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36v2s6 | what happens if you unintentionally spend counterfeit money and get caught? (united states) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36v2s6/eli5_what_happens_if_you_unintentionally_spend/ | {
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"This is going to vary depending on the circumstances of how you get caught. \n\nIf you can easily prove where you acquired the money from and that you had no ill intent, the police will generally confiscate the counterfeits and that is the end of it. You obviously don't get your money back. \n\nHere's a [relevant article](_URL_0_) about one man's story who unfortunately was given $800 in counterfeits by a post office employee when cashing a money order."
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bskgh7 | since heroin is such a hot topic and is illegal to use in the us. where does it come from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bskgh7/eli5_since_heroin_is_such_a_hot_topic_and_is/ | {
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"I don't know about Canada, but \"the bulk of heroin consumed in the United States has been traced to Mexico\"[(ref)](_URL_0_ ). The Middle East just seems a lot farther away, and shipping costs would tend to favor a closer source.",
"Based on your comments you are asking where the poppy plants that will eventually be processed into heroin are grown. \n\nIf that is correct then Afghanistan is your answer.\n\n[Afghanistan is the world capital of opium; estimates peg its share of the global opium production at between 75 and 85 percent, with an estimate of nearly 500,000 acres (200,000 ha) under cultivation as of 2016.](_URL_0_)\n\n[Also here is an interesting history of Opium that gives more information, note this is coming from the DEA.](_URL_1_)",
"It's called amapola in México, it grows in Guerrero \n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt's in Spanish but u can translate it and see why the us heroine consumption is Killin lots of Mexicans by cartels \n\nI'm Mexican."
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6ip0jz | why do things freeze in space? where does the heat in the object go? | If you were to put an apple in some liquid nitrogen, it would free because it's surrounded by very cold matter and is able to easily transfer it's energy into it. In space there isn't any matter to transfer the heat into, so where does it go? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ip0jz/eli5_why_do_things_freeze_in_space_where_does_the/ | {
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" > In space there isn't any matter to transfer the heat into, so where does it go?\n\nThermal radiation. Conduction isn't the only method of heat transfer, it can leave through things like infrared radiation as well.",
"It freezes, but it boils first.\n\nTo answer your original question, energy can radiate into space just fine. After all, light and heat from the sun travels vast distances to reach Earth.\n\nTo explain what it will do though...\n\nFirst remember that matter state depends on both temperature and pressure.\n\nVacuums lack any pressure at all so the water will immediately and violently boil.\n\nNext, remember that heat radiates. Now, consider that in normal situations water radiates heat in all directions, but most directions just means more water. Only the surface radiates out.\n\nNow, remember that we just boiled all that water terribly fast. So it's floating as tons of very separate water molecules. Each one can radiate their heat it in every direction. So after boiling so violently, it abruptly freezes.\n\nEnd result is a cloud of ice crystals."
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1xad25 | why so much hate on the olympic games in sochi? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xad25/eli5_why_so_much_hate_on_the_olympic_games_in/ | {
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"There are accusations of corruption. In other words, a lot of people seem to be under the impression that the International Olympic Committee chose Sochi not because it was the best candidate but for other reasons. These accusations come up every olympics, and honestly I don't think anyone knows how valid they are.\n\nSochi's infrastructure and accommodations do not seem up to par. One could imagine that Austria or South Korea, which lost to Russia in the bidding to host, would have put things together much better. Apparently, the roads and transportation in Sochi are not up to mar. There are reports of ridiculous conditions in the hotels and restaurants around Sochi. Basically, it looks like Sochi just doesn't have its act together. They don't seem properly prepared for the biggest international sporting event in the world. \n\nFinally, people are upset with Russia in general. There is widespread political corruption, homophobia, and security problems there. \n\nBasically, when compared with something like London, Beijing, or Vancouver, where the last few olympics were held, it just doesn't seem like Sochi is up to the task. ",
"Honestly the propaganda machines from Russia and the USA are in full force. Both sides want to make the other side appear weak. I would say between the EU and the USA, that is where the bulk of the criticism is coming from. If the reports of massive corruption are true than I'm sure some of the Russian people are feeling like piling on is okay. We all suffer from confirmation bias, with an event with this much emotion and so many nation's pride on the line it's bound to happen. "
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cvj3pu | why dont phone companies make smart phones harder to break? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cvj3pu/eli5_why_dont_phone_companies_make_smart_phones/ | {
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"1. Looks way better - and looks sell.\n2. People don’t break their phones often.\n\nAssuming the above are both true why would they make a worse looking phone for everyone to cater for the few that break them?",
"They're constantly compromising between the different things customers want. If you make a phone too tough, it gets bulky and heavy, and then most people don't buy it.\n\nInstead, they say \"if you need it tougher, you can always add a tough case.\"",
"Money. It’s that simple, they want something small and simplistic because looks sell. But this also means they aren’t durable, especially iPhones, the best thing about most smartphones is the software in it. Companies like Apple don’t care that they break because it means that people spend more money either paying to get it fixed or buying a new one.",
"Over the years of cell phones, there's actually been quite a variety of extremely hardened phones or external cases that are extremely protective. However... these are generally really bulk, unpleasant to use, and consumers just really didn't like them unless they absolutely had to have it for some purpose where their phone takes a beating.\n\nSmartphones are actually quite durable, but to make them even more durable, you have to get rid of some of the things that make them convenient, such as a big easy to use screen, thin pocket-size devices, and so on. Basically, you can have an exceptionally durable phone... if you're willing to make some serious sacrifices. In a modern context, if you want a super-durable phone, there are third-party cases that fill that need for $20 rather than redesigning a whole phone that will only appeal to a tiny segment.",
"Planned obsolescence. They could make heartier phones, but then people would be buying them less frequently.",
"A big part of it is that people keep buying new phones. The primary motivation for people buying phones is mostly based on processing power, screen resolution, connection speed, etc. Basically because their phone was getting old. So current phones are usually just made to be durable enough that for the most part you're going to be buying a new phone before your old one breaks. Or take the phone breaking as the signal to buy a new one and not be too upset because your phone was getting old anyway.",
"Last 3 phones I have bought where rugged phones. \n\nOukitel k10000. \n\nOukitel k10000max \n\nOukitel WP2 . \n\nThey where fair rugged in fairness apart from the charging port. \n\nLooks sell. I personally rather the look of rugged phones but majority of people don't. \n\nI have the Doogee S90 being delivered in the morning and I'm like a child on Christmas day waiting for it to arrive. It's not a pretty phone but it should hopefully do what I want. \n\nMany people just like to have what other people want for bragging rights and others just like to have the newest phones to keep up with the times is all. \n\nPersonally I just want a phone that can take a few slaps or at least will be safe in my pocket when I ride my motorcycle and I don't have to worry about it breaking and spending hundreds on a screen replacement.",
"The majority of \"broken\" phones just have a cracked screen. \nThey crack easily because they are made out of harder materials. \nIn the past they made them out of softer materials, but over the course of normal use these screens would become scratched, and people didn't like this. \nSo now they make them out of hard, non scratchable materials, so they don't scratch, but break if you get really unlucky and drop them in the wrong way. \nThis is because harder materials fracture instead of bending.\n\nAs for the rest of the phone if they made it tougher, it would be heavier, bulkier, and more expensive. \nSomeone who wants a lighter, slimmer and cheaper phone would not want to buy it. \nThe person who wants a tougher phone can just buy a tougher case."
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b5kn1y | what happens in the digestive system when someone with celiac disease/gluten intolerance ingests gluten? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b5kn1y/eli5_what_happens_in_the_digestive_system_when/ | {
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"The body has an immune response that damages parts of the small intestine called villi. Villi are small finger-like projections that increase the surface area of the small intestine. When they shrink, there is less surface area in the intestine, which means fewer nutrients are absorbed from the food.\n\nDepending on which nutrients are reduced, this can have knock-on effects like fatigue (carbs, iron), anemia (iron), weight loss (carbs, fats), osteoporosis (calcium), etc. \n\n",
"Gluten intolerance and Celiac disease are two different things. Celiac disease is an actual autoimmune disorder where the presence of gluten causes the immune system to attack the lining of the small intestine. Over time, this can cause permanent damage to the intestinal lining, which is why it's absolutely essential that people with celiac avoid *any* gluten exposure.\n\nGluten intolerance on the other hand isn't an autoimmune disease. It's more like lactose intolerance, although more complex, and we don't know the exact cause. People with gluten intolerance may be able to eat some amount of gluten without any symptoms, and there's no actual physical damage happening."
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725fy6 | why are bugs so good at getting in the house, but so bad at getting out? | A bee managed to find its way into our apartment through a tiny rip in the screen, but has been struggling to escape for the last 20 minutes despite three windows now being wide open. Why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/725fy6/eli5_why_are_bugs_so_good_at_getting_in_the_house/ | {
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"If there are a lot of bugs outside only one has to find its way inside for you to notice. If there is one bug inside that bug specifically has to find its way outside for you to notice.",
"They brute force it. It may take thousands of bugs until one gets inside, but when only one is inside chance might not be on its side. Also you may not notice those that come and go ",
"There's something like a million bees in the world and one of them got in your house. I'd say there not that good at getting in our out.",
"When flying insects want to get into something, they look for a dark spot. When they want back out, they head for the light. When this is a hole in the ground or a bucket or something, this works fine. But in a building with windows, it's different. They may find their way in, but not out: the light spot they find that looks like it leads \"out\" is probably a window pane. This is why flies tend to buzz around the window. And even if the window is partly open, they're just as likely to focus on the part that isn't, bump against the glass, get confused, and try somewhere else.\nSome insect traps (yellow jacket traps) take advantage of this as well - dark hole leading in, lots of windows, there's a way out but it's not the brightest part so they don't find it."
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8oxg1b | what is speciation? (biology) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8oxg1b/eli5_what_is_speciation_biology/ | {
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"the process of one species becoming multiple species. For example, chimpanzees, humans, bonobos, and gorillas have a common ancestor about 10 million years ago. Then, some kind of different evolutionary forces acted upon different members of that population. Like perhaps some ended up living in the mountains more, while others were more on the plains and in a different forest. Gradually the two separate populations stopped interacting or interbreeding. The members in the mountains started spending more time on the ground and out of the trees. The males started fighting more and becoming more territorial, trying to restrict access to females. Gradually, the males of that species were selected for larger size. These were the ancestors of today's gorillas. lMeanwhile the ones on the plains and in a different forest stayed in the trees, kept to a smaller size, and behaved in a promiscuous manner, not fighting over sexual access to others, but rather spending more time having sex with mutliple partners, and even using sex not for procreation but to dissipate anger, for greeting, for bonding. Their body size stayed smaller since they spent a significant amount of time in the trees. Some started catching and eating small animals, and developed a taste for meat. These are the ancestors of the bonobos. Eventually, the ancestors of the gorillas and ancestors of the bonobos were apart so long that they looked very different, and eventually they became separate species."
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4nhm63 | why does indian cinema feel so self-contained? why does it seem to lack the global appeal that films from basically everywhere else in the world have? | I'm a pretty big film fan, and I watch films from all eras and all countries. But I can't name a single Indian or 'Bollywood' film. No-one has ever recommended one to me, I've never seen one on a 'top ten' list, and, essentially, despite being a *massive* industry, Indian film seems (from purely my own perspective) something of a closed system: popular among Indians, but without having bled out into the wider world like films from practically every other major world nation have.
Obviously there are going to be massive cultural differences: there are going to be things that appeal to Indian sensibilities lost on those in the west. But surely that applies to any and every country? How come India doesn't have a Miyazaki, a Bergman, a Ridley Scott, a Park Chan-Wook, a Spielberg (i.e. - a director with global appeal)?
While I'm on the subject: could it be somehow related to Indian music? A lot of Indian cadences sound grating and ugly to my Western ears, in a way that no music from anywhere else in the world does. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nhm63/eli5_why_does_indian_cinema_feel_so_selfcontained/ | {
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"When it comes to getting to other markets, it's all about, well, marketing. Be it word of mouth or organized advertising. I suppose part of it might be the fact that India (and the immediate region) is a huge market in and of itself so there's less incentive to try and push outwards.",
"All films save for American films are about as contained as those from India. It is really only Hollywood films that have the global appeal. ",
"Indian and a world movie buff here, so i understand your concern perfectly. Its something we ask ourselves all the time. This cannot really be explained in an ELI5 answer as it needs to be judged in a deeper socio-political context but an oversimplified answer would be that India has a population of 1 Billion and 80 % of them live in villages. A large number of people are not very highly educated and most people go through extreme economic hardships. So after a back breaking day at the rice fields or 9 hours of listening to abusive customers at call centres (*sorry for the over-generaliztion*) they just want to see their regular no-brainer dance drama routines with exploding cars and silly romances. Movies here for most people are escapist fantasies with unreal physics, crass music and color vomit. So most producers invest in these so called movies with 'entertainment value' as they are watched by a large no of people and have maximum return potential. \n\nThe niche for intellectual well made movies is so small that producers don't want to invest in them. Add to that piracy which is rampant and a negligent government film board which has not been able to create a distribution network for such films.\n\nHaving said all that it is important to mention that not a long while back (the 70s to be more precise) we had a film culture that was really flourishing. And any world movie buff worth his nickel should have atleast heard the name of [Satyajit Ray](_URL_1_) and his **Apu Trilogy**. Ray was highly revered by his contemporaries including Bergman and led Kurosowa to popularly comment [Watching a Satyajit Ray Film Is Like “Seeing the Sun or Moon”](_URL_4_). Ray is also frequently mentioned by modern directors as their influences including [Scorsese](_URL_2_) and his Apu Trilogy is frequently listed in the lists of Greatest Flms of All Time.\n\nRay was the from the city of Calcutta and brought on a major revolution in Indian cinema. That coupled with a [Marxist civil uprising that was raging in the country](_URL_0_) and [India's first woman Prime Minister declaring her dictatorship](_URL_5_) and attempting to curb free speech, a promising niche of high voltage intellectual cinema was born in and around the city of Calcutta that soon spread throught the country. It came to be known as the [Indian Parallel Cinema Movement] (_URL_3_) and was an alternative to the mainstream commercial Indian cinema known as **Bollywood**. And for a couple of decades we produced world class directors whose movies frequently competed at major film festivals across the world and watching Indian cinema compete at Cannes or Berlin was a sight as commonplace as it is with South Korean cinema now. Some of these directors worth mentioning are Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak and Shyam Benegal. \n\nBut unfortunately due to the rise of television and increasing production costs we were not able to hold the momentum and it declined. But the good news is that we are currently seeing a resurgence of the parallel cinema movement (fuelled by the internet and pirated torrents of world movies a lot more youngsters are developing a taste for good movies) and some breathtakingly good cinema have come out in the recent years which I will hold on par with some of the best world cinema I have seen out there. But again due to the absence of good distribution network and government support, they have not reached the international audience. \n\nIf you are really interested I can suggest you a few that can really blow your mind and spark your interest in Indian cinema. You may be missing out on a lot of good stuff.\n\nedit:spelling."
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"https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiRv5fUhqDNAhWDt48KHV1HAs8QFggeMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FIndira_Gandhi&usg=AFQjCNFgmcniFH5iG3vQA4o1SA65bb8SLQ&sig2=FGJ0nUO7EES6-n69ZYQTeg"
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3q1mpa | how electricity works on an atomic level? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3q1mpa/eli5how_electricity_works_on_an_atomic_level/ | {
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"electric works by having a NET movement of charge in a particular direction, if a place has a High electric potencial(V) the electron will more towards that side and since electrons are losing potencial energy thus some menrgy is transformed into work or heat"
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3ef0u3 | eastern vs western medicine | What are the differences of each and, the pros and cons? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ef0u3/eli5eastern_vs_western_medicine/ | {
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"'Traditional Chinese Medicine' or 'TCM' is a lot like pre-enlightenment European medicine. It uses herbs to balance things like 'heat' and 'cold' in the body. Some of these herbs have effects that are confirmed by 'western' medical practices like intense peer reviewed studies, others do not.\n\nProponents of TCM say that it's very empowering and they would say that it's very effective. TCM relies on non-patented processes and herbs and human interaction. They would say that centuries of use slowly removes bad practices and only leaves working ones - that tradition is a form of research that takes place over generations.\n\nOpponents of TCM will say that the placebo effect is at work, and that TCM techniques would fare better in intense medical studies if it really worked. Tradition, they would argue, is no match for rigorous analysis. Although 'Western' medicine isn't very personable, they argue, it's rise has all but eliminated deaths from infectious disease, a claim that cannot be made by TCM."
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c6tk7d | does snoozing your alarm to get those extra few minutes of sleep have any actual benefits? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c6tk7d/eli5_does_snoozing_your_alarm_to_get_those_extra/ | {
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"Depends on your definition of a few minutes. \n\nIn addition, it also depends on your morning routine. Do you typically feel better after using the snooze and getting up? If you feel better then you’re benefiting.\n\nAs far as getting additional “sleep”, then it’s unlikely as it’s a complex process which requires varying amounts of time to benefit from.",
"So I don't see many answers addressing your actual question, which I believe is do you get any rest from those few minutes. The answer by and large is no. One sleep cycle takes on average 90 minutes. On average you will have between 4 and 6 a night and different people will have different amounts at different rates.\n\nGenerally sleep that restores takes about 30 minutes to enter the first stage of the cycle. Naps are recommended as 30 minutes, 90 minutes, or a full night because of this. A 30 minute nap won't allow the body to accumulate the chemical signals that lead to.grogginess, a 90 minute gives you one full cycle at the end of which your body is naturally waking.\n\nYou can hit that alarm every 15 minutes the whole day and you will still be as tired as when you first woke up because your body can't begin a sleep cycle.\n\nIf you find you always feel like crap when you wake up by your alarm, there are aps that help you find your circadian rhythm and map your rem cycle. Ideally you should be waking up right at the end of a full rem cycle. If you wake up in the middle you will feel groggy."
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3oi8sh | why don't fast food workers and wal-mart workers in the us organize into unions like teachers and auto workers in order to negotiate pay and benefits? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3oi8sh/eli5_why_dont_fast_food_workers_and_walmart/ | {
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"They try here and there. The problem is that jobs like fast food workers and cashiers are typically easily replaced. Thus when unionization efforts start up, the companies are quick to find reasons to let go of key individuals and put new ones in their place. Teachers and auto workers require at least a certain amount of training and technical knowledge, thus finding replacements for those jobs is more difficult.",
"They're low-skill jobs where finding replacements is easy and turnover rates are high, so those companies generally have no problem firing everyone and hiring a bunch of new people. Wal-Mart has shut down stores for trying to unionize before, and McDonald's will hire convicted felons, so people who work there are basically told to deal with it or find another job. \n\n[This article](_URL_0_) goes into more detail about Wal-Mart's anti-union activities. ",
"Wal-Mart has a very legally questionable history of allegedly suppressing the unionization of its workers, to the point where some have claimed that they closed stores to prevent the unionization of their employees.\n_URL_0_",
"How replaceable are you?\n\nIn order to become a teacher, you need a teaching credential: at best, that's 4-6 year of college education. Auto workers require a certain amount of skill as well (don't know the amount on this one).\n\nFast food work, on the other hand, requires minimal skill, and there are many people with those skills: many more than there are jobs available.\n\nUnions only work when they have some leverage over the company: withdrawal or the work force (striking) being the most notable one. ",
"The faster WalMart and McDonalds employees try to unionize, the faster they will be replaced by machines.\n",
"Some do. There are scattered unions of hourly retail workers. (I remember there was a union I was able to join when I worked at a bookstore. There was recently a strike at my local grocery store. \n\nThe problem is that retail worker in incredibly replaceable. If a union of fast food workers goes on strike, the place can simply hire replacements with no significant difficulty. \n\nThe second problem is that such workers are hired on an \"at will\" basis, meaning that they employer can fire you for (almost) any reason or no reason. So, if someone joins the union... their employer can simply fire and replace them. \n",
"Walmart employees have unionized in the past, but then Walmart shut down those stores, effectively preventing unionization. Unfortunately, if you work at Walmart and are concerned with unionization, it's likely that you rely on that job and can't afford to risk losing it because you want to be treated like a human being. For those who are disenfranchised, it's a choice between being in a union or having a warm meal on the table."
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28wao8 | what happens to a mortgage or similar loan if the person getting loaned to dies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28wao8/eli5_what_happens_to_a_mortgage_or_similar_loan/ | {
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"When someone dies, their assets and liabilities become part of their estate. This normally includes the house (as an asset), life insurance proceeds (another asset), and some types of loans (liabilities). The assets can be used to pay liabilities and remaining assets are given to heirs. Paying off the mortgage after the death of the family breadwinner is one of the big reasons people purchase life insurance. ",
"I believe it's a very widespread misconception that a note comes due upon death. There's a federal law saying that if the property is inherited, the person who inherits may continue to pay the loan and the mortgage company may not call the note. The federal law supersedes the due on transfer clause. _URL_0_\n\nEdited for typos"
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"http://www.uslaw.com/library/Real_Estate_&_Property_Law/Federal_Law_Protects_Sale_Clauses_Inheriting_Mortgage_Property_Relativ.php?item=356259"
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34bc8v | how do newly created subreddits gain traction? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34bc8v/eli5how_do_newly_created_subreddits_gain_traction/ | {
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"You could add a link to your sub in a popular /r/askreddit post.[ Just like this bloke](_URL_0_) ",
"What I typically see is a comment mentioning the subreddit gets upvoted a lot in a post that makes the front page.\n\nI found out about /r/Gaming4Gamers when someone made a post in /r/gaming (or was it /r/games?), about the decline of the subreddit, or low quality of new posts (I forget what exactly). Someone commented that they should head over to /r/Gaming4Gamers, and I joined, as did thousands of others within the next few days.",
"Most new subs arise out of a newly formed community /r/DestinyTheGame or some succesful post /r/realrule34/ . Some thrive (like the Destiny one) and keep drowing, some become stale or repetitive and wither. Sometimes a user or clique takes over a sub (like the Rule34 one) and form their own sub. Like a spinoff.\n\nAs the communities surrounding the sub grows, so do the subs. Featured subs also get a lot of publicity and thus traction. Think /r/thebutton That one was featured by Reddit itself on April 1st, and got massive traffic/traction."
