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aq0r7c | how can you tell if the wine you’re drinking is “good” or “bad”? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aq0r7c/eli5_how_can_you_tell_if_the_wine_youre_drinking/ | {
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"People's sense of taste vary as much as their sense of sight. Not everyone can taste the same range of flavors. But other than that there's really no \"good\" or \"bad\". If you enjoy it you enjoy it. Typically aged wines are a little mellower from what I've heard, but even the experts have gotten duped by the cheap stuff. ",
"You just haven’t developed your taste yet, my family is in the wine business and my dad always hates when people ask him to pour something “good”.\n\nEveryone has different tastes, you just gotta find the wine you like to drink. If you enjoy drinking it, it’s good wine:)\n\nedit: unless you mean “bad” as in *gone bad*, like it got too hot or is corked or something. that’s just something you’ll learn how to assess over time ",
"Does it taste good? There is your answer",
"There's honestly no way to tell. You should try out different ones but enjoy what you enjoy. A lot of people that present themselves as experts really aren't. They just like to look smart. Here, watch this to get an idea\n_URL_0_\n\nAnd just enjoy whatever wine you want."
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24e940 | once an individual shies away from fast food and begins to eat a healthy diet, why is he or she turned off by the fast food he or she once craved? | I'm guessing this phenomena doesn't apply to everyone. However, I recently began a regimen of healthy diet and exercise after years of eating fast food or take out every night. Today, I watched a KFC commercial and I honestly felt a little queasy. Is there possibly a mental or physical reason for this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24e940/eli5once_an_individual_shies_away_from_fast_food/ | {
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"Physically, if you have recently eaten then naturally, you're satiated and wouldn't really want or require extra food. The sight of KFC wouldn't be appealing to you. \n\nMentally, you might be linking KFC to being 'Unhealthy' and the 'Unhealthy Lifestyle'. This is really a subjective question.. as millions of people go on diets but wish they *could* have KFC.\n\nPeople have argued that there are addictive substances in fast food especially in things like Coca-Cola, but there really is no hard evidence.",
"My own experience ...\nI've gone healthy, going on 2 years now. At the beginning, on occasion I would eat some of my former favorite foods. Invariably, I was sick as a dog, as my system had grown unaccustomed to the fatty/salty foods I used to eat. I now refer to this as \"aversion therapy\" to keep me on the straight and narrow. If I ever stray, I'm \"rewarded\" with stomach upset!"
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1qeohx | why can i see ir light on my phone camera, but not with my eyes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qeohx/eli5_why_can_i_see_ir_light_on_my_phone_camera/ | {
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"The phone camera's sensor can detect IR light, but your eyes cannot. The phone sensor reports everything it picks up as visible light though, so your display shifts the IR into the range visible to humans for display."
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1fyoqn | how does a life of heavy drinking lead to a red bulbous nose - the "classic" sign of alcoholism? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1fyoqn/eli5_how_does_a_life_of_heavy_drinking_lead_to_a/ | {
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"alcohol dilates the veins (they get bigger), that causes a drop in blood pressure, the heart beats harder to fill the new bigger veins. The bigger veins are now visible in the face, nose and eyes causing lots of redness. Over time my guess is the nose gets stuck.\n\nthe extra blood also causes a warm sensation as the core blood is warm. But this also tends to cool your core body temperature. So alcohol consumption can make your skin feel warm, but if you are hypothermic (low body temp) alcohol can kill you.",
"It doesn't always, but if you have roseacea, it can, especially in men. See W. C. Fields. It causes the classic response explained by /u/RandomExcess to be much, much worse. Don't Google it unless you're prepared. (I have roseacea, so did. I've regretted it ever since.)"
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1rhx3d | why are van gogh's paintings considered to be so good? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rhx3d/eli5_why_are_van_goghs_paintings_considered_to_be/ | {
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"Before van Gogh: only [this](_URL_1_) was considered art.\nAfter van Gogh: [this](_URL_2_) is also considered art.\n\nELY20 (explain like you're 20):\nBefore van Gogh, what mattered was the subject. The painting had to look like the object it was supposed to represent. An artist was only good when creating a variation on a subject matter.\nAfter van Gogh, the intent of the artist became more important. The painting no longer had to represent a specific object. Van Gogh is part of a larger move towards abstraction where the final painting is only the end-product of a longer process. The [Starry Night](_URL_0_) is a picture of a starry night and the way van Gogh felt before that scene, both at the same time. That is why the psychological aspect is so important in understanding his paintings. It would take the work of other great artists before full abstraction became recognized as a form of art.\n\nEdited: some typos, added the example of Starry Night and changed \"your\" for \"you're\". D'oh!",
"TL;DR: Van Gogh is considered good because he tricks you into thinking you are seeing a painting of a flower, when in reality you are looking at abstract brush strokes.\n\nLet's take his [Irises](_URL_2_) painting. The reason he is so considered to be so good is that the painting above generates inside of people the impression of seeing a field of Irises while not actually using all the forms and colors of an actual purple [Irises](_URL_3_). \n\nTo see where this started; painters at one point were basically cameras and someone like Martin Johnson Heade produced a painting called [Birds and flowers](_URL_1_). Then people like Monet started to question this dogma with paintings like [Nympheas](_URL_4_). When Van Gogh and other painters at his time came around they pushed these questions harder and with more rigor than those before. Following Van Gogh people like Picasso pushed this idea even further [Flowers in a Grey Jug and Wine-Glass with Spoon](_URL_0_). In all of these images you get the idea and feeling of a flower and that is what an artist does. Its not their job to reproduce a flower as it is seen. Their job is to make you -feel- like you saw THE FLOWER.\n\nEdit: I know not all of the above are actually honest to God paintings. Some are of other mediums."
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1k70dm | what is the difference between a celt and a gaul? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k70dm/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_a_celt_and_a/ | {
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"If you mean the ancient Gauls, then it works like this: *all Gauls were Celts, but not all Celts were Gauls.\n\nCeltic peoples lived all over Europe back then, from what is now Spain all the way east into Turkey. They were not in any sense a unified political entity, and went by different names depending on where they lived. Those tribes living in what is today France and northern Italy (lands the Romans called cis- and transalpine Gaul) were known as Gauls.\n\nSo it's sort of like Hispanic vs Cuban: Cubans are Hispanic, but most Hispanic people aren't Cubans.\n\nnote: it's entirely possible that the Romans included non Celtic peoples living in the same area under the label \"Gaul\" as well. But when I say they they were Celts, bear that in mind :)"
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26d39q | why do roller skates have such a negative response from people? | I personally think they're really cool but I get called a faggot wearing "fruit boots" whenever I ride them around here. They were the shit in the 90's so what happened? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26d39q/eli5_why_do_roller_skates_have_such_a_negative/ | {
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" > They were the shit in the 90's so what happened?\n\nThey stopped being cool. Instead, at least in the minds of the people calling you names, they became a negative. \n\nIt's fashion, I don't think anyone can really explain it. Opinion sways on what good looking things are. In the 70's flares were cool, wear them now and you look completely out of touch with modern life.",
"bikers and skateboarders happened",
"Your probably just not doing it right. Roller skating is still bitchin, but without a fanny pack and some cut off jean shorts you're just asking to be made fun of. Cruel world we live in. ",
"I don't know that it is considered negative still. New things just came along and other alternatives were more popular. When I was young all I did was roller blade / roller skate. Later scooters became a big thing, and I eventually decided skateboards were the cool thing. I also wouldn't take any negative connotation to fruit boot. I mean I used to say that as a skateboarder, but I also called myself and other skateboarders \"wood pushers\" it's just a name. \n\nAlso the other things gaining popularity can have a lot to do with media. For example, how many tony hawk games are there? How many skate games are there? Now how many rollerblading / rollerskating video games are there? I can think of agressive inline and jet set radio. The only scooter game I can think of is a razor scooter game on the N64. Also movies. Tons of skateboarding movies, not as many rollerblading / roller skating movies. ",
"I guarantee once you stop caring what people call you the other kids will stop giving you shit about it.\n\nUnless you're *actually* using skates rather than blades, in which case you'd better be at a disco or roller derby. (jk)",
"Fuck what's \"cool\" and what's not. Roll if you enjoy. Mostly, what follows rolling is always enjoyable ",
" > they were the shit in the 90s\n\nUhhh are you confusing roller skates with inline skates (roller blades)??",
"What places are you riding them around that are full of homophobes who hate roller skates?"
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370w1y | how do urine drug tests distinguish between illicit drugs and prescriptions? | I've had to do urine tests for employment a few times, and every time, I've been worried that my prescriptions would send off some kind of red flag. And I guess this is really two separate questions, firstly, how do the tests distinguish between street drugs and things that a layman would think might give a false positive (like a similar prescription or eating a bunch of poppy seeds), and how do they verify that medications that are frequently abused (e.g. ADD meds, anxiety meds, and painkillers) are in your system as a result of having a legitimate prescription? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/370w1y/eli5_how_do_urine_drug_tests_distinguish_between/ | {
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"Even a basic drug test isn't simply a +/- like a pregnancy test. They tell what category if any you test positive for. If it is a controlled prescription then you show them the prescription before you take the drug test. ",
"They don't, however, if the dirty UA can be proven with a prescription, employers could hire that individual upon discretion.... ",
"The simple answer is to the first question, they don't distinguish between them. A drug metabolite is a drug metabolite. But false positives are easy to deal with. You just take the test again the next day.\nThe answer to your second question, a job can't force you to produce a prescription for a drug, unless maybe they have a record of known felony drug charges on you. But if their was an issue, you would just show them the prescription anyway.\n\nDrug tests are a form of E.L.I.S.A (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) \n\nEnzymes are biological catalysts. A catalysts speeds up reactions. Each Enzyme is specific for a different substance.\n\nSo they have Enzymes that recognize the metabolites of each drug the test is designed to look for. \n\n\n",
"Have a prescription is really the only valid answer. We did a drug test at work and one woman tested positive for methamphetamines. We asked her to produce medical documentation saying it was legal and she couldn't. ",
"From what i know from the tests they did at my last job, they can't. It all comes up just the same. If something comes up and there is proof that you were prescribed it and on it within the bounds of the prescription then no harm to foul.",
"This is an extraordinarily complex issue. The urinalysis performed by employers is junk science and cannot differentiate between prescription drugs and illicit drugs. A GC/MS can detect everything, however, but is a very expensive test."
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1duhuz | why are some zits, regardless of size, extremely painful, while another bump of the same size can have no pain at all? | Edit: By bumps, I mean non-zits. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1duhuz/eli5_why_are_some_zits_regardless_of_size/ | {
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"Your skin does not actually feel pain at all points. It is possible to have a zit in a non-pain sensing area.\n\nThis is also why you can get a small nick and not feel it."
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1i5cv6 | how digital distribution for video games works. | I don't really understand this or physical distribution honestly. How is steam able to sell games so cheap? How is Greenmangaming able to sell things so cheap AND give a 20% off coupon a lot of the time? Are they just paying a fixed amount for the license to sell a game or are they required to sell at a certain price? I just am curious to know how this pricing works, and how distributors make any money off of stuff like the insane amount of Bioshock Infinite preorder bonuses, for example. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1i5cv6/eli5_how_digital_distribution_for_video_games/ | {
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"It is little different than how other digital goods are sold, whether that's ebooks or music.\n\nThe distributor and producer come to an agreement. The distributor takes a percentage cut for every sale. In some stores, like Apple's App Store, the content producer sets the price and the distributor sells on that price.\n\nEvery unit sold the producer gets the proceeds minus the distributors cut.\n\n > How is steam able to sell games so cheap?\n\nBecause digital distribution is much cheaper than physical distribution. The cost of transporting digital media is way cheaper than shipping boxes with DVDs in them. So they can lower those prices.\n\nAlso remember that for digital content sold online, it costs the company nothing to sell another copy. The cost of producing the game has already been spent, and selling one more copy doesn't cost them a thing.\n\nSo for older titles, which few people buy, it makes sense for them to sell at a lower and attractive price. A producer/distributor can keep lowering the price until the game gets sold.\n\nSo if a 2 year old title can only sell 10 copies a day at $30, but can sell 1000 copies a day at $5... then it makes sense to lower the price to maximize profit. \n\n > How do distributors make money off of stuff\n\nVolume. The Apple app store makes billions in revenue by taking a 30% cut. Many of the app store games are 99 cents... but the volume makes up for it."
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drvjdw | why do corrosive substances get stored in glass containers? | Wouldn’t they deteriorate with highly corrosive acids/bases like perchloric acid? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/drvjdw/eli5_why_do_corrosive_substances_get_stored_in/ | {
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"\"Corrosive\" is a non-scientific, catch-all term, and it can apply to just about anything. Salt water is corrosive. As with all things in chemistry, different substances react with some things but not others. Hydrofluoric acid, for example, will corrode glass, but not most plastics, whereas hydrochloric acid will not corrode glass. This means you can't store hydrofluoric acid in glass, but you can store hydrochloric acid in glass.\n\nGlass is mostly composed of silica (SiO2) and silicates (SiO3), which leads to strong covalent bonds between the silicon and oxygen atoms. Most acids can't break up these bonds, which makes glass inert to these substances. Metals are not good because they will react with acids to form metal salts and hydrogen gas.",
"Some can, some can't. Corrosive chemicals are highly reactive, but not necessarily to the same things. \n\nAcids don't deteriorate glass because they don't react with it. \n\nBases would eat through glass, so they must be stored in plastics they don't react with. \n\n\nGenerally, solvents like alcohols and more nasty organic solvents do fine stored in metal containers. Some are only compatible with certain kinds of plastic, and cannot be stored in others for long periods of time.\n\nReally, it comes down to whether or not the container will react with that particular chemical at that concentration.\n\nContainment difficulty is one of the big reasons we can't store antimatter, even if and when we make any of it."
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e1msy7 | what do people mean when they say some thing "is a right, not a priviledge," or vice versa? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e1msy7/eli5_what_do_people_mean_when_they_say_some_thing/ | {
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"A right = you can do, and you don't have to qualify for nor can it be revoked.\n\nA privelidge = you can do but it can be taken away, or you have to qualify for.",
"rights are uniform for everyone. privileges are only granted to certain people. so rights aren't restrictive, priviledges are.",
"A right is something that all people are entitled to regardless of whether they've worked for it, or otherwise - by whatever benchmark - \"deserve\" it... or not. \nA right is something everyone has (or should have) and under normal circumstances can/should not be taken away from you. \n\nA privilege is something that not everyone has, that only some get to have, and only because they've been given it, or they work for it. If you fail to meet or continue to meet the criteria to keep the privilege, it can be taken away from you. \n\nThe ability to go wherever you want whenever you want is a right.\n\n The ability to do so in a motor vehicle, on roads maintained by the government, in concert with millions of others, through adherence to commonly followed laws... that's a privilege. If you start driving like an asshat your license and/or vehicle can be taken away.",
"Right: a fundamental license to do something that can only be taken away under extreme circumstances. In the US, it is nearly impossible to legally take away someone's right to free speech. Even people that have committed the most heinous of crimes are allowed it.\n\nPrivilege: a license to do something that must be earned, or can relatively easily be legally taken away if it is abused. Driving a car is a privilege. It requires first obtaining a license, and that license can be suspended or revoked for (relatively) minor infractions (e.g. multiple speeding tickets)."
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1ey7xy | why don't planets travel around the sun in a circular trajectory? | Not only the sun, but there are examples of planets being very close to their star at one point and almost twice the distance at another. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ey7xy/eli5_why_dont_planets_travel_around_the_sun_in_a/ | {
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"Gravity doesn't behave like a solid string. It's more like a rubber band. The pull changes based on how far the planet is from the sun. The rubber stretches more at some times than at others. ",
"The common explanation involves figure skaters, and I will drag it out here with a minor change. Imagine that the sun is a hockey goalie spinning in a circle in the middle of the rink. He is a huge guy. Along comes a female skater who grabs his hand and is pulled into the turns that he is doing. \n\nThey both feel a pull on their arms as they continue making circles. Now imagine the hockey goalie has arms made of rubber. As he circles, the pull on his arms allows the rubber to stretch out and pull the girl around. She will make a pull-out, the arm will stretch, then he will pull in, and she will come closer to him. \n\nThat's what happens with planets in orbit of a star. The pull of the gravity is enough to keep the planet in orbit, but the planet keeps trying to pull away. ",
"I'll ELI5:\nPlanets travel around the sun in an elliptic trajectory. That's what the gravity law for two objects dictates.\n\nA circle is a particular type of ellipse, and it would happen only if particular conditions are met(mass of sun, distance to sun, initial speed).\n\nA circle is very possible: look at Saturn's rings and the trajectory of the moon.",
"So, consider a planet in orbit. It's got some energy from the fact that it's moving around, call that K. It's got some potential energy from being in a gravitational field, let's call that one G. So then the total energy T = K + G. This total can't change, because the planet and star aren't losing energy. So if one increases, the other has to decrease.\n\nNow imagine that it's in a perfectly circular orbit. This means both the energies, K and G, are fixed - because the speed and the distance from the star are constant.\n\nGive the planet a push. Now it's moving faster, so it'll move away from the star. But that means it has to increase it's gravitational energy (G goes up). The increase has to come from the kinetic energy, which means the planet slows down (K goes down). Slowing down means it's going to fall back closer to the star. Moving closer to the star means it's decreasing in gravitational potential energy (G goes back down) - energy that gets converted into kinetic energy (K goes back up). This means the planet speeds up, and the whole cycle begins over again.\n\nTLDR: Elliptical orbits mean that the energy oscillates between kinetic and gravitational energy. Circular orbits are when that doesn't happen. It's slightly difficult to damp 10^25 kg of stuff oscillating, especially in space."
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35ntpv | american football: how could a deflated football affect the outcome of the super bowl and why is tom brady being suspended? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35ntpv/eli5_american_football_how_could_a_deflated/ | {
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"It's not clear that it affected the outcome of the Super Bowl, but a deflated ball is a bit softer, so it's easier to throw and catch. That's especially true if it's cold or wet out - Tom Brady's suspension was for the AFC Championship specifically, where it was rainy. Each team has its own balls for when they're on offense, so one team tweaking the inflation can give them an advantage.\n\nBrady's being suspended because the NFL concluded that it was probable that he knew the balls were being deflated below the minimum pressure allowed.",
"It makes the ball easier to throw and catch, which gives a team an advantage over their competitor, since the NFL allows each team to supply their own balls while playing offense."
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20hjot | how is it that a tomato isn't poisonous despite being a member of the nightshade family? | And other plants that seem to do this, like the pepper (also part of the Solanceae family). Why is it that a family of plants can have plants that are poisonous and then others that aren't? Are they just part of a rough group of plants but in actuality do not have that much in common? As you can see, plant taxonomy is nowhere near my forte. I understand evolution but what exactly does a plant have to gain by not being poisonous like its fellow cousins? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20hjot/eli5_how_is_it_that_a_tomato_isnt_poisonous/ | {
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"Nightshade are a group of angiosperms (i.e. flowering plants) that fall under the taxonomic family of Solanaceae. This family includes many diverse species of plants such as tobacco, morning glory, potato, mandrake, and tomato. The \"poison\" that you refer to in your question are certain organic compounds call alkaloids. Different types of alkaloids have different effects on various species, and most are indeed used as poisonous defense mechanisms. The food groups of nightshades that humans consume contain a much less concentration of poisonous alkaloids. This makes sense from an evolutionary view of the symbiotic relationship between angiosperms and their biotic factors, or pollinators. Humans have played a major role in the evolution of many agricultural plants because we have acted as one of their main pollinators in our attempts to domesticate certain plants for food through artificial selection. For example, vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, collard greens, brussel sprouts, kale, and cabbage are all the result from humans cultivating and domesticating the wild mustard plant. It then seems reasonable that the parts of the agricultural nightshade plants that we consume today are ones that don't inherently contain alkaloids that are poisonous to us. Agricultural plants merely entice humans to consume them for energy as a way to further populate their species through our attempts at domestication. We are a slave to them as much as they are a slave to us. We're actually probably more so a slave to them. "
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4nd3tf | why are barns red? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nd3tf/eli5_why_are_barns_red/ | {
"a_id": [
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Paint used to be expensive, so farmers found a way to make their own protective paint using milk and iron oxide found in natural red clay. This results in the red color we associate with barns.\n\n",
"It's tradition at this point, but the origins have to do with cost and practicality. Red paint is easily made from iron oxide, milk protein, and linseed oil which are all materials relatively easily accessible to the average farmer. The paint lasts a long time, helps to prevent rot, and keeps the buildings warmer in the winter than bare wood."
