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c6bppr | what constitutes how "full" you feel? | Stupid question, but what makes you feel "full", is it the literal volume of the food you eat? it cant be calorie intake otherwise chocolate would fill you up fast... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c6bppr/eli5_what_constitutes_how_full_you_feel/ | {
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"There are actually a number of different hormones and enzymes that affect satiety. These are released and picked up by the nervous system, causing your brain to cease the feeling of hunger. Release of these hormones/enzymes happens following physical stretching of the stomach, when certain pH levels are reached, etc.",
"I don't actually know much about it, but I know that there's a \"fullness hormone\" called Leptin that signals your brain to feel full, that gets released after you eat. Should be a good starting point of research if you wanna know more."
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2syqwf | what do female jihadi fighters believe awaits them in heaven? | There's an argument that male Jihadi fighters believe that 72 virgins await them in heaven, and that for young men in such a sexually repressive environment this can be a powerful motivator to fight. Assuming this is true, what are the corresponding rewards/motivations for female fighters? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2syqwf/eli5_what_do_female_jihadi_fighters_believe/ | {
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"Just so you know... getting 72 virgins in heaven is not part of canonical Islamic belief, at this point I think it's more of a joke rather than something that jihadists actually believe in.",
"The 72 virgins thing is more of a Western joke and fanatical thing than reality. They do it because they love their religion and believe that dying for their religion will result in greatness and eternal happiness. This is great, if they had a normal interpretation of their religion - since then they would care for the poor, spend their lives doing good deeds, and make the world better. The issue is that through fanaticism, their interpretation is so messed up, they do things in the name of Islam that go against Islams actual purpose. \n\nBut tl dr to your question: they expect divine reward like joy and happiness and nearness to God",
"You have to understand how Heaven in Islam works. \n\nThere are multiple layers to heaven, and you get access to each one of them based on the level of your faith and belief. That being said, even the lowest level is still infinite times greater than earth. \n\nAs for women, they never age, they remain beautiful, they have everything they desire, and the food they eat will taste different in every bite, each tasting delicious. Old women do not enter Heaven, as they enter it as young versions of themselves. ",
"The colloquial western idea of \"72 Virgins\" is not directly mentioned in the Koran, but rather is a part of several 'Hadiths' which are something of a collection of sayings, traditions, and stories of the Prophet Muhammad.\n\n\nFrom oral histories, the Hadiths were first recorded more than a century after the death of the prophet, and since then have been accepted to varying degrees, or outright rejected by the many varied Islamic cultures and governments around the world and through history.\n\n\nUltimately there is no supreme arbiter who decides which Hadiths are or aren't an acceptable supplement to the Koran (That job would fall to The Caliph, but the only person who is really trying to claim that title is the leader of ISIS)\n\nAlong with 72 Virgins here are some other things that are not mentioned in the Koran but are sometimes accepted as a part of Islam throughout greater Arabia.\n\n\n**Stoning/Death** as punishment for adultery (The Koran would rather give 100 lashes)\n\n**Circumcision** is recommended in a few Hadiths but is completely unmentioned in the Koran\n\n**Hijabs/Niqabs**. The Koran asks only that people dress 'modestly' with no specifics given as to hair/face covering or gender\n\n**Inter-faith Marriage** Many Hadiths discourage inter-religious marriage, and some outright forbid a Muslim woman from marrying outside the faith. The Koran allows Muslims of any gender to marry among Christians and Jews.\n"
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2f269p | why isn't comcast launching a mass production campaign or sweeping policy changes? | It seems like there are massive amounts of people vocally challenging Comcast and it's policies. Why aren't they addressing it? Wouldn't it be smarter to change and address the outcry? Or atleast try to bamboozle us into thinking they're changing their ways? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2f269p/eli5_why_isnt_comcast_launching_a_mass_production/ | {
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"Because they don't have too.\n\nThose customers are free to pick someone else... oh wait thanks to the nature of the business there likely *isn't anyone else*. Comcast has no incentive to spend billions of dollars to fix a problem that is not (currently) costing them anything.\n",
"They would, except that they're what's called a Monopoly. People don't have another choice when it comes to service provider, so Comcast can gleefully tell them to go pound sand and nothing will happen until enough people are willing to completely give up their services to force a change."
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3z5hwt | how snickers edited a scene from the brady bunch for their commercial | [Here's the video in question.](_URL_0_)
I'm curious as to how they are able to edit this (and how other companies do the same for their commercials) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3z5hwt/eli5how_snickers_edited_a_scene_from_the_brady/ | {
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"Basically: first they hire people who sound like the actor they're portraying and use some cuts from the original show to add to the illusion. From there, they'll cut away, and use body doubles, like when the camera faces away from the actors. This creates the illusion that the original actors are still on the set. They film the scene, edit for lip sync, do a few jump cuts, and add Steve Buscemi for comedic effect. Finally, add a seventies tv filter, and you have yourself a Snickers commercial.",
"In case you are wondering about the legality, the Brady Bunch was a production and the rights to it are owned by someone. They were paid for the right to produce this little episode. Somewhere there are copies of the release sitting around.",
"Not answering the question as other people have this covered, but I'd like to thank you for this link. The commercial was really funny. I've never seen it; I don't have cable.",
"Dude, if you watch the video it'll play the \"[Making of](_URL_0_)\" featurette next. They show you how they did it."
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3dmml0 | how come there's nothing pulling the ships through the panama canal? | ELI5: Why it's so.
The Erie canal had horses that would help pull the boats across the canal.
I understand that container ships aren't exactly the same size since back then but wouldn't something like hydraulics on land that pulled the ships not be more energy efficient than the ship using its propeller in the water? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dmml0/eli5_how_come_theres_nothing_pulling_the_ships/ | {
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"There are small trains, located on the sides of the canal. These pull the ships through the sections (specifically, the locks) were they cannot move under their own power. Here is a detailed video of them in action. _URL_0_"
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5a63ix | how do boilers tell when someone has turned a tap to hot as opposed to cold? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5a63ix/eli5_how_do_boilers_tell_when_someone_has_turned/ | {
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"Changes the flow rate of the hot and cold lines. In between is a mix of the two. Full hot outputs water from the hot water tank almost exclusively. Full cold, from the regular cold line.",
"They don't. The boiler just puts out a constant heat, and the mixing is done at the tap, which adjusts the ratio of hot and cold water. ",
"A boiler is just a holding tank, with water from the well or water company coming in, and hot water coming out. The boiler has its own thermostat set to keep the water in the tank at a particular temperature. So when you run the hot water in the house, hot water in the tank is removed and replaced by colder water from the supply. If it's enough, it will trigger the thermostat to turn on. \n\nWhen you turn on cold water, it takes water directly from the supply, so it doesn't affect the temperature of the water in the boiler. ",
"Unless you were wondering about tankless water heaters, the kind that do not hold any water and then those use a flow meter, the faster the meter reads, the hotter it gets to compensate for flow. "
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r57a4 | waves in the electromagnetic spectrum | Are all waves in the spectrum made up by photons? Is there something special about the visible light we see, or are all waves essentially the same material but oscillating at different frequencies and amplitudes?
If waves are all made up by photons, why do the extremely high frequency waves damage people and things? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/r57a4/eli5_waves_in_the_electromagnetic_spectrum/ | {
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" > Are all waves in the spectrum made up by photons?\n\nall electromagnetic waves are comprised of photons, yes. these are different than compression waves, such as sound, which propagate through some medium such as air or water.\n\n > Is there something special about the visible light we see...\n\nthere is nothing special about visible light other than the fact that we can see it. other animals have different vision ranges. hawks, for example, can see well into the infrared spectrum to locate the little critters they want to swoop down and grab. (many birds of prey also have excellent vision, far superior to human vision for hunting little animals from high up.)\n\n > ...or are all waves essentially the same material but oscillating at different frequencies and amplitudes?\n\ncompression waves like sound require some kind of propagation medium that can be compressed and transfer the force to surrounding material. there is no sound in space, for instance, because there's no air in space (pitched star trek battles complete with explosion sounds notwithstanding).\n\nem radiation is different. photons are not compression waves in that they do not depend on some other underlying material to move. they just move through empty space, oscillating and making their way.\n\nprior to the 20th century, it was hypothesized that light was a compression wave and did travel through a medium, which was called the \"aether\". however, testing for the presence of this aether not only disproved its existence, it taught us far more about light and physics than anyone could have imagined at the time. (the relevant experiment that failed to confirm the existence of the aether was the michaelson-morley experiment, and the result led to einstein's theories of relativity.)\n\nit might seem odd that light has this special property that it can sail along through empty space while oscillating with a wavelength and a frequency. what may surprise you even more: light is not special in this way. all matter does this. when you throw a ball through the air, it actually moves with a wavelength and a frequency.\n\nyou don't see it because a ball is so huge and its wavelength so small, but it's there. it's called the de broglie wavelength and you can calculate it for any object you want.\n\n_URL_1_\n_URL_0_",
"All waves are photons. The length of the wave (how far it \"bounces\" back and forth) is determined by the amount of energy it has. \n\nOur eyes evolved to use the visible spectrum because that's what our sun emits the most of. It emits some of everything, but it peaks in the visible spectrum. It's kind of like a bell curve; the top of the curve is in visible light.\n\nHigh frequency means high energy. When a high energy wave hits a molecule, it can break it apart. The higher the energy, the more damage it can do to a molecule, including our DNA. ",
"Severoon's answer is excellent, but (s)he didn't seem to address this question:\n\n > if waves are all made up by photons, why do the extremely high frequency waves damage people and things?\n\nFirst of all, I'm assuming you're only talking about EM waves, not waves in general.\n\nSecond, note that if the frequency gets low enough, that can be harmful too. For example, lower than red is infrared, which can burn you. Lower than infrared is microwave, which can cook your internal organs.\n\nSimilarly, higher than violet is ultra-violet, which can give you sunburn and possibly even skin cancer. Higher than ultra-violet is X-ray, which can also give you cancer. Higher than that are gamma-rays which, again give you cancer.\n\nBasically, without getting into too much details, the high-frequency EM waves can excite the electrons in your body, modifying their chemical behaviour. It just so happens that our bodies are \"perfectly balanced\" with waves commonly experienced on Earth, such that whenever you make random changes to the chemistry, generally bad things (in this case, cancer), happens."
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3czt1u | why is hydrogen peroxide used in mouthwash? is it the agent that helps whiten teeth? can it help a tooth/gum infection? | Also, what does it mean if it foams like crazy in your mouth? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3czt1u/eli5_why_is_hydrogen_peroxide_used_in_mouthwash/ | {
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"Hydrogen peroxide is used as an antiseptic, it kills bacteria in your mouth. It is also used to clean out cuts and other wounds on skin. It does not have a direct hand in whitening your teeth but it can help with infections. HOWEVER, it is NOT recommended to just swish some straight Hydrogen peroxide.\nAs for the foaming part, catalase is an enzyme found in our cells and when it is exposed to Hydrogen peroxide, H2O2, it breaks it down into H2O, water, and O2, just normal oxygen."
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cwkywt | what are voxels used for in brain imaging? | Chose Technology as flair but I'm guessing neuroscience also involved. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cwkywt/eli5_what_are_voxels_used_for_in_brain_imaging/ | {
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"Voxels are just 3D pixels. That means, one voxel is one point in a 3D image, just like a pixel is one point in a 2D image like a photo. I.e. a x,y,z (height, width, depth) coordinate mapped to another value such as color, or e.g tissue density or blood flow in brain imaging."
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9d5ywl | can old water harm you in any way possible? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9d5ywl/eli5_can_old_water_harm_you_in_any_way_possible/ | {
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"Water itself doesn't get old, it's chemically stable and will last indefinitely.\n\nHowever, bacteria in the water can grow exponentially over time. If the water isn't perfectly sterile (which it isn't if you've already touched it) there's a chance that bacteria has had time to reproduce in large numbers.\n\nIt can also leech chemicals out of containers if allowed to sit for long periods. As long as the container isnt a lead pipe this is usually harmless, but can foul the taste.",
"The water itself can't hurt you, no matter how old it is.\n\nBut depending on how it's stored and bottled it could be contaminated with something that can harm you.\n\nThe two things I can think of off hand are biological and chemical.\n\nIf you get a few cells of something like plankton in the water it can grow with just sunlight. If it's also contaminated with something that eats that plankton you could end up with bacteria that can make you sick.\n\nThe other issue is that some containers aren't really safe. In particular, there are some plastics that can allow (mildly) toxic chemicals to leach into the water. This isn't likely to cause noticeable harm right away but you shouldn't make a habit of it.\n\nThat said, old water is a fairly low risk factor. If a particular water source was safe to drink when it was fresh it's most likely still safe to drink later. It will likely just taste bad, mostly because the pH drops a little due to atmospheric CO2."
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8on41g | after eating bad food, why does vomiting happen in waves and not all at once? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8on41g/eli5_after_eating_bad_food_why_does_vomiting/ | {
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"I assume you mean food poisoning right?\nIt’s because it’s not the food itself causing you to be nauseous, but the bacteria inside of it, which can last much longer than your meal.",
"It takes time to get it all up and out..you throw up stuff thats already been in your small intestine sometimes too not just an emptying of the stomach",
"The bad stuff you ingested doesn't get entirely out the first time you vomit; there's some left behind. But once your stomach is mostly empty, you can't vomit the rest up (when your body tries, that's a \"dry heave\").\n\nThe stomach refills with liquid and ~~bile~~ acid and stuff, and when its full enough to \"rinse out\" your stomach, you vomit again and that extra stuff carries away more of the bad stuff you ingested. This may need to happen a few times before your body is \"satisfied\" it's expelled enough.\n\n**EDIT:** I said \"bile\" when I meant \"acid\", whoops.",
"Interesting. I never have this issue. Whenever I have food poisoning, once I throw up it’s all over said and done. ",
"Related: how can your cat or dog eat things that would make you sick? Their digestive system is so fast pathogens have less replication time and the gut is exposed for a much shorter time to any endotoxins etc. ",
"How come our stomach acid doesn't kill the bacteria that makes us sick? ",
"It’s actually more like: when you get food poisoning, the bacteria within your body that die release toxic chemicals in the process. By this time, the bacteria have replicated to a certain degree, which takes time for your immune system to pinpoint those bacteria’s and kill them. Bacteria are opportunistic and have evolved to find ways that creates obstacles for your immune system to find them. ",
"I got food poisoning from Chipotle at the beginning of the year and man I don't wish it on my worst enemy. I called corporate and they did an investigation because several others got really sick too. Without being graphic let's just say I had to bleach my bathroom after a few episodes over 15 hours because my body forgot how to work. Your best bet is to sit on the porcelain bus with a bucket on your lap. I got sick so many times that my body had completely emptied itself. I drank water and couldn't even hold that in, so I was throwing up clear water. I almost went to hospital because I couldn't eat or drink anything for over 3 days.",
"I once had some bad chicken for dinner in India. We boarded an overnight train and in the middle of the night I woke up knowing something was wrong. Got down from my bunk and ran for the bathroom. But I wasn't going to make it, so I put my hand over my mouth. My stomach didn't care, and vomit rocketed out of my mouth between my fingers. I spewed on the carriage door, got into the bathroom and heaved some more.\n\nFortunately, it was a tiny bathroom, so when it happened I could put my head in the sink and my ass on the toilet and let my body take care of the rest.\n\nEnded up having to change my pants \\(yup\\), then had to walk the whole length of the train before I found a conductor, where I had to awkwardly explain that I had vomited up an absurd amount of chicken chow mein in a public area. Came back to find out some dude on the train drinking my bottled water. When I questioned him, he said \"Oh, I thought it was the conductor's.\" Dude, what? It's still not your water!\n\nI spent the next two days sick as a dog. We got to Agra and our hotel room. My girlfriend \\(now wife, even after all this\\) is telling me I've got to pull it together because we're going to see the Taj Mahal, and this is our only chance because we're continuing on the next day. I patiently listened to her argument before kindly asking her to move so I could vomit into the toilet. She got to see the Taj Mahal, I stayed in bed. Win/win.\n\n2/10 would not do again.",
"I have a literal phobia of vomiting \\-\\-\\ > nothing in the world makes me feel the way I do when I vomit. Shaking, too weak to stand but I'm still hurling and lurching. The anxiety as the saliva collects in your mouth. The relief after you throw up until that twisting uncomfortable pain starts in your stomach and grows stronger with each passing second.\n\nI used to get gastroenteritis like clockwork every single June since I was 3 \\(almost died once due to dehydration\\) in which I would vomit 25\\+ times\n\nThis obviously affected me as I entered my adult years. I am now unable to throw up unless I am very very sick and even then will never do so voluntarily. "
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1foy6r | i read that algorithms used by ups allow them to limit the amount of left turns their trucks make. do ups drivers have a gps unit that tells them where to drive all day or what? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1foy6r/eli5_i_read_that_algorithms_used_by_ups_allow/ | {
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"In short, yes. All the addresses for pickups and dropoffs for UPS drivers are put into a computer program, which tests hundreds of possible routes for the one that uses the least fuel, which often happens to be the one that avoids idling in traffic the most. They don't tell it to avoid left turns, it just usually works out that way.\n\nThe route is put into their navigation unit and they follow it.\n\nSource: This general type of computer program is called a b-tree, and it's used for solving a lot of problems."
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5rwugd | why do people get so angry when people burn the american flag? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rwugd/eli5_why_do_people_get_so_angry_when_people_burn/ | {
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"Duh. okay, for me it's because your current president isn't the one who did the flag, isn't reason why the USA is here today. It is your ancestors, your founding fathers who made it or the reason behind it. So, pay respect.",
"For all of its faults, even if we hate President Cheetos, it's still \"our team.\" It would be like walking up to a bro who is painted up for the Pittsburgh Steelers and waving those yellow rags around and saying \"go Pats!\"\n\nThey use patriotism to feel like a part of a team. It doesn't mean it's a rational decision, or maybe they're using patriotism to feel \"better than other people,\" but flag burning as protected speech doesn't mean you won't face consequences.\n\nI suppose you should really be asking why people wouldn't be angry with protests that don't align with their views.\n\nAnd to be blunt, if they care about flag burning, but not about Flint, then they prioritize symbols over actual human suffering. Judge them accordingly."
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3vpj45 | what is chrome os? | I am looking to buy my first laptop. I want to use it for both school and personal things. My dad recommended a laptop (I can't think of the name atm) and it uses a Chrome OS. The extent of my knowledge comes from watching commercials so basically nothing. Anyways I don't understand what the system is or how it differs from other systems.
What I would like to find out is what the pros and cons of the system are, can I still use it for notetaking and such if my schools wifi connection is basically non-existent, will I be able to use it for Pinterest, Skype, Spotify and obviously Reddit, etc, and is it a viable long-term option? Also, would I only be able to use Google programs or can I still use Microsoft programs? I don't have the means to buy more than one computer and this seems cheaper than others.
Sorry if this is really poorly worded but I'm pretty technologically illiterate which is why I'm here I guess. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vpj45/eli5_what_is_chrome_os/ | {
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" > can I still use it for notetaking and such if my schools wifi connection is basically non-existent\n\nYes using notepad extension\n > Pinterest, \n\nYep\n\n > Skype\n\nNo (not easily /r/chromeapks)\n\n > Spotify\n\nYep, there's an extension\n\n > Reddit\n\nYes\n\n > can I still use Microsoft programs? \n\nNo. Google Docs\n\n[And here's a video.](_URL_0_) ",
"One of the major factors that you should consider is that essentially everything on Chrome OS is online based. Because of this, the storage is almost entirely cloud based, so you need an internet connection. Some basic functions can still be used without internet: Calculator, Camera, and locally saved files, as well as some note extensions I would assume.\n\nYou can't use Office, or Skype, but anything webpage based will run fine. Many of these are cheap computers, but there are also expensive Chromebooks and cheap Windows laptops. A Windows laptop at the same price as a Chromebook will likely have similar build quality and specs. Personally, having used cheap Dell and Samsung chromebooks at ~250 bucks, they are some of the shittiest pieces of machinery I have ever laid hands on in terms of durability. The Dell ones are hit or miss, about half of my 2500 kid school has them being repaired at any one time. The slightly newer ones seem a little more sturdy. The Samsung ones will stop working if the screen is torqued at all. Acer and Asus books seem to be higher quality and not cut as many corners.\n\nReally, in the end what you need to consider is how much you'll be online, and what kind of programs you want to run. If most-all of your work is online, I'd recommend a Chromebook, especially from Acer or Asus. If you like the feel of Windows, and if you're considering any gaming whatsoever, and like downloading programs, I'd go with a Windows laptop, for a little extra."
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25duut | if beverage labels must contain the amount of sugar a drink contains then why don't they have to list the amount of aspartame they contain. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25duut/eli5_if_beverage_labels_must_contain_the_amount/ | {
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"Because there hasn't been a huge backlash about the amount of aspartame in beverages.",
"Nutritional labels are for this that the body metabolizes. The body doesn't metabolize aspartame. Nor does it yellow #5. ",
"Aspartame has extremely low digestible energy content. And aspartame is harmless unless you're a...what's it called. Phenylketoneurotic? Sounds right. "
]
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| []
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[],
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|
||
119rni | why do people still create websites similar to megaupload or _url_0_ although the owners of these sites were taken to court? | Do they just hope not to get busted, do they have different business models or are they just enjoying the money for a couple of years and then go to prison? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/119rni/eli5_why_do_people_still_create_websites_similar/ | {
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"text": [
"Probably different reasons for each person.\n\n* They may not realize it's illegal or know about the other sites that got busted.\n* They may think they will do it differently in a way that will prevent/reduce illegal content, so they don't get prosecuted.\n* They may think they will keep the site small enough to stay under the radar.\n* They may be based outside the U.S., making it harder for them to be prosecuted, especially if they live in a country with lax IP laws.",
"The same reason people still deal drugs even though some dealers get busted. There is enough demand and enough money that it is worth the risk."
