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a64dio | google maps uses mercator projection when zoomed out, giving a distorted view of earth. why does nothing seem to change as i zoom into those distorted areas? surely there should be areas of siberia, canada, etc that look fucked up when zoomed in? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a64dio/eli5_google_maps_uses_mercator_projection_when/ | {
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"First, Google Maps doesn't use a Mercator projection when zoomed out... at least not today on my browser. I get a 3-d spherical \"satellite view\".\n\nBut anyway, what Mercator does wrong is that the scale depends on latitude: polar parts of the Earth look bigger than areas near the equator. But it doesn't distort the shapes of things otherwise -- it's called a [\"conformal\"](_URL_0_), or shape-preserving, projection.\n\nSo when you zoom in to Siberia, you're getting a magnified but correct view of what that part of Siberia looks like. But since you can adjust the amount of zoom as you like, you don't notice the magnification difference. It's only when you can see both Siberia and Brazil in in the same map that there's an obvious problem.",
"The difference comes with the scale of the zoom. If I zoomed in on Northern Greenland or similar, 6 mouse wheel clicks brings me down to a scale bar of 5km (bottom right). If I did the same 6 clicks in Central America, the scale bar is 20km. If you move the map north or south without changing the zoom, the scale bar will adjust.\n\nNot exactly a scientific method of working it out, but this would mean that Maps can preserve the weird shape of the Mercator projection even when zooming in - because zooming in at different latitudes ends up with different scales."
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2g0taz | why can't anyone create an internet connection, anywhere, for free without the need for a provider? | I have no idea how this works, please explain. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g0taz/eli5_why_cant_anyone_create_an_internet/ | {
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"\"The Internet\" is just a word for the massive network of cables that connect computers all over the world with each other. Every single one of those cables is owned and maintained by a company, and since installing and maintaining those cables costs them money, they charge other people to access the cables.\n\nThe only alternative to paying one of those companies for access to their existing infrastructure is to put down your own cables connecting the world's computers together (at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars), and then convincing everyone to abandon the Internet, and use your network, instead.",
"What are you going to connect to? You have to be connected to someone else's network to get data from it, and I promise they will want to be compensated for the connection and the data you send and receive across their infrastructure.\n\nThe Internet is an interconnected network of networks, so in a very real way, ISPs ARE the Internet."
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8z0cys | why is riding a bike a skill you can basically learn once and then never have to relearn while other skills degrade if unused? | Ok, I'm not 100% if riding a bike *never* has to be relearned, but the phrase "it's like riding a bike" came around for a reason. It's something you don't know how to do, but once you learn, your brain seems to just get it from that point on and even if decades pass between bike rides, you can get on one and maintain balance and all that. But most other skills seems to degrade over time and you might have to totally relearn from scratch. What is it that's so special about bike riding that makes it so long lasting? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8z0cys/eli5_why_is_riding_a_bike_a_skill_you_can/ | {
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"It is connected with the amount of effort you put in in order to learn a skill. Bike riding involves the coordination of many parts of the body which while learned develop many new connections in the brain. \n\nAs time goes by, if you don't ride, some of these connection will start to degrade, but because there are so many of them most will remain and you will be able restore the knowledge quickly. \n\nPlaying an instrument or even speaking a language will work similarly - you can forget particular words over time, but once you decide to re-learn it or start speaking it will come back pretty quickly. ",
"The skill of riding a bike does degrade. If you don't ride a bike for twenty or thirty years you will be wobbly and a little unbalanced until you practice and regain the skill set.\n \nThink of it like handwriting. If you don't write anything for decades (because you type everything for example) then you will still be able to write but your writing will be more untidy and your hand will cramp quickly unless you rest it. \n\nAll skills degrade. Most things are not binary. You become less skilled not unskilled over time without practice. "
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3gnksv | how did "mississippi" become the accepted method for audibly measuring seconds? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gnksv/eli5_how_did_mississippi_become_the_accepted/ | {
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"There are many methods of doing this. Mississippi is not the only one. Some people, for instance, say \"one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand.\"\n\nThe unifying factor (it should probably go without saying) is that the word takes about a second to say. "
