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bxtymb | why is it sometimes my pee sinks to the bottom of the toilet and other times it seems to mix with the water in the bowl? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bxtymb/eli5_why_is_it_sometimes_my_pee_sinks_to_the/ | {
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"There are solids in your urine. The more hydrated you are, the more diluted those solids get. Pure urine, without being diluted is about 4 times as dense as water, so it sinks."
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5xqfna | how did we decide where the prime meridian goes? | I understand the placement of the equator because there is a definite northern most and southern most point on earth so the equator would obviously be directly between the two, but that isn't true for east and west. Is the prime meridian just arbitrary in its placement or is there an actual reason for it to be exactly where it is? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xqfna/eli5_how_did_we_decide_where_the_prime_meridian/ | {
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"It was located to run through Greenwich, England, because the Royal Observatory (one of the leading science and navigation institutions at that time) is located there.\n\n[Here it is](_URL_0_) marked on the ground in Greenwich today.",
"In 1884, at the International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C., 22 countries voted to adopt the Greenwich meridian as the prime meridian of the world. This made he French mad, but Britain's huge investment in the longitude problem won them the majority of votes."
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eh4pur | what exactly is the e-sports bubble, and what happens when an economy "bubble" bursts? | I'm asking this after reading [this article](_URL_0_)
How could E-Sports businesses avoid creating a bubble and grow organically? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eh4pur/eli5_what_exactly_is_the_esports_bubble_and_what/ | {
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"Not every game needs to be an \"eSport\". Destiny 2 has learned this the hard way: they made significant changes to the functionality of the game's PvP mode between Destiny and Destiny 2 in an attempt to forge an eSports-friendly mode. The player base hated it, and they eventually reverting a number of the most jarring changes they made. \n\nThe 'average user' is likely not going to want to buy \"eSports-branded\" gear (as in hardware components, keyboards, and mice). Items such as apparel and mousepads are iffy as it is. Computer equipment is expensive enough without tacking on an extra percentage because of a 'special coat of paint'. And keyboards and mice selection is a personal preference item, and a number of people don't like having to adjust to something new, so the market for keyboards and mice is often smaller than the market for other components.\n\nAnother issue with \"eSports\" is that games become 'outdated' at a relatively rapid pace. To compare to other sports, the National Football League (professional American football) has been celebrating its 100^th season this year. Fortnite, Counter-Strike, and Rocket League are likely not going to still be around in 100 years, at least not in their current iterations. Any time a new game releases, even if it's a sequel to an established franchise, *something* will be different, which takes some time for players to learn and adjust to.\n\nFinally, for a spectator sport to be successful, you need not only established teams, which apparently eSports has, but established personalities. I wouldn't be able to tell you any eSports players, nor would I be able to recognize them either.",
"The E-Sports bubble is a term that describes the fact that the current E-sports boom is rather unstable. It's doing somewhat well at the moment, but it's extremely fragile and is almost certainly going to come tumbling down at some point - and probably sooner rather than later. Lots of people are pouring a ton of third party cash into the e-sports scene, but this makes it highly reliant on those third parties. If they start withdrawing, which is entirely possible, the general e-sports industry crashes as so much of its value is tied up in those sponsorships. There are also other factors that compound the issue - the fact that South Korea is disproportionately dominant, the fact that many of the e-sports video games are fads, not long-term sports, and the fact that as quite a new and modern concept, e-sports is just unable to capture the same communal feel of traditional sports. Traditional sports work because you back a team, but in esports your interest is generally in the game being played. This means that you need the games to keep changing to keep feeling interesting, and you're also far less likely to buy merchandise. Compare to things like football, where the game has remained largely the same for decades, if not centuries, and you like it because you have a favourite team, which became your favourite probably because it was your parents' favourite, or because they're from the place you're from. \n\nWhen the e-sports bubble bursts, we'll probably see esports become a generally less popular concept. There'll be much less emphasis on monetising the whole thing, and they'll exist primarily as adverts for the games being played, rather than for the sake of merchandise. \n\nAs for how these businesses could avoid creating a bubble and find ways to grow organically - well, the people directly involved haven't the foggiest, evidently, so I sure as shit don't. My suspicion is that it's probably going to turn out as impossible, because that tradition hasn't been established and the turnover rate of games people are interested in is so high. Will we still be watching League of Legends esports 30 years from now, or Dota, or Starcraft? What about games like Overwatch and Fortnite? I personally suspect this to be highly unlikely - I think all games probably have inherent time limits, because we're constantly innovating new games. And if your industry exists in this kind of fleeting, phasing way, you can't ever really build a fanbase.",
"It is a bubble because most/all of the profits are **potentional future profits** which may or may not turn out to be real.\n\nThe name “e-sports” was intentionally chosen to make you think big events, sponsorship, broadcast rights, merchandise and all the rest that goes along with traditional sports. \n\nA corporate version of FOMO makes companies dump money into e-sports when they see competitors doing so. They try to match player salaries, sizes of events and such. They get very excited when they get tens of thousands of views.\n\nThe problem is, most/all of the sponsoring developers and companies don’t have a good way to convert these events and views into money. Especially more money than they spent to put the event on. They keep doing it, because they believe in the future, they’ll figure out something. Worse, if they stop sponsoring events, they worry their competitors might suddenly figure out how to make money and leave them behind.\n\nThe industry as a whole could avoid this problem if the governing boards or shareholders demanded a reasonable return-on-investment in a reasonable timeframe. That FOMO prevents most of them from doing this and instead they pour money into e-sports with the idea that if they get to Xxx subscribers or let the market mature in 202x, then this will all turn into a profitable venture.\n\nWhen the bubble bursts, we’ll see a lot of developers all of a sudden have to write off these potential future profits and their valuation will drop. Suddenly, an e-sports league will go from a $500 million asset to a $30 million liability based on all the money that’s been sunk into it. They’ll have a harder time getting investment and loans. There’ll probably be company contraction, firings and some may go out of business.",
"TournantDangereux gave you the best explanation but it might be too technically dense.\n\nBubbles form around speculation. That is, gambling. Basically wealth gets poured into ventures on the possibility of them being worthwhile. Without a bubble that gamble is based on pretty basic math . “How much does my bet cost, what is the probable return and how long will I have to wait to make a profit?”.\n\nIn a bubble there is so many bets going on that a sort of ‘fog of war’ comes about. There is so much money in the pot that people get very irrational.\n\nFor eSports to avoid a bubble you need sober boring analysis. “How much can I really make?”. \n\nThe reason these bubbles form is because that analysis is hard, because of all the unknowns. Sports participation is down in younger generations and eSport viewership is up. This means if you compare a mature league like NBA to an eSport there is a potential of owning the ‘Chicago Bulls’ for a laughably small amount NOW. The problem of course is whether 1. Any eSport can ever sustainably match professional basketball and 2. Which eSport? Maybe it’s Overwatch. Maybe it’s PUBG. Perhaps Rocket league? So everyone is throwing cash and dev time at it. Hoping they create the NBA, hoping they own the Chicago Bulls.\n\nBtw this problem is everywhere. Streaming services, ride share etc Its pretty much all speculative and in “securing market share “ mode. There are so many global titans who we don’t even know what their sustainable price model is."
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1kisxy | if humans are genetically programmed to find healthy looking people more attractive, why do we find sun-tanned people attractive, when its essentially just skin damage? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kisxy/eli5_if_humans_are_genetically_programmed_to_find/ | {
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"It's not a universal thing, cultural thing. Historically some cultures have found pale far sexier than tan. This was because to be pale was upper class, to be tanned meant working out in the sun. \n\n",
"Often times something is considered attractive not only because it is aesthetically pleasing, but because it denotes a certain status. For instance, I think in the renaissance, it was considered attractive for an aristocratic woman to be plump and pale, because this would indicate that she had the means to obtain a lot of food, and that she stayed mostly indoors rather than having to perform manual labor outside. Even though we know excess fat is unhealthy, it was valued because it displayed one's status in society. I think tan skin acts in the same way. Many celebrities and millionaires are seen laying on beaches and getting tan because they have the time and materials to do so, and thus tan skin is seen as a marker of leisure and success. Even though it is sun damage, the societal status implied by tan skin ultimately has deemed it \"attractive\". Additionally, with so much importance being placed on exercise, tan skin also represents someone who is often outside and actively working on their physical fitness.",
"It's a culture thing, a classic example of nature vs nurture. While we should want a healthy looking being, we have been taught/influenced-by-the-media to believe that being sun-tanned is a quality of an excellent \"mate\".",
"People don't die of skin cancer until they are well past their child bearing years usually, so there's no evolutionary advantage in being turned off by sun-tanned people. If people did die young from sun-tanning, then there would be a disadvantage to being attracted to sun-tanned people because you'd be less likely to have off-spring who would survive to reproduce (they'd be dying young of skin cancer). Of course all of that assumes that there is some gene which makes some people with light skin want to get a tan and others not to want to tan and as people here already said, it's really a cultural thing. [Evolution of skin color](_URL_0_) is interesting though and sort of related. \n",
"That's definitely a cultural bias, in the same way we've grown to find ultra-skinny women attractive. It's not the natural state of things, but we're constantly reminded that those traits are admirable, so that's what we come to find attractive.",
"A long time ago (varies according to culture, roughly I guess 80 years for the west) *white* skin was considered to be beautiful. Having tanned skin was a sign you worked outdoors; IE you were a farm laborer or something. Pure white skin meant you were rich or even aristocratic; women would therefore go to great lengths to maintain it such has parasols, gloves, veils, large hats, etc etc.\n\nSome time around the 40's and 50's when mass transit went global and the rich started jetsetting and going skiing and hanging out in coastal resorts, suddenly a tan was a sign of wealth. It meant you were rich enough not to be stuck in an office all day working for someone else; possible even rich enough to travel internationally for your holidays.",
"As an outlier here this makes me wonder about the nature of what \"healthy\" means for an individual. I'm really into big girls, but not just big, but huge, you see. I'm strange, that goes without saying, but within my own category of sexual attraction there is most certainly a desire to date and be with someone who is healthy. What does that mean for a 400 lb woman that I might want to be with? It means being social, it means being rational, it means being smart, it means having drive, and it means being active, surprisingly enough, but active in a way that a 400 lb woman is active. I don't mean running 5ks, but wanting to go out into the world and do things. That kind of active. All of this, plus being actually physically attractive (yes, there are ugly big girls and extremely sexy big girls, just like thin girls can be either) make up elements of attraction for me. I have my own criteria for health, although I'm not in denial of obvious physical health issues that come with the big life, I am what I am so I just make due!\n\nI'm just thinking out loud here, I don't really have a point other than I think that we're not necessarily programed with a definition of healthy rather than a desire to date someone we perceive as healthy, whatever that may mean for the person with an attraction to someone else. This exists in tandem with what we as a society define as health. For me, obviously, it's more of a contradiction.",
"This to me is a nurture not nature thing. I cant stand tanned skin and I know a lot of people who feel the same. Its not a selective thing its a cultural thing.",
"Vitamin D.\nThe skin needs some light otherwise its going to be susceptible to surface infections.",
"Being tanned actually shows that your skin is working correctly.\n\nTiny parts of your skin called melanocytes produce this dark pigment called melanin that absorbs UV rays. As you know some UV rays are harmful the to the layer of skin beneath it. If you become tanned when exposed to excessive sun shine, your skin is behaving as it should and it's a good sign.\n\nSo to answer your question, because being able to tan is healthy.\n\nOf course, trends have a lot to do with it too. In 1923 Coco Chanel accidentally made the tanned look popular again."
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7ifi5a | why do people die from anorexia? why can't hospitals liquid feed them to at least keep them alive? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ifi5a/eli5_why_do_people_die_from_anorexia_why_cant/ | {
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"Extreme malnourishment causes bigger problems with a person's health. Most obvious of these is organ failure due to lack of available energy. By the time someone with anorexia makes it to the hospital, it's possible that they've done enough damage to their body that the hospital can't fix it and the body is no longer able to heal itself, even with all the calories and vitamins they can pump into you.\n\nMore likely though the hospitalization leads to recognition of a problem and bringing in more resources like therapists, nutritionists, doctors, and family counseling (if the person is lucky and has a good support structure).",
"Anorexics usually die of an electrolyte imbalance which then causes cardiac complications. \n\nThe hospital will attempt refeeding but sometimes people don’t make it to the hospital. They will tube feed an anorexic against their will if needed.",
"If they are found in time, hospitals can do exactly that.\n\nHowever, anorexia can be a very serious mental illness, and even after a medical intervention, patients will often return to self-destructive behavior. You can't lock someone up and force feed them the rest of their lives, so eventually, they will get more opportunities for self-harm.\n\nAlso, anorexia does a lot of other damage to your body, leading people to die of illness and injuries a healthy person could fight off. If your kidneys have been damaged, you could die from a otherwise ordinary UTI, if your bones are brittle, a minor fall could turn into a compound fracture with complications.",
"There is a balance between personal freedom and someone intervening on your behalf. For example, if you skip a meal, or even skip eating for a day, is that bad? You will survive with very little health consequences from that. On the other hand, how many meals can you skip before you are endangering your own health? \n\nDepending on the jurisdiction, there will be a health level where the state can declare you a danger to yourself, and forcibly feed you. Repeatedly reaching that point permanently damages internal organs. Eventually the damage to the organs builds up to the point where nothing a hospital can do will save them. \n\n",
"Anorexia nervosa is the psychiatric illness with the highest death rate. Legislation designed to help other mental illnesses from harming people generally isn't that applicable to anorexia. Sufferers aren't overtly 'mad' in that they don't (usually) hear voices or have paranoid beliefs that others will harm them - most mental health laws are designed to stop people like that harming others. Evidence is building up that you need to feed people until they reach a decent BMI then keep them there.\n\n\nAround the world most mental health legislation won't allow you to do more than prevent immediate death. Unfortunately, repeated brushes with immediate death tend to lead to er... death.\n\nIf society wishes to have a more restrictive set of legislation around restricting the rights of people to behave in ways that society dislikes then we could save more people with anorexia, but there may be other negative consequences."
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1yqltk | why does it cost so much to change flight dates? | Why does it cost so much to change flight dates? I could buy a whole new ticket cheaper than it would cost to change the flight date.
Is it purely just a money maker? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yqltk/why_does_it_cost_so_much_to_change_flight_dates/ | {
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"It's designed to make people think twice, or more, about changing their plans. Airline scheduling and filling planes is a complex problem for airlines; they want a plane to be absolutely full and not one person over, and so they like to encourage commitment to your flights. They do it with fees like this, and with cheaper non-refundable tickets. By adjusting the cost of date-changes, they are able to encourage or discourage the practice as they need, and they can also offer cheap or free changes as a benefit for bigger or more regular customers."
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1zmrcn | can past films be re-released in 4k or are they maxed out at 1080p? | I'm especially curious about animated films, do they simply re-render the entire movie? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zmrcn/eli5_can_past_films_be_rereleased_in_4k_or_are/ | {
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"Most films are shot in 35mm film, which was more than enough for rescanning in 1080HD, but debatable for 4K.\n\nSome films were shot in 70mm (Lawrence of Arabia for example) and this has already been converted for 4K\n\nIMAX films use 65mm film, but mounted horizontally so each frame takes up more than double the space on the film - so they will be future proof for some time",
"They generally don't rerender an animated film to rerelease it but that's because most animated files that would be \"rendered\" are modern so were exported in a very high quality to begin with.\n\nThe movies you're likely talking about, for example old Disney movies, we're not rendered, of course. They were hand drawn. Therefore, to make a higher quality digital recording, they would need to redigitize the film reel."
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716eyz | are wireless earbuds bad for you? i heard that keeping your phone in your pocket is bad because of radiation, so won't wireless earbuds do the same to your head? am i just being extremely paranoid? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/716eyz/eli5_are_wireless_earbuds_bad_for_you_i_heard/ | {
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"Paranoid. \n\nThere are many types of radiation, most of which are harmless. Cellphones use radio waves to communicate. You've got radio waves passing through you at ALL times from broadcast TV, phone service, WiFi, and even just the background levels of radio waves leftover from the Big Bang. They are harmless. \n\nVisible light is also radiation, and also harmless. It should be noted that the Sun itself produces massive amounts of harmful radiation that is proven to cause cancer. That's something you maybe *should* be a little paranoid about. Funny how people worry about a phone in their pocket but walk around all day without sunscreen and a massive thermonuclear explosion in the sky. Wear sunscreen!\n\n"
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kp5p8 | what black heads are made of, and why some people get them more than others | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kp5p8/eli5_what_black_heads_are_made_of_and_why_some/ | {
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"Your skin has millions of glands on its surface that secrete an oily wax known as sebum. This is completely natural, and serves a natural lubricant for your skin to prevent chafing and dryness. Many plants have a similar waxy coating on their leaves, which helps prevent dehydration as well.\n\nThese glands can sometimes get clogged with an excess of sebum. The propensity or chance of this happening is not actually related to hygiene, as some people believe. It's just a genetic disposition - some people have oilier skin than others. They are more likely to experience blackheads. The reason they are black is that they usually clog hair follicles, and the hair root reflects light irregularly to make them seem black.\n\nIf you've ever removed blackheads using a Biore strip or something, you'll see that they're yellowish in color.",
"Your skin has millions of glands on its surface that secrete an oily wax known as sebum. This is completely natural, and serves a natural lubricant for your skin to prevent chafing and dryness. Many plants have a similar waxy coating on their leaves, which helps prevent dehydration as well.\n\nThese glands can sometimes get clogged with an excess of sebum. The propensity or chance of this happening is not actually related to hygiene, as some people believe. It's just a genetic disposition - some people have oilier skin than others. They are more likely to experience blackheads. The reason they are black is that they usually clog hair follicles, and the hair root reflects light irregularly to make them seem black.\n\nIf you've ever removed blackheads using a Biore strip or something, you'll see that they're yellowish in color."
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2sat0p | why don't big chains like papa johns, pizza hut, and dominos ever sell pizza by the slice? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sat0p/eli5why_dont_big_chains_like_papa_johns_pizza_hut/ | {
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"Don't know about the other ones, but I know Papa Johns sells it by the slice in my area.",
"\nSelling pizza by the slice involves having multiple pizzas with different toppings ready all the time. Which is an expense and a hassle.\n\nIf you keep the pizza fresh, then you'd end up tossing a lot of unsold product. If you don't keep the pizza fresh, then your brand starts to suffer as customers start to judge your entire menu by bad experiences with stale singles.\n"
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3tve2c | why are an infant's hands so often closed in a fist, rather than open-palmed? | I've noticed that infants hands are often closed in a fist, rather than open-palmed and loose. why is this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tve2c/eli5_why_are_an_infants_hands_so_often_closed_in/ | {
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"Babies have a lot of reflexes that they grow out of, one in particular is the grasp reflex (_URL_0_).\n\n Although it is activated by brushing their palm, the reflex is very random and likes to stop or start at any moment or from very light stimuli. The sensation of his/her fingers on their palm is probably what keeps them grasping. The reflex eventually goes away after several months and the baby will usually start opening their hands more after several weeks."
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s1w6s | how middle east terrorists groups makes money? | I've heard that that central american terrorists groups make money throughout drugs, but I've never heard how middle east terrorists groups make money and sustain themselves. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/s1w6s/eli5_how_middle_east_terrorists_groups_makes_money/ | {
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"I'm no expert, but middle east terrorist groups often make money via drugs as well. While central american groups tend to make money through cocaine (and staples like marijuana), middle eastern groups focus more on opium (and its derivatives e.g. heroin)",
"Depends on the groups. \n\n- Donations from countries like Iran, Saudi arabia, UAE,\n\n- Extorsion and protection money\n\n- small and medium businesses (hezbullah was found to even been peddling used cars)\n\n- Investment banking. \n\n- Drugs and weapons, While they do prohibit their consumption, selling them to non muslims seem to be ok. ",
"Osama bin Laden (and Al Qaeda by extension) funded much of his activities (including earlier anti-Soviet activity with the mujahadeen) with his personal capital, being a member of an extremely wealthy family.",
"Financing by the CIA, MI6 Mossad etc (if they are freedom fighters) \nFinancing by Iran, Jordan Syria, russia etc(If they are Terrorists)",
"Bake Sales. Halal of course. ",
"You need to be specific about which groups you're talking about. If you're talking about organizations like al-Qaeda, then they get their money from sympathizers in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.\n\nWhat you might consider a terrorist group is probably just a local gang of neighborhood dudes in Iraq who shot at US occupying soldiers with leftover weapons from the Saddam era.",
"Donations.\n\nFor instance the Al Qaeda group in Iraq is funded by Saudia Arabia. The Terrorist group in Iran which has been killing Iranian scientists have been funded by Israel and there are a number of American supported terrorist groups. Iran itself funds Muqtada Al Sadr in Iraq, who has a large number of militant supporters. \n\nEvery faction has a terrorist group these days. "
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jqbeb | why time warner cable customers can't access hbo go (when time warner owns hbo)? | Is HBO asking TWC for an insane amount of money to license the service? How much do cable providers pay simply to carry plain HBO? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jqbeb/eli5_why_time_warner_cable_customers_cant_access/ | {
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"text": [
"Time Warner owns HBO, but Time Warner [no longer owns](_URL_0_) Time Warner Cable.\n\nHBO GO is offered free to cable providers who carry HBO. The main problem is that cable providers have to develop systems to authenticate customers and make sure they subscribe to HBO. Then they have to create links to HBO GOs site such that only HBO subscribers are allowed in.\n\nUntil your ISP/Cable provider has such systems in place (tested and verified by HBO), HBO GO will not be available to you.\n\nIIRC, wholesale HBO costs around $8 or $9 per subscriber.",
"Time Warner owns HBO, but Time Warner [no longer owns](_URL_0_) Time Warner Cable.\n\nHBO GO is offered free to cable providers who carry HBO. The main problem is that cable providers have to develop systems to authenticate customers and make sure they subscribe to HBO. Then they have to create links to HBO GOs site such that only HBO subscribers are allowed in.\n\nUntil your ISP/Cable provider has such systems in place (tested and verified by HBO), HBO GO will not be available to you.\n\nIIRC, wholesale HBO costs around $8 or $9 per subscriber."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/21/business/main4114950.shtml"
],
[
"http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/21/business/main4114950.shtml"
]
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|
|
28ze7r | even though i know nothing is there why am i still afraid/scared of the dark? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28ze7r/eli5_even_though_i_know_nothing_is_there_why_am_i/ | {
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"text": [
"Part of your brain call the amygdala. \n_URL_0_"
]
} | []
| []
| [
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala"
]
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|
||
8w0wr4 | on my smartphone, why is cellular data (lte) blocked when using sms or calling? | DISCLAIMER: this is not me asking how to get it to work, or me reporting a tech issue, I’m curious why it’s designed like this.
For example when you are using google maps, and on a phone call, there is no gps connection. Also you can’t browse websites.
Is this something to do with how the antenna connects with a 1/2g connection to the tower and therefore can’t use 4g/LTE? Is this a physical limitation or a software design?
^(*For reference I’m using a iPhone 6s+ on iOS 11 , provider is Sprint, in the USA.*) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8w0wr4/eli5_on_my_smartphone_why_is_cellular_data_lte/ | {
"a_id": [
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"score": [
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"text": [
"This is a limitation from the Sprint network and the technology they use. An iPhone on AT & T or Verizon has simultaneous voice, data, and GPS."
]
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| []
| [
[]
]
|
|
k5yx8 | how would the internet work for a couple weeks without people? | To elaborate: I'm planning to write a book where 80% of people die off, but there is no physical natural disaster. So the power lines and things needed would still exist, but no one would be running the show.