]
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[],
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||
6000es | why goverments just don't take fingerprints when issuing ids? | I mean it's logical. You can catch criminals quickly and it's easy identification so no Joe Does | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6000es/eli5_why_goverments_just_dont_take_fingerprints/ | {
"a_id": [
"df2edxx",
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"score": [
16,
3,
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"text": [
"Why not a DNA sample as well? A few hair follicles? Blood sample?\n\nThe crux of the issue is your 4th amendment and right to privacy. There is no logical reason that you should have to provide any of this to be allowed to utilize public roadways and therefore it is a violation of your rights to collect this information without cause or warrant",
"Many people are not very comfortable with giving the government such a huge database of bio-metrics. Could it help solve some crimes? Sure. But it might also be abused. \n\n(Though even if we had everybody's fingerprints on file, there'd still be John/Jane Does. Not all of them are exactly found in a... fleshy state.)",
"Right to privacy, at least in the US, also because most people don't want it. You think how it can used to catch criminals, but it can also be used by the government against you for things not a crime and allows them some ability to monitor your movements like a Big Brother state. Not surprisingly, most people don't like that idea."
]
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[],
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31pzww | why is it that alot of people seem to feel the most comfortable with their leg hiked up on a person/pillow? | As im lying here trying to fall asleep, I grabbed my pillow to put between my legs. I can't seem to fall asleep without a pillow between my legs, or else without one of my legs being hiked up to nearly my stomach. I actually know a lot of people the same way. Why is it that a lot of people feel the most comfortable with their leg hiked up on a person/pillow? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31pzww/eli5_why_is_it_that_alot_of_people_seem_to_feel/ | {
"a_id": [
"cq3vv1q"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Because its comfortable. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
|
40a47w | why do we measure weight and mass with the same unit (kg or g) when they are different things? | Maybe I'm just going crazy, or I'm really dumb, but how is this possible? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40a47w/eli5_why_do_we_measure_weight_and_mass_with_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"cysmz03"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"We do it on Earth because it is simple and familiar. Our numbers are consistent with what we experience on earth.\n\nGrams are a measurement of mass, but *Newtons* are a better measurement of weight. Basically, \"weight\" would be how much force a given amount of mass will exert in a given environment. So, in a no gravity situation, a thing has no weight but it does have mass. When that mass comes into contact with gravity, it has weight in relation to the gravity source.\n\nLong story short, we use the term weight and mass to mean the same thing on earth because it's easy shorthand but they aren't technically the same thing.\n\nHope that helps."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
|
8hkjoh | is there other factors that limits the “resolution” of a tattoo than the skill of the artist ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8hkjoh/eli5_is_there_other_factors_that_limits_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"dykm7n0"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"The needle itself is another limiting factor - lines can only be so sharp because needles can be only so thin."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
1vdxlm | why don't people who take adderall or other amphetamines for add/adhd experience typical addiction/withdrawal symptoms like typical "chronic" users? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vdxlm/eli5_why_dont_people_who_take_adderall_or_other/ | {
"a_id": [
"cer9vit"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Actually, they would, if they stopped taking the drug overnight. Usually, when doctors want to take a patient off of Adderall, they wean them off, stepping down the dosage slowly over weeks or months until the body can function again without them.\n\nMost drugs like this explicitly state \"Don't stop taking this unless directed to by a medical professional\""
]
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| []
| [
[]
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|
||
7w4986 | why is it easier to talk when we move hands? | I see it all the time during speeches. I noticed I was doing it the other day and it made my flow of speech better. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7w4986/eli5_why_is_it_easier_to_talk_when_we_move_hands/ | {
"a_id": [
"dtxelqy",
"dtxfdml"
],
"score": [
40,
5
],
"text": [
"Words are linguistically representative of concepts, but their range of meaning is limited. You can get a lot of information from things like tone and emphasis (the audible equivalent of \"reading between the lines\"), but body language adds yet another level of interpretation. For people with the subconscious desire to be understood with specificity and precision, making hand motions and facial expressions is a natural extension of the communication process.\n\nLet me make it even simpler: you know when you comment on something in a sarcastic way and someone overreacts in a reply, not realizing that you're not really angry or upset? Imagine how much easier it would be if someone was listening to you speak instead of reading text in their own assumed tone. Hand motions and facial expressions are exactly that, but one level higher. You feel like it's \"easier\" to talk because you're using even more tools to make your communication clear, and you feel more comfortable and confident that you're being understood. \n\nAnd you're right - most of the time, you are being understood better when you use the right words, the right tone, the right emphasis, and the right body language.",
"It's mostly because you, specifically, learned to speak with your hands when you were growing up. It's a cultural thing, not an adamant human behavior. Some cultures do it a little, some do it a lot, some don't do it at all, and each gesture means something specific to each culture, even if you aren't aware of that specific meaning you'll still find that you're using it correctly.\n\nWhen two cultures meet that use gestures differently, or one uses them and the other doesn't, problems in communication can occur. As an example, pointing to things can be considered rude in Chinese or Indonesia, but it's perfectly normal to do that in the USA. "
]
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[],
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1kmdt1 | why is everything so cheap in usa compared to scandinavia? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kmdt1/eli5why_is_everything_so_cheap_in_usa_compared_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"cbqea2t"
],
"score": [
10
],
"text": [
"Costs of imports including both transportation costs, duties and the like, sales tax, higher wages for workers, more stringent laws about what can or can't be in food/products, etc."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
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|
||
7yl8td | how does artificial rainmaking work? | It just rained today and people were saying that the government made it artificially to clean the air. I searched online and it said something about salt powder, but I don't quite grasp it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7yl8td/eli5_how_does_artificial_rainmaking_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"duhis63",
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"text": [
"Cloud seeding is usually the term applied to this sort of practice, whereby a plane will go up higher than the clouds and dump a load of something or other on the cloud below to increase its fertility and make it rain out. As far as I know this is only possible with clouds that already exist, it's just sort of beefing them up a bit and encouraging them to rain. Specific substances like silver iodide, potassium iodide, or increasingly sea salt are used which encourage the attraction of water molecules. No new water is being generated, the existing cloud meant that the air here was H₂O saturated anyway, the process is just giving particles (with chemical properties that make them particularly good for the purpose) to act as condensation nuclei for raindrops to form. I think it's most commonly carried out at airports where they remove fog by forcing it to rain out. \n\n\nYou could put cloud seeding under the general heading of geoengineering. ",
"Well first of all, the government doesn't influence the weather. people who say stuff like this are often conspiracy nuts, talking about \"chemtrails\", aka the trails of condensation airplanes leave behind.\n\nhowever, there have been experiments and it is possible to influence clouds, that contain a lot of water to make it rain prematurely. the process is called [cloud seeding](_URL_0_). Simply put: you got all that water floating around up in the cloud in very tiny particles (tiny enough to float). when cloud seeding, you introduce other particles into the cloud (e.g. salt powder and/or dry ice if you want snow) that attract the tiny water particles and combine them into bigger water particles. once these are big enough, they can no longer float and fall down to earth as rain. it's actually a physical process, not chemistry."
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding"
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1gwml6 | why are americans so un-trusting of their government? | Or is it just reddit that's skewing my opinion? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gwml6/eli5_why_are_americans_so_untrusting_of_their/ | {
"a_id": [
"caojk38",
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"text": [
"Because they're incompetent, corrupt, and untrustworthy.\n\nMost of us don't think the government's actually out to do us harm, but the system is so poisoned by money and power that you'd be dumb to really trust them either.",
"Because it's basically an institution perpetuating socio-political war between two factions and has nothing to do with governing the country anymore. You just show up, get paid, talk shit about whatever party you don't belong too, go home, and do it again the next day.",
"The entire American system of government is founded on the idea of limited government. Government in American society has always been treated as suspect and a necessary evil since its revolution from the UK. It's very much deeply ingrained into the culture of America. News stories that tell of Government abuses only further enforce a widely held belief among Americans. ",
"I think it's just reddit. The majority of the population gets its News from TV.",
"I don't know if I'd call it un-trusting, I would say its more of the fact that in recent years especially, the Government of the USA hasn't exactly been forthright or very good at doing the job appointed to them.\n\nThey seem to have really taken their own direction as well in what they want to do, and although we are a representative democracy, they only seem to listen to those waving the most money at them.\n\nThis increases the frustration of the average citizen, although in some ways the average citizen is to blame, since they do elect and seem to send most of the same people to Washington, although the system does allow for that as well simply because we aren't really given many choices.\n\nAnd thats probably the biggest issue of all, we're being led down the road we're being lead down, and we really can't do much about it but scream and yell and hope our \"representatives\" listen. But they seem to prefer bickering between themselves and doing what they feel is right, not what the country or public opinion does.\n\n"
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80zz41 | how do bomb disposal teams decide which wire to cut on a bomb and how do they pinpoint where a bomb is? | I’m referencing towards “The Hurt Locker” film. The scene where Sgt. James finds one bomb which leads to several other bombs, how did he know the first one was there and know which wire to cut? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/80zz41/eli5_how_do_bomb_disposal_teams_decide_which_wire/ | {
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"text": [
"Ninety percent of the time, they find a bomb the same way non-explosive-ordnance-disposal (EOD) guys do - someone sees a loose piece of trash that seems suspicious, someone just *said* something to a passing patrol, or there are signs that something's been buried - loose dirt, suspicious tracks, etc. Often, there are only so many places to put an explosive in such a way that they'll be useful - along convoy routes, in areas where troops are passing by somewhat regularly, etc., and so, upon approaching this sort of an area, the guys trying not to get blown up are going to be eyeing every dead animal, trash pile, upturned patch of dirt, and so on with extra wariness.\n\nIn some of the less hospitable portions of the Middle East especially, the bomb isn't on a timer like you'd see in a Bond film - a lot of times it's just an old land mine someone found in an old Soviet dump, which has its own set of drawbacks - maybe it needs a certain amount of pressure, maybe it's unreliable and corroded, maybe it's only going to go off if something large and metal drives over it - or there's a simple circuit connected to an antenna. The latter are more common then you'd think, and they require someone watching the bomb's location with a cell phone to actually detonate. So if a patrol sees someone eyeing the area who's not got a good reason already to be doing so... well, see above: it's a pretty good indicator.\n\nAnd most of the time, there's no particular rush after the thing's been spotted - the troops are pulled back, civilians are warned off the area, and people are posted at a safe distance to redirect traffic. There's no sense risking someone - a very well-trained and in-demand someone, to boot - to go in and cut wires and the like. Nine times out of ten, it's a simple matter of just blowing the thing from a safe distance - send a little robot in to place a charge and press the button when it wheels merrily away, toss an explosive on top of it and light the fuse, and so on. These aren't bombs in the sense of old WWII bunker-busters; if you know it's there, it's just easier, faster and safer to get anyone and anything out of the likely blast radius, back up a little more, and blow the thing up - most likely, it won't have an effective casualty radius of more than few meters anyway, and the end result is just a hole in the road and the EOD guys waddling away to their next date with destiny. ",
"That's movie nonsense. Bomb disposal is not done by a guy running up to it and trying to decide between the red and the green wire. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nIn most cases, bomb disposal involves either trying to neutralize the electronics by dousing it in water or detonating the bomb in a controlled fashion. ",
"Cutting wires to defuse bombs is something that almost never happen in real life. There could be a number of different booby traps and failsafes in a bomb that you would not know about. Defusing bombs only happen when the design of the bomb is fully known and the cost of blowing it up on site is too high. Defusing is more common in wartimes due to these factors. However even during a war with known bomb designs defusing is a dangerous task.\n\nA bomb have two main components. There is an explosive and a trigger mechanism. These are connected with a detonator, either embedded in the explosives or connected with a fuse. If you cut the wire or fuse connecting the trigger and the explosives then the bomb is not able to go off. That is unless there is a secondary trigger hidden in the explosives or if there are several detonators and the trigger mechanism monitors each one of them to detect when they are being cut and detonates the bomb or if the wires between the trigger and explosives are unaccessible. There are also attacks that works directly on the triggering mechanism. Things like disconnecting the power, removing the trigger switch or otherwise disable the trigger mechanism might work in certain cases. Something that is sometimes attempted is to use explosives to cut multiple wires at once or destroy the trigger mechanism without causing the main charge of the bomb to go off. However this have a big chance of either detonating the bomb directly or not defusing it causing it to go off on its own. So it is usually done as a last attempt when you are planning on blowing it up in place anyway.",
"Btw, there was/is a TV show that followed around a bomb squad in the Middle East. They’d literally drive around looking for IED’s on roads in specialized vehicles. Sometimes they’d cut a wire, sometimes they’d just blow things up. \n\nThe show was far more entertaining and intriguing then it should have been. \n\nHere’s a link if you’re interested. \n\n_URL_0_"
]
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2a07p5 | why do we have to swallow? | When we drink water, we have to physically swallow. Why is it that we have to? Why doesn't water just flow from our mouth to our stomach right away? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a07p5/eli5_why_do_we_have_to_swallow/ | {
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"text": [
"It's very nice to be able to separate what goes into our stomach and lungs since we use the same way in.\n\nWe have something called the [\"epiglottis\"](_URL_0_) that closes of the way to the lungs (\"trachea\" in the illustration) when we need to get something into our stomach via the \"esophagus\" or \"foodpipe\"",
"Because there are two different possible destinations for things going down our throats. Our stomach, and our lungs. When you swallow, you are voluntarily closing off one of the routes and directing things into your stomach, as opposed to your lungs. If you didn't swallow, you would likely pour a bunch of water into your lungs.",
"Just as others have stated there are two possible destinations for things in our throat: into our lungs or into our stomachs. The airway is an open tube at all times. The esophagus, which is the tube that leads to the stomach, is closed unless you are swallowing. Speaking simply, when we swallow a\nmuscle pulls the top part of the esophagus open so food goes into our stomachs. Our airway simultaneously closes itself off when the epiglottis (small flap like structure) covers the top of the airway. If you didn't actually swallow, the drink would not be able to get into the esophagus because the esophagus would still be closed. The drink would instead go into the only place it can...your uncovered airway."
]
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"http://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/663/flashcards/314663/jpg/epiglottis1333241445407.jpg"
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4616hr | how can mayonnaise sit on a shelf but once you open it, it must be refrigerated or else? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4616hr/eli5_how_can_mayonnaise_sit_on_a_shelf_but_once/ | {
"a_id": [
"d01mzpi",
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"text": [
"Because it's been contaminated as soon as you open the lid. Refrigerating it will lengthen its shelf life. You could leave it out but it won't stay good as long. The fridge slows the growth of bacteria because of cool temperature. Mayo has eggs and oils in it that go bad.",
"Its jarred in a sterile environment. However your kitchen is not a sterile environment, so the second you open it, its contaminated. Especially if your sticking spoons and knives in it. Mayo is a perfect environment for bacteria so it goes bad quickly after its been opened. Refrigerating it greatly lengthens its lifespan after its been opened."
]
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7kpmv2 | what's the difference between an anti-hero and a villain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7kpmv2/eli5whats_the_difference_between_an_antihero_and/ | {
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"text": [
"A villain is an inherently bad or evil character. He exists to do bad things, that is his goal.\n\nAn anti-hero is someone who is not inherently a \"good guy\" - he does not have \"heroic\" traits, he might not even have good morals. An example of that might be a drug dealer (immoral and engaged in illegal activities that hurt people for the sake of money) who discovers that a rival gang is selling a dangerous drug that is killing people and drawing the attention of the cops. He sets out to destroy that gang - in the process saving the lives of those who would have taken the drug, even though he might have only done it for the sake of protecting his territory.\n\nA ... less drastic example.\n\nDarth Vader in Star Wars is a villain - he serves an evil emperor and kills people to maintain an iron rule over the galaxy.\nHan Solo is a type of anti-hero - he's a self-serving galactic smuggler who really only signs up to help out Luke and Obi Wan for some money. ",
"An anti-hero is a protagonist -- the main character whom you want to win -- even though he lacks some qualities of a hero and is in many ways not a good person.\n\nA villain is an antagonist -- the character you want to lose, because he opposes the main character. Typically evil, but not always.",
"An antihero is a person who the audience or reader is supposed to identify with or support as a protagonist, but who doesn't have typical heroic qualities. Usually they're either doing the right thing for the wrong reasons or they're doing bad things for the greater good, whereas a typical hero is just doing the right thing. Think of The Godfather - the main characters are criminals and murderers, but we empathize with them and their situations, because they have some good motivations along with the bad. \n\nA villain is just a villain - they're the bad guy, they're the obstacle in the hero's way, and the audience or reader is not meant to support them, though they may have some empathy built in. "
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46482r | in american football, when the kicker kicks the ball for the other team to receive, why they sometimes catch the ball and run it, sometimes let it fall, and sometimes catch it and take a knee? | I'm a casual football fan- mostly high school games- and I've never been able to make sense of why they do one thing versus another. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/46482r/eli5_in_american_football_when_the_kicker_kicks/ | {
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"text": [
"They'll run it if they think they can gain ground.\n\nIf they don't think they'll gain any ground, they'll call a \"fair catch\" by signaling with thier arm.\n\nThis is basically saying \"don't tackle me. I'm not going to run the ball anywhere. We agree to start here.\"\n\nTaking a knee is for when there's a turnover, and the ball is kicked into, and caught in the endzone.\n\nThe person takes a knee. It's kind of like a \"fair catch\", only they'll start on thier 20 yard line. They'll do this if they think they won't be able to get past the 20 yard line if they run it.",
"It depends on the situation on the field. If they let it fall there is zero chance for a fumble and the returning team gets the ball. If they wave for a fair catch they cannot be tackled and have to take a knee but if they drop the catch it is a fumble. Catching and running gives the best chance to get farther down the field but is the most risky if the opposing team is close to the punt returner.",
"There are two situations you could be referring to. And the odds are if you're confused it's because you're conflating the two. There are *PUNTS* and *KICKOFFS*.\n\n* A *Punt* is when the team with the ball is on it's fourth down, and rather than risk turning the ball over to the other team after their next play, they opt to punt it back to the other team instead. The ball will end up back an additional 30-40 yards, but it'll end up in the other team's possession. The offensive team snaps the ball back to a guy standing behind the line (the punter), [he catches the ball, drops is from chest-height, and then kicks it downfield.](_URL_0_)\n\n* A *Kickoff* is when the offensive team has just scored, either by touchdown or field goal, and now the ball goes to the other team. They put the ball on a tee at the 35-yard line, and a guy standing about 15 yards behind the ball (the kicker), [takes a running start and kicks it as far as he can down the field.](_URL_1_)\n\nWhy am I making this distinction? Because *the rules of football differ depending on which play is being run*. Specifically they differ on what happens if nobody from the other team touches the ball during a punt or a kickoff. If nobody touches the ball during a *Punt*, the ball eventually comes to a stop. At that point the play is whistled *dead* and the ball's awarded to the receiving team at the spot the ball stopped moving.\n\nIf nobody touches the ball during a *Kickoff*, the ball remains live. In fact, if a member of the **KICKING TEAM** grabs the ball, (subject to certain rules, that go beyond an ELI5) then they get the ball! So a member of the receiving team really needs to grab the ball!\n\nSo with that in mind, here are the decisions to be made:\n\n**DURING A PUNT**\n\n* *Punt Into the End Zone* - If the punt goes very deep, like past the receiving team's ten yard line, then it's in real danger of going into the end zone. If it does, then the receiving team is awarded the ball on the 20 yard line. So the punt returner (the guy who's job it is to catch the punt) will often just let the ball drop & bounce, hoping it goes into the end zone and they can get the ball on the 20 without a fuss. This is a good deal for the receiving team: If the ball would have been caught at the 5, and you offered them a guaranteed 15-yard return with a guarantee of nothing bad (fumbles, injuries, etc...) happening, they'd sign up.\n\n* *Punt Fair Caught* - If the punt goes very **HIGH**, and it's in no danger of going into the end zone, then often it gets fair caught. It's very high, so it hangs up there a while, giving the punting team plenty of time for their guys to get downfield right next to the returner. And they're getting all set to line up and take the guy's head off. To avoid this the punt returner waves his arms like he's flagging a passing car, and then catches the punt where it's going to first hit the ground. The opposing team isn't allowed to touch him but he's not allowed to run with the ball. Since he probably would've gotten obliterated the moment he caught the ball (and maybe something bad happens - fumble, injury, etc...), this isn't a bad deal.\n\n* *Punt Allowed To Bounce* - Sometimes the returner doesn't have a good play to make, either a fair catch or a return, so instead he just stays out of the way and the punt bounces. Mostly it bounces forward (good for the punting team) but sometimes backwards. It **is**, after all, an oddly shaped ball. Eventually the ball stops moving and it is awarded to the receiving team at the spot it stops moving. Or, if the punting team touches it, it stops there at that spot.\n\n* *Punt Returned* - Sometimes the returner catches the ball and runs it back.\n\n**DURING A KICKOFF**\n\n* *Kickoff Into the End Zone* - If the kickoff ends up in the end zone, the ball still needs to be fielded by the receiving team. But once they do the returner can \"take a knee\" and the ball is advanced to the 20 yard line, just like a punt into the end zone.\n\n* *Kickoff THROUGH The End Zone* - This is the exact same result, only no kneel-down because it's impossible to field the ball in the field of play.\n\n* *Kickoff Returned* - This is the only realistic other outcome.\n\nDuring a kickoff there is no fair catch. But that's mostly because the defenders have a much longer way to run to get to the guy catching the ball during kickoffs, so there's less need to protect the guy. And they never let the kickoff bounce, or if they do, they pick it up ASAP, because a kickoff is fair game for either team."