]
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"kino.to"
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| []
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[],
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pntty | radiation hardening | I've read about radiation hardening, specifically in the context of the processors required in satellites that have been upgraded over the years, like the Hubble telescope. I read recently that it was only a few years ago that the Hubble was upgraded to a 486 based platform. I understand enough physics to know that obviously there are several sources of strong radiation in space (atleast relative to what is experienced inside Earth's atmosphere). I know that part of it is the materials used in the manufacturing process have to be able to withstand this extra radiation, but why does it take so long? Is it simply that the process as a whole is not as common/streamlined so they have to take longer? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pntty/radiation_hardening/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Its not really that it takes a long time, the 486 is chosen for other reasons.\n\nWhen we make faster and faster CPUs we basically do this by making the CPU use more and more transistors. In order to do this we make the transistors smaller and smaller.\n\nThe 486 CPU has transistors that are 1µm across, modern CPUs like the Intel Sandy Bridge i7 have transistors that are 32nm across. That means that the 376 has transistors that are 31x times bigger than modern CPUs.\n\nThe main problem with such small components is that the wires inside them are only made of a small handful of electrons. The margins between \"on\" and \"off\" are so small that if a cosmic ray or high energy radiation photon hits one of the transistors the energy it imparts can easily change what the current value of a wire is.\n\nBigger components need alot more energy to cause a similar error."
]
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| []
| [
[]
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|
4h5tsg | why do hindu dieties have more than 2 arms/multiple faces usually? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4h5tsg/eli5_why_do_hindu_dieties_have_more_than_2/ | {
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"text": [
"Hindu {and some associated with some schools of Buddhism) have multiple arms as a symbol of their capacity for actions (how much more could you do if you had more hands and arms?) and multiple faces/heads to show their all seeing natures.",
"Describing deities as somewhat human-like but with extra properties is a pretty common thing in world religions.\n\nEven in your run-of-the-mill Judaeo-Christian faiths, angels are described as having extra limbs (e.g., wings), having four faces, and having eyes which flash with lightning. \n"
]
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5mygir | how does my car know if it is icy outside? | My car can tell me the outside temperature AND whether or not it is icy.
What sensors does a car use to determine if ice is possible? Does it detect moisture and compare it with temperature? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mygir/eli5_how_does_my_car_know_if_it_is_icy_outside/ | {
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"to my knowledge, its completely dependent on temperature. typically triggered at 36 or 37 degrees to be safe.\n\nThough its possible, that if your car has a modem or satellite data link (like onstar or xm), it could be getting a real time weather alert instead.",
"Typically they just report icy conditions if the temperature is less than 36 or so. I haven't heard of any vehicles that do anything more sophisticated than that.",
"If it's a Ford Focus III, than I'm sorry to tell you it's just a yellow light if it's +3 Celsius and a red light if it's 0 or below. Nothing more sophisticated than that. And it just so happens that at these temperatures, ice can occur.",
"I highly doubt your car has onboard sensors to tell if it's icy. Instead, it's either temperature based, or fed through your satellite navigation system.",
"My car will display ICE POSSIABLE on the display when the temps get around freezing or below. It's just a temperature sensor. ",
"Once the thermometer senses that the temp outside is 37 degrees your car will warn you that it is potentially icy outside. "
]
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3nwbao | why do wild cats (tigers/lions/etc) attack their owners at some point? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nwbao/eli5why_do_wild_cats_tigerslionsetc_attack_their/ | {
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"Cats are solitary by nature, and thus much less prone to the kind of appeasing behavior that you find in pack animals like dogs. Pack animals tend to engage in warning behaviors rather than attacks when angry, and they act more altruistically. This builds group cohesiveness very well. Solitary creatures don't behave this way because they rarely need to survive in a cohesive group. So, they'll immediately act more aggressively and they won't try and please you the same way a dog would. ",
"Taming is different from domestication. Domesticated animals have been bred through numerous generations, which has altered them down to a genetic level, to behaviors and adaptations that make them more useful for humans. \n\nTamed animals are still wild animals, but they have been socialized to the presence of people. \n\nSo in particular to your question, I would say it is more in the nature of the animal. We've changed the nature of 'dogs' from wolves to something that gets along with us better by default, and its offspring will get along with us better by default. With a tiger, you can discipline an individual it so that it doesn't necessarily react with immediate aggression, but it's still a tiger, and its offspring won't be tame. \n\nThat being said, even domesticated animals can be aggressive if they feel threatened enough."
]
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[],
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a5ebee | will dolphin sonar sense work above water with air as the medium? | I was watching spinner dolphins jumping out of the water and was wondering if their sonar would be effective through a different medium than water such as when above it in the air? Or would it be too dispersed and be undetectable to them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a5ebee/eli5_will_dolphin_sonar_sense_work_above_water/ | {
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"text": [
"Echolocation, another word for sonar sense can be used in air. This is possible because sounds, made by the dolphin bounce back to the dolphin in a similar way in air as in water. Echolocation is used by bats as well as some blind people. Water or air does not affect the way sound travels in echolocation. ",
"Dolphin echolocation wouldn't work well in air. Their echolocation has evolved for an aquatic environment and makes use of the fact that water is much better at transmitting sound than air. Dolphins generate sound with their melon(a fatty blob in their head) and use their lower jaw to pick up the vibrations in the water from the returning sound\n\nBats use echolocation in a similar manner but they've evolved large ears to detect the quiet reflected sounds and generate the sound using lungs like we do.\n\nEcholocation can work in air or water but the same setup won't work in both"
]
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cd8uka | why do plants transpire the majority of the water they absorb (not use it) if them need that water to live? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cd8uka/eli5_why_do_plants_transpire_the_majority_of_the/ | {
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"Water containing nutrients is pulled up from the roots. If the water did not have anywhere to go, then no more nutrients would be transported. The plant allows 90-95% of the water to evaporate to make room for new water with more nutrients.",
"It's not that plants choose to do so. It's a consequence of getting the water there in the first place.\n\nIn order to get water up a plant, cappilary effects of water are used, in the same way a straw wil contain a fluid without yousucking on it. The bonding of the molecules pushes the water up a bit. However, the water will only go so high.\n\nBy evaporating water through the leaves, an area with lower pressure in the top of the plant will start to exist compared to the bottom part. Therefore water can be sucked up much higher compared to cappilary action in the same way you suck on a straw. Your mouth creates an area of low pressure, sucking up the fluid.\n\nThe problem is though, plants are rubbish in controlling the amount it evaporates through the leaves. On the bottom of the leaves are small \"mouths\" that can open or close to control the amount of water that evaporates through these pores, as well as CO2 intake. However, water will still evaporate through other stuff even when these mouths are closed on a hot day, hence the effeciency problem. Some plants combat this by making really thick leaves or making a cuticula: a waxy kind of coating on the leaf to prevent evaporation. Another way is to make really small leaves to have less surface area. However, a plant can only do this when there is sufficient light to catch for fotosynthesis\n\nHope this helps.\n\nEdit: typos",
"In life on earth, both plants and animals, water is primarily used as a solvent. We don't really require much water to actually use. What we require it for is to carry things dissolved in it that we actually do use, or don't use.\n\nWhen materials are broken down in the body urea is created, which is toxic if it accumulates. To get rid of that urea it is dissolved in water and expelled in urine. We also evaporate water from our skin to remove excess heat. We have to drink more water to replace this water lost."
]
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3pzf35 | why do symbols like & or apostrophes ' have issues translating between fonts (i.e. showing up as amp#? or something instead of & )? why doesn't this happen with letters? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pzf35/eli5_why_do_symbols_like_or_apostrophes_have/ | {
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"It's not really \"translating between fonts\". A little background first:\n\nIn some document formats (like HTML, which is what this web page you're viewing now is made in), certain symbols have special meanings. For example (I'm making the specific details up, but this is the general idea): Perhaps if the document contains:\n\n & bold;Hey there & /bold;, how's it going?\n\nThen the thing that is tasked with displaying the document to you will actually show you:\n\n**Hey there**, how's it going?\n\nBut now, what if the author of the document really does want to show you an ampersand? For example, if they want to show you:\n\nHere's how you make bold text: & bold;blah blah blah & /bold;\n\nThe underlying document itself can't contain that, because if it did, it would show up to you as:\n\nHere's how you make bold text: **blah blah blah**\n\nSo often such document formats will make you do something specific when you actually want to display something (like an ampersand) that it would normally think of as one of these special characters. For example, perhaps to display an ampersand, the document needs to contain:\n\n & amp!\n\nSo to display:\n\nHere's how you make bold text: & bold;blah blah blah & /bold;\n\nThe document would contain:\n\nHere's how you make bold text: & amp!bold;blah blah blah & amp!/bold;\n\nAnd from there the question is just \"Well then why does it sometimes show up *displayed* to me as & amp! instead of as an ampersand?\". Various reasons, for example cutting and pasting, losing track of the fact that the document follows these particular rules, or perhaps whatever is displaying the document doesn't even understand the rules in the first place.",
"Usually caused by encoding format discrepancies. The website has to know how to format the data correctly. "
]
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1jp9dl | what are tor sites and how were they compromised? | It seems tor allows a user to browse anonymously, but what exactly are they, who uses them? What does it mean they were compromised, why was Eric Eoin Marques arrested? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jp9dl/eli5_what_are_tor_sites_and_how_were_they/ | {
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"From what I understand, Tor is a service that reroutes your internet traffic through a number of anonymous volunteer networks. If its not your network, you can't be traced through it (or at least its harder- its like putting a fake licence plate on your car).\n\nLots of people use Tor and services like that for many reasons. People like Anonymity, even if what they are doing is perfectly legal. Programs like the NSA Spying have increased the demand for such services among normal internet users, and of course people selling drugs (like the Silk Road), Pirates and others will want them for obvious reasons. \n \nMarques was arrested because distributors of child pornography used Tor to mask their activities and used it to host illegal files.\n\nFrom the link on Reddit floating at the moment, it was compromised because of a Javascript exploit: \"The JavaScript zero-day exploit that creates a unique cookie and sends a request to a random server that basically fingerprints your browser in some way, which is probably then correlated somewhere else since the cookie doesn't get deleted. Presumably it reports the victim's IP back to the FBI.\"\n\nHopefully that's correct, I expect someone will correct me if its not. ",
"Tor has two functions: [a] it lets you browser the (normal) web anonymously by masking your IP address; and [b] it lets you browse an exclusive deep-web network (called the onion network) which can only be accessed through the tor proxy service.\n\nBasically, the onion network is like a whole new web on top of the Internet that is exclusive to people running Tor. There are websites on the onion network that look and act just like other websites on the normal web, but which are completely hidden to users who are not running Tor.\n\nWho uses Tor? Lots of people. People who value privacy. People who want to protect freedom of speech... but also people who want to use the Internet for criminal activity.\n\nBecause of the way Tor is designed, the network is completely anonymous. It is, for the most part, not possible to track which users access which websites on the onion network. This means that the network operates like the wild west with no concern for laws. For this reason, in some ways, Tor can provide a safe haven for criminal activity (e.g. illegal drug trade, terrorism, child exploitation etc.).\n\nWhen a site is compromised, it basically just mean the site has been 'hacked'. In other words, some attacker managed to exploit a vulnerability in the website and inject or modify code (for example) to perform some sort of operation which should not have been authorized.\n\nI haven't read the full scoop on what happened yet, but I think the basic gist of it is that some law enforcement agency managed to inject JavaScript code in certain webpages on the onion network that exploited a vulnerability allowing them to collect the IP addresses of people who visited those sites (which normally would not be possible).\n\nAs for Eric Eoin Marques, again I'm not quite up to date with what happened yet, but I believe he was involved in some sort of web-hosting service for Tor websites that was being used to host illegal material, and thus Marques was implicated somehow in the illegal activity and arrested.",
"At least from how I understand it (there is still a lot of unknown information to be determined), the exploit, when you visit websites affected by it, downloads a cookie (malware would be a better description to be honest) and stores it in your browser. This cookie sends information (almost certainly your IP) to the FBI. When you are using Tor, the IP that is sent would be \"anonymous\", but if you were to turn off Tor and use your browser without it, the cookie would still be communicating and thus would send your actual IP.\n\nNow, what it appears to have happened was that the guy visited a CP site run by the FBI that had this exploit on it, and that led to his IP being sent to them."
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1qxxcd | how can forensic artists be so (relatively) accurate when someone describes the appearance of a person? i can't even describe my fathers face! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qxxcd/eli5_how_can_forensic_artists_be_so_relatively/ | {
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"They ask very specific questions. ",
"[They aren't quite as accurate as TV would have us believe](_URL_0_)",
"_URL_0_\n\nI have some more questions for anyone that can answer also!\n\nDoes race/cultural similarity have an effect on how well the witness can recall the subject? For example would an Asian witness recall better another Asian subject compared to say an African?\n\nDo extreme features on the subject improve witness recall? For example if a subject had a really big,crooked nose, would a witnesses attention be drawn to the face? Or would it hinder recall by being the only focus point of the witness.\n\nSimilarly, would other features of a witness reduce witness recall? For example if a subject had a leg cast, would witnesses concentrate on that rather than the face?\n\n",
"It's actually a great deal down to how good your witness is. The forensic artist can't draw out information that isn't there.\n\nWhen we used them (I am a Detective) the first thing they want to see is the witnesses written statement. That will give them an idea of how much detail the witness can recall. They'll then speak to the witness by phone to assess that further. You have to be within a week of them seeing the suspect, in general. They'd have to have had a good look at the suspect, in good lighting. A fleeting glance won't do.\n\nThen they use software (or at least did where I worked) that allows them to build a face quickly, then modify it on the witnesses command to get it as close as they can remember. There is obviously an art and lots of training to do this well, but the most important factor is not leading/imprinting on the victim at all, and ensuring that it is their memory that drives the suspect image.\n\nIdentity in investigation is a very complex issue, fraught as it is with the vagaries of human memory, prejudices and all manner of outside influences. For example, we'd have to have a witness who could give the forensic artist the image, but once they'd done that they could take no further part in any identification procedures. So if witness A build a forensic image of the suspect, and we arrested a suspect, Witness A could never go and identify that suspect - the assumption in court is that they would be identifying the suspect now in their minds eye having created the image, and not necessarily the person they saw that day.\n\nBecause of the stringent requirements, despite investigating hundreds of cases where a \"photofit\" image could have been useful over 10 years, I only actually used their services twice.\n\nPeople in the visual arts tend to have excellent recall of facial details, as a rule. You either have it, or you don't, but people who work in visual and creative areas are trained to be more in tune with faces and how to describe them. I know one of the witnesses I used was a casting director for TV and Film, and her photofit was an outstanding likeness of the suspect.\n\nSo, they choose their witnesses well, use powerful software, and are trained to get the best out of witnesses."
]
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[],
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"http://phys.org/news/2011-05-police-dont.html"
],
[
"http://www.askaforensicartist.com/how-can-police-sketch-artists-draw-what-another-person-saw/"
],
[]
]
|
||
5f4zz9 | if one were to fall into an active volcano, how long would it take to die and in what order would things happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5f4zz9/eli5_if_one_were_to_fall_into_an_active_volcano/ | {
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"Question | Answer\n---|---\nWould you feel pain if you fell into magma? | Yes. The pain would be that of being burnt alive.\nWould you drown? | No. Magma and lava are 2-3 times as thick as water, so the body would float.\nHow would you die? | It depends. You would probably start to burn before you made contact with the magma, due to the radiant heat. However, you might also asphyxiate due to the hot air and gases. Depending on the height you fell in from, you might simply hit a hard substance, and die from impact.\n\nMental floss has a great answer to the question [here.](_URL_0_)",
"Have you seen [this](_URL_0_) video? It's from very high up but it's a decent example.",
"There is a YouTube station called Nerdist. They have a segment where one of their hosts answers cool science questions like this. I don't have the link but he made a video on this exact topic!",
"Basically, you would bounce around on the surface like a drop of water on a hot skillet until you either burned to death or asphyxiated. You would probably pass out either way before dying though.",
"Human beings are much less dense than molten rock, so you would float on the surface while the heat and noxious fumes would kill you. Luckily if the fall alone didn't kill you, you would pass out from the fumes and your nerves would be so burned that you couldn't even feel the pain.",
"Worked at a steel mill, we had a safety video that was security camera of a guy throwing a 1/2 full water bottle into a furnace full of roughly 3000 degree molten liquid steel. There was a big explosion, and smoke quickly killed the camera feed. Guessing as we are mostly liquid something similar would happen..."
]
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| []
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"http://mentalfloss.com/article/52770/if-you-fell-volcano-how-would-you-die"
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1jni60 | why don't all of these chinese mothers importing foreign milk powder simply breast-feed their babies? | I understand it's not for everyone, but supposedly 98% of mothers can produce enough milk to breastfeed exclusively, and the health benefits of breastfeeding are pretty significant even ignoring the possibility of tainted formula. So why insist on sketchily-imported foreign milk powder when there's a clean healthy alternative available? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jni60/eli5why_dont_all_of_these_chinese_mothers/ | {
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"OB/GYN resident:\n\n98% of women is a huge over estimation of women who can breast feed. Most women struggle with it at first, at my hospital we have several nurses who simply help women with breast feeding. \n\nThere are issues such as the baby can't latch on, there is no milk or not enough milk production. Breast feeding is very painful and exhausting. Some women who have to work might not have the time, or it might be just too painful to do. \n\nAlso many women are probably not aware of the dangers. In China from my experience (my boyfriends parents emigrated to US), foreign = better. "
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662a3p | what's the deal with the uk snap election? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/662a3p/eli5_whats_the_deal_with_the_uk_snap_election/ | {
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"In the UK, a general election has to take place at least every five years. The Prime Minister can however call an early election or \"snap election\" with the backing of at least 2/3 of all MPs (members of Parliament), which Theresa May will likely have.\n\nSo why call a snap election? The PM will usually do this when they believe that they have a good chance of winning and by a greater majority. Having a greater majority will make a party more influential in Parliament and make it easier for them to enact their policies.\n\nCurrently, the opposition party in the UK are the Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn. Labour have endured a torrid time since Corbin became leader and Theresa May will therefore be seeing this election as an opportunity to win over disgruntled Labour voters.\n\nAs for whether it's a good or bad thing, that's a matter of opinion.",
"Why is it a bad thing?\n\nRight now the Conservatives have a fairly narrow majority. May (the Prime Minister) has to make sure all her Members of Parliament (MPs) vote the same way, meaning she can't do anything to controversial otherwise it won't get passed (think Trump failing to get his Health Bill through because not all Republicans wanted it).\n\nAnd the second chamber could be pretty awkward in altering legislation, and if there is only a small majority they can threaten to vote against bills, slowing the whole process down.\n\nSo May, the Prime Minister, wants an election to get a bigger majority so she can pass legislation easier.\n\nPeople (and this will be most people from the UK you bump into online) who don't want a hard Brexit (go elsewhere to find out what a hard or soft Brexit is) think it will be bad if May can get what she wants easily as she is much more extreme on her views on Brexit than most online people from the UK."
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1w6gy1 | why do websites in commercials often have numbers in their url's? | Example: I just saw a commercial for a LASIK surgery company advertising the URL "_URL_0_". Why the 24?! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w6gy1/why_do_websites_in_commercials_often_have_numbers/ | {
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"text": [
"This is just speculation but possibly to track what advertisement you got the URL from."
]
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| [
"www.24.regainyourvision.com"
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| [
[]
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|
|
dgh6hh | ; why are we taught that atoms are the building blocks of matter when atoms are made up of smaller things? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dgh6hh/eli5_why_are_we_taught_that_atoms_are_the/ | {
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"Because those two points are independent of each other.\n\nAtoms *are* the building blocks of matter.\n\nAtoms are *also* composed of sub-atomic particles.",
"Atoms are the smallest unit of matter that have the same properties as the thing they make up. A single atom of hydrogen is still hydrogen. Anything that makes up an atom behaves differently than the atom it‘s a part of.",
"Because an atom is the smallest unit that maintains chemical properties.\n\nOr actually ELI5\nAtoms are the smallest things that act like themselves.",
"Atoms are the smallest parts of an element that are still that element. An oxygen atom is still oxygen, and a sodium atom is still sodium.\n\nNot only that, but they are the smallest pieces that you can easily divide an object into. (The word \"atom\" itself comes from the Greek for \"not cut\".) Breaking an atom into its component particles permanently requires a particle accelerator, whereas you can typically separate the atoms of a piece of an element from one another with an ordinary knife or even your hands.\n\nYou can think of atoms as being like Lego bricks and subatomic particles as the molecules of plastic that the bricks are made of. Dismantling a Lego model is much easier than breaking the blocks up into molecules.\n\nSo just as Lego bricks are the building blocks of Lego models, atoms are the building blocks of matter.\n\nEDIT: grammar, clarification",
"There are a couple of reasons for this. For one, it has become tradition. They used to be the smallest units we knew about. That being said, we know that’s not the case now, but it would kind of silly to introduce young students to subatomic stuff because it gets WEIRD. Subatomic science is tricky and lots of fancy math and doesn’t make any sense without at least bachelor’s degree level math. It’s not intuitive and puzzles most people. If someone says they really get quantum physics, they are lying. So they are the smallest sensible/useful thing to learn about in school",
"Because we the idea of matter was conceived of, atoms were the smallest things known. And most matter anyone will have every-day contact with will be matter composed only of atoms.\n\nAnd this is generally how we teach things. We teach the simple and general first, then refine with special cases.",
"Lego blocks are the building blocks of Lego sets but they are also made up of smaller things (plastics, dyes, etc). If you had all those things separately you wouldn't necessarily be able to make the lego set, but using the blocks you can easily. Same with atoms, even if you had a bunch of protons, neutrons, or electrons it would be extremely difficult to make water, but if you had hydrogen and oxygen you could easily."
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4avltw | how does medicine get absorbed in your body before food gets to your intestine? | If I vomit 20-60 min after I take medicine, I was told to not take another dose. But obviously the food I took the medicine with is no longer with me. How is it that the medicine (that I took with the food) is possibly effective if the food I ate at the same time didn't have time to get digested?