I really don't know how the internet works, but I'm speculating that internet providers and power stations would be autonomous enough to work for a couple of weeks. Would things like youtube and reddit work for the few people left alive to access them? Please don't get too deeply technical as not only should I be 5 for this explanation but I actually don't really know much of how this works anyway. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k5yx8/eli5_how_would_the_internet_work_for_a_couple/ | {
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"The Internet will run without human intervention until stuff breaks or needs rebooting. In theory, it should last years. However, ISPs employ people for a reason: things mess up from time to time. You'll probably see the Intenet backbone stay up just fine, but individual ISPs will go offline as their systems fail.\n\nThe real problem is power. How long does a coal fired power station operate without human intervention? I honestly don't know, but it wouldn't be more than a few of days. All that coal has to get loaded in there somehow. Wind turbines and nuclear should be able to run without human intervention. Again, until something breaks - a pump will eventually trip in the nuclear plant and take it offline.\n\nThere is also the authority that co-ordinates the electrical grid (I don't know what yours is called), they set pricing rates etc. I expect it's largely automated, but the decision of when to start up peak demand units like hydro or gas turbines might be human-triggered.\n\nTL;DR: You will have electricity for at least few days. Reddit and YouTube will continue to work while they have power.",
"You might want to find a more original story-concept before you write an entire book. . .",
"Reading [this!](_URL_0_) book will give you plenty of good information, imho. ",
"More details about how long the power would stay on.\n\n_URL_0_",
"The Internet will run without human intervention until stuff breaks or needs rebooting. In theory, it should last years. However, ISPs employ people for a reason: things mess up from time to time. You'll probably see the Intenet backbone stay up just fine, but individual ISPs will go offline as their systems fail.\n\nThe real problem is power. How long does a coal fired power station operate without human intervention? I honestly don't know, but it wouldn't be more than a few of days. All that coal has to get loaded in there somehow. Wind turbines and nuclear should be able to run without human intervention. Again, until something breaks - a pump will eventually trip in the nuclear plant and take it offline.\n\nThere is also the authority that co-ordinates the electrical grid (I don't know what yours is called), they set pricing rates etc. I expect it's largely automated, but the decision of when to start up peak demand units like hydro or gas turbines might be human-triggered.\n\nTL;DR: You will have electricity for at least few days. Reddit and YouTube will continue to work while they have power.",
"You might want to find a more original story-concept before you write an entire book. . .",
"Reading [this!](_URL_0_) book will give you plenty of good information, imho. ",
"More details about how long the power would stay on.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
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| []
| [
[],
[],
[
"http://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Without-Us-Alan-Weisman/dp/1905264038"
],
[
"http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2165/when-the-zombies-take-over-how-long-till-the-electricity-fails"
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[],
[],
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"http://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Without-Us-Alan-Weisman/dp/1905264038"
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]
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|
|
20y0wt | what exactly are those "heat waves" you see when it is a hot sunny day | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20y0wt/eli5what_exactly_are_those_heat_waves_you_see/ | {
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"The high contrast between hot air and cooler air refracts light causing it to be slightly distorted. As they mix, they swirl about causing the refracted light to adjust angles and produce the wavey effect.",
"Light traveling through fluids of different densities bends towards or away from the normal (a perpendicular line from the boundary of the two fluids). On a hot day, the pavement or asphalt heats up a lot as it absorbs the sun's light. It then releases heat to the air above it, making the air hotter and less dense than the air higher above it. The light then bends as it passes through and eventually hits our eyes. Even knowing this phenomenon, our eyes literally don't believe our brain so we trick ourselves into seeing puddles on the road to \"explain the bending of the light\" by simple reflection.",
"Is this Snell's law? The refraction thing "
]
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||
399422 | why do they still paint airforce planes in camouflage? | In this day and age with all the technology
i.e. satellites, radar, heat seeking missiles etc,
[thinking that a little bit of paint will hide a plane is optimistic at the most]( _URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/399422/eli5_why_do_they_still_paint_airforce_planes_in/ | {
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"The paint on the B2, F22, F177 is radar absorbing paint which helps reduce it's radar signature. And the paint on the other planes is CARC paint which is chemical and radiation resistant. ",
"They are not painted for camouflage. It may look like camo but the paint is special and has other purposes. "
]
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| [
"http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/4935676-3x2-940x627.jpg"
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65knnm | what does it mean to consolidate student loans and what are the pros and cons of doing this or other refinancing options for student debt? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65knnm/eli5_what_does_it_mean_to_consolidate_student/ | {
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"When you consolidate loans, you are essentially taking out a brand new loan to pay off other loans. This is typically done when a person is having trouble making monthly payments. The new loan will have a longer term than the existing loans and therefore a lower payment. \n\nImagine having 3 loans, all for $10,000, with 5 year terms, and monthly payments of $200, for a total of $600 per month. A consolidation loan would do something like replace all 3 loans with a single $30,000 loan with a 10 year term and a monthly payment of $350\n\nAdvantages: if you can't afford your current payments it beats hell out of defaulting/late pay, you may find it easier to work with a single lender\n\nDisadvantages: your interest rate will likely be higher. Spreading the loans out like that will increase the total amount you ultimately pay (you pay interest for a longer time)"
]
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73ui7v | - the rise and popularity of anime in western culture. | I'm nearly 40, I remember anime being somewhat popular even when I was in high school... but I don't understand the appeal. Not being judgmental, just wondering why people gravitate towards it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73ui7v/eli5_the_rise_and_popularity_of_anime_in_western/ | {
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"Personally, I'm not a fan of anime, but a lot of my friends are and they talk often about it. Enough that I tried watching a couple of them. I'm still not a fan of most of them, but I can see the appeal.\n\nA big reason is that animation in North America have two main target audience. You have adult comedy like South Park, Family Guys, etc and you have kid show. There is not much else in term of animation.\n\nIn Japan, it's not the case. Anime cover drama, action, sci-fi, investigation, fantasy, etc. There is no the same taboo there about animation, so it attract more talent to produce those show about different subject/genre.\n\nNow in North America, we still cover those subject, but it's usually in Tv Show or movie and those kind of media are costly to produce. That mean that fringe subject are usually not produce with big budget and don't attract talent as much. The fact that big money in involve also mean that there is often more corporate intervention in the artistic process. Usually to make them more mainstream.\n\nTLDR : The cost of producing an anime is so much lower than a Tv Show or movie that you have a huge variety of numbers of anime. So the chance is that you will find a couple of anime that fit your tastes, especially if you like mainstream production.",
"The main issue with this is; Anime isn’t just one genre it’s a type of animation that hosts a massive amount of different genres such as Horror, romance, action etc. Literally any genre you can think of there is anime of it whereas in Western Culture it’s pretty much the same old same old. Anime also varies in animations styles, while sticking to the usually Asian comedic tropes such as exaggerated body proportions and reactions that make it fun. It’s a kind of cartoon animations that can grow with the viewer meaning there are more mature anime out there in comparison to others. \n\nExample:\n\nTry comparing Attack on Titan to Fairy Tale. Two completely different worlds and levels of maturity, some friends of mine that could be associated with the so called “cool kids” have watched AoT but would frown in disgust with Fairy Tale. \nConsidering the kind of anime I’m into, Fairy Tale isn’t for me either far to cheesy with too much filler for me, whereas everything is AoT has depth, great plot, emotion and it’s gripping with awesome action sequences. \n\nOne of the anime that gives people that watch anime a bad name is, Dragon Ball Z, very childish classic boy gets stronger and defeats enemies anime but just so happens to be one of the most popular because people grew up with it. So if you look up anime you get this weird misinterpretation of what the animation style/genre is. Turning people off almost immediately especially those from the west as it’s weird and against our culture in many ways. As you can guess I don’t like it and never have -shrug- I was always one of those people that liked more serious shows almost a bit too mature for my age at the time. ",
"Since I don't think this question has a thoroughly researched, objective answer, I'll just bring up some points that I personally find attractive about anime/manga. \n\n* There's a wild variety of subject matter available, including cooking, sports, slice of life, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, animals, romance, historical, comedy, thriller... the list goes on. So chances are if you have some interest, someone's made a manga or anime about it. \n* There's also a wide variety of tones. I like some media that falls in the grimdark territory featuring a cast of unlikeable characters, but I don't want it 24/7, and it turns out it's extremely easy to find more positive stories that aren't explicitly written for children. If you want something more quiet or comtemplative, you can find it. If you want heartwarming stories about cats, that's there, too. And of course there's always over the top action schlock if that's your jam.\n* I find it a nice cultural alternative or supplement to what I got growing up in the West, and America in particular. American culture, especially when I was growing up, was really insular -- the American way of doing things and looking at things is normal and \"natural\", and any other way is implicitly seen as weird and foreign. As an example, I often read comments on reddit complaining about how men have to do all the work of confessing their romantic feelings. Guess what? In Japan, it's a cultural trope for high school girls to confess to boys, academic excellence tends to make you more popular, rather than a nerd, and also cat cafes. I'm not saying the culture is better (for instance, good luck finding black characters anywhere), but it is different, and I think being able to become more familiar with a different perspective and absorb the idea that the way the West does things doesn't have to be the be-all, end-all, \"natural\" way of doing things is very valuable. To an Asian-American like me, it's also something of a relief from the constant bathing in American cultural values and nationalism.\n* Because there's so much of it, you can really start to pick out authors that genuinely seem to love and master their craft, some of whom work on a single, carefully-crafted story for decades (One Piece) or who gobble up pop music/art and enthusiastically mash it up with classical Renaissance sculptural influences and throw in some Nazi vampires for good measure (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure). \n* When the art is good, it is really good. The lush natural backgrounds and creatures in Mushishi or the wild, experimental ukiyo-e like style in Mononoke, or the outright crazy amount of detail in Otoyomegatari come to mind as examples."
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9novax | why is it still “rule” to use one foot for each pedal in cars with automatic transmissions? wouldn’t one foot for each be better? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9novax/eli5_why_is_it_still_rule_to_use_one_foot_for/ | {
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"Because there are zero situations in which you as Joe or Jane Driver should use both pedals simultaneously, and people are prone to making errors especially when surprised or for example, extending their legs in a situation where they are trying to brace themselves. If you're in an emergency situation and need to brake, and you brake with your left foot, and then when your body decides to brace itself it decides to extend your right leg - you'll step on the gas. The 50ms it takes you to rotate your foot so the top is three inches further to the left is incredibly unlikely to make any difference in an emergency situation.",
"you colonial peasants need to embrace the manual transmission. why you persist with this abomination i will never understand.\nbrake pedal = slow down\naccelerator = go faster\nwhy would you need to do both those things at the same time?",
"Have you ever driven behind someone who is driving with both feet?\n\nYou can always tell because their brake lights are on almost ALL the time, including when they accelerate. \n\nWhether you realize it or not, a foot on the pedal applies *some* pressure to that pedal. \n\nSo in addition to emergency situations causing you to do something foolish with both feet, you are also wearing your brakes for no reason, burning more gas as you fight your brakes for no reason, and giving confusing information to the drivers behind you by effectively nullifying your brake lights.\n\nEdit: I no can spel"
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3ygp8q | why does a ball without spin have unpredictable movements in the air? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ygp8q/eli5why_does_a_ball_without_spin_have/ | {
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"I remember reading a long time ago about this in reference to why the knuckleball is the most unpredictable pitch in baseball. The idea is that the pitcher throws the ball with as little spin as possible and the ball moves in all kinds of random ways. The same effect also can be seen in old pistols. Before people learned to put grooves inside the muzzle of the gun (rifling), the projectile didn't spin and it was nearly impossible to aim very reliably.\n\nThe way it was explained to me, and I'm no physicist by any stretch of the imagination, is that when an object is flying through the air, any tiny imperfections in it, any tiny changes in wind or whatever, can affect its motion in weird ways. This makes it's flight unpredictable. When you put spin on it, the spinning action neutralizes these imperfections. "
]
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5rgxpu | why do bad words exist? | Seriously explain like im 5. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rgxpu/eli5_why_do_bad_words_exist/ | {
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"Some people don't like to be reminded gross or bad things exist. Some people don't like you making fun of them, their family, their religion etc. So they don't use the words that do that. \n\n\nWe end up using the words because words are used to explain to other people things like how we feel. If we feel *really* strongly about something, we may use a bad word so the other person is shocked and pays attention. They mean you feel so strongly you're willing to use words most people don't want to use. ",
"Vulgar used to mean common, or relating to peasants. The upper class had more proper words for unpleasant things, and so the \"vulgar words\" were looked down upon. ",
"Well.... shit. \n\nI'm going to give this a shot. \nPsychologists say that about 93% of communication happens nonverbally, or with the body. but \nAs people, we have a wiiide range of emotion and feelings, which is why you can feel very differently about very different things. \nAs people, we respond really well, to the strongest emotions, like love, hate, happiness, and suffering/pain. \n\nWhich is when why when I tell my friends:\n \"I fucking love you bro\"\n -or-\n\"I'm gonna beat the fuck outta you!\"\n\nThey know exactly what I mean.\nBecause they can read my body language/ energy and tell if I'm happy or sad or indifferent.\nBut they can also tell based on what I'm saying, what I specifically mean. \n\nIt's sort of a necessary clarification.\n*bad* words are very necessary to language in the same way your range of emotions, feelings, and instincts are.\n\nFor that rough 7% of communication thats verbal, we need extremes.\nIt doesn't matter the language, spoken, signed, extinct, written, they all have *bad* words. Words you *shouldn't* say unless the context and circumstances call for them. \n\n\nBecause quite frankly if I couldn't speak my bitchass mind, about all the goddamn nonsense running through my motherfucking head; I'd probably lose my fucking shit!\n\n\n\nEdit : Bad words exist for the same reasons all other words exist. We need them. \n\n ",
"Bad words tend to be related to something that is/was taboo. \nFor example, in English a lot of bad words have to do with sex, stemming from when religion was a much bigger deal and anything sexual was looked down upon. \nAnother one would be in French (Canadian French at the very least), has it's bad words mostly centered around religion, Catholicism in particular. A few examples are calisse, crisse, and tabarnak.",
"Basically, they are taboo subjects that you aren't supposed to talk about. Historically, bad words were focused on religion. When you said \"damn you to hell\" in medieval Europe they were originally meant literally, as in calling the wrath of God to punish them for all eternity. So naturally they were taken rather seriously and people would be rather offended for you to curse them like that. \n\nAlso looking at more recent swear words to do with vulgarity, again take them literally. Words like shit or bitch used to just be words. But over time they would be used in offensive manners by referring to someone as them. Calling someone a bitch would be referring to them as a female dog, which they might take offense to. Especially in more religious, \"prudist\" cultures like American Protestant culture, sex is something that you should never refer to because it's improper. So in more religious times it would be a scandal to openly talk about \"fucking a woman's cunt with your dick\" because it is unnecessarily graphic. They preferred sex to be more \"spiritual\" and \"meaningful\" so they would use terms like \"make love\" instead. \n\n Over time, the words lost their real offensiveness, and they've just become offensive because society accepts them as offensive. Most people nowadays don't literally want to sentence you to eternal punishment or to command you to have sex \"get fucked\", but those were sensitive topics at one time and we still hold on to the use of the words as a manner of expression. ",
"Words themselves aren't good or bad. Usage and context usually give them vulgar or derogatory meaning. They are usually used to add emphasis or implication to a statement."
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36wmwz | why is everyone against qatar hosting the world cup? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36wmwz/eli5_why_is_everyone_against_qatar_hosting_the/ | {
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"Because they're confiscating the passports of foreign workers building the stadia for the world cup, preventing them from leaving, essentially treating them like slaves. And thousands will die before the world cup starts.",
"And because the insane weather there is forcing the World Cup to be moved to the winter, in the middle of the European club season. (And in the middle of NFL/NBA, for American sports fans.)",
"Essentially its the rampant corruption that has plagued the whole selection of Qatar from start to finish. But here are some of the worse reasons why Qatar sucks as a choice.\n\nThe games have typically (always?) been played in the summer break months of the european leagues of June and July. In Qatar the temperature can hit 45C (with 50C not being unheard of). This is bad for both the players and those watching in the stadiums. For those not fortunate enough to get tickets but still travelling to the country to enjoy the atmosphere and watching the game on a big screen, outside with zero shade this is also very bad (Add alcohol dehydration and this only gets worse).\n\nThe country has a population of about 2 million, with 2 major metropolitan centres. It is expected that a million travellers can travel to watch the world cup. Does the country have both the shelter and the infrastructure to deal with a 50% increase in population? Many impartial people are sceptical.\n\nThey dont have the stadiums...yet. Which is why they are basically importing workers from India, china, Nepal and North Korea (yes THAT North Korea) and quite literally working them to death. Qatari law says you are only allowed to work x number of hours a day outside and those hours may not be during the hottest of the day. They are forgetting to apply these rules to the foreign workers they have imported.\nThey are also forgetting that they have to pay these people (in the case of North Korea they are just paying the North Korean government a 'fee' per worker and bypassing the worker altogether!)\nNot only are they \"forgetting\" to pay alot of the workers but they take their passport as a condition of work (\"we will look after that for you, it would be terrible if you lost it\") and then making workers waive their backpay when they want to leave the country.\nThey have also lost a huge number of workers due to quite literally working their \"slaves\" into the ground and ignoring any health and safety.\n\nThis is just a quick list of why alot of people are against Qatar, add to this the fact that people are advised not to do anything homosexual, drink alcohol outside of designated areas and did I mention the rampant corruption surrounding the whole thing? ",
"To follow up my previous post on why people so against Qatar.\n\n[That](_URL_2_) [many people](_URL_0_) thinks Qatar won by [buying votes](_URL_4_) and [corruptions](_URL_1_) that [rife in FIFA](_URL_3_).",
"Because Its a slave state of desert savages, its regularly over 110 degrees, nobody wants to go there, nobody likes them, its far as fuck from every civilized nation, everything is expensive because its in the middle of bumfuck desert so everything has to be imported. All they produce is oil and suffering. Also, the more money and tourism they get, the more we prolong the inevitable swallowing of the city by the desert sands. ",
"The Qatari bid was easily the least appropriate bid for the tournament and the original bid stated the summer dates.\n\nWhen the Qataris admitted they couldn't actually do a summer WC it should have been treated as an abdication of their bid, instead they were allowed to move to winter. \n\nThese two things all but prove that the bidding process wasn't anything but a highest bidder bribe-fest. These suspicions have been bubbling away for decades but have now come to a head. ",
"-The selection of the host country to world cup have been always corrupt in recent times : Qatar with Oil & gas money basically bribed FIFA to get the world cup (although in all fairness if another country was selected it would be because they outbid Qatar not because they are better ) .\n- they employ slave workers who die in the process of building stadiums .\n-the temperature in the summer is 45C to 50C so the WC is likely to be played in the winter .\n- The cliché of the filthy riches arabs from an oil golf state wearing a \"guthra\" & throwing away their money at sports . Bigotry is a factor. \n- they beat the US in the selection process .\n",
"Followup question: Why is it still happening?",
"With everything bad that has been posted here, what can we do to try and change things?\n\nAlso - how many of you are going to actually vote with your wallet and not watch? I'm guessing zero.",
"You mean other than the fact that the host should have a soccer team worthy of making the World Cup?",
"They have summers too hot to play in, resulting in them fucking over domestic leagues after winning by having it in the winter.\n\nThey blatently bribed their way to getting it.\n\nThey use slave labour in building facilities, resulting in over 1000 deaths.\n\nOther countries bidding were way more suitable.\n\nThey dont even have much in the way of football, and fans from around the world have to travel there and not drink alcohol.\n\n",
"Qatar also doesn't have a footballing/soccer heritage. This is certainly less important than the rampant human rights abuses, but it is definitely a factor for where the world's highest level event in the sport should be held. \n\nThink about cricket, something the United States doesn't give two shits about. Imagine if the Cricket World Cup was held in the US, a nation that has little to no interest in the sport, just because of obvious bribery and the opportunity to make a quick profit. And we built our cricket grounds with slave labor. And we only get to compete because we're the host nation, but we'll get destroyed because we don't have any meaningful experience in the sport. ",
"Forget about the corruption. It was hot enough in Brazil that players had to take cooling breaks at times, picture that times 2 ",
"why doesn't someone just start a company like FIFA that only sucks half as much balls? That way all the players choose that new, kinda sucks league and FIFA can go fuck itself",
"Something I haven't seen mentioned is that the opening and closing ceremonies are going to be played in a city that starts with an L (I've been informed the name of the city is Lusail) that is an oasis in the middle of the desert. The only problem is: the city has yet to be built. It literally does not exist yet. They have to build an entire city with multiple stadiums on the desert coast, from scratch, in 7 years",
"Qatar is hot, Islamist (also sponsoring Islamism in the region), chances are they bribed someone in FIFA to be selected as the host country, it seems like they'll be overwhelmed with tourism given how their population is really small compared to the potential tourists that'll arrive, and probably the biggest criticism is how they treat migrant workers. They treat them like shit and then work them to death. They take their passports away and during the holy month of Ramadan, if you're a non-Qatari Muslim (the brown kind to be exact), you're fucked. Try working twelve hours without water or food in 100+F weather.",
"Because of the intense heat the players will have to endure, The corruption of Qatar, the lack of workers rights. to name a few. ",
"Instead of spendiing 15 minutes writing a long essay that will likely never be read, I think I'd rather just direct everyone to [this episode of Last Week Tonight](_URL_0_)",
"Not only is it likely that it will be dangerous as a place to host, but it will also be HOT AS BALLS. I mean really I'd be surprised if athletes don't pass out mid game. This is crazy",
"Slavery.... They have more slaves than pre-civil war america and their slaves aren't treated as well as ours were....\n\nYes american slaves are treated better than Saudi slaves. (all of the countries on the peninsula have slaves)",
"What's stopping countries from just refusing to participate? ",
"I'll give just one example, amongst the many deaths that have happened, and are still happening, in preparation for this event, in a country with defacto slave labourers working with no regard to safety and working through the day in insane heat levels. \n \nOne of the workers died in an accident which caused his ribcage to be caved in. The official cause of death was listed as 'cardiac arrest'. \n \nThat's one of a huge number of deaths detailed in the official report into human rights abuses in Quatar's world cup prep, which FIFA are perfectly fine with. ",
"Qatar is using unapologetic straight up slave labor to build their stadiums. Kinda takes the fun out of it.",
"Because Qatar 2022 is expected to kill over 4,000 migrant workers. It is projected to cause more casualties than 9/11\n\nAnd lots of other reasons",
"Aside from the concerns over worker welfare, it's actually pretty simple. It's 120 fucking degrees in the summer, when the World Cup usually takes place. However, this WC has been moved to the winter, which interferes with the club schedules (EPL, La Liga, etc.) And that will destroy just about every European's year. ",
"They have no soccer/football culture and the weather is so unbearable that no one can play without serious consequences. The weather is so bad FIFA has to consider playing the World Cup in the winter",
"You know how, when you play outside, you get tired and thirsty quicker when it's hot than when it's cold? Well, Qatar is a place in the desert and, like we learned in school, deserts get very very hot! \n\nSo when you are playing soccer in Qatar, you get really tired and thirsty really quick! Sometimes, so quick that you can get sick. Also it's so hot that it can happen even if you are not playing, just watching the game!\n\nAnother bad thing with having the World Cup in Qatar is that the place is not really ready to have so many people visiting. So they need to build places to live for the people who will be visiting and they need to build it fast. \n\nBut the way they are making people build things over there is not very nice. If mommy and daddy were to work there, they would have to work all day and most of the night everyday! Remember that it also gets very hot so mommy and daddy will probably get sick!\n\nEven more than that, Mommy and Daddy would also not be getting paid so we won't have any money for food or clothes or toys! And mommy and daddy could not leave there either because they would not be allowed to. If they really insist, they would get sent to jail. They would not be able to come home to you even if they wanted to very much.\n\nThat is why having the World Cup in Qatar is a very bad thing. Think of all the players and visitors who would have a very bad time playing there. Even more important, think of all the little children who have mommies and daddies working over! There mommies and daddies won't be able to get them money for food and clothes and toys. If things go very bad, they might not even see their mommies and daddies ever again!",
"Mainly because slavery and weather and timing. But also because Qatar and surrounding countries have no football history. It's a slap in the face that they can pay a little money and skip the queue to host.",
"Because they have literally nothing to do with football. Before the fifa \"accepted\" them as the host for the world cup, they weren't interest in football at all. They even bought a complete third league team from belgium to be their national team. \nQatar as a host for the world cup is like Australia hosting ice-hockey world cup",
"In the best style of like you're 5:\n\n1. They're using slaves to build the venues.\n2. The heat there makes it physically impossible to play soccer unless you're from Venus. It's like holding the NHL playoffs outside in Phoenix, AZ, USA. \n3. They got it through bribes they didn't even do a good job of hiding. ",