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1gb89z | the basic rules of league of legends so i can enjoy watching a match as a non-player | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gb89z/eli5_the_basic_rules_of_league_of_legends_so_i/ | {
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"2 teams. Blue's base is at bottom left of map, purple team is at top right. Every 30 seconds, non-player minions spawn for each team (purple and blue) in equal numbers. These minions go down 3 lanes: top, middle, and bottom.\n\nThere are 5 Player controlled champions on each team (10 total players in each game). The blue and purple minions are equally strong, so the skill of the player-controlled champions is what decides who wins.\n\nThe winner is the team who kills the opposing team's Nexus (the last building in the respective team's base). To get to the Nexus, your champion needs to be strong (money and experience are gained from killing opposing team's minions and champions)",
"Eh. \nBasic, non-contextual stuff:\n\n* Two teams of 5 champions each\n * Most champs have a passive ability, 3 normal abilities, 1 \"ultimate\" ability, and 2 summoner spells (high cooldown)\n* Three lanes, each with \"minions\" spawning and walking along them at regular intervals\n* Two basic towers per lane, plus an \"inhibitor turret\" which protects an inhibitor, which, when destroyed allows for **super**minions. Inhibitors regenerate health/respawn. There is also a nexus further in, with two turrets, which regenerate health (but cannot respawn once destroyed).\n* Jungle between lanes/across the river, with camps of creeps\n * Some creeps provide \"buffs\" - blue/red.\n * A big buff in the top river (confers additional stats), and a dragon in the lower river (confers global gold)\n* Killing minions and jungle creeps nets the killer gold; killing dragon, Baron Nashor (big top-river buff), and towers nets your team gold (190g, 300g, and 150g respectively)\n* Killing champions nets you gold, as well as netting some for anyone who assisted (by providing damage/shields/heals)\n* Champions need gold to buy items; items grant them additional stats.\n* Basic attributes - attack damage, ability power, health, armour, magic resistance, and for most champions, mana (as their resource for casting spells/using abilities)\n * Resources: mana (blue), energy (yellow), fury/rage (red), health (green)\n* Champion abilities have some base damage/healing/shield strength attached to them, as well as additional damage//healing/shield strength based on (usually) attack damage or ability power.\n * Apart from damage/healing/shields, many abilities have \"cc\" (crowd control)\n * These are - stuns, snares, roots, slows, taunts, fears, charms, knock-backs, knock-ups...\n* Champion abilities have cooldowns (wait time till next cast)\n* Object of the game is to kill the enemy's nexus or force them to surrender (if they think they can't protect it)\n\nContextual stuff:\n\n* The 5 champions tend to split into 1-1-2 (top, middle, and bottom lanes), with 1 jungler\n * Top champion tends to be a bruiser (attack damage OR ability-power oriented)\n * Mid champion tends to be an ability power champion, who scales very well with levels\n * There is usually a ranged attack damage champion here (called ADC - C is for \"carry\"), with a support champion (who tries not to take any gold from the ADC, who scales mainly with gold/items)\n * The jungler gets his gold through the jungle - tends to be tanky and have some form of cc.\n* Note that there is almost always some cc in any given team\n* General flow of the game right now: laning, some grouping for an objective (tower/dragon), some more laning, some grouping/team-fighting, depending on the outcome - pushing (taking towers) or taking other objectives (dragon/Baron Nashor), push out lanes, group, etc.\n\nJargon:\n\n* ganking - when someone from another lane (but usually the jungler) attempts to kill or apply pressure in a given lane\n* split-pushing - when one or two champions push a lane (farm the waves of minions and attempt to destroy towers) whilst everyone else is grouped/skirmishing/fighting in other lanes\n* greens/pinks - green wards last 3 minutes, grant vision of an area; pink wards last 3 minutes, grant vision of an area, including stealthed/invisible units (which include green and pink wards).\n\nEh, that should be enough to start you off. There are popular champs (there are over 100 champions, but I believe less than 20 get picked regularly) which you will probably start recognising. Then you will probably find out what abilities they have, etc.\nI'm really tired, so apologies for formatting/confusion, but hope this helps. By the way, are you watching this weekend's NA LCS?\n",
" I have played league a decent amount so I will give this a shot. I'll describe the basics of a 5v5 game since that is what is typically played at pro tournaments.\n\n* **Basics** So you have 2 teams that start on on opposite sides with the goal of reaching the other side and destroying the enemy team's nexus or home of sorts. To do this each team needs to destroy the towers in at least 1 lane and 1 inhibitor. The towers fire at whatever is attacking them and the inhibitor prevents super minions from being created and the nexus from being attacked. Once this is done there are two more towers directly in front of the nexus that have to be destroyed and then the nexus can be destroyed winning the game for the team that destroyed it. To get there the champions or players kill minions or monsters that aren't controlled by players in the lanes to get gold allowing them to buy items that make their champions more powerful. They also get gold from fighting enemy players or killing the neutral minions or monsters in-between the lanes. Those are the basics of the game to really get what is going on though you need to know a bit more. \n\n* **Team Setup** There are 3 lanes in which you can do