]
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3fsoo4 | how insurance companies determine if something is medically necessary? | I am having a 24 hour EEG done currently and I had to get a pre-authorization from my insurance before I had it done. After talking with my insurance company they said that they needed medical files to determine if the test is medically necessary. How do they do that? Do they have doctors on staff to review the files? I can't see how that would be viable on a large scale and across many different disciplines. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fsoo4/eli5_how_insurance_companies_determine_if/ | {
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"They do employ doctors to review and approve/deny stuff. Typically, for the more common requests, they also have a checklist of conditions that qualify you for a procedure and a checklist of stuff that disqualifies you, so a less expensive employee can review the chart and approve the straight forward stuff."
]
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1538v0 | why is it that when i sing i sound like a goddess in my head but in reality i sound like a dying toddler with the flu? | Thanks for all the responses!
to clarify, Im not a singer nor do I want to be, and trust me, my voice is horrid. thanks for the singing advice anyway though! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1538v0/why_is_it_that_when_i_sing_i_sound_like_a_goddess/ | {
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"We all mostly sing really well until someone hears us...",
"You probably already know that sound is vibrations that your ear perceive. When you hear your own voice, you perceive both the vibrations that go out of your mouth, and the vibrations that travel inside your head. The other people only perceive the vibrations that go out of your mouth. That is why the voice you hear and the voice that everybody else hear are not the same. \nEdit: spelling. English is not my primary language. ",
"It's because you're Macy Gray.",
"Can I ask a secondary question? Why can I have a tune in my head and then not be able to replicate it at all?\n\nI often jam to music in my head and it sounds perfect, but I can't sing well. (It doesn't sound good even to myself.) That makes sense; you can hear things without knowing how to manipulate your voice to replicate them. But sometimes I'll try to duh-duh-duh the tune of a song in my head to someone (like to ask them, \"What's the song that goes like this?\") and cannot get the sounds coming out of my mouth even *close* to the tune I can replicate so clearly in my thoughts.",
"Aside from acoustics, I think it's also got to do with psychology. When you sing a song you know, you think about the song and mentally \"play\" it along with what you're actually singing. It takes some practice and focus to actually *really listen* to the notes you're singing and recognize what sounds off.\n\nAlso, the sound of your own voice takes some getting used to. Almost everyone who's recorded themselves will have had an \"*Is this what I really sound like?*\"-moment, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have an unpleasant timbre."
]
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6af15c | how do you use bidet toilet attachments effectively? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6af15c/eli5_how_do_you_use_bidet_toilet_attachments/ | {
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"text": [
"there should be a non sexualized video of a beautiful woman teaching us how to use a bidet."
]
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| []
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[]
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||
bza2bk | are there negative values in nature? | Is there something in nature that can have a negative value? We were discussing when mankind invented negative numbers. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bza2bk/eli5are_there_negative_values_in_nature/ | {
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"You kind of have an interpretive decision to make here. Either there are numbers in nature and therefore there must be negative numbers (e.g. Newton's third law). Or you conclude that numbers are an abstract construct that don't fit your understanding of what is natural. \n\nEither way you can't have numbers but no negative numbers. They're the same thing.",
"As others have said, it just depends on the correspondence you pick between numbers and nature. If you can represent it with negative numbers, you can also represent it with positive numbers while keeping track of direction.\n\nHowever, there are definitely cases where the latter is so cumbersome it intuitively feels like nature 'knows' about negative numbers, just like it intuitively 'feels' like it knows about natural numbers because it can have discrete objects.\n\nFor example, electric charges (and charges in general, as there are a few others in the standard model) would be extremely cumbersome to model without negative numbers. Those definitely feel like they inherently have a sign associated with them.\n\nWavefunctions include complex numbers, but inherent in that is negative numbers, and you have the same situation there. It would be so cumbersome to try to talk about the system while referring to positive values only it feels like the signedness is inherent.",
"When an animal starts running its acceleration is positive. When it slows down its accelleration is negative"
]
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21bhkp | why does it take my phone 2+ hours to charge when plugged into an outlet, but it only takes around a half hour to charge when plugged into my laptop (even when my laptop isn't on its own charger)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21bhkp/eli5_why_does_it_take_my_phone_2_hours_to_charge/ | {
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"text": [
"Odds are you have a shitty charger that just doesn't provide nearly as much current as your laptop's USB port. The charger likely says on it what the max current it provides is."
]
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7efanf | how do we know that interstellar asteroids, rogue planets, cool brown dwarfs, and pockets of gas don't account for the remainder of the mass in the universe? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7efanf/eli5_how_do_we_know_that_interstellar_asteroids/ | {
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"We are missing like 85% of the mass. I mean sure maybe, but that's an awful lot of undetected things, vs the possibility of stuff we just can't detect.\n\nIt is a lot more likely there is something we can't detect than just a ton of stuff we have missed but could see.",
"Among other reasons they don't explain the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. The Dark Energy is actually the majority of the \"missing\" part of the universe.",
"So basically the process we have gone through is the following. We tried estimating the mass of our solar system whose objects masses we can estimate quite accurately so for example we know for a fact that the sun is roughly 99.86% of the mass of our solar system, so even Jupiter which is the second largest and heaviest object in the solar system is more or less negligible when it comes to mass of stars. So, imagine if all star systems in the universe are holding this same ratio (or even a higher one cause we know a huge number of stars that are much much bigger and heavier than our own sun).\n\nThis way we can have a rough estimate for the mass of an entire galaxy if we estimate the number of stars per galaxy accurately enough.\n\nWhen scientists tried to apply this method of estimate on far away galaxies, they found out that the effect of gravitational pull of these galaxies (galactic clusters to be more accurate) we found out that the number we had using estimates was around 5% only of the actual mass we are witnessing.\n\nYou might think well, our estimate was wrong but in fact, it can not be that way off. Also, we did not have an explanation for this huge difference and if it was causing the universe to expand, thus we called these \"Dark Matter\" and \"Dark Energy\" cause we really know so so little about them at the moment. \n\nAs for asteroids and meteors specifically, they are actually too spaced our to matter in the mass calculation and they were actually accounted for in the 98.6 % calculation I mentioned earlier.\n\nTo put this into perspective, the mass of our sun is roughly 2x10^30 Kg while the mass of all the asteroids in the asteroid belt combined is roughly 3x10^21 Kg. meaning the sun is a billion times heavier than all asteroids combined.\n\nHope this helps",
"The stuff that planets, brown dwarfs, etc are made from, baryonic matter, interacts with light. If the missing mass was baryonic, we'd be able to observe it somehow; either it would be stars or other hot bodies that emit electromagnetic radiation, or it would be clouds that block light. With the amount of missing mass, there's no way that our technology would miss it if it is baryonic.\n\nSo, there's lots of mass out there that doesn't interact with light at all, which defies what people think about normal matter."
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chok2v | how private is texting? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/chok2v/eli5_how_private_is_texting/ | {
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"If anyone malicious really wants to see your texts, they'll see them. Mobile providers and governments cannot be trusted. That being said a service like WhatsApp which uses end-to-end encryption is a lot more private, although there is pressure on them to give governments backdoors.",
"Yes your carrier can see your texts. They are kept in a backlog attached to your account.\n\nHowever for anyone other than the recipient to view them it takes a court order.\n\nYou can use something like Signal to send encrypted peer to peer messages with a much higher amount of security. \n\nAnything send over a public network can be viewed by a skilled enough of an individual. However with the millions of users it’s highly unlikely they will stumble on yours.",
" > Are cell phone carriers easily able to see your content?\n\nYes.\n\n > Should people generally expect that someone else (other than the intended recipient) has seen or could see any texts, videos, or photos they send over SMS?\n\nNo. No cell phone provider is going through mundane everyday text messages to read over.",
"If you're in the secrets-keeping business, they are not private at all, and virtually public information. \n\nCell Phone Companies can easily see in plain text who you're texting and what you're saying at any time. It's a relatively open secret that most providers, app developers, and phone manufacturers are at least screening your texts for marketing analytics. \n\nInternal controls are the only thing preventing individuals working for a cell phone carrier from reading your texts. \n\nDeleting texts does not delete it from your provider's records either. Only from your local phone, and maybe the online texting access point on your provider's website. \n\nYou should also know that it's relatively trivial for a lawyer working against you to get a subpoena for your FULL text history if they can show a need for it. Divorces, employment disputes and custody fights are pretty great times to start seeing what the other party is saying. \n\nMost providers will blindly comply with a lawful court order and not fight it in any way. Even if the messages end up not being relevant to the proceedings at hand, you should assume everyone involved in the trial had a chance to give them all a good read.\n\nIf you're worried about governments spying on you, [John Oliver](_URL_0_) had a great piece on it. \n\nGenerally speaking, it's illegal for the US government to read any messages that stay within the US border. However, since most of our devices are backed up on \"the cloud\" and it's good practice for \"cloud\" providers to have backups outside the country. \n\nThat means when you sent a picture of your dick to your girlfriend, it was conveniently backed up on Verizon's Cloud that keeps a copy on their French Data Center. Since the message was sent overseas, the US government can now take a look at it because it's \"foreign communication\". \n\nAgain, I'm not saying that some neckbeard is quietly stroking it to the messages between you and your girlfriend. 99% of people are fucking boring so nobody's looking without cause."
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16p3it | - obama's stance on not putting armed guards in schools. | In light of the recent NRA video calling Obama a hypocrite and an elitist, I'm trying to figure out the real reason he said no to armed guards. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16p3it/eli5_obamas_stance_on_not_putting_armed_guards_in/ | {
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"First, the issue is a little more than armed guards. The NRA and various others are proposing armed guards as an ALTERNATIVE to gun control, so just adopting a policy of armed guards in schools wouldn't satisfy them, he would also have to abstain from implementing any gun control, which he doesn't want to do. Even if he still ended up implementing some form of gun control, the armed guards would still be a symbolic concession.\n\nThat being said, it isn't all politics. Armed guards would be distracting to the students, and I think that it would go uncontroverted to say that armed guards don't really belong in schools. Beyond that, they're not very effective; there were armed guards at Columbine. Now, the answer a lot of people give to that is that there were something like two armed guards at Columbine, and they were distracted at the time of the shooting, but the fact of the matter is as a matter of practicality we can't commit militias to every school, SO, even if an armed guards policy were implemented it would probably be ineffective. Furthermore, there's only so much an armed guard can do. They're just as human as anyone else, and far less likely not to be carrying an assault rifle than a school shooter would be, so they're even outgunned. All in all:\n\n-They don't \"belong\" in schools\n\n-The number of men that would have to be assigned to the school for an effective defense would be impractical\n\n-In low numbers, armed guards aren't effective"
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8e2gbi | how is it that the worldest building mia khalifa is able to withstand high winds? does it like sway? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8e2gbi/eli5_how_is_it_that_the_worldest_building_mia/ | {
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"Ummmmmm I think you mean BURJ Khalifa.... Mia Khalifa is a porn star..... And it's rounded and build flexible enough to handle winds. Just like all skyscrapers.",
"Sometimes I wonder whether r/subredditsimulator is evolving into the rest of reddit when I read things like this",
"As mentioned, it’s the Burj Khalifa.\n\nThe building shape was designed to dissipate incoming winds and not allow vortices to form. In physics, a vortice is like a “whirlpool” of low pressure air. If the other side of the building has normal or high pressure air, it will cause the building to move sideways and damage it.",
"All skyscrapers do sway occasionally up to about a meter. But they have a mechanism in them that are made to counter the sway to keep a building from toppling over. It's like a giant super heavy pendulum in the middle of the towers called a Tuned Mass Dampener. \n\nIt's a scary thought something like that is required to keep the sky from falling down. Technology is awesome.",
"r/titlegore is leaking pretty badly.",
"Are you... actually 5?",
"What makes something the worldest building?"
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3mz7b6 | was there a legal avenue for eric snowden? if so, what was it and did it have a chance to bring about change? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mz7b6/eli5_was_there_a_legal_avenue_for_eric_snowden_if/ | {
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"Nope. If he tried to bring it up the chain of command it would have gotten locked away, he would have been removed and maybe even gag ordered.\n\nIf he tried to go to the public without releasing information he would have been asked to provide evidence, at which point he would be fired, sued for whatever breech of contract there is.\n\nWe used to have strong laws protecting whistle blowers, but they've since eroded.\n\nHe wasn't even going to get a fair trial, so in his best interest he fled, which is the right thing.",
"Did you mean *Edward* Snowden?"
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58c24n | what causes our muscles to feel weak when we are nervous/ in a high tense situation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/58c24n/eli5_what_causes_our_muscles_to_feel_weak_when_we/ | {
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"When you are stressed, you're body reroutes blood away from your limbs to supply your brain and other areas. The lack of blood can give you that weak feeling. ",
"Basically your body is continuously pumping out the stress hormone. The stress hormone is a stimulant, and being exposed to it for long enough can cause you to feel tired or weak. This is true for the nervousness and the stressful situations, as both cause it to be produced."
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f1brdq | how are explosives manufactured without exploding? e.g grenades, c4 | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f1brdq/eli5_how_are_explosives_manufactured_without/ | {
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"Modern explosives need something to set them off, without the initiator they are inert and can be handled perfectly safely without any danger of an explosion, some even can be eaten.",
"You ever strike a zippo? That's basically how grenades work. You have to really mean it to set one off traditionally",
"Explosives is a broad term, there are explosives that are very sensitive which are used to initiate an explosion and explosives so inert you can set fire to them and they will just burn like a piece of wood.\n\nMost explosive devices contain mostly inert explosives like C4 which you can add to anything with as much danger as handling clay and the sensitive explosive initiator is only added when you are ready to blow up something.\n\nThat being said the manufacturing of any explosive is extremely dangerous and handled with extreme caution, and still from time to time accidents occur (usually these are in fireworks plants handling fire sensitive black powder maybe with less stringent regulation; producing C4 is dangerous during the process but the finished product won't accidentally explode, and producing sensitive explosives is done in smaller quantities and with great care and very strict regulations due to the extreme risk).",
"Secondary explosives like TNT or RDX are relatively stable and can be handled, stored, and even melted without much issue.\n\nPrimary explosives however (those used to initiate detonation in a secondary explosives) need to be handled and manufactured in very specialized and controlled conditions, since friction, shock, and heat can set them off. What these conditions are depends on the explosive being manufactured.\n\nIn a lot of cases, processing is done in a \"wet\" state, where the explosive compound is dissolved or mixed with a solvent. This lessens their sensitivity during manufacturing. Drying off the solvent returns the explosive to its sensitive state. Tools and containers for processing/handling the explosive compounds are usually made of soft materials like wood or rubber. For stuff like nitroglycerin, the ingredients are kept cold during mixing, and forced air nozzles are used instead of mechanical stirrers.\n\nGenerally in all cases, the explosives have to be made in small batches at a time to lessen the risk of accidental detonation.\n\nEDIT: I just consulted my copy of \"The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives\", and there is an interesting subsection on how detonators for dynamite were made in the early days.\n\nA rectangular rubber mat placed behind a concrete barrier is used to mix small batches of mercury fulminate and potassium chlorate powder together. Wires attached to the corners of the rubber mat to allow them to be manipulated by a worker at a distant. By repeatedly lifting and lowering the corners, the ingredients on the mat are thoroughly mixed together.\n\nThe mixed explosive powder is then carefully pour into a rubber bowl, and carried to another location to be filled into caps. Note, the book then states that the powder loaded into the caps are then subject to a pressure of 2900 psi by a press with a wooden rod to compact it.",
"A part from other comments, even knowning the chemistry principles behind, accidents in explosive factories do occur. The place where I come from is known for fireworks manufacturing and fatal explosions happens from time to time."
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1d2v1f | how have spain and greece's unemployment rates gotten so high? | The unemployment rates are as high as some of the poorest places in the world. I can't understand why that is happening in developed economies. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d2v1f/eli5_how_have_spain_and_greeces_unemployment/ | {
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"What you see in Greece and Spain is the result of highly-integrated socialist/welfare state policies. Greece in particular spent way more money than they had, as a nation, and has been doing so for a couple hundred years, occasionally defaulting on the money owed to others.\n\nWhat did they spend it on? Perks and entitlements for the citizens. In the last decade or so, public sector salaries nearly doubled, people got pensions at > 90% of their previous salaries, and let them get this starting at age 58. The government paying people retired people inflated wages for doing nothing for 30 years is a great way to run out of money.\n\nWhen they joined the Euro, they thought they were clear to keep spending money like water, but they ran into a problem. They don't control the Euro. We spend too much money here in America also, but we have a way to \"fix it.\" We just print more money. It devalues the currency, but it keeps us from defaulting. Greece, as part of the Euro, can't do that. The European Central Bank decides when to print more Euros and tell the Greeks to take a hike. The economy tanks. This alone causes unemployment.\n\n*edit for expansion* The reason the ECB won't print more Euroes to keep Greece afloat is it would affect all of the Euro countries. Germany and Belgium et al say, \"Hey, there's nothing wrong with our economy. You can't screw us to dig yourself out of debt. Fix it yourself.\"",
"The answer is quite straightfoward:\n\nMany of their banks ran out of money due to the effects of the 2007/2008 credit crunch. To prevent a total collapse of the banking system, their governments bailed out the banks. The only way their Governments could afford to do this was by borrowing money.\n\nBut because both countries had already borrowed lots of money during the boom years (mainly to finance speculative building projects), the international finance markets considered the Governments of Spain and Greece (and Portugal and Ireland) to be bad credit risks, so only lent them the required money at very high interest rates.\n\nWith the continuing bad global economy, the Governments of Spain and ~~Portugal~~Greece weren't able to repay the expensive debts they'd run up saving their banks. So they turned to lenders of last resort, such as the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank. Those organisations agreed to lend the money to keep the governments afloat, but only on condition that they made very large cuts to government spending budgets. These cuts have had a twin result: firstly, lots of people who used to work for the government have become unemployed; secondly, there has been a large reduction in the general amount of money available in the economy which has meant many other companies have had to let staff go.\n\nThe net result is a very big contraction in the economy and an even larger leap in the number of unemployed people.\n\nEdit: s/Portugal/Greece/ in 3rd para",
"The simple answer is that people continue to believe a country cannot function in debt. Furthermore, they believe countries must get out of debt as quickly as possible by cutting spending. This is called austerity. People also continue to believe that austerity can improve a country's standing by reducing debt, but fail to recognize that in most cases government spending serves an important purpose. When austerity measures are taken, that is money not put into the economy directly lowering gdp, gdp per capita, and thus the welfare of the citizens. Job loss should be expected in such circumstances as the government is employing fewer people and businesses will cut jobs to avoid going under. ",
"Greece was borrowing tons of money at low interest to run its economy. They were able to do so because they were a member of the eurozone, which made them seem stable, and because they were completely lying about their finances. Once it because clear they had borrowed more than they could ever hope to pay back, people stopped loaning them money, and their economy toppled.\n\nSpain wasn't nearly as reckless as Greece, but they were borrowing lots of money too. When Greece got in trouble, people started to think twice about loaning out money, and suddenly Spain and other countries had to pay a lot more to borrow money, getting them into trouble as well.\n\nThis made it more difficult for companies to borrow money, and the gloomy outlook means people don't want to take chances starting new or expanding existing companies. What's more, strong labor protections in Europe make it difficult to layoff employees once hired, making companies even more hesitant.",
"Some people are blaming the global credit crunch of 08 onwards, but the reason for Spain's massive unemployment is only partially related to that.\n\nWith Spain, the biggest problem was the housing bubble. Building houses in Spain was very big money. A massive percentage of the population owned their own homes (a much higher percentage than in most other countries). And when I say owned, I mean had a mortgage on. Mortgages were very cheap in Spain, and the companies building houses made a lot of money. They were very profitable, and they paid very well. So well that children aged 15 and older were leaving school to join the construction industry. Because let's face it, when you can earn a really good wage with a 15 year old's education level, then what incentive is there to stay in school and wait a few years to get the same level of pay? This went on a lot in the decade leading up to the 07-08 financial crash. \n\nWhen that crash did hit, banks around the world tried to call in what debt they could to stay afloat. In Spain, the debt was all to people with mortgages, and local authorities with massive building projects, like an airport that has to this day not been used. The property bubble burst, and many construction companies crumbled, house prices collapsed, and so people were left with massive mortgages for houses worth nothing. The end result is that Spain suffered a lot more than most countries did.\n\nSo that explains why they fell so low. Why are they still struggling so badly now? Think through that second paragraph again. A huge chunk of their young workers went into the industry that collapsed instead of continuing their education, and it's educated people that are desperately needed now to regenerate the economy. There's no procedure for sending a entire generation back to school to learn something beyond basic literacy and arithmetic, and so youth unemployment in Spain sits at around 50%."