"Here is a shortlist of problems \nBidding processes flawed. Bidding was for summer world cup. Tender changed after award. Couple that with shady behaviour with delegates\nInfrastructure. Not enough hotel rooms, roads or rail.\nAdditionally changed from 12 stadiums to 8 is a blast at breach of tender. \nLegacy. 2m people in a country in the desert isn't going to have a lasting impact. \nWeather. At 50 degrees qatar should never even been considered. Aircon stadiums was never going to happen. Fifa report said significant risk to players and fans.\nHomosexuals could be arrested just for attending. [Blatter saying not to be gay if they want to attend doesn't help] \nQatar is a dry country & may refuse to sell alcohol, which is frankly as important as the ball. \nCorruption report. Burying of the report & finding qatar innocent, but pointing finger at critics such as oz & england. \nThe football. Winter world cup is a disaster for clubs teams & players. Causing up to 2 years of changes to traditional schedules. English lower leagues can get 30% of turnover during this period, so quite destructive to grass roots football. \nFinally human rights. A worker in qatar can't leave the country with out their employers permission. The fact that people are being worker to death in the names of football is frankly a stain on the beautiful game. European reporters are being arrested for telling this story. \nIn short qatar is as unsuitable location to host a world cup that you will finding in the world. The process of award was flawed. Since the award FIFA has done everything in its power to make it work after the fact. The human rights record is just appalling & nobody give a shit about the actual football. ",
"Because it is basically like hosting the Super Bowl in North Korea: too many reasons, don't know where to start. ",
"From my point of view, as a Brit, football tournaments are about a lot more than just the sport. \n\nThe human rights violations, the conditions the workers are kept in, the hours they work are all unacceptable in the west, but in the Middle east, no one seems to bat an eyelid.\n\nOn top of that, Qatar is a Muslim country that forbids the consumption of alcohol, which is a big part of the fan culture of a lot of countries. I understand that these rules will be relaxed within fixed boundaries around the stadiums, which is hypocrisy at it's worst, it's saying our religion and government bans alcohol but only until it's consumption is profitable, then we'll allow it.\n\nAdditionally the infrastructure to support an international tournament of this scale isn't in place, the stadia haven't been built, the conditions, heat and humidity don't support playing a summer tournament, which means it'll likely be changed to a winter tournament, which will have knock on effects on European domestic competitions.\n\nPlus the allegations of corruption, rigged voting, bribes and gifts just doesn't look good. It's a farce, and is primarily a money making venture for FIFA rather than a celebration of the sporting talent of footballing nations.\n\nI for one hope it's not held there. I'd much prefer to see it held in a country that has an established football infrastructure and culture.",
"Slave labour, corruption and excessive heat. I'm sure the other posts elaborate more, but that should be enough!",
"For my application into a big 4 accounting firm, I had to prepare a report outlining all of the issues surrounding the Qatar world cup, and potential solutions to (hopefully) implement to avoid these concerns. The main issues are: \n\n1) Moving of World Cup to December, with the final game being played on the 19th (I think, was a while ago). This will cause mass air travel around the busiest time of the year, and interfers with major European sports competitions, plus players will need rehabilitation time after the world cup. \n\n2) Workers: So many issues here. Due to the small nature of Qatar (2 million) they have been required to import a large number of workers from areas such as Nepal, China and India who live and work in harsh conditions. They don't have proper shelter, food and water, and are required to work up to 14 hour days in the heat of Qatar, which is on average 40 - 45 degrees. These workers also have their pass ports taken upon arrival, and don't get paid, meaning they can't leave easily. Also, if they do leave, they have literally no chance of getting their stuff back. \n\n3) Worker's deaths. Thousands have already died due to the above issues in (2), and it's reported that Qatar will need up to 1 million more workers. There's an estimate of around 500,000 people will die from (2 years ago) to the world cup due to harsh and low working conditions. \n\n4) A lot of controversy around the way in which Qatar earned the world cup, especially because it makes little to no sense for FIFA to give it to the nation. Reports of bribery were made, and corruption in FIFA is something that has been around recently, so any news of it and people will get \"up in arms\". \n\n5) Culture and alcohol. The islamic culture isn't big on Alcohol, and in Qatar it's (at the moment) virtually next to impossible to acquire it. There's only several restaurants able to sell it currently, and it's really expensive if you decide ot purchase it. Qatar is not like Dubai, it's the complete opposite. \n\nThis is an issue which I feel most people over look, that Qatar is COMPLETELY different from Dubai. It's against the law in Qatar to have alcohol in public, and their quite strict. \n\nLastly, 5 or 6, Qatar are HEAVILY against the LGBT community (like it's a crime to be gay in public). Many tourists who have gone to Qatar who label themselves under the LGBT label have faced jail time in Qatar for this, and there is a lot of pressure from officials on FIFA for giving the WC to Qatar due to this. \n\nSeveral high ranking LGBT's have spoken that they will not be travelling to Qatar, including the United States women's team Captain. \n\nWhen asked about it, Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA, stated \"They should just not act gay in public, and leave it for their hotel rooms\". This caused MAJOR back-clash, and he quickly responded with an apology, but it's still not good enough. \n\nAll in all, there's so many issues surrounding the Qatar world cup, not to mention the fact the stadiums aren't built (they only have 3 in Qatar) and all of the above. \n\nThere's also the issue that the 2 million population country will have all this infrastructure, and due to the strict cultural reforms it's unlikely tourists will travel back to Qatar after teh world cup, so there will be a lot of empty hotels and un-used stadiums. ",
"Oh boy, where to start?\n\nFirst off Qatar is hot as balls. It will likely be 100+ degrees for many of the games, which is putting the athlete's in legitimate danger.\n\nSecond they almost certainly acquired the rights to hold it through bribery. I'm not sure if it is officially known if they did, but everyone is pretty sure they did, because there is no other explanation for why it would be held there.\n\nAlso Qatar is a slave state. They are withholding the passports of foreign construction workers who are constructing the stadiums, not allowing them to leave. The conditions for the workers are HORRIBLE. Hundreds have already died constructing the stadiums, and hundreds, if not thousands more will die before the world cup even starts.\n\nAlso Qatar isn't really the nicest place, so not many people are gonna want to fly in to watch the games in person, but at this point that's almost a non-factor compared to the other reasons.",
"The human cost:\n\n* Slave Labour\n* Confiscating foreign workers passports so they can't leave\n* Workers dying on the job\n* The complete disregard to human life and well being, as long as the stadiums get built.\n* FIFA and the big sponsors giving 0 fucks about the situation.\n\nThe football side:\n\n* The 45 degree heat in unacceptable to play football in at any level.\n* Even if they move it to the winter it will disrupt the major leagues across Europe and the world.\n* Very strict Muslim customs and rules. A lot of fans will be waaayy out of their comfort zone. Germans with little to no alcohol for a potential month?\n* The way they basically paid to host the WC is shady as fuck. Just proves how corrupt FIFA is.\n* It's a very small country and they will not cope with the influx of fans..... that's if anyone even bothers going. How does a few weeks in Qatar sound? A lot of people couldn't even mark it on a map.\n\nThe human cost of course out weighs the football side. I honestly cannot believe in 2015 this sorta situation is allowed to happen. It kinda reminds me of when the Ancient Egyptians used slave labour to build the Pyramids. That wasn't even acceptable 2000 years ago for fuck sake.\n\n*EDIT - Also a side note regarding FIFA corruption. FIFA has been banging on for years about bringing the WC to new countries, which maybe do not have a huge football following so they can start a legacy and get the interest in the game flowing through the population. This in my mind seems sensible and countries like England should be overlooked for the WC in favour of countries like India, Canada, China, Australia etc where they have a huge population and football maybe isn't the national sport. \n\nSOOOO why in hell would they give the WC to a country with a population fewer than London, in which a fair percentage of the population aren't even native Qatari's!!! Most people that live in Qatar, I can imagine I haven't researched this, are either foreign slave workers or ex pat westerners working in the gas fields doing engineering type jobs. FIFA are equally to blame for people needlessly dying just as much as the Qatari hierarchy. They shouldn't of even entertained a bid from Qatar.... but I suppose the highest bidder wins... OIL and GAS money ftw!!",
"FIFA is so corrupt it's an open secret Russia and Qatar bribed officials into getting hosting rights. Russia will obviously be a shit world cup but they expect it to raise the football profile in eastern europe. Qatar is a joke, no one lives there, it's too hot to play, sharia law goes against everything football fans on a boozer want to do. oh and the stadiums are being built by slave labour.\nTL;DR FIFA bribes have gone to far this time",
"Can say what you want about FIFA. But this is up to the likes of English FA, Spanish FA, German association to boycott it.\n\nThey can't complain about the corruption then fucking turn up themselves.",
"the working conditions for the TCN's (third country nationals) who are building everything for the World Cup are horrific. they have them working long hours for little pay in hot weather. I lived in Qatar for about 5 months and have seen the way these guys are having to work. they have had multiple deaths and to top it off the way that Qatar won the world cup is suspect. ",
"The stadiums are being built with slave labor and Qatari officials bribed FIFA to vote for their bid.",
"I am an expat living in Qatar. Just burnt my arms getting into my car that was parked outside for 4 hours under direct sunlight. It's too hot for summer football, they're trying to move it to the winter.\n\nAlso, you cannot buy alcohol here for home consumption if you are muslim, if your sponsor doesn't approve or earn less than 1400$/month\n\nEdit: there are millions of reasons more, but these are the top ones",
"1) They bribed FIFA so they could host it. (It's a publicity stunt for Qatar)\n2) They are removing the passports of many poor workers so they can't leave the country and escape having to work on the stadium.\n3) Thousands will (and already have) die in the construction because it is very dangerous to make a stadium like Qatar's one if you don't have extensive safety precautions (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a builder/architect).\n4) The world cup will have to happen in winter because Qatar is in a desert.",
"- They became the hosting nation through bribing FIFA officials.\n- Their climate isn't suited for hosting a World Cup. Because of that the tournament has been moved to the winter. Which messes up the national and international leagues schedules for a few seasons.\n- They are treating the workers that are building the stadiums very poorly.\n- They are not a traditional football nation. To not get destroyed during their own tournament they started project Aspire Academy. The last few years they scouted more than a hundred thousand talented kids from third world nations in Africa, Asia and Middle America. The most talented ones were invited to the project Aspire youth academies. The end goal of this project is to give all these players the Qatari nationality. With their national team full with foreigners they will be able to compete during that tournament. Many of these players are already part of youth plans of the big European clubs now. Don't be surprised when Qatar turns out to be a big contender for the world title during that tournament.\n\nQatar is proving that everything in football is purchasable, as long as you have enough money.",
"Because where a bunch of millionaires kick a ball of air around has global significance, so much so that humans must die for it to happen, wow this sounds real bad when you over simplifiy it, good job I'm just a hairless monkey getting lucky thrashing away at this keyboardolfjhefljweknfwl lwekdnqeldjkdnlkdne lk lkdnqweldknqlkdk",
"Australia says hey. It would be Winter in June/July which is still basically a European heat wave. We already have at least 10 major stadiums that can host games. We're a safe, clean and friendly-natured country.",
"I think it has something to do with the disgusting amount of human rights violations and deaths that are required to make this event happen. \n\nThey are essentially using slave labour and people are dying. The better question would be: Why do so few people publicly oppose this?\n",
"So are you people still going to watch it?",
"I am boycotting it. Not going. \n\nBastards I swore to myself I would go to every World Cup since last year in Brasil.",
"They currently lie to reporters about their workers conditions, showing elaborate up scaled hotels where they stay, and harass/detain the reporters if they poke their heads anywhere at all.",
"They currently lie to reporters about their workers conditions, showing elaborate up scaled hotels where they stay, and harass/detain the reporters if they poke their heads anywhere at all.",
"All the corruption and human rights abuse claims are only a big part of it for fans.\nThe main reason for people inside football is that they plan on changing the tournament from summer to winter. (Which wasn't part of their campaign)\nThis has upset many European super powers ,mainly the premier league whom are afraid they will loose a lot of money.\n",
"It's simple- We care about human life and dignity and won't support companies that don't.\n\n-Sent from my Apple device, which was made in factory conditions so appalling that the workers literally kill themselves. The fix? Install suicide nets.\n\nOoh! Can I get another fair-trade grande latte? Everyone, have you noticed my Mac yet!?!?",
"Fuck these corrupt backwards savages amirite? No, I mean FIFA",
"Three reasons\n\n1. It has been determined that the bidding process was not fair, and instead there is/was a huge kickback/bribery system in place to get a world cup.\n\n2. It is F'ing hot in Qatar, to the point that the fans could be endangered by exposure. This has been somewhat fixed by rescheduling the games to take place during the winter/European soccer season.\n\n3. All the stadiums are being built from scratch, using foreign workers being tricked into coming to Qatar and then held like slave labor in really bad conditions, conditions causing many deaths. ",
"There are great reasons listed here,but I haven't seen anyone mention the fact that Qatar is a brutal, repressive regime. I'll never forget during the Arab spring, when there was a big, peaceful sit-in in Qatar. The government sent people in, who stood among the sitting protesters... Then pulled out axes and started chopping. The cellphone footage of it was unbelievable. Then Qatar cut off Internet, and since they own al jazeera, reporting on it stopped. \n\nIirc it was shortly after this that they won the world Cup bid. ",
"1. They bribed officialls to get the right to host.\n2. They are using slave labor from Nepal and 900+ workers have already died.\n3. The World Cup is typically played in the summer. It is 120 degrees in Qatar in the summer. They are talking about moving it to the winter to avoid the heat, but that's when all major leagues are playing their seasons.",
"There is also the issues of their religion. They are against alcohol, homosexuality, and women's rights to dress how they want. They said alcohol will be available in certain areas only. No mention of how they would deal with homosexuals and women must \"dress appropriately\" (who knows what that means in the extreme heat).",
"* It looks like Qatar bribed a lot of officials to get the World Cup\n* World Cup is normally a summer event but it is so warm in Qatar summer that it might be moved to the winter, thus disrupting a lot of domestic leagues\n* Qatar is a country under Sharia law, so its illegal to do a lot of things the western world sees as standard eg gay and alcohol (even though I bet FIFA will force alcohol laws to change, like they did with Brazil)\n* Qatar are essentially using slave labour to build their infrastructure\n* Working conditions are horrendous for these slaves (as you would probably assume), with around 900 already being killed in the work place with this number predicted to hit 4000 by the time the World Cup starts [source](_URL_0_)"
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"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1392140/FIFA-corruption-Qatar-DID-buy-World-Cup-claims-chief.html",
"http://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/fifa-lose-three-major-sponsors-as-corruption-allegations-persist-20150123-12xaqo.html",
"http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-16/platini-backs-new-qatar-2022-vote-if-corruption-proved/5817466",
"http://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/calls-for-qatar-to-be-stripped-of-soccers-world-cup-after-fresh-evidence-of-vote-rigging-20141116-11ns03.html",
"http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/27652181"
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cjqrey | why is it reported that it's safe to use plastic water bottles the first time, but dangerous chemicals will leach into your water if you refill it for use later? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cjqrey/eli5why_is_it_reported_that_its_safe_to_use/ | {
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"What unbiased agency is saying dangerous chemicals will leach into your water? What health authority is providing this information?\n\nThe main concern with refilling one-use-intended plastic bottles is sanitation, not chemical leaching. Once your lips touch the bottle or you crack the seal and air gets in, the odds increase that the \"pure\" water in there gets pathogens in it.\n\nPlastic one-use-intended bottles will slowly degrade over time, but not enough to cause chemical leachate into their water unless you keep them for years.",
"According to the FDA, the plastic used in water bottles is completely safe for repeated use. They do add that you should wash your plastic bottles because they could have bacteria in them that builds up after being refilled multiple times. Per the FDA, the original source of the rumor that plastic bottles being reused cause cancer was from an email hoax that went viral. That email hoax was based on a student's masters thesis and the thesis has not been peer reviewed.",
"I think you are confusing 2 ideas about thin plastic. Single use water bottles are completely safe to refill in that concern as all the other comments mention. \n\nI believe you are thinking about heating food/drink inside thin plastic containers in a microwave for example. If the container does not specifically state it is microwave/dishwasher safe, then it cannot be guaranteed to not degrade at all or contaminate whatever it is holding.",
"The bottlers don’t want you using the same bottle multiple times. Nestle would much rather people purchase their water repeatedly rather than refill one bottle multiple times.",
"If it hasnt already leached into the water thats been sitting in that bottle for a few days / weeks, then it wont leech into the water when you refil it and leave that fresh water sitting for a few hours before you finish drinking it.",
"**WARNING!** If you refill the water bottle with tap water, you dangerously risk the well being of capitalist businessman as they might not afford to buy a second yacht this year.\n\nA regular store bought water bottle contains 1% plastic, 0.001% water and 98.999% profit (in money terms)",
"I was under the impression that refilling plastic bottles to be safe in itself, but you're not supposed to drink from them if you've left it in a hot car or something because it's the heat that makes the plastic leach chemicals into the water.",
"I have seen that it is dangerous to leave them sitting in a hot car and then drinking from them, but that seems flawed. You would think that sometime during the transportation that they were kept in hot conditions before reaching the grocery store. Local news did a report a few years ago, about reusing bottles that you have kept in a hot car. Apparently they can also create a focused beam of light from the sun and potentially cause a fire in your car.",
"Are water bottles that got hot in the car and smell funky alright to drink?",
"What about a plastic water bottle in the sun? Does the plastic being out in the sun do anything to the water inside?",
"It is not actually unsafe to reuse water bottles. That's a myth from the 90's. The plastic used in your water bottle is perfectly safe for repeated use (as long as you're washing it to remove bacteria like you would with any other container). Indeed, the bottles wouldn't be allowed to be sold if they could leech those dreaded \"chemicals\" into the water.\n\nPeople that sell water are certainly not going to go out of their way to dispute that myth, because (as you suspected) it results in people buying more water bottles.",
"Is this an american thing? I've never heard the claim to never re-use water bottles.",
"The danger of reusing a single-use water bottle has nothing to do with the chemicals but everything to do with its shape. The problem is those ridges in the bottle which are there to make the bottle stronger while using less plastic overall. However, these ridges are excellent places for bacteria to get caught and grow. Once they grow enough, they can make a protective layer, called biofilm, that will protect them from soap and other chemical cleaners. Using a scouring brush to clean the bottle just makes it worse because it creates many tiny grooves for bacteria to get caught in. \n\nYou can reuse the bottle a few times, but you should toss it within a week at most of first drinking it.",
"Is it safe to heat a frozen burrito inside the plastic bag, per the directions? I’m needing an ELI5\n\nEdit: the same question applies to using any plastic in microwaves - plastic bowls/cups/dishes.",
"Snopes has you covered\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAs has already been mentioned, it’s just the spread of false information. What is undetermined is the effect of heating those bottles on the liquid contained in it. But otherwise, you’re fine.",
"I thought it was because bacteria built up on the mouthpiece and cap not that plastic would leach into the water.",
"'Plastic contamination is rampant in bottled water. That was the unsettling conclusion of a study published last year in Frontiers in Chemistry that analyzed samples taken from 259 bottled waters sold in several countries and found that 93% of them contained “microplastic” synthetic polymer particles.'\n\nThe article goes on to say the World Health Organization is investigating the safety of bottled water. \n\nSource: _URL_0_\n\n(Opinion) We are interacting with these microplastics on a daily basis but directly consuming them seems foolish even without conclusive evidence of their effect on the body. At the very least they are foreign substances that the body has not evolved to process. \n\nOver time we have been able to identify many things as harmful that were seemingly innocuous, like lead paint in children's toys. Just because something is legal and unregulated does not mean it is safe. Use your own discretion.",
"The thinner plastic in the 'disposable' water bottles is more likely to break down *in heat*, than thick plastic you find in re-usable water bottles. That breaking down *can* cause plastic to mix or leech into the water. For example, leaving water in the car on a hot summer day or in direct sunlight can be like putting plastic in the oven. Bad idea! However, if the plastic hasn't been exposed to heat or a lot of wear and tear, then there's nothing causing plastic to break down and leech anywhere. \n\nAlso there's bacteria that all the other posts are talking about. Disposable water bottles are so wasteful anyways! Why not just get a reusable plastic that can take heat and go in the dishwasher. Better in every way except that you have to carry the bottle home (which you're doing in the re-use scenario anyways) and don't come filled with water.\n\n\nEdit: There's a lot of conflicting research, but it makes *a lot* of sense for thinner plastic that isn't dishwasher safe to not handle heat super well.",
"This is a complicated question, and there's not really a solid answer on it one way or another! Can you tell us where you're hearing that these reports?\n\nWhat it comes down to is that scientists aren't sure one way or another whether plastic use, generally, is safe or not for storage of food and drink. It comes down to this idea of \"leaching\", and it's kind of a hot topic.\n\nThere's been a few studies done on it in the last decade that basically conclude, \"Well, we're not sure - we should look into it more!\"\n\nThere's a whole lot of debate in this thread about sources, so I've compiled a few of the more recent studies that have been done. I found these with a quick Google search and I've included an ELI5-appropriate summary for each one. :)\n\n[Synthetic Polymer Contamination in Bottled Water (2018)](_URL_3_)\nThis study tested just over 250 bottles worldwide, from _URL_2_ to Lebanon, and found that 93% had some kind of microplastic particles in them (from very small to reasonably small). The study concluded that the particles have to be at least partially coming from the packaging or manufacture process. They recommend more studies on the impact of microplastics on human health.\n\n[Most Plastic Products Release Estrogenic Chemicals: A Potential Health Problem That Can Be Solved (2011)](_URL_1_)\nThis study looked into whether plastic products, including ones advertised as BPA-free, released chemicals that had estrogenic activity (\"EA\") - a chemical that mimicks the estrogen hormone. They tested more than 500 products. They found that nearly all the products they tested released chemicals having some kind of EA, and some BPA-free products actually released more than their counterparts. They recommend changing the way we make plastic to remove the risk of EA leaching.\n\n[Migration of plasticizersphthalates, bisphenol A and alkylphenols from plastic containers and evaluation of risk (2012)](_URL_0_)\nThis study investigated whether or not plastic and additives can migrate into the water from bottles. It used three different ways of testing. BPA was found in all the water they tested in levels below the legal amount, but they warned that since people use different kinds of plastic through the day, they might be consuming more than they think. They remind that BPA has shown negative effects in animal experiments and that more study is needed on the long term effects on humans, and notes that BPA has been banned in Europe."
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"amazon.com",
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74uh88 | what are flares/countermeasures used by the army vehicles and how do they work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74uh88/eli5what_are_flarescountermeasures_used_by_the/ | {
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"So I'm more familiar with them with aircraft but I understand tanks have them too now. Basically you've got two types: chaff and flares\n\nChaff is a rapidly dispersed cloud of tiny fragments of aluminium. It confuses radar into thinking that the cloud of fragments is the actual vehicle and so it makes radar guided missiles go off too soon or swerve off target.\n\nFlares are a stick of something, usually magnesium, that burns with a very very hot heat. You throw out a flare and a heat seeking missile will go after the flare instead of going after you. "
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3o11tt | how does the us supreme court reach their decisions? | I mean specifically. Doe they all sit in a room, discuss the issue, argue, vote, and then split up to write the decisions? Of do they pass notes to one another, vote in secret...how does it actually happen. Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o11tt/eli5how_does_the_us_supreme_court_reach_their/ | {
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"They typically are supposed to debate the court case and decide if ruling in favor of it would be constitutional or not. Ever since FDR, though, presidents have appointed justices with litmus tests, meaning that they will vote purely based on party lines, which effectively means that they already decided how to vote before the case even gets there. Scalia for example is the most conservative, so he will never vote for a measure that would ban the death penalty. ",
"They read the briefs on their own, although they can confer informally whenever they wish, and there's nothing inappropriate there. Then during oral arguments they get an idea of what their colleagues might think based on the questions they ask. After orals they have a private conference where they discuss things, but (as far as we know) not typically in great depth. Then the Chief and the senior associate justice on the other side assign the majority and minority opinions. The assigned justices retire to their chambers and draft the opinion. It's here where the real work happens in earnest, as many opinions are redrafted and circulated, with justices who agree in bulk saying \"I can't agree with this section\" or \"can you add a section addressing X?\", etc., and justices on each side redrafting to respond to arguments brought up in the other side's earlier draft. And this continues until everybody's happy with their statements, and then it's announced publicly and the opinion is published. ",
" > Do they all sit in a room, discuss the issue, argue, vote, and then split up to write the decisions?\n\nThat one. There's a conference a few days oral argument, in which they discuss the case, then vote on what to do and it's decided who's writing the majority opinion (whoever's the senior justice in the majority picks who'll write the opinion). After the conference, the justices, with help from their clerks, write draft opinions; justices can change their mind after conference, and ultimately whichever opinion gets a majority signing on to it becomes the official disposition of the case.",
"As mentioned the justices tend to vote along their ideological (not necessarily political party) lines. These are well known before they are appointed so its no surprise.\n\nOne cannot forget that they all have clerks who do most of the heavy lifting for them. Very often the process isn't \"here are the facts of the case, everyone vote on it\". The process is usually a judge's clerk building a line of legal reasoning consistent the judge's general ideological views on the topic. Clerks give the justice a plausible \"excuse\" to vote according to thier general views concerning a particular case.\n\nSometimes, judges do look at the facts more objectively and vote based on the case's legal merits alone. Roberts decided for The affordable care act even though he's a conservative. It was more of a legal decision than a ideological one. Ditto with the recent vote to require a police officer to have a warrant before seaching a cell phone...all 9 voted the same way.\n\nA lot of the theater of the Supreme Court is more or less for show and for explaining the legal way they and their clerks have found to decide a specific matter. Same with the printed decisions. \n\nIts not that they are making stuff up because they aren't. There isn't just one possible way a decision can go. There is no ultimate objective \"right\" way to decide an issue. That's why there are usually split decisions....reasonable minds can disagree and use different interpretations to lead them down different legal avenues to reach their ultimate decision."
