down version but many americans don't realise the even though the president is our leader they don't have that much power without the support of congress. \n\nAlso my former landlord is a state senator and he is a piece of shit who has recently been revelled that he hasn't payed taxes but there isn't anyone around who has the money or following to replace him.",
"Because, thanks to a particularly bad implementation of First Past The Post, US elections are a scam anyway. When it comes to the general public's influence on their country, there isn't much difference between either election. However, it's easier to milk the political tension during the presidential campaign. ",
"Not on the topic of president's, but prime ministers.\n\nIn Canada most Canadians will not vote for the prime minister. The prime minister has a seat in the house of commons and thus only people in his riding vote for him -- the PM is the leader of the party in power (we've never had a coalition government, presumably in that case the leader of the largest party in the coalition would be PM). Yet election coverage is all about the PM.\n\nWhy? I think part of it is that the face of the party has a huge say in direction and policy and leadership style. There's an element that these people set the tone. So even if you can't vote for the PM, you look at the representatives of these parties in your riding and not only their own record but also the direction that their party leader wants to take the party in. Some leaders tolerate dissent more readily than others, some have steep punishments for standing out of line. In my province, the last government (the NDP) has a bunch of the caucus come out and ask for a leadership race -- they correctly read that there wasn't faith in the premier's leadership and felt (maybe incorrectly, who knows) that going into the next election with a new leader would help them. These members of the legislature were removed from the caucus and removed from different committees. So it's in the voter's best interest to know what the party leader/representative is like.\n\nI suspect this is something that holds true to American politics. There's generally more leeway for members of congress to dissent, or at least it seems that way, when compared to the House of Commons; but it seems like it's still fair to see the President's role as having to do with setting the ship's course on these sort of things. ",
"Because people falsely believe that the president is powerful. \n\nTruth is, its congress who makes all the laws. They presidnet just says \"guys, work on X,Y,Z\". Congress then does all the work. They are the most powerful in truth. The President can get up there all they want and scream \" free tuition\", but its up to Congress to make it happen. They could make it happen at any point if they really wanted though. They also write terrible laws all the time. Its their laws that allow Trump to pay zero income tax and their decisions that led to high college costs ane their regulations that allowed for big pharma monoploies to be able to jack up prices. All this because people spend more time \"on the president\" rather thean their direct incumbents. You want change? You target congress, not the president.",
"There is also the lack of understanding of American politics. Your average American can't understand the difference between a U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, State Senator, and State Representative/Assembly Person. They can't understand the different levels of legislative government and the process as well. \n\nI work in state government and once talked about work to my uncle and how I deal with constituents. He had to ask me what constituents were. I also get calls from constituents asking why congress can't do this or can't do that, when, at the state level, I have no control or say in.",
"There are tons of good answers here, but the *real* answer is, they *should* be more important, but I honestly feel most citizens would rather bitch about the way things are than try to change them. If we did, more people would vote in local elections (shit, or vote in general) and we'd have freaking term limits for congress!",
"I honestly think it has to do with congress creating a convenient distraction. If people are always hyper focused on the president, it means they aren't paying attention to congress. And congress is where the actual power resides. So the more congress can shift focus onto the president, the less people will hold them accountable for what they do. ",
"Cause we are lazy idiots that are only interested in shit that gets jammed into our faces by the media. Not enough TV coverage on anything but the presidential election for anyone to care.",
"The presidential election is important because they enforce and write regulations with in the constraints of the laws. For example EPA regulations. \n\nSecond, they appoint Supreme Court Justices with approval of the Senate. This is a life time appointment that can alter the country for a generation.",
"And follow up question, why do a large number of Americans think voting is the maximum amount of political action they are willing to take...",
"I can only theorize that congressional and senate races are local, and the presidential is national, therefore it feels more importnt. But you're exactly right to ask.\n\nI'd suggest, don't just ask here. Get involved in your own community. Campaign, help out, but most importantly? Make sure people know its important to vote.\n\nGET OUT THE VOTE!!!",