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phmyb | why do computers perform faster when a hard drive is less filled? | I always thought that only things like RAM, the video card, and the processor dictated speed. I have always noticed that clearing up space on a very clogged computer has sped it up, and I don't know why. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/phmyb/eli5_why_do_computers_perform_faster_when_a_hard/ | {
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"Windows and almost all programs running (notably large ones like Photoshop) all use some temporary disk space to work with. Windows creates a Pagefile on the Hard Disk which works kind of like an extension to your RAM. This Pagefile grows as is needed by Windows even if you have plenty of RAM to spare it's just part of the whole Memory Management. Without this breathing room on the disk applications may just fail to load or function properly.",
"RAM is great. It's fast and efficient, but it can't store data when the computer is off. It needs constant electricity to maintain the data. That's why we use hard drives to store data, and not RAM. \n\nHard drives can store a lot of data in a small space and the data is stable. It will not disappear unless you scrape a magnet against it, and that's only because it uses magnetism to store the data. This security makes it slower than RAM.\n\nBecause the RAM is always empty when you start the computer, it has to move the data you're working with from the hard drive to the RAM, where it can be used, manipulated, and sent back to storage as needed. When you load up a program, it is stored in the RAM. If you open the program again later, the data is already in the RAM so it loads much quicker. This is why it takes longer to open up your browser to check Reddit when you turn on your computer, but opening it up again after closing it takes much less time. When the data is not in the readily accessible memory, the computer has to look for it in the hard drive. \n\nThink of a hard drive as being like a series of levers, all either up or down, and RAM is a series of blinking lights. You can light up a light much faster, but when the power goes out you can't tell which lights were on. You can easily tell which levers were on, because they're a physical manifestation of the data. \n\nHard drives are slow, but only noticeably slow when there's a lot of data. This is because the data is stored kind of like how music was stored on an old record. The needle has to move past all of the data it does not need before it gets to what it does need, and when there's more data the average time rises. To use the lever analogy again, more levers means it takes longer to walk down to the lever you need to look at. \n\nThis is also why defragmenting a disk helps speed. When you delete a file, the space it was in is not wiped clean. It is marked for use and the next thing you save goes there. If the next thing is too big, it gets split up. Defragmenting the drive takes a long time, but it organizes all of the data, which makes it easier to find, and moves it to the front of the line, so the needle doesn't have to travel as far.",
"In addition to what the others have said, another thing to realize is that not all areas of the hard drive are the same speed. It is faster to read data that is stored closer to the edge of the disk than it is to read data stored closer to the center, because of the properties of a spinning disk.\n\nSo, if your hard disk is over 70% full, you will start to see serious performance problems loading things from the last 30% of your disk. A good defragmenter will move frequently used files to the edge of your disk, and rarely used files to the center.\n",
"This is a fallacy. Unless the PC's hard drive is dangerously low on space there will be little performance difference. The main thing is to have enough space on the hard drive for the page file, which acts like RAM, but is on the slower hard drive. ",
"Why can you park faster in a empty parking lot?\n\nEven if it is half full, you can part pretty fast. But when it gets super full, and you have to go up and down the lanes looking for a spot, that's when it get slow.\n\nHard disk works pretty much the same way."
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b86lc7 | why are wild orca's and dolphins so chill around humans? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b86lc7/eli5_why_are_wild_orcas_and_dolphins_so_chill/ | {
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"Wild dolphins aren't as stressed out around humans as those are which have been captured and forced to do tricks.\n\nThey're as smart and as social as we are, and the biggest difference is that they don't have thumbs. They get bored same as we do.",
"Wild one's have the ability, if they do so desire to defend themselves and could easily kill the people that get close to them in the wild.",
"I'm no marine biologist, but I reckon I know enough to make an educated guess. More on orca than dolphins (though orca are just big dolphins).\n\nSo fear us, fight us or friend us. Why the last one?\n\nWell, Orca at least are apex predators - they have absolutely nothing to be fearful of in the ocean. Great white sharks turn and run when they see orca. And they've never been hunted to any serious degree, so they've really no reason to be frightened of humans. They are terrifying organic submarine-tanks. And they know that.\n\nSo why don't they eat us? Well, maybe an orca would eat a human if it were very hungry? They've been known to pick off swimming deer and such. But for the most part orca are good enough hunters they can afford to be actually pretty picky eaters (it's not unusual for them to kill an animal just to eat the small part of it they want, then leave). There are actually a few different groups of Orca, which each have their own very specialised diets and which avoid one another to the point where some think they count as subspecies.\n\nThere's orca that eat almost exclusively fish, and orca that almost eat exclusively marine mammals. That's just how they roll. They have a prey they like to eat, and we aren't it.\n\nAnd you can't forget that Orca (and other dolphins) have pretty amazing echolocation abilities. Unlike sharks, they aren't going to be mistaking you for their prey and taking a curiousity bite out of you to figure out what the hell you are and whether you are good to eat. We don't have this sense, so we can't really conceive of just how good it is. But it's pretty fucking good. Like, pinpoint organic radar good. Like, 'you can throw a screw into the ocean and train a dolphin to go find it in the sand and bring it back good'.\n\nAn Orca (or dolphin) using his echolocation is never going to mistake you for a seal because of poor visibility. An orca doesn't just see you, they see through you. They're getting an MRI of you when they see you. They know how much of you is bone, how much you weigh, they know your freaking fat content. And humans are boney and scrawny and small, a human is not going to appeal to a pack of Orca.\n\n(This means strangely that it's kinda safer to be in the water with an orca than out of it, since out of the water they can't get a good ping on you. IIRC that happened to a guy on an ice flow with his dogs. Orca like to try and knock seals off those things. Course they stopped when they realized he wasn't a freaking seal).\n\nSo when all is said and done, they aren't frightened of you and they sure as hell don't think you're good to eat. Adding to the fact they're very smart and social animals - curiousity is going to win out. And after all, when humans are interacting with them it's safe to say they probably think we're curious too. Since they probably don't think tiny humans want to eat them, and we don't seem to be frightened of them, the only reason we could want to hang out with them is to play."
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5ke2f5 | what are my niece and nephew to my cousins? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ke2f5/eli5_what_are_my_niece_and_nephew_to_my_cousins/ | {
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"They're their first cousins once removed.\n\n_URL_0_"
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21nccx | if the tsa is hired and paid for by government funds, why do first class passengers get a special line? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21nccx/eli5_if_the_tsa_is_hired_and_paid_for_by/ | {
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"TSA is actually paid for by the taxes that come from airline (all public passenger) operations. More tax revenue comes from the more expensive tickets.",
"Incentive by the airlines for you to upgrade.\n\nThe TSA doesn't care. They just want everyone to go through the lines in some way. To make first class more appealing an airport/airline may offer a special shorter line for their first class or premium members. That way they get people to buy the higher margin (and therefor more profitable) tickets.",
"Its not so much a first class line as it is a frequent traveler's line. It makes more sense that someone who goes through security often and therefore usually more proficient at it gets priority as it cuts down on total wait times. \n\nSimple example:\n\nPax A can clear security in 1 minute, Pax B takes 2 minutes\n\nIf A goes first and takes 1 minutes, \nthen B goes through in 2 minutes, after waiting 1 minutes for A, totaling 3 minutes\nTotal time spent for both, 1+3 = 4 minutes\n\nIf B goes first and takes 2 minutes, \nthen A goes through in 1 minutes, after waiting 2 minutes for A, totaling 3 minutes\nTotal time spent for both, 2+3 = 5 minutes",
"I fly to Hong Kong several times a year on cathay pacific. I have silver status in their frequent flyer club. They always stamp \"priority\" on my boarding pass and after the first tsa check point they allow me to go into the crew/ fast lane. It's pretty much a perk. Probably not officially sanctioned. But nonetheless I like it. "
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1xkxzc | why a pound of apples cost more than a pound of potato chips? | When the chips seemingly require more time and money to get to the consumer. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xkxzc/eli5_why_a_pound_of_apples_cost_more_than_a_pound/ | {
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"Even if you assume that a potato and an apple cost the same to grow (which I'm not sure they do), you have to safely and quickly transport an apple to the consumer before it spoils, without it getting banged up. Potato chips only have to get to the factory, can take more damage doing so, and then can be distributed over a longer period of time to the consumer.\n\nSo pretty much time to consumer is the biggest factor.",
"Where I live, apples are 99 cents/pound, potato chips, 5 bucks/pound.",
"Doing a quick look at the Safeway website for some prices.\n\n* Apples range from $1.20-$4/lb, depending on the variety.\n\n* Potato chips run $0.20-$0.50/oz (ignoring \"snack size\" packages). This translates to a range of $3.20-$8.00/lb\n\nSo the *cheapest* potato chips can be more expensive than the *most expensive* apples. *Most* apples cost less than *all* potato chips."
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91okzj | how does naloxone block/reverse the effects of opiods? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/91okzj/eli5_how_does_naloxone_blockreverse_the_effects/ | {
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"Opioids work by the molecules in them binding to specific spots on the brain. When the right kind of molecule binds to that spot, it produces the effects associated with that opioid. \n\nNaloxone works by binding to those spots first so that the opioids can't. Then, once bound there, they don't do anything, or at least not the harmful things the opioid would do if it were there. \n\nThink of it being like \"how do you prevent hecklers from interrupting a speaker? Pack the audience full of people who will not heckle so the hecklers can't get in.\"",
"We have protein receptors within and on the surface of cells throughout the body to which substances can bind to. These substances can cause a response in turn depending on the cell when they bind to these receptors. There are certain receptors that have an affinity for opioids and naloxone works by competing against opioids in binding with the receptors. Thus naloxone is termed as a competitive antagonist, since it actively interferes with the opioids intent to bind since it has a higher affinity for the receptors compared to opioids. And in doing so, you don't get the ill effects of opioids save for the withdrawal I guess"
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ctopdq | what is the british identity? i often hear it used as an alternative to english, but doesn't the term british include scottish people? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ctopdq/eli5_what_is_the_british_identity_i_often_hear_it/ | {
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"Britain should normally include all of the mainland so England Wales and Scotland, the UK is the United Kingdom of Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) and Northern Ireland.",
"It depends on the individual. My British and English identity is defined by the history of my family. Working class people who worked in the pits, on the railroads, and who fought in the trenches for this Union. My British identity is hard graft and toughness, resilience and candidness. Being English, they are one and the same.\n\nWhich is Probabaly very different from the British identity of a middle class Scotsman, or a welsh aristocrat.",
"Thanks for the answers guys, I don't know how I didn't think of u/Non-Combatant's answer on my own. thanks again :)"
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6ywgip | how do you sell houses you haven't finished paying for? | When people are moving, they sell the house first, and then buy a new one.
But how can you sell a house, for like $185,000 - when you haven't even finished paying off your mortgage? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ywgip/eli5_how_do_you_sell_houses_you_havent_finished/ | {
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"So say your house is worth $250000, and you still owe $185000. You have roughly $65000 in equity. You pay your realtor their cut and the rest is yours. Because when you sell your house, you sell it for what it is valued at, not for what you owe. \n\nSo someone else wants to buy your house. They have 20% to put down, (lucky bastards) and their bank loans them the other $200k. They start paying their mortgage payment to their bank, and their bank cuts your bank a check, which pays off your mortgage, pays your realtor, and then whatever is left over goes to you. ",
"When you get a mortgage, the bank places a lien on your house. This is basically a legal document that says they have a right to the property until the debt is paid. So you can't sell if without their OK.\n\nWhen you sell, you pay the bank back the payoff amount of the loan, and they release the lien so that you can transfer the title to the seller. Most real estate deals involve an escrow agent of some sort - this is basically an independent third party who ensures that the money is correctly split among all of the parties (buyer, seller, agents, banks, etc) and all of the paperwork is handled correctly.",
"There are two ways to do this.\n\nIf your credit is good an you can afford it, you just buy a second house and have two houses for a while. Once the old one sells, you pay off the loan and roll what's left into the new own.\n\nIf you can't, you do a contingency contract. You make an offer on the new house, letting them know you have to sell the old one to pay for it. They accept your offer, and you have X days to get your old house sold. Then you have slightly more complicated closing where the proceeds from the old house pay off the loan and go directly towards the new one. If you fail, the contract is void, and you often have to pay a small penalty, like forfeiting your earnest money."
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2a0rph | why do shitty infomercials exist? surely whoever makes them doesn't believe they work... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a0rph/eli5_why_do_shitty_infomercials_exist_surely/ | {
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"They work.\n\nThey cost virtually nothing to produce and run in ultra cheap daytime and late night time slots.\n\nIf they can get a few hundred people to bite, they've made money.",
"Shitty infomercials *do work* is the thing. They don't cost much to make or distribute, and there are tons of idiots. The margins work out that it isn't worth trying to make a better commercial to convince more people when the product itself is so shitty.",
"They do work. For certain types of products and markets, that's the best way to sell them",
"The end goal for infomercial products is to generate enough sales/interest to make it to retail stores. Plenty of successful products start out on infomercials, including the George Foreman Grill, shakeweight, slapchop, oxyclean, shamwow, and snuggie. Billy Mays was a very successful infomercial pithcman that got several different products in the retail market."
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dvs33x | how did old forts actually "protect" a strategic area? couldn't the enemy just go around them or stay out of range? | I've visited quite a few colonial era and revolution era forts in my life. They're always surprisingly small and would have only housed a small group of men. The largest one I've seen would have housed a couple hundred. I was told that some blockhouses close to where I live were used to protect a small settlement from native american raids. How can small little forts or blockhouses protect from raids or stop armies from passing through? Surely the indians could have gone around this big house. How could an army come up to a fort and not just go around it if there's only 100 men inside?
**tl;dr** - I understand the purpose of a fort and it's location, but I don't understand how it does what it does. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dvs33x/eli5_how_did_old_forts_actually_protect_a/ | {
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"Yes you are right you can try and avoid it. \n\nThe issue with forts and castles is that it's a hideout for men. You could ignore it but you then have a group of highly armed and trained men you can nip out, attack your supply chains and retreat back into the safety of the fort. \n\nForts are often built in higher places giving a larger radius of fire meaning you would have to go a very long way around to avoid them. This would often be through terrain so would slow troops down and maybe impossible for carts to traverse. Rivers with bridges or fords were a commonplace to build forts near as defending troops can snipe, enemies, trying to use the crossing. \n\nIf you went past the fort you'd have real problems supplying or even having your frontline troops retreating. Runners were needed for communication so messages could be hindered or intercepted.\n\nFinally, it's hard to prove to the populace that you're their new ruler if they're old ruler is still down the road looting your supply convoys.",
"Here's a pretty famous fort, the [Castle San Filipe del Morro](_URL_0_) in San Juan Puerto Rico. \n\nThe fort wasn't built to protect the town from the native Puerto Ricans, it was built to control access to San Juan's large natural harbor. It's built into one bank of the harbor access, and had plenty space for cannon to sink a ship attempting to access the harbor. The fort doesn't stop unauthorized ships from sailing further away from Puerto Rico, but harbors are really important for trade (then and now) so the fort protected that. \n\nLike San Juan's Castle del Morro, many other forts were built to control access to something important to travel (like a mountain pass or a point where a river might be easy to cross or a good well in dry country), the goal isn't to prevent all movement, it's to prevent access to a very important point (the mountains or rest of the river or your thirst can greatly reduce the other movement).",
"Forts are generally placed in strategic locations like a harbor entrance, along a navigable river, overlooking a valley, or guarding a city. They would have cannons that let them engage enemies from quite a distance\n\nYou could just evade the fort and the soldiers inside, but then they'll just sit back and shell you while you try to take the city. You need to deal with the troops and their cannons before you can secure the area they're guarding\n\nForts and natural terrain were often used to force troops to approach from a certain area. If I've got tons of forts around the harbor then you can't land troops in there, and the rocky cliffs mean you can't land nearby so you'll have to land a ways down and then funnel across a narrow strip of land to get to the forts. Oh, and the forts already have their cannons dialed in to hit that little strip of land so have fun with that!\n\nMost early cities were set up in defensible spots so that the fort could cover the only approaches. You can't go around the blockhouse if the other side is a mountain or fast river",
"Think of a fort as a base of operations. Defense of an area relies on being supplied with weapons, food, and a secure area to hold a defensive position in the event of appearance of a greater threat. Forts can be set up to have cannon firing positions on important water pathways. Even an early simple wooden palisade structure can provide protection and a defensive position. They were not designed to be inpenetrable, or to prevent the movement of standing armies.",
"They don’t just stay inside the fort. They do patrols, security, protect supply lines. They may even had camps outside the walls. \n\nYou could be only looking at 1/4 the remaining fort. \n\nA small fort could easily protect 20 miles or so of land.",
"There are a lot of good answered here. I'd like to add though that the forts overlooking water can't be avoided for the obvious reason that unless you had some shit from the 1800's that could turn on a dime, you aren't dodging cannonballs.",
"Forts are defenses and staging areas for troop operations. Apart from being a fighting position in itself, the fort allowed the defenders to control the surrounding area. If the fort had artillery, it could directly project its firepower over strategic positions (such as a body of water), preventing enemies from moving freely and forcing them to take other approaches or risk an assault. Soldiers within the fort can venture out to skirmish, scout and harass enemy troops and territory. If left alone and bypassed, troops in the fort may create problems for the flanks and supply line.\n\nBasically, a fort wasn't something you could just ignore. It's there. If you were able to go around it, you present a risk to your own forces due to the unaccounted enemy inside the fort.",
"Depending on your goals it may be advantageous to try and avoid fortresses. Like if you know you're going to wage a guerilla war and just try to disrupt the national power. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nBut if you're trying to take and hold territory then you can exactly have buildings full of enemy soldiers out in the frontier ready to hit you from behind. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nIf your France and you have a growing colony in Ohio maybe you decide to take over Pennsylvania from the British. Problem is you need to capture Philadelphia which is on the other side of the colony from where you are. You can only go as fast as men and horses and wagons can go in a day (across paths and roads to boot) and that will take weeks. \n\n\nYou could try to avoid the fort at what will become Pittsburgh but if you leave them alone there will be plenty of opportunity for them to attack your supplies coming and going back from Ohio. Which means you'll need men to protect the supplies and that's fewer men you have available to actually take on Philadelphia. You also can't use the rivers there anymore (The fastest way to move supplies then) because the fort is still there.",
"If you want to raid the nearby village/settlement/whatever, usually with a small mobile force, then you can bypass the fort but you are constantly under the threat of being attacked. \n\nIf you want to move an army that probably is larger than the fort's garrison, this would mean that you leave your supply lines exposed and/or in need of a constant escort, that reasonably has to be significant enough, in order to protect against harassment from said garrison. \n\nEven putting that aside, the fort's presence is a constant threat to you. From night raids, to reconnaissance, to reinforcing an army sent to fight you off, to hindering or even cutting off your retreat...\n\nForts act as force multipliers, safe havens and strategic control points for those that occupy them. They aren't just army \"bedrooms\"",
"There are a lot of great points here, but I'll just add in that I've always appreciated that forts usually have a great view of the surrounding area. This would be good for observing advances and for giving firing range from cannons.\n\nI appreciate it because whenever I plan a trip, I look up forts to include in our sight seeing for those great views.\n\nFor the smaller forts you visited, they may have simply been a home base for storing artillery and military men, and a meeting place for kicking off plans.",
"Forts do what they do by restricting access. Imagine driving across your state on the freeway. Easy right? What if you couldn't use the freeway but could use county roads and lesser highways? Still doable, might take 2-3 times as long. Now imagine you couldn't use any main roads and instead had to walk or drive cross country and that same journey might take weeks instead of hours. \n\nIf I have forts along the interstate at every main state road intersection, and outposts along major state and county intersections it really impacts your ability to maneuver, and as others have eluded to, supply forces if there are roadblocks in the way. \n\ntl:dr forts make it inconvenient to enact unpopular foreign policy on the civilian population",
"Additionally, many forts tended to reenforce each other. Often they would have lookouts, observation and signalling stations in static, semi fortified positions as well as roaming scouts and patrols. If one fort saw movement or was under threat, a militia would be raised to reenforce and troops were lent out to support the operationally vital areas. They were also continuously supplied and generally places of local governance, intelligence and business. It was generally vital to consider these strongholds more than just defensive fortifications when planning out any sort of campaign. They also served as commercial hubs and contained forges, suttlers and stockpiles of food. If you could isolate a fort, you could often starve any local citizenry out of the area.",
"Forts built on waterways were very interesting in the time of gunpowder. One of my favorite forts is Fort Pulaski in Savannah, GA. The fort was strategically placed on the Savannah river to control the waterway. The Savannah river was extremely important economically to the South for trade. The fort was just completed right before the civil war and was designed to be impenetrable. Georgians at the time felt very secure with the fort in place as they were worried about a great power trying to seize Savannah again through naval blockade. The fort was designed to tear through the ships at the time making it impossible to take Savannah without control of the river.\n\nThe Union forces during the civil war used the latest technology in artillery (rifling tech) which essentially made forts, in general, obsolete as the shells would destroy the \"impenetrable\" defenses. Eventually a shell hit their munitions supply causing a great explosion and forcing the Confederacy to surrender the fort.",
"An army marches on its stomach. Forts keep those supplies from reaching the army. A hungry army becomes a diseased, malnourished, recalcitrant army. Get it hungry enough and you won't even have to fight it as it will just fall apart on its own.",
"You are getting different answers depending on “when” someone is thinking of the fort being used. \n\nBefore long range weapons they were mostly places for troops to project into an area to defend it. Kind of like a forward operating base is used in modern times. \n\nAfter guns, cannon were developed they were used to protect artillery positions that could defend large areas in addition to being able to house men. But now the men are protecting the guns which protect the area instead of the men directly protecting the area.",
"I think this has been answered pretty well but while less obvious to us in 2019 is that most fortifications were built specifically in locations to protect population centers and trade routes bc they were at/on the only reasonable routes of travel (passes, fords, bridges, etc. )",
"The top comment doesn’t really answer your question. Native Americans were largely unconcerned with the impact of small frontier blockhouses on their “supply lines” during the colonial and revolutionary periods.\n\nThe purpose of that sort of fortification was to serve as a nexus of trade and information and be a sheltered way-station for friendlies. Importantly, this wasn’t just for the military, but for friendly settlers and native tribes as well.\n\nIt was really the native tribes that had the most military impact. Native Americans could conduct trade, receive European weapons/goods, information, etc from “friendly” Europeans. In exchange they’d provide information and sometimes aid them in conflicts. Controlling their economic outlet gave European powers a way to influence them to act as allies.\n\nIn other words the “forts” would exert influence on native allies who would then serve as proxies to actually exert military control.\n\nFort Dusquesne is a pretty good example. It featured prominently in the French and Indian war and was one of the largest “fortifications” in the Ohio river valley.\n\nBut it began as a trade post created by an Englishman. That trade post dominated the nearby fur trade giving England a lot of influence on surrounding tribes. The French took it over and fortified it. The significant feature isn’t the impact the fort had on “supply lines”, it was the the French were now in control of the economic nexus for the nearby native Americans. \n\nTherefore these fortifications didn’t need to be large. They weren’t meant to project force themselves so much (though retaliatory expeditions could be launched from there). Their primary purpose was to be grounded, reliable points of civilization that exerted influence that way, primarily economically. Want iron nails? You have to do business at the fort. Need more ammo? You have to do business at the fort.",
"The forts were normally placed in strategic points along roads and supply lines, you could bypass the fort, but all your supplies would then be vulnerable to the number of troops in the fort coming out and raiding your wagons and taking the supplies. Nothing causes more trouble for an army on the move than being out of supply.",
"Because then the people come out of the fort and are behind you.\n\nThe fort doesn't do anything on its own it's simply makes it very difficult to remove an opposing force from that area.\n\nIt's the opposing force that protects the area. The fort is simply a place for them to go if they are attacked.\n\nIt's called a force multiplier because it's like having an army that's many times larger than it really is because of how hard it is to kill the people inside the fort.",
"A fort generally dominated key terrain. Places of strategic importance. Generally the fixed cannons of forts were larger and had more range. The purpose of making warfare is to force your enemies to submit to your terms. Generally this is achieved by breaking their will to fight through casualties and occupying their territory. When you leave a fort untouched you leave a resistance force as well as leaving your supply trains and rear exposed to said forces.",
"You could walk past it. Sure. But since an army can only walk about 50km at marching speed in a day. When they have to make a camp, all you need is some cavalry to run shock in to the camp at the dead of night. Or disrupt the supply lines. Army without supplies and sleep won't function for long.",
"Some great answers. I would like to add that forts were used to defend harbors. Boston harbor was well protected by forts set up on surrounding peninsulas and islands, making it difficult to get in and out of Boston Harbor. The shipping lanes were difficult enough to navigate that they usually went around. A lot of Brits bit the dust in Boston, despite the numbers they sent in.",
"Think of the fort as a police station. It's not where they defend the land from directly, but it's where they start and stop their shifts.",
"Forts were frequently built on the banks of rivers since travel by water was significantly easier than by land. You could go around, but it would take much longer and require more resources to get where you were going.",
"Forts used to have different purposes. In some cases they simply served as a Garrison for soldiers. Bypassing it would effectively mean allowing these soldiers to operate behind your lines which is bad for obvious reasons. Another thing a fort might be used for is holding valuable ground. Sometimes this might be as simple as high ground in an otherwise flat area but it could also be a river crossing or an intersection of roads, a bridge, or anything that might be worth holding on to. Forts served as a way to slow down advancing army's because it forced the attacker into a siege which could last anywhere from days to weeks or even months. During that time a defending force was given time to organize and respond to the attack. The down fall of the fort was the Advent of high powered artillery which could effectively reduce a fort to rubble in perhaps just a few hours or less, for more on this look into the French and Belgian forts of WW1 and how the Germans were able to overcome them.",
"Let’s say you go around the castle and pass it without fighting. Are you really going to be able to sleep well knowing there are thousands of enemy troops somewhere in your rear that can come out and attack you at any time?"