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2u7wua | why does it seem like soda companies are putting sugar substitutes in all of their non-diet drinks? | I don't know if it's just my experience, but I feel like recently, whenever I drink soda from a bottle of non-diet soda, it always has sucralose. What's the deal? Is this a real trend in soda companies in the USA? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2u7wua/eli5_why_does_it_seem_like_soda_companies_are/ | {
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"Pepsi, Coke and Snapple all agreed to [\"lower calorie consumption by 20% over 10 years\"](_URL_0_). They're *trying* to give people normal tasting products with less sugar."
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2z65cf | why car rental companies require a credit card and can't take a debit card even though i can run my debit as credit everywhere else? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2z65cf/eli5_why_car_rental_companies_require_a_credit/ | {
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"They basically charge you to fix the car if you wreck it. A debit card only pays for however much is in the account, while a credit card can be charged however much the repairs amount to. ",
"Places like car rentals, hotels, or others who don't know what the final total will be place a guesstimate reservation on your credit available on your card. If your credit limit is $1000, they will put a hold on some of that. Then they are guaranteed the amount will be available when you return the car (pay your hotel bill, ???). \n\nYou cannot do the same thing with a debit card. The rental can't charge you before you return the car, and they don't know if you will still have the money available later.",
"With a debit card, you could close your bank account and take off and the rental agency is left with the bill. With a credit card, the bill goes to the credit card company and rental place is guaranteed to be paid. ",
"There are many reasons. One is that if you get any parking tickets or toll charges they can charge the card in the future as per the contract. Another reason is people who don't or can't have credit cards are often financially unstable and it's bad for business to lend them a $30k asset. Also people often return rentals late or refuse to return them at all, incurring additional charges. It can be hard to collect on those debts so the card is used as security and authorized for the running total. If the card declines and the person doesn't reply to calls the car will be repossessed. As others have said if you damage the car they can charge your card as well. \n\nAlso from many companies you can rent with a debit card deposit but you have to fill out a form with references and provide proof of residence (utility bills)."
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2g6mqg | why are plastic bags so noisy? | Makes it hard to sneak late night snacks when you're married. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g6mqg/eli5_why_are_plastic_bags_so_noisy/ | {
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"Molecules of plastic resist deformation up to certain point and then give up en masse producing cracking sound. Like cracking a stick except some plastic types can bend multiple times before breaking.",
"As an addendum: why were those discontinued biodegradable Sun Chips bags so freakishly loud?",
"Like you're an adult: Plastic bags are made up of stretched and hardened polymers to keep the bags inexpensive and strong. This process makes the bags more resistant to movement, and the energy that is expended when you do move the bag is released as sound.\n\nLike you're 10: Crumpling the bag causes vibrations in its crystalline structure. These vibrations are picked up by our ears as sound.\n\nLike you're 5: Sound = vibrations. Crumpling a bag = causing vibrations.",
"Followup: why do you my cats love to crinkle them so?",
"Follow-up question:\n\nWhy the hell are SUNCHIPS BAGS so noisy???",
"It depends on the material. The crinkly ones, like the one you get at walmart is made from HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) material. That material rustles and makes louds noises easily. \n\nThere are also bags made from LDPE (Low Density Polyethylene) and the material is naturally softer and doesn't make the loud rustling noises you hear. This type of material is more commonly found in garbage bags and produce rolls. \n\nSource: I make bags for a living."
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1vl07g | i feel a cold coming on. home remedies aside what should i actually be doing to avoid/weaken it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vl07g/eli5_i_feel_a_cold_coming_on_home_remedies_aside/ | {
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"text": [
"Stay hydrated, get plenty of sleep, eat decently. But you should be doing those already :P"
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59546a | what advantage to companies have for focusing on short term stock gains? | I've been at two companies now that make cuts and business changes to focus on the short term increase of stock as opposed to making longer term investments to make the company successful over time. I assume that the increase in stock makes the company more visible and seems successful (i.e. marketing), but fail to see how the gains tie directly to corporate profits. Stock holders will see larger dividends and the company, or it's employees, can sell stock at a higher value, but that doesn't directly impact the bottom line.
Perhaps is such to ensure job stability for the upper management and prevent shareholders from asking the board to replace them. I can't imagine that's the only main reason, though. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/59546a/eli5what_advantage_to_companies_have_for_focusing/ | {
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"From the perspective of the board of directors, and the \"company itself\" the single measure of success of the company is shareholder value. In fact, a focus on _anything other than that_ is a shirking of legal responsibility of a board member.\n\nSo...thats the starting point. If your shareholders are frustrated that it's taking too long to get them return, then you aren't doing your job very well and you _must make a change_. This is to say that when this occurs, the company is not doing a good job. Period. \n\nThis isn't to say that you aren't right - that they are being short sighted and might regret it later, or might create more shareholder return on a longer time continuum if they could escape the \"pressure\" of quarter announcements. \n\nFurther, while I generally embrace cynicism and there is a lot of poor management in the world, do remember that the people doing the analysis are pretty smart and pretty experienced. Notably the best companies can create both short and long term value and when either of those aren't happening they should make adjustments. It's generally considered \"burying your head in the sand\" to say \"the stuff we've got coming out next year is really gonna save us\" - the market is right to look for management of the finances of the businesses in ways that hedge against that risky stance. "
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1q1ffj | what does the discovery of the knee's anterolateral ligament mean for us, and why did it take so long to confirm it's existence? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q1ffj/eli5_what_does_the_discovery_of_the_knees/ | {
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"Seriously! How did we just now discover this? Wouldn't it be noticed during the countless autopsies performed?"
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6mj59b | why do journalists and producers have to ask for permission to use a tweet or a video, but they don't ask for permission to (famous) people (politicans, rappers, etc.)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6mj59b/eli5_why_do_journalists_and_producers_have_to_ask/ | {
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"In America, depending on the state, there are different rules for dealing with public figures lives and private citizen's lives. \n\nA media outlet could report any publicly available tweet, but why would it?"
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2kyc8m | when our ancestors left africa were they homo sapien sapien like us or did that come later after leaving. | Also our ancestors were in competition with other races from the Homo family like Neanderthal. For many of these we either out bread them, out fought them, absorbed them, or they just died off. And i was wondering about how and when they popped up. Since different groups were found in different parts of the world how did that happen. Like did they branch out then leave to new places then branch out again and spread out again?
Also did homo sapiens sapiens evolve in Africa then spread out and encounter these other races already inhabiting different parts of Eurasia. Sorry the time line has always just been confusing to me. And I couldn't find it in a search though that may just be my blindness. And while i have read a lot of interesting stuff on what i guess you would call our evolutionary siblings i haven't really been able to find a good timeline. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kyc8m/eli5_when_our_ancestors_left_africa_were_they/ | {
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"They branched out earlier, than many died off, a portion developed into homo sapien sapien in africa and that group spread out of africa, encountering what could be described as their cousins elsewhere."
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5ag0fl | if you have two glasses of water (one at 12°c, the other at 32°c), will they reach room temperature (say 22°c) at the same time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ag0fl/eli5if_you_have_two_glasses_of_water_one_at_12c/ | {
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"The warmer glass will cool off faster because it will also cool from evaporative cooling. In fact, the cooler glass will held back from warming faster because it will be experiencing evaporative cooling as well.",
"The warmer glass should cool faster. There is a property of matter called thermal conductivity, which is experimentally determined as the thermal conductivity coefficient. This number is a measure of how quickly heat transfers from hot to cold across a distance. The number is also roughly proportional to temperature, as temperature increases, this number generally increases (with some exceptions). Using [this](_URL_0_) table, we can see that for water, the thermal conductivity coefficient increases with temperature, so water at 32C will reach 22C more quickly than 12C water because the higher values mean that the heat transfers more quickly.\n\nOther factors such as evaporative cooling may also affect this value.\n\n[Source](_URL_1_)"
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_conductivity"
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8pb4i4 | how come whenever you get a paper cut or any sort of lesion it stings whenever water or anything touches it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8pb4i4/eli5_how_come_whenever_you_get_a_paper_cut_or_any/ | {
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"First off, papercuts usually happen on your fingertips - which are full of very sensitive nerve endings because they are how we explore the world. The cuts are usually not deep enough to activate the body's ability to scab or clot, leaving the nerve endings very exposed (this is also partly why small lesions not caused by paper hurt so much, too). Paper is also not as smooth as it seems, it's pressed pulp, which is jagged, and leaves a jagged cut in the skin. "
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1xe83t | why aren't breast implants filled with the patient's own fat instead of silicone or saline? | Everyone says breast implants are much harder/firmer than real tits. So why don't they just take fat from other parts of the woman's body, like her stomach or legs, and use that to give her some boobs that feel real? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xe83t/eli5_why_arent_breast_implants_filled_with_the/ | {
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"My GF was wanting to get her boobs done for the longest time. I even wrote a post about it before.\nI was pretty against implants cause i think they are dangerous but with [stem cell breast enhancement](_URL_0_) procedure i just wasnt as worried. I mean its her OWN friggin bodyfat.. why not!\n",
"Fat is living tissue, not butter deposits.\n\nIf you cut it off from the rest of the body it dies and decomposes. If you just stuff it in there the immune system will dismantle it over time.",
"Fat-filled *implants* would die quickly. Living tissue needs blood flow to carry oxygen and nutrition. (Implants filled with soybean oil were tried some years ago, but had an unusually high rate of complications.)\n\nInstead, what some surgeons do is harvest fat via liposuction and graft it directly to the breast area, where it can ideally stay alive. When it works, it looks and feels much more natural. Unfortunately, there's still a risk of complications, like formation of lumps, mineral deposits, and tissue death. It's also not effective for women who don't have much fat to graft.",
"Because when you put meat in a warm bag, it spoils.",
"They do for some women needing breast reconstruction One procedure is called a TRAM flap where the surgeon cuts a large piece of tissue (including the skin) from the abdomen and pulls it through a tunnel up from the stomach. They then fashion it into a breast shape and sew it in place on the chest wall where the original breast was. Some women choose this option for reconstruction because the essentially get a free tummy tuck. There are other similar procedures using fat from the abdomen and the back. \n\nAs far as I know, they only use these procedures for reconstruction, not enhancement. The surgery is time consuming and much more delicate than putting in a implant. ",
"Recently they have started a new surgery specifically for women with breast cancer who have mastectomies...they take fake from the women's' butt, thighs, and or stomach and put it into the breast.",
"Also, natural breasts are NOT made purely from fat. The type of cells that constitute breast tissue are very different.",
"because most breast implants are desired to be perky and firm like breast tissue - not like breast fat.",
"fat needs oxygen, blood, etc. Locked in plastic bag it wouldn't fare so well",
"You know, a thought just struck me. Could stem cells be used in breast augmentation? We've already heard stories about spinal tissue being repaired when stem cells were injected into the area to heal damaged portions of tissue... could something similar be done in breasts as well?\n\nPaging medical researchers to this thread...",
"How this very topic hasn't been the impetus for wide-scale government support of stem cell research is beyond me.\n\n\"Rich white males (aka Congress): We believe that we can learn to develop stem cells into any other type of cell. Including breast tissue. To allow for safe, natural enlargement. Do we have your support?\"",
"Japanese scientists are injecting fat stem cells for breast augmentation. One of the leaders in the field came to my university and gave a seminar on it. He basically showed 45 minutes of topless women poking their boobs. It was the best seminar ever. \n\n_URL_0_\n_URL_1_",
"Fat isn't just loose fluid in you, it's more like skin. It's made up of actual cells that are fixed in place and surrounded with capillaries. so taking fat from there and putting it somewhere else in you would be as hard as moving muscle from your leg and making your arms bigger. if you just squirt your fat under the skin without reattaching as many capillaries would have is rot under your skin. Unless you mean use the plastic bags implants are made from but fill them with fat instead of salin or silicon. In that case I bet silicon and saline are a cheaper or more reliable or both solution than human fat.",
"Woman with breast implants here. I got mine when I was 20, it's now been close to ten years. Mine are saline. Most things to note: the comment \"everyone knows\" is kinda BS. I dated plenty of guys in my early twenties who couldn't tell the difference. That being said, many factors can have an impact on how they look and feel. When I worked out like a maniac and have a bonier chest and tighter pec muscles, they are surrounded by less fat, and they tend to sit a little higher on my chest, and they look more fake. When I'm not as fit, as I am now (because I'm pregnant) they look bigger because I simply have more body fat in general and I'm not pounding out any push-ups. So they do look more natural now then if I was leaner. Also depends whether they are over the muscle or under it. Mine are under the muscle, so breast feeding will be fine because all my ducts and stuff are intact. \nIn sum, not everyone can tell if your tits are fake or not. Some fake ones, like real breasts, are not as nice. Doesn't really answer your question, admittedly.",
"I could donate so many fake boobies if this were a possibility. Tits for you, and you, and tits for you, everyone gets free tits!!! ",
"Contrary to common conception, fat grafting has actually been around for a long time. It goes back to 1893 when it was used for facial defects. However, fat graft alone is met with mixed success.\n\nTo explain why, I'll have to describe a little about liposuction. When a liposuction occurs, the fat is suctioned out through a cannula with a hole size of about a few millimeters. This fat has now been broken away from its microvasculature that was supplying the blood that carries the nutrients the fat needs. However, the fat cells (adipocytes) need a network of blood vessels in order to keep them alive. As a result, if the fat is introduced back into the body without blood vessels (or at least a method of encouraging the microvasculature to regrow), there is reduced likelihood of the fat tissue staying alive.\n\nThe lack of angiogenesis leads to a few complications, which limits the popularity of a traditional fat graft:\n\n- Fat necrosis can occur, which leads to calcifications that are lumpy, hard, or have contour irregularities\n- Fat graft will lose its volume over time due to the fat being absorbed (20-40% of the fat will not remain permanently)\n- Oil cysts can develop where the fat is transferred, which may lead to lumpiness\n\nHowever, there is a solution to this problem. Back in the early 2000's, stem cells were discovered in the fat tissue (named adipose-derived stem cells). These are all extracted from the patient's own fat tissue (an autologous process, so absolutely no embryos are involved - it takes fat from one portion of the body and moves it to another portion of the same patient's body). These cells appear to have angiogenic properties. By delivering these cells with the fat graft (in what's called a cell-enriched fat graft), the complications described above appear to go away based on the Clinical data that I've seen. This is because the blood vessels are growing, which reduces fat necrosis and calcifications.\n\nUnfortunately, these surgeries still are not very popular (I feel) because of just the industry's inertia. As the comments have stated, there are procedures such as the transverse rectus abdominis myocutaneous (TRAM) flap and the Latissimus Dorsi (LD) flap surgeries that are currently used in breast reconstruction. These methods use primarily **muscle** and skin to rebuild the breast (which is primarily made of fat tissue). The result is not ideal and oftentimes, the women have to go in for repeat surgeries due to the complications. In my opinion, these gruesome surgeries of cutting muscle flaps to reconstruct the breast are vastly inferior to using a cell-enriched fat graft.\n\nHowever, I may be a bit jaded, but it really takes a long time for a new technology to catch on. Even the silicone implants that are used today were around since the 1960s, which goes to show how long it takes for a technology to get used in the medical field. Here are just a few reasons for this:\n\n- There needs to be a lot of Clinical data to prove effectiveness for regulatory approval. Certain countries have a more conservative stance than others (and may freak out at the mention of \"stem cells\" even if those stem cells are already in your body).\n- The medical billing process takes years to develop for there to even be a new code where the physicians can be reimbursed for their treatments.\n- I feel that companies developing the existing solutions (implants, for instance) are always trying to squash out the knowledge that there is a better alternative out there.\n\n**TLDR:** No blood vessels cause the fat cells to die. Dead fat cells creates lumpy or hard calcifications. An alternative exists to keep the fat cells alive, but inertia and politics.\n\n**Source:** I work for a company that develops this technology.",
"Fat is adipose tissue. TISSUE, meaning it's like skin, and it contains blood vessels, meaning it needs blood to survive. But when you cut it out and place it elsewhere these vessel cannot reconnect. Therefore it dies. The fat dies.\n",
"How would skinny chicks get breast implants??"
]
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1l8rk6 | if drugs are illegal in almost every aspect, why isn't detox mandatory? | Title edit: Meant to put "E:" beforehand. Sorry!
Why isn't detox, or something similar, (even just a 72hr. hold) a mandatory thing after a drug related incident?
**Edit for example:** A friend of mine is really into hardcore drugs lately. The addiction flat out took him. He wants help, but every time he fails. You can say "he doesn't want it enough" or whatever but it's bullshit. He sees what it's doing to him and he hates his life. Jail is pretty much his only way out at this point.
If he's doing drugs as an obvious full blown addict, why can his rights not be stripped away (he was recently hospitalized after threatening to OD and commit suicide, etc. but then released the next day) for a few days and be forced into detox? If for nothing else, just to get his mind out of a drug addled state in order to make a semi-rational decision about completing a rehab or just saying "fuck it, I'm going back to get high"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l8rk6/if_drugs_are_illegal_in_almost_every_aspect_why/ | {
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"Every drug doesn't need a detox period or program. LSD for example has no known lasting physical or mental effects. This is more of a crime and punishment issue. Laws in America rarely have a strong scientific correlation. \n\n_URL_0_"
]
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| []
| [
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lsd#Potential_adverse_effects"
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2k83si | how is it that when making a parody you can get away with it by simply adding extras to it? (i. e. snl) | Edit: Clarification- on the season premier they showed Cialis "Turnt". All of the box graphics and logos were spot on to the actual brand. Wouldn't this infringe on copyright laws? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2k83si/eli5_how_is_it_that_when_making_a_parody_you_can/ | {
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"You can thank Larry Flynt for being rich and getting into trouble a lot. The [Supreme Court ruled](_URL_0_) that a parody isn't defamation if a reasonable person believes it's not factual. \n\nSo, as long as SNL adds enough extras that a reasonable person (basically a jury) doesn't see the parody as factual, it's not defaming the party it's aping. ",
"Do you mean how can they get away with showing a clip from a copyrighted work when all they've done is add things to it like, say, fart noises? Because that's enough to make it a parody under the fair use exception to copyrights. \n\nCourts generally let parodies use a lot of the original. The test is whether the parody is \"transformative,\" which means that the parody alters the copied work to achieve another purpose, meaning, or message. Judges evaluate whether a parody is transformative on a case by case basis - there's not one clear rule that can easily tell you whether something is transformative enough to qualify as a parody or not under fair use."
]
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| []
| [
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell"
],
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|
|
458o4n | what separates an everyday plant from being a vegetable? | As the title says. Where is the line drawn between plant and vegetable? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/458o4n/eli5_what_separates_an_everyday_plant_from_being/ | {
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"How are you using it? In culinary use it tends to be a part of a plant you eat, excluding mostly fruits and nuts. But even then you get exceptions, because it isn't a rigorous term and has more to do with history than biology.\n\nIn biology, vegetable mainly means 'part of a plant.'",
"Vegetable just means a part of a plant that we eat, with the exception of fruit and nuts. It can refer to leaves, stems, roots, whatever.",
"Biologically there is no such thing as a vegetable. Anything we eat is just an edible part of the plant i.e. carrots are roots, cabbage are leaves etc"
]
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721qyh | why is there such a huge disparity in airline prices (example in text)? | Today I searched for roundtrip ticket prices from NY to Singapore for next month. [These are the prices a well-known travel website gave me.](_URL_0_)
The prices range goes from 779 for China Southern to 3372 for United Airlines.
1) Do airlines like United even TRY to be competitive? Has United given up?
Why this huge disparity in prices?
2) Who in the world elects to buy United Airline tickets when they're obviously four times the price of the lowest carrier? Somebody must be buying them right? United won't be flying an empty plane?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/721qyh/eli5why_is_there_such_a_huge_disparity_in_airline/ | {
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"All you can see is the price for the next remaining seat, what you don't know is how many others are sold and at what prices\n\nUnited may be doing a codeshare flight with someone else in which case if you fly that plane it won't be a United airframe or crew so they don't care if it's full\n\nIt may already almost be full, if they know that route usually fills up then they can charge more. If they only have a few seats left they'll charge a ton to heavily fleece the last few sheep who really need a seat\n\nIt could also be they already sold all their economy seats and you're comparing a first class ticket to coach\n\nThere are so many variables you haven't accounted for, I assure you that their pricing scheme is designed to maximize profits and get planes just as full as they want and no fuller",
"The thing to understand here is that a lot of these airlines aren't really going after *you*. \n\nAirlines like United are courting business fliers. These are individuals who don't have to pay for their own tickets... but *do* get the frequent flier miles! So an airline will go for offering them more services and more frequent flier bonuses. \n\nThere are no-frills airlines that *do* court individuals - they tend to be a lot cheaper. And a lot less... comfortable. And be smaller and more regional. \n\nThen there are airline hubs - an airline will tend to have cheaper flights to/from their hubs. \n\nThere are also some other concerns - for example, China-based airlines might be incentivised (or financed) by the Chinese government to have cheaper flights to China. "
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cdqgx4 | do the finger nails of a fetus grow inside the womb? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cdqgx4/eli5_do_the_finger_nails_of_a_fetus_grow_inside/ | {
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"Yes, babies come out with fingernails. When my son was born, the nurse commented that his nail already needed a trim.",
"Yes. Nail beds begin to form at 11 weeks gestation and the nails themselves begin growing by 12 weeks gestation."
]
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99csyk | what an indictment is, what it means, and why it seems like only certain people are served one. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/99csyk/eli5_what_an_indictment_is_what_it_means_and_why/ | {
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"text": [
"And indictment is being charged/accused of a crime after an arrest. And indictment will lead to a trial to determine whether you are guilty of the crime for which you were indicted."
]
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| []
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[]
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||
6etegh | with all the millions of planes taking off, landing and generally flying each day, how do more not crash into each other? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6etegh/eli5_with_all_the_millions_of_planes_taking_off/ | {
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"Because not anyone can be a pilot, pilots go over huge degrees and immense training flight hours, so usually, only responsible people go into piloting.\nThere are no obstacles up in the sky, it's not like if you run a green light, some other dumb guy will cross a red light and hit you, or you will lose track of your car, and hit another car or a bunch of people.\nYou have an open sky in order to correct mistakes and possible turbulence.\nIn a road for example, you are forced into a confined straight line usually with cars passing by you less than a meter away, any slip has a higher chance of causing an accident.\nAlso, to make sure that planes don't hit each others both in sky and land, there are the tower crew, who constantly monitor airplanes and tell pilots where to go and where to be, when to land, when to take off, and when to change course.\nOverall, airplane is the safest transport vehicle but the deadliest when an accident happens. \n"
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8tkn64 | why are we more likely to have a heat stroke if we've had one before? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8tkn64/eli5_why_are_we_more_likely_to_have_a_heat_stroke/ | {
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"Anyone can have a heat stroke under extreme enough conditions. But it is unlikely that you were experiencing world-record conditions when you had a heat stroke. Especially if you were around other people in the same conditions who didn't have one.\n\nIt is far more likely you were in only slightly extreme conditions, and had a heat stroke because you are more susceptible to them than other people are. Whatever made you susceptible the first time is likely still there, making you more susceptible in the future as well.",
"In a nutshell, it has to do with heat tolerance. In Construction we learn about it as acclimation. Your body needs time to adapt to a hot environment, and so the general rule of thumb is small doses of exposure to excessive heat and then gradually your body can tolerate more. \n\nEvery season reacclimation is needed but not as often do you see people reacclimatizing, they expect to be able to handle what they were able to last season. \n\nFor those who have had a heat stroke before, it depends on how fast they cooled down. The faster you fix it, the more likely a full recovery. However, if thermoregulation (the body’s ability to regulate its temperature) was damaged from prolonged exposure, then the body can develop heat intolerance. \n\nHeat intolerance is similar to lactose intolerance, or any bodily intolerance. \n\nEven heat intolerance should heal itself within a year at the longest, but having a stroke within the middle of a hot season leads to complications because the body is still experiencing intolerance, leading to a higher likelihood of having another heatstroke and causing more damage. Also things like dehydration factor in as well leading to a higher risk. There’s generally a reason someone suffered a heatstroke in the first place and those reasons are likely to reoccur. \n\nSource: am a student in Civil Engineering and OSHA trained \n\nThere isn’t a lot of research into it being a genetics thing, but it could be possible. "
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7fqua1 | smoking after sex. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7fqua1/eli5_smoking_after_sex/ | {
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"My experience confirms it, but it also confirms that if you are a smoker, smoking after anything tastes good.",
"In a movie, if it shows two people in bed, you can't really be certain of what has happened prior.\n\nExcept if one or both are smoking, then you know they had sex. It's movie-code.",
"It was initially a ploy by the cigarette companies to advertise; they'd help fund a given film in return for the leading actor and actress lighting up with their brand after getting busy.\n\nAnd they did it so much that now [it's a movie trope.](_URL_0_)"
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j43oh | [li5] what's with openoffice and libreoffice? | I'm a geek, and even the author of a tech blog [Right Now In Tech](_URL_0_). But I never got to fully understanding the dilemma between LibreOffice and OpenOffice. All the answers online are not clear enough.