this each with 2 towers for each team and an inhibitor. The lanes are referred to as top, mid, and bot. Then there is the jungle which makes up the area in-between the lanes. Different champions usually stick to different lanes. Top lane is usually for fighters, champions who have a good amount of health and can survive without much help. Mid is usually for champions who rely on AP or ability power. In other words champions who use their magic abilities to do most of the damage. This is countered by MR or Magic Resist. The bottom lane is where the AD carries go. They are called AD carries because they rely on attack damage or the physical damage dealt from their basic or auto attacks, the attacks that are not abilities. The AD carry is joined by a Support who supports the AD carry by keeping them healed up and controlling the enemy champions as much as possible. This is accomplished through abilities and **Sight**. Sight is important because if you can't see where your enemies are you don't know when they might attack. You get sight from buying items called wards. The 5th champion is the Jungler. They focus on killing the minions in the Jungle who are worth extra gold and some have extra buffs or bonuses you get from killing them. They are usually more similar to top lane champions than any other champion. \n\n* **Gameplay** Each champion has 3 unique abilites and 1 ultimate ability. Each time a champion reachs a higher level they get to put another point into 1 of there abilities with 2 main rules. 1: you can't put any points into the ultimate until level 6. 2: each regular ability can only have 5 points in it and the ultimate can only have 3. This is because the ultimate is more powerful than the rest of the abilities and the max level for each champion is 18. 5*3=15 +3 = 18. Each player get to pick two summoner spells from a list of 12. All players choose from the same choices of summoner's spells. By default the 3 abilities are set to the \"q\", \"w\" and \"e\" keys so the are referred to buy these letters frequently. To get more powerful champions rely on buying items for their \"build\". It is called a build because you begin by buying cheaper weaker items that combine with other cheap items to become or build into stronger more expensive items. Each champion can only have 6 items at a time. If a champion is \"Fed\" it means that they have a lot of kills and can afford to buy there powerful items early. \n\nWell that is everything I can think of right now that you might need to know. Sorry for the wall of text and if this wasn't very ELI5. Hopefully someone can fill in any gaps I left and let me know if you have any specific questions. \n",
"You were five I would say something like:\n\nThe five creatures on the one side is trying to destroy the big flying thing in the middle of the other five creatures' base. To get to that flying thing they need to destroy some tower that shoot at them and some other buildings. ",
"5 people on one side and 5 people on the other side. There are 3 paths that lead to their main base.\n\nThey have to destroy their enemies' 'towers' along each path until they reach the end of one side.\n\nEach player tries to stop the other them by fighting them.\n\nOnce they reach the end and destroy the last big tower thingy on their opponents' side they win.\n\nThat is the skeleton.",
"**BASICS**\n\nSo take a RTS game. Starcraft, Age of Empires, Warhammer, something like that. Now imagine that instead of controlling 100s of units, you are controlling one super unit. You are on a team with 4 players against 5 other players. Each of you control 1 super unit.\n\nLike an RTS game, each team has structures. However, in LoL, these structures are already set up and in place. In the bottom left and upper right hand corners of the map are the two nexuses. You win by destroying the enemy's nexus. Guarding each nexus is a series of towers.\n\nFrom this nexus, a bunch of minions are spawned every 30 seconds. Think of these minions as super basic units in an RTS, they don't do much except in large numbers.\n\n**THE CHAMPION**\n\nYour super unit is called a champion. There are 115 to choose from roughly. Each has the following:\n-An auto attack (some are melee, some are ranged)\n-1 unique passive\n-4 unique player activated abilities\n--These can do anything from enhancing your auto attack, to making you champion jump, to stunning an opponent so they can't move just to name a few.\n--The 4th ability is referred to as an \"ultimate,\" because it's usually the strongest ability.\n--Each of these abilities have a cooldown, usually between 5-15 sec, before they can be used again. Ultimates however, can have cooldowns ranging from 2 second cooldowns to 200 second cooldowns. However, most have about 1 minute cooldowns. The more powerful the ability, the longer the cooldown.\n-A health bar, this regens slowly over time.\n-A resource bar, usually mana. Casting abilities costs mana for most champions on most abilities. Sometimes, casting a spell costs health. Sometimes, it costs nothing. Mana regens at a decent pace over time\n-A recall ability. This brings your champion back to your fountain (explained later) after channeling for a few seconds. Being damaged stops this channel.\n\nYour champion starts at level one. The level cap for every champion is level 18. Generally, it takes about 30-40 minutes to reach level 18. Each time you gain a level, you power up one of your 4 abilities. You must have 1 level-up point in a spell in order to use it. For most champions, your ultimate ability cannot be unlocked until level 6.\n\nIn addition, the player can choose 2 \"summoner spells\" for his champion. There are about 10 summoner spells to choose from. Think of these as 2 additional spells that can be used on any champion. However, these spells have really long cooldowns compared to basic abilities, up to 5 minutes.