EDIT: thanks everybody! That makes a lot of sense! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4avltw/eli5_how_does_medicine_get_absorbed_in_your_body/ | {
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"Unless you weighed what you ate and then weighed your vomit, you don't know for sure how much you absorbed. Vomit includes some stuff that was in your small intestine, so its likely that whatever was there was partially digested and absorbed. For most medication, overdosing is a lot more dangerous than underdosing once, so medical advice errs on the side of caution.",
"Medicine is designed to be absorbed as readily as possible. Foods need to be broken down by enzymes and other digestive juices inside your intestinal tract and this is what takes the bulk of the time - in addition, certain parts of your gut are designed to absorb certain nutrients (for example, vitamin B12 is mostly absorbed in the last third of your small intestines, so if you lose that part of your intestines, your doctor will recommend Vitamin B12 shots to make up for it).\n\nMedicine, as mentioned before, is designed to be absorbed as quickly as possible without much need of breaking down. And it's all absorbed in the duodenum, which is the first 20cm or so of your small intestines, just after the stomach. "
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26h6kd | how could finland,a small piece of land,defeat the russian invasion with one third of the soldiers and a thousand times less machinery? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26h6kd/eli5how_could_finlanda_small_piece_of_landdefeat/ | {
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"* Invaded Finland in the winter, which is not a good idea.\n\n* Lots of defensive positions for the Finns on their home turf, and incompetent officers for the Russians.\n\n* The purge demoralized lots of Russian soldiers.\n\n* Terrain was terrible for machinery, and perfect for the defending Finns.",
"One of my grandfathers served in the Winter War, so I guess i'm pretty qualified to answer this.\n\nSoviet side:\n\n-**[The Great Purge](_URL_0_)**: where Stalin killed off most of the best and brightest of Soviet military minds, left a inexperienced, demoralized, and greatly reduced officer corp\n\n-**Poor military:** Unlike the Red Army of 1944 and 1945, which was arguably the best, most experienced one in the world, the Red Army of 1939 was made up almost completely of conscripts, with little to no training, no experience, and little unit cohesion. *Side note: the disastrous Winter War lead to Germany's disastrous invasion of the USSR, as Hitler thought that the Soviets will be a pushover. Instead, they took on the combined might of a more or less unified continental Europe and won*\n\n-**Poor equipment**: While the Soviets had an absolute advantage in equipment quantity, the quality was absolutely poor, and the vehicles were often not functional in the poor conditions that the war was fought in\n\n-**Poor tactics**: Unlike the intricate fire teams, combined arms, and [Deep Battle](_URL_1_) tactics of the later part of WW2, the Soviets used little more then human wave tactics for the majority of the Winter War. Finn equipment such as submarine guns made these types of tactics very ineffective, but Soviet leadership kept doing it.\n\n\n---------\n\nFinn side:\n\n-**Great morale and will to fight**: The Finns were fighting for their survival; every man understood their duty and fulfilled it. Their military was a cohesive, unified force.\n\n-**Knowledge of terrain**: The Finns also had knowledge of the terrain, which they used to terrifying effectiveness. Soviet machinery also could not operate well in this terrain, while at the same time it was perfect for the defending Finns.\n\n-**Foreign Aid**: From arms to cash to officers, the Finns received massive amounts of foreign assistance from nations opposed to the Soviets, such as Nazi Germany.\n\n--------------------\n\n**Closing note**\n\nDespite the massive causalities inflicted by the Finns on the Soviets, the Finns actually lost the war, and in the end the Soviets actually got more then they initially wanted. \n\nAlso, to go on a bit of a tangent, the Soviets do not mean the Russians. While the Russians were the largest minority to suffer under the reign of Stalin, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Kazakhs, ect. also suffered. My grandfather who fought in the Winter War was a Kazakh who was conscripted into the Red Army. While the Russians are a heroic people for suffering so much, it is insensitive to other minorities to refer to the Soviets as the Russians.\n\nEDIT: My English isn't that great, so please tell me if I made any spelling or grammar mistakes! ",
"Soviet army wasn't very experienced yet, and they weren't defending their own soil.\n\nBut be aware of the fact, that Finland didn't 'defeat' the invasion. All of the Soviet Union's territorial demands were met(which was crucial in the days preceding WWII, as the border was just too close to Leningrad)",
"But did they really win? I mean, Finland lost territory to the Soviets in the end...",
"except they didn't really defeat the invasion, they held them temporarily but ended up ceding more than what the Soviets asked for in the first place.",
"Finland is objectively quite big, actually"
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6yepey | why do cigarette companies like marlboro don't make cigarettes healthier? and wouldn't it be better profitwise since costumers live longer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6yepey/eli5_why_do_cigarette_companies_like_marlboro/ | {
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"I'm not an expert by any means, but maybe I can help a little here.\nTobacco is inherently unhealthy. People aren't fond of blanket statements, but it's true. Marlboro isn't out there slathering tobacco leaves with tar before rolling them up; tar is found naturally in tobacco. Also nicotine is terrible for your vascular system. It causes your blood vessels to narrow which, over time, leads to permanent narrowing and higher blood pressures. The higher blood pressures/decreased blood flow to tissue increases your risk for heart attack and stroke.\nSource: I'm an OR nurse and some surgeons I work with won't perform non-emergency surgery if you're an active smoker because the risks for complications are that high.\nEdit: Companies might be able to remove some unhealthy additives, but tobacco will always be bad for you.",
"You can't make inhaling smoke healthy. It doesn't even matter so much what the smoke is from. Smoke in your lungs is just bad and always will be."
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3aji19 | how does the bbc stay in business when it doesn't run ads? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3aji19/eli5_how_does_the_bbc_stay_in_business_when_it/ | {
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"It is given money by the British Government that is collected from fees that everyone in the country with a TV set has to pay.",
"Everyone in the UK that watches or records live broadcast television pays what is called the licence fee - currently £145.50 a year for standard colour TV (over 75's don't have to pay, nor do people who only watch on-demand, DVDs, etc).\n\nThis is a fee raised and collected by the BBC, and pays for its services.\n\nThe BBC also has for-profit commercial operations outside the UK (BBC America, for example) which also contributes to the BBC's overall budget."
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24hle0 | why does poverty still exist if we donate billions of dollars to charity organisations? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24hle0/eli5_why_does_poverty_still_exist_if_we_donate/ | {
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"Because those charity organizations don't just distribute the money out to people, they do a lot of different things.\n\nEven if they did that and **nothing else** billions of dollars spread across millions of people in poverty isn't going to completely change their life. If you're poor a few thousand is great, but if you're paying nearly 1000 for rent or you're in a ton of debt or you're sick and have medical bills, **or you don't have a job** that isn't going to change everything.",
"There are a lot of factors, but it isn't as simple as throwing money at people. Often times the problem isn't production of food, but distribution, or sometimes money you send somewhere gets taken by warlords who keep it all for themselves.\n\nIt is a relatively common sight to see items meant to be given as donations be sold by people who are corrupt for a price that many can't afford.\n\nAnd it's different answers for where in the world you're talking about.",
"Over 40 million Americans live in poverty. Every billion dollars donated, even if it went directly to their pockets would only amount to $25 each. $25 does not put a big dent in an individual's poverty.",
"Poverty is defined as the lowest percentage of income. Unless everyone was suddenly making the same amount of money then poverty will always exist. ",
"Because most charities that require massive amounts of money to operate basically just try to stimulate the economy in impoverished areas by injecting funds and free items into economies. The problem is most likely underlying in education and work. Low education is almost directly linked to poverty. I'm not saying put x amount of more funds towards education. I would say that people need to assess the exact needs of the areas that are impoverished. The results are not instant. It takes time for an impoverished area to grow and flourish\n\nTL:DR low education not money is the problem",
"The charity organizations are throwing money at the problem, not the cause.",
"Not to be too too cynical, but the amount of money that reaches the actual people in need is much less that 100 percent. The Susan B. Komen charity spends 20% of revenue on fundraing an administrative costs- including a CEO that makes $684,000 a year.",
"Total charitable giving in 2012 in America was ~$316 billion. If that amount were distributed among the roughly 50 million Americans in poverty (ignoring overhead and international charity), they would get just over $6000 each. That would certainly help, but it wouldn't entirely lift everyone out of poverty. On a worldwide scale, the situation is even worse, since America is on the upper end of both total wealth and charitable giving. I would be surprised if the worldwide amount given was enough to give everyone below the (US) poverty line even $1000 per year.",
"A big part of the \"issue\" is that charities often work like putting a wrapping over a bad wound. It will help cover things up, might prevent some infections, but in the end is really just a glorified band-aid. \n\nPoverty is a symptom of much larger issues in economics, socio-ethnic tension, urban decay, treatment of veterans, and often times mental health issues. These are not issues solved with money, no matter how much there is. \n\nSo while I highly encourage you get active in donating your time, money, goods, food, and doing anything you can to help: it comes with the caveat that it will likely not solve poverty, but you *WILL* make one person or one family's life much, much better. ",
"if you look at all the money that both charities and government have spent toward ending poverty in the last 60 years, all it has done is make it possible for more people to be born into poverty. if they spent the money making jobs and quit pulling the monetary rug out from under people who want to get out of poverty whenever they start making just a little money on their own, they could beat poverty.\nbut you can't buy votes from people as easily if they can fend for themselves."
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2fyglr | what makes dexter, post season 4, so bad? | I've been hearing lots of things about the show and that it's great up until post season 4. I'm curious as to why. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fyglr/eli5_what_makes_dexter_post_season_4_so_bad/ | {
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"Repeat storyline. It stopped being believable very quickly. For a show like Dexter but with much more upside, check out Banshee.\n",
"I didn't think the last half of the show was very bad (except season 6), it just wasn't nearly as good as the first half. ",
"They removed most of what made the show fascinating in favor of turning it into a cash cow. \n- the moral ambiguity of the Dexter character, a large part of the humor and intensity in season 1-4, is largely thrown away to turn Dexter into a consistent hero. Situations play out in such a way that Dexter is always close enough to being in the right that it becomes easy to root for him\n- it throws away the major plot point of season 4's finale, a perfect time to raise the stakes and explore new depths, to do a functional reset followed by formulaic Villains-of-the-Season...\n- unlike Ice Truck Killer, Lila, and Trinity (and Miguel, though I didn't like that season too much), the villains stop being a vehicle for exploring the characters and are, well, Just Villains. \n- as noted, the writing on smaller things took a dive as well. While never the highlight, the subplots become throwaway soap opera stuff, and half don't go anywhere\n\nI admit there's some exceptions to my rundown, but I think that's the jist of it. I also think the show runner switched around s4 but can't look it up atm"
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cz60w3 | - why is paper white and cardboard brown? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cz60w3/eli5_why_is_paper_white_and_cardboard_brown/ | {
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"The main purpose of paper is to display information, so it is bleached for better contrast, for cardboard it isn't that necessary so they don't bleach it since it's cheaper to produce",
"Paper is treated to make it white, cardboard is not. Very early paper had a cream/tan color, and specs of wood grain could sometimes be found in it. Treated paper is easier to write on due to contrast, whereas cardboard isn’t something that necessarily needs to be written on.",
"Wood has two main components to it: Cellulose and lignin. \n\nImagine you're making a fiberglass boat. The glass fiber fabric (cellulose) is strong, but not very rigid. Your boat would be all floppy and wouldn't float very well. But if you add epoxy (lignin), it binds those glass fibers into a tough, rigid material. Without lignin, trees wouldn't be able to grow more than a couple feet high. \n\nPaper is made from wood pulp with most of the lignin removed. It doesn't need to be rigid. Lignin also has a dark colour, which is undesirable in writing and drawing paper. Natural paper, which is mostly cellulose, has a light tan colour. It's then bleached to turn it white.\n\nCardboard is made from paper that retains more of the lignin in the wood pulp. Lignin is what gives it it's strength, and characteristic dark tan colour."
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408l4g | is there an evolutionary reason that brain freeze occurs? | Or, Is there a negative affect to eating a lot of cold stuff very fast? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/408l4g/eli5_is_there_an_evolutionary_reason_that_brain/ | {
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"A brain freeze isn't the brain itself cooling down, but instead a cooling down of the blood that lead into the brain. As the blood is working its way up your noggin it passes very close to the roof of your mouth. If your mouth is in contact with a cold drink/food, it can cool down the blood enough to cause vascular changes, which feels like brain freeze. So theres no reason for it to occur, its just the side effect of consuming too much of something too cold",
"its the contracting of some blood vessels in the roof of your mouth, so its purely a side effect of eating cold stuff fast. its not even a \"negative\", there are no short or long lasting effects other than the temporary pain",
"The evolutionary reason is that in a species from africa rarely if ever encountered icecream in the wild and a minor and non damaging shock of pain from eating it too fast didn't rate high enough to redo all the plumbing in our mouths for. "
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7n4bat | how do waves from radars, once they hit the plane, bounce back to the radar since plane surfaces are round and radars are small. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7n4bat/eli5_how_do_waves_from_radars_once_they_hit_the/ | {
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"The great part about waves is that they bounce in all directions. So no matter what it hits, as long as your dish is sensitive enough and the plane’s made out of reflective material, you will get some response back. ",
"They don't all bounce back but the few that do (as long as you have a big enough antenna & amplify the fuck out of the signal) are enough to tell the system that something is out there & roughly how big it is.\n\nStealth aircraft work by using paints that absorb radar & forcing the waves to bounce away in weird directions, making it much harder to see that something is there."
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cvbqs9 | what does it mean to have controlling shares in a company? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cvbqs9/eli5_what_does_it_mean_to_have_controlling_shares/ | {
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"A number of decisions in the company are voted on by the shareholders. How much your vote counts depends on what % of the shares you own.\n\nSo if you own over 50% of the shares then everyone else's votes are irrelevant. This is called a controlling interest, it basically means you get to make the big decisions.\n\nWhich includes who runs the company."
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6967zk | why do people blink with one eye to each other when they want to show support/good attitude/etc | Which non-verbal message hides in it (like when we shake hands we demonstrate our hands are not carrying any weapons, or idk)?
Why do I feel awkward when I try doing it myself (while being a total introvert)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6967zk/eli5_why_do_people_blink_with_one_eye_to_each/ | {
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"text": [
"Blinking with one eye is a very unnatural thing to do so hard to do on accident. And from either side it does not look unusual. So it is the perfect hint for people you are looking at but not others around you."
]
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4egn0p | why is it that it's a large additional effort and expense to develop a video game for an additional console, yet developers can make games that run on thousands of different pcs with infinite combinations of different components? | How much more different can Xbox be from PlayStation than my Asus laptop can be from my brother's custom desktop? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4egn0p/eli5_why_is_it_that_its_a_large_additional_effort/ | {
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"A lot different in some cases.\n\nComputers all share a similar architecture. So yes they have different processors and ram and harddrives etc. However all of those work exactly the same way. So you design your game to work for anything above a certain perfromance and boom it covers most PCs.\n\nWell Xboxs and Playstations are physically laid out differently, they sometimes use totally different types of processors etc. This causes more major differences in how games are designed.\n\nAlso consoles are actually very very weak compared to even average PCs used for gaming. As such the games have to be designed to work well on them vs just porting the game.",
"Think of an Xbox vs a PlayStation to be like a PC vs a Mac. You can't run Mac software on a PC and you can't run PC software on a Mac. The same problem occurs on an Xbox vs PlayStation. They just don't speak the same \"language\".",
"What most of the comments fail to address is operating systems (OS). The xbox, based on windows, has a different OS from Sony's playstation. The playstation OS was developed by Sony, and is also used in their other devices such as blue ray players. These OS's while similar operate differently and are not the same.\n\nA better comparison is to ask the question, why don't games instantly release on PC and Mac. They do not because Mac has a different operating system that requires extra knowledge to ensure the game runs efficiently. Most developers find that the added cost of this development is not worth the potential gain.\n\nThe overall type of hardware is rather moot (processor, GPU, etc). The larger reason is it is difficult and more costly to code for multiple OS's.",
"Computer hardware works pretty much exactly the same, no matter what brands you buy. Plus, when you're developing a game for PC, you're focused mainly on Windows, so as long as it's Windows compatible, you're all set.\n\n\nNot only does each game console have different hardware and \"wiring\", so to speak, but they also have completely different operating systems. So porting a PS4 game to Xbox One is just as much of a hassle as porting it to PC.",
"Part of it is that even though lots of PCs have different hardware, they're mostly compatible with each other and they don't have to be programmed differently. Whether your PC has an Intel or AMD CPU, Nvidia or AMD GPU, the game still runs the same code (with some exceptions, although usually the developers don't have to use those features). \n\nIf your game runs on Windows PCs, they use the same APIs to draw graphics to the screen, play sounds, access the network, etc. If the game is on Steam, it uses the same APIs to do things like achievements. The developers don't specifically write different code for different PC hardware, they just have to make sure it works on a broad range.\n\nIt's different between say Xbox One and PS4. If you're making a PS4 game, you have to use the APIs Sony provide, and you have to do things their way. They have a set of rules that your game must comply with. Microsoft do the same for the Xbox One. And often these things can work in significantly different ways. You actually have to write some parts of the code separately for each console.",
"Think of keyholes. \n\nAn Xbox One and a PS4 have completely different keyholes. A game designer needs to make two versions of the game that fit in the two different keyholes in order for the games to work on those systems. \n\nPC is a third keyhole. However, there *are* many many different types of PCs with different components. Think of those different kinds of PCs having all the same keyhole shape but being made of different materials and all working at different rates. ",
"Don't think of it as running on a PC, think of it as running on windows.\n\nWindows deals with whether or not the computer can handle the game, and integrates all the different components of the PC to do so. Basically, Windows is the translator that takes all those different pieces of hardware and gets them to communicate with the game. The game never sees the different \"foreign languages\" that all the pieces of hardware are speaking, it just talks to windows who either gives it the thumbs up or the thumbs down.\n\nSo a game can speak \"Windows,\" but we have to go back into development to teach it \"Xbox\" or \"Mac\" or whatever.\n\nThat's the super basic explanation."
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5yfb74 | why do people react differently to anti-depressants, and differently to different kinds of anti-depressants? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yfb74/eli5_why_do_people_react_differently_to/ | {
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"Mental issues are extremely complicated, and our understanding of the brain is very far from complete. Haven't you ever wondered why anti-depressant comercials contain the phrase \"X is believed to work by....\" They're not really sure how they work, they just know that sometimes they do. ",
"The answer will be a bit unsatisfying because honestly we just don't know. We don't know entirely why or how anti-depressants even work. We don't know entirely why or how depression works. And not all cases of depression have the same chemical reasons behind them.\n\nWhat we do know is that, X, Y and Z chemicals, in most cases, can help alleviate A, B and C symptoms. And you just have to try them out. If you have a mental illness you can go through dozens of medications and therapies before you find one that works, and might never find one.\n\nAnd most don't really 'cure' a disease so much as alleviate enough of the symptom to help people manage their life, which is why most drug therapy is ideally coupled with behavior and psychology therapy. They sometimes can only act as a life preserver to help you learn how to swim better, even if other people seem to be born with rafts. Some people will just have a lifetime of working harder ahead of them, and it's not fair, but we just don't know enough yet to fully help them. All we can do is smooth things out as best as we can.\n\nAnd that isn't to say that most 'neurotypical' people aren't working hard to control and maintain their 'raft' either. It's a learned skill for everybody. They still have to learn to manage stress, social awareness situations, etc. It's just that the disease more or less robs you of an advantage. The medicine and therapy are there to help you get as much of it back as you can, and that's often all it can do.\n\nThat's also part of why it's so important to be patient with and respectful of people with 'invisible' illnesses. Not every illness causes visible injuries.",
"As a person with diagnosed depression and anxiety, I will echo what's already been said. Doctors simply don't know. The brain is incredibly complex and sadly, insurance companies have not treated mental health with great favorability until the institution of ACA.\n\nI took Zoloft and it made me worse. I currently take Effexor XR and I manage extremely well. That said, medication is 10% of working through mental health issues. Counseling/group/talk/etc therapy and lifestyle changes are what help you truly get through things.\n\nBut like above posters, we just don't know. Finally, if you do need psychiatric medication do everything in your power to see a psychiatrist or someone with serious psychiatric training and medical knowledge. They have the best knowledge base to get you on the meds appropriate for you. ",
"There are so many causes to depression and it verys from person to person. People who are drug resistant are often genetically predisposed to depression. There is so much to it it's like a big ball of tangled headphones, no one is sure why and how it got tangled up, i mean they were sorted and nicely laid out on the desk, then you ignore it for a while and poof it's messed up. Now how you untangle it becomes the puzzle that needs the mystery of how it got that way solved before the problem itself can be solved.",
"None of the answers actually seem to \"ELY5\" so I'll answer to the best of my abilities (as someone medicated on anti-depressants for a few years now).\n\n______\n\nWe have Carol, Pam, and Ray. \n\nCarol, Pam, and Ray can all be diagnosed as suffering from depression. \n\nFor Carol, this could mean that she feels fine about half the time, but sometimes swings into depression. Ray, on the other hand, is always kind of depressed, as is Pam. \n\nFor Carol, the anti-depressants might help for her low mood-states, but they may have negative affects on her when she exits those states, so a doctor will need to monitor her more carefully because her mood instability makes it harder to predict how she will be affected by the medication.\n\nNow, Ray and Pam are both depressed in similar ways, but you might see that when Pam and Ray are prescribed the same medication, it works great for Pam and seems to make Ray worse. \n\nOne relatively recent theory suggest that depression could be caused either by a shortage of serotonin, or an over-abundance of it, so it is possible that Ray has too much serotonin, and the medication is intended to treat a serotonin deficiency. \n\nThis highlights the main reasons that people react differently:\n\n* Like Carol, sometimes we simply can't predict how a medication will affect someone because of the nature of their illness. \n\n* Like Pam, sometimes the causes of the symptoms being treated are understood well enough to treat successfully. \n\n* But, like Ray, sometimes the symptoms presented can be confused for any number of causes, or in other cases sometimes someone's personal physiology is just incompatible with certain medications (for example, I have sleeping medication prescriptions. One prescription leaves me with a terrible hangover, but doesn't affect my girlfriend negatively whatsoever. Another prescription works wonderfully for me, but leaves her feeling awful the next day.)",
"The thing we call depression isn't one single biological condition. It's a loose collection of symptoms that might happen for a wide variety of reasons. "
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7w3a5i | why do broken bones still hurt if they aren't set back into place? | Sounds like a bit of a dumb question - but let's say you break your arm and a 15 degree angle. You don't get it set, but you splint it anyway and the bone fuses back together.
It'll still hurt and you won't be able to use it correctly, you'd have to get it rebroken and reset so the bone would fuse in the proper position.