Can you explain like I'm 5? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j43oh/li5_whats_with_openoffice_and_libreoffice/ | {
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"OpenOffice was a project that was started by Sun. They made a previous product they had StarOffice open source, and made it an open project.\n\nAnd for a time it was good, everyone in the open source community liked it and contributed towards it. Sun had a good respect for open source so it all worked well.\n\nBut then Oracle bought Sun. Oracle weren't as friendly to open source as sun had been, so some of the community that had contributed towards OpenOffice in the past decided they didn't trust Oracle to be in charge.\n\nSo they decided to copy the source code and use it make a new project called LibreOffice. LibreOffice at the start was identical to OpenOffice, but now there are lots of people contributing to LibreOffice to make it better and basically only Oracle and a few others contributing to OpenOffice.",
"Quite simple actually, from wikipedia: \n > On 28 September 2010, several members of the _URL_0_ project formed a new group called \"The Document Foundation\". The Document Foundation created LibreOffice from their former project, over concerns that Oracle Corporation would either discontinue _URL_0_, or place restrictions on it as an open-source project, as it had on OpenSolaris.\n\nThe guys that were working on OpenOffice were afraid that it would be discontinued or become less open-source than it used to be, so they \"forked\" it (took the source, modified it and made a new version of the product) so they could continue to develop it the way they wanted it to be without fear that the company making the official OpenOffice version would harm their app."
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3mhegw | why when someone redlines a car does it rev up and down instead of staying at max rpm? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mhegw/eli5_why_when_someone_redlines_a_car_does_it_rev/ | {
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"Usually the computer controls the RPMs to stop it from staying at redline. This is done to try and prevent permanent engine damage. "
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5gs5bu | i'm not an american so can anyone explain why there's a stereotype about african americans liking watermelons? what started it all? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5gs5bu/eli5_im_not_an_american_so_can_anyone_explain_why/ | {
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"_URL_2_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_3_",
"Watermelons have a historical reputation of being a messy fruit, and a fruit for lazy people, because they are easy to grow, and it's hard to eat a watermelon while doing work. Many black slaves were allowed to grow watermelons on the side, and when many slaves became free, they continued to grow and sell watermelons, so it became a sort of symbol of freedom. The racist white South twisted the symbol for their own means, saying that watermelons are messy, unclean fruits for lazy people. At least, that is the origin of the stereotype that has been perpetuated for 150 or so years. Once a stereotype that old gets started, it becomes deeply ingrained, and people forget what the stereotype actually means, but they will still repeat the stereotype anyways, usually for a cheap laugh or a cheaper insult.",
"Many things that get attributed to black people are actually aspects of southern culture. There is a lot of black diaspora that moved into the north and their southern peculiarities became black peculiarities that they got ridiculed for. Minstrel shows were a product of the North, not the south. The north wasn't more or less racist, just anti-slavery. ",
"Here is a pretty good article on the subject:\n\n_URL_0_",
"Thanks for all the answers. I wondered about this as well. I'm from the UK, and only recently learnt about the fried chicken thing recently. ",
"Watermelons were the first thing African Americans could legally sell. Thus the strong association of them to the African American population",
"The cognitive dissonance needed to reconcile mistreating other humans is strong. You can't keep slaves if you see them as people, because you'll feel guilty. So they need to be made less than people.\n\nYou can do this with biblical justification, or by \"scientifically\" insisting they're a lesser species. Childlike and simple. \n\nTo ram that last part home the caricatures were created. Minstrels (white folk in blackface) rolling around doing amusing acts of childlike simpletons that they wanted to portray black people as. Either that or dangerous brutish beasts ready to rape the first white woman as soon as the chains came off. See the movie Birth of a nation (which was the presidents favorite) at the time. Bestial stupid, slow, messy subhumans. The Sambo, the golliwog, the dutch people with their Black Pete that they're still in denial about. All examples of simple stupid negroes who can't be trusted to look after themselves. Slavery and Jim Crow isn't evil. It's humane! It's better to have them chained and cared for you see... for their own good.\n\nThe minstrels spoke in an affected childlike way. Fell over, shied away from work and yes... greedily gobbled melons leaving messy faces like toddlers. \n\nYou might see it as just melons/fried chicken but it goes far deeper and speaks to all of that.",
"While I get it from a systemic oppression standpoint, taking something that a particular group likes and demonizing it to make that group look like lesser beings, this one never made sense. Same with all the other foods black people stereotypically like. They're foods *everyone* loves, almost universally.\n\nBlack people like watermelon, fried chicken, and collard greens. OH NO BLACK PEOPLE LIKE DELICIOUS AWESOME FOOD, HOW DARE THEY!",
"This won't really help answer the question, but I was in the Navy once and every year on Martin Luther King Day my boat would serve fried chicken, collard greens, chitlins, watermelon, all the stereotypical African-American foods, they'd even make sure to put the grape flavor in the koolaid machine. One time I happened to be in line to eat with this African-American girl that worked for me and she was all like \"damn this is gonna delicious\" and I asked her if it struck her as just a little racist, because they didn't normally serve all of these things at the same time, she then decided it was a little fucked up and lost most of her enthusiasm for the meal. ",
"the original attachment of the stereotype comes from after the civil war and the emancipation proclamation, after most blacks were freed they really only had one skill, farming, with melons both easy to grow and in high demand in the south most freed black took to melon farming, and in keeping to the status quo the white southerners, and former slave owners began to do their damnedest to sabotage what was good thing [link](_URL_0_)",
"Mark Twain on watermelon:\nFrom Puddinhead Wilson\n\n\"The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with commoner things. It is chief of this world's luxuries, king by grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took: we know it because she repented.\"\n\nFrom the Autobiography:\n\n\"I know how a prize watermelon looks when it is sunning its fat rotundity among pumpkin vines and “simblins”; I know how to tell when it is ripe without “plugging” it; I know how inviting it looks when it is cooling itself in a tub of water under the bed, waiting; I know how it looks when it lies on the table in the sheltered great floor space between house and kitchen, and the children gathered for the sacrifice and their mouths watering; I know the crackling sound it makes when the carving knife enters its end, and I can see the split fly along in front if the blade as the knife cleaves its way to the other end; I can see its halves fall apart and display the rich red meat and the black seeds, and the heart standing up, a luxury fit for the elect; I know how a boy looks behind a yard-long slice of that melon, and I know how he feels; for I have been there. I know the taste of the watermelon which has been honestly come by, and I know the taste of the watermelon which has been acquired by art. Both taste good, but the experienced know which tastes best.\"\n\nI don't know how watermelon became associated with African Americans when it was a treat enjoyed by all. But it became a trope or meme in the form of a picture of a black child enjoying an enormous slice of watermelon starting in the mid 19th century. It was considered cute or funny, and the same idea was repeated by many cartoonists and advertising artists for nearly 100 years. I don't think it was specifically racist but it got that reputation over the years.\n\n",
"Watermelon is an African fruit. Watermelon was one of the few plants and foods that they, the African slaves recognized. Also add to the issue that to Anglo-Americans love to point out food as an insult. Therefore a German is a Kraut since they eat sauerkraut; a Frenchman is a frog because they eat frogs; an English man is a limey since their sailors were rationed out lime juice to avoid scurvy etc. ",
"It was what at the time freed slaves could afford and enjoy. Chickens on the other hand was a luxury meal, so it was a big occasion to have it for dinner.",
"It's not a stereotype. African Americans do like watermelons for the same reason everyone else in America likes watermelons. They're tasty.",
"As a white Southerner, I eat watermelon, fried chicken and collard greens whenever available. ",
"Watermelons are a popular fruit in the south, and in the past, this was particularly true among the poor.\n\nWhen large numbers of african americans moved north, they tended to bring the foods they were accustomed to - this included Watermelon.\n\nNot many whites moved north at that time, so the stereotype was associated with blacks, not with southerners.\n\nJust about any food that african americans are stereotyped as liking was also a common food of white southerners, particularly poor white southerners at that time.",
"This is all really interesting. It's a shame that the stereotype exists. Everyone should be assumed to like watermelons. They're great, and if you don't like them, you're wrong and must be cleansed. In watermelon.",
"Most people like watermelon, so it's not unusual that one group would like it.\n\nStudies suggest watermelon is originally from Africa. It is considered a traditional food of some African nationalities.",
"If anyone is interested about racist tropes, this is the most comprehensive resource I have found. _URL_0_",
"As a black man being made fun off my whole childhood in the white neighborhood I grew up in, I cannot tell you how many times I was told to go eat some fried chicken and watermelon. I have not had watermelon in the past 38 yrs.....but I do still eat fried chicken.",
"I've heard this comment almost every time I've watched a football game; if it was a watermelon he would have caught it. ",
"I can't remember his name-but there was an Englishman who visited Africa in the 15th century(I believe that was the time). He remarked about many of the people eating watermelon on the streets, because it was easy to eat & I tasted good. That didn't really matter to him though, he saw that the Mellon was eaten like a savage and the people didn't care about their community enough to throw the rine away, rather instead leaving it on the ground. ",
"I see a lot of misinformation about this stereotype, especially the top comment by /u/suezetta which is wrong.\n\nRead this article for the real history behind watermelons. It has nothing to do with blacks liking watermelons more than anyone else, or that the fruit is for lazy people. I think /u/suezetta must like making things up:\n\n_URL_0_",
"Part of it is just people being shitty man. Blacks have a reputation for liking Chicken too in a derogatory way, but...fucking everyone likes chicken. Kung Pao Chicken, Chicken Cordon Bleu, Chicken Wings, Chicken w/Pasta, Chicken Parmesan, Chicken Scallopine, Fried Chicken, Chicken Soup, Chicken Burritos, Grilled Chicken Sandwiches, Chicken Enchiladas, Chicken Marsala, Fettuccine Alfredo w/Chicken. The whole freaking world loves chicken and yet blacks are stigmatized for it. It makes no sense. \n\nEdit:Oh yeah, so where I was going with this was...who doesn't like watermelons? Watermelons are delicious. ",
"Let me get Herbie Hancock to explain it to you:\n\n_URL_0_"
]
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[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1i7jrf/eli5the_whole_black_person_watermelon_thing/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a0r6d/eli5_what_made_black_people_liking_watermelon_one/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zuwzp/eli5_hello_im_from_argentina_can_someone_explain/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fsodf/eli5_why_are_foods_like_watermelon_and_fried/"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/how-watermelons-became-a-racist-trope/383529/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watermelon_stereotype"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.authentichistory.com/diversity/african/"
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[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/how-watermelons-became-a-racist-trope/383529/"
],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzPZvKSdN7g"
]
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|
||
5e3igu | what exactly is a "liberal"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5e3igu/eli5_what_exactly_is_a_liberal/ | {
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"Think of it like this. What, exactly, is warm? Is 90 fahrenheit warm? That's pretty cold for a cup of coffee, but pretty warm for a spring day.\n\nWhen Google gives you the definition of liberal, it feels pretty unhelpfully vague to you. You aren't sure if one combination of ideas is really liberal or not, because whether or not they're liberal changes on context. Someone who doesn't support gay marriage might be conservative surrounded by people who do, but liberal surrounded by people who support a gay death penalty.\n\nSo when someone says that they're a liberal, it's a lot like they're saying they want society to be warmer. It doesn't reflect some precise philosophy or set of ideas. What it means is that they have rejected a kind of thinking that they view as traditional, and wish the rest of society would do the same. You could be liberal about anything you believe society has traditional values about.\n\nConversely, when someone complains about liberals, it's because they feel like a trend in society to abandon a traditional value is wrong-headed. They think that the people who have abandoned it are wrong, and want to try to conserve that value as long as they can.\n\nOne thing that complicates the issue though is political parties. People who are liberal tend to be Democrats, and Democrats favor plenty of issues that are neither conservative nor liberal, like fighting climate change or increasing taxes on the wealthy, but people who support these issues tend to think of themselves as liberals. It becomes something of a complicated mess, with the exact policies favored by conservatives and liberals changing as readily as the seasons. In general though, what I said above is true - Liberals believe that antiquated 'values' like race-nationalism and religious intolerance are too prevalent and are holding humanity back, and Conservatives feel that values like religion and individualism are threatened by dangerous and wrongheaded new ideas.\n\n"
]
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1kekk4 | if a mosquito sticks his "needle" into someone with aids, then into someone who doesn't have aids, why doesn't the second person not get aids as well? | Wouldn't it be almost identical to sharing a needle with someone who has AIDS? Other blood-based diseases spread with Mosquito bites, so why not this one? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kekk4/eli5_if_a_mosquito_sticks_his_needle_into_someone/ | {
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"Mosquitoes feed on blood, so they are not going to inject their food back to someone else. HIV virus doesn't reproduce in mosquitoes. So by the time it's hungry for blood again the viruses are all dead already. \n\nWhen people share a needle for drugs, they often inject themselves right after using it on someone else. \n\nEdit: Also a mosquito bite only draw 0.003ml of blood from you, so there's not a lot of virus to pick up. ",
"HIV, the cause of AIDS, is a very delicate virus. It can't survive in a mosquito. Other blood borne illnesses can, not all, but some. ",
"Very few blood-based diseases spread via mosquito bites. The main one is of course malaria, but the malaria parasite is an organism that actually needs to be inside mosquitoes (as well as inside humans) to live.\n\nHIV, the virus which causes AIDS, cannot live for long outside of a human body. What's more, mosquito bites aren't really like an injection from a doctor -- that they're not putting anything *into* the bloodstream, rather they're taking blood out of you."
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5e0rq1 | why isn't there a giant bubble at the bottom of the ocean? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5e0rq1/eli5_why_isnt_there_a_giant_bubble_at_the_bottom/ | {
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"Mostly because there are no gases denser than water. The most dense gases are still about a tenth or so as water is at sea level. ",
"Heaviest gas is Radon, with density of 10g/L. To make it as dense as water you need to compress it 100 times, there isnt deep enough to get that kind of pressue."
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3imdg9 | why there are so many more men interested in programming? | Just started college in a software engineering program and was wondering why the gender difference is so severe when programming itself feels rather gender neutral. Obviously there is probably social stigmas that have an effect but I doubt this could be the only cause | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3imdg9/eli5_why_there_are_so_many_more_men_interested_in/ | {
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"It's probably mostly [social stigmas](_URL_0_). People that [look into the issue](_URL_1_) of women in STEM fields point to things like higher attrition rates for women in STEM education and cultural biases against women's ability to compete in STEM fields despite research showing otherwise.",
"Girls are brought up being told that computers are boys toys, so they're no interested. Simple as that.\n\n\"“Social scientists really agree pretty wholeheartedly on the effect of these kinds of gender labels on kids’ choices,” Brown said. “What they find is that the girls don’t want to touch it if it’s labeled a boy’s toy.” When the exact same toy is labeled as a girl’s toy, however, the girls are interested. Similar patterns have been observed in boys. In one study, published last year in the Journal of Developmental Psychology, preschool-age children preferred toys they’d never seen before when they were labeled according to their own gender. This was true even when the toys were given purposely confusing visual cues — for example, when handed a monster truck that had been painted pink, boys were more interested when it was labeled “for boys,” and girls were more interested when it was labeled “for girls.” \"\n\n_URL_0_"
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"https://xkcd.com/385/",
"http://www.ncwge.org/TitleIX40/STEM.pdf"
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"http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/08/science-of-kids-and-gender-labeled-toys.html"
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bcvw7p | the french colonized canada, the english colonized usa, and spain colonized mexico. why is mexico the only country whose population is not predominantly caucasian? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bcvw7p/eli5_the_french_colonized_canada_the_english/ | {
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"Because native people were much more extensively exterminated in the USA and Canada than in Mexico, either by the colonial powers or later by their new independent governments (mainly in the USA). They were also much more stricter in mixing with native populations",
"okay, so its a little weird. Spain hit up South America, but they did not exactly colonize as much as pillage everything. Not to say that they did not colonize, but they more built forts and missions, and then just mined for resources to send back home. They also had children with the native people who they raided, and that also attributed to darker features",
"Also, weren't there a fair amount of darker skin/hair people already in Spain, from there being a lot of people with north African roots in Spain?",
"**TL;DR** Lots of Europeans and few Natives north of Mexico. Few Europeans, lots of Natives south.\n\nI'm just going to quickly acknowledge that Latin America, as colonized by Spain, is more than just Mexico, and that Portugal colonized Brazil.\n\nThere are going to be a lot of reasons, but a lot of it comes down to how many natives were in an area, and how many non natives, and how that butterfly effects out. **In North America there were probably 2-7 million natives total, US and Canada**. There was a huge influx of Europeans to the United States during the 1800s. Population of the US more than quadrupled from 5.2 million to 23 million from 1800 to 1850. There were also 350,000 black slaves brought to America, up to 1800, and were encouraged to have lots of children before and especially after Cross-Atlantic trade was outlawed.\n\nOn the other hand, there were huge kingdoms of natives in Central and South America, probably around **37 million in Mexico (including the Aztec, Mayan, Inca, etc)**, and there were probably around 1.86 million Spaniards that immigrated to Latin America up until 1824, and maybe a few million more after.\n\nConsidering that the native populations were drastically reduced similarly in both continents (citation needed, I know that different nations and empires were not killed at equal rates, but that they were all drastically reduced) it would be like if blue aliens invaded New York City and Anchorage, Alaska, killed 90% of both, and then sent 50 or 100x more blue aliens to live in Alaska. In one city the population is roughly equal, there might even be more humans. In the other there are dozens and eventually hundreds then thousands of aliens for every human. There is some interbreeding in both cities, and after a few hundred years Alaska would be a lot more blue than New York City.\n\nThis would lead to a different power dynamic for the two cities during occupation. In New York the aliens would have to devote a lot of resources to ensuring they remained in control and they would be more conquerors or slavers, while the aliens in Anchorage could probably just find an abandoned house or plot of land and start a human-free life as colonizers. As these cycles go on for hundreds of years even more aliens are going to prefer Anchorage rather than New York City. It's far easier to start a village than to conquer and suppress a city.\n\nWith different power balances, social norms would also be affected, as the closer to equal populations of New York City would lead to humans in New York having more power than the humans in Anchorage. New York might even be able to declare independence from the Aliens after a few hundred years and form their own identity. Meanwhile in Alaska, the blue aliens would retain a sense of identity with their blue homeland, and the humans with theirs because the aliens of Anchorage would have enough of a power discrepancy that they could corral all of the humans together in some corner of the city.",
"I'mma try to keep this short because we're in ELI5 after all. For one Iberians, look different than French or English to begin with, they tend to have darker skin, as for why that is an entirely different ELI5. But perhaps more importantly, Mexico had actual massive civilizations already there. The Natives of Canada and America were largely nomadic and their total population probably didn't amount to that of a single nation in Mexico.",
"The Spanish conquerors used the native population as a slave resource to collect up, mine, and export all the gold, silver, and precious jewels they could find. There was little interest in bringing wives and families over to the conquered territories, the men merely picked locally available women. There was also little displacement of the indigenous population in the same way the American west was 'won' by breaking treaties and massacring the Indians as they discovered mineral deposits or suitable farm land. The original inhabitant remnants got all the poor land the whites didn't want, or they got to starve, or die. In Canada and New France, things were done slightly differently, but after the British were running it in the late 19th century the net effect was the same. Lotsa white families farming and mining/logging and the original inhabitants crowded into pretty lousy places to try to make a life.",
"The Spanish took a more \"integrate as opposed to eradicate\" approach toward the natives in Mexico than the French and English did toward those in North America. That's not to suggest natives in Mexico weren't brutalized and subjugated (Aztecs say hello), but intermarrying and exchanging culture was seen as acceptable and sometimes even encouraged, while the same thing was much more of a taboo among the French and English in North America. Mexican culture is essentially the melding of Spanish and Native Central American heritage. To this day there are stereotypes in Mexico around the upper class and government being descended from the Spanish and whiter, and the lower class having more native heritage and darker skin.",
"Just throwing this out there but britain colonized Canada too. We arent all French Canadians.",
"Being white (i.e. Caucasian) in terms defined by the US government simply means being primarily of an ancestry from Europe. Anyone of Spanish ancestry fits that definition. Despite having darker complexion, a person from Mexico could still be considered Caucasian and then would also be Hispanic additionally.\n\nIn everything from law enforcement to medical and government documents there is a race field where you'd classify a person as being Caucasian and then in a separate field there is a Hispanic / Non-hispanic question. In many trainings, my background as an example, we were told that typically people from Mexico and S. American countries are considered Caucasian unless they are primarily some other race like Asian, Black, or Middle-Eastern.\n\nTl:dr: Mexico *does* have a population that is Caucasian. Caucasian (or white) doesn't mean you don't have color. It means your ancestors came from Europe and Spain is in Europe.",
"The French also colonized quite a bit of the USA as well.\n\nPretty much the entire gulf coast, in fact.\n\nNew Orleans ring a bell? What about the entire Louisiana purchase?\n\nThe nearby (to me) island of Dauphin Island also was French.\n\nAs was the nearby city of Mobile, AL.\n\nIn general, the UK settled the northeastern US, while the French got the southeast and gulf coast areas."
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aw9363 | why does the lock on my bathroom door only turn ~90° right and left, while the lock on my door can turn several rounds? | *Not sure if “rounds” is the correct word* | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aw9363/eli5_why_does_the_lock_on_my_bathroom_door_only/ | {
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"Sounds like the lock on your main door is broken. Most locks only need to turn roughly 90 degrees to engage and lock the mechanism/slide the bolt in to place. ",
"Turning a lock a second time pushes the bolt deeper into the door, making it a bit harder to force it. This is not needed in a bathroom door — or any internal house door for that matter. "
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5c5qd2 | how are we able to determine the visual acuity of different animals/insects? for example, how do we know that snakes have poor eyesight and rely on heat sensing organs and smell? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5c5qd2/eli5how_are_we_able_to_determine_the_visual/ | {
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"They see how they react to different stimuli. For example, if you put a snake in a dark cool cage, it's still able to find the heat rock or whatever it needs.",
"They create situations where the animals can learn where food is located by a visual signal. If they respond to some kinds of visual signs (say, a difference in shape) but not others (say, a difference in color) consistently across a range of different trials, the conclusion is that they are failing to perceive the second difference.\n\nThis can in some cases be confirmed by dissecting the sensory organs and actually inspecting what kind of equipment is there."
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dg05b4 | why do ddos attacks end? | If a hacker has the resources to shut down a website for an hour or two, don't they also have the capability to shut the website down permanently? Why do DDOSers stop their attacks after a few hours? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dg05b4/eli5_why_do_ddos_attacks_end/ | {
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"An attacker does usually have limited resources. When he runs his attack the malicious software becomes more visible and people start noticing them and shutting them down. Running the attack for shorter reduces the probability for the software to be discovered. If your Internet is slow for half an hour you may not think anything was wrong but after two hours you would have noticed that something was off and would have tried to find the source of the issue. Service providers also takes some time to notice the unusual behavior and start looking into the problem. So for an attacker it is much safer to run the attack for a shorter time and then attack again another time.\n\nThere is also other possibilities. The victim might often be able to mitigate the problem in an hour either by making costly changes to their infrastructure or by paying the attacker the ransom. For normal sized companies it takes about an hour to identify the issue, allocate funds to mitigate it and then implement the mitigation."