\n\n**THE MAP**\n[Summoner's Rift map](_URL_0_)\n\nIn LoL, there are only 4 total maps. The one most commonly played is called summoner's rift. The reason why summoner's rift is played is because the champions are balanced for this map. On summoner's rift, the nexuses are in the upper right and lower left hand corners of a square map. There is a direct line uninterrupted by terrain going from each of the nexuses to the upper left hand corner of the map, the lower right, and the center of the map. These are referred to as \"lanes.\" Usually they are called top lane, mid lane, and bottom lane due to their positions on the mini map.\n\nRunning from the upper left hand corner to the lower right hand corner is the river. Walking along the river is no different than walking in a lane. The area between lanes is referred to as the \"jungle.\" In the jungle neutral monsters spawn. These monsters will not attack you unless attacked first. These monsters are stronger than minions, but still much weaker than champions.\n\n**Structures**\n[Summoner's Rift map](_URL_0_)\n\nOn summoner's rift, the round plateau in the very upper right and very bottom left hand corners of the map are the fountains. Being in the fountain quickly regenerates a champion's health and mana. It also is where champions can spend their gold (more on that later). If an enemy walks into the fountain, a powerful laser shoots 1 target at a time dealing massive damage. Basically, your fountain is your safe zone.\n\nThe single round structure with a blue color (in the lower left) and a purple color (in the upper right) are the nexuses. Killing your opponent's nexus is how you win the game.\n\nThe 3 small round structures with a purpler color (in the lower left) and a blue color (in the upper right) are inhibitors. Destroying an opponents inhibitor makes all of your minions stronger. 1 inhibitor must be destroyed before the nexus turret's can be attacked. Inhibitors respawn after they are down for 5 minutes.\n\nIn each lane, there are 2 towers per side. There are also 2 towers guarding each nexus, and 1 tower guarding each of 3 inhibitors. Towers deal massive damage at the beginning of the game, but don't get stronger as the game progresses. This means that by the endgame, towers aren't that deadly anymore. The outermost turret in a lane has to be destroyed before the next one inward can be attacked. The inhibitor turret must be destroyed before the inhibitor in that lane can be attacked. If any 1 inhibitor is down, then the nexus turrets can be attacked. Both nexus turrets must be destroyed before the nexus can be killed and the game won.\n\n**JUNGLE BUFFS, DRAGON, AND BARON**\n\nThere are 2 buffs in the jungle, red buff and blue buff. Whoever strikes the killing blow on the monster than has the blue or red buff takes it for themselves for 2 or 3 minutes (depending on factors not worth mentioning right now). Red buff causes any opponents hit my auto attacks to be slowed and deals additional damage. Blue buff causes mana to be regenerated much faster and shortens a spell's cooldown by 20% (maybe 15%, can't remember for sure).\n\nThe dragon is located on the lower part of the river in the pit area. The dragon deals massive damage. Usually, it takes 3+ members of the team to kill it early. Late game, 1 person can take it down.\n\nThe baron is located in the pit on the upper part of the river. The baron deals much much more damage than the dragon. It usually requires all 5 members to take it down at all points in the game. Killing the baron grants the entire team that dealt the killing blow baron buff. Baron buff grants increased damage on many spells and a massive health regen boost. Baron buff lasts for 3 minutes.\n\n**GOLD**\n\nEach player gains individual gold throughout the game. Generally, the team that has more gold is considered to be winning. Gold can come from various sources:\n-Killing minions (last hitting minions) grants only the individual who struck the killing blow gold\n-Killing jungle monsters grants only the individual who struck the killing blow gold.\n-Killing champions grants all those involved with the kill gold, with most going to whoever struck the killing blow.\n-Destroying towers grants the entire team a large amount of gold.\n-Killing the dragon or baron grants your entire team a large amount of gold.\n\n**ITEMS**\n\nYou use your gold to buy items. Items increase one of your following stats\n-Movement speed\n-Attack damage (the damage your auto attacks and certain spells do)\n-Ability power (The damage certain spells do)\n-Health\n-Armor (reduces damage done by attack damage)\n-Magic resist (reduced damage done by ability power)\n-Mana (increases max amount of mana)\n-Health regen\n-Mana regen\n-Tenacity (how long stuns affect you)\n\n**END OF REQUIRED READING**\nce it's along a diagonal. AP carry's and assassin's spells are for damage, and thus their spells rarely allow them to escape ganks. AP carries and assassin's scale off of levels which cause their spells to do more damage. This means AP carries and assassins need as much experience as possible so they get their own lane.\n\nBot lane has an AD carry and a support. This is done because AD carries scale off of items so it doesn't matter if experience is split 2 ways. The support's job is to make sure the AD carry gets as much gold as possible.\n\nTop lane has bruisers or tanks in it because that's what the team lacks. Generally, champions that are strong early are top because once someone gets an advantage in top lane, they tend just to do better and better because it's a 1 on 1 matchup.\n\nAfter about 10-25 minutes of people being in lane, the team is strong enough to kill towers. Because of this, teams start grouping up to take down towers and win fights as a team."