But why does it still hurt and not work properly even after the bone has fused? Can't the muscles and tendons eventually adapt to the new configuration? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7w3a5i/eli5_why_do_broken_bones_still_hurt_if_they_arent/ | {
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"There could be nerve damage in the surrounding tissue. Bone is also covered by a thin membrane called periosteum, which can also be torn or stretched by the broken bone.",
"Bone and soft tissue structures are designed for the mechanical stresses they undergo. Any change to the structure impairs the way they can function; because they can't tolerate or support the forces as well in their new position, they are more prone to stress, pain and injury. For instance, imagine, as you said, that you fractured your arm bone and it healed at a 15 degree angle. There's a sharp angle where the two ends of bone come together, and even after they've healed quite solidly together, a muscle that runs across that angle is going to rub against the sharp edge every time the arm is moved, sawing at its tissues and creating damage and inflammation, impairing the force it can generate and causing pain, rather than crossing a straight, smooth bone in a straight line as it originally had done. This is only one example - another: what about the bone marrow, which is also alive and has several functions? Are the blood vessels within it able to link up properly? Periosteum, the extremely sensitive, vascular, and delicate tissue surrounding and providing nutrients to the bone, might have to cross gaps in the bone after the break and be more vulnerable to tearing, even after the break has healed. Soft tissue attachments might now exert more pressure, in the wrong directions, than the periosteum can handle, so it might hurt or keep getting injured. Tendons that were previously supported by nearby structures might now be positioned differently and no longer mechanically capable of handling the load without overstretching or impinging on other soft tissue. Soft tissues that used to move freely might now get sawed or pinched between bones, and when the body creates scar tissue to try to stabilize so it can heal, soft tissues that are in unexpected places may end up getting adhered there. Yes, the body can adapt, but it is designed to work best in a certain configuration - it takes the forces of physics into account - and a bone which is no longer straight is just not quite as functional. How much trouble the body has adapting depends on the specific break and how it heals, but it's usually not as functional as it was, unless it is pretty much put back into the same configuration it was originally. "
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56wd7g | how does a baby, in the womb filled with amniotic fluids, survive? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/56wd7g/eli5_how_does_a_baby_in_the_womb_filled_with/ | {
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"A baby gets everything it needs through the placenta. The fluid exits the lungs upon birth, part by being squeezed through the birth canal and then coughing after birth to start breathing air. ",
"At the moment your baby is getting all their nutrients, including oxygen, through the umbilical cord, so they have no need to breathe. The lungs are filled with amniotic fluid, but that's 100% normal. Upon exiting the vaginal canal and hitting cold air a series of hormonal changes will take place which will kick start your babies lungs. The fluid will eventually be absorbed into the blood stream, and those first few breathes can be challenging for the baby, sometimes they need a little help, usually just vigorous rubbing of their bodies to get circulation moving, sometimes a little puff of air into their mouths. (This is where the cliche about spanking a newborn baby comes from - the shock jump starts the lungs.) But you have nothing to fear, your doctor will see any lung issues long before the birth, so any delays in that first breath won't mean anything is wrong."
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46x8e4 | why do we fire space shuttles straight up? | why wouldn't it make sense to say aim in the direction of the earths rotation and fly upwards at an angled climb or something like that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/46x8e4/eli5_why_do_we_fire_space_shuttles_straight_up/ | {
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"The answer is in the physics. In order to get an object to orbit the earth, it must be travelling at over 17,000 mph. Using today's technology, the only way to generate enough energy to get the shuttle to orbit is with engines that are more powerful then jet engines. Those engines use fuels like liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen and solid fuels like in a bottle rocket. The Space Shuttle generates about 6,000,000 pounds of energy (thrust) to get the orbiter to orbit at the right speed. There are no known wheels, tires or runways that can handle that much energy. This is why shuttles are designed to launch vertically. \nSource: _URL_0_\n\nOne certainly could launch horizontally, but then your vehicle would have to be designed to generate aerodynamic lift for those critical first few seconds of the flight, after which it would quickly become superfluous. Given the enormous amounts of thrust required to achieve orbital velocity anyway, launching straight up for the first few seconds of flight is just easier.",
"We do. Well it's dependant on a lot of variables but essentially a rocket goes up and begins to turn with gravity until it's going horizontal. [This is the ascent profile](_URL_0_) for Apollo 8.",
"Mostly, we don't. We fire it straight up for only a short time just to get it into thinner air so there is less drag from air and then we turn it to take advantage of the Earth's rotation AND get it into an orbit that is parallel to the ground.\n\nSo, only in the first minute or two does it go straight up. Then it turns pretty sharply east.",
"We do it like you say, but it pays to get passed some air first. But they always do a small turn immediately because they want anything to fall to fall away from the launch site.\n\nFYI you would love kerbal space program. a rocket design simulator. You learn things like this through trial and error, explosions, and the r/kerbalspaceprogram community",
"I'm pretty sure that's where they keep space. Kidding aside, you want to get out of the dense atmosphere as fast as possible, it starts to turn when it gets to a certain altitude to inject itself into orbit. If it just went straight up it would fall back down if it didn't have enough speed to break away. ",
"This is not my original thought, and I wish I could source OP on this:\n\nImagine you're playing Mario Kart and you're driving in the mud. But the farther you get from the track, the thicker the mud gets and the slower you're able to drive. If you're really far from the road, it makes sense to take a direct path straight to the road until the mud thins enough to start angling back toward the direction you want to travel on the track. This is why modern rockets take off vertically but turn toward the rotation of the earth. But in this case mud=the atmosphere."
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4joizy | why do wild animal mothers (like bison) sometimes reject their young if they have been in contact with humans? | I just read the story about people putting the baby bison in their car, and afterwards the herd would have nothing to do with it, and it had to be euthanized. Why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4joizy/eli5_why_do_wild_animal_mothers_like_bison/ | {
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"Likely smell.\n\nA lot of animals communicate much more with smell than we humans do. It can be a much more important sense when you're in the wild, and can help differentiate your \"herd\" or \"family\" from \"other\", and \"other\" is usually bad.\n\nSo when some people handled the baby and put it in their car, it got all sorts of WEIRD NASTY smells on it, like car seat fabric or vinyl or the cigarettes that were smoked in that car or the human stench of its owners, and those \"other\" smells got stuck to the baby bison and masked his own natural scent. He no longer smelled like the herd or like family, and so they stayed away from him."
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be4aee | can a magnet create light? | Imagine a static permanent magnet. If that magnet moves, it will introduce changes to a surrounding magnetic field. This, in turn, should create changes to electric field and so on. These changes are self-propagating, so in theory, every movement of a magnet should result in a single EM pulse
If these assumptions are correct, magnet, oscillating with high enough frequently, should emit visible light - just like oscillating surface of the speaker emits sound
Is that so? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/be4aee/eli5_can_a_magnet_create_light/ | {
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"I think this is more suited for r/askscience\n\nThis is a theory and as such can't be have definite explanation",
"Yes, a rotating magnet will create light -- but not visible light. You could create radio waves this way, but to create visible light you'd need to spin the magnet 600 trillion times a second. The centrifugal forces would rip the magnet apart unless it was literally a single atom or molecule in size. And in that case, we're really talking about atomic and molecular energy levels, which are indeed influenced by the magnetic properties of the atoms involved. But now things are all quantum mechanicsey and we're pretty far from the simple idea of sticking a bar magnet in a cordless drill."
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8a3y7z | how could someone possibly survive after being submerged in water for over 45 minutes? | I read today about a girl named Michelle Funk that survived drowning and found with a body temperature of 66F (19C). She was in water for over 45 minutes. How could she survive? She even turned out normal. No signs of brain damage. How is that possible? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8a3y7z/eli5_how_could_someone_possibly_survive_after/ | {
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"When temperatures get colder, everything that the body does slows down - respiration, metabolism, everything. As it turns out, that includes the processes that actually kill our cells, especially our brain cells. \n\nI've heard that there's a saying in the medical community: You're not dead until you're warm AND dead. If the circumstances are right, a cold body will die far, far more slowly than a warm body, and the odds of recovery can increase quite a bit if you can warm it up and get oxygen back to the brain.",
"This is only generally known in freezing/near freezing water. Hypothermia has a protective effect on the central nervous system and heart, that retards the effects of oxygen deprivation. \n\nThis has to do with the same reason that refrigerating food slows spoilage and decomposition.\n\nIn fact, there's a fair amount of active research into deliberately cooling cardiac arrest victims to protect them until they can be treated."
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4w163y | how can airbnb inflate rental and housing prices; shouldn't competition drive down prices? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4w163y/eli5_how_can_airbnb_inflate_rental_and_housing/ | {
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"Airbnb is competing against hotels and hostels for customers but compete against regular renters for space. They drive down the prices of cheap hotels and hostels but increase the demand for flats thus increasing the rent.",
"People who wouldn't normally buy a condo or house as an investment property might choose to do so if they can make more money by renting it on AirBnB than they can probably get more overall for it than a traditional rental. Say a house might rent for $1500/mo. They might be able to get $100/night through AirBnB, meaning that if they rent it more than half the time they make more money than with a full time tenant. \n\nAdditionally, apartment owners might choose to use units in their buildings as AirBnB rentals for the same reason rather than finding full time tenants.",
"AirBnB drives down ***short term rental*** prices. AKA \"hotel\" prices.\n\nIt does this at the expense of decreasing the housing supply and ***driving up*** prices for long-term accommodations like homes and condos.\n\nIn a simple supply and demand equation, it increases the supply of SHORT TERM accommodation (like hotel rooms) - reducing their cost- and decreases the supply of long-term accommodations (like houses) - increasing their cost."
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1xrjpp | how fast do you have to travel to make interstellar travel possible? see text | If a photon can arrive anywhere in the universe "instantly" from its POV, then how fast would you have to travel to arrive at a nearby star or system in your lifetime? Barring forms of stasis. You can pick destination. Forget about practical things like radiation its about speed. If you want to speculate on a space bending warp drive you can go right ahead. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xrjpp/how_fast_do_you_have_to_travel_to_make/ | {
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"Proxima Centauri is the nearest star to Sol at a distance of 4.24 light years. \n\nIgnoring the fact that we wouldn't particularly want to go there anyway because it's a red dwarf with a massive flare problem and no known planets, we can work backwards to find out how fast you'd have to go to get there in an average human lifetime (78 years for the average US citizen or thereabouts according to the CDC).\n\nI hope my math is right here, because I'm a pretty appalling mathematician. Someone please correct me if it's not. Cheers.\n\nTravelling at the speed of light - 671 million miles an hour - you'd get there in 4.24 years.\n\nTravelling at 50% the speed of light should get you there in 8.48 years.\n\nTravelling at 25% the speed of light should get you there in 16.96 years.\n\nTravelling at 10% the speed of light should get you there in 42.4 years\n\nTravelling at 5% the speed of light should get you there in 84.8 years\n\n84.8 years at 5% of c - that's right at the upper end of the typical human lifespan, so we could suggest that if you were willing to put a newborn baby on a spacecraft and shoot them off towards Proxima Centauri at between 5 and 10% the speed of light, they would reach their destination within an average human lifetime. Just before they croaked of old age, if they were lucky, they would feel the light of a new sun.\n\n5% of 671 million miles per hour is 33,550,000 miles per hour - so roughly 33.5 million miles per hour is the speed you'd have to go in answer to your question.\n\nOut of interest, a quick Google search tells me that the New Horizons probe (unmanned) launched in 2006, achieved a takeoff speed of 36,000 mph, which means in order to get to Proxima Centauri in a single human lifetime, we're going to have to figure out how to travel over 900 times faster than current technology allows.\n\nI'm probably missing some obvious factor that would change everything (relativity perhaps, not sure) but that was fun to think about anyway.\n",
"The_Dead_See and sjbaker30 are looking at this through Newtons eyes, but these speeds need to be seen through Einsteins eyes, and his Theory of Relativity to make any sense. \n\nThe answer might surprise you. You can cross the Milky Way; a 100,000 light year expanse, in 12 years, with a ship capable of accelerating at 1g the entire time, and never exceed the speed of light.\n\nThis apparent paradox is answered by time dilation and length contraction; from the point of view of people on Earth, over 100,000 years will have past to your 12, and the effect is greater the closer you get to the speed of light, if you want to slow down enough to arrive at a star without simply blasting on through, you need to start slowing down half way. Because of this, to reach the center of the galaxy, and do so such that you arrive at a slow speed, it would take 20 years, even though its \"only\" about 30,000 light years away.\n\nTo be honest, the math doesn't make a lick of sense to me, but this article explains it very well. Even if the math is still chicken scratch, it does a good job of putting it into laymans terms.\n\n[The Relativistic Rocket](_URL_0_) ^By ^the ^University ^Of ^California ^Riverside"
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2ples9 | why doesn't the bank put the vacant house on the market, when it has been rotting away for three years? | The house next door to us had been vacant for three years. How come the bank doesn't try to sell it "as-is"? I know the bank owns it as a lady comes every few months who works for the bank, but she is unable to answer my question. Doesn't the house just continue to depreciate in value and bring down the value of our houses nearby? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ples9/eli5_why_doesnt_the_bank_put_the_vacant_house_on/ | {
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"The bank wants to make a profit, so they often have a minimum price they're willing to sell it at, in order to at least break even. If that price is below market value, then the house will likely sit there for a while. ",
"If that house has remained unsold for three years, chances are the housing market in your neighborhood is very depressed.\n\nThe bank is hoping the market will improve faster than the house's value will depreciate. \n\nIf they has a crystal ball that told them the house wouldn't sell for three years, they probably would have sold it for less sooner. But lacking that, all they can do is make their best guess with the available information.",
"If a bank has an asset to cash ratio that's too low, they often can't sell it at a loss legally.",
"The bank probably doesn't own the house. The bank 'services' the loan on the house, but the loan itself was owned by a consortium of people through a \"mortgage backed security\" or MBS. It is hard to get all of those people to agree on anything, including selling the house at a lower price than they originally thought it was worth. Also, those people lost a lot of money by trusting that bank in the first place, so when the bank advises them to sell the house at whatever price they can get, the people don't trust them this time and don't take the advice."
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3qlag2 | what causes us to be completely irritated by certain sounds, like nails on a chalk board or peoe eating with their mouths open? is it a learned irritation or something biological? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qlag2/eli5_what_causes_us_to_be_completely_irritated_by/ | {
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"I think its something biological. There's a name for it, Misophonia. I don't have it to the point where it heavily impacts my life, but I have what I consider a mild version. People eating with their mouths open or the way certain people eat (like my father with few teeth, UGH) drives me up the wall and I will tell kids to close their mouths when eating if they aren't. ",
"I'd really like to know this too as I get that \"nails on chalkboard\" reaction from the stupidest things. Like people sliding their straw through the lids of those McDonalds cups, I HATE the noise it makes... Ulg "
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b506o1 | some smartphones are even faster than pc’s nowadays. why do smartphones make no sound while being used, but pc’s make "working" sounds. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b506o1/eli5_some_smartphones_are_even_faster_than_pcs/ | {
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"The \"working\" sounds on a PC are either the disk drives, or the fans. Without the fans whirring your PC would catch fire/smolder/die pretty quickly and disk drives (especially standard ones) are cheaper so they go into a computer. \n\nAs for \"some smartphones are faster\" you have to look at the big picture. A smartphone out of the box usually can't match a PC of the same price for high intensity usage. For example: pubg (I'm sorry) can be played on PC and mobile but the graphic quality and responsiveness of the game on PC is light-years ahead of a smartphone of similar age. That PC could also go on to transition into rendering 3D Mechanical drawings for massive projects whereas the smartphones components would literally burn up.\n\nPhones don't have fans to cool them off so instead they throttle power when they get hot. That's why the phone can start feeling buggy if it's warm. Their big advantage is that they use only a \"solid\" form of storage so the reaction could be faster for simple uses."
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2me13i | why don't americans vote absentee? | With all the talk of dismal voter turnout, especially a few weeks ago, I am hearing people talk of making election day a federal holiday so people who work all day have a chance to get to the polls. While that does sound like a good idea, I've always avoided problems with getting to the polls by voting absentee. You don't have to literally be absent to vote absentee so why don't more americans simply do this instead of complaining about not being able to get to the polls? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2me13i/eli5why_dont_americans_vote_absentee/ | {
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"Most likely because absentee voting is 1) something that can be put off until tomorrow, day after day, until it's too late. And 2) most people aren't really aware of how to go about doing it. Not that they are unable to find out, necessarily, but they have other things on their schedules and can't be bothered.",
"Different states have different laws about absentee ballots. Each is fairly unique. In some states, such as California, 20-30% of all votes are absentee ballots.\n\nIn Washington and Oregon, all votes are by mail.\n\nThere are 50 states plus DC and the territories, and they all have different rules.\n\nEdit:spelling",
"Another reason - the race goes on until election day, and the candidates continue to campaign for themselves and against each other until the last day. The race can change up until the last minute, and to vote absentee, one would have to make one's final decision at least a few days before the polls.",
"I haven't heard any Americans complain about themselves not being able to get to the polls. That is an excuse made up by people who do vote and hope that nonvoters would vote their way.\n\nNonvoters don't vote mostly because they don't want to. They don't want to vote in person, they don't want to vote by mail."
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j2cef | anyone interested in a general description of the housing bubble bust in 2007 which started this whole bailout/tarp thing? | I figure that I could give a very general explanation of what happened since it seems like not a lot of people really understand. And other, more knowledgeable people, could come in and help me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j2cef/anyone_interested_in_a_general_description_of_the/ | {
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"This is a great overview on the credit/housing crisis: _URL_0_ - Although it doesn't explain bailout/TARP.",
"This about covers it: _URL_0_",
"check this out\n_URL_0_\n\ni really wish khanacademy gets even more recognition that it has already",
"How it used to work: a house gets sold, the new owners pay back the money plus interest to a bank, and everyone wins.\n\nHow the banks tried to win more: package multiple houses together into multimillion dollar investment plans. Banks buy them from each other. Then banks add an insurance plan where you pay extra in exchange for a guarantee that you make back at least as much as you put in. Since there are multiple houses in each plan, only a few should ever default, and the rest should make the original bank, the investors, and these insurance deals all profit.\n\nWhere it went wrong: suddenly no one could pay back what they borrowed on the houses. Now all the banks need to pay back double. Bear Stearns was in so deep that they folded rather than pay everyone back. So suddenly everyone who sold insurance on that bank's housing plans is screwed over.\n\nOur solution: give banks enough money to pay each other back.",
"You should read \"The Big Short,\" by Michael Lewis. Explains the housing collapse in clear, nonpartisan detail. I just finished reading it yesterday, great book.",
"I think I understand the housing fairly well, but I'm curious to know exactly what people mean when they talk about Wall Street regulations. I feel like we keep hearing that in the 80s and 90s, politicians deregulated Wall Street. What were some of the more significant/damaging ways that that happened?",
"If you want a good explanation in visual terms watch Inside Job. If you want a little deeper explanation in audio form listen to the FIRST episodes of Planet Money, the podcast.",
"I can explain this in bite-sized pieces, but there will be a lot of pieces, because this is complicated.\n\nSo let me start with a question that sounds unrelated: where do big companies store their money?\n\nTake Home Depot for instance: they sell stuff all month, then at the end of the month they have to make payroll. So they have to take the cash that's coming in, and store it somewhere until the end of the month comes around. Where do they store it?\n\nThey don't use checking accounts. You see, checking accounts are only FDIC insured up to 250,000. If Home Depot were to put its money in a checking account, and the bank were to go bankrupt, Home Depot would lose everything. It's too risky.\n\nOne thing companies sometimes do is use the money to buy treasury bonds (also known as savings bonds). Then, at the end of the month when they have to make payroll, they sell the treasury bonds. Since treasury bonds don't change in value from one day to the next, they sell for the exact same amount it cost to buy them. It's almost like having the money in a checking account. This is a reasonably safe thing to do.\n\nBut there's a problem. Home Depot would have to sell millions of dollars worth of bonds at the end of the month, to make payroll. But what if there's nobody buying? They might end up with a disaster where they can't sell your bonds, so you can't make payroll.\n\nThe investment banks came up with a solution: \"repo.\" They sell treasury bonds, but they promise to buy them back whenever you want (for a small fee). That way, Home Depot can use their money to buy treasury bonds, but they feel secure that they can cash in their bonds in time to make payroll.\n\nBut there's another problem. The US only owes 15 trillion. So there are only 15 trillion dollars worth of treasury bonds in existence. That may seem like a lot, but if all the big companies were to save by buying treasury bonds, there just wouldn't be enough treasury bonds to go around.\n\nSo companies started looking for a different kind of bond that's just as safe as a treasury bond. That's a tough thing to do - in fact, it's pretty much impossible. There's nothing that safe. So what to do?\n\nThe answer is a very clever trick. This is subtle, so bear with me.\n\nHere's what you do. You get two people, one of whom wants a super-safe investment, one of whom wants a high-risk, high-profit investment. Each one puts in $500 bucks, and together, they buy $1000 worth of stock. Then, they make a contractual agreement: they're going to sell the stock at the end of the month. No matter what the stock sells for, the low-risk guy will get $500. The high-risk guy will get whatever's left.\n\nSo let's say the stock goes up ten percent, to $1100. The low-risk guy gets $500 of that, the high-risk guy gets the whatever's left: $600. From the high-risk guy's perspective, this is a great deal: if he had just invested $500 directly, and it had gone up ten percent, his profit would have been $50. He doubled his profit by entering a deal like this.\n\nOn the other hand, what if the stock had gone down ten percent, to $900? In that case, the low-risk guy gets $500, and the high-risk guy gets $400. The high-risk guy didn't just double his profits, he also doubled his losses. But maybe that's a chance he's willing to take, to double his profits.\n\nThis is a clever deal. Basically, low-risk guy transferred his risk, contractually, to high-risk guy. Low-risk guy is Home Depot, and high-risk guy is some crazy hedge fund somewhere. Home depot needs safety, because they need to be sure they can make payroll. The hedge fund is willing to take risks, because it's really just bunch of rich guys playing the stock market for fun. This is win-win for both of them.\n\nBut here's the problem: low-risk guy still isn't satisfied. He thinks: what if the stock tanked so hard that it loses more than half its value? In that case, the low-risk guy gets all the proceeds of the sale, but he loses money regardless. So this isn't really a perfectly safe investment. Low-risk guy wants something even safer.\n\nWhat if, instead of buying stock, these two guys (low-risk guy and high-risk guy) had invested in something that never loses half its value? Yes, there is such a thing: mortgages.\n\nLet's say these two guys pool their money, split it into a thousand pieces, and loan it to 1000 different homeowners. If 10% of homeowners default, these two guys would lose 10% of their money. If 20% default, they lose 20% of their money. But there's no way that 50% of homeowners could ever default. That has never happened, not even during the great depression (and still hasn't happened today). So no matter what, low-risk guy will get his half. So this really is a safe investment, as safe as a treasury bond.\n\nThe investment banks formalized this process: they would buy mortgages, and then they would issue high-risk bonds, and low-risk bonds. The low-risk bonds would be sold to the same sorts of people who wanted to buy treasury bonds. Furthermore, the investment banks would continue to do the repo thing - they'd promise to buy back the low-risk bonds whenever you want to cash them in. Furthermore, they'd guarantee that the low-risk bonds wouldn't lose value - they'd promise to buy them back for the same price they sold them to you, regardless of whether they actually lost value.\n\nThis is very clever. Companies really did need a safe place to put their money. The banks figured out a way to create an investment that was super-safe. It was a good idea.\n\nBut then things got iffy: there were too many low-risk guys, and not enough high-risk guys. So they had to invent contracts which were basically the same, but which teamed three low-risk guys for each high-risk guy. This basically worked the same way, but it meant that the low-risk guys would lose money if more than 25% of the homeowners defaulted, instead of 50%. That was still unheard of, so they figured it was still safe.\n\nThen, there was another problem. There's not enough people buying houses. So they branched out in to car loans, and home improvement loans, credit card loans, and eventually, subprime loans.\n\nIt's important to understand this has nothing to do with greed. Corporations really do need to put their money somewhere until the end of the month. And they're really going out of their way to find a safe place to put that money. This is not careless gambling, they're really trying their best to be safe. Meanwhile, the investment banks were doing their best to create those safe investments.\n\nWhat happened in 2007 is this:\n\nFirst, subprime mortgages tanked hard enough that more than 25% defaulted. The banks didn't anticipate that, and the low-risk bonds started losing value. That wasn't supposed to happen.\n\nCompanies like Home Depot were in possession of these low-risk bonds, but they had an escape hatch: the banks had guaranteed that they would buy back the low-risk bonds at the original price, whenever Home Depot wanted. So Home Depot cashed in their bonds. So did every other company. That's called a bank run, and there wasn't enough money in the bank's coffers to buy back all the bonds.\n\nThe banks started desperately tried to find cash somewhere, anywhere, to pay their contractual obligations. To maximize the cash available, they stopped lending money. ALL of them stopped lending money. Suddenly, we had no functioning banks.\n\nThat was bad. Companies need to borrow money all the time. They'll have a bad month, so they'll borrow a little to pay their employees. But all of a sudden, every single bank had stopped lending money. When all the banks stopped lending, many, many companies couldn't make payroll. So they had no choice to start laying people off.\n\nWhen people got laid off, they stopped paying their mortgages.\n\nNow you've got a vicious cycle.\n\nThe solution they came up with was the bank bailouts. You can argue with it, but it was logical: the economy needed functioning banks. The only way to get that, in a hurry, was to get the existing banks back up and running.\n\n"
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5derzx | why does "sleeping on it" aid in information retention? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5derzx/eli5_why_does_sleeping_on_it_aid_in_information/ | {
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"You consolidate memories and strengthen connections between brain cells during sleep. Part of the reason babies sleep so much is because their brains are growing like gangbusters and they have to consolidate everything they are learning.\n\nIt's still a relative mystery, scientifically speaking. We have long known that sleeping aids problem solving and memory creation/retention.\n\nOne theory is that the system is overloaded with info throughout the day and sleeping helps to \"clear the cache\"...kind of like shutting down your computer. It helps the brain to clear out extraneous info and keep the important, practiced information.\n\nBrains are so cool. "
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6dmpa6 | why is the bass in music more audible far away compared to the highs and mids? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6dmpa6/eli5_why_is_the_bass_in_music_more_audible_far/ | {
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"Low pitched sounds travel farther than high pitched sounds. If you ever are near a school during a marching band practice you will hear the low brass and bass percussion before you hear the flutes and trumpets as you approach the field from a distance. "
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b42maj | if we're conciously aware that something isn't a threat to us, why does our subconscious often still override this with contradictory feelings? i know i'm not gonna die bungee jumping, but it's still scary af? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b42maj/eli5_if_were_conciously_aware_that_something_isnt/ | {
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"Fear responses are driven by deeper and older part of the brain (like hippocampus and amygdala) whereas logic and reading is a much newer part of the brain (prefrontal cortex). \n\nThe older and more basic parts of the brain override the newer more complicated parts. This is so that things like fear and adrenaline responses are much faster and “instinctive” designed to save our lives. \n\nFor example, before bungee cords or parachutes were a thing any time you fell there was a good chance you would die. So our brains hard coded to try and avoid that scenario. ",
" > I know I'm not gonna die bungee jumping\n\nAnd how do you know that? Can you predict the future? People die from bungee jumping, you know. Do you think anyone who's ever died bungee jumping ***knew*** they were about to die bungee jumping? It is absolutely a threat to you."