"Because Americans are dummies, why else do you think their leaders have been taking advantage of them for the past 40 years. Even corporations joined in, it's too easy. ",
"Classic FUD.\n\nA little misdirection, throw in some patriotic pap and you, too, can rule a country.",
"Presidential election is like the Superbowl and congressional elections are the regular season games.",
"To quote the Wizard of Oz: \"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!\"\n\n(It's because that's where the real decision making happens, and congress doesn't need the public snooping around their business.)",
"The President is a figurehead for the entire nation. Congress isn't. Although congress makes the call on most issues, there are too many of them to cast a spotlight on, while the president can be an icon (or a scapegoat). \n\nPeople like blaming one person for a problem instead of admitting there is a systemic problem with the entire government. No one wants to have to actually do anything to make the kind of difference needed to fix the problems in government so it is easier to blame and put focus on the president (which makes the elections much more important to people).\n\nMost importantly (I think) is that the president is just 2 candidates (for the most part) and people still don't really learn everything about the person they vote for AND the opponent. If people don't even do this for the election with the least possible candidates, imagine how little they will want to learn about all the congressional candidates.",
"The Duality of being American, the desire to be better than the next guy without everyone knowing it.",
"As someone who use to work as a magician I know the answer to that. If I am waving my hand around, making a big show of it, that is because I want you to look at THIS hand and not see what I am doing with the OTHER hand.\n\nIt only takes one second.",
"People treat the office of President like Minor nobility and the President is seen as a sorta king. People are often interested in who wears the crown and not who has the power. ",
"What's the best way to find out more about candidates for Congress or Senate?",
"I think this can be attributed to a few things:\n\n1) Media incompetence\nThe media can't even cover meaningful issues on the 2 candidates due to eventually run for President; now imagine them trying to craft a meaningful dialogue about THOUSANDS of candidate, many of whom have 1/10000 of a history in the spotlight as our current candidates. Can you even name 10 topics that each candidate is passionate about? How about 10 things they are for, 10 things they are against, and 10 things they are promising to fix (specifically; i.e. no \"JOBS!\" answer) Despite 24/7 coverage of news, not a single outlet talks at all, in any detail, about actual policies, plans, and initiatives that the candidates want to carry out. It's kind of mind-numbing. Furthermore, with how much \"garbage\" news is out there (I.e. Buzzfeed articles with 0% validity, stupid memes, clickbait websites that don't have any facts/only opinions stated as facts, etc) it's really quite hard to determine where some of these stories even come from. Lastly, with the death of local newspapers en masse, we just don't have as much local coverage of... well, anything.\n\n2) Public ignorance.\nSee the above post. There are people who believe in Flat Earth theory. There are people who believe that all Republicans are inherently evil, and that all Democrats are inherently imbeciles. There are people who believe things simply because they can, despite no factual evidence of any kind. Consider how regularly our candidates flop on their opinions on a weekly basis, on camera, only to deny a stance they've held for years. Most people are simply unable/unwilling to keep up with all the lies, deception, and misinformation from 2 people; imagine trying to convince people to keep up with dozens of local candidates! Want to test the theory? Ask people about the following things, and see if any light bulbs pop off:\n\nTrans-Pacific Partnership\n\nEcuador and Chevron\n\nAutomation\n\nAleppo\n\nBerta Caceres\n\nJohn Ashe\n\nScotland Estates\n\nThe Crimea Penninsula\n\n\nYou probably won't get a lot of light bulbs. By the same token, try the following Buzzwords:\n\n\nRosie O'Donnell\n\nClinton Foundation\n\nBorder Wall\n\nChina\n\nEmail server\n\nISIS\n\nBenghazi\n\netc\n\nThe difference between what people THINK matters, and what actually matters is pretty staggering, and yet I'd be willing to bet that at least 7/10 Americans can't tell me much, if anything, about the top column.\n\n\n3) Voter apathy.\nMany voters simply haven't heard of their local candidates. You can attribute this to #1 and 2 technically, but even moreso, it's because many local candidates have never been heard of or made any effort to be discovered before election season. Could you name your local school's superintendent, or any of their policies? How about some initiatives from your Mayor? Who is on City Council where you live? Most people can't name that, and in many cases, these are the folks who (ultimately) end up becoming governors, representatives, senators, etc. \n\n4) Decline of debate quality\nThere was a time, believe it or not, when the debate actually seemed like a debate. People who were articulate actually were able to win elections solely for SOUNDING educated. Nowadays, the \"Debates\", if you can even call them that, are just pissing contests that come off a lot like \"NO I DIDN'T!