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1p4ciz | what does addiction feel like? | My SO is addicted to cigarettes and I don't understand what addiction is like and why it's so hard to quit. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p4ciz/what_does_addiction_feel_like/ | {
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"There are two kinds of problems you get from addictions.\n\nThe first one is the most common, and it's getting addicted to the feeling of something. With a drug, it's usually because taking the drug makes you feel happy, or calm, or at the very least, you don't feel sad anymore. It's fulfilling in some way, like eating delicious food or having really good sex. When you grow dependent, you start to rely on the drug because you get used to feeling happy, or used to being able to run away from your sadness so easily. It's like a quick fix. Why bother cooking a whole meal when you can just order a delicious pizza. Sometimes, knowing you have a problem can make you even more dependent, because you can just take the drug to stop feeling sad about it. Other times, if you stop taking a drug, you just crave it the way you crave air when you hold your breath. It doesn't feel especially good to breathe, but you always notice how much you hate not breathing.\n\nThen there's withdrawal. Unlike psychological addiction, which is liking the feeling of taking the drug, withdrawal keeps you addicted because stopping feels awful. Some withdrawals make you really sad, some make you sick, some are painful. Some withdrawals can kill you.\n\nCigarettes are tough to quit because even though they don't make you feel really good compared to most other drugs, they make you crave smoking just so that you can feel normal again. The withdrawal from cigarettes makes you really irritable and upset.\n\nBut above all, you should remember to be supportive of your SO. The only thing harder than quitting is quitting alone.",
"You didn't quite ask for the answer I'm about to give, but I hope you'll find it interesting anyway. \nI've never been addicted to things like cigarettes or other drugs. However, I have been (and still am slightly) a video game addict. Some people still wave this off as non-existant or just a lack of discipline, others understand. It's a mental thing. My body never physically asked for another dosis of video games and I never had a physical feeling of missing it. But it's something in my head. \n\nI find it easy to compare to not finishing something and just leaving it like that. For example, I walk out of my room, leave the lights and the tv on and go get a drink. But instead of getting my drink, I decide to go out and visit a friend. There's always that thought of \"I can't go, I need to turn off the lights and tv first.\" That need to go back and do just that lingers and will always be there whenever I'm not playing a video game (or at my PC). Currently, I still have a mild case of it, but not because of the video game. When I have my phone with me with Skype on it, it's much, much easier for me to deal with it, because it's about the people I play the games with (online), instead of the actual game.\n\nOften, after a night of going out and I've been away from my PC for a certain amount of hours, I still log on and talk to people, play games, etc, while it might be 5 AM and I could be drunk/tipsy/whatever happened while going out. I just want that small dosis of being at my PC, playing the game and interacting with the online world.\n\nThe only way *not* to have this feeling, is when I am absolutely sure there is no way that I can log onto my PC/game. When I'm on vacation, for example. Then I can genuinely enjoy it, but if I'm just downstairs in the living room, or at a friend's, or in a bar, I know I could go to my room and do that instead and that messes with your mind. In a way, it's a form of disclipine, because I used to play World of Warcraft a few years ago and I just quit because it was taking over my life. But it's easier said than done.",
"Like having to piss. Try to not piss. The need fills your mind. Your body and mind can't ignore the building signal. ",
"I think the best way for me to characterise addiction came from 12 step programs (which I have mixed feelings about): **an obsession of the mind and a compulsion of the body.** This summarises both the psychological and physical addictions so succinctly. \n\nDepending on the drug of choice, one of these two will probably come before the other, but both will inevitably happen if you keep on long enough (provided the drug has a potential for physical dependence). One is not inherently worse than the other. Both have the potential to be sheer misery and living hell, 24/7. There's no break or reprieve. I've had physical withdrawals that put me in the hospital multiple times and very nearly killed me, but the anguish and mental prison that comes from psychological dependence can be just as crippling and deadly. \n\nFor me, I was psychologically addicted first. I was a late bloomer; I never drank/used until relatively late in life. But as soon as I did, I was immediately hooked. I didn't party like normal people who went out on the weekends and had a few drinks and then resumed their lives as normal. It consumed my thoughts. I plotted and planned and when I wasn't using, I was thinking about using. \n\nYou know how you feel when you go to work and forget your phone at home? (Feel free to substitute any 'vital' thing that you use daily -- the internet, your purse/wallet, whatever.) Sure, you might not actually need your phone to call anyone. In fact, you kind of hate having to answer it all day long. All people do is bitch at you anyway; it's not worth it. But you spend all day at work sitting there obsessing about what important texts you're missing. Your work suffers. You try to take a nap on your break and can't. You snap at everyone for no reason because your mind is elsewhere but you can't figure out exactly why you're irritated. On your way home, your phone is all you're thinking about. You can even visualise yourself holding it and turning it on, entering the screen lock code, checking your messages. You immediately check it first thing when you walk in the door and your anxiety and stress from the past 8 hours is finally relieved and you feel normal again. No missed calls or anything; there was no real reason to even worry. \n\nThat's a very tame version of what it's like to be an addict. (Although for me, in active addiction this analogy would have made no sense, because a phone was useless... the bill was never paid anyway! I chose that analogy simply because I see SO many people whining about lost/broken/forgotten phones as if it's the end of the world as they know it.) Using drugs and alcohol isn't even fun anymore, it provides us few benefits (in fact, the negative consequences vastly outweigh the positives) but we still continue to do it anyway and feel horrible when we aren't. \n\nThen, if it progresses, the physical dependence sets in. Now, you're not only *thinking* about your drug of choice, but your body is *constantly reminding you* that you **need this NOW.