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1zvpp4 | why is it so difficult for citizens to defend themselves in court if they killed out of self defense, but a police officer can get off the hook like nothing happened. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zvpp4/eli5why_is_it_so_difficult_for_citizens_to_defend/ | {
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"Cops are issued firearms by the state for the specific reason to shoot people if needed. \n\nPlus people kill others in self defence all the time in various countries and don't see a single day of prison. You're just hearing about the ones who claimed self defence but there was enough evidence to convince a jury that it wasn't. The ones who have the cops rock up, look around and go, \"Obviously a case of self defence,\" make for a boring headline. ",
"Police are expected to deliberately enter scenes where the risk of having to kill in self defense is heightened and intrinsic to the duties of the work.\n",
"Others have brought up a lot of good points. But also I think it has to do with the fact that most police shootings happen out in public. A lot of shootings are caught on dash-board cams or have civilians and other police as witnesses, a lot of stations even require cops to wear audio and video recorders on their body now.\n\n I would think most civilian self defense would happen in private residences and secluded areas. And then if there's just one dead attacker, and only the gunman defending themself is alive the only words they have to go on is the living person and they can't hear the dead persons side of the story. Then they have to open up an investigation and see if there's any other motive for this, or if there's anything suspicious about it, if the persons life was really in danger, if they were legally allowed to own the gun etc:",
"If you honestly believe that people are constantly going to jail for self defence and the police are running around murdering people without repercussions you need to go spend some time outside. We aren't living in the police state internet neckbeards think we are in the U.S.\n\nI can assure you there are hundreds of cases of self defence resulting in no charges just in my city alone, and police are fired or charged weekly for negligence in various departments all over the U.S. You can't always criminally charge them not because of the imaginary blue line but because it's very hard to pursue those cases in court due to their job giving expansive reasonable doubt regarding their intention to commit a crime.\n\n > basically green lit to shoot them dead and call it self defense and end up with a slap on the wrist and paid leave at most.\n\nThis is an outright ludicrous lie. Even in a 100% justified police shooting the vast majority if not all departments require mandatory leave for mental health reasons. If you shoot someone as a cop in America you are not going back to work for at least a few months or as long as a year. This is not \"paid leave\", it's a time for psychological evaluation and to make sure the officer in question is handling it ok. \n\nThe anti-cop neckbeard circlejerk would get a lot more credit from me if they didn't constantly engage in ridiculous hyperbole or talk about how they want to believe things are rather than how they actually are...\n\n"
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8v1khp | why does a cold coke taste better than a room temp coke? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8v1khp/eli5_why_does_a_cold_coke_taste_better_than_a/ | {
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"Cold things taste less sweet than warm things, and carbon dioxide is less soluble in cold soda than warm soda. So, it’s bubblier and less overwhelmingly sugary.\n\nEdit: I’m wrong!! Sorry. Forgot my ecology 101. Obviously gases are less soluble at higher temperatures. That’s why fish die when the ocean warms: oxygen is less soluble in water.",
"don’t underestimate Advertisements. You have been conditioned by every single coke ad, even the ones from fast food restaurants, movie theaters etc. \n“Enjoy an Ice Cold Coke” countless images of Coke being poured over a cup full of ice. We’re trained to want an ice cold coke. \n\nThere are ofc people who don’t follow this notion. They like it flat, and warm. But those people are just weird. "
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1qqjzu | what drives somali pirates? is their risk on life actually low, or are they that poor? do they even actually steal goods? if so, who do they sell them to? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qqjzu/eli5_what_drives_somali_pirates_is_their_risk_on/ | {
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"If I remember correctly, the pirates initially started out as fishermen defending their waters against fishing ships from foreign countries. Since Somalia barely has a functioning central government, they don't have a means to protect their territorial waters. Somali fishermen were losing their livelihoods because foreign ships were rapidly depleting fish stocks in Somali waters. These fishermen gradually realized that piracy was MUCH more profitable. I might be missing some things, though"
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c8ksq2 | why do people usually have to fast before an operation, and how does this work in case of an urgent, unplanned operation where the person has not been fasting? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c8ksq2/eli5_why_do_people_usually_have_to_fast_before_an/ | {
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"Has to do with the sedatives the patient is given to knock them out/ keep them unconscious. Food in the digestive system can make the patient vomit or need to eliminate upon coming to. This is an especially bad thing if the operation is near an area where muscles violently contract (throwing up generally makes muscles clench).\n\nAlso reduces the risk of rupturing digestive system and having partially or wholly digested material where it doesn't belong in the body. There are bacteria in your gut that you would die if they weren't there, but will make you seriously ill or kill you if they manage to get anywhere else in the body.",
"Because of the general anesthesia. General anesthesia and the intubation process can make people vomit or regurgitate, and since you're unconscious and your normal reflexes are suppressed, you could aspirate stomach contents into your lungs, which can be fatal. Also for surgery on part of the digestive system itself, obviously you don't want food in there while surgeons are operating.\n\nAs for emergency surgery, doctors will determine the risk of performing the surgery right away vs the benefit of waiting. Usually if it's that serious that you need emergency surgery right away, they're just going to do it. Aspiration is pretty rare anyway, so if you can avoid it, fine, but if you're gonna die without surgery, they don't really have a choice.",
"Anesthesiologist here. When you are put to sleep under anesthesia you lose your gag reflex and cannot protect your own airway. If food or drink is in your stomach, it can come up your esophagus and the gastric contents can be aspirated. That is the reason you are told not to eat before surgery. If the surgery is an emergency, the patient is considered to have a full stomach and special precautions are taken which is called a rapid sequence intubation.",
"you fast so none of your stomach content will go into your lungs. That is a major risk during operation.\nif you have an emergency and need immediate operation, the risk is probably worth it.",
"For emergency surgery - for example where there is a risk to life or limb - where a patient hasn't fasted and there's a risk of aspirating (breathing in) the stomach contents, the idea is to get their airway protected by the breathing tube as soon as possible. \n\nThe 'rapid sequence induction' technique differs to a normal general anaesthetic induction - the muscle relaxant used is extremely fast acting in order to paralyse/intubate them as soon as possible - we also apply pressure to a certain spot on the neck (cricoid cartilage) to close off the oesophagus and reduce the chance of regurgitation. (Although the efficiency of this is pretty debatable, I believe it is still widely used, at least in the UK.)",
"It's to avoid vomiting food into your lungs. \n\nIn an emergency situation anaesthetists tens to perform what's called a \"rapid sequence induction\" . Whilst doing this they apply pressure to the neck over the cricoid cartilage to reduce aspiration risk\n\n\nOnce they fully intubate you the risk of aspirating is very low and ant computer food can be auctioned without it going down the trachea (as it is blocked by an inflated cuff around the tube).\n\nWhen possible under anaesthetic the anaesthetist Wil avoid fully intubating you and place a laryngeal mask airway which is less intrusive but Risker for aspiration.",
"Does this depend on the surgery? I had an unstable pelvic fracture that got me life flighted to a Trauma 1 center and bumped to their next surgery slot. Got in around midnight & the surgery was going to be at 6. In the meantime I literally begged for water, ice chips, a wet towel to suck on, any kind of hydration & was denied, not just before the surgery but for a few hours after the surgery as well. \n\nI needed a followup surgery recently, not an emergency but still kind of an intense surgery. For this one they said I could drink \"clear liquids\" up to 2 hours before the procedure & that included not just water but things like apple juice and ginger ale as well.",
"There are already a lot of good answers here but not sure if they are ELI5 answers. Ill give it a try. \n\nWhen you go to sleep from anesthesia there is a big chance you will puke and then suck your puke into your lungs. This is bad. If your stomach is empty the chance of pukeing is much smaller. \n\nFor emergency surgery, or when your stomach is mot empty, we put you to sleep a different way but the risk of inhaling puke is super high. \n\nTherefore: empty stomach for anesthesia is the safest. Emergency surgery is called “emergency surgery” for a reason and we deal with the added risks. \n\nCheers.",
"Because if you have anything on your stomach and you're sedated, your muscles can be paralyzed. That means peristalsis, the muscle movement of your digestive tract, will slow to a halt. That means that you could have a reflex reaction to vomit when your body senses that you have a bunch of shit on your stomach that isn't moving. Nausea from the sense of dysphoria from sedation can have the same effect.\n\nWell, if you vomit during surgery, there are some obvious problems. One, it's supposed to be sterile and you just sprayed the entire scene with the contents of your last meal. Two, it's vomit and can create unpleasant reactions for staff (read: I'm a sympathy spewer, so if someone vomited you guys need to find another 220 lb guy to assist cuz I'm out). Three, depending on what they're cutting on the action of vomiting can create complications in positioning or holds.\n\nThen there's the not-so-obvious problem, and that's breathing your own vomit a la Jimi Hendrix. When you do that, you're sucking acid, bacteria, and food into your lungs which are two giant sacs made of a bunch of tiny sacs. Which means they can't do their job bc they're full of fluid and also means there's going to be damage to the lungs (bc acid) and a gigantic risk for infection (bc damage from acid, bacteria, and food). It makes it really hard to monitor proper anesthesia and breathing machines (using things like oxygen saturation) when suddenly the lungs aren't working bc they're full of fluid.\n\nIf there's an emergency, everyone accepts that things may not go to plan. If the doctor makes a mistake and you die, well that happens. If you vomit and screw it all up, well that happens too. Unless you have a really strong case of a big mistake, collectively the world shrugs, you're dead, and everybody moves on. There's another case in the ER waiting to be seen. This is a really big part of why quality medicine and healthcare workers that are not burnt out or overworked is vital, but everybody wants free healthcare and if that happens we're all fucked. May the odds be ever in your favor!",
"I had to have an emergency c section, they gave me an 'anti sickness' medicine before I went into surgery.\n\nI absolutely 100% without a doubt threw up my entire stomach contents within 5 minutes.\n\nSneaky, sneaky dr's... But at least I was able to have the surgery with an empty stomach.",
"For the local anesthesia, for example during the C section there is a risk that half of the digestion system is operational, the other part is not. It may happen that if the digestion system cannot push the content forward, it is gonna push it backwards. Not the greatest experience.",
"Mom of 5 year old and L & D nurse here so I'm qualified for an actual ELI5:\nYou might throw up and it'll get into your lungs if you eat before surgery. If an emergency happens they decide it's more important than waiting until your stomach is empty and keep an extra close eye on you.",
"A couple of reasons.\n\nUsually it's for internal medicine like abdominal surgery but it could be for other types of surgery as well. \n\n1. Room to work. Surgeons prefer to work laparoscopically through several tiny incisions around the operating site. Because they are working inside the body using special tools and cameras, the amount of space the internal organs take up can affect their ability to work in this way. The liver in particular takes up a large volume of space, and a fatty liver can prevent surgeons from having enough room. Fasting and special diets used to shrink the liver are common. \n2. Surgery is traumatic to the body and it can often cause nausea and vomiting. Having food in the gut can be dangerous and problematic and you don't want patients vomiting while intubated.\n\nIn situations where someone needs immediate surgery to save their lives, the surgeon makes the call whether to open the patient up for easier access, or to attempt a laproscopic procedure on a patient with a fatty liver.",
"Other people have explained the why, but I have an anecdote about your second question. Several years ago my dad got an infected boil and he went septic, but he ate literally just before he was taken to the hospital and even though he was at risk of losing his leg or his life, the doctors had no choice but to wait 6 hours before they could put him under to remove the infected tissue.",
"I was vomitting like crazy after an emergency surgery couple of years ago, when a friend of mine cut through both of my arms in a snowboarding accident",
"Not an expert but I will relay my father’s experience. He had a finger crushed off at work. Unfortunately, he had just returned from lunch. They had to put a clamp (not the technical term) around his arm and then give anesthesia that numbed his arm. He was actually awake while they reattached his finger.",
"Because they don't want you vomiting if they have to put a tube in your throat and they don't want to risk you accidentally messing yourself when you're cut open.",
"I went into labor 2 weeks before my scheduled C-section. It wasn't completely sure that I was in labor so I drank a soda and had some toast before we went to the hospital. Had a C-section about 4 hours later and puked like crazy for a while when they had me open. I thought I was going to choke. I was strapped to the table so all I could do was turn my head. It was scary and not worth it.",
"Well besides the vomit factor, fasting also helps to ensure the bowels will be void of fecal or food matter.\n\nIn the xase of surgery, overall if you are having your intestine cut into, its better to not have a turd hanging out, possibly getting into the surgical area or making the surgery overall more difficult or messy.\n\nI had to have a colonoscopy a few months ago, not only do you fast, but you are required to take laxatives, prescription grade shit. This is so that when they use the endoscope the bowel will be clear of material preventing complications, as well as giving them a clear view of your bowel. You can google images of uncleared bowels during endoscopys, vs cleared, and lumps of corn kernels look like cancer to the untrained eye.",
"The reason for fasting has to do with minimizing the amount of content in the stomach. This includes not only food but also gastric juices. Even simply chewing gum before surgery can stimulate the production of stomach acid. The likelihood of you dying from aspiration during anesthesia is directly related to how much food is in your stomach and the pH of the stomach acid.",
"People have already given you the answer, because you might regurgitate your food but in am emergency it's worth the risk, but here's an analogy to help you understand\n\nPilots don't like flying the plane when one of their engines fails. It's not that it isn't completely doable; in an emergency situation, even with an engine not working they can take off and fly just fine and get where they're going, granted it will take a little longer, put a lot of wear and tear on the plane, stress out the pilot, and waste fuel flying inefficiently, but they can totally do it. \n\nDealing with regurgitation/aspiration under anesthesia is totally manageable, you won't die, they'll most definitely manage to clear your airways, but everyone would really prefer, if possible, that it not happen.",
"Late to this but gonna add: in addition to the more important aspiration risk, anesthesia slows motility. If you are digesting food, it will slow that process and you will get the worst constipation and gas of your existence, such that it will outweigh post-op pain.\n\nSource: me last year when this exact thing happened."
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2vhhqj | if minors can be tried as adults becuase they are old enough to understand what they're doing is wrong, why can minors not use their maturity to be able to purchase things like alcohol and tobacco? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vhhqj/eli5_if_minors_can_be_tried_as_adults_becuase/ | {
"a_id": [
"cohoqot",
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"_URL_0_\n\nMost of it's been discussed - you should probably see if that explains your question.\n\nMinors only get tried as adults when the crimes are incredibly heinous. A 16 year old is not expected to know the full extent of the law or the full consequences of their actions but premeditated murder & rape are things that should be *obviously* wrong by that age. A 16 year old is *not* expected to fully understand that their brain is developing and the alcohol they drink will have consequences that last the rest of their lives.",
"What they said... But also, it only happens in rare cases where a judge- after interacting with the minor and hearing from one or more psych-experts, rules that *that specific person* is a mature enough to be an adult *in regards to that specific thing,* because age-of-maturity is neither static nor universal.\n\nEssentially, it's intended as a legal hat-nod to the idea that no one really matures at the same rate, and acknowledgement that \"age of maturity\" is arbitrary and occasionally inaccurate.\n\nSimilarly, mentally disabled persons are generally given leniency for being less sociologically developed... Ideally? Some 18yo's who matured particularly slowly could get a similar pass... But it would have to be rare, and on expert recommendation.\n\nThat's all *ideally* and *as intended* though. As someone else pointed out, judges and lawyers have been known to abuse the clause for the sake of making an example of someone.",
"A judge put it as 'A Shield, not a Sword'\n\nIf they are intentionally using their status as a minor to avoid punishments, such as a drug gang having 16-17 year old members be their assassins; being a minor is no protection."
]
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3tdr8i | the three way relationship between consumers, cable/sat providers, and networks. who pays who? why do we pay a monthly fee but still have to watch commercials? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tdr8i/eli5_the_three_way_relationship_between_consumers/ | {
"a_id": [
"cx5b5l2"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Networks pay the costs to create shows and be able to show them on their network (there are various ways networks get ownership of shows)\n\nCable companies then pay the networks a fee (called a carriage fee) to broadcast their network on their cable service to their customers, it varies from cents to ~$6.25 for the highest priced channel, ESPN. [These contracts can get very complicated with a lot more than just a carriage fee]\n\nConsumers then pay their cable company for service."
]
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| []
| [
[]
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||
260thn | internal clock and conditioning | Say, for the sake of argument (and barring any of the moral terribleness that this implies), you have a group of people that are fed every day at am, 12pm and 6pm. They can see a clock. Eventually, you take the clock away and put them in a room that doesn't show the outside (so they can't see if it is day/night). You continue the conditioning of feeding. If, after some time, you brought in a clock back in, would the body know that it would be fed at 12pm? I'm unsure if the experiment I proposed is accurate, but basically I'm trying to figure out if we have an internal clock that actually can keep time.
The reason I'm asking is because I read somewhere that if a person knows he or she needs to wake up at a certain early time, the body will start producing stress hormones to wake them up slowly. I'm wondering how the body would know that it's 4:30am and I have to be up in 2 hours. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/260thn/eli5_internal_clock_and_conditioning/ | {
"a_id": [
"chmktbn"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"IIRC, our body gets used to the pattern of being fed, regardless of the time. The time on the clock would only serve as a secondary signal (forgot the proper term) associated with being fed. \n \nWith regards to your experiment, the group of people would become hungry at 12PM, even if they don't know what time it is, because their bodies have already been conditioned to be fed at this time of day/night."
]
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| []
| [
[]
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|
|
fqmyfg | how do mouse without the red light/ball work? | I recently bought a new wireless mouse. So far, all the mice I've ever seen had either a red light at the bottom (IR im guessing) and I suppose that's how it works. Or, even older, the little ball mice used to have. But this new one does not have either of them. It does have a similar hole like those with the red light, but no light at all. How do these work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fqmyfg/eli5_how_do_mouse_without_the_red_lightball_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"flr2xa6"
],
"score": [
11
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"text": [
"Well, the \"red light\" on an optical mouse is really just that - a red light emitted by an LED.\n\nThe mouse you have now is actually projecting infrared light, which is why you can't see it, because humans can't naturally perceive light in the infrared part of the spectrum.\n\nIf it's a \"laser\" mouse, then it's using infrared lasers to do the same thing that the LED \"optical\" mouse is doing (even though they're both technically optical).\n\nHow they work is kind of like how a bat's echo location. Except with light. It projects light, sometimes directly downward or sometimes through small mirrors/lenses, and then tracks the light particles as you move the mouse around. It translates that back into motion that the computer registers to show the appropriate motion on your screen. As you can imagine, it has to do this very, very quickly since you see it all happen in real time."