\", \"YES YOU DID!\", \"NUH UH!\", \"UH HUH!\". Did you learn anything about your candidates in the last 6 debates? Do you feel like they answered questions well, or discussed their proposed policies and plans? Do you feel they stayed on subject, were moderated well, and were concise and to the point? No? Neither did anyone else.\n\n5) The Two Party System\nImagine if you knew that you were neither a Democrat, nor a Republican, yet also knew there would be no additional option to select. In my opinion, this contributed largely to #3, as people weren't being represented, and as such started going \"Well, I'm CLOSER to being a Democrat than a Republic, so I'll just vote \"D\" down the board. This problem has been further exacerbated by the willful neglect of third party candidates, such as Stein, Johnson, etc, by the media and political system. Furthermore, the combined lobbying efforts of these two parties can practically bury any attempt to breach into the field by simply buying more media time, more experts, etc to ensure that aspiring candidates are unseen, unheard, and unknown.\n\nIt's a messy problem that has arisen over decades of keeping voters uninformed and out of the loop. It's funny because transparency was a large issue many decades ago, but with the age of the internet, you would have expected that to have dissipated. Alas, instead of using it to inform ourselves, the 'net just becomes saturated with even more garbage, making it even more off-putting to really dig up dirt on your candidates accurately. ",
"Huge number of reasons, most of which already seem to be covered. What I'm not seeing covered, though, is how it reinforces the two-party system. By focusing entirely on a national election (for all the completely valid reasons that would motivate you to do so), there is also an avenue to have this be The Most Important Election Ever. I have heard that \"the stakes are too high\" for every election since I've been of voting age. All of the media attention, convenient downplay of the balance of power, and apparent apotheosis of the successful candidate, lead people to invest completely in one of the main two candidates, lest idk the wrong one gets into power. Even though the wrong one has gotten into power literally every election, since the dawn of time. It just depends on who you ask.\n\nThis is a great consequence for everyone involved who is already in a position of power. Both major parties get to keep their ties to productive businesses, those businesses don't need to branch out to try lobbying other, potentially hostile candidates, and the media has stories pretty much set in their lap on an hourly basis. This results in a positive feedback cycle, allowing power to continue to accumulate in the hands of those who already wield it.\n\nKeep in mind, I'm not putting this out there as some grand, sinister conspiracy. As one of the candidates said last night, \"that's called business\". It's just the way the system happened to evolve because it's a self-sustaining outcome, and while it's certainly being capitalized upon, it's hardly some clandestine action. I find it an undesirable state, and wish to fight it, but at the very least it's not an intentionally malicious system.",
"In my opinion, there is no one who is news-worthy in the eyes of the Media. It always comes down to what sells. If someone in congress is corrupt, then they may need to do something really extreme to get noticed. However, since there are two people who have so much controversy surrounding them who are running for president, the media thinks that they are the most profitable. ",
"This is an opinion. I think that many in the states thing the president has more power than they do. So they think the presidential election is by far the most important. But that isn't always the case. If the president is a democrat and the house and congress are majority republican then next to nothing will get done.",
"The real question should be why almost no attention is paid to state level and local elections. ",
"The President is one very significant person to keep account of as \"government\". I find that a shocking amount of people have NO idea who their senator or congressman is, on the state and even federal level. \n\n\nThe president is one person. easy to keep track of and pay attention to. \n\n",
"I agree and furthermore, when people vote for a congress person, over 80% vote for the incumbent. No research here............",
"Simple explanation: You know (of) people like Taylor Swift or Justin Timberlake right? Do you know any members of the band that play with them on tour? No, you don't.\n\nThe presidential candidates are the face of the bands The Democrats and The Republicans. The musicians behind them on stage are Congress, the Lead Guitarist is a different Senator every couple weeks. The candidates can give passionate speeches and great performances and interviews on their own, but the solo act only gets you so far and can get old. \n\nSo yeah, you see the band behind the front person, but you don't really care who they are, so nobody pays attention to them.\n\n",