** It's very difficult to concentrate on daily life when your brain is running a million miles a minute thinking about a substance, and then you start getting sick on top of it. So, you're trying to work, and not only are you anxious and worried, but you start shaking and puking uncontrollably. Your heart races so fast you're seriously convinced that you're having a heart attack or stroke. This makes your anxiety even worse, unbearable, terrifying. You might end up calling emergency services because you legitimately think you're dying, only to find out it's another panic attack. Everything part of your body hurts and you can't stay one temperature -- you're either freezing or burning up, dripping with sweat. You smell disgusting no matter how many showers you take every day. At the bitter end of the scale, sleep is completely replaced with seizures and hallucinations. \n\nI don't know what to compare that to except perhaps having a metal pole shoved through your head. You **know** that you shouldn't pull it out, but the pain is so bad and you're in such a frenzy that you're driven to do so anyway to relieve the pressure. So you yank it out and things feel better momentarily. Likewise with serious addiction, continuing to use drugs is very likely an eventual death sentence, but whilst going through withdrawal, we do it anyway in because that moment of crisis, relief is more important and valuable than absolutely anything else in the world. At least it doesn't feel like it. And you *know* that your drug of choice will provide that gratification. Nothing logical matters now. We don't even have the *capacity* to think logically at this instant. This is why/how addicts throw their lives away and lose everything that matters to them. \n\nAnyway... a lot of that is way above and beyond what someone addicted to nicotine would experience. Personally, I've never really had tough withdrawals from cigarettes -- I can either take them or leave them. One thing I have noticed, though, is that they're so ubiquitous that efforts to completely quit are easily abandoned. When I chose to stop shooting up dope and getting shitfaced drunk, it's not like I was going to walk down the street and see someone sipping on cheap vodka like it's Sprite and then nonchalantly pulling out a syringe to shoot up at the bus stop outside my university. (Yes, this does happen, but let's be realistic: cigarettes are far more societally acceptable, not to mention legal.) Even when I'm not really in the mood to smoke, if I hang out with people who smoke long enough, the temptation eventually arises -- especially if smoking is 'the' social activity like it is at some workplaces and such. It sounds so damn dumb when I type it out, when you get on a schedule of going outside, sitting down with your friends, watching them smoke... well, it doesn't seem so bad to just have one (provided you're a smoker/former smoker, obviously). Soon you're back to smoking when you're by yourself -- walking to the bus stop, before you go to bed, whatever your little routines are. It kills time and it gets so ingrained into your mind that 'that's what you're supposed to be doing right now.' \n\nI find that the things that worked best for me were finding something else to occupy my time and distract myself -- grab a book, listen to music, and put the $5.17 per pack in a savings account towards some luxury item I want, etc. \n\nI saw in another comment that you mentioned that he doesn't want you to acknowledge his quitting: I **completely** sympathise with this point. When people make a big deal (or even a little deal) about my sobriety, it is obnoxious and a pain in the ass. It makes me feel like people are watching and waiting for me to fail, which just causes more anxiety, which very well could lead to me saying 'fuck it' and going back to old habits. I relapse far more often when I'm counting the days... I'm a performance perfectionist, I compare myself to others, and it just makes me nervous to have an audience to my personal struggles. It's admirable that you want to help support him, but it may hinder more than you realise -- especially in the first few days/weeks/months. If *anything*, after he's done well for awhile, make a casual comment about it then to let him know you've seen positive progress. Other than that... I'd let him tackle this one on his own. ",
"I recently quit smoking. I quit for a few reasons, none of them included my significant other. I always knew that if I did \"quit for him\" that I would not be committed to the change. I had to do it for *me*. \n\nMy cigarette addiction was simply that: it controlled me. My days revolved around the next time I would get to smoke. I would wake up, sluggishly crawl out of bed and go smoke. I would smoke on my way to work, I would count down the hours and minutes it would take to get my next cigarette. I would smoke before bed. \n\nIf I thought I wouldn't make it through the work day without running out of cigarettes, I would buy a pack of cigarettes before work, even if I was running late. It wasn't worth the risk that I wouldn't get to smoke.\n\nThe desire to smoke was not so much a need as this extremely irritating presence that never leaves you. Ever. You smoke more and more, because the sensation isn't relieved by a single cigarette anymore, or the sensation intensifies more quickly than it used to. \n\nAnd when you do smoke? Holy shit. It's the same feeling you get when you take your shoes off after a long, terrible day at work. Or that first moment when you're sinking down into a hot bath. It's a *relief*. \n\nThere's two parts to it, though. There's the physical addiction and the psychological addiction. Once you break the physical addiction (moderating with patches, etc), the habit comes quickly. I ate suckers and then eventually switched to jolly ranchers. Two weeks after I put the first patch on, I pulled my last patch off. I quit way earlier than I expected to and it was far easier than I had ever anticipated. \n\nI still creep on smokers, though. \n\nEdit: clarification"
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30s0av | why is there so much tension over this iran nuclear deal? | What's going on over there? I keep hearing about powers coming together over a deal.