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7s74zr | why do some oranges possess a smaller secondary orange inside of them? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7s74zr/eli5_why_do_some_oranges_possess_a_smaller/ | {
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"These are Navel oranges, so-named because the second orange looks like a belly button from the outside. The mutation responsible for this also makes the orange seed-less. This mutation happened naturally in the wild one time, and was preserved and cultivated because some people don't like seeds in their oranges.\n\nTo answer the obvious follow-up question: The absence of seeds means these oranges cannot reproduce in the usual fashion. Human intervention is required to cause these oranges to reproduce, in a process called 'grafting.' Basically, if you take a branch from one orange tree and attach it to a second orange tree. The branch will then continue to grow, and will have the genetics of the original tree, and can give fruit.\n\nCrazy people can take grafting even further, creating a single tree with branches that bear a dozen different types of fruit. These are usually called \"fruit salad trees.\" "
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307t6p | what stops telecom operators from dropping their call, text and data rate in comparison to their competitors? | Why can't a company like AT & T, T-Mo, etc drop their prices? Is it a government regulation? Or the network system's running costs? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/307t6p/eli5_what_stops_telecom_operators_from_dropping/ | {
"a_id": [
"cppx2bt"
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"It's lack of incentive. Without another way to differentiate their products if any company dropped their price to try to get a bigger share of the market there's nothing stopping one or more competitors from just matching that, preventing a change in market share. Except now they're both charging less and making less profit. A price war is bad for all of them, and they all know it, so none of them do it."
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4ne9yq | why do rape scandals get a huge media coverage while murders dont? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ne9yq/eli5_why_do_rape_scandals_get_a_huge_media/ | {
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"Rape is way, *way* more common than murder. \n\nThe coverage of a particular story comes down to other factors anyway, not just the type of crime that was committed. Crimes involving notable people or children will usually get more exposure. ",
"Rape is far more common than murder.\n\nMurders of random strangers is quite rare. The majority of murders are between criminals, and/or gang related. This doesn't have quite the impact because it's harder to feel bad for the victim.\n\n",
"You said it yourself in your own title: rape *scandals* get huge media coverage.\n\nIts often claimed that our society is overly permissive of rape. Look at Baylor, where credible and confirmed sexual assaults have been swept under the rug for years. Look at Stanford, where Brock Turner received only six months in jail for raping an unconscious woman. Look at Bill Cosby, who may have assaulted dozens of women since the 1960s and probably won't spend a day in jail. Say what you will about patriarchy and feminism, but you'd be insane not to say there's a pattern here.\n\nMurders rarely cause controversy because our society isn't overly permissive of murder; murderers are consistently investigated and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. There isn't news here because law enforcement, for the most part, does its job.\n\nAlthough even that is changing; the rise in gun violence and spree shootings have made people open their eyes and created media controversy; it's just usually over the laws and not the law enforcement or societal norms.",
"Um OJ? Casey Anthony? Scott Peterson? Murder trials make the news all the time.\n\nRape cases might be in the news more often, because:\n\n* rape is more common\n* rape vs. consensual sex is difficult to prove, and tends to lead to controversy\n* men and women tend to view rape differently\n* there is often a racial component...poor black men get much harsher sentences, particularly when the victim is white\n* college campuses have been accused of discouraging victims from reporting rape to keep their crime statistics low\n* colleges and local police have been known to shield athletes from rape accusations\n* there is an unfortunate history of law enforcement and DAs not pursuing rape cases aggressive, and judge handing down light sentences"
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66ulzm | why do people say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, when it is not the definition | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/66ulzm/eli5_why_do_people_say_the_definition_of_insanity/ | {
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"because it sounds cool/smart.\nreally, that's it. there is no other reason for it.\n\nthe quote has been attributed to Einstein (and Mark Twain and Ben Franklin and others) which again gives the speaker the impression he/she is insightful for quoting a genius. ",
"Probably not in the context you intended, but as of recently, because a variant of it was made kind of famous by a video game: *Far Cry 3.*\n\nThe quote in full: *Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact… same fucking thing… over and over again, expecting… shit to change.*\n\nI know Einstein is apparently credited (emphasis on apparently) with saying this but if you've been seeing this phrase used more recently I'd wager a few sandwiches it's because it's one of the most memorable moments of Far Cry 3 and even enjoyed some time as a widely spread meme."
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9v5h5g | how does digital banking work? i mean it’s just a number online that displays how much money you have, what prevents someone from just changing that number? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9v5h5g/eli5_how_does_digital_banking_work_i_mean_its/ | {
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"text": [
"The enormous array of software that is tracking every single transaction in multiple redundant places all over the world.\n\nThe banks know exactly where the money is, and they know exactly how much of it there should be. If a number changes they'll notice."
]
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fc8ajl | is it important that we must cook meat before we eat or can we eat it raw without any effects on our body? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fc8ajl/eli5_is_it_important_that_we_must_cook_meat/ | {
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"The reason we cook meat before consumption is because of oa pathogens. Bactera mainly. The heat from the cooking process is what kills these bacteria. If you DO eat them then you get sick as our body cannot kill them in digestion. Also, different animals neats have different pathogens. For example, its ok to eat beef that is a little rare. But NEVER chicken.",
"Parasites and bacteria. A long time ago one our ancestors realized that cooking meat made more easy to digest and also killed some things that would kill us.",
"In addition to what others have said about increased safety, I believe it requires less energy to digest cooked vs uncooked. This provides more net calories, and is sometimes credited with why humans were able to develop larger brains."
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1ol3mm | do very, very small animals with eyes see things on the microscopic level that us humans cannot? and if they can, how? | I recently saw this (epic and majestic) picture of lice:
_URL_0_
and it got me wondering whether small animals can see tiny things! Please explain! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ol3mm/eli5_do_very_very_small_animals_with_eyes_see/ | {
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"I'm no expert but I would guess that a microscopic animal would see things normally and not microscopic. Imagine if there was a giant looking at you. You would seem microscopic to the giant but the things you see would be normal like a dime. Maybe it's about perspective. Please help me someone. "
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26x1m2 | when you right click while using an old computer and it freezes for a few seconds, what is it doing? | What causes a computer to freeze up temporarily? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26x1m2/eli5_when_you_right_click_while_using_an_old/ | {
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"chva27r"
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"text": [
"the question is a bit general, but usually the computer wants to display some menu when you right click.\n\nWhat happens is that the computer has to collect information about what to display (and what will happen when you click something), but this task might be delayed because the place the computer looks up information from looks more like a kindergarden playroom than the city library it once used to be.\n\ntl;dr 15 kindergardeners scrambled your \"library\" and now it takes time to find the book you want\n\nedit: spleling"
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6qp8lf | what is a groom's cake and why do people have them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qp8lf/eli5_what_is_a_grooms_cake_and_why_do_people_have/ | {
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"It can be very difficult to make a wedding cake large enough to feed all the guests at a wedding, so in the American South they started to have the tradition of having a second cake that was called the groom's cake. Where the wedding cake is normally white and highly decorated (thus bridal) the groom's cake is normally chocolate or red velvet and far less decorated. "
]
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3vckos | when you stare at a bright color then look away, why do you see the opposite color? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vckos/eli5_when_you_stare_at_a_bright_color_then_look/ | {
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"Color is perceived by special cells in your eye called cones. There are 3 kinds of cones, and they detect red, green, and blue light. These cells detect light using a form of vitamin A. Each time it is used to detect light, it must be reformed in order to be active again. For example, if you stare at something red for a long time, the cells detecting the red light runs out of the activated molecule, and when you look away, the after image you see is actually a decrease in signal of these cells to the brain for that specific color. However, the cells around are still picking up light, but since the red cones have a decreased signal, you just see blue and green light. "
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1xx8fo | why do tree branches form a circle when viewed against a light source? | Just to make myself more clear - this is what I mean _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xx8fo/eli5why_do_tree_branches_form_a_circle_when/ | {
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"The branches go in all directions, but you only see the parts of the branch that are on the same side of the light source as you, and perpendicular to it as lit up. That makes the lit parts from circles.",
"It's because the light source is a circle, so the reflections you're seeing from the branches are all coming to you from that central point. You're seeing different sides of different branches, but it's always reflecting from the side facing the light. Look again at that picture and you'll notice you aren't seeing a bunch of branches curved in to a circle, you're seeing a bunch of short straight lines arranged in a circle (well, some of the branches are curved some, which adds to the effect)."
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4inbrp | why do people pay millions of dollars for stradivari violins when tests have shown that the sound they produce are just as equal or of lower quality than modern violins? is it because of their rarity? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4inbrp/eli5_why_do_people_pay_millions_of_dollars_for/ | {
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"It's because,like with many works of art, they are rare and they have a great story to accompany them. ",
"Is a flaw that becomes accepted as the industry standard still a flaw? Reminds me of \"that's not a bug, it's a feature\" in programming, but essentially when a flaw becomes accepted, it becomes part of the character of the sound. Suddenly flawless sound is missing something and sounds too vanilla. It is also what makes Stradivari unique and unique things sell.",
"Theyre more than just a high quality violin. They are a piece of art in themselves that are rare, incredibly old and quit largely a status symbol",
"Aston Martins are notoriously difficult cars, compared to a less expensive and more reliable Porsche.\n\nDespite their imperfections, if I had millions of dollars to spend on my car collection, I would still buy an Aston Martin. \n\nAnd I'd keep it in my [living room garage.](_URL_0_)",
"I don't know if I'd trust these \"tests\" to be indicative of actual sound quality.\n\nI can't speak to the violins because I haven't heard one in person. I *have* heard a side-by-side comparison of a Stradivari *cello* with a modern instrument, and I can tell you that the sound was dramatically better from the Stradivari. It was not subtle, at all. It was much, much better.",
"I'm not aware of a study that specifically pitted Stradivarius violins against modern violins, but I do know they have done studies where people are given a picture of a violin while listening to a recording and then a different picture along with a 'different' recording that is actually the same. People usually say the recording that accompanied the older/more aged instrument sounded better. This phenomenon is part of why Strads are so valuable, but there is more to it than that. \n\nA lot goes in to what makes an instrument sound 'good'. There is much that is subjective, but one objective element is that string instruments sound better as they age. This is called 'opening up', and is a result of the wood expanding, contracting and settling over time. Strads have had hundreds of years to 'open' so they traditionally have a more complex or nuanced sound than brand new instruments. Another factor that can often confuse listeners is that sound samples lose their usefulness by being recordings, while the value of an acoustic instrument can often lie in how it is perceived when played live. There is a video on YouTube of a kid playing on Bernard Greenhouse's former cello (a Strad) that was purchased for six million dollars. He's playing a movement of Bach for a radio station. He's in a tiny room with a microphone jammed up against the cello. This is a very unrepresentative sound sample of the instrument, and it does not sound any different/better than many very cheap cellos in other YouTube videos. But instruments aren't valued based on how they sound in that kind of setting. There's another video on YouTube of a violinist in the Milwaukee symphony talking about his Strad and he says the biggest x factor in its value is how it fills a concert hall. He says that it reaches the back of the hall with a presence other violins don't provide. This falls somewhere between objective and subjective, but part of that is that his violin has 'opened up' more than almost any other violin in the world.\n\nMore on the subjective side of things, how a listener perceives the sound an instrument makes is only part of what a player is interested in. They are also concerned with things that constitute their own personal affinity for the instrument. I can't recall if he is discussing a Strad, but the cellist Gabriel Capucon has said that one of the things he likes about his cello is that it is not particularly easy to play or responsive, and that this forces him to be very very deliberate with every note. The now deceased Roman Totenberg had his Strad stolen from him late in his career and upon getting a replacement instrument went back and reworked all his fingerings and approach to his solo repertoire. His Strad had become a major part of his musical identity. Instruments, like many things, are worth what people are willing to pay for them. In the seventies, double basses made by Panormo were worth around ten thousand dollars. Today they are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Strads aren't immune to this, and players are willing to pay for pedigree. There is a palpable allure to instruments that have history. Many old instruments have a lineage of who has owned them, and the more famous an instrument, the more famous players have likely owned it.\n\nAdditionally, Strads are also valuable as works of art and as pieces of history. They have immense historic value, being some of the best examples of the first violins in the 'modern' design. Often times institutions own Strads and lend them out to famous players, so in some cases the people playing them may not have spent any money on them at all. So there are lots of factors that go into Strads being both objectively and subjectively better, and this affects their worth alongside their inherent allure and their intrinsic value as objects of historical significance. It's also worth noting that the amount someone buys an instrument for is not necessarily a direct relationship to its sound compared to other instruments. A Stradivarius may not sound definitively better on recording than another violin, but it can still be worth more simply because people are willing to pay for things other than 'just' how it sounds on one piece/one small sample in one setting with one person playing it. \n\nEdit: hit enter twice between paragraphs",
"Years ago there was an article in \"Money\" magazine where a financial reporter set out to discover what set the prices of rare violins, Strads being a case in point. He consulted six of the most prestigious violin dealers in the world. They all agreed on the factors that set the price.\n\nThese included: Authentication--can you prove who made it, do the experts agree. Provenance--who has owned it, any good stories. Condition--how significant are any repairs or alterations.\n\nI don't remember the whole list, but there were six factors that all the dealers agreed on. The reporter thought it over, then realized that none of them mentioned the sound quality. After all, these were musical instruments. Surely the sound quality must be a factor?\n\nHe re-visited the dealers. All assured him that sound had nothing to do with the relative price. The reporter grew more and more puzzled. Finally one of the dealers took pity on him and explained.\n\n\"If I put five of the most expensive Strads on a table and asked the five most famous violinists to rank them on sound quality, I would get five different rankings. Each great player has his individually style and sound, and each would have different preferences among the instruments. So sound has nothing to do with the price.\"",
"Imagine that they used to be the best instruments in the world. Imagine that because they were the best for generations and generations they have been played by the most gifted musicians in the world. And now they are damn good violins but also marinated in history, and sure they might not make a sound as good as a modern violin but they are a symbol that the people who play them are a continuation of the line of those great musicians.\n\nImagine if Bob dylan had the world's best guitar, gifted it to Jimmy Hendri~~cks~~x, who then passed it on to Keith Richards, who all played it for their most creative and groundbreaking periods. Now if some young musician gets that guitar aren't you going to be saying \"holly shit I need to hear that kid play!\" while a standard issue guitar might be technically better but can be had by anyone with three hundred bucks?",
"I'm guessing the same reason people buy a million dollar supercar when a 20K car will do the same job."
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2oj3xz | why is it that people who are woken up in the middle of a nap seem panicked and confused? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2oj3xz/eli5_why_is_it_that_people_who_are_woken_up_in/ | {
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"You have sleep cycles that alter your physiological states. If you wake up from the middle of one, your physiological state can be quite different from awake (lower core temp, different brain waves etc.), so you don't deal with the situation in a normal awake way.",
"When waking from sleep the person's mind is absolved from the reality of their situation, whether they be dreaming or just in some sort of sleep state. When woken at all, or abruptly like you mentioned, a person becomes startled and their senses slowly tell them where they are, what they were doing, etc. When woken in the middle of sleep, this can cause a sense of panic and urgency to understand their surroundings which could take a moment or two. Its pretty much the same as calling in a predator missile in mw2, you don't really know where or what your physical body is doing until you come back to your body and gauge the situation.",
"I like what people are saying about sleep cycles. But also remember that sleeping wasn't always so safe. Before people had homes if you were woken up in the middle of a sleep panic was probably a good response.",
"If you wake up mid-sleep cycle, when you go back to sleep do you resume where you were in the cycle or is that then completely lost and you have to start again?",
"another thing to consider is that it's not 'normal' (usually!) to fall asleep in the daytime. \n\nthe reason i wake up confused after a nap is because it's daylight & i'm on the couch & have been asleep. i start thinking 'what time is it?! where am i?! how long have i been asleep?! am I late for work?!' when it's 3pm on a sunday. \n\ni've often looked at the time (i.e. it's 8pm) i've been napping, and i think 'OMG IVE OVERSLEPT AND IT'S 8AM!!'\n\nCan you tell it happens a lot? ;) If anyone else suffers this, my solution is to go for a nap with a blanket (not just accidentally fall asleep) & put an alarm on for 45mins-1hr, telling myself 'you're just having a short nap'. knowing i'll be woken by an alarm stops the sudden panic when I randomly wake up. ",
"From an evolution standpoint it's the epinephrine that your body has elected to go inject to you because of an immediate threat it has detected nearby. This allows you to kill it or run very quickly away. On a real world situation I believe your body decides this because of unusual sound inputs. When asleep you rely mostly on auditory senses, others are less reliable so when you hear a twig snap or a loud noise, or even a drastic change in decibels of sound your body says okay time to cut losses on the sleep and go.",
"In my experience it's because I'm standing over them with an ice pick, sweating profusely.",
"If I get woken up by my alarm - no problem...might be a little bit grogy if I didn't get much sleep. It's completely different however if a loud noise wakes me up, for ex. a bang, or people talking loudly. I wake up with my heart beating really hard and immediately go into agressive mode...takes a while to calm down.",
"Because they don't know you or how you got into their house.",
"What do you mean by panicked? It might take someone a few seconds to orient themselves, but I don't know anyone who wakes up in a panic as though they think the house is on fire. Unless you go up to people taking naps and shake them briskly while shouting WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP!!! ",
"People that take naps are generally over 40. When they are awoken they realize they were taking a nap and they get hit by the fact that they are over 40 and they won't be able to do all the things they wanted to when they were younger and makes them panic for a moment. ",
"Its how you wake them up. You grab their upper body to wake them, lizard brain fight or flight kicks in for protection. Evolution baby. If you were getting attacked, you had to get up and go right away and attacking the upper body, primarily the neck, is the predator way.\n\nOn the other hand, predators don't target your foot in an attack so if you shake someone's foot, you are less likely to get a fight or flight response from being woken up.\n",
"Natural anti predatory response of fight or flight is triggered, making the body ready to fight an attacker or run from attacker as fast as possible.",
"Because some fucking asshole woke them up in the middle of a nap."