"/u/spez \n\nWe can't have Subreddits like this continue to be default when the ignore their own rules \"because front page\"",
"Because there are 535 congressmen and senators. If I had to wade through 535 times this amount of shit to be \"patriotic\" I would fucking kill myself.",
"Most people think the president is analogous to a king (in terms of the power he wields), and that Congress should serve the king. So they don't really care if the presidency isn't up. ",
"I have gotten the feeling that congress is more important than the president. It seems they have more of an impact on our economy and laws in general. I wish more attention was given to congress. They may act more appropriately if there was a giant spotlight on them.",
"Its up to each individual state republican party organisation to decide how to pick delegates for the national convention. There is no legal requirement to hold a public vote or caucus, its just that most do.\n\nColorado decided to suspend their caucus and allow delegates to go to the convention unpledged. Since it looks like the convention will be an open one (with no candidate having a majority) all the other states delegates will switch to being unpledged after the first vote anyway\nThis is actually wrong in a number of ways.\n\nThe most glaring being that the GOP didn't\n\n\"decide to suspend their caucus and allow delegates to go to the convention unpledged. [sic] Since it looks like the convention will be an open one...\"\n\nThe GOP decided this LAST August. EVERYONE, including Trump, has known about this since LAST AUGUST. It's just getting a lot of play because the vote would have happened this week.\n\nThe Colorado GOP didn't make this decision because of the current GOP people running or how close the race is at all.\n\nThe Colorado GOP made this change because the national GOP said that all states had to lock the votes for whoever was the nominee nationally, regardless of how the vote went. This made CO angry, because it effectively said the vote didn't matter, and to draw attention to this anger, they canceled the vote to give the national GOP a black eye.\n\nSadly for Colorado, apparently the media is doing a terrible job of reporting this, and the black eye is falling on the CO GOP.\nHi x6ftundx,\n\nNicholas Morse here, Republican nominee for US House from Colorado's 2nd Congressional district. My comments are simply an observation of my experience over the past two months and are not endorsements for or against the process on behalf of myself, my campaign or the state party in any fashion.\n\nWhile the Colorado presidential voting system is cumbersome and not a direct democracy, it was a democratic representation of the voter populous through the caucus & assembly process.\n\nEvery delegate in the state had to run for a national delegate opening starting at the county caucus on March 1st, then through the county assembly afterwards, followed by the congressional assembly on Friday and the state convention on Saturday. Everyone who ran as a delegate at every level previously mentioned had to win a vote among all those in attendance at each level to move on to the next. Each delegate also had to state which presidential candidate they were running on behalf of or if they were unbound going to Cleveland. So, on March 1st you had each caucus location send (hypothetical) 100 delegates to county, each county then had to narrow those down to congressional, then state, & national. Along every step of the way, there were thousands of voters who attended these assemblies and voted on behalf of those attempting to go to the next level as a delegate.\n\nSo in the end, 34 people from across the state climbed the ladder in order to pledge a GOP convention vote towards a particular presidential candidate (to help get above 1,237) in Cleveland on behalf of the people who voted for them as they rose through the ranks.\n\nThis process was extremely democratic although it wasn't easily accessible. I (along with many others) have asked the state to return to a primary in 2018/2020 & beyond so those who are unable to attend can vote directly on candidates from home (mail) or at their local polling station and not be forced to sit in a middle school cafeteria for six hours and listen to 100 delegates give one minute speeches about why Ted Cruz is the anointed one or how Donald Trump is going to stop Apple Jacks from causing the roof of your mouth to bleed if elected President.\n\nBest Regards, Nicholas Morse _URL_0_\n\nPS - At my congressional assembly where I was nominated to the ballot my competitor & I took roughly six minutes to give our speeches to the crowd. The delegates attempting to move to the state convention the next day spent the next three hours giving 30 second speeches per person.\nRight now, you're in the primary part of your election process, where each party is choosing their nominee (who runs for president from their club). Even though it's part of the political process, the parties are independent and have their own rules. This means that individuals aren't all equally represented, and the parties kind of get to do what they want, based on what might work best for the party at the moment, and the people in charge of it.\n\nIt's not fair, but it's not illegal either, which sadly describes a lot of the American electoral process. You'll still get to vote in the election, but a lot of the decisions will have been made for you before that day.