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4g3nzq | why do we sometimes taste blood when we see we're bleeding? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4g3nzq/eli5_why_do_we_sometimes_taste_blood_when_we_see/ | {
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"Do we? I've never experienced that. Maybe it's some kind of mind-trick thing.",
"Its just memory recall based on what you are currently seeing...Just like when you look at something on a restaurant menu, you can envision what something will taste like...obviously a bit odd with blood, but same idea."
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3btwbj | what does putting chalk on my pool stick actually do? and is it stupid not to use it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3btwbj/eli5_what_does_putting_chalk_on_my_pool_stick/ | {
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"You chalk the tip so that when it makes contact with the ball the ball is sent in the direction of the cue. The chalk adds grip to help with the aiming of the ball\n\nTry using a cue with no chalk. You will mis-hit the ball a LOT, and it'll make a horrible sound and go flying off in the other direction away from its target.",
"In addition to preventing the tip of the cue from slipping, you can also chalk your bridge hand to help the cue slide through your fingers easier. In either case, you won't need to be told to use it. You'll know.",
"Chalk lets the cue tip have more friction when it comes in contact with the cue ball. The currently highest rated post is sort of incorrect. The chalk doesn't help at all when striking the cue ball in its center. But, the chalk helps enormously when hitting a cue ball above center (follow), below center (draw) or left or right (English). With no chalk you can miscue when hitting off center. Chalk helps when it's off center. \n\nEdit; change currently to formerly. Thanks for the up votes!"
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497br3 | when film earnings are being calculated, especially big releases that break all sorts of "biggest opening weekend" and such, is inflation taken into account when comparing these numbers to older films? | With cinema ticket prices being more than they were 10-20 years ago etc. does this effect the final numbers? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/497br3/eli5_when_film_earnings_are_being_calculated/ | {
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"It depends on what source you're looking at.\n\nUsually when they're comparing box office sales for movies, they'll peg them to dollars in the same year so they're meaningful. \n\nBut you could be reading an article that said \"Star Wars opened with $X, more than any other film that year\", and that context doesn't require a conversion because it's not really comparing the given number to one from a different year. ",
"The only reason that films keep breaking records all the time is because ticket prices have been going up over the last few decades. If you look at how many people went to see 'Gone With The Wind', you'll see newer films won't come close to selling that many tickets, even though they make more money.\n\nBoxOfficeMojo estimates that Gone With the Wind sold 202 million tickets domestically, while Avatar sold 97 million.\n\nBest-selling movies in America adjusted for inflation: _URL_0_\nSadly couldn't find a worldwide version."
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5rawj0 | how did the culture of "work before life" start in america? | Whenever I read about work culture in many European countries, the culture is you go to work, you work, you come home, and don't do anything work-related until the next work day. That's *your* time to live *your* life. Plus they have SO much more vacation and paid-leave days because they realize people have lives outside of work, which matters a lot more to them.
In the US, people will, or are sometimes forced, to work 10-12 hour days. Some are expected to be able to respond to email and take calls into the evening or night. On top of it, there is no minimum paid leave because of this work-before-life culture.
How did work become such a priority? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rawj0/eli5_how_did_the_culture_of_work_before_life/ | {
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"(1) Back in the day, your work was your life. If you didn't work (eg on a farm) you would die.\n\n(2) America was founded largely on a Calvinist doctrine some people call the \"Protestant Work Ethic.\" This idea holds that work, discipline and frugality are a result of a person's salvation in the Protestant faith. In this religion, hard work is more important than rituals like attending mass, receiving communion, and other \"Catholic\" ideas.\n\n(3) Partly due to these influences and partly due to the cut-throat nature of capitalism, America developed an idea of hyper-competitiveness. We routinely reject social safety nets like welfare programs, with the expectation that if people just \"work harder\" they will achieve success.\n\n(4) Over the last thirty years or so, workers have been getting screwed over by government and business owners. Business owners increasingly treat employees as disposable and try to pay the bare minimum in wages and benefits. In past generations, a 9-to-5 job for an unskilled worker was still enough to make a good living. This is no longer true, and a LOT of people in America still don't acknowledge that the labor situation is very different from the pre-Reagan era."
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4pc7uc | ive always wondered what happened to the ethnically roman people since the fall of the roman empire? are they the modern day italians now or what? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4pc7uc/eli5ive_always_wondered_what_happened_to_the/ | {
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"\"Roman\" isn't really an ethnic group per-se... \"Roman\" is basically a subset of \"Italian\" which happens to originate from the city-state (and eventual empire) of Rome...\n\nSo yeah, the Romans are still (mostly) in the same place they always were - Italy. Though a lot of that Roman genetics got spread all over the place by the Roman army, and the Roman citizens who traveled to the edge of the empire.",
"Many of the Romans left today's Italy for points east when Constantine moved the capitol of the empire to Constantinople, so to today's Greece, Turkey, Syria, the Levant. \n\nThe current Italians are a mix of the original inhabitants, Greeks, various Germanic groups and some Semites."
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9lrfve | if oceans are salty and rivers are connected to oceans, how come rivers aren't salty? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9lrfve/eli5_if_oceans_are_salty_and_rivers_are_connected/ | {
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"Because the water only flows *toward* the ocean, so there's no path for the salt to move backward up the river.",
"oceans are salty because the water's constantly moving and breaking down rocks to make salt but ultimately stays where it is so it can absorb it. rivers come from rain and constantly flows so even if it makes salt the salt is immediately carries away in so small an amount that its not noticeable ",
"Rivers are salty it is just that the salt content is so low that it is hardly noticeable, the oceans concentrate the salt from the rivers - _URL_0_"
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26z0dj | what exactly would have to happen in order for a man-built artificial intelligence to be considered "alive"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26z0dj/eli5_what_exactly_would_have_to_happen_in_order/ | {
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"Don't know, the definition of alive is very vague as is. People still argue about whether viruses are 'alive' or not.\n\nI don't know what it would take for me to truly believe it's alive, I don't even think I would know it when I saw it. It's exciting isn't it.\n\nI once read (I have no idea where, but if somebody knows the source please let me know! And I may not remember it perfect):\n\n > the day that a computer lies to protect somebody's feelings is the day we have true artificial intelligence.\n\n(That doesn't sound perfect but it is close enough!)",
"It would have to be able to communicate and learn, in layman's terms.",
"A nice philosophical question. Some might say that it can't be alive. But it would only have to seem alive for it to live in the eyes of many.",
"Unfortunatly i think that might be beyond the scope of a ELI5 question. Its a very deep philosophical debate. What is life? One interesting place to look though is The Turing Test which was created by Alan Turing",
"If it passed the turing test, I'm pretty damned sure it would be alive, since it would be indistinguishable from a human. _URL_0_",
"A lot of you guys are mixing the terms alive and artificial intelligence. One does not need to be able to replicate or react to stimuli to be considered an AI.",
"In order for something to be alive it has to have the basics of life. The ability to grow, adapt to its environment, reproduce ect \n\nAt the same time artificial life would be likely unable to do most of those things so I would have to say independent thought would be the main factor. Like for example we made a super computer that decided it was going to compute what it wanted too when it wanted too and only if it wanted too it would have signs of life.... It would have a personality and based on its actions a conscious. ",
"To be considered alive, one of the defining characteristics it would need is the ability to learn. Therefore it would need a mechanism for learning. Our own brains create storage for things we learn. So, it would need the ability to produce the materials for storage [Neurons/Dendrites], and an ability to record the information [Our sight, smell, feel, and taste]. It would also have to be programmed to learn before it can start learning, so it knows when and how to record. This is similar to humans as we don't make conscious efforts to turn input information into memories. We are programmed to learn from birth. So in short, the machine would need to be programmed from inception with the knowledge to gather resources to make materials that gives it the ability to store information. Edit: Grammar, and summary.",
"Biological definition of life:\n_URL_0_",
"We hasn't even come up with a way to determine if other people are fully conscious. Everyone pretty much take it on faith, because everyone acts like they are self-aware. For all you know, however, everyone else are just robots wearing skin suits, and you're the only one actually capable of independent thought.\n\nWe'd probably have to sort that situation out before we even think about testing AI's for the same thing.",
"Have you heard of the Chinese room experiment? Essentially someone is captured and sent into a room, they don't know Chinese. He is told to respond to mail by looking up the phrases in books found in the room and writing down the response phrase next to the phrase they were sent. The end goal is the writers of the mail who is unaware of the situation is given the impression they're speaking to someone who know's Chinese but that person doesn't know Chinese at all he just has access to infinite phrase books with response phrases for every possible communications.\n\nSo taking this to the AI level how do we then define consciousness. What if our everyday interactions is our brain taking input and churning out possible output, our every day life being predetermined by input output.\n\nAI is essentially a much less refined situation of the prior. They get some input in the form of sensory data of some sort and output some action in the form of some sort of movement. I suppose we would consider it alive when AI's emulate the mannerism of sentient beings. With seemingly novel responses to input that humans may sometime take in addition to frequent normal responses. A lengthy turing test might suffice.\n\nPersonally I find it very very hard to imagine the existence of an AI so sophisticated that it has billions and billions of phrasebooks for every interaction and more importantly it can add phrasebooks as required.",
"in ELI5 terms-\n\npeople can not agree on so many fucking things. things more more \"self-evident\" than \"alive\".\n\nit may never happen.",
" I'd be inclined to use the movie 'Short Circut'?' (Johnny 5) as an example. It learns, can reproduce itself but could it impart what made it 'self-aware'? The ability to grasp a joke seems a decent test of the abstract thought needed for problem solving.",
"It would have to be aware of it's aliveness.\n\nOne would now ask what about plants? Plants don't have AI. Well, upon writing this I changed my mind, I'm not sure if they really don't have AI, cause I don't know what your definition of AI is and I don't know precisely how plants operate. I mean they probably have a nervous system.",
"ITT people equal \"alive\" with \"intelligence\"",
"People would need to lose their minds.",
"So, the main issue is what would it mean for a computer to be alive? Is it just being able to reproduce? That's already taken care of with evolutionary algorithms. Do they need to be able to solve problems? Well, they do that already. Do they need to interact with their environment or other AIs? Well, they can do that already.\n\nFor me, I think that the main thing that would make AIs into a \"living\" creature, it would need to be able to figure out what problems it should solve next. AIs will solve whatever tasks we tell them to solve, if they can actually solve it. This might not be required for other people's definition, but that's the main thing for me that they're missing. AIs can already interact with their environment, each other, pass on their \"genes\" and many other things that we think that a living creature must be able to do.",
"I'm kind of late, but there are actual characteristics that determine if something is alive: ability to grow/develop/regenerate, ability to move (internal or external), ability to respond to stimulus. I think I'm missing one, someone please help with the last one. ",
"I would watch the movie \"Bicentennial Man\"",
"1. Does it consume something in order to stay active?\n2. Does it excrete waste?\n3. Can it and x number of others of its kind (x could = 0) create more of its kind?\n\nIf all of the above are true, than it is alive.",
"Depends on how you define something to be 'alive'. Scientifically speaking, we say something is 'alive' when it is able to make copies of itself. So, if an artificial intelligence is able to code another AI without human instruction on how to do so, then we could say that it is technically alive.",
"Too many factors to this, however not necessarily impossible. I think that with the advancement of technology it could be done. Whether or not it is safe is a different story.",
"by definition it's a collection of inanimate objects and can never be \"alive\" That is solely for biological.\n\nA rock, if it somehow was capable of exhibiting emotion, a sense of humor, learned, laughed cried. Would still be a rock.\n\nbut, I'll venture.. Fearing it's own death would be a pretty good indicator. and actually dying would be proof.",
"To understand how difficult to answer your question is let's look at this similar question : When is a person insane and so legally irresponsible ?\nEven in court medical experts will disagree with each others because being insane is a gradient. It isn't a yes or no answer.\nSame for life, intelligence (the whole I.Q controversy), beauty, clinically dead, ...\n\nSo first if you want to answer that question you have to ask yourself what's the minimum for what a life is.\n\nIf you answer is viruses are the smallest unit of life then by that requirement some robots that already exists today are considered alive.\n\nBut that would just be the minimum for it to be called alive.\nI think a much more interesting question is \"How much is it alive ?\"",
"\"Life\" is just a set of letters/sounds that some have used to describe a whole lot of different things in the history of the English language! Life is not anything specific, compared to something like a lightyear. \n\nSo it's up to you to answer your own question... What do you think \"life\" means? And then we can work from there."
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1q24vo | how does "geothermal energy" work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q24vo/eli5_how_does_geothermal_energy_work/ | {
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"Geothermal energy works by taking heat energy from the earth and using it to heat up water. When the water turns into steam, it is put through a turbine. The movement of the steam causes the turbine to spin. Inside the spinning turbine is an electromagnet that converts the movement of the spinning turbine to electrical energy.",
"There are weak points in the earth's crust where magma pools can be found not far beneath the surface. At these locations, the earth's heat can be used to boil water, creating steam which then drives a generator to generate electricity.",
"There are two kinds.\n\nThe first is water/steam heated by magma near the surface. If there is enough volume and pressure, that is run through a turbine to generate electricity. Surplus heated steam is used for municipal heating.\n\nThe other kind relies on the fact that the earth below a few feet stays pretty constant year round, and at that a nice piece above freezing and below a hot summers day. That heat is captured with piping buried in the ground, or down specially drilled wells. It is circulated through a heat exchanger that is hooked to a refrigeration based heat pump system, which extracts the heat into the home, or the reverse for cooling. "
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fwbc3n | why does newborn baby's iris colors change as we get older? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fwbc3n/eli5_why_does_newborn_babys_iris_colors_change_as/ | {
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"Babies aren’t born with all the melanin (pigment) they’re destined to have. Blue is little melanin, so they can darken as the melanin develops",
"Melanin is the answer! Or, lack of I suppose. Melanin is the pigment that gives skin, hair, and irises their colour. Babies don’t produce much of it to start off with and it takes a while for it to build up enough to become visible.\n\nIf the baby never produces much melanin due to their genetics, their eyes remain blue. Otherwise the more melanin produced, the darker their eyes become."
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qctv2 | if the odds increases by, say 17%, what does that really mean? | Im used to seing odds in a 7-1 format, and not in %. I encounter ths while trying to figure out logistic regression, and how to interpret the results. If the odds that the-thing
-im-trying-to-predict will happend increases by 17%, what does that really imply? Im feeling really stupid here... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qctv2/eli5_if_the_odds_increases_by_say_17_what_does/ | {
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"If there is an X% chance of an event occurring, then that means that, out of 100 times, on average, you could expect that event to occur X number of times.\n\nFor example, there is about a 17% chance that I will roll a 5 on a 6-sided die (actually a little bit less than 17, but let's pretend), because all sides have an equal probability of being rolled, and 100/6 is ~17.\n\nIf the odds of something increases by 17%, it can be interpreted in one of two ways. Either the probability increases by 17% out of 100, or it increases by 17% of the previous probability. With respect to the latter, an example would be if the 6-sided die was weighted such that the probability of rolling a 5 increased by 17% of the previous 17%, making the new probability of rolling a 5 ~20%.",
"Let's say I have a 1 in 6 chance of rolling the number 1 on a standard dice. That means I have a 16.67% chance of rolling number 1. Now, let's say I change the numbers on the dice. I make it so two sides have one dot on it. Now, I have a 2/6 chance of rolling a 1. Well, 2/6 is 1/3, which is a 33.33% chance of rolling a 1. \n\nBefore, my odds were 16.67%. Now, they're 33.33% chance. That means my odds have *doubled.* My odds have increased by 100%. \n\nHow else can I explain that? I think I should show another example to explain the math. OK, let's say I have a 30% chance to pick a red sock out of my drawer. Now, let's say someone changed the socks in my drawer and told me my odds have increased by 50%. What that means is this: First, my original odds were 30%. What is 50% of 30? It's 15. So, my original odds were 30%, and now they are 30% plus 15%. My new odds are 45%. So, my original odds were 30%, now they're 45%, so they have increased by 50%. \n\nLet me try to explain it one more time. \n\nLet's pretend I have a 10% chance to pick a can of grape pop out of the fridge. If my odds increase by 10%, then I have to figure out what 10% of 10% is. That's 1%. So, if my odds increase by 10%, my odds jump from 10% to 11% because 10 + 1 is 11. If my odds were 10%, and they increased by 20%, then I have a 12% chance to pick a can of grape pop out of the fridge. If my odds were 10%, and they increased by 30%, then I have a 13% chance to pick the can of grape pop out of the fridge. You keep going and going. If my odds were 10%, and they increased by 100%, then I have a 20% chance of picking the grape pop out of the fridge. If your odds increase by 100%, that means your odds have doubled. If your odds increase by 200%, then your odds jump from 10% to 30%, because you add the original odds of 10% to 20% because 20% is twice the amount (200%) of 10%.\n\nThis is tough to explain. No wonder they don't teach 5 year olds statistics. \n\n\nEdit: I thought of one more way to explain it! OK, let's say you're at a store. There's a shirt you want that was originally $25. It's on sale for 50% off! That means it's now $12.50, right? OK, let's say you have a coupon that is for 50% off a sale item. That does ***not*** mean 50% + 50% = free! It means 50% off of the new price of $12.50. So, the new total is $6.25. Your new total of $6.25 is actually 75% off the original price of $25. So, the shirt was originally $25. The sale made it 50%. Your coupon further increased the discount by 50%. So, you have 50% plus 50% of 50%. That looks like this mathematically: .5 + .5*.5 = .5 + .25 = .75 = 75%. ",
"It is a statement that has to be interpreted for context to be meaningful. \n\nOdds and probability can be thought of as being fractions. For the sake of simplicity, lets consider fractions of pie, and that particular outcomes are slices of the whole pie (100%, the sum of all outcomes).\n\nSuppose I split the pie into two halves. If someone says my piece of pie is 20% bigger, that can be taken as an ambiguous statement--is the piece of pie 20% larger relative to itself, or relative to the entire pie? Consider the following:\n\n1) If the piece of pie is 20% larger relative to the entire size of the pie, then we can simply add 20% to 50% (our half), and find that our slice (odds/probability for that specific outcome) is now 70% of the pie; our friends are now envious.\n\nor \n\n2) On the other hand, if the pie is 20% larger relative to itself, then we must use what we know about the size of our slice to find out what its new size is. In this case, we need to know what 20% of 50% is: .5 * .2 / 1.0 = .1. Since our slice increased in size, the size of our slice of pie is now .6 / 1.0, or 60%.\n\nIn both cases, the other slice of the pie is reduced in size--after all, both slices have to add up to 100% of the pie (we can't create pie out of thin air! But more importantly, the difference in what we are basing our change of off has changed the way we interpret the results. \n\nAll of that being said, when this information is left out I have found that academically case two is the one that you are being expected to solve for--or in the worst case work it out for both situations if you are uncertain and can't get resolution. But in the real world where the results are significant, this is a case where clarification should be requested.\n\nHopefully this helps!"