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dsmsfo | why do chromed metal parts ,for example the exhaust manifold on a motorcycle, get those nice colors when it heats up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dsmsfo/eli5_why_do_chromed_metal_parts_for_example_the/ | {
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"They’re called temper colours, and they don’t just happen to chromed metals, I do with it mild steel specifically to induce those pretty colours (:\n\nMy metallurgy is pretty basic, but metal has crystalline structure that is determined by the temperature it is at. This in turn affects which wavelengths of light it reflects because different structure reflect light differently.\n\nWhen you cool metal quickly, it maintains whatever crystal structure it has. Pipes on bikes are fairly thin so they don’t trap heat too long and can therefore keep some colour",
"Previous poster is dead on. Also if your chrome pipes are turning colors, your fuel air ratio is too lean causing excessive heat that initiates this process."
]
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44y866 | what exactly is "bailing out big banks on wall street" and what caused them to need bailing out? how did this result in the 2008 recession? what exactly is "the establishment" | I'm trying to get a grasp on this subject so I understand better about the "big banks on Wall Street" that is a major topic this election, along with "the establishment". | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44y866/eli5_what_exactly_is_bailing_out_big_banks_on/ | {
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"You have the order of events a little bit wrong. The bailout was caused by the crash, not the other way around.\n\nBack in the 1990s, there were some changes to regulations surrounding mortgages that allowed people to buy and sell ownership of debt. Let's say I lent you half a million dollars to buy a house and in exchange you have to pay me a thousand dollars a month for 20 years. I can sell that contract to someone else, and you'll pay them instead.\n\nMortgages and real estate shares became a super popular way to save for retirement. Everyone figured that since population was always rising, demand for housing would always be rising, so real estate value only went up.\n\nBanks came up with this idea that they could sell a house to anyone. Even if you defaulted, you basically paid the bank money for two or three years then gave them a house that was worth more than they paid for it. People bought more and more shares in these, and more and more houses were built and sold. There's a famous story now of a Las Vegas stripper who owned 5 mansions because people kept basically giving them away to her expecting her to rent them out, then default when the tenants moved out.\n\nThen the trend caught up with people. Suddenly, there were all of these empty houses without tenants and buyers. The price of houses dropped. Banks stopped getting mortgage payments. They were in serious trouble, and when your bank is in trouble, you're in trouble. You might think that if your account has $10,000 in it that there's $10,000 dollars in a vault somewhere with your name on it, but there isn't. The bank owes you that money, but it's not obligated to actually keep any of it, only to provide you with money when you ask for it. If the bank runs out of money, then your money is gone too.\n\nMajor trading firms, banks, and other companies negatively affected by this crash were going to collapse if they didn't receive a huge, interest-free loan from the government. So, the government gave it to them. But the government never gave huge interest-free loans to failing small businesses or homeowners, so a lot of people feel like the bailouts were a costly way for the government to pay off their friends, rather than halt the crash. One of the major arguments in capitalism is that people manage risk and make smart investments, suffering the consequences of failure themselves. The rich will argue that they take on *risk* for a project, and that's a major contribution. If there was a bailout, was there ever really risk, or just a gravy train for the rich? These people argue that the government should have extended that loan to all homeowners, basically providing free mortgage payments for everyone. It would have cost exactly the same, but the people who bought houses they couldn't afford would still have the houses.\n\nYour opinion may vary on whether the bailout was the right thing to do. It was expensive, it saved a lot of rich people from a stupid mistake they made, and it did nothing to help the unemployed masses in the great recession. But on the other hand your money would have vanished too, even if you had nothing to do with the mortgage crisis. Either way the mistake hurt everyone, guilty or innocent. You might feel that poor people buying mansions deserved to lose them, or rich bankers selling mansions to poor people deserve to be bankrupt. In the end, a decision was made that did as little as possible without doing nothing. You be the judge if it was the right one.",
"Clinton was worried about 'inner city ghettos' and was trying to fix this problem. His choice was to repeal glass steagal and force the banks to issue mortgages to people who had no business getting mortgages. \n\nThe banks were fine with this because they just bundled up these bad mortgages and got rid of them because they knew they were bad. Other banks actively bet against these bad mortgages. Very smart move. \n\nThe financial crisis came along when the banks 1 by 1 started to notice they were imbalanced on credit and stopped accepting any subprime mortgages but for some banks even started to try dumping the bad mortgages.\n\nThis effect resulted in housing prices to decline and that's a problem. People who owe $300,000 on a house that's worth $200,000. They stop paying their mortgage or sell. People who want to buy can just wait for housing prices to decrease further and dont buy. \n\nWhat happens when a load of people stop paying their mortgages? The banks go bankrupt. "
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4dmocr | what is a synapsid? is it reptile, mammal or neither? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dmocr/eli5_what_is_a_synapsid_is_it_reptile_mammal_or/ | {
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"The amniote clade contains synaptids, reptiles, birds etc. Within synaptids, all that are left that have not gone extinct are the mammals. Other synapsids are described as \"mammal-like reptiles\".",
"You for example are a synapsid (I assume).\n\nThe synapsids are a group of animal species that includes all mammals such as cats, dogs and humans as well as some closely related extinct species that were somewhere between reptiles and mammals.\n\nThe distinction between what is and isn't a synapsid has mostly to do with the number of holes in the skull.\n\nSome of the extinct synapsids sometimes get mistakenly called dinosaurs like the famous dimetrodons with their big sails on their back, but they aren't they are closer related to us than to dinos and they live before the age of the dinosaurs.\n\nSynapsids used to be the predominant type of life on earth before the dinosaurs. After the dinosaurs had gone extinct (except for birds) they reconquered the world in the form of mammals.\n\n",
"Today, mammals are the only living synapsids. All extant reptiles (and birds) are diapsids.\n\nHowever, the distinction didn't used to be so cut-and-dry. Lots of prehistoric synapsids, especially when the two groups diverged, were scaly and reptile-like such as the Dimetrodon (which is commonly misidentified as a dinosaur)."
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7ga6dh | if food gets stuck in our teeth, what prevents it from making us sick? | If we leave food out on a bench or counter, bacteria grows after a while and makes us sick. Why isn't this the case on our mouths? Google doesn't really give a detailed answer. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ga6dh/eli5_if_food_gets_stuck_in_our_teeth_what/ | {
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"Food poisoning is cause by \"bad\" bacteria being present in a larger than normal quantity in the food we eat. Cooking/Freezing things usually helps lessen the count of bacteria because they need a very specific temperature to survive, and freezing/boiling temperatures simply do not support life. \n\nSo, when you have food stuck in your teeth and you aren't sick, chances are 1) that food wasn't infected to begin with, 2) these things called enzymes in your saliva (proteins that usually break things down) have begun to attack the bacteria if its there.\n\nAll in all, if you have eaten infected food, it isn't the amount in your teeth that you should worry about, Its that pound of meat sitting in your gut!",
"I've read somewhere that human bites that break the skin are actually very likely to get infected because of all the bacteria and stuff that remains in the human mouth from food "
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1xmpri | how can an electric motor produce torque at 0 rpm? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xmpri/eli5how_can_an_electric_motor_produce_torque_at_0/ | {
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"If you hold the shaft still it is still outputting a torque. You are just putting an equal torque against it.",
"Go to the wall nearest you and put both hands on it and push as hard as you can. You just applied a force even though the wall (presumably) didn't move at all. Torque is just a force in a circular motion. If you've ever tried to loosen a nut with a wrench but it wouldn't move, you've applied torque at 0 RPM. Of if you've ever struggled opening a jar of pickles, you've also applied torque at 0 RPM. It is no different for an electric motor. "
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6yv36a | how does triboluminescence work? | In some of Smarter Every Day's videos, he shows some [slow motion examples](_URL_0_) of Triboluminescence, what are the physics behind this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6yv36a/eli5_how_does_triboluminescence_work/ | {
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"The truth is there is still debate among material scientists on why the phenomenon of Triboluminescence happens, but this tends to be the leading theory:\n\nIt's a breaking of chemical bonds between two dissimilar materials. When this happens electric charge is separated for an instant, leaving a voltage potential between the materials. This potential quickly dissipates, creating a flash of light when doing so. It's a little bit like the spark when you shock your finger on a doorknob.\n\nAgain; the professional jury is still out on this matter and the explanation may change if a better one is found."
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8ndam5 | how did the native americans deal with the insects? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ndam5/eli5_how_did_the_native_americans_deal_with_the/ | {
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"Sage leaves can be rubbed on the skin to leave an odor that keeps insects like mosquitos away. So does urine, if you’re into that. \n\nBut mostly they probably just ignored them. ",
"Aside from natural insect repellent and a higher tolerance, population density kept things manageable. And depending on the tribe, nomadic lifestyle did as well.\n\nCities tend to have insects because we create good habitats. Food waste and feces, is home to a lot of bugs. Standing water in pots, cest pools, puddle in agricultural felds all create mosquito breeding grounds. A tribe that is nomadic and lives in an area for a few days or weeks will be gone before the mosquito population grows big enough. A tribe living in a southwest desert might be more stationary but stagnant puddles don't last long.\n\nDepends on the tribe, geography, and local weather.",
"When I worked up in Northern Ontario one trick I learned from the local (edit) First Nations guys was to sit in the smoke of the fire and get all smokey. Get it in your hair and your clothes and the mosquitos don't bother you as much.\n",
"Mud works. Sage works (white sage better than common). In Canada, First Nations is almost universal among FN persons. Indigenous or Other are Non-FN terms. Tolerance is certainly an issue where mosquitos and flies are concerned, but what nobody has mentioned are the effects of a modern diet and the chemicals released through sweat and skin. Malaria has been documented for close to 2,000 years; FN and Native Americans weren't immune entirely, but certainly location was a factor. Documented studies have shown that the Osceola Tribe in Florida has more resistance to Malaria and other mosquito-borne illnesses than the Cherokee Tribe members. In addition, mosquitoes are attracted to CO2, moisture, the amount of iron in the blood, and some studies have shown that mosquitoes are attracted to certain blood types more than others. A person with A-Negative blood is less of a target than someone with O-Positive, for example. And while O-Pos is the most common blood type in the world, it is relatively (on a per-capita basis) rare among NA/FN populations. So, a NA tribe that lived primarily along a coastline or a waterway and ate a diet heavy on fish and less venison would be relatively unpalatable to most mosquitoes, whereas a Tribe like the Cherokee who at mostly warm blooded mammals like deer, rabbit, and squirrel, would be larger targets. Moving along to flies, as previously mentioned, Native Americans tended to not be in one spot for long periods of time. And the agrarian tribes like the Cherokee who basically only had winter/summer locations used every last bit of meat, sinew, intestine, organ, and bone...resulting in less breeding ground for flies. There were some, but not nearly as many and, also as previously mentioned, there were no major population centers."
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7fi8em | what is a hilbert space? | One of the strikes (read: dungeons) in Destiny 2 involves storming a Hilbert Space populated by time-travelling robots, but I've no idea what a Hilbert Space even is. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7fi8em/eli5what_is_a_hilbert_space/ | {
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"Never played Destiny 2, but if it has Hilbert space reference, I now kinda want to.\n\nAnyhow, to describe Hilbert space, but omitting mathematical details, you kinda can just take your intuition about what a space even is(assuming you aren't mathematician. If you are, then you're thinking too broadly), and consider for example sheet of paper as 2d space. Or our world we live in as 3d space. Or piece of string as 1d space.\n\nHilbert space is a catch-all name for these spaces, and some more. You can have 4d Hilbert space, or 5d Hilbert space, but also the thing that really makes it a bit weird is that even infinite-dimensional spaces are allowed. If one speaks of **the** Hilbert space, you refer to the infinite-dimensional case.\n\nThe cool bit about Hilbert spaces is that infinitely many dimensions breaks surprisingly few of our intuitions. There's still concept of distance between points, you can still do sorta geometry in this space, and you can even do calculus in infinite dimensions. How you arrive at them is basically, imagine infinite dimensions. Then try to figure out how to calculate distances between points without everything being infinite(for comparison, distance on a straight line is |x1 - y1|. Distance on a plane is sqrt((x1 - y1)^2 + (x2 - y2)^2 ).) And boom, you're more or less done. Technical details left as an exercise for the reader."
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y3se3 | how much do insects know? what do we know about bug consciousness? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/y3se3/eli5_how_much_do_insects_know_what_do_we_know/ | {
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"Bug brains are what we call ganglia. It's the middle ground between regular neurons and an actual brain. Think of it as a simple machine, it reads sensory receptions and then dishes out appropriate responses. There isn't any actual \"thinking\" going on. ",
"Well, they have reletively simple brains, but some can certianly learn to ignore repeated stimuli (the first time you try to hold your pet hissing roach, the roach will freak out. But, if you keep trying, the roach will dissassociate being held with danger and will stop freaking out.), as well as learn to associate two unrelated stimuli (train bees to associate the smell of drugs with sugar water, and you get a drug-sniffing bee that gets super exicted when she smells some.) \n\nThey also have pain responses, so please remember to be nice to them!",
"I HIGHLY recommend the book [Sex on Six legs](_URL_0_) if you're interested in insect behavior. It's fascinating.",
"They appear to know a little.\n\nBees are capable of storing and repeating information in the form of a waggle dance, as well as interpreting the waggle dance of others. They are also capable of counting to four. \n\nDesert ants have been shown to be able to calculate distance walked and average direction over many kilometres of random walking, which is pretty advanced mathematics. \n\nThere are other examples but those were the most interesting. In short, it appears insects are better at thought and potentially knowing stuff than previously thought. \n\nSource: some peer reviewed literature I know exists but am too lazy to look up.",
"*ZippyLoomX* mentioned the waggle dance. A link about it was posted on reddit many months ago. Here's an article about the study.\n\n[Quantum Honeybees](_URL_0_): How could bees of little brain come up with anything as complex as a dance language? The answer could lie not in biology but in six-dimensional math and the bizarre world of quantum mechanics.",
"I have a favorite pet theory about insect consciousness. Hear me out:\n\nImagine you were the size of a neuron, swimming around in the human brain. You see all these individual cells, acting partially independently with their own internal chemistry, communicating with one another by releasing chemicals from their asses, which are then sensed by other cells.\n\nWithout other information, it would be very difficult for you to extrapolate out that somehow, the result of all this complex interaction was an illusion of *consciousness*, another layer above and beyond the individual interactions of the units, a total more than the sum of its parts. \n\nWhat if, in the same way, the little robotic ants are nothing more than individual components in a complex, second order organ/organism, the colony, with its own consciousness that we cannot even detect due to its foreignness to us. But what if it can feel and think? What if it can feel pain, even though the individual ants do not? (And our brain could likely function just fine even if it lost a single neuron...). Certainly the analogy breaks down. I am not saying that a colony of insects has the *same sort* of consciousness that we do. But is it possible that their interactions create a second order layer of being or awareness?\n\n[Ants create a life raft](_URL_0_)",
"I once had to take an advanced entomology course in college, even though I was as a non-biology major. One day, the professor begins a lecture on the nervous system by placing a cockroach on his arm. As the professor spoke and the little roach perambulated the professors arm and torso, the professor presented us with a small plastic dish. Inside the dish was *the cockroach's head.* The night before the lecture, using a microscope, the professor removed the head of the cockroach with a tiny scalpel, and then put a drop of glue in it's place so the roach would not bleed to death. Despite this, the roach went on to live and move about for another two weeks! The lesson to be learned here is that much of the movement of insects is the result of a sympathetic nervous system that responds to outside stimuli. Sort of like reflexes. Movements in general are not the result of the brain making decisions.\n\n**TL;DR** - A cockroach can live without it's head for several days.",
"I think everyone is wrong, because I know that son of a bitch bee that stung my stomach today,while I was trimming the hedges was thinking, \"I'm going to sting you, you fat fuck! How dare you attack the hive. Yeah that's right; run inside you pussy.\"",
"_URL_0_ bees can recognize human faces and are very intelligent",
"Insects have consciousness. First, they do experience their senses, described [here](_URL_0_), as we do. However, their experience of the sense information carries with it NO ideas, thoughts, or interpretation of the incoming information (unlike us humans). This is because they have no neocortex, which also means no prefrontal cortex. They do have many of the same neurotransmitters such as dopamine and oxytocin (they don't have adrenaline, but the structurally similar chemical adipokinetic hormone), so they still *feel* excited, motivated, etc. However this excitement and motivation is solely directed towards eating and procreating, the experience of which is excitement and motivation to move their legs and bite after being given appropriate taste and smell inputs.\n\ntl;dr: insects are conscious, but there is no intervening thought between action and sense perception.",
"Frankly, I find the idea of a bug that thinks offensive",
"So my pet stick insect will never love me?",
"Bees can learn to generalize a pattern such as \"pick the opposite\" when flying through a maze. However, it's probably more accurate to think of them as advanced robots. Insects respond to stimuli (smell, sound, sight and some that people don't have) in a very instinctive way. For example, if you put a beetle in an cylinder with stripes painted going up and down on the sides, it will spin in circles. Ants returning home can get lost if you force them to go over hills so they walk further (they count the number of steps they make). Lastly, one of the most interesting examples of how insects are very much like robots can be found in a book written by a scientist named Richard Dawkins. A.certain kind of wasp builds a tower for its offspring. It knows that each stage is complete when it receives a certain stimuli. If you were to knock a little bit from the top, instead of fixing just that bit, the wasp would start over, because it's program would tell it the tower wasn't done. You can repeatedly knock over the tower and cause the wasp to restart, and the poor little guy will never suspect something is wrong."
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2jyauv | how are some organisms able to survive in outer space for several months? | There's no oxygen, the pressure is deadly low and it is absolutely not habitable. How are some organisms able to survive that for such a long time? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jyauv/eli5_how_are_some_organisms_able_to_survive_in/ | {
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"There are certain kinds of organisms known as anaerobic organisms; meaning they can grow in an environment with absolutely no oxygen. Regarding the extreme low pressures in space, there are organisms that can survive extreme conditions, these are known as extremophiles. There are extremophiles for almost every chemical and/or physical condition on Earth. Just as there are extremophiles for conditions such as temperature, or pH, there are extremophiles for extreme pressures (high or low). In the case of prokaryotic organisms, there are some bacteria that could fit both categories, such as Tardigrades. Those are one of the few prokaryotic organisms that I know can thrive in space, however, there are more."
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938dsf | - 3d printable guns. what’s the deal? these things will be able to be printed and then shoot an actual bullet?? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/938dsf/eli5_3d_printable_guns_whats_the_deal_these/ | {
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"You already could 3D print a working gun, but it would be expensive af compared to regular manufacturing processes\n\nIt's not really a big deal until we get consumer grade metal 3D printers, which will probably take a while ",
"Technically yea they can.\n\nIt's generally the thought of untracked printed guns then the actual guns themselves.\n\nIn practise due to the way they are made and the materials, they are generally brittle and prone to breaking before the gun is fired. Guns without proper metal firing pounds are also much less powerful so sneaking through metal detectors is reduced.\n\nYou also still need to be able to get your hands on the things that can't be printed arch as the ammo itself.\n\nIt'll be worse when the materials get better and printers become more common. When metal printing becomes the norm them you basically have a problem with unlicensed firearms.",
"Problem with 3D printing a gun is it still requires metallic parts to fire the bullet, which removes any benefit for nefarious purposes and generally the plastic is not strong enough to fire multiple shots. The first shot would fire but would crack the barrel. Then the second shot would just blow up the gun and probably a finger or two.",
"You can buy a 3d printer, download the blueprint and print a functional single shot gun from PLA plastic and few metal parts like a firing pin\n\nBut then...it's easier and cheaper to go to home Depot and pick up plumbing parts to make yourself a shotgun in about 30 minutes."
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19jbui | why is the mexican drug war so extraordinarily violent? | Surely it would be more logical for the gangs to keep themselves relatively quiet like other drug operations across the world, even if there is competition? What is the logic behind the scale of the violence? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19jbui/why_is_the_mexican_drug_war_so_extraordinarily/ | {
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"Fear is a powerful weapon. It'll make other gangs fearful of them, itll make workers obey, and it will also put fear into the DEA and other agencies. \n\nLets say, for example a drug lord says \" I will kill your family if you rat us out\". If a drug runner gets caught and gets offered a deal of a reduced sentence if he rats out the suppliers. If he has a family, he won't say a word, and the drug business keeps running smoothly.\n\nThere are many other examples I can give, but basically the use of violence is to keep the business running smoothly. When you are dealing with something THAT illegal and targeted by the government, they will do anything to make money. What is actually done depends on those in charge, but violence is an easy and efficient weapon."
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6zmx1k | what's the point of having multiple hexagonal cells in the eyes of insects? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zmx1k/eli5_whats_the_point_of_having_multiple_hexagonal/ | {
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"Hexagon is one of the most efficient way to fill out a surface. If you put bubble next to each other, they will naturally form hexagon shape. This is because a sphere is the less surface area by volume, but if several sphere need to touch each other, the hexagon is the less surface by volume.\n\nThe less surface by volume is very important because it put the less amount of stress and the less amount of material for a set volume. \n\nHere an image of bubble of soap.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n",
"Compound eyes are good for detecting and tracking fast motion, and allow for a very wide field of view, as you can just keep adding more cells as you wrap the eye around the head. Simple eyes, like vertebrates have, only allow a relatively narrow field of view but allow much higher resolution, allowing the use of much smaller eyes and the ability to see things further away."
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1vb1e8 | why do visa and mastercard have such a strong hold on merchant payment processing? | For example, why can't I pay with Paypal or my Apple ID at my grocery store? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vb1e8/eli5_why_do_visa_and_mastercard_have_such_a/ | {
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"It's a circular problem at this point. No merchant will pay to be part of another network because there are no customers, and there are no customers because there are no merchants using it.",
"Credit Cards started as a method for merchants to outsource credit to a third party that had a better understanding of the customer's creditworthiness. Once their payment-processing hardware/network grew, they had a oligopoly on payment processing. They began charging fees (1-5%) to the merchants. McDonald's (and many others) initially resisted, but saw that their sales increased dramatically if they accepted credit cards (and thus the fees). The credit card companies are continuing to grow by giving incentives to transactors (those who always pay their bills on time and only use credit cards for simplicity and cash-back bonuses). Given the large barriers to enter this market (a lot of $$$ for point-of-sale hardware), it is very hard for new companies to be successful. Square, Google Wallet, Paypal, etc is using smartphones to challenge this, but still needs more adoption or new technology to break the strong hold of Visa and Mastercard."
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1etpb7 | why are disposable batteries more commonly used rather than rechargeable batteries? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1etpb7/eli5_why_are_disposable_batteries_more_commonly/ | {
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"Convenience I guess...\n\nI've got a battery charger, and a few recahrgable batteries... But I can never find the charger when I need it.. I'm nearly always 1 rechargable battery short... I'm never organised enough to pre-charge the batteries ready for use, and when the batteries in my TV remote die, I don't want to wait for a few hours to recharge them....\n\nSince I replace the batteries in most of my small electronics so infrequently, it's just easier to go out and buy a new pack of AAs than mess about trying to find all the bits to recharge my own..",
"Another reason is self-discharge. Regular batteries will stay charged for years if they're not used, whereas most rechargeable batteries will discharge themselves after awhile.\n\nFor something that you're using the batteries in a few days or weeks, rechargeable makes a lot more sense.\n\nFor something where normal batteries last month or years, going to rechargeable would mean you'd need to take out the batteries and recharge them quite a bit more often than you have to replace the alkaline batteries.",
"They are cheaper, and until recently, much better than disposables."