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awryzu | how people -especially porn stars- clean their ass that deep so it is clean all the way that penis or dildo goes through? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/awryzu/eli5_how_people_especially_porn_stars_clean_their/ | {
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"They use an enema to clean out their colon before they engage in any sort of anal penetration, that way it's all cleared out and there's no mess"
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47gh93 | how do microwave cooking sensors work? how do they determine how long to cook something such as popcorn? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/47gh93/eli5_how_do_microwave_cooking_sensors_work_how_do/ | {
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"Humidity. Microwaves work by exciting water molecules, so it makes sense that humidity be the factor in when to determine the food is done. The different presets for sensor cooking are for when they individually measure what level of humidity is best. ",
"I've never heard of a microwave having a sensor to detect when different kinds of foods are done, except for my aunt's 30 year old machine that had a jack on the inner wall for a meat thermometer.\n\nEvery microwave I have owned or used (notwithstanding the above example) only has preset times and power levels for the shortcuts like popcorn, pizza, baked potato, frozen dinner, etc. and does not use any type of sensor.",
"Just wanna add...um popcorn...if you hear a pop...then nothing for 3 seconds then the popcorn is ready no need for fancy settings"
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45mql1 | how does air miles make companys money? | Who benefits from the program? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45mql1/eli5_how_does_air_miles_make_companys_money/ | {
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"The various participants benefit in their own way:\n\n* Credit card issuers get 2-3% of all purchases from merchants (if you buy $50 worth of stuff, the merchant gets $48.50-$49) and usually a very high APR when a card user carries a balance. They pay airlines some portion of the 2-3% for for the incentive.\n* The airlines get more loyal fliers, especially business travelers who can book the airline they prefer and the company is paying. They also get the incentive fees from companies offering miles as a promotion and card fees from the credit card companies.\n* Promotional incentives (food, rental cars, hotels, etc) pay the airline to give a miles incentive (historically one mile was worth about one penny), and this comes out of the same budget as coupons or other discount programs. They benefit from sales growth (a few people try a new brand and like it) or having constant sales volume (factories are cheapest when running constantly so discounting some sales may mean more overall profit because of the lower cost of making the stuff). ",
"Another factor: frequent flier miles are essentially a way to give business travelers a kickback for spending their company's money with a particular airline."
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ebweys | why is it easier to balance on a plane than a bus, even though it is going at a faster speed? | This probably sounds stupid, but why is it easy to get up in a plane, and walk around as if you were on the ground. Then on a bus it's harder even though the speed of the vehicle, is slower? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ebweys/eli5why_is_it_easier_to_balance_on_a_plane_than_a/ | {
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"The speed is irrelevant because both you and the plane/bus are moving at the same speed, so the speed relative to you is effectively 0. What's more important about balance is the change in speed/direction during travel.\n\nOn a bus, the roads are bumpy, the suspension is soft to allow for said bumps, and there are regular starts, stops, and turns. This makes for a lot of change in speed/direction as a person tries to walk down the aisle. It's hard to maintain balance when the environment around you is constantly changing.\n\nOn a plane for the majority of your travel the ride is very consistent. Your cruising speed and altitude don't vary much from moment to moment (barring turbulence), so relative to yourself the plane acts as a pretty solid steady floor on which to walk around.\n\nThe primary difference is the *potential* extreme. While a bus COULD in theory get into a big time accident and flip over or suddenly decelerate from 55mph to 0 mph, a plane's potential for change is way worse, with the option of barrel rolling multiple times in the case of catastrophic engine failure or mid-air collision, dropping hundreds of feet in a few short seconds due to radical turbulence, and in the event of a crash landing decelerating hundreds of miles per hour to 0 in an instant. It'll be a lot harder to maintain balance during a mid-air aeronautical catastrophe than it would in a bus crash.",
"Because a plane is a constant speed, whereas a bus is braking, accelerating, etc.\n\nAs long as there's no speed change, it feels like it's not moving",
"No question is stupid.\nThe thing that makes it hard to get up is not the speed rather the changes in speed, i.e. ecclleration and deceleration. Buses change speed more often, slowing down and speeding up, and whenever it does so, you experience a force (not real) that feels like you are being thrown forward (deceleration) and backward (excelleration). In addition, the changes in course are more profound in buses than in air plains, these also play role in throwing you from side to side",
"Basically, you don't feel constant velocity, you feel change in velocity (acceleration). The Earth is rotating at 1000mph at the equator and 67000mph around the sun, but you don't feel it because the velocity doesn't change. The bus is bouncing around everywhere, stopping/starting, etc."
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54v9nd | i understand that the organs detox but do any of these products that claim to detox help the organs in anyway to be more efficient at detoxing. if yes, how ? | *just curious*
I mean is it all dishonest marketing ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/54v9nd/eli5_i_understand_that_the_organs_detox_but_do/ | {
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"There are some foods which have useful vitamins and minerals that help the body function to its peak potential. However none of these foods/products detox by themselves and basically by eating a normal healthy diet and exercising you will be far better off than wasting your money on detox products.",
"It's all dishonest marketing.\n\nMost \"cleanse\" products are simply laxatives or placebos. \n\nYou don't need to \"detox\", you need to eat healthy and drink lots of water. ",
"When there is a harmful substance in your body, it's usually either broken down in the liver or removed through the kidneys - that is what detoxification actually means. If those organs do their job, you don't need any help products which supposedly detox, and if they don't, you should rather contact a real doctor.\n\nSo yeah, it's somewhere between whack science and dishonest marketing.",
"It's all a bold-faced, unambiguous lie. Either your organs work well enough to detox or you need to be in a hospital. ",
"If you are not detoxing, you need a new liver and/or kidney.\n\nThe only real cleanse you get from all the other \"detox\" products is in your wallet.\n\nEdit: Your body's greatest \"antioxidant\" is also one it self produces, glutathione. Give it the raw materials it needs from normal foods and you'll be fine. ",
"Just to play devil's advocate...\n\nI see that most of the replies say that the detox products are junk, and most, if not all, of the products sold to consumers as \"detoxifying\" are junk.\n\nHowever, there are actual detoxifying chemicals which are used:\n[Chelating agents](_URL_0_) are used to cleanse heavy metals out of the body after heavy metal poisoning. However, Chelation therapy is something that you would do under a doctor's supervision, not a product that is advertised on an infomercial.\n\n",
"Nothing \"detoxes\" anything. It's bullshit.\n\nNow some specific organs filter waste, and other organs do a lot of chemical synthesis. But it's wrong to think of it as \"detox\". Buildup of _anything_ in your system is potentially harmful, but the normal levels of things are normal (duh) and necessary.\n\nA simple example is carbon dioxide. You don't want extra CO2, but if I purge your body, or just your blood, of CO2 you'd get very sick or even dead in short order.\n\nSo organs _regulate_ substances. Some of that regulation is pure elimination. An accessible example here would be alcohol, which your body wants you to have essentially none of. So the target regulation value is _zero_. But when your liver processes alcohol it doesn't \"detox\" you, that is you don't _excrete_ _alcohol_ as a result. It turns it into something else.\n\nMeanwhile your kidneys regulate salt and ph and water in your blood, and in so doing creates and excretes a complex solution; but the kidneys don't \"detox\" you, they regulate.\n\n\"detox\", and the promise that particular foods or procedures will \"detoxify\" you in any way are _complete_ _crap_, and should be taken as a warning sign of Woo and Dishonesty, or at best \"folk tale beliefs\".\n\nSimilar things and claims have been around forever. Like that myth that you have \"years worth of red meat rotting in your gut\". Anybody who's ever had diarrhea _should_ know how good your body is at getting rid of things it doesn't want.\n\nThose emergency procedures that your body _can_ do to \"detox\" happen automatically if you've been exposed to an actual toxin. The \"detox\" will be super obvious. Probably painful or embarrassing. And sometimes it's life-threatening.\n\nIf you ever experience toxicity and the related detox, you will, make no mistake, remember it for the rest of your possibly very short remaining lifespan."
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1rww9k | why do we go partially blind after shining a bright light in our eyes. | I'm assuming we don't do any damage to the eyes, and it still happens when your pupils are already fully contracted. So what happens? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rww9k/eli5_why_do_we_go_partially_blind_after_shining_a/ | {
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"The bright light saturates the rods and cones (light receptors) in the retina of your eye and they require some time to return to a ready state. This is due to something called a [refractory period](_URL_0_) for nerve signals. "
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zxadp | why do many baking recipes require just "a pinch of salt"? | It just seems so unimportant to add a tiny bit of salt into a huge mixing bowl, but apparently if you forget/omit it the recipe will be ruined. I assume it's something to do with certain chemical reactions with the batter or something, but not sure exactly how or why.. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zxadp/eli5_why_do_many_baking_recipes_require_just_a/ | {
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"*Some* salt is needed to enhance the flavor, but the specific amount depends on your tastes. Recipes say \"a pinch\" so you know that you're free to put in however little you'd like.",
"Several reasons:\n\n* ~~salt inhibits gluten, even in small quantities, making your cake/brownies/whatever less tough. You still want some gluten for structure, but not a ton. Other ingredients/techniques help with this too, such as chilling, and less-mixing.~~ Bails_au corrected me; I had it backwards.\n* salt helps other flavor molecules handshake with your tongue, increasing non-salt flavors, even in small quantities.\n\nI'd also suggest more than a \"tiny bit\" of salt, actually. In my opinion, reason #2 is a more important answer to your question than reason #1.\n\n\n* Consider an experiment: make a batch of pancake batter, divide it into five bowls. Keep one unsalted as a control, and to the others, add different amounts of salt. Cook, eat. You'll quickly get a feel for the flatness, and you may be surprised at how much salt you enjoy (once you scale up and see how much salt you prefer in an entire batch of batter).\n \n* Another experiment: the next time you get some really bad, bitter coffee, experiment with adding a little salt to this (in this case, a tiny pinch IS what you want). Salt will decrease your sensation of bitterness - not by interacting with the food, but by interacting with your tongue.",
"It's a flavour enhancer, reducing bitter or acidic notes and bringing out sweetness. Too much salt and your cake will taste salty (yuck) but a tiny pinch makes it taste sweeter. This flavour enhancing magic comes from the fact that the subtle saltiness is a contradictory taste to the sweet and so its presence excites the taste buds and the brain as the flavour is more complex to process. It can also enable surrounding molecules to be released to the air more easily thereby improving aroma which is a major component of taste. \n\nFor bread baking it affects the fermentation rate of yeast, giving you control over how much carbon dioxide is produced and therefore how airy or stodgy your bread is. \n\nIt has a strengthening effect on the gluten protein in dough, making it more elastic and much easier to work with. \n\n//“Charged amino acids in the flour are going to interact with the ions in the salt, and that helps line up the gluten fibers. Your bread is going to have better texture.”// \n\n_URL_0_ \n\n",
"Salt does a great job in bringing out other flavors. Try adding some sea salt to your hot chocolate and you'll taste a huge difference. This works for other flavors as well. ",
"Also you can add a pinch of sugar to your food that´s not supposed to be sweet. At least that´s what my mom told me.",
"If you ever watch Alton Brown's show \"Good Eats\", he has a segment on one of his chocolate shows about why salt goes well with sweet and how it amplifies other flavors.",
"Also, in anything that uses yeast as a leavener (cinnamon rolls, Beignets, stuff like that) a tiny bit of salt can keep the yeast from over proofing your dough and causing it to flatten out in the oven. ",
"* butter (and fats) are enhanced greatly by salt. ever use unsalted butter on bread? ick.\n\nother than flavoring, here are some other reasons:\n\n* yeasted breads. salt retards the yeast slightly\n* salt can act as an abrasive and can help eggs beat fluffier (so can sugar)\n* strengthens the gluten\n* improves texture"
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1u9hxg | how come so many companies are changing their logos to get rid of gradients and going to a more "flatter" look? | Ebay: _URL_1_
Chome: _URL_2_
Windows: _URL_0_
Just to name a few. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1u9hxg/eli5_how_come_so_many_companies_are_changing/ | {
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"It's due to everything moving towards a \"flat\" design on mobile phones. Flat design has become popular because designs that look like real life objects (i.e. the iPhone's old Notepad) are losing relevance. For example, 20somethings have never had a physical contact book so there's no point to make an app look like a contact book.\n\nThe recent big shift has been because of the change of Apple's iPhone operating system to a flatter look. Apple decided a few years ago to have Jonathan Ive take over all user interface. Now, because the new iPhone operating system is flat, everyone else is going flat.\n\nThis is also because a lot of tech company's MAIN business is now on mobile phones and it'd look weird if they weren't consistent with the design of the phone. \n",
"Minimalism is in right now, thats about it.",
"Just like other things (appliances, cars, etc) preferred styles change over time. Flat / solid colors are in and gradients now look \"old\" - seeing gradient based graphics / graphic design typically has a 90's / early 2000's feel to it.\n\nThink of it the same way that a house built in the 1980's and wasn't updated has a definite \"80's\" feel to it. And the way car style shifts between rounded curves and straight edges throughout the years.\n\nI'd suspect a big contributor to this is that gradients were a very cool / high-tech thing back when the internet was taking off and a gradient effect was one of the \"cooler\" features in graphic design software back then. Keep in mind they weren't nearly as feature-packed as they are today! \n\nSince gradients wound up being the cutting edge look during the tech boom, sites / logos that haven't been updated maintain that gradient look. Because of that, we're now starting to associate it with \"old\" style.\n\nTL;DR: Gradients were cool, cutting-edge, modern, and popular during the GeoCities days. Seeing anything that reminds you of the GeoCities days now is amusingly ugly. Thus, the shift to a different style when updating graphics - currently, flat, simple, and solid colors are in."
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1auf0q | why cats don't respond to verbal commands like dogs do? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1auf0q/eli5_why_cats_dont_respond_to_verbal_commands/ | {
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"Cats don't respond to commands because they are in charge. We work for them. Sometimes you can make a deal with a cat, so she'll do what you ask politely IF you make sure to give her the treats and rubs she wants, when she wants them. But don't forget to keep your end of the bargain, because she has claws and knows how to use them."
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2he2az | why do tv networks increasingly make viewers wait a week or more to watch new episodes legally online? how can this be more profitable if piracy is such a threat to them? | I think that myself (and a decent number of other television fans) would be fine with watching new episodes from an ad-supported network website if episodes were posted that night. However, we've seen a trend towards delaying new episode postings by sometimes a week or more, which would seem to just drive viewers to piracy.
I've heard that online viewing (even ad-supported), is in general less profitable for networks than television viewing. But, even if that were the case, wouldn't it make more sense to gain back some of that revenue by giving a timely, ad-supported online option to those who simply don't have time or access to broadcast TV? It would seem that this method of "penalizing" honest viewers for not being able to catch episodes on TV would just increase the temptation to pirate.
note: I was surprised to not be able to find this question asked before; my search efforts only turned up [this thread](_URL_0_), which only pertained to broadcast delays overseas. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2he2az/eli5why_do_tv_networks_increasingly_make_viewers/ | {
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"Networks gear this kind of a response to try and force viewers to watch the programs they want to see live on the first broadcast.\n\nIt all comes down to advertising dollars. Advertisers pay big money to be sponsored and be shown in the advertising gaps throughout a show. If people watch online, the tolerance for advertisements are reduced to 60-90 seconds at a time, whereas broadcasts are up to 7 minute slots of commercials between breaks.\n\nit all comes down to the money.",
"Networks make a lot more money from broadcast ads than online ads. But the sooner they make their shows available, the less advertisers are willing to pay.\n\nSo they have to walk a tightrope between maximizing broadcast ad revenue and losing out online ad revenue to piracy."
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2o62p7 | why is it cheaper to add phone service to a bundle? | Most telecomms offer bundles that are actually cheaper if you add phone service. i.e. It is cheaper to have cable+internet+phone than to just have cable+internet. This question was asked about 4 months ago but the answers provided were just speculation.
Do the telecomms receive some sort of subsidy or tax break for providing the phone service that makes it worthwhile to provide an additional service but charge less money? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2o62p7/eli5_why_is_it_cheaper_to_add_phone_service_to_a/ | {
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"A significant cost you pay for when you buy a phone plan an internet plan and so on is the cost the provider incurs getting you to sign-up - aka \"sales costs\", or \"customer acquisition costs\". Further, a significant area of loss for these providers is due to switching.\n\nThese businesses rationalize that they can pass on the savings of lower customer acquisition costs or lower sales costs AND they can get a \"stickier\" relationship with a customer. We can be pretty darn sure that this \"stickiness\" means that the length of relationship is longer when a customer utilizes multiple products (its more of a PITA to switch internet, cable and phone than it is to switch just one of them). Reduction in churn is massive for the bottom line - its easier to keep a customer than get a new one.\n\n",
"It make their subscriber numbers look more impressive which helps their stock prices.\n\nIt psychologically helps customers think they got a good deal, which makes them less likely to cancel service.\n\nIt also makes it a bigger pain in the ass for you to cancel service because it adds hassle to you having to find replacement services."
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1vujdr | why is gravity weaker at the core of the earth? | EDIT: Thank you all for your responses! I get it now :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vujdr/eli5_why_is_gravity_weaker_at_the_core_of_the/ | {
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"It wouldn't be pulling you downwards as strongly because a lot of the Earth's mass would then be above you.\n\nSay you're in the inner core, for example, there would then be 5150km worth of Earth no longer pulling you downwards. [This might help you picture it better.](_URL_0_)",
"Gravity is the earth pulling at you. \nNear the center of the earth a lot of the earth is above your head and pulls you up instead of down. \nAt the dead center of the earth there is no gravity, as the earth pulls in all directions equally.",
"Gravity is the force of attraction that all mass has. If you're at the center of the earth, you're surrounded by mass on all sides, and it's all pulling on you more or less equally. That means you'll feel weightless (assuming we've got a hollow area in the center of the earth and you're not dead.\n\nHow about halfway to the core? Well, now *most* of the mass of the earth is in the direction of the core. But there's also a log that's to your left, right, and above you. Thus, the pull of gravity isn't as strong there.",
"When you are standing at the surface, you have all of the mass of the Earth pulling at you from wherever it is. The amount of earth beneath your feet isn't just from the surface down to the center of the planet, but all the way across to the other side of the planet, the entire diameter of the Earth and all of the earth beneath your feet is pulling you in the same direction.\n\nIn the center of the Earth, you only have the Earth's radius of matter pulling on you in any given direction. Also, every direction you look there is roughly the same amount of pulling going on and those forces all largely cancel each other out leaving you just sort of floating there. Presuming we made a livable room there for you.",
"Let's forget the earth for a minute and just look at a uniform sphere.\n\nWhen you're standing on the surface of the sphere, every bit of sphere is pulling you towards it.\n\nNow, when you move inside the sphere, things change a bit.\n\nYou can visualize a sphere as being made of a number of concentric nested shells.\n\nSay you're half way between the surface and the core, and now pick any random shell you want which is above you.\n\nDraw a line which connects you and the core and intersects in two places with the shell.\n\nNow if you draw another pair of lines which come from you with a small angle on either side of the one which you first drew, you end up with two long, skinny triangles centred on you; the side of it which intersects with the side of the shell closest to you will be smaller, the side of it which intersects the far side of the shell will be larger.\n\nThese two triangles each represent an equivalent angular area of the surface of the shell and thus a pair of gravitational forces covering the same angular area. You can also extend them into the third dimension, coming out of and going into the page, and turn them into cones intersecting circles on the shell.\n\nNow, if you determine the radius of the area of the shell that the circle made by each cone covers; this would be arc length = distance from you x angle in radians.\n\nYou can use this radius of each of the circles to determine its area. Then you can use this area to determine its mass, depending on the density of the sphere.\n\nIf you then do a calculation of the gravitational attraction provided by each part of the shell, you'll find they're both exactly equal to each other; as gravity follows the inverse square of the distance from you, and the volume of each circle depends on the square of the distance from you.\n\nThis works out for every pair of parts of the shell which have the same angular size from you; they all work out to be zero.\n\nSo every shell outside where you are will provide zero net gravitational attraction.\n\nWhen you're at the core of the earth, every shell is outside you, and so you'll experience zero net gravitational acceleration.",
"There are two very important facts to remember when dealing with the gravity hollow spheres:\n\n1. On the outside, you can treat it as if all the mass is at the center of the sphere.\n\n2. On the inside, you feel no gravitational pull at all.\n\nSo, when dealing with the Earth, you can treat it as a series of hollow spheres on top of each other (sort of like the layers of an onion). Whe you're on the surface of the Earth, all of the sphere follow rule 1 and pull you towards the center. But if you're in the center of the Earth, all of the spheres follow rule 2, so you don't feel any gravity at all.\n\nOf course, the Earth isn't perfectly spherical so the rules aren't perfect in this case, but they're close enough to offer a good explanation."