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8qo2nv | why are drugs that you can get from a shelf called over the counter, when you don’t have to get them over the counter like you do for prescription drugs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8qo2nv/eli5_why_are_drugs_that_you_can_get_from_a_shelf/ | {
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"A pharmacist used to hand you everything because all the stock was behind the counter. You could buy things “over the counter” without a prescription. ",
"[This image is poor quality but this is pretty much what a pharmacy used to look like.](_URL_0_) \n\nDrugs used to come in bulk, in big bottles and cases and then the pharmacist would take part of that and give you the drugs you wanted in a paper bag, wooden case or glass bottle. It wasn't like today where everything is all neat and tidy in their own little box and single packaging pill sheets. So you had to get everything dosed out manually by the pharmacist who worked behind the counter. \n\nAs others have said, prescriptions came later along with regulations. I just wanted to add a post for the image so you could visualize what it would be like to shop at one of these pharmacies. ",
"Idk if it is very different depending on what country you are in, but at least in Australia you can only get OTC medications from a pharmacy, and some require for you to see a dispensery assistant or a pharmacist, whereas prescription medication can only be acquired with a prescription. Other medications such as paracetamol, ibuprofen, immodium, etc. Aren't marketed at OTC and can be purchased at local grocery shops.",
"Depends on the country. In the UK, there are 3 classifications of medication:\n\n1. Prescription Only Medication\n1. Pharmacy Medicines\n1. General Sales List\n\nThe first is obvious, I guess. The second is 'over the counter' medication. The third is stuff that is put on the shelves, and can be sold anywhere (supermarkets, etc).",
"Somewhat on topic. Why are some drugs that people need to live restricted to prescription only? For example insulin for diabetics, heck even test strips. ",
"I never knew this for sure and have been using \"OtC\" to describe prescription stuff and \"Off the Shelf\" to describe everything else without anyone questioning it. Could be the original meaning others are pointing out is becoming antiquated ? Or my associates all think I'm an idiot and don't care enough to correct me :p ",
"because you can buy them for simply showing up at the counter. you don't need a piece of paper saying you can.",
"Prior to the implementation of the Durham\\-Humphrey Amendment, all drugs were counted and dispensed in a pharmacy from bulk containers and patients were handed counted doses \"over\\-the\\-counter\" given by the pharmacist, depending on what symptoms they came in with. The only drugs that required a doctor's prescription at this time were ones that contained sulfanilamide.\n\nWhen this amendment came into place, it placed a clear distinction between over\\-the\\-counter (OTC) medications and prescription (legend) drugs. OTC medications can be obtained without a prescription, while legend drugs require a prescription, as they are medications that have been chosen by the FDA to require supervision from a qualified health practitioner. These drugs have some habit\\-forming tendencies or are potentially harmful in some way. Prescription drugs also all carry the label \"Caution: Federal Law prohibits dispensing without prescription.\"",
"I know in Australian pharmacies, I've noticed 3 distinct types of drugs. \n\nOff the shelf, are general drugs (paracetamol, ibuprofen, aspirin kind of thing) and treatments/first aid supplies, vitamins, all that sort of thing.\n\nThen you have over the counter, these are drugs you don't need a prescription for, but the pharmacist/assistant needs to physically hand them to you over the counter, these are quite often the same as the ones off the shelf but usually at a higher dose per tablet/pill, or more specialised drugs that don't require a prescription but your doctor may reccomend getting, and so the pharmacist/assistant wants to have a chat about them to you in some cases.\n\nAnd finally there is prescription, held behind the counter, often locked away and only given on doctors orders.",
"“Over The Counter” is from the pharmacist’s perspective. Opposite of “Behind The Counter” (AKA prescription medications).",
" Think of the prescription drugs \"behind\" the counter, and the non-rX have been carried \"over-the-counter\" to the customer so you get them yourself...",
"IIRC in the UK at least this is linked to a change/clarification in the law of when a sales offer is made — does the shop make an ‘offer to treat’ (an offer to sell at a specific price) at the shelf or at the cash register?\n\nThe law decided it was at the cash register (ie. they can change their mind about how much to charge you there, even if the shelf price was different - though other consumer protection laws now cover that). \n\nThis is important here because Over The Counter medicine had to be sold by a responsible person. If the ‘offer’ was made when the customer picks it up then it CANT be on the shelves so must be behind a serving counter (before this law change). This change/clarification meant it was fine to have them on shelves because the offer from a responsible person wasn’t made until the cash register, but they kept their name of ‘over the counter’. \n\nOther medicines are more restricted and need to be given by a pharmacist. ",
"\"Over the counter\" is when you pay for something directly without going through official prescriptions to get the drugs. \n\nIt's a way of saying \"you can buy these without asking/getting 'permission' from a medical authority.\" \n\nThink for example buying a custom made birthday cake. Either you can get the cake maker to make one completely from scratch by getting a \"consultation\" or a \"prescription\", or you can just walk right in without any preferences and just buy ready made, \"over the counter\".",
"In the UK there are higher strength drugs you don’t need a prescription for but they do need to be handed over by a qualified person. We call these over the counter. \n\nOn the shelf is 200mg ibuprofen tablets. Over the counter is 400mg ibuprofen tablets. ",
"You can buy them over a cashier's checkout counter... not because \"that's just what they did in the old tymes\"..",
"Because you can purchase them by bringing them to the counter. Prescriptions need to be filled first therefore.\nThe descriptive word used in both cases have to do with how you obtain them.",
"In the UK there are different licensing to drugs \n1) General sales list (GSL)\n2) Pharmacy (P)\n3) Prescription only medicine (POM)\nSo, over the counter medicines are usually used to describe P medicines which legally have to be kept over the counter. Which means customers can’t just help themselves to these medicines. The purchase of P medicines usually require a short consultation. Not sure how it is across the pond ",
"In Australia, there are drugs that can be bought off the shelf in grocery stores, and other shops. These drugs are usually called \"unscheduled\" as there is no control on how they are sold. This is opposed to \"over the counter\" drugs which are purchased at a pharmacy and given by a pharmacist. The drugs are stored behind the counter, so they must be handed \"over the counter\" in order to be bought. It is common to call unscheduled drugs as over the counter drugs, and group them as one when referring to medications that can be bought without a prescription.",
"In the UK there are still non-prescription bits that are ‘over the counter’. It’s useful because you can get advice from a professional, but there are things in the shop that you can just pick up if you know exactly what you want already. ",
"Some drugs are still over the counter. Like bronkaid, a drug for asthma or something can be bought without a prescription but because it has ephedrine in it, you have to ask and they scan your I'd to make sure you aren't buying a whole bunch to make meth or some shit."
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5y3386 | how do relatively less educated laborers successfully execute the precise designs of highly educated engineers when constructing buildings or roadways? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5y3386/eli5_how_do_relatively_less_educated_laborers/ | {
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"They are supervised by skilled, experienced foremen who are trained to read engineering drawings. Also the large projects are broken up into simple tasks",
"This happens in a lot of industries - a typically smaller group of highly educated designers consider all requirements and outside stresses, and come up with a design that will perform under the expected load with margin. All that's required at that point (ideally) is labor skilled enough to take a set of prints and/or specifications and construct it - they don't have to know *why* a particular material was used or understand the intricacies of the design, they just need to follow the instructions to build it.\n\nThat said, it doesn't always work out this way. It depends on the ability of the engineers to produce good instructions and documentation, and the ability of the laborer to understand and follow the instructions."
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1wdx0q | why is it that the closed caption text is sometimes different (even adding in a sentence) than what is said on a tv program? are these old scripts that got mixed up and sent to the cc offices? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wdx0q/eli5_why_is_it_that_the_closed_caption_text_is/ | {
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"Not old scripts, but THE script. Actors aren't always working off the script, it's a guideline, not meant to be strictly followed or enforced. In this case, the CC is probably working off the script and not the actual transcript of the dialogue."
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jjkd4 | why does fiji water taste better than regular water? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jjkd4/why_does_fiji_water_taste_better_than_regular/ | {
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"Fiji Water might not have all of the additives that might be in your municipal water supply. I have a well at my home and the water from it tastes noticably different and better than everybody else's who has city water.",
"Fiji Water might not have all of the additives that might be in your municipal water supply. I have a well at my home and the water from it tastes noticably different and better than everybody else's who has city water."
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65uavb | what turns human genes on or off? what reaction results thereafter? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65uavb/eli5what_turns_human_genes_on_or_off_what/ | {
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"The specifics are incredibly complex and full of word salads like the names of transcription factors and genes. On a broad theoretical level, it's very simple. The genes can be physically blocked using certain \"labels\". Once these labels are put on, the gene is tightly coiled up and in most cases permanently. For example even though every cell contains every piece of DNA, once a cell in the kidney has fully differentiated it will never need the genes relevant for the heart so they are permanently inactivated (this is a very broad and conceptualised simplification, in reality there is no such thing as \"kidney\" genes and \"heart\" genes, but you get the picture). \n\nFor the day to day action of genes, certain triggers which can originate from outside the cell or inside (e.g. a hormone) can activate specific molecules called transcription factors. Once activated they will go to a region of the DNA they are specific for and start transcribing that segment of DNA. The DNA code itself has certain regulatory controls, such as regions which correspond to the start and the famous STOP codons which can tell us where a segment ends. \n\nThe reality is obviously **WAY** more complex. Many areas of the genome are regulatory sequences, which in turn activate other genes, or inactivate. The majority of the genome is redundant, and it has to go through extensive processing. \n\nIt's easier to think of it like a computer algorithm. When you have X trigger, the cell produces Y protein. More of X can mean more of Y, or it can mean less of Y. Alternatively after a certain level it can mean start producing Z protein and so on. "
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2g1j4p | why does warm water from faucets freeze clearly, while cold water freezes with a cloudiness in the center? | Title. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g1j4p/eli5_why_does_warm_water_from_faucets_freeze/ | {
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"Dissolved gases in the water don't have enough time to escape before being trapped in the ice if the water is cold. If it's hot, more of the gases can escape in the time that it takes the water to get from \"hot\" to \"cold\".\n\nAlso, if the freezer isn't set as cold, it will take longer for the ice to freeze, giving more time for the gases to escape."
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5yv7tb | why dont countries just give africa food? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yv7tb/eli5_why_dont_countries_just_give_africa_food/ | {
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"We do repeatedly. However that food doesn't always get to its intended recipents. Some gets stolen due to corruption. Some gets stolen by armed groups to use themselves. Some never makes it due to logistical issues like poor transportation infrastructure. You most likely live in a country with an outstanding transportation network for goods, and don't even think about how or why your grocery store is stocked with food. Without a functioning port, rail, and road network, that may not happen.",
"Africa receives tons of food aid. The problem is rarely just a lack of food however. Political instability and poor infrastructure make it very difficult to actually get the food where it is needed. Food aid also has the side effect of putting local food producers out of business and driving down prices for local crops.",
"Because there is many really bad side effects by doing that.\n\n\nIf you give directly food to a country it means that local producers are made useless.\n\nIt means you make the price of the food you give getting lower in that country, which make sellers and producers very poor.\n\nIt also means that people over there have no interest of producing their own food (because it's not viable economically speaking), which mean the country don't develop, which mean everybody stay poor, which mean everybody still risk to starve, etc etc\n\n\nAnd that's only a part of the bad side effects you get by directly giving food.\n\nGiving food must be done only in case of an extreme emergency, never massively.",
"[Here](_URL_0_) is an article talking about the issue.\n\nThe problem with sending food (or other resources) to unstable countries is those supplies often get taken by militant groups. Africa is really bad about this. There are a lot of militant groups that take anything they can, and there is not a stable enough government ot stop them.\n\nThe more supplies you send in the bigger of a target those shipments become. "
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3paoca | how can shows like game of thrones shoot an hour long episode with a budget of $6 million, but it costs an average of $200 million to shoot an hour and a half long theater film? | I recently read that each episode of Game of Thrones has an average budget of $6 million but the average feature film costs roughly $200 million. How is there such a major difference between the budgets of TV shows and movies, yet TV often has the same production standards of any movie? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3paoca/eli5_how_can_shows_like_game_of_thrones_shoot_an/ | {
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"Movies have to construct all of their sets. TV shows do too, but they get to reuse them over and over. Also, casting is expensive and the cost of casting a character happens once, even if they're on for five years. \n\nSo there are a lot of the same expenses except that the show gets to reuse them. This is one reason why pilots are so expensive. ",
"Game of Thrones - > Casting volunteers for extras \nIron Man - > Casting paid extras, along with free meals \nMarketing, construction, crew cost, actors, stunt people, etc.",
"Game of thrones is also pretty light on the special effects. They have to limit the amount of times you get to see the dragons do cool shit for budget's sake, while a move like the edge of tomorrow is 2 hours of stupid special effects and cgi",
"Much of what you do for a TV is reusable. Sets, customs, music, even special effects. You only have to pay to have them designed once and often can reuse the end results as well.\n\nSo if, say, the Iron Throne cost a million dollars to make, the $200 movie pays that all at once, whereas that cost is spread out over 50 $6 million dollar episodes. This also makes it quicker and cheaper to film the movie, as you can do scenes on the same set that cross episodes. It was about 6 months to film a season of GoT, versus a year for a movie.\n\nAnother issue is actor salary. A leading actor can easily make $10-20 million for a big Hollywood film. Sean Bean was probably the most famous actor, and made about $150K an episode."
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3x1hca | how did internet provider monopolies, such as comcast, form in the first place? what's keeping the competition out of certain areas so that comcast is the only option? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3x1hca/eli5how_did_internet_provider_monopolies_such_as/ | {
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"Comcast was a cable television company before it was an ISP. Decades ago, it was common for a company like Comcast to strike a deal with a town: \"give us a monopoly on cable television in this town, and we will wire the *entire* town\".\n\nThose exclusive franchises have been outlawed, but the physical networks that were created remain. It is very difficult to pay for a new network to compete with an established company that installed and payed for its network decades ago.\n\nThere *is* competition, for example RCN operates mainly in areas where there was already Comcast service, or some other company. This is called an *overbuild* network. It is not, however, a super lucrative business model, which is why you only see it in limited areas.",
"The barriers (costs) to entry are quite prohibitive really hard to overcome.\n\nIn order to provide wired broadband internet service to a home, you have to have a direct wired connection from your regional data switching/routing facility to that home. That becomes very expensive to install. \n\nDepending on the area, it may cost more than $1,000 per household to wire in copper or fiber optic cabling. In many cases, this type of cabling deployment will also require co-operation of the municipality / 'right of way' access, road (re)construction, digging trenches in the ground, and (if applicable) access to sewers or existing conduit infrastructure for carrying cabling underground. Co-operation of the local power utility and/or telephone company may also be required to carry cabling along telephone/utility poles.\n\nSo, very few companies can handle this type of initial capital expense/investment and all the legal hassles associated with all the necessary permits etc. It's also worth noting that many of the major ISPs in existence today have relied on funding from the US government in the past to help pay the cost of rolling out these expensive networks. Obtaining this sort of funding is also very difficult for smaller / independent / startup ISPs.\n\nAlso, cable companies usually avoid building overlay networks that compete with other cable companies in the same region (even if no legal monopoly granted in that area). This is largely because cable companies recognize that it is not cost effective to invest in installing a new cable network in an area where another cable network already exists, so they instead focus their efforts on non-competing areas where they hope the majority of households will subscribe to their service.",
"Some industries have economies of scale indefinitely. This means that the average cost of providing the good/service gets cheaper the more they provide. This results in a natural monopoly. No matter what we do, or how many firms we start with, we end up with just one firm. \n\nA lot of factors go into determining if it is a natural monopoly or not. Typically you have high fixed costs, and low variable costs. Building the infrastructure is expensive, but providing the service to one more person is very low. This makes sense with Comcast and the industry as a whole. Comcast has to make a huge initial investment to provide internet to an area, but once they have made it, their additional costs are very low.\n\nFurthermore, these firms can engage in practices that can prevent newcomers. They can undercut competitors when they start to make a move to come in, engage in exclusive dealings (you agree to only buy from them in exchange for a better rate), tying clauses and bundles, and many more. The short answer on why these happen is because their effects aren't entirely clear and/or they are hard to prove in court. Did you lower your prices to screw over competition or did you just try to provide a better price to customers? Antitrust law is complicated.\n\nSource: Currently studying the Economics of Regulation.",
"Back in the old days, cable wasn't a monopoly. All you needed to do to have a cable company is run a wire from your site to people's houses. And in fact that's how cable companies started.\n\n\nOver the years the cable business got more and more expensive, and expanding your cable footprint (ie: hooking up houses to your cable network) got more and more expensive as well. Most cable companies in the US were family businesses*, and as the owners got old they sold their plant off to someone else...usually the bigger guy.\n\n\nAs cable companies got bigger they started getting laws passed that protected them from competition. You can't just run a wire and make a new cable company anymore; you have to get a franchise agreement with various government agencies (city, county, state), etc etc. Which is where we are now: it costs so much to connect everyone's homes to a new wire that it's basically not viable for anyone but the ultra-rich companies like google.\n\n\nThat said, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is that you have a customer that's stuck with you for life. 20 years of $40/month payments can be worth it...if you can get the investment capital.\n\n\nTL;DR: smaller cable companies sold out to bigger cable companies, and now it costs too much to install new wires to compete.\n\n\n* note that comcast is still family-owned."
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3iqhuo | black holes don't last forever (due to hawking radiation) but crossing the event horizon does takes forever (due to time dilation), so the black hole will no longer exist as you cross the event horizon? | This question was asked and answered, but not in a way I'm satisfied with.
Fact 1) Due to Hawking radiation black holes don't exist forever.
Fact 2) If you fall into a black hole backwards you'll see the universe accelerate as you approach, and an infinite amount of time will transpire before you cross the event horizon.
Conclusion, the black hole no longer exists as you cross the event horizon.
Edit: I'm marking this explained with the following link because experts seem to agree this is in fact what's going on (_URL_0_).
However, I stubbornly think a clock approaching a black hole will continue to slow relative to its synced partner left behind, and in the hour or so it takes to hit the event horizon (in proper time) the black hole, relative to the watch left behind, will have evaporated, so nothing ever reaches, let alone crosses, the event horizon.