Try to keep your opinion out of it, I'd just like to hear facts in a way I can understand and make my own opinion from. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30s0av/eli5_why_is_there_so_much_tension_over_this_iran/ | {
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"Because this is the defining moment, before the Space Jew Lizard Reptillian Illuminati Communist Marxist Soviet army invades and sets the world as the Empire of Israelistan.\n\n\n\nBut really though, lots of people believe that if Israel is not satisfied with the results, they may strike Iran, starting World War III."
]
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1y3oxt | what exactly is happening in the brain when you stutter due to social anxiety? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y3oxt/what_exactly_is_happening_in_the_brain_when_you/ | {
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"Generally, in the brain, a combination of decreased activity in the areas of motor language processing (Broca's area) and increased activity in areas of voluntary motor control (basal ganglia) leads to stuttering. This may sound contradictory but it's essentially when your ability to speak can't match your need to speak, and you end up making a lot of repetitive sounds.\n\nWhat causes this is pretty complicated and not well understood, but it is generally looked upon as a disorder with a genetic basis. You can read more in [this pdf about stuttering from Harvard](_URL_0_)."
]
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9rfdgu | why do phones slow down when its cold? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9rfdgu/eli5_why_do_phones_slow_down_when_its_cold/ | {
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"The battery is not as efficient when cold. The loss of power causes the phone to slow down. ",
"How cold are you talking about? If it's human livable temperatures, then are you sure you're not viewing the causality wrong?\n\nIn general, a phone will be able to perform better when it's cold. If a phone becomes too hot, the SoC will throttle itself (i.e make itself perform worse) so the chip doesn't destroy itself. \n\nThe colder the environment, the less the phone will throttle.",
"Because phone batteries rely on electrochemical reactions where chemical energy is converted to electrical energy. \n\nTemperature is essentially a measure of the average kinetic energy in a system so a decrease in temperature means a decrease in how fast the particles move.\n\nFor a chemical reaction to occur the particles involved must collide with each other at a certain speed (and angle) to form the product molecule or particle. \n\nWhen temperature decreases the average kinetic energy decreases too which means that the particles involved in the reaction move slower and therefore collide less frequently.\n\nSo, lower rate of reaction = less electrical energy produced.\n\nI’m certainly no expert on phones but I’m assuming that when you’re using your phone, a minimum of energy needs to be produced in order to sustain whatever function you’re executing. \n\nThis is the same reasoning I’d use for explaining why the phone battery declines at some point - I guess the rate of reaction just slows down so much at a certain temperature that it’s not possible to keep the phone turned on any longer even if it still displays a high battery percentage left. \n\nAn easy fix for this is to just keep your phone close to a warm body part for maybe 10-15 minutes. \n\n\n"
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85uxsb | why can't astronomers say with certainty if a specific asteroid will or won't strike the earth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/85uxsb/eli5_why_cant_astronomers_say_with_certainty_if_a/ | {
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"Because of the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, asteroid belt, Kuiper Belt, and Oort cloud. \n\nMost people assume that asteroids go in a straight line. But what many of us forget is that the gravity of nearby planets affect the trajectory of an asteroid. Even a pull of a body as small as the Moon can drastically affect the direction and speed an asteroid is going, even if it's on the other side of the solar system! Also, nearby stars also have a minuscule, but still measurable, gravitational effect. \n\nThese effects might only pull an asteroid a couple millimeters in another direction, but over time, these changes add up. Humans don't have enough computational power (yet) to try and compute all these different unknowns. Trying to predict the direction of an asteroid is known as the [N-Body problem](_URL_0_). ",
"Because that requires knowing it's precise trajectory. Even a minute error in readings over the vastness of space an object will travel can change something like an asteroid impacting earth.",
"They generally can.\n\nWhen a new object is first observed, all the observations are quite near to each other. Since any measurement has uncertainty, the resulting orbital calculations are uncertain. Think of it like two dots a pencil width apart on a piece of paper. The line from the top of one dot past the bottom of the other isn't exactly the same as the line between the bottoms of both dots. If you get across the room, the distance might be big.\n\nAlas, space is super huge, and we're talking about a lot more than \"across the room\". Fortunately, over time, we can make more measurements. When you have two dots on different sides of the room, the angle between these two lines is pretty small. Small enough to see if it intersects an Earth-sized object.",
"Gravity is an attractive force between objects. In space, there are lots of objects. Even at great distances, gravity exists between these objects and a specific object.\n\nNow, the effect is small. Let's say the moon is inadvertently pulling it closer to the Earth only an inch for every mile it travels along its predicted Earth-only trajectory. Doesn't sound like much, huh? Well, if it's passing by the moon then by the time it passes by the Earth it will have gotten 3 miles closer to the Earth.\n\nIf it's coming from an asteroid belt, then that 3-miles variance could wind up becoming 300 or even 3000 miles."