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1d58gw | when to use "i" and when to use "me"? | A child I know uses "me" when he should use "I" and I'm struggling with a simpl way to explain the difference. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d58gw/eli5_when_to_use_i_and_when_to_use_me/ | {
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"\"I\" is used when the sentence is about you doing something:\n\n > I see the dog.\n\n > I want to go to the beach.\n\n > I am running.\n\n\"Me\" is used when something else is doing something to you:\n\n > He saw me.\n\n > The dog ran up to me.\n\n > Can you take me along?",
"One teacher I had explained it this way: \"Me can't do anything, but I can.\"",
"I assume you are asking about the my friend and me vs. my friend and I?\n\nThe best way to do it is to take the other person out of it and say the sentence again. \n\nEx: Do you want to go the park with my friend and me?\n\nDo you want to go to the park with me?\n\nWhen we play video games, my friend and I always pick Mario Kart.\n\nWhen I play video games, I always pick Mario Kart.",
"Substitute who/whom. If *who* works, then go with *I*, if *whom* then *me*.",
"Tell that kid that Cookie Monster speaks Monster, not English.",
"It is one of the last signs of \"declension\" in English. If you know what conjugation is, declension is kinda like conjugation for nouns. Declension is when you change a noun to show what it does in the sentence. For example, in Latin, to show that something is a direct object in the sentence, you can change the -us to an -um. \n\nIn English we still have declension for possession (you add 's to the end of a noun to show it owns something else). We also still have declension for the basic pronouns.\n\nPronoun| Person|Number|Gender|Case|Gruesome Example\n:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--\nI|first|singular| |Nominative|\"**I** ate the shark.\"\nMy|first|singular| |Possessive|\"The shark ate **my** friend.\"\nMe|first|singular| |Oblique|\"The shark ate **me**.\"\nYou|second|singular/plural| |Nominative|\"**You** ate the shark.\"\nYour|second|singular/plural| |Possessive|\"The shark ate **your** friend.\"\nYou|second|singular/plural| |Oblique|\"The shark ate **you**.\"\nHe|third|singular| masculine|Nominative|\"**He** ate the shark.\"\nHis|third |singular| masculine|Possessive|\"The shark ate **his** friend.\"\nHim|third |singular|masculine|Oblique|\"The shark ate **him**.\"\nShe|third |singular|feminine|Nominative|\"**She** ate the shark.\"\nHer|third |singular|feminine|Possessive|\"The shark ate **her** friend.\"\nHer|third |singular|feminine|Oblique|\"The shark ate **her**.\"\nIt|third |singular| |Nominative|\"**It** ate the shark.\"\nIts|third |singular| |Possessive|\"The shark ate **its** friend.\"\nIt|third |singular| |Oblique|\"The shark ate **it**.\"\nWe|first |plural| |Nominative|\"**We** ate the shark.\"\nOur|first |plural| |Possessive|\"The shark ate **our** friend.\"\nUs|first | plural| |Oblique|\"The shark ate **us**.\"\nThey|third| plural| |Nominative|\"**They** ate the shark.\"\nTheir|third | plural| |Possessive|\"The shark ate **their** friend.\"\nThem|third |plural| |Oblique|\"The shark ate **them**.\"\n\nNominative means, roughly, that it's the subject of a sentence. The thing *doing* the action. \"I ate the chocolate\". You use \"I\" instead of \"me\" or \"my\" because \"I\" is the form you use for subjects. \"My\" is for possession, just like his and her. \"Me\" is the oblique case, which usually tells you it's a direct object (or the noun recieved an action, like \"He hit me!\"), or indirect object, which is kinda like recieving something, usually used with \"to\", (\"He gave to me a rose\"), or used with a preposition (\"That bee is flying around me\", where \"around\" is the preposition, and \"me\" is the object of that preposition). \n\nSo the rule of thumb for \"I\" and \"me\" is that \"I\" is used to indicate the subject. When used with other nouns, if \"I\" is still a subject in the sentence, you still use \"I\". For example, it's supposed to be \"Katy and I went to the zoo\", not \"Katy and me went to the zoo.\" That's just how you're supposed to write in school papers, though. It's perfectly acceptable to use \"me\" instead, since that sounds more natural to most english speakers.\n\n*However*, there is also a thing called the \"nominative predicate\". This is a fancy term for when you use \"to be\" with a subject. For example, if you pick up a phone and say \"It is me.\", that \"me\" isn't *supposed* to be \"me\", because it's not a direct object. It is a \"nominative predicate\". So you're \"supposed\" to say \"It is I\" instead. Again, that sounds stuffy, so in normal conversation, it's perfectly acceptable to say \"It is me.\"\n\n**In summary**.\n\n\"John and I went to the zoo\" = more formal , and acceptable\n\n\"John and me went to the zoo\" = less formal, still acceptable\n\n\"Me and John went to the zoo\" = less formal, still acceptable\n\n\"The killer is I!\" = more formal (to the point of sounding wrong), and acceptable\n\n\"The killer is me!\" = less formal, still acceptable.\n\nRequired reading: _URL_0_",
"* *I* did something.\n* Something happened to *me*."
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8us75x | how do soccer commentators identify players so well? | They seem to know every name and the position of every player through multiple games during live play as the ball is passed around and it's always struck me as very impressive. Is it as simple as lots of experience and a very good working memory? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8us75x/eli5_how_do_soccer_commentators_identify_players/ | {
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"It is impressive. They will normally always have a team sheet within reach. But in the same way that when you watch a tv series and get to know all the characters over time- commentators live and breathe their particular sport and get to know all players via the same method.",
"Other people have pointed out that the commentators have the lineups and the player's numbers.\n\nIf you watch soccer for a long time, you can start recognizing the players automatically without having to refer to the team sheet or the numbers. Each player has certain physical features that make them stand out. Height, width, hair and skin tone are the common factors. Then you combine that with other factors such as their style of running, their stature when walking and what part of the pitch the player tends to be regardless of position.\n\nAll of this information comes naturally if you watch the game for years like the commentators do. I am sure they still study the team sheets for every game, but it is much easier to recognize the players when you are already exposed to them at the depth most of these commentators are.",
"I’ll try and answer by speaking from my own personal experience (I’m a trainee journalist and huge football fan who writes match reports on his own team/ has written them for other teams)\n\nUsually members of the press are given teamsheets before the match, with all of the players on it. \n\nBut to be honest, when I was writing a report from a team that wasn’t my own, I struggled to identify the players. \n\nThe best way is to look at the numbers on the back of the shirt, and figure out where each player will be during the match in terms of position on the pitch. \n\nI think it’s much harder for commentators than it is for journalists writing match reports though, as you can always just ask the guy next to you if you aren’t sure!",
"All these are good reasons but also bear in mind that this is more-or-less a commentator's only job. If you had 30-40 hours a week every week in which to practice getting really good at something hard, you'd get really good at it."
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27ssie | what factors allow some mass shooters to injure/kill a large amount if people, while some harm very few during their rampage? | Let me start this out with a few things, because I'm probably on three lists by now.
This is a question that I have always wondered, but never had the gall to ask.
I in no way intend to come off as approving shootings, murder, or to put the fatalities number on a pedestal.
The question:
Some shooters, let's use James Holmes, the Aurora mass gunman. as example A. His total fatality & non fatal injury count is 82.
For example B let's use the Chardon High School shooting. Total fatality & non fatal injury count is 6.
I guess my question is: what factors lead to example A being able to kill/wound at a higher number than example B?
Were their goals not to injury or kill as many as possible? Does fear set in? Does the lower number shooting rethink at the last second? Did they not follow through with whatever 'plan' they had? Did they freeze up?
I'm really sorry if this doesn't belong here, I just can't think of anywhere else to put it, but suggestions are VERY welcome. This is just a question that I have wondered about for a while now.
I'm sorry if this offends anyone, that really isn't my intent :(
And final 'I'm sorry': sorry this is so broad. In my head I got the gist of what I wanted to ask, but actually seeing it typed out makes me want to apologize in advance because it seems so vague/broad. :(
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27ssie/eli5_what_factors_allow_some_mass_shooters_to/ | {
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"I'm pretty sure it's all about marksmanship.",
"Most school shooters don't have a target with that many people huddled into one room. The theater attack was during a premiere(i think?) and likely packed. He didn't really need to be a good shot.",
"You'd have to think it's the density of people that determines this. If an airplane dropped a bomb on a crowded stadium the result would be different than the same bomb on a sparely-populated beach. \n\nIn areas with a lot of walls/doors there are more obstacles. An open area like a theater or gym has fewer things to hide behind.\n\nWhat I don't understand is why these are increasing recently - are the numbers of incidents actually going up or is the media just showing more of it?",
"Off the top of my head (though there are almost certainly other factors):\n\n- The shooter's skill.\n\n- The type of firearm (and other weapons) used by the shooter.\n\n- The density of people in the shooter's range.\n\n- How much the surrounding environment affords potential victims an avenue for escape/safety.\n\n- The shooter's intended targets. For example, if the shooter is only pursuing women, or teachers, they'll kill far less people than a shooter who is indiscriminate.\n\n- The chance that there are officers, or others capable of stopping the shooter, on the scene and that they aren't taken by surprise or lack the necessary skills and training to stop the shooter.\n\n- The chance that the shooter experiences any regret, or psychological insight, after they begin to carry out the shootings."
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3nwnwf | where did the term spaghetti western originate? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nwnwf/eli5_where_did_the_term_spaghetti_western/ | {
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"Many 60s western films were directed by Italians, and since spaghetti is an Italian dish, the name stuck."
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t7fhi | why the jpeg format is so bad with text. | Isn't the idea of it to replace similar colored pixels with pixels of the same average color? If this is the case, why does it replace groups of the same pixels with artifact-filled bullshit? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/t7fhi/eli5_why_the_jpeg_format_is_so_bad_with_text/ | {
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"JPEG compression uses multiple types of compression to achieve its compression. Part of it is downsampling certain colour channels to reduce size. So a 200x200 image will have various parts of its colour space downsampled... like say the blue channel gets downsampled from 200x200 to 50x50.. that saves 16x the space. However, when it gets upsampled, it creates artifacts near sharp edges... making text look harder to read.\n",
"JPEG is going to look at the brightness of each color in 8x8 groups of pixels. If those areas overlap the borders of the text, then the area around the text will affect the new color of that part of the text. 8x8 pixel blocks that are entirely within text should end up as one color, although it might be a slightly different color than it was originally. "
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eq0ylz | - how do face masks keep out germs? | I see people on the subway with surgical type face masks on but I don’t get how they work.
Do they filter out germs? I would think air could still get in through the sides, in most cases there is a gap where air could get in. What am I missing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eq0ylz/eli5_how_do_face_masks_keep_out_germs/ | {
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"I was under the impression people wearing face masks in public were typically a courtesy to keep their own germs from spreading to others. \n\nWhen you cough, you spit a little. That spit has germs in it that get on your hands, your clothes, and things that you touch. \n\nIf you’re wearing a mask and you cough, the mask catches the spit, and you don’t spread as many germs around.",
"It's more to keep their germs from spreading to others\n\n\nThink of it like this. If everybody with a cold keeps 90 percent of their cold germs to themselves, then 90 percent of the cold germs that normally would be infecting others are... well... not infecting others.",
"Facemasks can help by keeping other people away from the wearer. As in, people see the wearer, assume s/he is sick and steer clear, thus the pathogens they exhale, sneeze out, cough out are further from the wearer.",
"By physically keeping out germs. \n\nMany illnesses aren't airborne. The virus or bacteria are spread in droplets of fluid. eg, when you sneeze, but also just when breathing in general. While the standard surgical mask is useless as a filter, it does limit your exposure to droplet borne pathogens (provided you also practise decent hand sanitization etc). So in hospitals, they're part of the required PPE if someone has the flu since that illness is a droplet hazard (you also ideally want something that covers your eyes).\n\nAs others have mentioned, they're also good for limiting *others* exposure. The mask is pretty effective at limiting your ability to contaminate the environment around you when you're ill.\n\nOther illnesses however are airborne (tb for example), and proper PPE for stuff like that includes actual fitted respirators. There are disposable options for those as well. They look like [this](_URL_0_) and are held much much more firmly to your face (you also need to be careful about facial hair etc).",
"They don't keep out germs. They do keep flecks/droplets of saliva to yourself if you cough. So, they're some help in ensuring you don't spread your own sickness. Some people think they'll protect you from outside germs, but they're not very effective for that."
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2qagfq | how do yearly incomes in the us compare to that in western europe? | Occasionally I like to browse around in /r/personalfinance but I'm a bit confused by how much people seem to earn (lots of folks in their twenties way over $50k, regular mentions of $100k salaries).
Obviously there is some kind of bias at work because of what kind of people that subreddit attracts, but still it seems like US salaries are a lot higher than what I'm used to. I can imagine things like cost of living and taxes are a factor, but I'm not sure about the specifics.
For example, as a web developer in the Netherlands I earn about $40k (8% vacation money included) which is just above the median (? "modaal"). It's a bit on the low side for my profession but overall I'd say I'm doing pretty okay.
Could anyone shed some light on the differences between western Europe (or Netherlands in specific) and the US?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qagfq/eli5_how_do_yearly_incomes_in_the_us_compare_to/ | {
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" > I'm a bit confused by how much people seem to earn (lots of folks in their twenties way over $50k, regular mentions of $100k salaries).\nObviously there is some kind of bias at work because of what kind of people that subreddit attracts, but still it seems like US salaries are a lot higher than what I'm used to\n\nThe median^1 income in the United State is $30932 . This is lower than Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland, but higher than all other countries.\n\nDespite having the 3rd highest median income, the U.S. has - by far - the highest disposable average^1 income in the world.\n\nSee /u/straightrazorheaven for the reason why...\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n^1 Note that it's changing from median to average, two distinctly different things."
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3wz8yc | when a movie trailer (or teaser) is released a year before it's premiere date, what's going on with the movie in the between time? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wz8yc/eli5_when_a_movie_trailer_or_teaser_is_released_a/ | {
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"For some films, they are still finishing up special effects. CGI can take quite a bit of time to complete, so they just use the parts that got finished for the trailer, or shuffle the order of completion so that they will have the shots they want to use done in time. For some films, they complete everything months in advance and the film is done, but scheduling films is done at the studio level, and if a movie gets completed earlier than expected, they can't just release it sooner without throwing their entire schedule out. The studio wants to have their big budget films released on specific weekends that they feel will make them the most money, and their smaller movies in between to keep the movie theaters happy. ",
"Editing, mostly. Films always shoot a lot more footage than the final product uses. It takes a lot of manpower to review that footage and cut it together into a workable product. Then you show it to test audiences and see how they like it, and you probably have to go back and make some changes. You've got to add CGI, too, which takes many man-hours and an incredible amount of rendering time.\n\nThe trailer isn't just outtakes from the finished movie--when it gets released, that's probably the most polished footage there is; the rest isn't that complete yet. This is also why trailers sometimes include footage that does not appear in the released film.",
"Also, in many cases Marketing a movie can take up just as much time and money as it does to shoot the movie itself: If the picture is a studio picture, there will have been a marketing campaign created (usually) around the time of production, heading through to the final premiere date. \nThink advertisements, merchandising tie-ins, working with other companies to market your film. (eg. For instance, though Star Wars may have been completed months ago, they are in the middle of their marketing campaign right now; you can't go anywhere without seeing some sort of commercial tie-in with Star Wars; that's marketing to help promote the film, which will have been decided months before the release and even months before the movie has been filmed)."
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23lri8 | if we can make imitation champagne from grapes grown outside france, why don't drug lords grow coca trees and poppies outside south america and afghanistan/burma/etc? | I understand the economic angle - cheaper, easier and such. But surely, if the climate and soil type are correct, some chap in another third world country which has low law enforcement capability can do the same. Are there some technical aspects I'm missing out here? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23lri8/eli5_if_we_can_make_imitation_champagne_from/ | {
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"Law enforcement is probably the biggest problem. Sure, you *could* grow a massive amount of poppies in the US for opium production, but the DEA would probably be on your doorstep in short order. ",
"I think you answered your own question. Those are the third world countries with poor law enforcement (or corrupt law enforcement) which have the correct soil conditions and climate.\n\nAs an aside, nobody makes imitation champagne, champagne is sparkling wine whose grapes come from the Champagne region of France, all other sparkling wines are the same (though not necessarily the same quality) but cannot be called champagne since the grapes were not grown in Champagne.",
"Its the climate, the land isn't suitable to make food producing crops efficiently when they can cheaply plant and harvest poppies. Additionally the dea cannot pressure a government to shut these illegal operations down if that government cannot control the area. \n\nIf poppies were so easy to grow outside of Afghanistan then pharmaceutical companies wouldn't be buying their legit supplies from there as well. ",
"Also it's not imitation champagne. Its the same thing as champagne but since its not bottled in champagne France, its not called champagne"
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37u1o3 | why do people whistle when they're bored or nervous? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37u1o3/eli5_why_do_people_whistle_when_theyre_bored_or/ | {
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"When they're bored, it's something complex but usually not difficult with which to keep their mind occupied. It doesn't require a pair of free hands, and if you know how to whistle more than one note it's a lot easier than humming (in my opinion). I don't know about when people are nervous, sorry; my interpretation is that it breaks a creepy silence, and for some people is a way to feign nonchalance."