\n\nSorry I don't have anything more uplifting for you.\nThis is definitely the part people should be questioning. People are equating these two political parties as \"our government\" in their minds when they are in no way part of our representation. They are the brands that people rally behind and everyone has to slot into one or the other if they hope to be represented in ANY way, because those two brands are the only ones that are going to get any screen time.\n\nPeople are rightly upset at the way these caucuses are playing out because they know this is what determines who will be running for president on the main ballots and that if you aren't on the ballot, good luck.\n\nWe could have all written in votes for Vermin Supreme but no one does because they know it's pointless. That's the part that really irks me - we're expected to play along in this political meta-game of party vs party because if we don't our vote will not amount to anything because it CAN'T amount to anything. I'm perfectly fine throwing mine away on whoever (though I intend to look at my local candidates to try and find something worth while) but that's mostly because I have no say.\n\"In Mexico, one party has stolen every election since 1929. Unlike the U.S., where two parties have stolen every election since 1848.\" -P.J. O'Rourke\nWith Republicans possibly voting against the favoured nominee and Democrats fighting a vicious battle amongst themselves, that election is going to be a shitshow for the ages.\nTo add to this with a bit of historical context, it wasn't until the turn of the 20th century that US political parties begun to actually have primaries/caucuses for candidates. There was a big push by Teddy Roosevelt in the election of 1912 to get a system that used popular vote rather than political machines (for the Republican party in that case) to nominate a candidate.\nall the other states delegates will switch to being unpledged after the first vote anyway\n\nNot all other delegates, but a certain number of them. See this New York Times article titled \"How Trump Could Be Blocked at a Contested Republican Convention\" which has a great info-graphic that explains the process, and to the point says \"After the first round of voting, more than half of all delegates, from more than 30 states, become free.\" More delegates become un-bound in successive rounds of voting.\nLook! You get to choose which side of the coin gets to be the president. You don't get to pick the coin. You don't get to pick who is heads or who is tails.\nI get why someone would be unhappy that the primary process is un democratic, but is it really unfair? If I started the \"Reddit\" party, and wanted to put a candidate on the presidential ticket, why am I necessarily obligated to listen to what non-members say?\n\nThe real issue is the first-past-the-post system. If we had instant runoff voting, you wouldn't need primaries, because several candidates could run from each party.",
"The President appoints Justices, and they're also the talking head of the nation. I follow Presidential elections much closer than congressional, but my main focus is on State and local. I think most folks care more about the latter than congressional elections. ",
"It seems the more free people become the more they want to be ruled. I suspect because people take their own freedom for granted and disassociate from situation where other people lose theirs. I also think valuing and desiring freedom only emerges in the majority of people after they have completely lost it. I think it is a vicious circle.\n\nMore specifically, I don't believe Congress is as \"representative\" as they once where. I think we have too few congress person's representing too large of segments of the population. We need more representatives and a return to citizen representation instead of professional politicians. Technology today is more than capable of spreading out governance to a more representative democracy. Plus, this should make it harder or at least much more expensive for people to afford lobbying for influence.",
"because it's America's Next Top President this year. haven't you been watching? :p",
"I know you've gotten plenty of answers but I want to throw my two cents and address your question with two separate points. The presidential election in my humble opinion is far more important.\n\nFirst of all, congress has completely lost its capacity to do anything. Unless one party has the house and 60 seats in the senate it will continue to be a non-functioning branch of government. As a result of this gridlock the president has had to rely on executive powers to accomplish even the most minor of tasks. This stretch of power can be viewed as executive overreach by some while others will view it as the only way to maintain a functional government in the face of a completely dysfunction branch that can no longer be relied on to accomplish the most basic things (debt ceiling for example).\n\nSecond, and it shocks me that this has barely been mentioned, the next president will likely select the next Supreme Court justice. With the current court being a solid 4-4 split between liberal and conservative coalitions, the next nominee to the court is going to tip the scales. Until Justice Antonin Scalia's recent death, the court has held a pretty steady 5-4 conservative split for the last 30 years. The next person selected for the court is likely to determine whether we continue that trend for another 30 years or start a new one for just as long.\n\nSo in terms of which election is more important, the only way congress matters more than the presidency is if a single party could actually garner 60 seats in the senate along with control of the house, and since that's highly unlikely, the stakes of the presidential election are much higher.\n",