]
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| []
| [
[]
]
|
|
4wginx | how do high pressure hoses work? | I saw a picture earlier of a guy who hooked up what looked like a hose to two little water nozzles and stuck it on his turtle's back. (I know this sounds really bizarre, but please bear with me!) This got me thinking about how one would go about compactifying the design to put the water in a little high pressure canister and have the nozzles fire high pressure water streams.
Are there any engineers here that can explain how a high pressure water jet is created? I've looked it up but I don't really understand it at all :) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wginx/eli5how_do_high_pressure_hoses_work/ | {
"a_id": [
"d66szk6"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Most pumps are centrifugal pumps. The most important part in that is [this little fan](_URL_0_). The water comes in through the hole in the middle, and then gets swirled outwards to a higher pressure. \n\nIn a pressure cleaner you pump the water to a high pressure reservoir, and then you can open it with the trigger. The release opening is very small, so the water accelerates to enormous speeds. The volume of water is very low though, since after all it's limited by the intake from the faucet. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"http://www.sulteq.nl/wp-content/uploads/gesloten-waaier-enkel.jpg"
]
]
|
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d3rvyx | carriers adding bloatware | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d3rvyx/eli5carriers_adding_bloatware/ | {
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"f04qbtd",
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"text": [
"Manufacturers have what's called an image of the phone's OS for each carrier they build. The image, basically all the operating system plus bloatware and carrier apps, is installed in the factory prior to shipping as firmware, the software in permanent memory. This is similar to computers in which manufacturers would get a kickback for all the software installed. The kickback could be pennies per unit but when selling hundreds of thousands pound units it adds up. \n\nThis is why a factory reset will not get rid of the bloatware.",
"SIM cards cannot store apps so I highly doubt your carrier is sending you bloatware though the SIM card. It is most likely that the bloatware was installed by the manufacturer of the phone. This happens all the time when you buy laptops from a store. For example, Dell and HP laptops always come with Dell and HP software that a regular user would never use. Apple iPhones also have apps that I never use, like Stocks or Files apps. I delete as much as I can and for those that I can’t, I put them all in a Trash folder and put it out of sight.",
"The manufacturer installs bloatware. At the request of the carrier or the retailer. Because they paid money to the manufacturer. It's that simple. \n\nBloatware goes on system memory and cannot be wiped by the user. A Sim card is not storage. Sim card identifies the billing account to the carrier, that's it."
]
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[],
[],
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9di57v | when doctors take your blood, where does it go and what exactly do they do with it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9di57v/eli5when_doctors_take_your_blood_where_does_it_go/ | {
"a_id": [
"e5hp17k",
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"text": [
"The take the blood and test it for diseases.\nThey put it in a plastic bag.\nThey stick a sticker telling the blood group, for example O-, like mine.\nIf someone gets hurt and loses blood, they give the blood to them.\nThen they throw away the plastic packet.\nAll the blood is used up, nothing is left, and the patient is saved! ",
"First off, I'm curious what doctor has actually taken blood because in my experience it's almost always a nurse or lab tech. But to answer the meaty part of the question - blood goes to the laboratory usually where it's often either run on analyzers or processed to be shipped to another laboratory to be run on their analyzers. Most labs have processes in place to hold on to blood for a period of time depending on stability (usually 7 days) then they discard it with biohazardous waste - which at most facilities gets incinerated."
]
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| []
| [
[],
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|
||
857wge | which files does an antivirus software scan when doing a "quick scan"? why are those most likely to be infected? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/857wge/eli5_which_files_does_an_antivirus_software_scan/ | {
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"dvve7yc",
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"text": [
"For a virus to do its job it has to be running on your computer not just sitting on the harddrive like a book on the shelf. Sort of like all the open books on your school desk. So a quick scan just needs to scan all the running programs in the computers memory and \"almost\" avoid the harddrive. It ignores the library books and just scans the open books that are on your desk that you are using.",
"It depends on the antivirus product, but generally it skips files that haven't been changed or edited since the last full scan.\n\nQuick scan usually still scans the entire RAM, but that's relatively fast compared to how long it'd take to chew through the entire HD worth of stuff."
]
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| []
| [
[],
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|
||
2pjbxk | why would a blockbuster like the hobbit premier on a weekday instead of a weekend? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pjbxk/eli5_why_would_a_blockbuster_like_the_hobbit/ | {
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"cmx895v",
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"text": [
"To expand the definition of the \"weekend\" so they can report a larger opening weekend gross.",
"The earlier in the week a film is released, the more days it has to bring in money. This really only matters, as far as I know, if they think they have a chance at beating a record, or being the top film that week. When they add up the money, it's from Thursday to Wednesday, or Wednesday to Tuesday or something. ",
"Premiers are usually on weekdays. On weekends, the movie will be full anyway, having the extra customers for a premier on a weekday evens out the load over a week and the capacity of the theater will be used better. Same reason there are discounts etc on weekdays, but never on weekends."
]
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| []
| [
[],
[],
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||
yaq9l | why people have different standards for special effects in different time periods? | I understand that the technology of movie effects improves over time, but even for, for example, kissing, there is worse kissing in old movies even though it doesn't makes sense that that is an improvable technology, it also seems that people used to not notice or care. Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yaq9l/eli5_why_people_have_different_standards_for/ | {
"a_id": [
"c5tvivp",
"c5txluk"
],
"score": [
2,
2
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"text": [
"Um... kissing isn't a special effect. The standard image of what a kiss \"should\" look like was just different back then.",
"The first audience to see a train on a screen as it approached the camera ran for their lives, thinking the train was about to run them down.\n\nVisual effects are as sophisticated as they need to be to keep with the visual sophistication of the audience."
]
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| []
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[],
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2qlzye | why did we stop using the lunar calendar as the primary method of measuring days? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qlzye/eli5_why_did_we_stop_using_the_lunar_calendar_as/ | {
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"cn7b12y",
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5
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"text": [
"Oh god yes! It would bring normal chitchat to a whole new level of badassery. \"It's been three moons since I last saw you.\"",
"because keeping track of seasons was much more important which the lunar calender doesn't do very well.",
"Part of the world still does. for example, calendars printed in Taiwan and China usually have both Western and lunar (also known as \"Chinese\") calendars. Chinese holidays such as Moon Festival, Chinese New Year, etc are still determined by the lunar calendar."
]
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[],
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[]
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||
6mtmhy | why does natural selection not achieve perfection, but just "good enough"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6mtmhy/eli5_why_does_natural_selection_not_achieve/ | {
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"text": [
"First, define perfection.\n\nSecond, let's imagine a species that survives based on its ability to gather bananas. It's better at gathering bananas than any other species that lives near it.\n\nNow let's imagine there are sets of adaptations that could make it even better at gathering bananas. However, these adaptations entail the organism requiring more energy, having more difficulty mating, or some other issue. Individuals expressing these \"better banana gathering\" traits may nonetheless be worse at surviving because they have to gather more bananas and have a hard time reproducing relative to their cousins.",
"Perfection isn't a sensible concept when talking about evolution. Different environments require different adaptations, so even if we entertained the idea of a \"perfect\" organism, it would be limited to a particular environment and set of circumstances. Additionally, since everything else is evolving too, that 'perfect' would not only be limited to a specific where and a specific what, but also be constantly changing as the environment itself changed.\n\nBeyond that, evolution has no guiding intelligence to understand what perfection is and achieve it. It is only directed, insofar as it is directed, by natural selective pressures, in which reproductively beneficial changes are more likely to persist than harmful ones. ",
"Don't view natural selection as a process but rather a consequence. The organism only needs to be capable of surviving long enough to breed. There is no force pushing it further to your definition of perfection. "
]
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| [
[],
[],
[]
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||
23tadh | why does anesthesia make peeing difficult? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23tadh/eli5_why_does_anesthesia_make_peeing_difficult/ | {
"a_id": [
"ch0en3w"
],
"score": [
3
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"text": [
"Anesthesia works by dampening your nerves so you don't feel pain (like the dentist's drill, or the surgeon cutting into you). But nerves are also how our brain tells our body what to do.\n\nAfter anesthesia, peeing is difficult because your nerves are still dampened and numb, and it's difficult to get the signal to your bladder to go pee. That's also why you feel drowsy and dreamy, because the anesthesia is still wearing off, and until it does you feel disconnected from your body."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
1rby3m | the different championships in boxing | It seems like there are so many different championships and authorities in boxing. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rby3m/eli5_the_different_championships_in_boxing/ | {
"a_id": [
"cdln8jb"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"there's really 4 major titles; WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO. There used to be 1, then there was the WBA and WBC in Ali's day, then the IBF was created by other guys splitting off, then some other guys created the WBO. (those last 2 were in the 80s i think...)\nIt doesn't stop there either, there's the IBO, the WBF, the WBU, but people don't really pay much attention to any outside the main 4. Some guys hold \"World titles\" without ever fighting a top 10 opponent.\nThere's a lot of other crap but lets put a pin in that for now.\nSo each of the 4 organisations will have their own rankings. So you start out turning pro, and you get a promoter who will have lots of other boxers, and you start off on his cards fighting easy fights, and move up to better fights and eventually get on some rankings. After you move up to fighting capable guys (about 15-20) fights, your management (promoter mostly) will decide which of the belts to go after. The main factors in this would be which is an easier route to the title, and which organisation your promoter has the best relations with.\nYou will often find that big promoters will focus a lot on one boxing orgainsation. They build up a good business relationship and it gets stronger over time. The organisation will clear a path for the promoter's fighters to get the title, give him an easy fight to win it etc. In return the org will trust that the promoter can guarantee that he will put on some fairly lucrative title defenses so the org can make their money. (The boxing org get a cut of all title fights.)\n\n"
]
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| []
| [
[]
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2ulmil | why did the pdf format become so much more popular than the postscript (.ps) format for document viewing? | On my Mac, I can save documents to both the PDF and PostScript (ps) formats. As far as I can tell, I can do the same things in either format, opening and editing the documents with Preview. Why has PDF become so ubiquitous when PostScript was the first format for this use case, especially since PostScript was already the preferred format for most printers? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ulmil/eli5_why_did_the_pdf_format_become_so_much_more/ | {
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"text": [
"PDF lets you embed media files (like videos) in the document, protect parts of the document from being edited, create forms that are easy to fill out and send back to the creator, and in general do interactive stuff that PostScript (which is really just a series of instructions you can send to a printer) wasn't designed to do.",
"PDFs are a wrapper for both PostScript elements and many other types of elements.",
"There's a great history here if you're actually interested in such things. _URL_0_\n\nI worked for half a dozen years as a developer in a digital print shop generating PDF and PS for truck sized digital printers.\n\nPDF already does everything you want to do in Postscript and it does it in a way that makes export to PS pretty lightweight. \n\nPDF is a more complex document container. It does all PS does, plus supports forms and urls and video embedding and all kinds of other stuff. \n\nAll of Adobe's tools are wrapped around optimizing and generating PDF. \n \nTL;DR Adobe is ever so slowly killing off postscript and putting all their R & D behind PDF.\n",
"One of the early reasons was that .pdf can use free True-Type fonts, while PostScript could not. Post Script fonts were generally expensive.\n\nPdf has several other advantages, and is, in general, a much more flexible format without all the backward compatibility limitations of Postscript.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
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| []
| [
[],
[],
[
"http://www.prepressure.com/postscript/basics/history"
],
[
"http://www.adobe.com/print/features/psvspdf/"
]
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|
99ddpq | why are soap operas called "soap operas" and what does soap have to do with it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/99ddpq/eli5_why_are_soap_operas_called_soap_operas_and/ | {
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"text": [
"The shows were originally sponsored by companies that made soap. Sponsorship and advertising has since shifted to the now-common “commercial break” model, but that's how they started.\n\nSometimes it really is that easy.",
"In the 50's when soaps were first aired, they knew women would be watching. Soap companies were the original sponsors, as most women did the shopping, so they were targeting their audience.",
"Oh this one I know. \n\nSoap operas used to be more of a radio show type thing. Of course, if you want to run shows, radio or television, you need sponsors, or advertisers. One of the earliest and most prominent sponsors were the companies Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, and Lever Brothers. These companies mainly produced soap. Eventually, due to the fact that so many of the sponsors were soap manufacturers, the media started calling these shows “soap operas”. ",
"The commercials during soap operas are traditionally for cleaning products. But since these days there are so many drug commercials during daytime tv, they should be called drug operas instead."
]
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| [
[],
[],
[],
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||
1qcp6z | why, when kissing, do we easily spread illnesses to each other but we do not spread antibodies that help make us resistant to diseases? | The question says it all. It seems like other humans that have encountered diseases and survived should have evolved to spread antibodies to their partners to further increase chance of offspring survival. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qcp6z/eli5_why_when_kissing_do_we_easily_spread/ | {
"a_id": [
"cdbhzzc"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Because your body would attack and destroy the new antibodies, which could make you feel sick and not actually do anything useful"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
|
3wq17r | if one spaceship is in orbit and another spaceship on a suborbital trajectory docks with it does it get pulled into orbit? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wq17r/eli5if_one_spaceship_is_in_orbit_and_another/ | {
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"text": [
"To be able to dock, they would have to be at the same altitude and velocity, so they couldn't be on different trajectories. If they just crashed into each other, then their trajectories would basically be added together, \"weighted\" based on their mass. ",
"No. What you'd get is a massive crash.\n\nDuring a docking maneuver you want both vehicles to be going at almost the exact same speed (± a small amount, to maneuver the ships relative to each other). If two spacecraft are at about the same place and are going about the same speed then they're in about the same orbit, which means that if you have one ship docking with another then you can't realistically have one be in orbit while the other is on a suborbital trajectory.\n\nThat said, we can completely disregard reality and imagine what would happen if the two ships could be fastened together without obliterating one another. In this case whether or not the resulting amalgamation is in orbit depends on which ship is heavier and how fast they were going initially. The ship that was in orbit will wind up slowing down while the ship on a suborbital trajectory would speed up. If the suborbital ship was heavy and slow enough and the ship in orbit was light and low enough then yes, they could wind up being pulled out of orbit. ",
"Just imagine for a second what it means for a ship to be in a suborbital trajectory. When it reaches the same altitude as the orbiting spaceship, it won't be travelling at the same horizontal speed. If that is it's maximum altitude then it will be travelling at a lower horizontal speed and it won't be possible for the two ships to dock. The orbital ship could crash into the suborbital ship, but this would slow it down and cause the orbit to decay."
]
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5xjj44 | were spain and portugal ever united as a country? if so, how and why did they separate? | I've always seen a map of Europe and have always wondered if Spain and Portugal were ever one. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xjj44/eli5_were_spain_and_portugal_ever_united_as_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"deik11c",
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"text": [
"Well, not for a millenium at least.\n\nThe romans did rule all of Iberia, but they administered Spain and Portugal as two separate provinces (Iberia and Lusitania).\n\nAfter the fall of the roman empire, the area was conquered, first by visigoths (coming from what is now Germany), then by the moors (coming from North Africa). Both of them ruled Iberia as a whole, so from the 6th to the 11th centuries, you might say both countries were united.\n\nIn the 12th century, Afonso I, a count from western Iberia, was prockaimed king of a newly-formed kingdom of Portugal, and proceeded to conquer some land back from the moors. That's the beginning of Portugal as we know it.\n\nSince then, Portugal has always been Independent. The Habsbourgs ruled both country for a brief period in the 15th century (iirc) but the lands weren't officialy united.\n\nDisclaimer : i'm no historian, merely a guy interested in all things medieval.",
"The closest it ever got was a dynastic union. _URL_0_\n\n",
"In 1581 king Phillip I of Spain inherited the Portuguese throne. From then on, the king of Portugal and the King of Spain were the same person, although the two countries had different laws and different administrative systems. It's worth noting that Spain was itself a collection of kingdoms with different laws and tax systems. In fact, there was no \"Spain\", just Castille, Aragon, Valencia, Granada, Seville, and a few other kingdoms, each with the same, king; adding Portugal to the collection wasn't that big a deal. Had history turned out differently, Portugal might very well have been folded into the mix and ended up as part of Spain today. \n\nIn 1640, the Portuguese nobles decided they had had enough of the Spanish King (Phillip III), and proclaimed that the Duke of Braganza would be the king of Portugal instead. The king of Spain was too caught up in the Thirty Years' War to prevent or suppress the revolt, although he did try to reclaim Portugal after the war ended. That revolt, inspired largely by the King's attempts to raise taxes to pay for the Thirty Years' War, is the reason the two countries are separate. "
]
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| []
| [
[],
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberian_Union"
],
[]
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2l7fro | why do people duck when leaving a helicopter even though the blades are much higher than their heads? | Just wondering. Edit: I'm getting a common theme of wanting to not die, which makes sense. Special thanks to the guys who went in depth and provided videos :D | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l7fro/eli5_why_do_people_duck_when_leaving_a_helicopter/ | {
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"Not sure, but my guess is that it's not necessary but reinforces the idea that you do not want to stick any body part or item you have anywhere close to the blades. Maybe stuff won't blow in your eyes too.",
"Thats not always the case. \n\n- on some helicopters the blades are angled downwards in one direction (the front, although on a Mi-24, its to one side)\n\n- on landing, pilots may immediately throttle down rpms; they've already bottomed out the collective (hence why you're down) but the blades are still rotating quickly, and whipping up debris etc. So they may reduce rpms..... slowing down the blades which may cause them to droop\n\n- the landing gear or skids of the helicoptor may be on flat ground but there may be a rise in the terrain you'd have to be careful of\n\n- radio antennae, or helmet attachments (for those in the military) further increase your height; best practice to get low existing the vehicle.\n\n- I dunno, massive whirling decapitation blades spinning at high speed only a few feet above your head? I'd duck/crouch just because...",
"Rotor wash is a very real thing. Ever try walking toward a helicopter with the blades in full spin? If you try to stand up straight you'll likely be knocked over by the \"wind\" being created by the chopper.\n\nHere's a decent demo of rotor wash in action:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n",
"It's probably not necessary, but some people tend to be cautious when the price of being wrong is getting your head chopped off. And people *have* been killed by helicopter blades, although I believe it is quite rare. \n \nIt's also worth noting that while they are spinning fast they are quite a bit above most people's heads, but as they slow down they droop a bit under their own weight. And even a slowly spinning chopper blade will probably kill you if it strikes your head. ",
"Loads of reasons. The one that always made me duck though was blade sailing. Not a nice way to go.",
"Fear....also it could be just for the door border",
"Better safe than sorry?",
"I rode in a helicopter once, they tell you to keep your head down just in case, anytime you're near it when it's running.\n\nIt might not be necessary but when you're dealing with something that could slice your head off before you even realize something happened, it's better to er on the side of caution ",
"My mother used to be in Avation (PPL), but never flew helicopters so I'm not entirely sure how truthful this info is, but she once told me that those blades can flex and dip down several feet under the right conditions (wind), and that you duck as a safety precaution.",
"Alright, there's a lot of speculation here and you're not getting a straight, accurate answer. \n\nThe simple answer is to avoid decapitation. 99% of the time, the blades will stay well above your head. In aviation, dying once out of every 100 flights is unacceptable and every precaution is taken to avoid danger.\n\nThis is the long answer with details.\nThe actual danger comes from movement of the rotor disk. If you don't know, the cone (approximately a plane) formed by the rotating blades is not fixed perpendicular to the aircraft body. It moves and pivots around the point where the hub attaches to the main shaft, essentially dangling the aircraft body below. Some high-performance helicopters make this pivot point more stiff but every helicopter ever will pivot here. Thus, the rotor disk can dip very close to the ground and much closer sometimes when the rotors are turning slow. The rotor disk can dip below the height of a human for a few reasons: a moving deck like a ship, erroneous pilot input, systems failure, or just wind. So even though manuals dictate a low point for the rotor disk to droop to, it can exceed that in extreme circumstances and enter a dangerous situation.\n\nAs for avoiding downdraft, helicopters aren't always producing lift from the rotors. On the ground, when collective is full down, massive rotors only whip the air up, making it gusty.\n\n[Video of rotor disk moving here](_URL_0_)",
"Student Helicopter Pilot here, The number one reason people duck is to not have their head chopped off. Those blades may look \"much higher\" than your head but I wouldn't count on it. What may be a few feet above you at the mast may be only a few inches above at the blade-tip. /u/tezoatlipoca has a nice list of reasons why. In addition to those, it only takes a slight nudge on the pilots part (he sneezes, lets go for some dumb-ass reason, someone exiting bumps him/the cyclic, etc.) for that blade to drop another foot or two.",
"My flying club has a sign posted:\n\n**Duck Your Head When Approaching Helicopter,**\n\n**Rotor blades are expensive**"
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3q2swl | how do ants know their roles? and/or how does their "society" work? | I'm not sure if this question is stupid or not because I know next to nothing about ants, but I just had this random thought a few minutes ago. Is it their DNA that makes them workers or soldiers or whatever other roles ants have, or are they taught? Again, maybe this is a dumb question because I pretty much have no idea of how the whole ant society thing works but you could always explain that to me too.
**TL;DR: how ants do?**
- | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3q2swl/eli5_how_do_ants_know_their_roles_andor_how_does/ | {
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"They are hardwired to perform their role as workers or soldiers from birth, the queen determines what she give birth to. ants \"communicates\" via scent, when a ant walk he leaves behind a scent trail that encourages other ants to follow the same path, if there is food in that path and no food in an other ants will go to the place with food and that trail will have more scent due to the increased trafic then more and more ants follow the same trail."