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1a5dof | the keto diet | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1a5dof/eli5the_keto_diet/ | {
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"In a normal diet, where people eat a lot of carbohydrates (\"carbs),\" your body takes those carbs and turns them into glucose, which is basically sugar. Using all of that sugar for energy can be great, but it isn't the only way the body can get energy.\n\nYour body can also get energy from fat. Instead of turning fat into glucose, though, your body turns it into \"ketone bodies.\" When your body is burning ketone bodies instead of glucose, you are on a \"ketogenic diet,\" or \"in ketosis.\"\n\nThe way the diet works isn't entirely understood, because it's part of a very complicated digestive process with many different chemicals ('hormones\") all interacting in different ways, and it can be hard to study. The basic theory, though, is that when a body is \"in ketosis\" it like burning through fat, so if you don't feed yourself quite enough fat to meet your body's demand it will burn your body fat, too. All diets work (or are supposed to work) by making your body turn to its stored fat for energy; \"keto\" is thought by some people to be a more efficient means of doing this. Other people think \"keto\" works simply by making you feel more full (fat and protein often make you feel more full than carbs, and being in ketosis might help this feeling happen sooner, too, again for complicated reasons) and thus helping you eat less. This is another part of the diet that still isn't entirely understood, though more and more research is being done all the time.\n\nThe basic eating plan for a keto diet is simple: eat fewer than 20g of non-fiber carbs per day (the amount of carbs you can eat actually varies from person to person for a variety of complex reasons, but 20g per day is a good target for most people; fiber is counted as carbs on nutritional labels but your body can't actually digest it, so they don't count towards your limit on keto). That really is all there is to it.\n\nOf course, there's a lot more you should pay attention to if you want to do keto in a healthy manner. Eating plenty of vegetables (vegetables should be your primary source of carbs), eating fat to replace the energy you're used to getting from carbs, and eating protein to protect your lean body mass (making sure your muscles don't get eaten up) are all important recommendations. Many people take multivitaimns to ensure they are getting the nutrients they need, and everyone should drink plenty of water.",
"Not sure if you know but if you go to /r/keto they will be happy to answer any questions, or just look at their side bar.\n\nPretty much you eat a diet balanced of 60% fat 30% protein and 10% carbs. Preferably more fats and proteins. Your body will burn carbs for a quick energy then protein and fat. If you get rid of the carbs, your body has to turn towards proteins and fats. You need to keep your protein intake up but not too much cause proteins can stall the fat burn. More protein is important if you work out while on keto.\n\nI've been on Keto for about 4 months and I've lost a lot of weight and dropped 2 dress sizes. It's a great diet contrary to popular belief. Once you change your diet and it starts working it's great! ",
"I recently posted pics of my scarred abdomen due to recent surgeries. The post kind of exploded more than I thought it would and I was naturally indated with a mix of both good and bad comments. One I read confused me - they told me I should think about going on the Paleo or Keto diet. I couldn't figure out if this was just them telling me I'm fat and need to lose some weight, or if it would be good for the healing of wounds.\n\nFrom what I'm reading here, I'm guessing their comment was a derogatory one.",
"Low carbs, high fat. You still eat lots of vegetables, just the ~~actual healthy~~ non-starchy ones, not potatoes.\n\nYou can still eat most things you want like pizza, burgers, cookies, cake, etc, but the catch is, you have to make it yourself. You have to replace starchy/carby ingredients with low carb alternatives. This is why it's hard for a lot of people to stick to keto. You get tired of cooking everything all the time.\n\nAfter a few weeks of keto, you are burning lots of fat very quickly, have more energy, and eat less because protein and fat make you feel full faster than carbs do.\n\nEdit: Wasn't trying to rub anyone wrong about potatoes. Just saying they are very starchy and keto-unfriendly.",
"It should also be mentioned that ketogenic diets have also been used as an effective means of treating (not curing, however, as far as I know) those who are epileptic.\n\nedit: I a word.",
"I saw someone on /r/keto descripe it like this: \nImagine you're at a camp, and everyone has their own campfires. Everyone uses gasoline on thier campfires, it burns good but they have to put new gasoline on their campfires every 10 minutes. \nYou decide to use extra logs on your campfire instead of gasoline. The logs burns slower and much more sustainable; you only have to place a new log every hour or so. \n\n*Edit:*\nThen the other campers sees how well you're doing with your campfire, and approach you to ask how your doing. You explain the principle and suddenly they all turn into fucking campfire experts and tells you how wrong you are because they've been taught throughout most of their lives how gasoline is the only way to do things. ",
"What's your favorite food? You can't eat it. You can't eat any of the foods you 5-year-olds like. That means no pizza, no french fries, no chicken nuggets, no soda, no juice, no pancakes, no waffles, no froot loops, no lucky charms, no pumpkin pie, no apple pie, no apples, no bananas, no banana bread, no bread, no sandwiches, no jelly, no fluff, no cookies, no crackers, no canolis, no candy, no cake, no brownies, no biscuits, no gravy, no mashed potatoes, no macaroni and cheese, no spaghetti, no raviolis, no tricolor pasta, no potato chips, no Doritos, no tacos, no pudding, and no jello. You can only eat meat and those vegetables you hate. And don't even think about smothering anything in catsup.\n\nSeriously kid, no one your age would want to go on this diet; read about it when you are grown up.",
"keto diet is short for ketogenic diet\n\nit was originally developed by doctors who found that most children who follow a ketogenic diet have fewer seizures, and almost all of them have decreases in the severity of seizures. \n\nbyproduct: this has a dramatic effect of lowering body mass and stored body fat.\n\n**how it works**:\n\n* it prevents the insulin response. insulin tells your body to (a) store all excess energy as fat and (b) to stop using fat for energy.\n\n* by strictly limiting the foods needed to make glycogen, the body then must use another source of energy - fats (more specifically, ketones, which the body makes from stored fat). when you are using ketones for energy instead of glycogen (the energy source derived from carbohydrates), you are in \"ketosis.\"\n\nmany people confuse keto with atkins. here is how atkins differs from keto.\n\n**Atkins**\n\n* works on the assumption that protein and fat have a slow digestion rate which defers additional calorie consumption through satiety (keeps you fuller longer)\n* people get no more than 20% of calories from saturated fat\n\n**Keto**\n\n* puts a limit on protein because excess protein has been shown to be converted into glycogen - which brings you out of ketosis\n* believes that fat (particularly fats found in nature - *how do you get oil out of corn?*) is the \"best\" source of energy for the human body.\n* believes fat-adapting the body is ideal - want to burn fat (aka \n* a significant majority - north of 60% - of energy intake should come from fat. \n\nthere is a lot of old medical science saying that saturated fats are bad. much of the recent science is debating this right now. check out /r/keto for more information. you'll be amazed how quickly people lose weight and even improve their bloodwork / lipid profiles.",
"it's where carbs are the devil and removing them from your diet makes you ripped!",
"Since we're ELI5ing; what's the health controversy all about? Newspapers made a big deal (which is their job, of course) about low carb/keto diets claiming they were dangerous.",
"I would like to point out that, because keto has you consuming less carbs, it is a horrible diet for athletes and bodybuilders. \n\nFor more info, here's a good summary: _URL_1_\n\nI think it fair to mention that they have a paragraph on that page that mentions Ketosis as a possible means of building muscle. This section sounds like speculation to me though, and there is a counter argument directly below it. \n\nIf you are looking to lose weight, ketosis may help you. But it is not a miracle diet by any means and carries several risks/considerations with it, such as possible liver and kidney damage.\n\nEdit: Some more info:\n\n > Another serious side effect that will affect your training goals is that on a low carbohydrate diet you will fatigue earlier which in turn leads to feeling lethargic and you don’t feel like training. This then leads to lack of exercise and will lower the metabolic rate. Muscle glycogen is the normal fuel choice for your muscle and without glycogen the muscle fibers contract less when glycogen is not immediately available to the working muscle. In absence of glycogen for fuel the body will then initially use protein from muscle and fat, the initial phase of your muscle depletion will be rapid and caused by the use of easily accessed muscle protein for metabolism or for conversion to glucose for fuel. If you then eat an excess of protein this does not prevent this because there is a caloric deficit.\n\nSource: _URL_0_\n\nEdit 2: it appears I've been found by the keto lovers, hence the sudden influx of downvotes. ",
"I'm late to this thread, but here is a comment I saved from reddit a while ago with a good explanation.\n\nCredit goes to /u/emmveepee\n\n\n > Honestly, there is not much in the medical text books about ketosis, since most of it is geared towards ketoacidosis (in diabetics). The biochemistry is similar, but ketoacidosis is a medical concern. My knowledge really comes from jargon-rich biochemistry textbooks.\nI'm not an expert because I'm not a dietician or physician, but I do know how the diet works.\nCrash course - Our bodies are likely used to a low-carb diet (think cavemen - agriculture is a recent invention in terms of evolutionary time scales)\nLet's think of a typical, 21st century diet. Some fat, some protein, but A LOT of carbs. Breads. Sweets. Sugar. Corn Syrup. None of these things are natural; they're all man made products. Bacon is natural. Beef, Poultry, Eggs, Vegetables are natural. Fruits? Fruits are cons made by crafty plants - they trick us into eating them.\nSo you just ate a pie. What happens? Your body senses a rise in blood sugar, meaning you just ate. As a response, your body produces insulin. Insulin let's glucose into your body's cells. Insulin, however, is a hormone. It also suppresses your appetite, and enhances \"satiation\" and inhibits \"hunger\" enzymes (read: Ghrelin, Leptin, etc). Satiation is that feeling you get after you ate a pie.\nBut then what? Your glucose levels drop because your cells are using them. Or, maybe insulin isn't as effective as it used to be, because we eat a lot of pies (insulin resistance). So you might not even be satisfied after that pie, OR, your blood sugar is back down to normal, and you're hungry again. So, what do you do? Eat more. And because you just \"spiked\" your blood sugar with a pie, your insulin spiked too, and now it spiked DOWN to \"clean up\" (sort of like a rebound). This makes you even more hungry.\nNow, let's say you give up the carbs. Your body senses the low blood sugar, and you get hungry. You muscle through it (keto flu). You eat bacon, veggies, and other keto friendly foods instead. Your blood sugar is getting lower. If it gets too low, you're going to go into a coma and eventually die.\nBUT WAIT! You don't die. Living is generally your body's number one concern, so it can cope with this low blood sugar. First, it uses glycogen, which is stored in your body (mostly liver). Glycogen is pretty much stored-sugar. This refills your blood sugar to a low, but \"normal\" level. You're still hungry, but you're alive (still keto flu. You SHOULD eat during this, just keto friendly foods. As much as you want. Seriously. Eat a pound of bacon.)\nBut \"glycogen\" isn't unlimited. You run out after 1-3 days. But now what? If your blood sugar goes down, you'll get tired, sick, etc. But this is when the beauty of Ketosis kicks in. Your body is starting to run out of glycogen, and realizes it. But it has all of this extra fat still. And you know what? That fat can be used for energy too.\nKetosis turns your fat into ketones, which can be used for fuel for almost your whole body. This is euphoric (so keep reading). Your body starts burning fat. Plus, that dietary fat you've eaten, helps you burn fat. Your blood sugar goes back up (from ketosis). And let's face it, you have a few pounds of fat to burn, months, or maybe years worth.\nBut the thermodynamic LAW says you need to burn more energy than you take in. So this is the euphoric part of the diet. Despite being allowed to eat any keto-friendly food, and as much as you want, you'll find that you don't want to. That insulin hormone stabilized - it's not being \"jolted\" by all that sugar anymore. Those of us who can not control their hunger are suddenly no longer hungry. I just went 16 hours without eating, and I had to force myself to eat. You also have a lot more energy because of the fat you're burning. When you're sleeping, you're burning fat. When you're EATING, you're burning fat. You're always burning fat.\nYour body uses substances like this: Carbs > > > > > > > > > > Fats > < Protein (the > < is there because it depends)\nSo what does this feel like on a human scale? Day 1 - stop eating 300-500g carbs/day Day 2 - Keto flu (supposedly drinking soup broth works) A lot of people don't really notice it. You're burning glycogen at this point) Day 3 - Scale should drop significantly; loss of water weight (you used up all of your glycogen, which holds a lot of water Day 4 - Ketosis kicks in, keto flu lessens or stops. Day 5 - Feeling good, starting to lose appetite Day 14 - Top of the world, maybe lost as much as 15 pounds, and you're completely satiated\nEveryone experiences it differently. I don't get a keto flu, and I can get into ketosis in a single day.\nAs I said, the downside of keto is that YOU CAN NOT CHEAT. You can not reward yourself with carbs for not eating carbs. If you make it to Day 5 and eat a doughnut, you can throw yourself out of ketosis. Reward yourself with bacon, or nuts, or something keto-friendly, or don't reward yourself with food period. You're not a dog.\nLet me know if you have any questions.",
"The keto diet is an effective way to lose weight which is safe and backed up by loads of science. ",
"I've been on a keto diet since July 2012 (lost 45 pounds in the first 5 months, now just maintaining because I don't need to lose any more), and this is how I'd explain it if you were 5:\n\nWhen you eat carbs all the time, your body gets used to getting them and decides that it wants all its energy from carbs from now on, ignoring the OTHER source of energy it's storing in your body: fat. A ketogenic diet breaks that habit and gets your body to realize that it can and should use its fat stores for energy (with the added bonus of fat making you feel full longer, resulting in you eating less overall).",
"Huh, when I asked this about a month ago on here I got one comment telling me to read the faq on r/keto. I had read it already and it was disappointing because I needed it explained almost literally like I was five. Glad this post has gotten attention, I understand it now.",
"Hey, put down that bread, and have some eggs and bacon. Boom."
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75m8cy | why don't eggs go bad as fast as meat? | Like eggs sometimes have salmonella just like chicken, but you can't keep chicken or other raw meat past like 5 or 6 days without the bacteria creating too many toxins for you to consume it. So why can you keep eggs for weeks before they go bad? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/75m8cy/eli5_why_dont_eggs_go_bad_as_fast_as_meat/ | {
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"Realize that eggs are laid by birds. The birds lay a clutch of eggs which sit at room tempMeaterature until enough are laid. Then the bird sits on the eggs until they hatch about the same time. Eggs can sit at room temperature without changing for days.\n\nEggs did not begin as little pockets of food for you to enjoy. They began as ways birds reproduce.\n\nMeat is sliced carcasses. An animal is dead. The skin has been removed. What was living tissue is exposed to air with bacteria. Eggs still have a shell protecting them.\n\n"
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2h8o89 | how did studio recording work before digital multitrack came along? | Growing up and learning recording techniques in a time where digital multitrack is so prevalent, analog music recording seems so foreign to me. How was it done back on tape (or vinyl), before you could just move anything you wanted around on a computer? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h8o89/eli5_how_did_studio_recording_work_before_digital/ | {
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"You hit record, the tape zoomed up and started running. If you wanted to add effects, you ran the tape through the box and recorded to a second tape (no do-overs). If you wanted to edit it, you got out a razor blade and cut it apart then glued the part you wanted into place. It's a pain in the ass, but it has such a different workflow that the studio techniques and creative decisions made while working on tape create a very different product. It's also still used, there are a bunch of tape diehards who only record in analog. \n\nYou should check out the movie \"sound city\" by the way. It has a lot of cool information about that kind of thing. ",
"The term \"multitrack\" is a reference to literal \"tracks\" that run along reel to reel tape. \n\nTo splice music together yoiu'd physically splice the tape - cut it and use adhesive to reconnect it.\n\nThe act of \"mixing\" or \"mixing down\" was to take multiple tracks and mix them down to a single track (managing EQ etc.). You had to manage the finite track space carefully.\n\nSo...you'd lay down a drum track, then a bass track and that would have taken up two tracks and you've 15 parts and 8 tracks to work with. So..you'd do some EQ and mix down the 2 tracks to one track and then you'd have a bass and drums track. That takes your 2 utilized tracks and makes it only take up one track...but...it's also a point of no return (other than going back to the original tracks and starting over again with the mix-down). \n\nedit: spllng\n",
"One of the best videos on that subject is Sound City _URL_1_ there are parts in the movie where they show how it was done with tape and the older Neve console _URL_0_",
"Everyone gave you a correct answer. Additionally, it was also possible to ping tracks back to each other on the same tape, so for instance if you had, let's say, oh I dunno, a Tascam Portastudio 424 (a low-end cassette device popular back in the day with people just getting into recording), and you recorded drums on Track 1 and guitar on Track 2, you could copy them both onto Track 3 at the same time, which freed up Tracks 1 and 2, and so on. (However, doing this on the 424 generated a lot of tape hiss and such, so that by the time you were finished, what you got was half music, half hiss. Ah, the memories.)",
"In the very early days, they'd put out one microphone and have the band play the song. The singers would be closer, and the orchestra would be further back to balance levels. So it was pretty simple... you get musicians who can play the song live and record it. Eventually they progressed into using several microphones and recording them all at once, then things started being recorded into several tracks so they could be mixed after the fact, and people started experimenting in the studio with overdubbing and tape splicing.\n\nRecordings simply weren't as \"perfectionist\" back in the day... take The Beatles, for example; there's a [whole site dedicated to listening to every song and pointing out every little quirk or mistake](_URL_0_).\n\n",
"Phil Spector's Wall Of Sound is an extremely creative use of mono to build a cascading \"wall\" of sound.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\nThere's a great book I'm reading right now about Phil Spector called Tearing Down The Wall of Sound - The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector by Mick Brown and it gives a great history of early rock and roll and Phil Spector's genius use of mono."
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fqspd4 | how literal is it when people say 'the big bang was the creation of the universe' | when people say the big bang was the creation of the universe, do they mean there was an infinite vast outer space that existed and the big bang happened in said space and created everything? OR do they mean there was literally just true nothingness, no space. which i guess humans cant comprehend ?? and the big bang happened which created outer space and everything in it?
if it's the latter....how does one try to conceptualize absolute nothingness? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fqspd4/eli5_how_literal_is_it_when_people_say_the_big/ | {
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"There is a special term for people who say the big bang created the universe: wrong. The big bang, and more correctly cosmic inflation, says nothing about how the universe was created. It only describes the universe from a very, very early period. What happened before that isn't described by any known theories. We will likely need a theory of quantum gravity before we can see any earlier than what inflation tells us.",
"We really don't know, most of the known physics breaks down around the big bang, it is possible that the matter for the big bang could have come from a previous big crunch so the big bang is just the recent in a cycle of bangs and crunches.",
"The big bang was not the creation of the universe. Anyone who says that fundamentally misunderstands what the big bang is. We cannot and make no attempt to describe or model what came before the big bang."
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4vpfkb | why, when buying peaches, are the varieties not identified like the varieties of apples? | Apples have a number of identifiable varieties that can be very helpful as a consumer when purchasing them. Peaches on the other hand, only seem to identify the peach in very general terms, like "freestone" or "white" or "yellow." Even when I ask at the farm stand, I get a vacant shrug, "I don't know." | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vpfkb/eli5_why_when_buying_peaches_are_the_varieties/ | {
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"Apples have a lot more variability in size, flavor, and texture. Peaches not so much. Peaches are also much harder to grow, and only grow well in warmer areas, so less crop means less variety. In order to try and fix this, the traits usually introduced in new varieties of peaches change size and cold tolerance. So there are varieties, but they are really only important for the person growing the peaches.\n\n(Source: Studying horticulture)",
"Peaches and other stone pit fruits require specific conditions to grow and are grown in a greater variety of areas (i.e.: CA, TX, GA, FL) compared to apples (75% or more of US crops comes from WA state.) Every orchard or vendor might use a different name either for marketing reasons or to specify crossbreed varieties. For example, Sugartree a well known CA orchard, has at least 10 varieties of yellow flesh peach: August Fire, Honey Blaze, Crimson Sweet, etc). \n\nWhen you only have one spot in your department or stand for yellow peaches different vendors' products might (probably will) get mixed. The boxes might use a catchy marketing or crossbreed name like in the above example which makes it difficult if you have five different orchards' boxes of yellow skin peaches with different names. Small orchards might not even sticker their peaches, especially if they're local. Then it just becomes a \"yellow peach idk lol\".\n\nCompound this with the fact the average worker can't be bothered to learn this unless the tables are pretty much empty and pre-signed.\n\nSource: produce manager for 3 years",
"Peaches don't last nearly as long as apples, as such it isn't really feasible for a grocery to have bins of 10 different peach types. Why label the variety of your one conventional peach and one organic peach when they're likely to be different next week because your supplier sent a different variety?"
]
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| []
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[],
[],
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1dv7eu | why republicans are still obsessed with benghazi. is there a legitimate argument to be made, or is it just wishful thinking to get obama in hot water? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dv7eu/eli5_why_republicans_are_still_obsessed_with/ | {
"a_id": [
"c9u58rp",
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"text": [
"Politicians of both parties love a scandal for the other side. It can dominate the news cycle, and it's especially good if it fits into people preconceived notions about that party. In this case it could be used to suggest that Obama's \"weak policies\" might invite attacks, or the old standard \"democrats are soft on military\" to suggest that lack of military funding is to blame. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to investigate Benghazi, but it gets pushed in the press mostly because republicans are hunting for political capital they can use against Obama.",
"Wouldn't you like to know if those people died in vain? Wouldn't you like to know if we could have protected them better, came to their aid faster, done anything to make the outcome different? If someone is to blame, shouldn't we find that out, and correct the problem?\n\nPut all political spin aside. Don't we owe it to those killed to find these things out? "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
]
|
||
bam4ho | how do they remove caffeine from drinks like coffee or tea? are they not naturally caffeinated? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bam4ho/eli5_how_do_they_remove_caffeine_from_drinks_like/ | {
"a_id": [
"ekcjzt4"
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"text": [
"No they are naturally caffeinated. There are four different ways to decaffeinate a drink. \n\nMethylene chloride processing - the chemical is a solvent for caffeine \n\nEthyl acetate - this is called 'naturally decaffeinated' because the chemical is found in many fruits, same as above it is a solvent. \n\nCO2 - at very high temps and pressure the co2 reaches a supercritical state where it acts as both a fluid and gas and the smaller non polar caffeine molecules bond with the co2, this leave most of the flavor molecules as such having more flavor. \n\nWater processing - this is basically steeping the drink (typically coffee) and then is passed through a carbon filter to remove the caffeine in the liquid. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
79hbec | why you can stay up and ride out your drunkeness, but of you sleep you get a hangover | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/79hbec/eli5_why_you_can_stay_up_and_ride_out_your/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Presumably, while you are awake, you are continuing to drink water and eat food. A large portion of hangovers is dehydration, so you're reducing that portion of it.",
"When you stay up, the hangover hits gradually. You feel a wee bit worse every few minutes, but it's not like there was a point when the buzz ended and the hangover started. They just gradually faded into each other, and eventually it's 9am and you aren't feeling so good, so time to go to crash out.\n\nWhen you go to sleep, you presumably still had your buzz on. So your memory jumps from happy buzz, feeling no pain as you fall asleep or pass out, to waking up to uhhh.... shit. Yeah, you're deep in hangover territory now. Your consciousness just jumped from happy buzz to miserable hangover."