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1bkssi | difference between fascism, nazism and flat out racist. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bkssi/eli5_difference_between_fascism_nazism_and_flat/ | {
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"Fascism: A totalitarian state- whatever the government believes to be right is enforced through violence and fear. A strong Leader and big army/ police force.\n\nNazism: A type of Fascism started in Germany in the 1920s, and came into power in the 30s. Short for National Socialists. Held very right wing beliefs: extremely racist, anti-semitic, prejudiced. \n\nRacism: A belief that humans are different based purely on their race and ethnicity: where they come from and how they look. A racist would think that he is better than someone else because of the colour of his skin for example. ",
"I can't do this question justice but I wanted to point out that Fascism is quite hard to define. The Nazi's were fascist but I don't know if we can say there was such a thing as Nazism. Everyone will interpret ideology in their own way but that doesn't really make it something new.\n\nRacism really doesn't have much to do with Fascism. While we think of the Nazi's killing the Jews it may not have been racism in the way we often use the word. Explanations I have heard suggest that the Jews were a handy scapegoat for the Nazi's in the same way that \"immigrants\" are today. You can be fascist without attacking other races and you can be racist without being fascist.\n\nYou could argue that there are some commonalities between Fascism and racism though. Both can be a result of a fear of people who aren't like us, the other, although Fascists may simply seek to exploit this in order to reach their larger goals",
"Fascism is, as has been mentioned, an extremely difficult idea to pin down that smooshes together ideas of racial purity, social darwinism (the strongest people/races/government departments will destroy the weaker and have the right to do so, and that this will lead to a better world - that life is a struggle between countries and peoples), a totalitarian state, nationalism (that your country is better than all the others) and an emphasis on military expansion.\n\nNazism is the ideology of Adolf Hitler and his followers, members of the Nazi party in Germany which developed through the 20's and 30's. They were most certainly a fascist party but through some other ideas into the mix, like the idea of a National Community and a particular emphasis on racial purity.\n\nRacism is a belief about a group of people based on their skin colour.\n\nYou can be fascist without being racist, and racist without being fascist. ~~You can be a Nazi without being racist~~. You can also be a Nazi without being fascist. But that's because the terms 'fascist' and 'Nazi' are near impossible to pin down.",
"the historical origin of the term \"Fascism\" is a reference to the ancient Roman practice of a general entering Rome with the Fasces (an axe-head bound in a bundle of sticks). a general entering the city with the Fasces would assume dictatorship over the city, replacing the civilian government. This was actually intended to be helpful and was part of the tradition of the ancient Roman republic. It allowed for the city to assume a more suitable form of government for crisis scenarios and was intended to be temporary. The dictator would step down when the crisis was over. A Fascist Dictator, in the Roman sense, had total control of the city. He could command the army, the civilian authority, and also the economy of the city. \n\nIn the 20th Century a Fascist government is basically any government run by a Dictator who assumed totalitarian control over their country. There are different kinds of Fascist states (Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Franco's Spain are the classic examples from Europe) and there are plenty of other states that are usually labeled something else but were in reality Fascist dictatorships of another kind. \n\nFascism is about state control and power. It has no intrinsic connection to racism. Nazi Fascism incorporated racist ideology for various reasons but the racism is not directly related to the Fascist form of government. \n\n",
"Fascism refers to an overly authoritarian (controlling) and nationalist form of government. In a fascist government, the government will control key areas of the economy as well and they will suppress information and censor opposition through often terroristic means.\n\n\"Nazi\" refers to a very specific group of fascists. The word \"Nazi\" specifically refers to the NSDAP, which stands for \"Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei,\" which in English means National Socialist German Workers' Party. Obviously this is a mouthful. The first two syllables of the German name are pronounced \"Natzi,\" which sounds like \"Nazi,\" and that's how we get the term \"Nazi\": it is a nickname for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. It is like how people in America sometimes refer to Democrats as \"Dems\" or Neo-Conservatives as \"Neo-Cons\" (I do not mean to draw a parallel in beliefs to either group, just demonstrating party nicknames).\n\nThis is why I really hate when people say things like \"Bush/Obama/Blair/EA/Glenn Beck/etc is a Nazi,\" because, among other things, none of those people are members of the National Socialist German Workers Party, nor are they even German.\n\nRacism is when a person or group of people don't like an entire group of people based on their race. Fascists are often, but not necessarily, racist. Many fascist governments are racist. North Korea believes Koreans to be superior, for example. The Ba'ath party in Iraq was racist towards Persians (the main ethnic group of Iran) and Jews. Racists are not necessarily fascists. The Nazi Party had racism built into its core belief structure in that they believed the Aryan (white, typically blonde hair, blue eyes) where superior to other races (Jews, Roma, Slavs).\n\n**EDIT:** cleaned up some definition stuff. Added the bit about fascists being \"often\" but \"not necessarily\" racist.",
"Just a note that racism is not simply a belief that people are different because of their skin color.\n\nRacism includes these three basic elements:\n\n* Belief that humans are divided into biological groups (races).\n* Belief that those races share certain attributes.\n* Belief that those attributes make one race superior or inferior over another.\n\nBut from a sociological perspective, racism is also a form of systematic group privilege, meaning it isn't just one person racially discriminating against another person, but that it's companies, governments, law enforcement, mass media, etc. - groups that have influence and power - that promote racism in not super obvious ways (e.g. TV shows do a bad job at portraying black families [subtle racism] vs. TV shows use racial slurs [obvious racism]).",
"Jesus. It says ELI5!!\n\n**Fascism**: one man has all the power. Everyone must follow him. \n\n**Nazism**: one group, who thinks they're better than you, controls the power, and forces you to do what they say\n\n**rascism**: a man or group assumes they have power--when they don't have any power--and thinks they are better than you. \n\nEdit: for clarity",
"I suspect OP is a Sunderland fan.",
"Facism: I'm always Right because I'm in charge.\n\nRacism: I'm better than you because you are different.\n\nNazism: I'm always Right because I'm in charge and I'm better than you because you are different.",
"Fascism: we might not be royalty, but we know we're supposed to be in charge. So we make all the decisions, and you can't get us out. Also we're usually prepared to use extreme corruption and deadly force to stay there.\n\nNazism: We're the best-race party. We might be from different countries, but somehow we decided we're better type of humans than the common rabble. We often draw mythic origins for ourselves, and love to embellish accomplishments. We also usually blame minorities for the country's problems and pop up in popularity when the economy goes bad.\n\nRacism: We hate cultures different from us. We don't necessarily have to feel superior, just find something you hate about a group of people and slap it on every member you meet."
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24ugh4 | why do news anchors and politicians say "an history" instead of a history? | I thought rules of a/an dictated that "an" is only used when the word starts with a vowel sound. the word history
BONUS: ELI5 why it aggravates me so much to hear people say "an history."
Edit: changed "starts with a vowel" to starts with a vowel sound, because vowel is wrong. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24ugh4/eli5_why_do_news_anchors_and_politicians_say_an/ | {
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"The 'h' in history wasn't always emphasized, so 'an' made more sense than 'a', (possibly in England) and the practice hasn't completely ended. Different sources have different views on the correct form, but generally either should work.",
"Basically put, if a person emphasizes the h, it should be a history. If a person omits the h, or says it only very softly when they pronounce it then 'an 'istory is the correct form.",
"It enrages me, too. \"It is an historic day...\" Aaaaargh.\n\nAlso, in early high school, I got into a big argument with a friend about it. Somehow she ended up insisting that it's correct to say 'an house'.",
"No. It's not whether it's a vowel or not. \n\nIt's whether it's a vowel sound or not. \n\n\n",
"The rule is use \"an\" ONLY if the SOUND of the first letter starts with a vowel. That is why...\n\nIn \"an hour\" hour is pronounced \"our\", \"o\" is a vowel so \"an\" is used.\n\nIn \"a historic\" historic is pronounced \"historic\", \"h\" is not a vowel so \"a\" is used.\n\nThe exception to this rule is when your local dialect pronounces it that way. So if you're a cockney Londoner who drops the \"h\" sound from the front of some words (including historic) then saying \"an 'istoric\" is perfectly OK.\n\nIT PISSES ME THE FUCK OFF IT'S SO WIDESPREAD ON TV. THE SCRIPT WRITERS ARE FUCKING MORONS. You are aggravated because you (like me) appreciate that flagrant breaking of rules is generally a bad idea. And it's such a simple fucking rule too. Urgh."
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1ntalp | why do catholic people put so much money into churches? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ntalp/eli5_why_do_catholic_people_put_so_much_money/ | {
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"It's supposed to be God's house. Wouldn't you want the Almighty to live well?",
"Leviticus 27:32\n\nAnd every tithe of herds and flocks, every tenth animal of all that pass under the herdsman's staff, shall be holy to the Lord.\n\nSo basically the bible says give 10% to church. (I think 5% or less is more like what most will give)\n"
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2ajxt7 | why did hitler chose not to take spain and switzerland? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ajxt7/eli5_why_did_hitler_chose_not_to_take_spain_and/ | {
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"Well, Spain was ruled by Franco, a fascist dictator who was assumed to be a Nazi ally, but who never brought his country into the war.",
"Because Switzerland has put a lot off effort into making sure they have the logistics to back their decision to remain neutral.\n\n > If you're wondering how Switzerland can remain famously neutral, there are several reasons, but let's start with this: The entire country is rigged to blow.\n\n > There are at least 3,000 points of demolition built into bridges, highways, and railroads throughout the nation. And those are just the ones acknowledged by the government. Some of those beautiful mountains are hollow enough to fit whole military divisions. There are cannons hidden in houses -- just waiting, just begging for the chance to kill someone. There are man-made rock slides waiting for the trigger. And all of these Wile E. Coyote traps weren't just set up and abandoned after World War II -- civil engineers undergo regular drills all the time. You know, just in case.\n\n > What we're trying to say is that Switzerland is like that quiet kid in the back of class who you just don't fuck with because he knows muay thai and has a weird twitch. Oh, and he has a lot of guns. In Switzerland, every man is required to join the military once he hits 19. That in itself isn't too weird; lots of countries have compulsory conscription. What's different about Switzerland is that once discharged from basic training, everyone takes their weapons home with them. They have to. It's the law. And they can keep those guns forever, which is one reason why the only two countries that have more firearms per capita than Switzerland are the United States (no surprise there) and Yemen. Not that we can get accurate numbers, because gun registration isn't a thing in Switzerland.\n\n > Why couldn't someone just bomb them into submission? Well, the country has spent the last 50 years building bomb shelters, for one. Beginning in 1963, every household was required to build its own shelter in case of nuclear attack. In fact, by the 1980s, the Swiss could shelter up to 83 percent of the population underground should the U.S. and USSR lose their shit. Which is so cute, because American funding for fallout shelters ceased altogether in the mid-1960s.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Mainly because Hitler always had someone he wanted to invade more. And because they were more useful as friendly neutrals than they were as enemies or occupied territories.\n\nSwitzerland was absolutely on the invasion list. The Germans even had an invasion plan all worked up called [Operation Tannenbaum](_URL_0_). The problem was the ideal time for an attack would have been spring or summer of 1941. That year Hitler decided to go south and bail out the Italians in Greece and then go east and invade the Soviet Union. From that point on the Germans never had extra manpower to go get Switzerland. But don't let anyone fool you. It wasn't because the Germans were scared of Switzerland. Invading would have been a bear of a fight. The Swiss would have given the Germans a nasty bloody nose. But if Germany had decided to invade, they would have won. The only question was how steep a price they would have to pay. And the Swiss always played just nice enough to keep the Germans... well not happy... but not unhappy enough to invade anyway.\n\nSpain was in a different condition. Hitler wanted Franco and Spain as an ally. He wanted access to Spanish manpower. And he wanted Spanish ports and access to Gibraltar. Invading Spain gives him the exact opposite. Instead of a million or more soldiers, he's fighting an additional million or more. And Spain as a neutral was *very* useful as a path by which goods could be imported into Germany from places like South America."
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2e7qme | why can we flush toilet paper down the toilet, but not similar tissue papers such as facial tissue or paper towel? what makes toilet paper so special? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2e7qme/eli5_why_can_we_flush_toilet_paper_down_the/ | {
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"It is modified in such a way, such as by using shortened fibers, so that it breaks down and decomposes rapidly in septic systems, thereby reducing the likelihood of clogging the narrow channels utilized. ",
"You see wrgm0100 toilet paper is special. When the men who make toilet paper they make it so that it will fall apart in the water more easily. Other paper maker men make paper to be stronger so when you draw your pictures on them the paper does not fall apart as easily. \n\nNext time you wash your hand try drying your hands with toilet paper. \n\nResults may vary, but doing so is usually messy. "
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32pi25 | why isn't light blocked by air molecules? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32pi25/eli5_why_isnt_light_blocked_by_air_molecules/ | {
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"It isn't blocked but it gets scattered, that's why the sky is blue and the sunset is red. ",
"It is.\n\nIt's just not blocked much. It's like running: running through the air is pretty easy: not much getting in your way. Running through the water is harder; and running through a solid object is even harder.\n\nLight works the same way, only it moves differently, so some things (like smoke) allows your movement through pretty easily, but not light; and other things (like glass) light can get through, and you can't."
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99nh8z | how did vikings in the early days didn't suffer that badly from scurvy (vitamin c deficiency)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/99nh8z/eli5_how_did_vikings_in_the_early_days_didnt/ | {
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"Vikings, as far as I know, for the most part sailed along shores so it wasn't too hard to resupply.",
"They were farmers, largely, and grew vegetables. They may have dried or otherwise preserved them for the winter. They also traded as far south as the Mediterranean where they probably obtained foods and other goods not native to Scandinavia.\n\n **Vegetables with the highest sources of vitamin C include:**\n\n* **Broccoli**, **Brussels sprouts**, and **cauliflower**.\n* **Green** and **red peppers**.\n* **Spinach**, **cabbage**, turnip greens, and other **leafy greens**.\n* **Sweet** and white potatoes.\n* **Tomatoes** and **tomato juice**.\n* **Winter squash**.\n\n### [Vitamin C: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia](_URL_0_)\n\nr/_URL_0_ ",
"There is vitamin C in a lot of foods that we don't really consider as good sources. They ate beets, scurvy grass, pine bark, wild celery, apples, plums and other fruit. Some of them ate kelp. ",
"Vikings had long journeys measure in \"days away from home\", but their journeys \"at sea\" were not that long - they typically hugged the coastline, and stopped frequently. "
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5ahga2 | if there are only 4 chemicals in our rna how come everyone has different dna? | GCAU yet there are billions of combinations, If they paired up 1 and 1, how can 4 chemicals determine such things like your height (for example how would your body know to make you 5 ft 9 in based on 1 pairing of DNA | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ahga2/eli5_if_there_are_only_4_chemicals_in_our_rna_how/ | {
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"If there are only 26 letters in the alphabet why are there so many different books?\n\nThere are four nucleotides used in the DNA code. Three in a row code for one of the amino acids, There are just over 20 amino acids. Chains of amino acids are assembled. They are folded into proteins. The proteins are what make us alive.\n\nThe DNA code makes up genes. Almost all of our genes are the same. But some are different. If those with one gene have more children then evolution happens.",
"Says someone on a computer running on base two a combination of ones and zeros and yet it can be used to create very complex programs by building those ones and zeros in a complex pattern. "
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1lcisw | why do mma fighters continue to strike their opponents when they have obviously knocked them out? | Always wondered as a casual fan. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lcisw/eli5_why_do_mma_fighters_continue_to_strike_their/ | {
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"The match is NOT over until the referee calls it. You go until the ref calls the match, no matter what. There are plenty of matches where someone thinks they won, they back off, and the other fighter pops back up. In a fight its rather hard to determine the other fighters exact circumstance, so you let the ref take care of that for you.\n\n",
"They're trained to keep going until the ref pulls them off, because you just don't know for certain that the fight is over until that point.\n\nHaving said that, I have seen one or two fights where the attacker eases off and pulls back even before the ref has figured out that the opponent is out, so there are some fighters professional enough and quick enough to know when to call off the assault.",
"Fighting is an extremely physically demanding activity, and in the heat of the moment the fighters are physically and mentally exhausted. Add in the disorientation and lack of visibility of a fighter who has trained those actions over the course of years, plus the threat of attack in turn if they hesitate, and it is the responsibility of the referee to stop them should their opponent lose consciousness. Their attention simply isn't devoted to the condition of their opponent; all they can bother with is protecting their vulnerable areas, pushing out the attacks, watching their form, keeping their balance, pushing any advantage they can get, and only relaxing when the fight is ended.",
"The opponent isn't \"obviously knocked out\" or the referee would have stopped the match already.",
"[Because of things like this...](_URL_0_)\n\nYou got to make sure that dude is REALLY knocked out.",
"Because Captain Insano shows no mercy. ",
"In most other sports that have full contact striking there is no ground game, so if a guy is knocked down then the other guy will stop because the fight will either be over or the other guy will get a count. In MMA since there is a ground game there is no reason to stop when they go to the ground because the fight it still on.\n\nHave you ever seen a boxing match where the guy is clearly knocked out but is being held up by the ropes or something? The other guy doesn't stop hitting him because the ref hasn't told him to. There are many MMA fighters who will kind of hesitate and look at the ref when the guy is clearly knocked out, but if the ref doesn't call it then they will continue until he does",
"Despite how dangerous it looks, what they are doing is relatively safe (at least when it comes to fighting). Getting repeatedly knocked out and stood back up like they do in boxing causes repetitive concussions and eventually massive permanent brain damage.\n\nOn top of that if as like other people said, if they ref doesn't call it and they back off, that could loose them the fight and in the end their rent money. "
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376f0r | what is paas ? what does it mean to run an application on cloud like aws or azure ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/376f0r/eli5what_is_paas_what_does_it_mean_to_run_an/ | {
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"PaaS = Platform as a Service\n\nSo the important thing to understand here is the 3 Layers of the Cloud.\n\n1) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)\n\nIaaS is the most rudimentary form of Cloud. The core idea is that the servers that are running your IT environment are not on-site with you... they are in some massive datacenter somewhere else. In this case you are literally just buying hardware, everything running on that hardware is your problem/business.\n\n2) Software as a Service (SaaS) -\n\nNow really SaaS should be #3 but since you asked about PaaS we'll come back to it. SaaS is the most advanced form of Cloud, and probably the one most consumers are familiar with. In a SaaS cloud the application is provided to you via a web interface. You don't have to deal with hardware, or the databases, or the middleware. This is really handy if you don't do a lot of development yourself... you simply buy an application from someone else and they maintain it for you.\n\n3) Platform as a Service (PaaS) - \n\nPaaS is the in-between state between SaaS and IaaS. In this model of cloud not only is the hardware handled for you, but the databases (where all your data is) and the middleware (the plumbing that makes all this stuff work) are provided as well. You just provide the application and data you want to be on the platform. This is useful both for development and for deploying custom built applications that you can't buy from someone else.\n\n\nSo running an application on AWS, Azure or the Oracle Cloud simply means that they are providing the databases, middleware and hardware for you... and you are giving them the application to run."
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2bm6bv | when food being sold says that it contains "no preservatives" what does that actually mean? | Salt and sugar, for instance, as well as oil, have historically been used to stop spoilage. When food claims to have no preservatives, does that mean it can't contain any salt or sugar? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bm6bv/eli5_when_food_being_sold_says_that_it_contains/ | {
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"They usually mean no *artificial* preservatives. Like sodium benzoate, sorbic acid, sodium nitrite.\n\nThings like that are good in the sense that you can eat a 7 month old Twinkie and not get sick.\n\nBut some people like no preservatives food because despite the decades of research, there *always* that one study that ties some preservative to high blood pressure or causing Tourrette's syndrome or whatever. Like Aspartame causing cancer. Yes, clinicly proven. But you'd have to drink 200L of it a day.\n\nAll commercial grade food preservatives - in moderate dosages - are proven to be at least OK.\n\nSource: have eaten many Twinkies, and I only twitch slightly."
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1gp4un | what does the puff in the eye test do at the eye doctor, and how does it work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gp4un/what_does_the_puff_in_the_eye_test_do_at_the_eye/ | {
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"It's a test for glaucoma, which is elevated pressure inside the eye. The puff of air pushes on the eye and by measuring the response to that external pressure, the internal pressure can be estimated. There are other, more accurate tests, but the air puff is the easiest to do."
]
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5d69ay | why can't we make hydrogen fuel cell power sources "happen"? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d69ay/eli5_why_cant_we_make_hydrogen_fuel_cell_power/ | {
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"Hydrogen is pretty hard to store; being the smallest element (it's only one proton and one electron!), it leaks through pretty much everything.\n\nBesides that... You ever throw a cheap butane lighter on the ground real hard, and it goes \"crack!\" and explodes like a small firecracker? Imagine that, with cars. And more fire. Accident damage is a *huge* concern for anything but completely stationary cells.\n\nAs to the solar splitting thing--why bother? There are better, safer, more efficient ways of using solar power. We already have plans for a massive salt-based solar plant; instead of solar power splitting water, we instead get solar power heating molten salt.",
"I think you've got a few misconceptions to clear up. A hydrogen fuel cell system is not a source of energy. It is much closer to a battery. Why is this?\n\nIn order to get large quantities of hydrogen, you'll need to split water through a process called electrolysis. You pump electricity into water, and it releases hydrogen and oxygen. You capture the hydrogen and store it in a tank. If you really wanted to, you could also store the oxygen, but the atmosphere provides us all we need for this process. \n\nThen, when you need electricity, you recombine the stored hydrogen with a supply of oxygen within a fuel cell. The fuel cell produces electricity and emits water. Unfortunately, thanks to the laws of physics, the amount of energy you get out of the fuel cell will always be less than the amount you spent to get the hydrogen in the first place. So it's a somewhat efficient battery.\n\nUnfortunately, storing hydrogen is both difficult and dangerous, so we don't really want to use it. A regular battery is generally a better choice."
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kufcm | processing of a crime scene (robbery, homicide, etc) | Leaving all the CSI: Miami stuff out, what happens when the police arrive at a crime scene? What is the protocol, the processes... maybe debunk some stuff from the tv shows like jurisdicition, tampering with evidence, interviews, etc.