In short, I find the distinction between coordinate and proper time irrelevant. But for some reason experts do not. My guess is they are right. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3iqhuo/eli5black_holes_dont_last_forever_due_to_hawking/ | {
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"\"Fact 2\" is not a fact. From your own point of view, you cross the horizon and hit the singularity in finite time. It takes infinite time from the point of view of a far away observer.\n\nTo respond to OP's edit, no my comment is not wrong. What I've said is a very basic result of GR. It's not hard to show in Schwarzschild geometry (the simplest kind of black hole you can come up with). They seem to have misinterpreted something that they may or may not have heard from a physicist and don't want to believe that they're wrong.",
"''ELI5 so I can disagree with you and claim I know better because I apparently already spoke to a PHD''",
"Well I did watch Interstellar last night so I'm probably qualified to answer this.\n\n12 Edits later: I give up....no idea how to use the spoiler tag in this thread. Something something end up in a space library.",
"I'm not a physicist but I'm going to share my rationalizations.\n\nThe question has to do with time \"slowing down\" due to higher speed and increased gravity.\n\nFirst, time doesn't actually \"stop\" but rather becomes \"REALLY, really slow.\" This isn't because time is added but rather the time segment is stretched. If we assume the observer is experiencing time at it's \"true\" speed, they should see the object zip through in 1 second, we'll say (ignoring light not escaping). The observer sees this as a second no matter what, right? Time dilation is relative and the observer is stuck at 1x speed, aren't they? The object's time is slowed but it's \"almost infinity years\" is just the observer's 1 second stretched out. No new light particles are hitting it so it's just in the dark with it's own thoughts for that expanded (not extended) time.\n\nWhich rule states we view the object differently because it's dilation is affected? Other than Doppler effect, which I rationalize as \"subsequent light beams have to travel farther each time to bounce off the object, so the frequency is lengthened.\" If the gravity at the event horizon in particular is slowing down the light that's being bounced, wouldn't that just be an after image we're seeing and not the object where it truly is? Some stars we see in the night sky may not even actually be there anymore.",
"Time dilation is weird in the sense that both observers see time moving normally for themselves. If you were to fall into a black hole you would be ripped apart and become part of the singularity in a finite period of time, however an observer looking at you from the outside would see you approach the event horizon and slow down. Finally as you crossed the event horizon you would vanish a the light reflected off you cannot escape the black hole to be viewed.\n\nSo essentially fact 2 is wrong.",
"I'm not a physicist, so anyone correct me if I'm wrong.\n\nTime dilation is mostly affected by gravity. The center and source of gravity is the black hole. Because of this, time will always travel slower for the singularity than your time, meaning that the black hole not only radiates away at a slow pace, but also has slower time than you do. This means you will die.",
"The problem is that you and the event horizon are both in the same reference frame, so time travels at the same speed for both of you.\n\nIt is only from the outside it seems that you slow down and eventually stop, but you continue through the event horizon and into the \"interior\" of a black hole.",
"_URL_0_\n\nThis explains all your questions. And why you are wrong about your assumptions. Definitely not EIL5\n\nHaving said all that. I really like the conversation. Despite not agreeing with you on the matter, I enjoy the topic and enjoy the discussion it brought. "
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69kyp7 | how can someone be your cousin's sister and not be your cousin? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69kyp7/eli5_how_can_someone_be_your_cousins_sister_and/ | {
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"They would in normal circumstances be your cousin. I think this is probably a question for your family rather than reddit.",
"They could be a half sister where the other parent is no your aunt or uncle. Or a step-sister to your cousin and therefore not related to you. ",
"My sister is my half sister, my dad is not *her dad*. My dad's, sister's (my aunt's) kids (my cousins) are not *blood related* to *her*, but they *are* blood related to *me*. \n\nI still consider us all related, though.\n\nMake sense?"
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6uzvvo | why does the exact same product vary in price so much between countries? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6uzvvo/eli5_why_does_the_exact_same_product_vary_in/ | {
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"This could be the combination of a variety of things that are all country specific:\n\n- import duties: these are put into place to protect or indirectly support the local industry; make similar imported products more expensive, makes local similar products more affordable. \n\n- taxes: some countries might tax a particular product category, while others might not or to differing amounts. For example, Canada taxes cigarettes at a much higher rate than most US states: right now a pack of 25 is $14 Cdn, which is $11 USD. Average price of a pack in US is ~$6-8 USD. Money from the increased tobacco taxes in Canada is rolled into our public healthcare system. \n\n- exchange rate: If the price of a book is printed on the cover, it could be $10 US. But taking into account exchange rate, that would be $12.58 CDN. Since it fluctuates, they usually leave it like \"Or higher in Canada\". "
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1m80hl | how do pharmacies work in getting your prescription? | Ex: I took 2 prescription in to get filled. They told me one will be ready in 10 minutes the other one would be 20. One was this cream and the other pills. Do they just have every ingredient back there to make them on the spot? The cream even came out in it's own branded box and tube so why'd that take 10 minutes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m80hl/eli5_how_do_pharmacies_work_in_getting_your/ | {
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"I'd suspect a lot of it is double and triple checking to make sure the dosages and length of prescription match what's in the bottle, verifying the prescription is valid and cataloging that the drugs are going to be released. They need to be meticulous to make sure they don't screw up your prescription, and because there are safeguards against drug abuse.",
"Pharmacist here. Here's the workflow:\n\nFirst step: **Drop-off**. You drop off the prescription, we type it in to the computer. If you haven't been to a pharmacy in our chain, we need to add all your info. Then we need updated/current insurance information, which, shittily enough, isn't as easy to put into the system as it should be. After entering it I to the computer, our system electronically sends the claim to your insurance, and they send back either approval or denial. If it's denied, we have to try to fix it. Sometimes we can just add some info to the claim and send it back to get it covered, sometimes we have to call either the insurance or the doctor. Once we get it through it goes to the second step.\n\nSecond step: **Production**. You're prescription goes into a queue of scripts. If you told us you want to wait for it, it shows up at the top, but behind anyone ahead of you that said they want to wait as well. At production, we print out a label, label your cream/box or count your pills, and put in a basket, stacked according to time due. Then they go on to the third step.\n\nThird step: **Verification**. Here is where the pharmacist checks your prescription. One check of what we enetered into the computer against a scanned image of the hardcopy you gave us, another to be sure what's in the bottle is the right drug, and another to make sure you won't have any crazy side effects/death. If any of these things aren't right, they go backwards in the steps to be fixed.\n\nWe mix very few prescriptions in a typical retail pharmacy, and even then its usually from existing medications. Usually mixing a couple creams together, or more often making a liquid out of a drug that's usually a tablet or capsule.\n\nIf you were the only person and oy prescription we were working on and there were no issues, both drugs would have probably taken about 2 minutes. It just takes longer usually because at any given moment there are 50ish scripts in that system, and at least 1 or 2 always have some issue that needs to be resolved. Plus the phone is to ringing, people are asking questions, picking up their prescription, demanding to know where the *good* air fresheners are, etc. Also, most pharmacies do anywhere from 200 to 1200 scripts a day. It gets busy."
]
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| []
| [
[],
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|
|
2resmq | what does the 1.2w = 10w on led lightbulbs mean? | [Here's what I'm refering to.](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2resmq/eli5_what_does_the_12w_10w_on_led_lightbulbs_mean/ | {
"a_id": [
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"The LED lamp consumes 1.2 Watts, but it gives out the same amount of light as a 10 Watt incandescent (filament) lamp.",
"LED bulbs are more efficient than incandescent bulbs, so you need less energy to produce the same amount of light. However, bulbs were never previously described in terms of lumens (light output), but in terms of wattage (energy use). \n\nThat conversion tells you that the 1.2W LED bulb you are buying will have the same light output as a 10W incandescent bulb. All the light for about 1/8th the electricity.",
"The first number is the actual watt usage. in this case, 1.2 watts. \n\nthe second number is the Watt Equivalent for incandescent light bulbs. in america, as well as many other countries, consumers got used to eqating the power used to light out. this is a bit like looking at a car's mileage by measuring the size of it's fuel tank. it works, as long as all cars have the same MPG or km/liter \n\nCFL and LED light bulbs get 10 or 100 times more light out for the same watt usage, so the old metric of \"100 watts bright\" really breaks down. people aren't used to thinking in Lumens yet (_URL_1_) so this \"incandescent watt equivalent\" number came about. if an old 100 watt incandescent provided 1600 lumens of light (_URL_0_), then a 100 watt equivelant should put out the same light (_URL_2_)"
]
} | []
| [
"https://i.imgur.com/eVsgF8b.jpg"
]
| [
[],
[],
[
"http://www.clarkhoward.com/watt-to-lumen-lightbulb-conversion/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumen_%28unit%29",
"http://www.homedepot.com/p/Cree-100W-Equivalent-Soft-White-2700K-A21-Dimmable-LED-Light-Bulb-BA21-16027OMF-12DE26-1U100/205054835"
]
]
|
|
3f82ga | how do portable wifi devices work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3f82ga/eli5_how_do_portable_wifi_devices_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"ctm64ho"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Portable WiFi hotspots use a cellular radio to access the Internet and a WiFi radio to form a local WiFi network. Is this the device you were asking about?"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
np2lp | how does norad track santy claus? | EDIT: [GUI Tracking Santa](_URL_0_)
EDIT: Past Marshall Islands and Fiji. At NZ, 12 hours to UK.
EDIT: WTH is a Vanuatu?
EDIT: Eastern Russia
EDIT: Spotted with a bag of pressies down under
EDIT: Stopping in Indonesia
EDIT: Happy Father Christmas Time in the Land of the Rising Sun | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/np2lp/eli5_how_does_norad_track_santy_claus/ | {
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"c3atqtx",
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"text": [
"By sampling the aerosolized reindeer feces and urine in the upper atmosphere.",
"During flight, Rudolph's nose is so bright that satellites can track it from space.",
"Methane blooms. All that speed requires a helluva lot of propulsion.",
"A secret consortium of elves, Jesus, and the Easter bunny track him at all times using advanced stealth aircraft and a significant number of anonymous sources from around the globe.",
"[Distant Early Warning System](_URL_0_)",
"Vanuatu is an island. ",
"It works on a predefined schedule. Santa isn't real.",
"By sampling the aerosolized reindeer feces and urine in the upper atmosphere.",
"During flight, Rudolph's nose is so bright that satellites can track it from space.",
"Methane blooms. All that speed requires a helluva lot of propulsion.",
"A secret consortium of elves, Jesus, and the Easter bunny track him at all times using advanced stealth aircraft and a significant number of anonymous sources from around the globe.",
"[Distant Early Warning System](_URL_0_)",
"Vanuatu is an island. ",
"It works on a predefined schedule. Santa isn't real."
]
} | []
| [
"http://www.noradsanta.org/en/"
]
| [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distant_Early_Warning_Line"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distant_Early_Warning_Line"
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|
|
2o5dty | how can you use hydrogen as energy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2o5dty/eli5_how_can_you_use_hydrogen_as_energy/ | {
"a_id": [
"cmjul5x"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"As with many other fuels, you can just burn it. It's a useful clean choice of fuel because burning it produces water with no other nasty by-products. You do need a lot of electricity to make the hydrogen in the first place though, so how clean it is comes down to how you generate the electricity.\n\nYou can also use a hydrogen fuel cell with also reacts hydrogen with oxygen to produce energy and water, but produces electricity directly. I'm not sure I can ELI5 that though. It's sort of a battery that you can recharge by adding more hydrogen to it."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
7fs3sk | the mathematics behind the notation to understand large numbers. | When I watched numberphile's video on Graham's number, I was already pretty mind-blown. Then I learned of TREE(N) where TREE(3) makes G64 look like zero.
Delving into the rabbit hole, there are even bigger numbers eg Loader's Number, Rayo's Number, BIG FOOT, and Little Bigeddon.
The recursive use of arrows is easy enough to understand, but the notation for everything else is a bit much for me. Could someone explain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7fs3sk/eli5_the_mathematics_behind_the_notation_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"dqe8c0c"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"I'm pretty sure there's not such a thing as a \"standard notation for huge numbers\" or anything, each of those numbers you listed were first defined in order to solve an equation or proof in a particular field of mathematics, so when you read about them the notation you see will be specific to the problem where the number was introduced.\n\nThe arrow notation related numbers are all from a specific set of problems so unfortunately you can't really extend those definitions to the other massive numbers."
]
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| []
| [
[]
]
|
|
6knjck | how is the volume of highly complicated 3d bodies calculated? | Bodies that are highly irregular, odd patterns of many other bodies, bodies with weird surfaces, and so on. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6knjck/eli5_how_is_the_volume_of_highly_complicated_3d/ | {
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"text": [
"There are a couple of clever ways. A simple one is to have a container of water of known volume, submerge the mystery object, and then see how much the water level increases.",
"One method is submerge it in water and measure the displacement of liquid. Crude, but it works for some things.",
"You can use calculus to solve for the volume. There are multiple ways to do so, such as if you can define the 3d shape as an area between two regions. This would work as long as you're able to come up with some representation of the body as a function/set of functions. Check this [page](_URL_0_) out if you're curious on some actual problems/how to do this.",
"I'm a bit late to this, but since the top answer here gives you a physical way to measure the volume of a physical object, I thought I might as well chime in and give a mathematical answer about mathematical objects.\n\nMeasuring the volume of things is a task that comes under a field of mathematics called Measure Theory. What we do is we start of with very simple shapes, so for example cubes and cuboids. We know what we want their volume to be, so we start off just saying \"this is the volume of a cuboid with side lengths of...\". After this, we can deal with more complicated shapes by approximating those shapes with cuboids. Unless the shape is very nice, this won't give an exact answer, but what we can do is find increasingly better approximations. We can then use these sequences of approximations to find the true volume.\n\n"
]
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| []
| [
[],
[],
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"http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/CalcIII/CalcIII.aspx"
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4mdznw | do "probiotics" survive the acids in the stomach? the theory is that the bacteria from the yogurt/kefir colonize the intestines but do they actually survive the digestion process? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mdznw/eli5_do_probiotics_survive_the_acids_in_the/ | {
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"What i was told is that most die in the stomach. but because there are so many (think about how some vitamins are 1000% of your daily dose) a small portion makes it through and begin to reproduce (possibly wrong word) rapidly as bacteria do.\n\n",
"They do! The first poster is correct - some do die, but enough don't. To see a different you have to eat it at least semi-regularly for at least a couple/few weeks because of that and the fact that the bacterial environment in your gut changes slowly.\n\nMy doctor even suggested it when I was having digestive issues from stress, and it helped a TON. There has been a decent amount of research done on the benefits of things like yogurt etc too, and on generally good nutrition being awesome for not only digestion but for your general physical and mental health too. \n\nYou can ignore all the bullshit probiotic names though, they're mostly all in the same family or even same kind of bacteria (ie one kind of yogurt with probiotic isn't better than others, and in a lot of cases just has more probiotic than typically yogurt, which still contains them).",
"Our Doctor told us specifically to take them about 30 minutes after eating - something to do with acid being at its lowest and more would survive to speed up the process.\n\nI laugh because when I first started taking them no one told me... my husband got sent home with them yesterday and that was one of his instructions.",
"How do malbiotics? If you eat a bunch of raw chicken you still end up getting sick because the bacteria survived. The process is the same. ",
"Yes. Some will even survive your entire digestive tract and colonize your vagina with healthy bacteria. Check out Lactobacillus rhamnosus and Lactobacillus reuiteri, they are the active probiotics in Jarrow Femdophilus which helped me immensely the last time I had a uti.\n\nEdit: some proof that oral probiotics can significantly alter vaginal flora _URL_0_",
"**TL:DR = The stomach acid is not the big blockade to changing intestinal flora. The biggest is the in-place flora. Your gut is like Russia, and it's winter all the time.**\n\nYes, a lot of probiotics survive the stomach acid (most if there's an enteric coating in pill form).\n\nThat's hardly ever, ever the issue, though.\n\nThe bigger issue is that your intestines house an enormous array of commensal bacteria (to the point that they could be used to identify you), most of which are so well adapted to their little chunk of intestine that they're extremely difficult or impossible to nurture outside of the body.\n\nThe bacteria you find in probiotics will survive your stomach, but they won't survive in most of your gut. Not only will they not survive in most of your gut regardless of current commensal bacteria, but the commensal bacteria play for fucking keeps on the niches they already hold. All-out bacterial warfare. \n\nFor them to \"win\" (that is, colonize), you need to keep up the supply long-term. Think daily for several weeks, if not months or years. Of course, unless it's a specific condition, chances are you won't notice squat. There can be up to several thousands of different species of bacteria in your gut -- successfully implanting 10 new varieties is a drop in the bucket.\n\nThere are other ways to modify your commensal bacteria, though: Poop transplant after taking drugs to wipe yours out will do the trick, but docs won't do that on purpose. The best, way, though, is changing your diet. In the long term the foods you eat change the makeup of your commensal bacteria. As you go off, say, high fat foods and onto more vegetables, the bacteria able to survive better off the veggie scraps will come to dominate their niches.",
"Does this mean I need a Yoghurt enema?",
"Eat some raw vegetables before the probiotic, we don't digest them fully and they provide rafts for those guys to ride through.",
"I've spoken to someone who did their PhD on exactly this, and she said that yes, they mostly die (your stomach is designed very well to destroy incoming bacteria), and if your diet and gut flora is otherwise healthy, there's no reason to take probiotics as your stomach basically kills them, and you already have all the bacteria you need. \n \nThere is a potential advantage if you've just been on a course of antibiotics, which can kill some of the normal bacteria you have in your intestine, but otherwise there's no reason to take them. \n \nIf you did want to try and get them to survive through your stomach, she also mentioned how you'd go about it. Your stomach has a sphincter at the bottom which ordinarily opens to allow digested food through, but if you drink cold water, your stomach opens this lower sphincter to allow the water to pass through quickly. So if you want to probiotics to get through, take them with a pint of cold water, and it'll lessen the effect of stomach acid, and open the lower sphincter of your stomach to allow them to pass through with a chance of making it through alive. ",
"Serious question: would you get more helpful bacteria in your gut if you used probiotic pills as a suppository while laying on your back and holding your butt up in the air and wiggling around to get the pills as far in as you could?"
]
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2a864s | why does everyone have a problem with gifs, especially _url_0_? | I know they load slower than HTML5 equivalents, but there seems to be an incredible amount of rage over GIFs on reddit, especially GIFs hosted on _URL_0_. Why? I never seem to have a problem with them, not even on my phone... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a864s/eli5_why_does_everyone_have_a_problem_with_gifs/ | {
"a_id": [
"cisf76o",
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"score": [
4,
2
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"text": [
"Pretty much the only reason is that Imgur has a very small file size limit for GIFs. Minus either doesn't have a limit or it's big enough that I've never had to worry about it before. Also I've never had a problem with loading Minus GIFs before (they're just as fast as Google or Imgur) but I think it must have something to do with my location.\nOn a similar note, there is no reason not to use gfycat now. It is clearly superior to Imgur or Minus for GIFs as it is much quicker to load, works perfectly on mobile and the original GIF can be viewed if you want full quality.",
"gifs are nightmarish on mobile. Videos load faster"
]
} | [
"Minus.com"
]
| [
"minus.com"
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| [
[],
[]
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|
dwlu78 | why do toned abdominal muscles appear as a “six pack” why not a four pack or eight pack? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dwlu78/eli5_why_do_toned_abdominal_muscles_appear_as_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"f7k4r55",
"f7k4zns",
"f7keyon"
],
"score": [
2,
12,
2
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"text": [
"because the big abdominal muscles come in 3 sets\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)",
"You have 8 abdominal muscles. A true \"6-pack\" is actually all 8, but the lowest 2 are elongated and less defined as they stretch into the groin area. That leaves the upper 6 as well-defined rectangular-ish muscles. If only 4 muscles were defined, it would mean you have some amount of visible fat, which isn't something that impresses people. There's also some element of literary parallel to a beverage 6-pack; other counts aren't common.",
"It doesn't always appear as a six pack, for example Arnold Schwarzenegger has a four pack. It depends on how your muscle is divided by the tendons."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"https://cdn.britannica.com/s:700x500/13/125813-004-2ACB1107/Muscles-wall.jpg"
],
[],
[]
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|
||
9nmqsf | how does orly bonder rubberized base coat nail polish work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9nmqsf/eli5_how_does_orly_bonder_rubberized_base_coat/ | {
"a_id": [
"e7nfpe3"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Oh wow what an interesting question Beeyonca!\n\nOrly® Bonder® uses a patented formula which contains a natural resin that dries clean on your nails. \n\nAlthough this all natural resin appears smooth, it actually uses a patented micro-pore technology to create a microscopic sponge-like layer on your nails. This microscopic layer allows your favorite polish to soak in, providing up to 52%* better adhesion than nails alone.\n\n*based on the results of a 2009 study conducted on the primary resin in Orly® Bonder®"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
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|
||
5mpwj4 | how does ransomware work and what makes it hard to deal with? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mpwj4/eli5_how_does_ransomware_work_and_what_makes_it/ | {
"a_id": [
"dc5j2ia"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Ransom ware is similar to a person going into your house and locking everything you own in a safe . this safe van't be opened without the code. Then the person who locked everything in the safe tells you they will give you the code if you give them some amount of money in a certain amount of time, and if you don't pay the safe will destroy everything in it. The time frame is typically less than 2 days which means it unlikely you'll be able to crack the safe before everything gets destroyed which is why it's very hard to deal with even if the encryption is fairly weak. ( which it usually isn't) "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
b0208i | when you eat citrus or anything that strips away the enamel on teeth, your teeth get sensitive. i learned that enamel does not grow back, so how is it that over time your teeth are no longer sensitive? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b0208i/eli5_when_you_eat_citrus_or_anything_that_strips/ | {
"a_id": [
"eibo25m",
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6,
4
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"text": [
"Your teeth are filled with these tube like canals, when those canals are open your teeth are sensitive but over time those canals close (or with the help of sensitivity toothpastes they close) no longer causing the sensitivity ",
"It is a myth that your teeth don't recalcify. As long as you have enamel, ions in your saliva, and from toothpastes with flourides or more advanced compounds, will thicken the enamel."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
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||
5xl2de | why and how do the owners of nonprofit/not for profit organizations earn salaries. | I don't see a problem with it I'm just curious how it works. I understand that the money might go back into the organization bt I've heard of some owners/execs of nonprofits who are making far more money than needed to run the business. Ie a salary. So? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xl2de/eli5_why_and_how_do_the_owners_of_nonprofitnot/ | {
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"text": [
"Nonprofit means that the business entity itself cannot earn money, but they are still allowed to pay their employees salaries, and that includes the CEO/president.",
"To say your a non profit on really simple terms is to say the company is net 0. Mean I g after all money coming in and all money going out there is 0 left over. The money going out includes salaries and pay for hourly workers, rent and utilites, really anything that would fall under the title of overhead for the company. ",
"there are no owners for non profit orgs. there are directors and officers. no owners. ",
"Execs and directors need to earn a salary because knowing you've helped others is not considered acceptable legal tender.\n\nSome execs earn large salaries because they're doing a large job and someone capable of running a multi-million dollar organization is worth paying large amounts of money. For example, the American Red Cross handles billions of dollars in donations and manages thousands of volunteers. This is Fortune 500 territory. You need to hire someone with the skill and experience necessary to run such a huge organization. This is someone that could make millions in the corporate world, so you need to pay them enough to keep them in non-profit land. They may be willing to accept less because they truly believe in the mission, but at the end of the day, if they're good at their job, they deserve good pay."