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3e7e4u | that if the "n" word is so derogatory in usa, why the black people use it the most? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e7e4u/eli5_that_if_the_n_word_is_so_derogatory_in_usa/ | {
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"The same reason a jokingly insulting comment from a close friend is okay but the same comment from a stranger isn't.",
"Let me preface this by saying I personally do not condone the use of the N word in general and think we would all be better off if it was left behind. That said, I think I have some understanding of it's use: \n\nYou're five years old and have just been prescribed thick glasses that you have to wear at all times. Pretty soon, you're getting teased about the glasses; everyone is calling you Four-Eyes. At first it's a little funny, but then it just becomes tiresome, and then outright hurtful. \n\n\"Wow, you're so dumb you need special equipment just to read, Four-Eyes.\" \n\n\"Your parents must be terrible for you to look so dorky, Four-Eyes\"\n\n\"Those glasses prove that you're genetically inferior, Four-Eyes.\"\n\nYou grow up with this. Every day, for ten years, you get called Four-Eyes. Eventually you get used to it, but it never stops hurting. \n\nThen finally, one day you reach an age where those around you have realized how hurtful Four-Eyes is, so they stop calling you it. You become friends with others with thick glasses who also grew up under the same name. You start jokingly calling each other Four-Eyes, as a way to bring about camaraderie for your shared painful memories. It becomes a badge of honor, to demonstrate what you went through growing up. Sure, maybe you still using it is actually perpetuating the term that caused you so much grief, but now you're making the term your own. You call your fellow friends with glasses Four-Eyes because they have earned the title, just as you have earned the right to use it. \n\nThen some jackass who grew up with perfect vision comes along and says \"what's up Four-Eyes?\" He isn't trying to be hurtful, he doesn't understand your history with the word and the pain it's brought you, he just hears you using the term and wants to be included. The problem is, he just doesn't *get* it. He has no idea just how hard it was for you growing up to hear that word from people *just like him*, when they really meant it. It puts you back in that dark place all over again.\n\nWith this explanation, I'm really covering a history of black culture in the United States stretching back further than just the teenagers and young-adults of today, but we learn from our parents so what was true for them will likely carry on to the kids. "
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2sws6y | how is that pictures and other data can be sent back and forth from mars so quickly and efficiently? how fast does data travel and what means is this data traveling through? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sws6y/eli5_how_is_that_pictures_and_other_data_can_be/ | {
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"Radio waves (low frequency light waves) they travel at light speed and it takes about 15 or so minutes to do so. ",
"Data travels at the speed of light, around 300'000 km/second. It does so because radio waves (the stuff we get from curiosity rover and the like) are only a different kind of light we can't see. Now, the speed of light is absolute, there's nothing faster. So it takes about 20 (13 to 24, depending on Mars' location) minutes for us to recieve a signal or for the rover to recieve it."
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542qw4 | how do self-healing cutting mats work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/542qw4/eli5_how_do_selfhealing_cutting_mats_work/ | {
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"When I saw the cut on my mat didn't heal like our human skin , I thought I was scammed. Thanks for reddit users explaining it, I tried to google but nowhere near this level of info.",
"The material on their cutting surface is slightly compressible. When you make a cut in this material, it doesn't really self heal - it just expands back out across the cut and it looks like it's healed up. The more cuts there are in the board, the less expansion you get (as it's spread over many cuts), which is why the self healing stops working eventually",
"They don't \"heal\" exactly. The cuts are still there. The mats are made out of a rubber that expands slightly when cut, which pushes the two sides of the cut closer together so you still have a mostly smooth surface. They expand because the inside is compressed (under pressure) and the film/surface material is holding them in that way so when they're damaged, they get released a tiny bit but are still mostly held in place by the rest of the mat. I'd sand those fuckers every once in a while, though. They get all these raised lines like scars (because of the expansion) that annoy me.",
"Either there's a compressed material inside the mat (which will expand when you cut it open, filling the gap) or there's something inside that reacts with oxygen to form more cutting mat material. \n\nEither way it's limited, and at some point the mat will no longer be able to heal itself."
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27b4so | if i don't plan on clicking the ads anyway, how does blocking them hurt the company/site? | Do they simply get paid whenever the ad actually pops up? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27b4so/eli5_if_i_dont_plan_on_clicking_the_ads_anyway/ | {
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"Whenever someone sees an AD it's considered an AD impression. Even if it's not clicked on they owner of the AD will pay for these.",
"You already get the idea. The site sells ad space to a company that distributes the ads of its customers. The site only gets paid when the ad is viewed, regardless of if you click it or not.",
"First of all, not all ads are CPC. Some are CPM based. So the website gets paid for each impression. \nBut that's not the worst of it. \nBy blocking ads, you lower the website's stats within the ad network. And this is very important. \nTake for example Google Adwords. When used with GDN it places ads through AdSense onto many websites. \nA lot of advertisers simply use context and interest targeting. \nBut large (and many medium-sized) advertisers use placement targeting as well. \nThey open up GDN's listing of properties (websites participating in AdSense), pick a niche (through categories or keywords), and get a listing of websites in the network with approximate stats for number of impressions and unique visitors. \nThe higher the website's stats, the more advertisers in the niche will decide to use placement targeting to buy ads on that website. \nSo when you block ads, you lower the website's stats and fewer advertisers target the site directly. \nThis decreases website's revenue with CPM or CPC ads as fewer advertisers target that particular website. \nThe same happens with lots of other networks. The higher a website's stats are the easier it is for the ad brokers to find willing advertisers to fill the inventory. \n"
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da7rzu | what's going to happen to all the data? | There's already an insurmountable amount of data floating around and the internet as we know it has only been around for ~30 years. In 100-200 years what's going to happen to the data from our time? Will it still be accessible, where will it be stored, etc. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/da7rzu/eli5_whats_going_to_happen_to_all_the_data/ | {
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"data that is in transit is just thrown away. this message exists on Reddit's servers (and various backups) but the data that goes from Reddit server to your computer and everyone else that reads this thread will just exist in the browser temporary memory for a few minutes and then it's just wiped.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nthis thread will exist as long as Reddit's data retention policy says it exists. alot of corporate entities have a policy that unused data will be marked for deletion after X years past the project completion unless it has an up to date owner.",
"Not sure what you mean by insurmountable. \n\nWhat happens to the data will be up to those that hold the data.\n\nAs long as whoever holds the data maintains the hardware, and continues to provide power and connectivity to the hardware, there's no reason to think that data won't be around forever.",
"Programmer here,\n\nFor huge companies where you provide your data (like Facebook, Reddit, google, ...) they love data, they are likely to keep it forever until one of these 2 conditions happens:\n\n- the company close\n\n- a major IT incident happens with both their hard-drives (not necessarily all) and theirs backup system.\n\nThe only kinds of data that I think of they are likely to destroy are system log overtime (not your history).\n\nFor small-medium sites/companies they are likely to keep only the end results/most recent data (like your activities).\n\nWill it still be accessible? well that depends for who but as a simple answer yes.\nYou may not know but lot of your own data aren't publicly available (think about banks, gouvernement).\nSome will be shared (like your credits information), other won't (anything from the gouvernement).\n\nFor data that aren't shared, or really old data that aren't useful they could archive it in slower media with higher capacity to free their main storage like with backup tape. (They can go like 15TB)",
"In the case of big companies, eventually the project that collected the data gets cancelled. When the engineers turn down the servers that stored the data, the disks are automatically wiped before the machines are released for another project to run on them. 90 days later, an automated process marks the backup tapes as no longer needed (since the project they were backups for is no longer in the projects database), and they are wiped and reused.\n\nThat is, unless there's a lawsuit about the project, in which case all the data is subject to litigation hold and can't be deleted for fear of criminal charges of destruction of evidence.\n\nMeanwhile, any publicly accessible data (e.g. users' public profiles) has been captured by the Internet Archive and retained indefinitely.",
"Data storage keeps getting cheaper and cheaper, so we can keep more and more of it. Storing data only costs the initial purchase price of the hard drives or whatever is storing it. Accessing the data (to search it or to look at it again) takes electricity though, and big data companies like Google use massive amounts of electricity. They are turning to solar and wind energy to make it a little greener.\n\nThat said, we do lose data all the time. Think of all the stuff on VHS tapes and floppy drives that it takes increasingly rare equipment to access. CD's and DVD's will be next. People lose tons of pictures on their cell phones if they never move them to the cloud or a local computer. I lose text messages after one year, including pictures, not sure if this is standard practice.\n\nAnd if you lose your account password and have changed your e-mail, you may never be able to access data on the cloud even if it is stored somewhere. This is an issue when people die - for instance, family won't inherit music you have paid for (back when people did that, nowadays it might be virtual objects paid for in an online game). Getting access to a person's social media account, or asking for it to be shut down, can be very hard, even if you're the surviving spouse."
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1l5wvg | how do deep sea creatures resist being crushed by pressure, but i could still crush them in my fingers? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l5wvg/eli5_how_do_deep_sea_creatures_resist_being/ | {
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"It's not the absolute pressure that crushes something, it's the relative pressure. Deep sea fish are mostly water on the inside and water on the outside, so if they are acclimated the pressure on their insides is the same as their outsides.\n\nIf you decide to crush a fish with your hands, it is a big, quick change in pressure that will crush it as it can't adjust."
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5eezfw | how do self driving cars work? after they're more prominent, do laws have to change because there is no one driving? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5eezfw/eli5_how_do_self_driving_cars_work_after_theyre/ | {
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"They work by sensing the environment around and interpreting the signals. They same way you drive. \n\nLaws currently are for limiting the actions of the driver. The driver can do this. The driver cannot do that. There are very few laws that are written with driverless cars in mind.",
"The laws would probably need to change, much like how laws have been introduced that pertain to hacking and such. Fifty years ago, hacking wasn't an issue, but with technology comes complication. For that matter, according to a Tesla video that is on one of their cars' pages, \"the person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons.\" From that we can infer that there are currently laws that would at least recommend that a driver be in the vehicle.\n\n[Video](_URL_0_)\n\nHow do they work? I'm no engineer, but Tesla put out that video, and it includes cameras that identify objects and from that assume where they must go. Maybe Tesla has it different than Google, but it's the first video I've seen that includes the camera POVs.\n\n* It identifies the lanes and from there provides itself an area to drive in. \n* It identifies stop signs and lights, so it stops when it detects a stop sign or a red light. I believe that it would also look at the speed limit signs and correct the speed to that number automatically, or it does what my Garmin does and already has that speed limit data programmed in, but my money is on the signs. For yellow lights, I'd probably say that it slows down regardless since the duration on yellow lights seems to depend on speed limit. I just did a quick Google search and the first few links said that it depended on the speed limit for that area and that there was an equation for that, so maybe Tesla took that into account. \n* It sees moving vehicles and pedestrians that could possibly pose an issue. At that point, if it gets close enough for a collision I suspect that it would stop just in case. \n* It is smart enough to also notice parked vehicles on the sides of streets that are not moving. \n\nOne can also reasonably infer that there's likely a GPS and rangefinder on board. With the rangefinder, the car will obviously know how close other vehicles are so you don't rear end someone. \n\nIt'll be exciting to see how this all plays out. There are certainly obstacles that are in the way, but tech companies have never ceased to overcome them, especially ones like Google. "
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r4rcd | how does a clutch on a manual transmission work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/r4rcd/eli5_how_does_a_clutch_on_a_manual_transmission/ | {
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"The clutch separates the Engine from the Wheels.\n\nA flywheel is bolted to the engine. When the engine speed increases, the flywheel speed increases. When the clutch is up (engaged, default position), the clutch is mated to the flywheel, connecting the engine to the transmission. This is how the engines power is translated to the wheels.\n\nWhen you depress the clutch, it separates from the flywheel. \n\nA clutch is not an on/off switch. The further you press the pedal, the further the clutch moves from the flywheel. If you let the clutch out slowly, the friction from the flywheel will increase the clutch's rotation speed smoothly. Once the clutch is fully engaged, it will be spinning at the same speed as the flywheel.\n\n[How Stuff Works - Clutches](_URL_0_)\n",
"Imagine one of those door-knobs that isn't really a handle, it's just a ball on the end of the pole that goes through the door. you wrap your hand around it and your grip allows you to hold it in order to let you turn it. Now imagine that you don't have any fingers - how would you turn it? You'd have to press the palm of your hand against the knob and twist it. We could probably make that easier by changing the shape of the door handle, to make it big and flat, so it's easier to put your palm against.\n\nThe clutch in a manual transmission is pretty much that. It's two plates with grippy stuff on them, instead of a hand and a doorknob, but it works in the same way. One is attached to the engine and one is attached to the gearbox. The one attached to the engine is like the palm of your hand - it does the turning, and the one attached to the gearbox is liek the doorknob - it gets turned by the engine.\n\nThere are really strong springs holding the two plates together. When you push the pedal you move the two plates apart. For some of the movement of the pedal you're only just starting to pull the plates apart, so there's not enough grip between the two plates, but there is a little bit - they slide over each other.\n\nThe sliding part is really important - you need it to be able to start your car moving, becuase you can't make the engine go that slowly.",
"Lambastingfrog gave a pretty damn fine explanation. Additionally [_URL_1_](_URL_0_) has some pretty solid diagrams, videos and explanations if you want a more complex look at the inner workings. "
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9q6xyz | bruno latour's 3 attractors/actor network theory | Eli5: In general, but also specifically, what is the difference between the Earth and the globe? Also open to any other theories thoughts in this area. Thanks in advance! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9q6xyz/eli5_bruno_latours_3_attractorsactor_network/ | {
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"I haven't read more than [his blog post on this](_URL_0_), but the conceptual difference he seems to be making is between \"seeing the planet as a possible singular political entity\" (the globe, e.g. global politics/history/economics) and \"seeing the planet an interlinked ecological entity\" (the Earth, e.g., the ecosystem, Gaia, the subject of climate change). And the third element, the _terroir_, is a term most often used in talking about wine — a wine's _terroir_ is the way in which the local environment (the sandiness or chalkiness of the soil, the specific weather conditions of a certain region of France, etc.) affect the flavor of the wine in subtle ways (allegedly; I remain somewhat skeptical of wine taster's abilities to detect such things). In this context, _terroir_ seems to be referring to the \"local conditions,\" an appeal to the distinctly non-global and non-international, an embrace of the local and national and all that.\n\nAs for understanding the point of all this, the key paragraph seems to me to be these two: \n\n > Here is the turning-point at which we find ourselves, a fatal and decisive moment: is there an alternative definition of what it means to be attached to a ground, other than those provided by the ‘territory-terroir’ or the ‘territory-globe’? Could we postulate a third point that would allow us to redistribute all those positions and avoid the contemporary tragedy of a battle between the utopia provided by modernisation and that provided by national identities? \n\n > Such a triangle has not yet been mapped out, I know very well, but to the line that joins the ‘territory-terroir’ to the ‘territory-globe’ it now seems legitimate to add two lines linking those two traditional attractors to the third apex: this would be the ‘territory-Earth’ (we might call it the planet, or Gè, or Gaïa—the name matters little). This is what I’ve called the ‘New Climatic Regime’.\n\nWhich is to say, Latour seems to be saying (I do not claim to understand him 100%, but who can?) that the traditional perspective is to oppose the local and the global. Perhaps there is a third framing, instead, which is the ecological: beyond the question of nationalism and internationalism, you have the question of the planet itself, which the collective risk and burden posed by climate change makes possible.\n\nIf this is the argument, he is not really the first to make it — Ulrich Beck's _The Risk Society_ and later works make very similar points about the way in which collective risk could potentially create new collective senses of identity. Frankly I have not seen any evidence that this is the case: even in talking about the mitigation of climate change, the discourse seems firmly rooted in nationalism and internationalism, not some kind of more elevated sense of a \"citizen of the world\" much less a \"citizen of Earth\" (which feels like a throwback to a 1960s or 1970s Earth Day sort of thing, and very much out of place in modern political discourse). If anything the fact that many places in the world seem to have re-embraced crude nationalism in ways that seem to rival the positions of pre-WWII or even pre-WWI do not seem to give much hope that such a view will be popular outside of the minds of European academics. But I admit that this may be a cynical and skeptical (American) position on this. Then again, he isn't saying this is _what is happening_ but rather _what ought (or needs) to happen_... good luck with that, Bruno!\n\nI do not pretend that any of the above is really ELI5; I am not sure Latour can be meaningfully rendered into true ELI5, but I have tried to do it without any fancy jargon (which probably butchered it, in the mind of a true Latourian). I would also suggest that most of the above is not specific to ANT, which is a separate issue altogether (and it is not clear to me that Latour is really \"doing\" ANT anymore; he has somewhat disavowed it, in my reading of his later writings). If I were trying to understand this with an ANT framework, the question I'd be asking is: how do you enroll the actors into this particular _problematization_ (e.g., your conception of how they ought to see the \"problem\")? How to deal with the many forces that are trying to enroll them in different schemes, or are trying to get your actors to \"defect\" from this way of seeing things?"
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6mcp49 | why does ram not have the same issue of limited write cycles that solid state drives do? | We're told that memory in solid state drives has a limit on how many times it can be written to before the sector becomes unusable. Firstly, how true of a statement is this? Secondly, how does RAM not have the same problems given that it's written to *a lot*. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6mcp49/eli5_why_does_ram_not_have_the_same_issue_of/ | {
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"I don't know too much about how RAM works, but I Googled it and found this:\n\n\"NAND flash stores the information by controlling the amount of electrons in a region called a “floating gate”. These electrons change the conductive properties of the memory cell (the gate voltage needed to turn the cell on and off), which in turn is used to store one or more bits of data in the cell. This is why the ability of the floating gate to hold a charge is critical to the cell’s ability to reliably store data.\"\n\n\"In digital electronics, a NAND gate (negative-AND) is a logic gate which produces an output which is false only if all its inputs are true; thus its output is complement to that of the AND gate.\n\nNAND flash memory is a type of non-volatile storage technology that does not require power to retain data.\"\n\nI'm guessing that this only applies to NAND storage, which RAM doesn't use.",
"I'm going to try and ELI5 this, so *please* do not consider this a *technical* response.\n\nSo, RAM has data written to it a lot, but it doesn't need to be *permanent*. That is, when you turn your computer off, and the RAM has no more power, you don't care what happens to the data. \n\nAn SSD needs to retain that data without power. So, one way to think about this, is that you have to write the data *harder* (you know how I said non-technical?) Because you're doing that, it also wears out faster. \n\nCompare it to, say, writing on a whiteboard you can erase and reuse to writing on a piece of paper using a pencil and then using an eraser on that paper each time. ",
"Two different types of storage. \n\nSSDs use a type of transistor called a Floating Gate MOSFET, which is really weird in the way it stores bits, but it works. However it seems that over time, these floating gate MOSFETs degrade in terms of their write capability. The big thing here to note is that transistors are not really designed to store a charge but seem to be able to for weird reasons. \n\nRAM uses capacitors to store charge. A capacitor essentially works like a little battery but with some significant differences, batteries store electrical energy in chemical form while capacitors have free floating electrons acting as a charge, and secondly, this makes capacitors very quick to charge and discharge, but they can't hold a lot of charge and cannot hold charge for long, depending on the capacitor, they are discharged within seconds or milliseconds.\n\nAnyways, RAM uses these capacitors, a charged capacitor = 1, an empty one = 0. \n\nI think the big part to look at here is that capacitors are designed to store charge while transistors were designed for other functions, but can store charge due to weird quantum mechanical consequences. ",
"RAM uses a capacitor to store information. \nImagine it is a bucket with a hole in it. \nTo fill it you will need a constant stream of water. \nThis little trickle of water doesn't damage at all, but you need a constant stream to make sure it's full. \nThe water in this analogy is electricity. \nThe RAM capacitor constantly drains of electricity. \nIf it has electricity it's 1, if it doesn't it's 0. \nHowever if you lost power, all of it would quickly drain to zero. \n \nAn SSD uses flash memory. \nThink of that like a painted sign. \nWhen you see it painted it's 0, when you see it unpainted it's 1. \nHowever that trickle of water isn't going to do anything to the paint when it's dry. \nYou need to use a darn water jet cleaner to get the paint off, but the water jet peels off a piece of the sign every time it is used.. \nLikewise flash memory needs a relatively large amount of electricity to flip the state of the memory. This is enough electricity to damage the slot. \nOvertime this damage accumulates and you can't use it anymore.\n\n",
"**RAM**\n\nRAM stores binary data using electric circuits (called DRAM circuits). It's hard to explain this at an ELI5 level, but basically the state of the circuit is stored by manipulating electricity (using transistors and capacitors). This electricity doesn't affect the physical state of the circuit - it doesn't wear them out, or cause any change in state, it simply passes through without doing any damage. \n\nOf course, since DRAM circuits store data using the electricity within themselves, they will lose their data if you take the power away (i.e by turning your PC off). Because RAM loses data like this, we call it \"volatile storage\".\n\n**Flash Memory**\n\nFlash Memory (the stuff in SSD's, USB *flash* drives, etc) works by blasting certain materials with lots of electricity, physically changing their state. You only need to zap a Flash Cell once to set its state. You can take the electricity away afterwards, and the state won't change, hence and you won't lose your data. Things with this ability to store data permanently, are called \"non-volatile storage\".\n\nHowever, every time you change the state of the Flash Cell, you wear down the materials a little bit (kind of like... repeatedly folding and unfolding a piece of paper), until eventually they kick the bucket and don't work properly any more. Of course, reading the cells doesn't cause any physical changes, which is why Write Cycles are limited *but Read Cycles aren't*.\n\n_______________\n\ntl;dr: Any physical state change, can degrade the materials a little bit, causing them to eventually wear out and break. RAM stores data without changing its physical state, so it never wears out. Flash memory, however, works by changing its physical state, and hence it can wear out."
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b3uwec | how does matter hold information. | Like how does a cd hold the information for music, or a tape, or a hard drive. I get that the information is codified and then put onto matter that is then put through a system that decodes the information but what property of matter or particles allow this. On a fundamental level how is this even possible that we can put information in matter?
Edit: Already got my question answered. Thanks for the help! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b3uwec/eli5_how_does_matter_hold_information/ | {
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"We assign meaning to a specific state of matter.\n\nThis can be a position, or an electric charge, or some other property that we can manipulate and measure without damaging it.\n\nA computer hard drive uses a powerful magnet to write your 1s and 0s to the disk by changing the magnetic direction of each designated space.\n\nA CD uses ridges burned into it by a laser.\n\nImagine you had a pile of rocks and needed to make it \"remember\" 10110100. You can do this a numer of ways.\n\nDraw a line and have rocks on the line mean 0 and rocks above it mean 1.\n\nHave two rocks mean 1 and one rock mean 0.\n\nAny number of permutations will work, as long as you can remember what means 1 and what means 0.\n\nThat's basically how we store data, using charge or magnetism or ridge height as our rocks.",
"On a hard drive, information is stored using magnetization. The disk is magnetized in a certain area and how magnetized it is corresponds to a 0 or 1.\n\nA tape also uses magnetization, but it's analog instead of digital (usually), meaning the pattern of magnetization corresponds more directly to recorded sound waves.\n\nOn a CD, information is stored based on how reflective a certain area is. You shine a laser at it and see whether it reflects back. This corresponds to 1 and 0.\n\nIn a flash drive, there's literally millions of tiny electrical switches that are on or off.\n\nIn a record, there are literal grooves in it that correspond to sound waves."