I'm also interested in the actual process of forensics. What happens when the blood sample is taken or the finger print is lifted? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kufcm/eli5_processing_of_a_crime_scene_robbery_homicide/ | {
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"Educated in Canada. Local protocols may vary.\n\n > what happens when the police arrive at a crime scene?\n\nThey secure the scene. The first officer on the scene has the responsibility to ensure that the vicinity is safe, and that a perimeter is set up. If necessary, the need to apply first aid overrides the security of the scene. At all times though, the first rule is \"don't become a casualty.\" Depending on what the scene is, the first officer makes the appropriate calls for the different forensic experts.\n\nIf the first officer is properly educated, he/she will identify likely routes of entry/exit, and secure the scene _without using those routes_. They will also ensure the scene is undisturbed (don't follow footprints on the ground, for example; some put rubber bands around the shoes to identify whose footprints belong to investigators). Non-forensics personnel will aid in gathering eye witnesses.\n\nOnce the forensic team arrives, the forensic identification officer takes over. (The exception being if there is a body - then it is the medical examiner's scene). No unauthorized personnel would be allowed within the primary perimeter - the immediate area of the crime scene where the most physical evidence is likely to be found. In fact, this should be done already when the first officer secures the scene. Depending on the scene, a secondary perimeter is usually set up as well. This is to keep onlookers from a direct view of the scene, and also acts as an additional checkpoint for authorized entry.\n\nNothing in the crime scene is altered until they are documented. If they were (for example, when the officer attempts to provide CPR), their testimony will be documented (original position of the victim, etc.). The crime scene will be thoroughly photographed. Every piece of physical evidence will have _at least_ three photographs accompanying it - an \"overview\" shot (the entire crime scene), an \"establishing\" shot (to properly show the location of the object of interest with respect to everything else), and a close up (to show any details of interest). Numbered tags or flags, along with a scale must be present in the photograph as well. Often sketches with dimensions are done as well, although new technology, such as laser mapping systems, can be used as well.\n\nOnce evidence is properly documented, collection can begin. _All collection processes are destructive_. In the case of blood samples, the object it is found is usually collected, and the blood isolated later. It is up to the evidence collection team to identify the proper method of collection (blood-stained objects, for example, is never put in plastic bags - the moisture can ruin the sample; another example would be proper air-tight containment of evidence from a fire scene, as volatile gases can still be on the objects).\n\nFingerprints and blood that cannot be brought into the lab (on the wall, for example) would be lifted on the scene. In the case of blood, this means solubilizing it. In the case of fingerprints, it depends on the substrate. Smooth surfaces allow for traditional dusting techniques (which is lifted with tape). Porous surfaces require other techniques. One could, for example, attempt to visualize the print and photograph it (using ninhydrin, for example). Other techniques include cyanoacrylate, iodine fumes, even silver staining to visualize a print.\n\nAll evidence follows _chain of custody_, which means its location is known at all times. Once in the lab, one can use any number of common analysis techniques. Blood, for example, can be matched via DNA (commonly short tandem repeats), and depending on quality, one can identify paternal or maternal relationships (for identifying victims, for example). Evidence from fire scenes often undergo _headspace analysis_, where the air above the object (still contained in the air-tight container) is extracted to be analyzed for volatile compounds (e.g., accelerants). This is often done using mass spectrometry.\n\nFingerprints is a whole other story. A fingerprint expert identifies the points of minutiae - distinguishing features of a print (where ridges join, split, etc.) - and marks it electronically. This then can be used to compare against databases. Ultimately though, the expert personally \"matches\" fingerprints by identifying _all_ the visible minutiae - the computer can only give you back results of _similar_ matches.\n\n**tl;dr** There are _many, many_ fields of forensic science, and I can't possibly cover all of them. Each of them is very interesting (forensic pathology, or entomology, for example), and I could go on and on for each field.",
"Educated in Canada. Local protocols may vary.\n\n > what happens when the police arrive at a crime scene?\n\nThey secure the scene. The first officer on the scene has the responsibility to ensure that the vicinity is safe, and that a perimeter is set up. If necessary, the need to apply first aid overrides the security of the scene. At all times though, the first rule is \"don't become a casualty.\" Depending on what the scene is, the first officer makes the appropriate calls for the different forensic experts.\n\nIf the first officer is properly educated, he/she will identify likely routes of entry/exit, and secure the scene _without using those routes_. They will also ensure the scene is undisturbed (don't follow footprints on the ground, for example; some put rubber bands around the shoes to identify whose footprints belong to investigators). Non-forensics personnel will aid in gathering eye witnesses.\n\nOnce the forensic team arrives, the forensic identification officer takes over. (The exception being if there is a body - then it is the medical examiner's scene). No unauthorized personnel would be allowed within the primary perimeter - the immediate area of the crime scene where the most physical evidence is likely to be found. In fact, this should be done already when the first officer secures the scene. Depending on the scene, a secondary perimeter is usually set up as well. This is to keep onlookers from a direct view of the scene, and also acts as an additional checkpoint for authorized entry.\n\nNothing in the crime scene is altered until they are documented. If they were (for example, when the officer attempts to provide CPR), their testimony will be documented (original position of the victim, etc.). The crime scene will be thoroughly photographed. Every piece of physical evidence will have _at least_ three photographs accompanying it - an \"overview\" shot (the entire crime scene), an \"establishing\" shot (to properly show the location of the object of interest with respect to everything else), and a close up (to show any details of interest). Numbered tags or flags, along with a scale must be present in the photograph as well. Often sketches with dimensions are done as well, although new technology, such as laser mapping systems, can be used as well.\n\nOnce evidence is properly documented, collection can begin. _All collection processes are destructive_. In the case of blood samples, the object it is found is usually collected, and the blood isolated later. It is up to the evidence collection team to identify the proper method of collection (blood-stained objects, for example, is never put in plastic bags - the moisture can ruin the sample; another example would be proper air-tight containment of evidence from a fire scene, as volatile gases can still be on the objects).\n\nFingerprints and blood that cannot be brought into the lab (on the wall, for example) would be lifted on the scene. In the case of blood, this means solubilizing it. In the case of fingerprints, it depends on the substrate. Smooth surfaces allow for traditional dusting techniques (which is lifted with tape). Porous surfaces require other techniques. One could, for example, attempt to visualize the print and photograph it (using ninhydrin, for example). Other techniques include cyanoacrylate, iodine fumes, even silver staining to visualize a print.\n\nAll evidence follows _chain of custody_, which means its location is known at all times. Once in the lab, one can use any number of common analysis techniques. Blood, for example, can be matched via DNA (commonly short tandem repeats), and depending on quality, one can identify paternal or maternal relationships (for identifying victims, for example). Evidence from fire scenes often undergo _headspace analysis_, where the air above the object (still contained in the air-tight container) is extracted to be analyzed for volatile compounds (e.g., accelerants). This is often done using mass spectrometry.\n\nFingerprints is a whole other story. A fingerprint expert identifies the points of minutiae - distinguishing features of a print (where ridges join, split, etc.) - and marks it electronically. This then can be used to compare against databases. Ultimately though, the expert personally \"matches\" fingerprints by identifying _all_ the visible minutiae - the computer can only give you back results of _similar_ matches.\n\n**tl;dr** There are _many, many_ fields of forensic science, and I can't possibly cover all of them. Each of them is very interesting (forensic pathology, or entomology, for example), and I could go on and on for each field."
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30ornf | how is the construction cost of the burj khalifa only $1.5 billion? | Seems too small of a number to cover the cost of an 830m tall building. With the grossing from Avatar (2009) you could almost build two Burj Khalifas. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30ornf/eli5_how_is_the_construction_cost_of_the_burj/ | {
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"I'm a civil engineering student. I'll just say whatever I know on the topic. \r\rDon't overestimate the expectancy because its that high in height. A good amount of the khalifa's base and underground was made to be simply support purposes rather than aesthetics purpose. The only technical challenge the building has is making sure the base sits securely as Dubai tends to have a lot of sand in its geology. Otherwise, ask things considered, it's no surprise the building can stand thanks to its immense structural base. Also projects of these kinds of scales tend to have a lot of cost estimations and planning put in years/months beforehand. This is called Project Management. The main goal of P.M is to bring about the building to completion with maximum efficiency in time and cost. There are numerous methods implemented to help streamline construction so that money and time is not wasted. Hope this clears up some of the fog .",
"Although the Burj is tall, it is skinny - the lead structural engineer described it as \"a knitting needle stuck in concrete\". Because of this, it doesn't use a lot of building material proportional to its size.\n\nAlso it was built on a new site with easy access, which again would drastically reduce costs compared to building in the middle of an existing urban environment.\n\nTaking those factors into account $1.5 billion is about right. You could indeed build many Burj Khalifas with the profits of major movies.",
"The Burj Khalifa is not particularly stocky and thus only has a floor area of roughly 300,000m2,\n\nA builiding with roughly the same floor area (274,000) is the ICC Tower in Hong Kong, which is only a fraction of the height. (484 instead of 830).\n\nAdvanced technology and efficient engineers, ease of being next to the coast in order to ship materials in, as well as being a rather under-payed migrant workforce (known in the general Middle East to be treated almost like slaves) helped keep costs at $1.5 Billion.",
"One of many factors might be that the UAE has no minimum wage laws. Labor is cheap, sometimes less than [ten dollars a day](_URL_0_)."
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6cl53z | why are women's big butts in vogue all of a sudden? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6cl53z/eli5_why_are_womens_big_butts_in_vogue_all_of_a/ | {
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"Fads come and go. Look at 80s/90s \"mom\" pants and look what's fashionable today for young hip gals.\n\nAnyway, fashion comes and goes and big butts have been fashionable in many cultures and have come and gone as main stream.\n\nEasiest answer to a question like this, as it seems you don't like big butts, is different strokes for different folks. You don't always have to like what's mainstream or dislike what's not, or any combination of that."
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exb3su | how does the body symmetrically burn body fat? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/exb3su/eli5_how_does_the_body_symmetrically_burn_body_fat/ | {
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"Fat is not connected to muscle. When your body needs fuel from stored fat it releases hormones in to your blood to tell all of your fat cells to release energy back in to your blood stream. It has nothing to do with which part of your body is currently using the energy because your blood stream mixes everything together.",
"Nature tends towards symmetry, because symmetry is easier to make than asymmetry and usually more functional to boot. The body can't point to a particular fat deposit and say \"burn this\" - it instead selects by the specific type of cell and how that cell recognises hormones. Since your body is symmetrical, the fat cells on one part of your body respond to hormones in the same way as their symmetrical counterparts."
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498xdx | why does it look like light is stretched when you squeeze your eyes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/498xdx/elif_why_does_it_look_like_light_is_stretched/ | {
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"The lens in your eye is (roughly) spherical, which means it focusses light from a point source into a point on your retina.\n\nWhen you squeeze your eyes you are either distorting your lens, or moving your eyelids so that the film of tears along your lids partly cover the lens, making it a non-spherical lens. This produces a line instead of a point image."
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1zhzvd | drm and what the hell it means for a home coffee maker. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zhzvd/eli5_drm_and_what_the_hell_it_means_for_a_home/ | {
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"You wouldn't download a K-Cup would you?",
"[This is a Keurig.](_URL_1_) As you can see, it's a coffee maker you put a little cup into, which is about the same shape and size as a shot glass, and is filled with coffee grounds or other stuff.\n\nThe machine ranges from $80 to $120 to occasionally more. The cups, however, range anywhere from 50 cents to over $1 each. Each cup contains 0.40 oz of coffee. If you drink three $1 cups a day and use the Keurig for all of them, you're spending about $90 a month on the cups. However, if you buy a big tub of Folgers (33.9 oz) and pack the same amount (0.40 oz) into a refillable keurig cup, you'll be spending about $8 a month on coffee instead. So obviously, the company makes an immense profit on the cups, but not so much on the machines.\n\nRefillable and off-brand cups cut directly into the Keurig company's sales, and since their [patent ran out](_URL_0_), there's no legal way for them to stop the off-brands. So they want to make the next machine they make (keurigs only last so long) to ONLY accept THEIR brands of cups. In their ideal world, you put in an off-brand cup and the machine doesn't work.\n\nThis part is mostly speculation, because I couldn't find anything that says what exactly the DRM is. There are three ways I see that this could work. First and most likely, there's a barcode printed on the side of each cup, and the keurig reads it like a scanner. No barcode, or an incorrect barcode, and the machine doesn't work. Second way would be to make both the cups and the insert slot a really weird shape, making it much less likely an off-brand would fit both the keurig machine and their own brand. Finally and by far the least likely, each cup gets a microchip that the machine reads.\n\nPersonally, I don't see this as turning out well for Keurig. The biggest reason by far that people use the keurig is convenience. If it becomes a hassle, people will stop using it."
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"http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-17889_7-57619817/keurig-2.0-brews-up-drm-to-freeze-out-copycat-cups/",
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1tm8xf | how is steam© able to put game sales so low? | And still be one of the power houses of today's gaming industry? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tm8xf/how_is_steam_able_to_put_game_sales_so_low/ | {
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"Steam is just a content distributor - they work with publishers to negotiate how sale prices will work.\n\nBecause of their popularity and market share, even a sale that discounts a title down to a dollar, steam still takes a share of that transaction - lets say 0.05c\n\nThat 1$ title might get 100,000 purchases, because its a part of a steam sale. Steam gets $5,000 out of that 1$ title in fees.\n\nThe publisher gets a lot of visibility out of a steam sale, and marketing is a factor - a 50% discount on a game might eat into their profit from sale, but the marketing/advertising gained might more than make up that 50% loss. There is not really a loss in incentive from going on sale due to the massive visibility gained.\n\nSo those low prices still net Steam money - plus with Steam Cards they get a small amount of transaction fee for each card sold, which happens quite often, meaning that for every sale, steam makes a fee on the sale of the game, the sale of collectibles, additional DLC/content - and once you buy one game on Steam sale for a substantial savings, you are likely to come back and buy more, and potentially buy when prices are not on sale.\n\nBeyond that its just volume - steam is at this point the #1 digital game distribution platform. Right now there are between 5 and 7 million players in the last few days [source](_URL_0_)\n\nif 1% of those players make a 10$ purchase, thats a *massive* amount of money, of which steam takes a cut.",
"Usually the games on sale are slightly old, a few months or even a few years old. Many people who really wanted the game already bought it at full price when it first came out. So the sale price just encourages people who wouldn't buy the game at full price to buy it discounted. This is good for the publisher, since it's money they wouldn't have gotten otherwise. A game studio is better off getting $2.99 for a $10 game than $0.",
"The games are software distribution, so no money has to go towards manufacturing game discs, cases, cover art or paying employees who would be doing those things. Plus, what lumpy_potato said.",
"[Here's](_URL_0_) an article written about four years ago on this subject, it's worth reading but one quote I'll give you from it is this:\n\nValve co-founder Gabe Newell announced during a DICE keynote today that last weekend's half-price sale of Left 4 Dead resulted in a 3000% increase in sales of the game, posting overall sales (in dollar amount) that beat the title's original launch performance.",
"In addition to what others have pointed out, I think a very important point is that developers have already spent the money to develop the game. Now they have the game files, and the only additional cost is that of bandwidth and maintaining the servers/support for the games. So it doesn't really cost them anything to sell you a game once it's been made. \n\nObviously, while demand is highest (when a game is first released), they want to sell it for a high price so as to maximize revenue. But two or three years later, if you haven't bought the game for $50 by now, you probably never will. So even if they only sell it to you for $2.50 during a Steam sale, at least it's better than nothing. \n\nIt'd be like if you spent months or years writing a book. You might price it at $15 a piece when it first came out, as anticipation for it would be highest and people might be willing to pay that. Especially if you're selling physical copies (which might cost you $10 to print and ship...you're certainly not going to sell it for a loss). But then say years later, nobody is really buying the book anymore, and it doesn't cost you anything to give some a copy of the book on PDF. So you might even sell it for a dollar, because at least that's better than nothing. ",
"It's the same reason sales at all stores are successful.\n\nIf I'm your average college student, I'm probably pretty broke most of the time. I like to play games, but dropping $60 on a title every few weeks is not feasible. Because of this, I am not a customer to Steam (or any video game store).\n\nA few months (or years) later, those titles drop down significantly in price because of a holiday sale. Typically on Holidays too as a poor college kid, I'm getting some extra holiday cash from the family. \n\nSuddenly, I'm able to become a customer to Steam, because I have some extra money and the prices are now in a range that does not impact my living budget significantly. I buy $60 worth of games, but instead of just getting 1 title, I got say 10. Huge deal for me in value per dollar.\n\nIf Steam didn't have that sale, I probably would have spent that extra holiday cash on something that would give me more long term enjoyment (a bike, a tv, skates, etc). Instead of Steam getting my $60, they get $0 because I'm still not their customer.\n\nTLDR: \nIt's worth it for a retailer to take a price hit to attract customers that would not have purchased from them otherwise. This happens in most retail-based industries. ",
"High volume sales. You can either sell few products for a very high profit margin, or set your profit margin very low and vastly increase the volume of sales (total number of units sold). \n\nIf you increase the ease to purchase your product, you can decrease the price and still make a very good profit margin. "
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9zijl8 | how do companies like ebates make money if we aren’t buying anything from them and we get cash back on purchases through 3rd party sellers? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9zijl8/eli5_how_do_companies_like_ebates_make_money_if/ | {
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"They get reimbursed by the companies. The companies just take a smaller profit in exchange for more sales that they wouldn’t have had otherwise. Solved!",
"I'm selling apples.\n\nEach apple costs 5 dollars to make.\n\nI'm selling them for 10 dollars each. I make 5 dollars profit.\n\nI sell 20 apples a day. I make 200 dollars a day, 100 dollars is pure profit.\n\nI go to a 3rd party rebate app- like Ibotta and tell them I'll give them 1 dollar for every customer they bring me.\n\nThey add into their app my apples, and they tell their users they will give them 50 cents to buy my apples.\n\nI now sell 30 apples a day, at (basically) 9 dollars each, I make 270 dollars. 120 dollars is pure profit. \n\nIbotta makes 30 dollars off of me, they give 15 dollars to their users, and they profit 15 dollars."
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43ow64 | why are the sounds of crying and laughing so similar? | I was crying (sobbing) this morning, and to cheer myself up, I watched some funny videos. When I started laughing, I realized that I sound and feel the same as I did when I was crying. Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43ow64/eli5_why_are_the_sounds_of_crying_and_laughing_so/ | {
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"text": [
"Mmm I never noticed that. Could it be they come from the same area?"
]
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2pfsqh | what is the "last" time zone for any given day? | If I'm in EST (Eastern Standard Time), at what time in my day (or how many hours into my next day), is that previous day "complete" around the world?
As in, it's currently Monday, December 15th, 11:52PM EST, at what point will I know that it's no longer "Monday, December 15th" any other place in the world?
plz explain like i am five years old. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pfsqh/eli5_what_is_the_last_time_zone_for_any_given_day/ | {
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"Time zones are set with 'zero', the Prime Meridian being Greenwich Mean Time. This is in the UK, near-ish London. \n\nThe International Date Line is the line that's on the opposite side of the world from the Prime Meridian. It's a bit to the east of New Zealand, and wobbles a bit so that most island groups stay on the same side of it. \nSo the area of the world that has the 'last' of any date is the one that has the time zone immediately to the east of the IDL. Timezones are often labelled as 'GMT- x', where x how much time to subtract from Greenwich Mean Time (where the Prime Meridian has its timezone) to get the time of that zone.\n \nSo on this map of the IDL, we just need to find the area with the largest GMT-x. _URL_0_ \n\nGoing by that map, it looks like zones with ~~GMT-11 are American Samoa, the Midway Islands, Jarvis Island, and Niue~~ GMT-12 are Howland and Baker islands..",
"That would be the time zone directly east of the International Date Line, which is in the Pacific Ocean. If it's 12:00 AM on Monday on the east side of the IDL, then it's 12:00 AM Tuesday on the west side (not 11:00 PM Sunday, which would come before 12:00 AM Monday).\n\nTime zones are counted out 12 west and 12 east from UTC (sometimes referred to by its old name of Greenwich Mean Time), which for the sake of ELI5 is the time in England. Ignoring Daylight Saving Time and stuff like that, EST is UTC -5, i.e. 5 hours before UTC. The east side of the IDL (counting west from England) is UTC -12; the west side (counting east from England) is UTC +12. So when it's 7:00 AM on Monday in New York, then it's 12:00 AM on Monday east of the IDL, and 12:00 AM on Tuesday on the west side, and is no longer Sunday anywhere.\n\nIf you're wondering how that works with travel: I live in Tokyo (UTC +9), and am going home to the eastern US for the holidays. I will leave Tokyo at around 2 PM on Monday...and arrive in Houston at around 2 PM on Monday. When I cross the IDL on Monday afternoon, it will suddenly jump back to Sunday afternoon, because the east side is 24 hours behind the west side. On the way back, I will leave from the US early on a Monday, and get back to Tokyo late on Tuesday night, because I suddenly gain 24 hours again when I cross the IDL in the other direction. It's kind of annoying, but it works."
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5rclvd | the difference between an officer and an enlisted person in the army | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rclvd/eli5_the_difference_between_an_officer_and_an/ | {
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"\nThis is the case for all branches, not just the Army. By all means please correct me or add to this guys, I've been drinking and just threw some stuff down (was sailor).\n\nTo become one: The biggest difference is that becoming an Officer requires a college degree and becoming Enlisted does not. This is not ALWAYS the case as senior enlisted have opportunities to become officers later on through various programs, however, the vast majority of officers have a 4 year degree.\n\nResponsibility: Officers are like executives in the private industry. Take a fast food place for instance. The young enlisted would be the burger flippers and cashiers, mopping the floor, etc. The senior enlisted would be like the manager. An officer would be someone who owned or oversaw the operation of that restaurant and/or several more as well.\n\nThe treatment: Enlisted boot camp is 50-100 dudes/ladies all staying in bunks a few feet from each other in a row getting yelled at constantly and treated like babies. You know nothing as a newly enlisted military member and you'll be treated as such. You need to be broken down and taught everything. Officer candidate school (officer boot camp) is like a cross between college and boot camp. Instead of a huge room full of bunks where you'll be scrubbing the floor with toothbrushes and sleeping feet from other people, you share a dorm with usually 1 other person. Not nearly as much breaking down and being treated like a child. You're treated more like an adult and taught how to lead more so than follow orders. You'll still be yelled at and have to get up early and run a ton, but it's night and day different from enlisted boot camp.\n\nThe pay: You can look this up yourself. Officers make a lot more money. Google \"Military Pay Charts 2017\". Very briefly I'll go into it, an E1 right of boot camp will make about $1450 a month. An O1 will make about $3050 a month. E1 being the lowest enlisted rank, O1 being the lowest officer rank.\n\nSource - Recently separated Navy E6\n",
"Officers in the military always have four-year college degrees, whether from a military academy or a civilian institution. They're the leaders and the planners, though they're not always in combat as much as enlisted persons and NCOs (non-commissioned officers). NCOs are in the middle and high ranks of the non-officer members of the military, who have more time and experience in the military than enlisted persons. To get back on point, enlisted members of the military often don't have college degrees, and most sign up to join the military after they're out of high school. They learn tactics on the job and through basic training.",
"Rank, basically. The lowest officer rank is higher than the highest enlisted rank. Normally officers have some authority or are in command in some capacity, and are better trained in leadership and management.\n\nThere's also such a thing as a non-commissioned officer or NCO (which aren't usually considered \"officers\") which refers to the higher ranks of enlisted personnel like corporals and sergeants.",
"A commissioned officer (lieutenant, captain, colonel, general, etc...) is a member of the military that derives his or her authority from a commission (formal appointment) issued to him or her by the head of state. In other words, he or she derives his or her authority from the state.\n\nCommissioned officers are generally in positions of management and leadership rather than positions of specialisation. However, air forces are often an exception to this.\n\nNon-commissioned officers are enlisted personnel (corporal, sergeant, warrant officer, etc...) that have obtained a position of leadership or authority through experience and promotion through the enlisted ranks. However, even the most senior NCO is inferior in rank to the most junior CO.\n\nIn practice, commissioned officers give general orders to non-commissioned officers, who in turn give specific orders to junior enlisted personnel under their command in order to facilitate the execution of the general orders that they were given."
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4aavpv | why are there baggage fees on most commercial airlines when part of the reason is due to weight limits and then there is the modified boeing 747 that carried the space shuttle which weights a lot more than the total weight of passenger baggage? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4aavpv/eli5_why_are_there_baggage_fees_on_most/ | {
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"text": [
"More weight requires more fuel so there is a cost. Don't forget to consider the weight of passengers, including their seats, food, water, toilets, etc., none of which the shuttle carrier required. Apart from maximum take-off weight, which is limited by engine power, range also comes in to play. Long distance flights will have a lower total weight limit than short-haul flights because of the weight of the extra fuel and because heavier aircraft burn fuel faster.",
"Every extra pound makes the plane consume more fuel.\n\nIt is able to carry a lot of luggage, but it makes the trip cost more.\n\nAlso, luggage takes up space as well as weight. You will notice that 747 did not carry the shuttle in its cargo hold.\n\nFinally, the safety regulations for carrying passengers are more stringent than carrying cargo. The 747 carrying the shuttle likely got special exemption and underwent major modifications.",
"It takes energy to move things. Jet fuel makes the plane go forward. Jet fuel is expensive. \n\nIt costs 230,000$ for to move a shuttle cross country. Someone has to buy the Jet fuel. _URL_0_",
"A fully loaded 747 is carrying ~70,000 kilograms of passenger and baggage. The shuttle orbiter weighed ~68,000 kilograms when empty. The shuttle was actually a bit lighter than what the 747 would be carrying with a full load of passengers."
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[],
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[
"http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2005/08/how_does_the_space_shuttle_fly_home.html"
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[]
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292hwd | why is slow-motion so visually appealing? | It seems that in media, whenever something wants an extra push of drama, slo-mo is almost always effective. From a psychological/neurological point of view, why is this? What is it about slow-motion that is so aesthetically appealing? It seems to be a pattern that transcends time and culture. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/292hwd/eli5_why_is_slowmotion_so_visually_appealing/ | {
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"It is because the slo-mo reveals a lot of things that cannot be seen by the regular eye. Normally mundane things like drop splashing and a glass breaking is (literally) seen in a new light. This ***is*** fascinating and appeals to natural curiosity. "
]
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23xizc | how do viruses/diseases form, and how does the bacteria go to the first host? | I'm talking about viruses like Ebola, H1N1,etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23xizc/eli5_how_do_virusesdiseases_form_and_how_does_the/ | {
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"text": [
"Viruses and bacteria have been around a long time.\n\nViruses are not quite organisms. The need to hijack the DNA or RNA transcription machinery of a living cell to reproduce. They mutate easily. Some are able to reproduce in hosts of more than one species. The damage they cause if any is species-dependent.\n\nEbola virus is in the bush in Africa, notably in bats, other primates and an animal called agouti. Locals hunt these for food, eat them and kick off a human outbreak. Ebola is not kind to humans.\n\nH1N1 is a flu virus. Influenza can flow between fowl and swine. It can also flow between swine and humans. It is not so common to flow between humans and fowl. All of this species-hopping enhances odds of mutation. Many new flu strains evolve in places where people, pigs, ducks, geese and chickens are living in close proximity - east Asia being prime. Flu infects the respiratory system and gets airborne when an infected host coughs or sneezes.\n\n"
]
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