]
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9l0xsa | when there are high winds in an area, like a sporting event, why does the sound wave from our voice carry with it? making it hard to hear if you aren’t in that direction | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9l0xsa/eli5_when_there_are_high_winds_in_an_area_like_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"e735ryd"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"You know how sound is wiggly air? As in, the sound is just a particular wiggle passing from air molecule to air molecule.\n\nWell in high winds, those air molecules are moving. They carry the wiggle with them. They still pass it on, but by the time they're ready to, they've moved a bit downwind. "
]
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| []
| [
[]
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|
||
4ofc7d | how do documentaries like attenborough's "africa" get perfect shots of insects fighting other insects in the depths of tall grass, etc.? how do they know where to set it up to capture these moments? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ofc7d/eli5_how_do_documentaries_like_attenboroughs/ | {
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"text": [
"They follow and film the insects for long periods. They edit out the 99% of footage that is far from a \"perfect shot\" so you only see the good stuff.",
"I am not sure about this particular movie, but some of these are staged in terrariums. Others are done by just taking A LOT of time (sometimes years) to get good shots in the wild.",
"Apart from very experienced cameramen and researchers, they just take a long time. If it takes a couple of weeks to get the right shot, that's what they'll do. It's one of the reasons the BBC wildlife programmes are so expensive to produce.\n\nThere are times when things are set up - a while ago they filmed polar bear cubs in a zoo - which was widely portrayed as cheating, though actually they never covered it up, just didn't point it out very vigorously.",
"This has been [asked before](_URL_0_). Shoutout to /u/PopcornMouse for this brilliant answer: \n \n > Depends on the ethics of the documentary makers.\n\n > Nowadays a lot of closeups can be taken with long-range HD cameras. For example, there is an excellent shot in Planet Earth (IIRC) where they are shooting a giraffe walking. You can see the leaves its eating, each eyelash, almost each hair on its head. But the camera begins to pan out, and out, and out...like 3 km away the helicopter is flying from the giraffe and I can see each wrinkle as it chews. Crazy. This is awesome, the animal is way less disturbed and we still get to see the awesome close up shot. This obviously only works for open habitats...no way you're going to get a shot like that of a gorilla in the forest.\n\n > The hide cameras in places where animals are known to frequent. They get knowledge about where animals are known to frequent from locals. Guide: \"Well every night, without fail four elephants take mudbaths in this particular pool in the forest. You should put your cameras there.\" So they go out, set up the cameras and then take a look at the footage later.\n\n > They hide in blinds, like hunters do, and wait for the animal to come by. They wait and wait and wait, and wait some more. While filming for BBC nature documentary one camera man waited for hundreds of hours alone in a blind just to get just the right shot of a bird of paradise mating ritual.\n\n > They bait the animals to get the shot. THIS IS WAY MORE COMMON THAN YOU THINK. They set up the shot - place prey animals in a specific location and wait for the predator to show. Or they film two animals at completely different times and pass it off as \"one scene\" - a lot of predator-prey chase scenes are like this (e.g. the snake stalking the mouse). At best these are two different scenes spliced together, the snake and mouse are placed in the same area and filmed at different times. At worst, they found the snake and placed the prey there and baited the snake for the shot. Finally, another common tactic is to use captive animals from zoos or private collected and make it appear like they are wild. I don't know how many times we had to tell off a group of filmmakers for trying to bait our wild study monkeys with food, just to get that coveted close up shot. It was an awful nightmare, and they did not understand why we had these rules in place. It's not just filmmakers, it's photographers too. You should avoid purchasing prints from nature photographers who bait their animals or practice unethical tactics just to \"get the shot\". [It can get pretty tricky to figure out just what is ethically acceptable, take a look at these examples of different levels of manipulation. Most of what I can find on the internet discusses the ethics of wildlife photography, and I find there is very little on the ethics of manipulating wildlife for video.\n\n > In order to get a spectacular shot there is time, patience, and a lot of luck - but there is also a lot of staging and arranging in nature documentaries.\n \n \nI recall seeing a behind the scenes episode of planet earth where they showed a guy waiting in a blind for an ungodly amount of time just to get a few shots. In that case they sent out a bunch of teams of camera men and each team was responsible for getting one shoot of a certain kind of animal.",
"I remember watching some of the behind the scenes stuff on Planet Earth and Life, and literally all of the footage is luck. They basically set up in locations that they know the animals reside, and sit there for months. They could end up working like 20 hour days capturing nothing the entire day",
"I think you are missing just how much time is required to spend filming an area just to capture even some brief seconds of action. They know where these things live... it's a matter of filming a bunch of spots for quite some time and examining what you filmed."
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z9dpt | why tires appear to be spinning the opposite way | I always notice that when a car is going fast enough, the wheels look like they're spinning backwards instead of forwards, and was wondering if there is an explanation for this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/z9dpt/eli5_why_tires_appear_to_be_spinning_the_opposite/ | {
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"I'm not sure how to ELI5 it, because I don't really understand it myself (and it seems like there is no solid theory yet) but there's a Wikipedia article on it, it's called the [wagon-wheel effect](_URL_0_)",
"Explaining this effect for movies is fairly easy. Its a bit harder for normal vision, but the usual explanation is that the same phenomenon is happening. \n\nA movie is a series of still pictures played one after the other at a certain rate. Essentially, a movie camera is just a still camera that takes a lot of pictures very fast.\n\nFor slow moving objects, when you see the frames played back at speed it looks like the object is moving smoothly. This is because the object does not move very far in each frame, and our eyes and brains can fill in the gaps easily. \n\nFor fast moving objects, this is not always true. If something is moving quickly, it can move quite far in the time between the individual frames of the movie. \n\nFor example, lets say that a wheel was spinning at a rate of one revolution per second, and we took a picture of it once every second. In each picture, the wheel would appear to be in the same place, even though it really made a complete turn. \n\nIf we slow down the wheel a bit but leave the camera the same, things get even more interesting. Now, the wheel will get almost all the way around between each frame. To our brains, it makes a lot more sense that the wheel traveled backwards a small amount than it does that it traveled almost an entire revolution in a small time. Over a lot of frames, our brains decide that the wheel must be spinning backwards.",
"To understand why this happens, it's important to think about how a video camera works. Video cameras take a series of still pictures (frames) at a given speed (framerate). The framerate is the number of frames the camera captures per second. These frames are then played back in order, one after another, to reproduce the video. Keep in mind that what we see as video is just a series of frames being shown one after another. \n\nNow on to the tire. Imagine there is a single tire floating in mid-air. I'm going to use a clock analogy to explain a given position around the tire. Let's say we mark the tire with chalk at 12 o'clock. If we start spinning the tire very slowly, we can see the chalk moves from 12 to 1, to 2, to 3, etc. When we see this, it looks to us like the wheel is spinning forwards. At the same time, we have to think about the video camera taking picture after picture (frame after frame) of the spinning tire. As long as the tire is spinning slow enough, the video camera is fast enough to keep up. In other words, for example, the camera captures one frame at 12 o'clock, then another at 1, then 2, etc.\n\nNow what happens if we speed the tire up? Let's say the tire is spinning so fast that the camera isn't fast enough to keep up. So instead of capturing one frame at 12, 1, 2, 3, it only captures a frame at 12, then the next at 2, and then 4, and so on. The chalk still moves from 12 to 1 and from 1 to 2, but the video camera isn't fast enough to take a picture (frame) of it. When the video gets played back (what we see), the wheel still appears to be spinning forwards because it's going from 12 to 2 to 4. But what if we get faster?\n\nLet's say the tire spins so quickly that the camera isn't fast enough to capture the chalk mark moving through positions 1 to 10. In other words, one frame captures the chalk mark at 12, and by the time the camera captures the next frame, the chalk mark is already at 11. And by the next frame, the chalk has already moved all the way back around and is at 10, and then 9, and 8, and so on. \n\nWhen the video is played back, frame by frame, is appears as though the chalk moved from 12 to 11 to 10, to 9, etc. Since we can only view the video one frame at a time, and we have no idea what happened in between each frame, we don't know how the chalk got from 12 to 11. Or from 11 to 10. But our brain believes what it sees, and if it sees a tire spinning with a chalk mark moving from 12 to 11 to 10 to 9, etc, it will think that that tire is spinning backwards. \n\nIn this example I used a mark of chalk as our reference, but the reference can be anything on the tire. In general, it's usually the spokes of the hubcap that we use as our references to see which way the tire is spinning."
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45f7ua | why did high school grads look so 'adult' back in the 60's, 70's, & 80's, but today they look so child-like? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45f7ua/eli5_why_did_high_school_grads_look_so_adult_back/ | {
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"people tend to dress the same they did when they were younger. not always, but generally.\n\nyou have probably associated the styles from those time periods with older people, because you have probably seen film and pictures of older people wearing those styles. movies and tv set in those time periods probably also set your expectations\n\n[budy holly was 23 when he died but you probably think he looks a lot older, because you associate the style of that time period with older people](_URL_0_)",
"This has to do with your perception. \n\nDo you remember being in 2nd grade, and seeing the big kids (5th graders for me) and thinking of them as, essentially, adults?\n\nThen you were in 5th grade, and 2nd graders were so tiny and miniscule. But those 9th graders... hoo boy.\n\nThen when you were a senior in high school...\n\nOn and on it goes. \n\nEdit: it seems I misinterpreted the question. But the answer doesn't really change. Why did high schoolers in the 70s look so much older and more mature than the ones that do now? Humans aren't changing that much. So, logically, it has to do with the fact that they are indeed older than the high schoolers you compare them to. Perception is heavy, man. Also, cameras are getting a lot better. People wear different stuff.\n\nAlso, OP seems to be asking about someone he knows' grandma/grandpa. He may know that person, thus, already having a preconceived notion of their age. So when looking at an image of them from high school, OP is already going into the question biased. \n\nI could be wrong. But I've experienced this before numerous times. If you look long enough, they really do look \"older than 16.\"\n\nClothing plays a big part too. People used to wear really fancy clothes to class. Now we wear T-shirts and jeans.",
"They don't, The fact that the picture is black and white combined with the fact that they dress differently make you associate the pictures with old people, try to mentally change the clothes with modern clothes, color the image and you'll be surprised.",
"Have you seen some of the high school girls walking around today? Without trying to get myself on an FBI list, I can only say I think you are mistaken in your perception. ",
"You probably are thinking of people in old movies. The high schoolers in movies are actually in their twenties. ",
"Because people retain elements of their style as they get older. The way your parents dress and do their hair and so on is derivative of their high school days. You have the ability to associate - even when you don't have a vocabulary - the look of people today from a generation with how they were in high-school.",
"people used to actually play out in the sun, smoke cigarettes, and drink early on. all of these things along with the clothes some people pointed out tends to make them look older. just being out in the sun alone ages the skin. people seem to forget that in this modern world we don't get outside almost ever, we don't have to do a lot of manual labor, and most of our jobs are cushy inside with AC now. like if you look at a construction worker who's the same age as a guy who works in an office now you'll see one look more rugged and older than the other even if they are the same age.",
"I know in parts of Canada, high school had a grade 13. This meant they were at the end stages of puberty, and 19-20yo by the time they were graduating. ",
"I think they actually do look older back then, and here are the reasons: \n\n- Adults were DEFINITELY shorter back then, there is no question. So they were a few inches shorter, which gives then a less 'lanky' and youthful appearance, more frumpy and older. (There is evidence that really bad, unattended common diseases may slightly stunt the growth of kids ever so slightly - less medical care would account for this.)\n\n- they didn't use sunscreen back then, which ages the skin\n\n- environmental pollution was much worse in America back then. Lead of course, but all kinds of industrial pollutants, more air pollution and of course MUCH more indoor cigarette smoke was inhaled by kids. Hell, more kids probably smoked back then. It adds up. \n\n- Less fortification and less variety in diets can have an impact, not everyone ate well back then, even if it was more 'natural'. \n\n- crappy shampoos encouraged the beginning of male pattern baldness just a little earlier, or perhaps it was higher testerone levels, but one of them. \n",
"I found a picture of myself in 8th grade this morning, I was a late bloomer but I still looked like a 13/14 year old. Whereas when I pick my cousin up from school (8th grade) his friends look wayyy younger, compared to my picture I look 3 or 4 years older than them. ",
"It most has to do with the style of the time... fashion.. hair styles.. facial hair and eye glasses... that you now associate with older people who kept wearing that same stuff.",
"It's a shift in society. In the past kids wanted to look and dress like adults.\nCurrently, adults want to look and dress like teenagers. ",
"people age differently .. look at a movie star in a 1960's movie , they often look really old even though they are in their early 40s. Today you see people in their 50s that still look pretty young for their age. I think it has something to do with better health/ nutrition ..",
"Looking at my parents' class yearbooks, nearly all their fellow students looked to be in at least their 30s, IMO, so this is always something that I've wondered as well. Probably because society just wasn't geared toward kids like it is today. Youth took a back seat to everything. There weren't the myriad products like creams, lotions, surgery, botox, exercises, yoga, hair replacement, hair color, supplements, vitamins, etc. Kids were just more 'adult'; kids dressed (and acted) more grown-up, hairstyles/fashion were more mature (butch/flattops for boys, waves/bangs/fringe for girls like their parents), little to no makeup, little to no jewelry. I noticed that nearly all lipstick back then seemed fairly dark, which tends to age one, as well. People were much thinner, too; plus, when people aged, they just...aged. Naturally. They got wrinkles and gray hair, or went bald, or went to the 'beauty parlor' weekly and got the 'grandma style' hair, or men went to the corner barber (where they got one of maybe 4 types of hairstyles) They didn't fight aging kicking and screaming like society today. ",
"I don't agree at all. Girls these days look almost the same between 15 and 22. \n\nThat's my story officer and I'm sticking to it. \n\nJust check this post I made completely independent of any other incident. ",
"An 18yo back in the 1970s generally was a lot more independent and mature than today's kids. So, they had more adult responsibilities. When you graduated high school, almost every person that I knew took only three life paths. #1 College. #2 Work. #3 Military service. If you were still living at home by 19. You were widely considered a major loser and life failure. Today. I know 30yo single guys who never moved out of mom and dad's house. Things were a lot cheaper so you could afford an apartment on your own with a job while working a mediocre full time factory job. That is not possible today without 3 or 4 roommates. No one had roommates, you had your OWN apartment or you lived in a dorm or in a barracks. ",
"I think another issue is that back in those days there weren't clothing lines manufactured for teens/young adults. Once you were adult sized, you wore adult clothes and therefore looked like an adult. ",
"Comments getting it all wrong: It isnt aesthetics it is cultural.\n\nThe average age of marriage in the 70's was early 20's, now it is late 20's to the early 30's. For a host of socioeconomic reasons we are in a \" new normal\" where we are now lagging behind the accomplishments of past generations when they were the same age.\n\nTl;dr people need to apply sociological observations when explaining the patterns of large populations.\n",
"The downside is that people looked like absolute crap by 40. These days, lots of people still look healthy and youthful into their 50s.",
"I'm not sure if anyone will agree with this or not, but my mom and I have had this opinion for a while on the subject. We have always seen it that people back then had to work harder much younger and had harder lives in general. People had jobs when they were 12-14, like hard labor. There was more expected of them and it showed. Teenagers nowadays, for the most part, only have to worry about going to school, getting good grades, and worrying about college to get a job where they DON'T have to exhaust their bodies at a young age.",
"Because kids today are soft balls of cookie dough who have never faced any real adversity and aren't allowed to have their feelings hurt. ",
"Am 48 years old. I look exactly as adult today as I did when I graduated from high school in 1985.",
"Simple. We werent all little, soft, pissy, entitled, wimps like most kids these days are. No cell phones, computers, gaming consoles, tv was for shit; we had to really work for bad porn (usually shitty old mags wrapped in trash bags hiddin out in the woods somewhere) we lived outside. Kids used to be much much tougher. To be fair: the kids in the 30s 40s and 50s were more \"adult\" than we were. - \"Child labor laws are ruining this country.\" - Ron Swanson ",
"Is your perception based on TV shows and Movies where they get 20 to 28 year olds to play 14-17 year olds? Plus they're white, white people age older than other races. A 24 year old white male/female will look older than their age as opposed to a 24 year old black/mexican/asian looking younger than their age until they hit like 35, especially asian females, not til they're 60. See factual reference: _URL_0_",
"I'm not saying I know the answer to this but: I'm 46 years old, and when I see an 18 year old from 1975 and an 18 year old from 2015, they look the same to me. Perhaps something about a person's relative age changes their perception of those kids.",
"It's because our tests weren't multiple choice and we had to walk several miles to school uphill, both directions, barefooted, in the snow.",
"Since the 1960's, Industries have increased in their economic and political power. They encourage child-like traits such as looking young (\"beautiful\"), high \"energy\" (productivity and sociability), and insatiable and sporadic/impulsive material neediness (along with the psychological traits that come with it). To be child-like: highly dependent on material needs, highly social, and \"active\" is encouraged, and becomes what is normal or valuable for society. On the other hand, non-child-like traits, such as independence, owning very little, not consuming very much (television, food, cars, read-once magazines, sports, Netflix, etc.), introversion, self-sufficiency (materially and intellectually), are discouraged and, in cases, developed into medical \"illnesses\".\nWhy has this happened? Industry profits from our neediness, it increases their control, and then they further profit. Industry aims to extend our child-hood, and maintain, if not increase people's neediness and lack of self-sufficiency. Our new mother is industry, providing all values and sustenance. Industry manufactures needs while simultaneously promising to meet them with the commodities it offers. To make people child-like; Industry seeks to cripple any semblance of independence, self-sufficiency, and creativity - individuality. The illusion of individuality/freedom comes under the guise that anyone can by anything, which, in being dependent on commodities and market forces, demolishes any possibility and outlet for individuality/freedom."
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158d7n | why does it take a few days after working out my legs to feel the burn, but lifting with my upper body causes almost immediate soreness? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/158d7n/why_does_it_take_a_few_days_after_working_out_my/ | {
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"Your lower half makes up more than 50 percent of your muscle mass and are among the most used skeletal muscle on your body, they can take the most punishment. So naturally, they're tougher to fatigue.",
"When you say \"working out legs\" do you mean running on a treadmill or do you mean heavy squats?\n\nI can't say for you specifically, but I know a lot of people that work out legs are not lifting heavy or are not doing exercises that would punish it. The legs consist of really large muscles so they can take more abuse (ie you can lift more). Chances are you're exerting more when you were benching or curls which is why those are sore.",
"Without knowing exactly what you're doing, with what quality of form, and with what frequency, this is an impossible question to answer. It is certainly possible for legs to \"feel the burn\" (though I'll note that Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness [DOMS] does NOT indicate a good workout).\n\nSo you could either be working out your upper body really hard (and/or with improper, possibly injury inducing form) and your lower body really easy (or you're using improper, not-full-range-of-motion form, like doing quarter squats), or your lower body is just more adapted to moving in general so you can do worthwhile exercises with it and just not get all DOMSey."