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5640rc | if bacteria die from (for example, boiled water) where do their corpses go? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5640rc/eli5_if_bacteria_die_from_for_example_boiled/ | {
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"Hah! One of those things people don't think of! YES excellent question.\n\nSorry, I work with medical devices, and this is a crucial issue.\n\nSo lets say we have a scalpel, right? Simplest medical device there is. There's a number of ways to make it totally(ish) sterile- gases, steam, dry heat, gamma radiation. \n\nBut as you ask- the little bacterial corpses are still *there*. Waiting, one presumes, for tiny necromancers. \n\nThe problem occurs when you stab someone with the scalpel, preferably in a medicinal way. The bodies immune system works by identifying certain chemical triggers in bacteria, and has no way to know that, for example, the lipopolysaccharide hanging around in someone's heart is not part of a bunch of living bacteria, but the floating corpses of dead bacteria. \n\nThe dead byproducts of bacteria are called \"pyrogens\" because they cause (among other things, such as death) fevers.\n\nWhere do they go? Nowhere. Bacteria are small enough that water has completely different properties on their level. Beyond rinsing off gross matter and reducing bacterial load, washing can't do much. \n\nSo for things like heart surgery scalpels, there will usually be a second step of \"Depyrogenation\" This is the process, not of killing bacteria, but of removing the bits left behind so they don't trigger an immune reaction. This varies widely in complexity depending on what you have to depyrogenate- steel scalpels are easier than an injectable drug, for example. Typically, the goal of the process is to so thoroughly break down the biological material left behind. \n\n*ok dang, Fiddling with this post to answer some common questions* There will be more of the apparently popular TimeNotTheMiles Humor, plz don't turn on me like wild dogs k thnx.\n\n\n**My post on how Depyrogenation can be done**\n[here](_URL_2_)\n\n**General Note: Endo and Exotoxins are types of Pyrogens** \n\n*For more detail go [here](_URL_1_) where u/aliteralmarshmallow u/Saint_Gainz u/checkhorsebattery and u/Chapped_Assets go into detail about endo and exotoxins using incredibly inappropriate words for five year olds- like \"lysed\", and \"amebcytes\"*\n\n*Keeping on Chooglin'!* \n\n**Why not make instruments out of antibacterial materials? Or 3D print them?**\n\nIf its a metal, you can just heat it. From a strictly technical standpoint, thermal heat is not the most efficient way to destroy the dead remnants of bacteria, but from a cost effective standpoint, it's really cheap. So you might as well use steel. If its a liquid, the issue isn't sterility-sterile is dead germs. Depyrogenation is cleaning up the germ corpses and the deathjuices they spit out in their hate. Where it gets technically tricky is working with things like drugs or implantable substances. IE- stuff that you can't just put in an oven.\n\n**Quick run down on terms**:\n\n*\"Cleaning\"* a medical device is basically doing dishes-getting blood n bits off the reusable ones. (plz dont reuse single use medical devices that makes regulatory professionals sad 😭)\n\n\"*Disinfecting\"* is using chemicals to get something purty darn clean. \n\n*\"Sterilization\"* is killing all* the germs on something\n\n*\"Depyrogenate\"* is taking bacterial corpses and reducing their remaining structure to a point where your immune system won't recognize it and freak out. \n\n*SALx10^-6 is the typical sterility level for a medical device. one in a million germs/one in a million devices\n\n**are my hands covered in bits of dead bacteria?**\n\nNo your hands aren't covered in dead bits of bacteria. They're covered in happy, healthy bacteria. \n\n**Then why wash my hands?? I would like to be filthy, but society....**\n\nWashing your hands removes dirt and debris that carry the nastiest bacteria. Sterilizing your hands is a ridiculous notion however- your hands are made of cells, bacteria are made of cells. Anything that would kill them would kill your cells. Your hands, and literally everything else on the world not currently under direct gamma radiation bombardment, are covered in bacteria. \n\n**Does that mean the Incredible Hulk generates a sterile field?**\n\nCouldn't say for sure, but you get to collect the skin swabs. \n\n**Am I eating Pyrogens? Will I die? Tell....tell Amy I always loved her.**\n\nPyrogens aren't much of a concern for eating. Your mouth is filled with bacteria, so is your digestive tract, so is your skin, so is everyone you love, so is the air EVERYTHING IS COVERED IN GERMS AHH AHH AHH\n\nBasically,your entire body is covered in and filled with teeming hordes of bacteria trying desperately to eat you alive, so your body is used to dealing with it. Pyrogen reactions are a concern when you put dead-germ bits into places that don't have germs- blood, pleural cavity, brainbox...\n\nThink of your immune systems reaction this way: You walk into your living room and find a DEAD BODY. Is it going to hurt you? No. Do you freak out anyway? Yes. \n\n(Also your wife is named Mary, I'm deeply ashamed of you, *think about your life.*)\n\n**THE EXCEPTIONS** are things like E. Coli, Salmonella (\"I barely know Ella!\") and botulism. In that case, what makes you poo/die is the toxins left behind by the bacteria. So if you have a piece of rotting meat, you can't just cook it until it is safe, because the toxins are what get you, not the live bacteria. However, boiling CLEAN water (**NOT AN EXPERT ON POTABLE WATER BRAH DRINK AT YOUR OWN RISK** makes it safe to drink because its unlikely (in clean water) that there will be enough toxins (in clean water) to hurt you (drinking clean water well boiled.)\n\n**Um, reusable medical devices?? Like, Grody to the max + 1 4EVA.**\n\nIt depends. A lot (**LOT**) of effort goes into making reusable devices safe. A lot of reusable devices have limited re-usability. For example, you *may* be able to reprocess a scalpel a time or two, but eventually, that edge will start to fade, and the surgeon isn't going to whip out a whetstone mid surgery, are you kidding me it's not the civil war. \n\nThere are, however, serious issues issues with reusing non-reusable medical devices, particularly things like lumens, catheters, shavers, and it gets gross. It gets really, really, REALLY gross [you don't want to read this but you will anyway and it will haunt you, welcome to my life](_URL_0_)\n\n**One word. LAZERS. *PEW* *PEWPEWPEW* *BZZZ* Murica yahhhhh**\n\nTake a laser pointer. Shine it on your hand. (NOT your eyes, hand) Not much happens. Flesh is tough stuff, and mostly made of water, which tends to boil away under lasering, requiring lots of energy. Surgical lasers are HUGE, and full of all sort of dangerous chemicals. Eye surgery uses lasers because eyes are delicate. Weak. Cowardly. \n\n**What happens to dead bacteria in nature?**\n\nTiny. Necromancers.\n\n(jk they get et. Bacteria are just little bits of protein. The amino acids that they're made of aren't any larger than the ones that make cow cells.)\n\n**I know that bacteria can steal DNA from each other, can they do this with pyrogens, and will this happen inside my body**\n\nNot a clue, awesome question, someone make an ELI5. \n\n**This isn't a real ELI5! There are words of multiple syllables! You don't get the ELI5s like you used too! I remember I used to go to shelbyville on the ferry, of course, we called it a toot-toot chugalug in those days....**\n\nOk, the real r/ELI5ForActualFiveYearOldsAndNotJustaRedditMetaphorForSimplifiedExplanations :\n\nGerms are tiny gross things that make you sick, and they can be in WATER! EWWWW How do we kill them? Water gets hot! Real hot! Wow, SO hot! Bubble bubble! \n\nBut OH NO the germs left their bodies behind! Now, Timmy (Timmy pay attention) we can DRINK the dead germs without any worries, because we have strong tummies (I KNOW I DON'T HAVE A SIX PACK TIMMY OK I WORK ALL DAY DAMN). But what if you had to do important medicine on a person and open then up to help them? Well, then what can happen is the nasty dead germ bodies can get into someones body! OHHHH NO! Your body is really smart, and knows that germs have special things in their bodies. (Yes timmy, even germs are special. Just like you.) And when your body senses those special things, it goes and attacks the nasty germs- that's what happens when you're sick! (Yes like when you threw up allll over daddy and woke him up. Yes, he did say bad words.)\n\nBut your body can't tell that the nasty dead germs are dead! It sees the SPECIAL GERM STUFF and it freaks out! OHHH NOOO! Then you get sick without any nasty germs at all, and that kills people to DEATH.\n\nSo people who make stuff for doctors use SPECIAL ways of cleaning Doctor stuff to take away the nasty germ bits, so your body doesn't get scared and die.\n\nNo you can't have a cupcake, dinners in half an hour. \n\n(**HAPPY??** )\n\n---*edits about how all y'all are awesome*---\n\nEdit: wow thanks! Um-rude to assume, I know. but if anyone was considering golding me (its happened before) plz dont, I dont use it. Send the money to a charity or something. \nAlso...how does this have more upvotes than the post? U/doitsarahlee deserves your love too.\n\nEdit:You are all the best. I'm seriously flattered by the amount of interest in a pretty dry subject, and you've all been absolutely awesome- all the replies, PMs have been incredibly kind and genuinely interested. \n\nYou give me hope for reddit, and a disgusting amount of Karma. Thank you all!\n\nHour 18: if you have not experienced Reddit love before, let me [explain.](_URL_3_)\nTheyre all so friendly....and curious....\n\nIll try, reddit. For you. For the karma. I've got an Augean stable of love in my inbox though.",
"So what's the difference between endotoxins and pyrogens? And why does the LAL test provide assurance?",
"Nowhere. They're still there. Often the bacteria have broken up into smaller bits and they float around. Eventually something will eat those bits of small bacteria (e.g., our immune system). ",
"Some great responses already. \n\nAnother way that dead bacteria are a problem is when you treat tuberculosis. Live tuberculosis bacteria hide from the immune system, but dead ones don't hide well, and their insides are poisonous as well, so you start to feel really bad before feeling better.",
"ELI5 further: This is great thank you. Is there a somewhat common occurrence where there is so much dead bacteria build up that one can see it with the naked eye? I always assume (without researching) that pus and zits are mostly white blood cells and the like but something like that ?",
"You step on a spider. The corpse is still there. You pick up the corpse with a paper towel, but the guts are still there. You wipe up with a wet paper towel and now the guts are gone, but you know guts were just there. So, to finish it off, you wipe a third time with sanitary wipe. \n\nApply this to the medical community at a much much smaller level. \n\n",
"They don't go anywhere. They are still in the same place. There are ways to take it off depending on what's happening or what you need it for.",
"Lyme disease actually causes a problem with this. When the bacteria are killed, the cause a [Jarisch–Herxheimer reaction](_URL_0_) that can make you feel worse than the actual infection.\n\nSource: I've had lyme twice, and the herx is almost as bad as lyme.",
"Great responses already, but also consider pasteurization of milk. Same thing happens. Bacteria die, but the remains float around in your milk. It is speculated that this is why some people have adverse reactions to milk like producing extra phlegm (not lactose intolerance). Lactose intolerance is something completely different. There is a strange new surge of people drinking \"raw milk\" which is unpasteurized but milked from grass fed cows that are relatively clean. Food for thought. ",
"To add to the already great responses, there may be little dead bodies of the bacteria that was killed in sterilization, but evidence of their little habits can sometimes be found too. Like toxins.\n\nSee, milk for example. Heat treatment of fresh milk is a great idea because it kills a lot of bad guys. However if those bad guys have been hanging out for a while, they may have produced a lot of stuff that can also give you a bout of diarrhea. This is especialy problematic in countries where cows get milked in one place, and then a non-refrigerated truck takes the milk to a cheese producer 100km away. People not used to eating said cheese, will probably get the runs because their immune systems can't handle it. \n\n This is why if food has been sitting around for a long time out of the fridge, it's probably not such a great idea to microwave or boiling it, thinking that if you just kill the bacteria on that 2 day old piece of pizza you found on next to the blender you'd be ok eating it. Stay safe!",
"Interesting, this came up at work recently. We got a new piece of equipment in our lab that does a check for pathogens' DNA.\n\nWe were getting false positives because the vials our suppliers sent us, though sterilized, sometimes contained, as you say, bacteria corpses. Sterilized, but their DNA is still detectable.",
"Well if you are strictly talking home boiling or in a survival situation then the bacteria corpses stay in the water. That is why staged filtering is superior to boiling. If bacteria load is high enough in source water then their corpses can act as a contaminant despite being dead and if they are not filtered or dissolved from the water then it can still make you sick. There is already a few great posts in regards to medical applications so I won't go into that too much but they do account for dead bacteria. Usually chemicals and enzymes are used that break down the bacteria into inert components (this is favored because of speed and no need for large additional equipment) but they also utilize filtering when dealing with large amounts of fluid. Dialysis is a more common example even though that removes more than just dead cells. The chemicals usually do something called \"Lysing\" which if I were to explain it to a 5 year old I would say that it causes the bacteria to explode!",
"In tap water, you drink them. :( I ridiculed people who bought and drank only bottled water, but then someone on Reddit posted an article about the living (and dead) things in tap water. Some are still alive, but the important point was that almost everything harmful was killed (but not filtered). There is still some living things in the chlorinated water, but it's not harmful.",
"Cells are not very strong by themselves and they are even weaker once their linings are ruptured. The cell can burst, the organelles and plasms inside the cell now leak out and they will likely be food for other bacteria. \n\nWater is full of life, even bottled water, even filtered water, even distilled water. \n\nIn fact it's really hard to make perfectly pure water, and you probably wouldn't want to drink any because it's very purity would start robbing your body of calcium and sodium and ruin your teeth and weaken your bones. \n\nWhat we consider to be potable or drinkable water, is water that won't make you sick. Doesn't make it 'pure' in the laboratory sense of the word though. "
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5p6g6u | why do large private companies and banks pay politicians vast sums of money simply for a speech at their conference or event? | I'm just reading about the UK's former Chancellor earning over £600,000 during the autumn of 2016 from giving speeches in the US.
What is going on? _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5p6g6u/eli5_why_do_large_private_companies_and_banks_pay/ | {
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"They're an influencer and important person. It's the same as a big corporation paying a musician or comedian to perform at an event. Politicians are allegedly smart and well informed individuals. The speeches are intended to impart some form of advice or knowledge to the attendees as well as lend a certain celebrity to an event. Now, for a more insidious take, a politician is generally a well connected individual, thereby paying them vast amounts of money a corporation may be able to exert influence on policy and so forth. "
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1hq0n8 | baha'i | I love what it stands for, but what are its actual beliefs? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hq0n8/eli5_bahai/ | {
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"There can be a lot said so here's the rough as someone who grew up in an active community:\n\nSo you know how in Christianity there's the old testament and the new testament? They are both holy but one was originally from Judaism and one from Christianity exclusively. Well in Islam, Judaism and Christianity are considered part of the same religion just as Christians view Jewish texts as part of their religion and the same God. \n\nWell the Baha'i Faith believes in this too, and believe that another prophet has come after Muhammad. They use the term \"progressive revelation,\" meaning that as mankind progresses God reviles more and more based on what mankind is capable of hearing. \n\nA common analogy is like different grades at a school. When you are in first grade you can't handle calculus, you need to learn addition. A few years later you learn multiplication. A few years after that you learn about exponentials and graphing. Then finally years later you have the foundation to proceed to the next level, calculus. Learning Calculus doesn't make addition wrong, and it doesn't make it useless, they all build on each other.\n\nThey believe that all religions come from the same God and are actually different incarnations of the same faith. It started with Adam, followed by Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, The Báb (that's a whole other tangent though) and now eventually Bahá'u'lláh. He lived in what's now Iran, born in 1817 and died in prison for his teachings in 1892 in Acre in what's now Israel.\n\nSome of the other major teachings beyond progressive revelation equality of the races/sexes/religions, and world unity. It's run by an elected government, there are no formal clergy. The elections range from the Local Spiritual Assembly, to National Spiritual Assemblies, to the global governing body the House of Justice located on in Haifa, Israel (by some [gorgeous](_URL_0_) terraces running up the mountain). Each body always has 9 members, which is considered a sacred number along with 19. Local assemblies are elected by the local community from anyone in the community, there's no nominating process or campaigns. Higher assemblies are only voted on by members of the assemblies below them (as in regular people do not elect the national or international members).\n\nIt only has roughly 6 million followers, but it is considered one of the most international religions out there. The highest concentrations are in Iran (because of its roots and despite the current government's best efforts to kill and jail all practicing Baha'is) and the US (because it has always been a safe haven for religious minorities), but there are communities in almost every nation on earth (particularly because it is a goal to be internationalist). It also has the benefit of being in an age of printing presses and mass literacy so there are literally libraries worth of books written by the Prophet and his descendants. The most central book is the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, but there are many many books.\n\nNot sure how much more you want to know but I'll add anything more you want."
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5e072u | - can things like light waves or radio waves become radioactive? | So like if I was in a radiated area and I sent a walkie talkie message to someone would it carry? Im guessing now because it sounds dumb but just making sure. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5e072u/eli5_can_things_like_light_waves_or_radio_waves/ | {
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"Light and radio waves are both kinds of radiation. Specifically, they are both non-ionizing EM radiation. What \"non-ionizing\" means is basically that they won't come barging in and jack up your DNA. X-rays and gamma rays on the other hand are ionizing EM radiation, and definitely will smack your DNA upside its head.\n\nSo no, sending a radio signal from an irradiated area won't change it into dangerous ionizing radiation, because that's just not how the EM spectrum works.\n\nSending radio waves from a spaceship travelling very, *very* fast could make your radio a weapon, but at that point your ship is already a doomsday device so it isn't a big deal."
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5b0fn8 | irritable bowel disease vs irritable bowel syndrome? | I have Ulcerative Colitis and I recently had the worst flare of my life. While in the hospital in the middle of a procedure, I asked my doctor how bad the flare looked and he responded with a 10/10. I believe this is one of the most painful things anyone can experience. The pain was unbearable. I was screaming at the top of my lungs at some point.
When I came back to school I found out that some of the kids I knew and 2 teachers had IBS. They explained their problems and not to sound like a douche but compared to what I went through and what I heard other people with IBD go through it's nothing compared to us.
Please if i'm wrong correct me on this. I have this random strong bias that people with IBS go through minor or sometimes moderate pain and it is nothing compared to people with IBD.
The symptoms are pretty similar but I think the level of flares with IBS can't reach what people with IBD's can get to. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5b0fn8/eli5_irritable_bowel_disease_vs_irritable_bowel/ | {
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"To my knowledge, IBD like Ulcerative Colitis and Crohns are autoimmune diseases with lesions and whatnot forming in the digestive tract, while IBS (which I have) is a functional disorder that affects the speed at which food moves through the digestive tract.",
"**IBD stands for Inflammatory Bowel Disease.**\n\nInflammatory means that it involves the immune system (things like white blood cells, antibodies, and lots of proteins and hormones that also make the immune system \"attack\"). \n\nIBD is a disease - notably it seems to be two types of diseases called Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis, which have many similar features, but also many differences. By disease, we mean we seem to have a better grasp of how it happens (sadly, not so much on why it happens). We know that in IBD, parts of the GI tract (anywhere from your gum to your bum) under attack by the immune system - this is called an autoimmune disease. There are many autoimmune diseases, like systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE, a disease that can affect nearly every system in the body), asthma, Graves Disease (a type of thyroid disease), and Rheumatoid Arthritis.\n\nIn any case, attacks seem to \"wax and wane\" - when they do, they cause damage to the intestinal lining, causing anywhere from intense pain, bloody diarrhea, scarring of the bowel (these are called strictures), odd connections between parts of the bowel to other parts of the body such as the bladder, the skin, and to other parts of the bowel (these are called fistulas). \n\nLife threatening emergencies can occur because of IBD, like bowel obstruction (everything gets backed up, the intestines can perforate), massive infection (notably, a really bad kind of infection called Toxic Megacolon, caused by a really nasty bug called Clostridium difficile, or C. diff), and some other what we call \"extra-intestinal manifestations\" - IBD is sometimes associated with types of arthritis, skin rashes, and eye disease.\n\nIBD is treated with medications that cool off the immune system, things like steroids (prednisone, dexamethasone), immunomodulators (e.g. azathioprine), and now antibody-based biological medications (e.g. Rituximab). IBD often also requires surgery to remove really badly diseased parts of the bowel, or to fix the life-threatening complications of it, like obstructions and massive infections.\n\n**IBS stands for Irritable Bowel Syndrome.**\n\nIrritable means that the bowels (the small intestine, the large intestine, the stomach) are relatively easy to upset - meaning that they don't seem to contract normally to keep food moving along, digest properly, and create waste normally.\n\nIBS is a syndrome - meaning it's a bunch of common symptoms (e.g. cramping, constipation, diarrhea) but we don't really know why it happens at a biological level. For odd reasons, IBS tends to cluster along with some other types of conditions, like anxiety, depression, fibromyalgia, and what we call \"functional disorders\". The gut is dysfunctional - it moves food too quickly or too slowly. We don't know what the underlying \"disease\" is (e.g. is it caused by bacteria, is it caused by a problem with the gut) - but it still has a significant impact on day to day life.\n\nIBS has a few subtypes - some people get chronic constipation; some people get chronic diarrhea; some people get both. In general, people can't actually die from IBS as you can from IBD, or rather, complications from IBD. \n\nIBS is notoriously hard to treat, because we don't seem to really understand how it works. For some, laxatives and anti-diarrheals seem to work (depending on the type of IBS symptoms they have). For others, nothing seems to work except controlling the food they eat. There are some new ways to treat IBS, like diets that consist of specific types of carbohydrates (called FODMAPs). Ultimately, we don't really know why IBS happens, or even how it happens, so we call it a syndrome. That being said, it can still be extremely difficult to cope with.",
"I've had some IBS symptoms for a number of years. I agree that I've never been in as much pain as you describe, but it does significantly affect how I live my life. Others have it better or worse than I do. It's possible that the other people you mentioned have been letting you know that they understand a little of what it's like to be you. They aren't trying to one-up you, just trying to show support. "
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