]
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| []
| [
[],
[]
]
|
||
1s4twe | how are agreements over the silk road enforced if everything is anonymous? | If every sale on Silk Road is anonymous, why does a seller bother delivering the drugs once he's been paid in bitcoin? Maybe I'm misunderstanding something fundamental about the market. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1s4twe/how_are_agreements_over_the_silk_road_enforced_if/ | {
"a_id": [
"cdtwte0",
"cdtxya9"
],
"score": [
2,
2
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"text": [
"Usually the bit coins are held in escrow so that the buy knows they are there and the seller doesn't release them till the good are his.",
"Good sites like Silk Road have user reviews to primarily stem the flow of scammers. They don't advise people to buy anything from anyone with a bad review or no reviews unless they are OK with losing money potentially. Smart sellers deliver a consistent product which nets them consistent sales. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
]
|
|
5rgnh8 | if games can now render almost perfect textures, why it is yet so difficult to have a nice looking shadow? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rgnh8/eli5_if_games_can_now_render_almost_perfect/ | {
"a_id": [
"dd7242o"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Shadows require redrawing the scene from the perspective of the light source to determine what is on top of what relative to that light source.\n\nWhen this redrawing happens the results get stored in a texture called a shadow map. This shadow map has a fixed resolution which is why shadows up close can look good but shadows far away can look patchy (just like if you stretch a texture over too much distance it looks good up close but terrible far away).\n\nIf you have too many light sources this means you are redrawing the scene for each light source. This can be mitigated somewhat by only redrawing the parts of the scene that change but it's still an expensive operation."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
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|
||
5a6r7m | how come dandelions only grow on lawns? | I never see them in the wild. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5a6r7m/eli5_how_come_dandelions_only_grow_on_lawns/ | {
"a_id": [
"d9e2naq"
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"text": [
"There are plenty of dandelions in the wild, but they do best in disturbed habitats where biological succession has been reset. Think forest fires, windfalls, and lawns.\n\nYou don't see as many outside of lawns because their seed dispersal works best for open areas where they can get blown to and they like lots of sun to support their quick growing. They tend to get out competed by taller plants who shade them out.\n\nEdit: deleted a redundant phrase"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
|
4qjdrr | after the president signs a bill what is the filing process that the physical copy goes through? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qjdrr/eli5after_the_president_signs_a_bill_what_is_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"d4thfdf"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"It goes into the Office of Federal Register at the National Archives. [Source](_URL_0_)"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"https://www.congress.gov/legislative-process/presidential-action"
]
]
|
||
t064o | radians | and the relationship between radians and degrees. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/t064o/radians/ | {
"a_id": [
"c4iga6x"
],
"score": [
4
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"text": [
"Using degrees, you say that a full circle is 360 - this number is really easy to split up into a bunch of different parts (think hours & minutes). Radians use 2*pi, because once you start doing trigonometric functions, it makes them easier. Degrees are a little easier for most people to visualize, radians make doing calculations simpler."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
|
frl42k | can someone explain the sodium potassium pump? | I cannot for the life of me understand this. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/frl42k/eli5_can_someone_explain_the_sodium_potassium_pump/ | {
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"There is a lot of sodium outside the cell and lots of potassium inside. When that happens, the sodium and the potassium try to move towards where there's fewer of them, like how the gas from inside a soda bottle violently escapes the bottle. However, sodium and potassium atoms are very big and they're charged, so they have a hard time passing through the cell membrane, which is essentially your soda bottle's cap, preventing the ions from passing through.\n\nThe sodium potassium pump tries to send sodium outside the cell and potassium inside it, even though the sodium normally wants to enter the cell and the potassium normally wants to exist it. \n\nThe pump has two \"forms\", one which attracts sodium and one which attracts potassium. First, it will open towards the inside in its form that attracts sodium. Once 3 sodium atoms bind to the pump, the pump will close, then re-open towards the exterior and change into the form that attracts potassium, releasing the sodium. Then, 2 potassium atoms will bind to the pump, the pump closes, re-opens towards the interior of the cell and change into the form that attracts sodium, releasing the potassium.\n\nAt some point during the process, the pump binds to ATP, which is a molecule in which most of our cell's energy is stored. The ATP breaks into ADP and P, releasing its energy so the pump can use it to close and open. The ADP leaves to get recharged back into ATP, while the P stays on the pump. The P being bound to the pump is what allows it to be in its potassium attracting state. After potassium is bound to the pump, the P is released. Breaking this bond also gives the pump energy to close and re-open. Since the P is what allowed the pump to attract potassium, you can guess that, when it is gone, it reverts back into its sodium attracting form"
]
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[]
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|
4umpwo | does a third party have any chance of actually winning an election? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4umpwo/eli5does_a_third_party_have_any_chance_of/ | {
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"text": [
"It would take a lot of circumstance such as the downfall of the party. Realistically, the most a candidate could get is about 15% in the general election. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
2pgsdj | how come dads feel antipathy towards their daughter's boyfriends but not towards their son's girlfriends? do mothers have similar feelings about their children but vice versa? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pgsdj/eli5_how_come_dads_feel_antipathy_towards_their/ | {
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"I think, for many people, it all goes back to remembering what you were like when you were at the age where you were discovering boyfriends/girlfriends. For a guy, you remember chasing girls down, trying to win their affection, and probably having dirty thoughts about them. Guys at that age are really curious about getting laid, and they generally have a one-track mind: Sex. So as a father, you remember that and automatically have ill feelings towards boyfriends.",
"The antipathy is largely exaggerated for comedic effect in media. IRL, it's a case-by-case basis and often it's not even there, especially for younger, more progressive generations.",
" > Do mothers have similar feelings about their children but vice versa?\n\nMothers may feel like a girl is taking her son away from her, so there can definitely be antipathy there. The stereotype of the horrible mother-in-law doesn't come from nowhere. "
]
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bgi2qy | why does heating a wire increase resistance? doesn’t heating something usually make it move more? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bgi2qy/eli5_why_does_heating_a_wire_increase_resistance/ | {
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"text": [
"When cold, the molecules in the wire are close together making it easier for electrons to move from on to another. \n\nWhen the wire heats up, the molecules move around more in essentially random patterns making it harder for the electrons to flow. Thats what resistance is.",
"The particles moving more is the problem. Imagine navigating through a crowd of people. If everyone is standing still, that's reasonably easy. If everyone's moving around on the other hand, it becomes much harder to navigate through the crowd. You can consider the situation in the wire to be similar to this.",
"You are correct, heating things makes the atoms making it up vibrate more. That's the problem. \n \nWhen a current passes through a wire, some electrons that are not tightly bound to their parent atoms are pulled along by the electric field (voltage). They move from where they are to a molecule downstream, kind of like water flowing in a stream. \n \nBut the atoms of the substance are there also, and their random vibrations impede this movement. It's like the difference between trying to cross a crowded room, and trying to cross a crowded room of people dancing. \n \nThere is another issue, however, that opposes this effect. In some materials, the number of \"conduction band\" electrons that aren't tightly bound to their parent atoms increases greatly with temperature. So even though the electron mobility is hindered by higher temperature, the quantity is increased. So in some things (like semiconductors) the amount of current can increase with temperature increase."
]
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6xy10q | how come some beaches have seashells and some don't? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6xy10q/eli5_how_come_some_beaches_have_seashells_and/ | {
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"text": [
"Seashells are the shells of organisms, clams, snails, etc, they are more prevalent in some areas than others, and some areas the currents don't bring them to shore. It is a combination of the organisms producing them being prevalent and the currents to take them ashore."
]
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21gddj | if russia and the us were to declare war on each other right now, what would happen between the astronauts/cosmonauts on the international space station? | It's always seemed to me that both space agencies seem to distance themselves from earthly politics, but if the US and Russia were to suddenly go to war, could/would there be bloodshed in space? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21gddj/eli5_if_russia_and_the_us_were_to_declare_war_on/ | {
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"There is a gentleman's agreement that earthly conflict does not extend into space. They are not soldiers. ",
"they would probably ignore any orders to harm each other.",
"Absolutely not. The people in the space station are highly intelligent people that would not allow their respective countries politics to interfere with the safety and results of their mission. \n\nThat's not to say that there won't be an impact. Russia may prevent their space agency from cooperating with NASA and the total mission of the ISS may be stifled. ",
"Not likely to be bloodshed. There are more than just Russians and Americans on the ISS to act as a buffer and the people on the station are scientists not soldiers so. There is a capsule attached to the space station that is transported up with the rocket that is for returning to earth. They would likely all pile into this and land in a neutral country.",
"There is a gun onboard the ISS",
"They would probably just feel sad and worried together. They would likely spend most of their time trying to keep themselves updated on the news of the conflict by constantly monitoring the media available to them. They might feel a little bit panicky about the idea of potentially being trapped in space without a mission to rescue them.",
"Nothing at all but I wouldn't mind if they had a no-gravity MMA match...(for science of course)",
"These people are smart, rational, best friends who have been living together in a crazy environment for a long time. \n\nNothing would happen.",
"A part of me wants it to be something like the spacestation training sport in Ender's Game except they would fight to the death or until someone blows the airlock so no one can win.\n\nBut I think they would probably just float around scared until someone on the ground remembers them and sends up a shuttle to get them home.",
"They are representatives on an international setting.\n\nHopefully, like with the Olympics, they would stay out of the conflict.\n\nOr they'd have daily arm wrestling competitions.",
"If America and Russia go to war, and an American and a Russian meet each other on vacation in Sydney Australia, would you expect them to start brawling in the streets?\n\nHow about a research convention/symposium on the effects of radiation and chemicals leaking out of Fukushima Daiichi? Should two doctorates interrupt lunch by trying to stab one another?\n\nThe answer is no. They won't (shouldn't) start fighting.",
"I'm pretty sure I saw a link with nasa on it saying it's relationship with Russian astronauts would not change. correct me if I'm wrong. ",
"First to put on their spacesuits and vent the internal atmosphere wins.",
"As of now, there are no indications that the Crimean conflict will affect space exploration. Blood shed in space is highly unlikely, especially because the ISS is a joint venture with nations other than the US and Russia (Canada, Japan, UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, etc. [The most recent expedition](_URL_2_) launched yesterday and includes 3 Russians, 1 American, and is commanded by a Japanese astronaut). The more realistic concern would be Russia refusing to sell NASA seats on Soyuz capsules, effectively grounding all American astronauts.\n\n[Source.](_URL_1_) [And another.](_URL_0_)",
"They'll watch from their cozy space station as we destroy humanity. And they may have s martini.",
"Slapfight. \n\nWait, no, that's the explain like THEY'RE five answer.",
"A tantalizing game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, in which the losers have to wear the winning team's flag painted on their faces so they look silly.",
"Funny thing is, if the US and Russia declared war, it would be absolutely nothing like the first two wars. Both countries have an insane amount of nuclear weapons that can wipe out the entire earth, let alone each country.",
"One-on-one thunderdome style battle royal, loser is ejected into space",
"Can you imagine the horror of watching nuclear war from the ISS? ",
"OR a zero-gravity matrix type scene with bullets flying by in slo-mo. Destiny. ",
"Who knows, two nations that have shared space on a space station have never gone to war with each other before. I think the US has contracted the Russians to fly the Americans back to Earth, so I don't know if they would deny them or what.",
"I think it could be the backdrop of a really cool political thriller for Hollywood. ",
"Considering the Americans are dependent on Russian spacecraft to get to and from the station I would imagine nothing would happen until they returned to earth. At which point they would be taken into Russian custody and held as bargaining chips.",
"Of course it's shank or be shanked",
"[Nothing.](_URL_0_)\n\n(Not sure if posted yet.)",
"They carry out order 66",
"There almost certainly wouldn't be bloodshed. A similar situation is what happened to [the German ambassador to the USSR when Nazi Germany declared war on the USSR](_URL_0_). This guy not just was in Russia when the Nazis declared war, he personally delivered the declaration. What did the Russians do with him? They kept him under arrest for a few weeks, then deported him to Turkey (a neutral nation), from where he went back to Germany.\n\n",
"Conflict will not arise on the space station unless the US and Russia decide to completely give up on it.\n\nThe ISS cannot operate without joint cooperation. The US funds and supplies it while the Russians give transportation. We can't do the transportation on our own, and the Russians can't fund and supply it on their own.",
"They would probably pour each other a shot of vodka and go \"kinda sucks, eh?\"",
"They are given the title \"Ambassador of Humanity\" and are exempt from surface conflicts. That isnt to say they wouldnt have words for each other, but until they come down back to earth, they have a responsibility to remain peaceful. ",
"Not a dam thing. They would continue working and living together."
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"http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/key-senator-says-we-depend-too-much-russia-space-n55861",
"http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20140318/SPACE/303180061/Nelson-U-S-Russian-cooperation-space-will-continue",
"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition39/#.UzOR8_n2Y70"
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awyau5 | budget airlines, the fares are ultra cheap year on year, it seems impossible that they are turning in a profit, how can they sustain this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/awyau5/eli5_budget_airlines_the_fares_are_ultra_cheap/ | {
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"They reduce the employee costs to the absolute minimum. In addition to that, the prices most of the times only look cheap on first glance. Most people will eventually figure out that they end up paying extra for many minor things, such as baggage, seat reservation, priority boarding and other things.\n\nMost of the times you end up paying more than you initially thought you would. That's their business model pretty much. ",
"There is a relatively short [YouTube video](_URL_0_) from Wendover Productions that actually covers this topic pretty. It covers the topic better than i could. "
]
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[],
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"https://youtu.be/069y1MpOkQY"
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||
3fh10m | why do belly buttons smell weird? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fh10m/eli5why_do_belly_buttons_smell_weird/ | {
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"text": [
"Since its shaped the way it is, in a circle, sweat, dirt, and anything else gets in there and isn't always washed out completely, leaving a strange smell",
"Anything else being bacteria. Fuzz too. Dial soap is amazing as it kills bacteria and thus the smell as well. ",
"Its so people who smell them will bring it up in conversation, thus identifying themselves as a person who sniffs bellybuttons. "
]
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||
23yir1 | what exactly are stomach bugs / viruses and how do they spread? | They seem to come in big waves - a bunch of people get them ( seemingly unconnected people ) and then it dissipates. What are they and how do they spread ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23yir1/eli5_what_exactly_are_stomach_bugs_viruses_and/ | {
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"Stomach flu or stomach bugs are neither flu nor bugs. But, the typical symptoms you get - nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, etc - are caused by a viral infection. Sometimes, it can be bacterial, but those are typically less communicable between people. So, let's stick with viruses.\n\nThere are a wide array of viruses that can cause these symptoms. A classic on is a group called Noroviruses. These often cause outbreaks on cruise ships and schools or other places where people are in close contact. There are others, of course.\n\nI hate to tell you this, but these viruses are transmuted via the \"fecal-oral\" route. Meaning that a person who is sick will shed virus in their feces. They can get small particles of this on their hands, which can then be transmitted to you by them touching you, your food, or other things that you touch. You then transfer this to your mouth and the virus infects you. This is why it is SO important to thoroughly wash your hands often, avoid touching your mouth and face, etc. You should also note that most of these viruses are not killed by hand sanitizer (though many, many other viruses are).\n"
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4pt89n | after intestinal surgery, does the doctor need to put your intestines back exactly how they were before? why/why not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4pt89n/eli5_after_intestinal_surgery_does_the_doctor/ | {
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"Even though it's a really long hose and the body will (to a certain extent) readjust as needed, there is also connective tissue that creates the folds. Imagine a fan; on the wide end you have the intestinal track and the small end is connective tissue. It allows for support and permanent folds and not kinks in the big ol' poop tube. If you do dissections in science class (college for me) you'll see this in cats and pigs. There are definitely free floating intestine areas but it's not like a can of snakes when you open up a torso. That would be insane to all jam back in at the end of surgery. ",
"One thing that gets overlooked is the fact that there is a lot of connective tissue in the gut that holds everything in place. Its pretty important that the bowel keeps it shape. During surgery, the intestines may need to be pulled out for various reasons, then put back it the right orientation (this can be more difficult if a portion of the bowel has been removed). Luckily, the connective tissue not only forms a sheet over the gut to hold it in place (the omentum), but there are also concentrations of connective tissue at the curves of the bowel that will naturally pull the intestines into the right conformation.",
"13 Yr. Veterinarian Technician checking in ( not human medicine, but it's the same concept )~ We do intestinal surgery quite often, along with internal surgeries in general. The intestines do just go right back in and they will go back in place wherever they want to go. It may sound strange, but that's it.",
"The small bowel (intestines) are all held together by the mesentery which is a sheet of connective tissue that holds your abdominal organs together. When everything goes back in it falls back into place because of these attachments. ",
"You need to pay attention that there are no holes in the mesentery, the curtain-like tissue between the guts and the posterior wall of the abdomen, that hosts the vessels for its blood supply. Otherwise if a bowel loop moves through it, it can get constricted and develop an internal hernia.\nWhile closing the abdominal walls you also need to avoid stitching a bowel loop in the process, as it would not be able to move freely in the abdomen and potentially develop strictures or volvoli (the torsion of loops on their axis).\n\nOther than that, you just stick it in as best as you can and peristalsis will do the rest.\n\nSource: surgeon.\n\nEdit: spelling",
"They only take out what they intend to remove completely. Everything is done by opening you up in the right spots to avoid movement as much as possible. Intestine surgery sucks to have done, but it's not like they pull 30+ foot of organ out then carefully try to put it back in.",
"Seen an exploratory laparotomy (exploring the abdominal cavity). The surgeon kinda just put the intestines back in the way they came out. It's not like they randomly shove your intestines back in, but it's also not overly calculated. As a previous poster commented; the intestines have folds and are intermittently connected to a blood supply, so that they are supported within the abdominal cavity.",
"On a related question, is everybody's small intestine basically folded into the same pattern, or is it uniquely random like a fingerprint?"
]
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[],
[],
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[],
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[],
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|
||
5synfr | is bubbly soapy water as antibacterial as putting soap directly on dishes? | Also I want to know if the bubbles themselves clean or are just a residue of the soap. When the bubbles die down is it still able to clean as effectively?
[ELI5] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5synfr/eli5_is_bubbly_soapy_water_as_antibacterial_as/ | {
"a_id": [
"ddiudp0",
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"score": [
4,
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"text": [
"Anti bacterial properties are due to antimicrobial chemicals in the soap, anti microbial chemicals work on 3 criteria, exposure, concentration and duration of contact. Bubbles in the detergent are due to its emulsifying properties, meaning detergents can allow oil and water to mix. So yes bubbles clean oils and grease but antibiotics, heat, pressure and time kill microbes.\n\nCheers!",
"Bubbles don't do the cleaning. Think about your dish washer... That soap doesn't creat bubbles. The bubbles are a property given to the cleaner mostly due to marketing. People like being able to see the product they are using. \n\nBubbles also let you know when the cleaning agent is mostly gone after you rinse so your not tasting soap later. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
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|
|
4zix45 | what's the deal with tie cutting ceremonies? | I'm talking about [this sort of thing](_URL_0_). As far as I know, this doesn't happen here in the UK - at least I hope not, as I don't really want my tie to get chopped off any time soon.
So yeah, why is it traditional in the US to have your tie cut off to commemorate certain things, or as part of an initiation ceremony? Is it a common tradition, or is it niche to certain fields/communities? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4zix45/eli5_whats_the_deal_with_tie_cutting_ceremonies/ | {
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"There are two reasons to hold a tie-cutting ceremony here in the US (and the second is not a very common one at all). Both ceremonies represent \"cutting the tie that binds\", and I'll describe how in each section. Reading through the first is almost necessary to understand the second.\n\nThe first (and original) is for military pilots, and is performed after their first successful solo flight. \"The tie that binds\" us to the Earth is historically cut by cutting a part of the pilot's scarf (a common accessory at the time for pilots), as a way of liberating them from earthly things (ceremonially). Instructors would often tug at a pilot's scarf to get their attention during flight, as many newbies would get so overwhelmed that they couldn't hear/respond without physical stimulation, and so it also represents cutting the ties to your instructor.\n\nThe second kind of tie-cutting ceremony is like the one you linked, and is used in various forms of business (especially sales). After your first successful big sale/project/whathaveyou, your manager \"cuts the tie that binds\" you to management, and represents the idea that you're now a good enough employee to \"fly solo\", so to speak.",
"This is not common throughout the US. But in the military, in some training programs, it signifies that you have achieved a certain level of proficiency and therefore are no longer \"tied\" to your instructor so closely. ",
"I've consulted for many different types of businesses and I've never seen or heard of this. I certainly don't think this is mainstream in US businesses."
]
} | []
| [
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAB8I1yyyKg"
]
| [
[],
[],
[]
]
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|
3af2d7 | with the internet widely available to any one in the us. why do we rely on politicians to "represent" their constituents instead of ourselves? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3af2d7/eli5_with_the_internet_widely_available_to_any/ | {
"a_id": [
"csc03nt",
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"text": [
"Because it's a full-time job. A lot of people can't even be bothered to vote on their representatives; do you really think they'll come out to vote every day, or even week, on all the individual issues politicians deal with? Also, it provides a buffer (ideally) against knee-jerk reactions. If we could all just log onto a website a vote all at once instantly, we may respond excessively to an issue, and later regret it. So we can either do that, and maybe try to compensate by changing the laws daily or weekly, or we could have people specifically designated to do things in a (kind of) orderly fashion.",
"Because the politicians are supposed to take the time to learn about the issues -- get informed input from everyone, and make the decision that is in the best interests of their constituents.\n\nI think that a direct democracy like that is a spectacularly bad idea. Because as bad as we are at voting for representatives, I think that most voters would be *spectacularly* bad at voting on many of the things the representatives have to vote on.",
"We don't all fit in a single room. So we have one guy to take care of the once boring job of being a politician. It's important to understand that when the role of politics and politicians in our lives was defined and developed, they didn't do important things like decide if it was ok to defend our lives from attackers or abort children. Politicians are supposed to decide if a county should get a new water purification system or just fix the old one. Those decisions we trust to others to make because they don't terribly impact our daily lives. Now politicians make decisions about if we can eat, drink, communicate and other important daily issues and people want the control back.\n"
]
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| []
| [
[],
[],
[]
]
|
||
2xwg2n | how did ask bongo and similar services that were popular a number of years ago find out so much information about me so quickly? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xwg2n/eli5_how_did_ask_bongo_and_similar_services_that/ | {
"a_id": [
"cp41bu8",
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"cp426nn"
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"score": [
92,
6,
8
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"text": [
"I worked for one of these. We googled you. You'd be surprised what we could find out, especially when Myspace was still a thing and nobody had anything on private. Also remember it's not just your own profile, it's anyone else's that has your full name. \n\nWe also could see your message history with us. A surprising amount of texts came from people who'd texted the exorbitantly expensive service before. If you ask \"Does John like me or does he just want to be friends?\" then two weeks later ask us what we know, bam, we'll say you have a good friendship with John.",
"Chacha was my jam. And then there was KGB too, but that one cost a dollar per question.",
"My understanding is you gave it all out, websites that ask you to fill out forms or sometimes reward programs through stores.\n"
]
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| []
| [
[],
[],
[]
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|
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