"People need a symbol and a simple answer to all of their complicated problems. The president acts as a director for the policy of the government, and in doing so acts as a symbol for what the people of the nation want. ",
"First, because many congressional races have a near-sure winner. Second, because the President is the most visible symbol of the nation, more than any individual congressperson.",
"Because there are 435 representatives and 100 senators that make up the legislative branch of the government. \n\nThere is one person that constitutes the executive branch.\n\nSo essentially, 1/3 of the government is divided among over 500 people. And one congressman or senator is relatively less important than the one man (or woman) that single handedly accounts for 1/3 of the government.\n\nWhen you get right down to it, any one of the nine Supreme Court justices are far more important than than any one congressman. ",
"#Short Answer: It's all a PsyOp to make the plebs feel like they actually have a voice (they dont).",
"Are you going to spend more time picking the CEO of your multi-trillion dollar company, or one of the shareholders?\n\nYour Congressperson gets one vote out of 435 and in essentially every case votes the way the party tells him or her to (because you can't be an expert on every issue and you trust your party leaders more than the other party's leaders).\n\nWhatever decision Congress makes the President then gets to vote on all by him or herself.\n\nWhich one are you more worried about getting right: 1/435 of the decision or absolute power to say yes or no.\n\n(In addition to ignoring the Senate, this also ignores the significant fact that the President runs the whole federal government, within certain constraints. Your Congressperson only runs his or her office staff, within certain constraints.)",
"There is no national vote in the United States. The closest thing to it is the 51 simultaneous votes for Electors to decide the next President of the United States. It is the only vote all Americans of voting age consider together. \n\nEvery other vote is a form of a local election. That California is choosing a senator is a big deal. But CA's senator has no more power than Delaware's or Wyoming's despite representing tens of millions more.\n\nOf the 33 senate races, maybe 6-8 are too close to predict. House races are dictated by districts which have largely been drawn to favor incumbents. The 60% Republican district will elect a republican. The 60% Democratic district will elect a democrat. ",
"For example, say you live in Kansas City, MO.\n\nWould you care about the senatorial race for the 6th district of Oregon? No\n\nWould you care about the gubernatorial race for any state besides Missouri? No\n\nYour local news should cover your local elections because the nation as a whole doesn't care about your local elections."
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c72amg | does a layer of dust on the leaves of a plant effect it's ability to photosynthesize at all? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c72amg/eli5_does_a_layer_of_dust_on_the_leaves_of_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"escj1c3"
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"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Yes, as dust on a window reduces the amount of light coming through the dust on the leaves reduces the light reaching the cells. Too much dust and the plant can't survive."
]
} | []
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[]
]
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||
1cledr | the recent vote on background checks for guns | I always thought there were background checks... was the vote for stricter background checks? And if the vote was in favor FOR background checks, why are democrats still complaining? Also, wouldn't background checks for guns be in violation of our second amendment rights? I mean, if a normal person for whatever petty crime can't get a gun legally, but a bona fide criminal can get a gun illegally... wouldn't background checks be a hindrance thus causing a normally law abiding citizen who may have made a dumb youthful mistake resort to illegally obtaining a gun? Or am I just completely wrong about everything. Please fill me in! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cledr/eli5_the_recent_vote_on_background_checks_for_guns/ | {
"a_id": [
"c9hq36i"
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3
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"text": [
"The bill would have made me a felon were I to go on vacation leaving my firearms locked in my gun safe, and a neighborhood kid came over once a day to feed my dogs and water my houseplants.\n\nThe law was bad and deserved to feel bad."
]
} | []
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| [
[]
]
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