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20yqy6 | why are researchers still able to test on animals? | This seems like exactly the kind of thing someone would latch onto and make into a huge controversy. This has happened before: someone sees that a person whose job they know nothing about is doing something they think they shouldn't do. It gets shut down because of the massive wave of people following everyone else, backed by media.
If people can find a way to be against vaccinations, they can find a way to be against this, and would have ammunition besides, "I don't understand it and the one sentence summary someone gave me sounds weird"
Why hasn't it happened yet?
EDIT: I didn't clarify enough what I was asking, it seems. Sorry, but I understand why they test on animals. I wanted to know why there isn't a huge movement going against it. ameoba's post answered this, but thank you for your replies :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20yqy6/eli5_why_are_researchers_still_able_to_test_on/ | {
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"Because its still better than the alternative and people aren't nearly as bent out of shape about it.\n\nProduct testing needs to be done, research **needs** to be done. We value human life more than the lives of other animals, thus we use animals.",
"Plenty of people think animal testing is wrong -- just like plenty of people think vaccinations are bad. Some of their reasons are founded, many of them are not.\n\nThat doesn't automatically make them right though, or automatically create laws about it.\n\nWhat are you trying to ask?",
"because given the choice between a human guinea pig and a guinea pig guinea pig, people will still choose the guinea pig. ",
"Most people believe that the life of a mouse or whatever is worth less than the life of a human. Still, researchers who use animals have to abide by very stringent regulations that are all about avoiding unnecessary pain. They are really not doing this research to be cruel to animals, but to help people (generally, I absolutely oppose cosmetic testing on animals).\n\nSome groups have attacked animal research facilities and either started fires and left them to die or released them into a strange wilderness where they will die slowere.",
"Son, that train left the station. Animal rights activism was huge in the 80s and many companies stopped doing needless animal testing.\n\nIt's gone around in circles and the result is that we do less animal testing, saving them for serious medical work (as opposed to frivolous stuff like cosmetics made from known safe ingredients).\n\nThere's still people violently opposed to all animal testing but they're mostly on the fringe. We like eating meat too much to really ask questions about animal welfare."
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2hup3q | why we perform lobotomies and extreme medication instead of euthanasia | Rain Man kid used to drag his head on the ground. He was so broken the doctors heavily recommended his parents get him a lobotomy. Instead, they put him on sedatives for a decade.
I don't get it. Most of these treatments are meant to make someone manageable--you cut half their brain out or you drug them up so they're not actually alive anymore, but still have a pulse and can be herded until they die. Functionally, it's like killing them, except the shell keeps moving on its own.
Why don't we just kill them? What's the purpose of keeping the body but removing the mind? Do they have a way to fix them afterwards, put the pieces back together so it works right? What's the end goal?
EDIT: Mostly ethics and existential responses. No medical reasoning I'm missing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hup3q/eli5_why_we_perform_lobotomies_and_extreme/ | {
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"The topics of end-of-life care, persistent vegetative state care, and assisted suicide are still heavily debated in the US.\n\nThere's also the less discussed issue of severely debilitating birth defects that render a child effectively brain dead (including cases where there isn't even a brain) and how to handle that.\n\nThere really isn't a uniform end goal. Some people choose to keep a lifeless husk alive for religious reasons, others for emotional reasons, and still others for legal reasons.",
"I would assume it was for the emotions of the patients relatives more than the patient himself, since they most likely wouldn't know better afterwards. The family would still get to see a moving representation of what they knew as opposed to seeing it lowered into the ground. I guess, prolonging the inevitable.",
"We don't really do lobotomies anymore. \"Corrective\" neurosurgery has advanced significantly in recent decades and non-destructive techniques such as deep brain stimulation are much more common. Likewise treatment with drugs has advanced greatly as well. The aim is not to make a person 'manageable' but to enable a greater level of function within society."
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20j6wz | if electrons are the outermost subatomic particle in an atom, and they are negatively charged, are objects ever actually touching? if so, how? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20j6wz/eli5_if_electrons_are_the_outermost_subatomic/ | {
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"Well, to be honest, if you zoom in far enough to see everything clearly at that level, you'd see there's a whole bunch of nothing in-between all atoms. That means they're not actually touching, the only reason they stick together on that level is because of charge."
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1iyr3c | why nasa is building a new rocket instead of re-using the saturn v design. | The new rocket (Space Launch System) can carry just over 8% more cargo than the old Saturn V. I understand that the old Apollo capsule and lunar lander are unsafe and have less modern technology, but not much has changed in rocket design. Why are we spending money making a new rocket? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1iyr3c/eli5why_nasa_is_building_a_new_rocket_instead_of/ | {
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"They are no longer capable of making a Saturn V. It required millions of components, many very unique. These are no longer being made. It's much easier to just develop a new modern and safer vehicle which we will be able to build for a long time. ",
"At this point we'd have to almost reverse engineer the Saturn V, then make it again. It's easier to start over with modern materials & processes than it is to figure out how to use modern technologies to do it the old way.",
"One main reason for the design of a new launch vehicle is the advanced manufacturing and materials available today. This coupled with the redesign of some critical components such as the F1 engine (now the F1B) will make many of the subsystems compile with much fewer parts and higher precision. All of this will make the SLS a much better rocket for the cost than any redo of the Saturn V. Also the ability to add strap-on boosters to increase thrust will make it so the SLS heavy will be able to lift at least 250,000 Lbs of payload. The block II may even get strap-n F1B's to increase thrust even further at a lower development cost. Things are looking up for space access for the US in the next 10 years."
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65as3c | severe water shortages | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65as3c/eli5_severe_water_shortages/ | {
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"Burning hydrogen is not a very good method for making water because hydrogen does not occur in nature very much on its own. (Not on Earth anyways.)\n\nHydrogen loves to bond with pretty much everything, which means it gets stuck to all sorts of pesky molecules like metal, food and people. When on its own, it's extremely light, and when given half the chance, it will float away and escape. (It's atom is also so small it can squeeze though stuff, given enough time. Even plate metal and rock. That fact can be very irritating for engineers.)\n\nIn order to make water from hydrogen gas and the oxygen in the air, the hard part is getting the H2 gas. H2 is either made from electrically cracking other compounds, or as a byproduct of filtering the air in mine shafts. Both of these are not very efficient and quite slow, which is why hydrogen gas is a bit more expensive and rare than you might think. It's by no means rare in the same way Uranium is rare, but it's tricky to keep around.\n\nThis means making water from H2 gas and oxygen would not be a very good solution.\n\nIt would be much easier to transport ice or snow from somewhere else, or use big sheets of plastic to capture the moisture in the air and soil evaporated by sunlight."
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2hyv9t | if you can skip periods using birth control, then what happens to the eggs that aren't being released every month? if they aren't being released, does that mean you're postponing menopause? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hyv9t/eli5_if_you_can_skip_periods_using_birth_control/ | {
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"No. A woman has way, way more egg cells than she could ever use."
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61f5x3 | why fusion reactions stops when final product is iron ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61f5x3/eli5_why_fusion_reactions_stops_when_final/ | {
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"Elements with higher atomic numbers than iron actually use up net energy in order to fuse rather than releasing net energy.\n\nThey also release energy when they break apart (fission) unlike elements with lower atomic numbers than iron (which use up energy to break apart).\n\nIron is basically at balance - it takes up energy to either break it apart *or* to fuse it with something else.",
"_URL_0_\n\nIn short fusing elements releases energy until they get up to iron and afterwards it starts consuming energy on the aggregate. \n\nThis basically means that stars cannot be fueled by iron fusion, so unless the star goes supernova and basically explodes heavier elements aren't made.",
"The forces holding together a nucleus are quite complicated but put simply there's a net attraction between all the protons and neutrons ('nucleons') but the there's a strong repulsion from the positive charges of the protons. The attraction has a small range but is very strong while the electrostatic repulsion has infinite range that drops off slowly. It just so happens the most stable nucleus is iron, because it's nucleus is just big enough that all the nucleons are in range to attract each other while having the most nucleons to produce this attraction. Any bigger and you're adding nucleons outside the range of the attraction but its still getting repelled by the like charges. \nSo when you try to fuse something with iron to make it a bigger, heavier nucleus, so more unstable, so you have to put energy in to get it there. \n~ A little extra is that when something is in a potential from an attractive force, because e=mc^2 and potential energies from attractive forces are negative, it's actually lighter than just the masses making it up. This means that your two constituent nuclei are actually lighter than the final mass of the product nucleus. That extra mass comes from the energy you put into the fusion. \nPretty sure that's it but if people have questions/criticisms please leave them below 😊"
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3fzapy | why is the retirement age 59 and a half in the us? | What's the deal with the half? Wouldn't it be simpler to just have it be 60 years old, which is a well rounded number? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fzapy/eli5_why_is_the_retirement_age_59_and_a_half_in/ | {
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"Where are you getting that it's 59.5? I've always heard it being 65 or basically whenever the hell you can afford it. My father just turned 66 and he is retiring this year. \n\nAccording to _URL_0_, full retirement benefits is still 65, but will increase to 67 for people born after 1959.\n\nAlso according to their site, you can't even receive social security until you're 62, so I'm really confused on where you're getting this. \n\nAlthough the site did have a disclaimer stating \"This is an archival or historical document. It may not reflect current policies or procedures\" and it's a bitch to navigate their site on mobile.",
"In the US you one can retire any time they want, even at age 18. All they need is the finances to support themselves.\n\nThe (few remaining) companies that provide pensions usually base retirement eligibility for pension withdraws on a combination of age and years worked. 55 is one commmon number: if a person is 40 and worked 15 yeared for the company, that adds up to 55 - they can retire and start drawing a pension.\n\nMany companies nowadays only provide 401(k) plans, or employee savings plans where the money from both the employer and employee is contributed \"before taxes\". The US government imposes a 10% early withdrawal penalty if the employee takes the money out before age 59-1/2. That may be what you're thinking about. Even that age (59.5) isn't 'set in stone', there are exceptions.\n\nMany US workers also wait until a later age (62, 67, or 70, etc.) because other government mandated programs have minimum ages, such as Social Security or Medicare.\n",
"The 59.5 figure is the age most people can access their pensions or 401Ks with no penalty.\n\nThe age you can get Social Security depends on when you were born. I was born in the late '50s and I can take SS when I'm 62.5, but if I wait until I'm 65, I get more money each month.\n\nNone of those figures mean you can actually afford to retire."
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9scnte | why are injuries caused by acid considered burns when it has different effects on human flesh from heat? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9scnte/eli5_why_are_injuries_caused_by_acid_considered/ | {
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"Because by and large the way it is treated is the same. Copious amounts of water, dressing and seeking medical attention.\nIn the worst cases, treatment in a burns unit, skin grafting and so on.\n\nIt might not technically be a burn, but it's easier to lump people together into rough approximations of their clinical needs.",
"Expanding on the post by /u/tc10b (who nailed the short answer): Just like heat/fire, acids (and caustic bases!) break apart the molecules that make your tissues/cells/proteins. Fire adds enough energy to start breaking chemical bonds and cause reactions with oxygen, turning flesh into...not flesh anymore. Acids/Bases, on the other hand, do two things (generally speaking):\n\n1. Mess with the hydrogen balance in your body's water, causing unwanted chemical reactions which turn flesh into...not flesh.\n\n2. Dissolve a tremendous amounts of ions into your body's water, which can produce a lot of heat, depending on the strength of the chemical. This heat, along with how some acids/bases also act as dehydrators, does the same thing as fire.\n\nHope this helps answer your question!"
]
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7kvzxz | what is the difference between forward and reverse osmosis? | I see "reverse osmosis water" on a lot of products these days and I'm curious how reverse osmosis is different. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7kvzxz/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_forward_and/ | {
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"In osmosis, water travels through a membrane from a low-concentration (i.e. less dissolved solids) mixture to a high-concentration mixture until the concentration on both sides is the same.\n\nThis happens spontaneously and can be quite dramatic if one side is extremely highly concentrated. This is why drinking salt water is so harmful, osmotic pressure starts sucking water out of your cells.\n\n*Reverse* osmosis is the inverse process, forcing water to cross from the concentrated side to the pure side. This *won't* happen naturally and requires high pressures, but also acts as a very effective filtration process because the membrane excludes most particulates and large ions.",
"Osmosis is when a liquid (usually water) is flowing through a selective membrane from a lower concentration solution to a higher concentration solution. \n\nSo in the example of salt water. If you have a strong salt water solution on one side of the membrane and a weak solution on the other side, the water (but not the salt) from the weak side will flow across the membrane and dilute the strong side until the concentration of the solution is the same on both sides.\n\nReverse osmosis is increasing the pressure on the higher concentration side to force the water to flow from higher concentration to lower concentration which has the effect of purifying the water.\n\nIn order to increase that pressure you have to use a pump which takes energy (read: money) to run. ",
"I don't get how \"reverse osmosis\" is any different from \"filtration\"???",
"Just to confuse the issue - it is possible to purify water through forward osmosis as well and there are plants that do it. One typically draws the (pure) water into a another medium (say an amine) and free the water through another step - maybe distillation or reverse osmosis",
"When a liquid gets osmosisized, it literally goes through a liquid diffusion process. Think about it, when you put ice into a thermos, you get condensation right? The insulation in that thermos becomes exothermic, resulting in that condensation. Now put that same amount of ice into that same thermos while in a oven? You guessed it, reverse exothermic reaction. The volume of that melted ice will literally increase. Don't try this at home lol. \n\nWith Deer Park and Aquafina (maybe Nestle water as well but not sure), they have gigantic reverse exothermic diffusion furnaces. Thousands of plastic bottles are grouped together and \" staged \" but only by 5 groups at a time, multiply that by hundreds of furnaces and that's how you get your delicious reverse osmosisized water. \n\nThis process has been shown to be drastically cheaper than filtered mountain springs water. Which is pretty much why you can buy 25 bottles or so in a pack for only 3 bucks. It costs jobs unfortunately, but we'll save the politics for a different ELI5. \n\nSource: used to work as a lead operator in a Deere Park factory."
]
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37aiq6 | how come we never wake up when we turn or move in our sleep, but if somebody nudges us, we usually tend to wake up. | I go to sleep on my back, I wake up on my side. How come my movement didn't wake me up, but when my wife softly nudges me, I wake up right away? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37aiq6/eli5_how_come_we_never_wake_up_when_we_turn_or/ | {
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"text": [
"I'm pretty sure it's the same reason we can't tickle ourselves our mind is aware of it's own movements but instantly recognizes external stimulus and wakes you up in case it's a threat"
]
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1hz8ot | a clockwork orange | Such a borderline abstract movie, I understand the idea that a psycho cult goes around, commiting crimes, and the such, only to be rehabilitated (under a hypnotist-esque trance) and then re-released into a socially new world. But what is the overall point to the movie?
What would be the major theme?
What was Stanley Kubrick's vision when he made the movie? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hz8ot/eli5_a_clockwork_orange/ | {
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"I suppose the big question that the film attempts to answer is \"How free is free will?\" Kubrick was a notoriously thourough (some would say obsessive) filmmaker, yet he was also very secretive. \n\nKeep in mind that A Clockwork Orange is based on a book of the same name by Anthony Burgess. I have not read it, but maybe reading the book could shed some light on your question. ",
"I guess the question of the movie is \"can people really change?\". Most people sum the movie up by simply a viewing of the final scene. \"Is he really changed, or is he faking?\"",
"At first, it's about morality: in particular, the evils of youth without restraint. You watch/read and are horrified by these boys' actions. They're so far outside the moral society, they even have their own dialect.\n\nBut as you follow the main character, you find he's not a 2 dimensional monster; he's a real person. And you begin to relate, even though you may abhor his actions. You realize that maybe you don't fit quite so neatly into the moral society, that you're a few steps from evil yourself.\n\nBut the story isn't over. Now your main character is older. His friends have moved on. They've stabilized, joined society, dropped the dialect.\n\nBut our character hasn't. \n\nSociety then tries to force itself on the main character, ripping apart his mind to make him conform. But why aren't we happy as we see this happen? Why aren't we glad to see him reprogrammed into someone good?\n\nAnd this is where we realize the true message: more important than being good or evil is having free will.\n\nThat's why, at the end, part of you is happy when the main character regains his inner monster. You're glad society failed to brainwash him. It's who he's supposed to be.\n\nAnd you're jealous.\n\n\nEdit: I'll note that I am ignoring the omitted-for-America final chapter, which I think ruins the story.\n",
"Okay first off, please go read the book and try to find the original version which has the full ending of the book, unlike the American version which Kubrick used as his inspiration for the movie.\n\nThe main underlying theme of the movie is human nature vs free will. Alex's human nature is extremely perverse and violent. When he is finally captured because of his extreme nature, he his given the ludovico treatment which removes his free will (his ability to choose violence or non violence). By doing so he renters society unable to cope and is beaten and trampled by the harsh reality of life. So the question burgess asks is how far will we go to suppress human nature (violent tendencies). Where is the line of going to far.\n\nIn the English version there is an additional chapter in which after Alex's treatment reverses, he finds himself unable to enjoy his violent ambitions from the time before. He gives up the violent life and lives a normal life, which leads to burgess's point that free will can in fact right the sinking ship, that in all our efforts to reduce violent tendencies it is up to our own free will and maturation in order to combat this",
"It seems like your question has already been answered, but you should know that it was actually a book first, written by Anthony Burgess. Kubrick's film actually leaves out the final chapter of the book, something that Burgess did not really like. It kind of made it a different story by leaving it out. It's one of my all time favorite books, and I thought it was much better than the movie (although the movie was still good.)"
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5mlzc6 | what is ethereum? and why and how is it mined? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mlzc6/eli5_what_is_ethereum_and_why_and_how_is_it_mined/ | {
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"Etherium is at its core a highly sophisticated new-generation cryptocurrency system akin to bitcoin.\n\n\"Mining\" in regards to cryptocurrency means providing computing power for logging the various transactions in the distributed ledger. This requires *a lot* of processing power because of the highly complicated cryptographic algorithm used to record the data in a falsification-proof way. As a result, the miner is rewarded by being granted new bitcoin out of thin air - i.e. that which did not previously exist, akin to printing new money."
]
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5z79ei | what causes 'bugs' in computer code over time? | I understand a little about computer programming, but this part has always made no sense to me. I get how if you introduce new programs or new code into an environment, you can get errors. But how come the same program, using the same code, can just 'go wrong' when it gets old? It's the same lines of code; how have things changed that drastically? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5z79ei/eli5_what_causes_bugs_in_computer_code_over_time/ | {
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"Code doesn't \"wear out\", so bugs don't \"appear\" after a while. What happens is one of two things:\n\n* The bug was always there, but you didn't have enough data to make it apparent.\n\n* The bug is a resource leak and the program finally ran long enough to exhaust some resource.",
"Usually when this happens, it's that something changed in the operating environment. Could be that you logged in under a different user and that triggered it. Or maybe an OS update got installed. Or maybe Acrobat Reader updated itself. Or maybe your hard drive got some bad sectors. Or maybe you were running more programs and using more CPU, which exposed a latent race condition.\n\nCode runs the same way every time, assuming the *exact* same conditions. If one of those conditions changes, then bugs can appear.",
"Often it is because the problem only appeared with something new that's been added. The code might always have been buggy, but nobody knew it because the conditions for the bug to appear were never met.\n\nI'll give you an example from my work. We upgraded the drives in a database server from spinning disks to SSDs. Makes everything much faster.\n\nAnd one application kept crashing. WTF?\n\nTurns out that there was a bug in their code where it couldn't handle events well if they came in too fast. It never was a problem before because the database was a natural speed bump and it was impossible for the data to come in too fast. Once we upgraded the server, data started flowing faster and their program crashed.\n\nOnly when that happened did they discover the bug and were able to take steps to correct it. This kind of thing happens all the time with complicated systems -- a piece of code that might have been running fine for years might stop working because of a related system.",
"Computer programs usually interact with other programs and data, and if those change in unanticipated ways, so can the program.\n\nFor example, a program might read names from a file and load them into some kind of database. The whatever made those names sudden decided to support non-Latin characters, that could cause a bug.",
"I can give you an example:\n\nPeople applying to universities, system requires last name to be longer than 2 characters... after 20 years school decides to accept international asian students, they have last names with 2 characters... keep in mind that if no asian student were to register, this would never be an issue.\n\nMost of the bugs are like this, usually appear when something new is added, or the system is used in a slightly different way that it was originally intended to.\n\n > But how come the same program, using the same code, can just 'go wrong' when it gets old? It's the same lines of code; how have things changed that drastically?\n\nin my example it worked fine for 20 years, since the regular users never had last names of less than 2 characters... however the restriction was always there, but no one noticed / was affected by it. If it aint broke dont fix it.\n\n\n\n"
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31lyra | where does time go? | I'm guessing the answer is 'time isn't a thing, it's a concept, what's wrong with you?'.
It may be the dumbest question I will ever ask, but I'm asking on the off chance that someone has a surprising answer.
I realise it's not a substance, or a reel of tape on a projector projecting our likeness onto reality, but if the temporal effects the spatial then there must be something *to* time, right? What form does time take once we're done with it?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31lyra/eli5where_does_time_go/ | {
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"Is it really time or moments? Time was made for control. Have you ever thought about living in a world with out clocks or time? I think all that there is, is now and that's it. I would be interested in discussing this more myself. ",
"In short I don't think you're going to get a satisfying answer for quite a few years, but there are some widely accepted theories/ideas.\nOne is that time is the fourth dimension.Time is a measurement of change and just as up/down, left/right and forward/back are seen as the three spatial measurements of distance then it seems logical to think of time as the fourth. You could argue that a species inside a five-dimensional world would be able to see time as a physical object which they can cut through or mold. (Sort of like the tesseract in Interstellar)\n\nOf course this is a theory based on our current knowledge of time. Know there hasn't been any experimental observation to prove this but also none that disproves it. \n\nIn the past it was thought of as just an arrow going from the past to the future. But this is beginning to fade.\n\nWhat I think is interesting is that when you think about it, we are always in the present. If we were to record the present it would be infinity (or until the universe ends If time is bound to space)\nYet the past is measurable sort of like distance and volume. The past has been happening for some time (around 14 billion years) and will get longer. But the present will always be every time everywhere. The future also looks to be measurable but we don't know what it holds.\nIts easier to imagine it like a cylinder. Draw a line somewhere along it cross section and label one side the past and the other the future. You would think the presence is that line that you drew. But in fact the presence is everywhere in that cylinder. No matter of you travel to the \"present\" or to the \"future\" you will ultimately still end up in the present.\n\nBasically we know fuck all 😁. Have a great day.",
"Time is a series of infinite moments.\n\nSomething you could try to think of it is is this, imagine a 0th dimension is a dot. The first dimension is a line, with an infinite amount of dots that can be placed on it. The second dimension is a plane, like on a paper, and you can place an infinite amount of lines and an infinite amount of dots on those lines. The 3rd dimension is space which has an infinite amount of planes, each of which have an infinite amount of lines, each of which have an infinite amount of dots.\n\nThe forth dimension is often explained as time. A way to think of it is imagine the 3rd dimension is like a dot to a time's line. There's an infinite about of dots on this time's line, some closer to a certain dot we'll call present than others. So the exact present, as you experience it, as you read this sentence, is just a dot on time's line. This line you're reading now is being read an infinite amount of dots apart, but the two dots are closer together than they are to say, any moment that JFK was alive.\n\nIt's a bit too complex to truly ELI5, but I hope this helps.\n\ntl;dr There's a points, then infinite points on a line. There's lines, which are infinite on planes just like points are infinite on lines. Then spaces, which has infinite planes just like infinite points on a line. Then there's time, which has infinite spaces just like infinite points on a line.\n\ntl;dr the tl;dr Time goes right out the window.",
"According to relativity, time is basically just another dimension like up/down, left/right or forward/back. Your question is a wee bit like asking \"what happens to up when we fall down? Where does up go?\" So there's probably not really a satisfying answer, but I suspect the way you're imagining time is a little funky."
]
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2bcfxn | why is the us involved in the mh17 crash investigation? | With an international airliner, over foreign soil, with no US citizens on board, why is the US government getting involved in the investigation of the downed airliner? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bcfxn/eli5_why_is_the_us_involved_in_the_mh17_crash/ | {
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"The plane was made by Boeing, an American company.\n\nIt is customary to allow the nation of the airplane maker to gather evidence and make findings in the event of a crash.",
"Ukraine requested ICAO assistance in the investigation of the downing of Flight MH-17. Under Article 26 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation, as well as Annex 13 to the Convention relating to Aircraft Accident and Incident Investigation, Ukraine is officially in charge of the MH17 accident investigation by virtue of being the State of Occurrence. Annex 13 also provides comprehensive international requirements for the investigation of aircraft accidents and incidents and spells out which States may participate in an investigation, such as the States of Occurrence, Registry, Operator, Design and Manufacture. It also defines the rights and responsibilities of such States. \n\n_URL_0_"
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15181b | why did the basalt at the giant's causeway in northern ireland form into mostly hexagons? | I realise that they aren't perfect hexagons but the shapes seem very geometric. Is this a normal feature of basalt?
I'm not sure how well known this is outside of Ireland but [here's](_URL_0_) a picture. And [another](_URL_1_). | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15181b/eli5_why_did_the_basalt_at_the_giants_causeway_in/ | {
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"This is called columnar jointing. It is mostly caused by the rate of cooling of the lava flow. As the flow cools, thermal stresses cause the triple junction (where 3 lines connect). \n\nAs for how common it is, I suppose its relatively common. This type of feature is not restricted to basalts. They can form in a variety of compositions of magma. \n\nSource: Senior geology major, and _URL_0_"
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"http://www.marinehotelballycastle.com/giants/image1.jpg"
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[
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465kyy | when a video doesn't load properly, why does the video turn different shades of green? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/465kyy/eli5_when_a_video_doesnt_load_properly_why_does/ | {
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"text": [
"In the most popular video encoding formats the information is represented as luminance (from dark to light) and two colour values related to red (Cr) and blue (Cb). The amount of green is calculated from the Cr and Cb numbers. So when you have no data (Cr = Cb = 0) the decoder will output green.\n\nTL;DR no data in your video means you get green as the default.\n"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
5iq93e | why is there no downside/punishment to voter suppression? or is there something underused? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5iq93e/eli5_why_is_there_no_downsidepunishment_to_voter/ | {
"a_id": [
"dba4q2n",
"dbaao5t"
],
"score": [
9,
3
],
"text": [
"Voter suppression is typically illegal if done by individuals. There are laws against things like voter intimidation that are punishable with fines or arrest/jail.\n\nThe bigger problem is governmental/systematic voter suppression, which is not illegal because by definition the laws a government passes define legality. These include things like ID checks, pre-ballot tests, poll-expenses, etc. which are typically not explicitly targeted against one group but none-the-less have a disproportionate effect on one group without actually providing any other benefit to the public.",
"What do you mean by voter suppression? \n\nIf you mean discouraging people through speech, like trying to convince people that \"voting for third parties isn't going to make a difference,\" or \"no one vote is going to make a difference, so why bother?\" That's protected speech under the First Ammendment: You're allowed to try and convince people of your viewpoint.\n\nIf you mean making threats or blocking off polling places, that's illegal.\n\nIf you mean things like reducing access to voting that some groups prefer, such as early voting and absentee voting, or creating more stringent ID requirements, those are a grey area and the courts have to decide if they serve a legitimate government interest or if they primarily discourage certain groups from voting. There are usually legitimate arguments on both sides of such changes. For example, [Arizona has a law disallowing third parties from collecting and delivering absentee ballots.](_URL_0_) This was upheld (at least in the initial phases of litigation) as a legitimate state interest even though it could potentially burden some people because it's too easy to tamper with ballots or influence voters while they're filling out their ballots.\n\nSo, the close cases boil down to the courts weighing the benefits and costs and constitutionality of laws that might suppress voters."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[
"http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/04/politics/arizona-ballot-collection/"
]
]
|
||
4r5g0v | why do black holes distort their background? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4r5g0v/eli5_why_do_black_holes_distort_their_background/ | {
"a_id": [
"d4ygqtt"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"This phenomenon is known as gravitational lensing.\n\nSay that you have a laboratory and you put it under different conditions\n\n1. Sitting on the earth\n\n2. Floating in space not under any significant gravitational influence\n\n3. In a rocket accelerating, not under any significant gravitational influence\n\n4. Far above the earth in free fall.\n\nIn situations 1 and 3, a ball will fall and a pendulum will swing, etc.\n\nIn situations 2 and 4, the ball will float in place and the pendulum will have no tension and cannot swing\n\nSo for all intents and purposes, you can say 1 and 3 are identical scenarios (accelerated reference frames) And 2 and 4 are identical scenarios (inertial reference frames)\n\nNow this is where it gets tricky to explain without pictures, in situation 3, say a beam of light comes in a window and projects itself on the wall. Since the rocket is accelerating, the light should appear to follow a curved path through the lab and be projected slightly lower on the wall.\n\nSince scenarios 1 and 3 are identical, we must observe the same phenomenon in scenario 1, so gravity must bend light.\n\nNow scale that up to the mass of a black hole, lots of mass means lots of gravity, lots of gravity means lots of light bending, giving us the warped image we see\n\nYou can see a similar effect from light passing by large elliptical galaxies too"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
6y3f9a | why do file checksums on a download page make the downloads more secure? | If a hacker somehow modified the files, couldn't they also modify the checksums on the download page?
(Example: _URL_0_ ) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6y3f9a/eli5_why_do_file_checksums_on_a_download_page/ | {
"a_id": [
"dmkdo2k",
"dmkk01q",
"dmkmuqo"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"That's true, but since checksums are small they are easy to verify through another source, like someone else who has downloaded the file or by contacting the developer. \n\nIt's also easy for the developers to check whereas it might not be obvious that the file itself has been replaced.",
"It's not just for security. It validates that your download was not corrupted (which doesn't always manifest in a visible way).",
"Notice that that link is https, so your view of the checksums is protected by the SSL certificate for that site. Now in this case, the download links are over SSL, so the downloads themselves would also have the same protection. But what if those links were too slow so you got the large files from a mirror site, a torrent, or some guy in the next cubicle?"
]
} | []
| [
"https://github.com/ethereum/mist/releases"
]
| [
[],
[],
[]
]
|
|
1ahxyi | ram, hdd memory, graphics cards and processors. | I'm comfortable with computers but useless when it comes to discussing specs. I have no idea if a NVidia is better than an AMD card, etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ahxyi/eli5_ram_hdd_memory_graphics_cards_and_processors/ | {
"a_id": [
"c8xkk08"
],
"score": [
9
],
"text": [
"HDD memory is simple. If it's bigger, it's better. There's also RPM (usually 5k-7.2k), which is how fast the physical disc of the drive is spinning. Again, bigger is better.\n\nWith RAM, again, bigger is better. There are other specs, but they are highly unlikely to matter in the slightest bit unless you're a hardcore computer enthusiast, in which case you wouldn't be asking this question (no offense). There will be numbers like \"DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800),\" and more is better, but that really doesn't matter at all for a regular computer user.\n\nFor video cards, there are two *chipsets*, nVidia and ATi, and different manufacturers make cards of each chipset (so, you can buy the same \"nVidia card\" from a bunch of different companies). One is not better than the other, despite what furious internet arguers from both sides will tell you. If you're buying/comparing video cards, the absolute *wrong* approach is to try to gauge how good it is by looking at the raw specs. A video card is actually so complicated that you can think of it as a second computer, so trying to reduce its performance to \"well, I have more gigabytes!\" is fruitless.\n\nWhat you need to do if you're comparing video cards is use \"benchmarking,\" which is another word for \"performance testing.\" There are some awesome nerds out there whose job it is to test various video cards (and processors!) against each other in tons of different ways, and they publish their results on various websites. If, for example, you play Battlefield 3 a lot, and want to see which video card is best for you, you can google \"battlefield 3 video card benchmarks,\" and you'll be inundated with charts upon charts of how well each card performs, and can make an informed purchasing decision based on that."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
|
d8no0r | what is that film on the bottom of your nail? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d8no0r/eli5_what_is_that_film_on_the_bottom_of_your_nail/ | {
"a_id": [
"f1bi6wo",
"f1biad2",
"f1bjbj0"
],
"score": [
11,
7,
4
],
"text": [
"Is it towards the part where your nail joins your finger? That's called the cuticle (cute-ickle), and it protects your nail from bacteria while it grows, at least as far as I've been able to google.",
"It's called the cuticle, a thin layer of dead tissue that rides on the nail plate to form a seal that prevents pathogens from infecting the production area of the nail.",
"A mixture of keratin from your nail, cuticle from the part underneath your nail, and all the garbage from surfaces you touch.\n\nThese are all mixed together and trying to be rejected by your bodys natural processes so it flows outwards and ultimately falls off when your cuticle/nails grow outwards."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[],
[]
]
|
||
18x39k | death tax | My grandmother just passed away, and before she did, she decided to let it be known that my brother and I get her house.
Our father then promptly tells us (not in her presence) that we shouldn't get too attached to the house, because the government is going to tax the shit out of it since we are inheriting it. He said there were ways around it by putting it in a trust or something, but I didn't understand.
The government taxes us on things that our loved ones leave us? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18x39k/eli5_death_tax/ | {
"a_id": [
"c8is9i3",
"c8isng4",
"c8ivtdb"
],
"score": [
8,
13,
5
],
"text": [
"You're talking about the [estate tax](_URL_0_).\n\nIf your grandmother's estate had significant value the government will charge you a significant percentage of the value.\n\nIt is obviously not popular among wealthier individuals because it can eat up 40% of their estate upon their death.\n\nSince they're taxed on earning (income tax), spending (sales tax), and living (property tax) already, they think that taxing that value a *fourth* time is excessive.\n\n",
"The \"death tax\" (aka estate tax) doesn't actually kick in unless your grandmother's estate is worth more than $5.25 million. Your father doesn't know what he's talking about.",
"The idea behind an estate tax was to prevent an aristocracy from appearing, where massive wealth is passed down from generation to generation. However, it generally does not apply to the basics, like the primary residence, small amounts of cash, cars, and other assets, and kicks in at values well above a million, depending on the country. \n\nIn the true spirit of Reddit, lawyer up. Talk to an estate or tax lawyer, and find out what you need to know to avoid losing it. \n\nA related issue will appear if you two decide to sell the house and take out the money. If you can't claim it as a primary residence, you may have to pay capital gains on it. If your grandmother had the house for a long time, the value may be very much higher, and so the taxes could leave you with only half the value. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_tax_in_the_United_States"
],
[],
[]
]
|
|
ce4p3s | what does a “vote to condemn” actually do? and what ramification(s) would it have? | It really seems like a “bad on you” | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ce4p3s/eli5_what_does_a_vote_to_condemn_actually_do_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"etyl35h",
"etzgajl",
"eu1xc4d"
],
"score": [
12,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"It doesn't do anything. It's purely symbolic. It has no functional purpose. It really just basically a scolding.",
"The condemnation is purely symbolic in nature but was put as a resolution in the first place following a dispute about Committee Rules of Conduct and Debate that some representatives felt House Speaker Pelosi violated when responding to the tweets President Trump put out targeting members of Congress. They put forth a resolution to strike Pelosi's comments from the Congressional Record which failed to pass but the Chamber Parliamentarian reviewing the incident did determine she was out of order making those comments and barred her from speaking the rest of the day. So the HOR decided to settle the matter within the Committee Rules of Conduct and Debate with an official resolution of dissent and condemnation about what the president said so they they could put the whole argument to rest.",
"It's sort of like sending a registered letter of complaint, return receipt requested. It is an official, trackable and historically permanent way to indicate the HOR disagrees with the President's tweets and has publicly chastised him for making them. It doesn't carry any legal weight for punishment but it makes a congressional record of their criticism, a record that remains forever."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[],
[]
]
|
|
c8yesx | why do some songs list the name of the dj as the artist, rather than the person actually singing the song? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c8yesx/eli5_why_do_some_songs_list_the_name_of_the_dj_as/ | {
"a_id": [
"esr4ydp"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"All music is collaborative at some juncture. In this case, the singers may be brought to simply “play their instrument”, so to speak, like a session musician. The majority of the track and it’s flavours are the DJ’s."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
fyku8x | why is the “standard” color for cardboard brown? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fyku8x/eli5_why_is_the_standard_color_for_cardboard_brown/ | {
"a_id": [
"fn0gla9",
"fn0mwi7"
],
"score": [
12,
3
],
"text": [
"Paper (which is what cardboard is) is made from wood pulp which is brown. White paper is bleached to be white.",
" > Is there a material in cardboard that automatically makes it brown when manufacturing?\n\nYes, it's wood pulp, the fundamental thing paper is made out of. \n\nBrown is the default color. Other colored papers are abnormally colored. We like bleached paper because it's easy to see the things that are written on white paper: however you can buy unbleached paper and that will very similar to the cardboard brown color."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
]
|
||
31nrlx | why do the elderly prefer cars with styles such as the crown victorian and the grand marquis? am i missing something? | One style of the most preferred car by elderly people would be cars that look similar to the Crown Victorian. Where I live I see about 70% of elderly people in cars similar. Do they prefer that style because it's simpler? Is the car secretly amazing and I'm not realizing it? What's the deal with these cars? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31nrlx/eli5why_do_the_elderly_prefer_cars_with_styles/ | {
"a_id": [
"cq38v6w",
"cq38vqv",
"cq3ajy4",
"cq3bpm1"
],
"score": [
3,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"I think it's because they are simple, comfortable (large inside), reliable, and they were made the exact same way for so long that repairs are easy and cheap, and Fords/Lincolns were well known way back in their day and they remember them well.\n\nJust like 50 years from now we will all be riding around in Mercedeseseseses and all the up-and-comers will be wondering why we are in such old-fashioned baloney machines instead of the new Zebrarunner hotness or whatever.",
"Those were the fancy popular cars when they were younger. They tend to prefer the \"in style\" car from then just like they tend to prefer the \"in style\" music from then. ",
"I was kind of thinking it was because of the size. If they get into an accident, which they frequently do, they would have more protection.",
"It's because they're comfortable, and old people have back and joint problems. Vibration is bad for your body. My father won't drive in my car because the suspension is too rough; what I consider a relatively smooth pavement, he criticizes me for finding and hitting every bump in the road. He won't sit in my mother's car because the seats are uncomfortable to him.\n\nYoung people don't know because we'd never drive such a wretched thing. I don't like them because they feel unnatural and uninviting. I'm sure I'll change my opinion in 20 years."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
|
|
6h5ga4 | why do many people enjoy crab, lobsters, and shrimp as food, but find the idea of eating tarantulas and large insects disgusting? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6h5ga4/eli5_why_do_many_people_enjoy_crab_lobsters_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"divoo09",
"divorpi"
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text": [
"My best guess would be because people are often surprised by insects, by finding them in unexpected places in their home.\n\nWe don't see crustaceans in the wild, and when we see live ones, it's almost always in a controlled, expected environment (inside a tank at the grocery store) and the movements are much slower than the movement of insects.\n\nAlso due to their size, it's a lot easier to get at just the meat and to discard all the \"icky parts.\" Insects are too small to do that effectively, so you have to eat the whole thing - icky parts and all. \n\nAdditionally, crustaceans have a lot more meat. They're generally more muscular animals, because in order to get around they have to be strong enough to deal with water resistance and currents. This too plays into the prior point about making it easier to separate the muscle from everything else. \n\nFinally though, there are a lot of non-western cultures that do eat insects. And some people are working on bringing that mindset to western culture as well, although I can't think of the example right now. ",
"Im guessing it has to do with how they are prepared in a culinary sense. Those sea creatures have exoskeletons protecting them, and when you remove that to cook the meat and cover them in butter and lemon (or roll them in sushi) it's easy to forget that they are bascially the cockroaches of the sea. Also, if you take a look at the context... maybe people regarded them as appetizing in the first place becasue you can't see them in the ocean scrounging around; if we witnessed a crazy shrimp crawling across your bathroom floor in the middle of the night we probably wouldn't think to eat shrimp."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
]
|
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