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9s3lub | why it’s so hard to stand with both feet pointed perfectly straight (most people). | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9s3lub/eli5_why_its_so_hard_to_stand_with_both_feet/ | {
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"If you mean that it's hard to not fall down when doing it, its because your feet are normally splayed out for increased balance. This extra balance is removed when you reduce the perpendicular distance of them to your center of mass.\n\nMathmatically, when you start to fall over you need to apply a rotational force to not fall. The further away your feet are from your center, the easier this is due to a formula: Moment = Force × Distance. \n\n > Think about it as trying to open a door by pushing on its hinges instead of the handle. \n\nThe door is exeedingly difficult to open if you made the distance to the hinges smaller. \n\nThe same thing happenes when you straighten your feet, it is harder to make a moment to counteract your falling. \n\n\n\nI cant speak for bone structure, so if your question was in regard to pain or something else, I can't help much there. \n\n\n"
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e7jscl | what is the "tls handshake" protocol that runs before you connect to a website? | I noticed it briefly before a page I visited loaded and I've never noticed it before. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e7jscl/eli5_what_is_the_tls_handshake_protocol_that_runs/ | {
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"Essentially, there's a large number of cryptographic methods available, since we've continuously improved them over time.\n\nYour computer is sending which ones it would like to use. The server checks against the ones it will use. There's usually a discrepency because newer ones get added, older ones get removed since they're less secure, so the exact group is not consistent. They'll find the highest one they can use.\n\n\nOnce they've determined protocol, both computers generate and exchange session keys using a special protocol that allows you to send something securely over an insecure medium. [This video](_URL_0_) does a good job of showing what happens there.",
"ELI5 explanation atempt: \nIts a security protocoll that makes the data transfer private and in short goes something like this: \n\nClient: hey!\n\nServer: hey! Heres some stuff, encrypt it and send it back.\n\nClient Encryps everything and send it back.\n\nServer: thanks, everything checks out, now we communicate with symmetrical encryption."
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3r4z5z | what left and right is. as if i were an alien, on the other end of a phone, at the other side of a galaxy, with no knowledge of earth or point of reference. (inspiration link attached) | Inspired by a similar posted question with a distinctly less friendly answer. Link in comments. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3r4z5z/eli5_what_left_and_right_is_as_if_i_were_an_alien/ | {
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"Left and right are *relative* rather than absolute directions, just like up or down (though we treat them as absolute when on earth). Any intelligent life would be familiar with the concept, although even in some human cultures relative directions are not commonly used.\n\nYou can just say \"they refer to either side of a bilaterally symmetrical thing\" and you'll be understood. Teaching them which is which is just a question of language translation, no different than trying to teach a German or Turk the English words \"left\" and \"right.\""
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2xmmqv | how can we still see thumbnails for images that are no longer available? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xmmqv/eli5how_can_we_still_see_thumbnails_for_images/ | {
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"I assume you are talking about on reddit? That would be because when you visit the page the system isn't generating the thumbnail all over again, it simply retrieves a cached copy.",
"Say you want to view 1 reddit page with 10 thumbnails from imgur on it. To create the thumbnails, you need to load the images from imgur first, then resize/crop accordingly. \n\nReddit can go to imgur every time someone accesses that 1 page. Wait for the 10 imgur links to load, do the cropping process and then show them to you. But that takes a lot of time and mostly depends on imgur and not reddit.\n\nInstead, when someone posts the links, Reddit generates its own set of 10 images *once* and then shows you those every time. \n\nIf the imgur links are deleted, the reddit thumbnails still remain.\n"
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5r34o9 | even though i got my flu shot this year, i ended up with the flu, how does this happen and why does it see so common? | Edit: Spelling | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5r34o9/eli5_even_though_i_got_my_flu_shot_this_year_i/ | {
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"There are numerous strains of influenza, and they mutate constantly so a vaccine from a year ago won't be effective on the same strain this year.\n\nSo every year Doctors for the Vaccine companies look at what current strains are circulating around that are most likely to come over to North America for flu season. They pick a set of the those strains that will hopefully provide the most protection and begin manufacturing.\n\nBut because it's all an educated guess on the exact strains that may circulate around, or the flu may mutate too much some years the vaccine isn't as effective.\n\nAs for the vaccine itself making you sick, that's basically 100% impossible. A few people may have side effects from it, but they aren't getting sick with influenza itself.\n\nYou also get a lot of people who just get some other common cold and call it the flu, when it wasn't influenza causing their sickness. "
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3yiqi3 | why do people expect countries to apologize for deeds/crimes that happened decades ago? | Even when the current government had nothing to do with it. Eg: Japan apologizing to South-Korea today for their use of Korean comfort women. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yiqi3/eli5_why_do_people_expect_countries_to_apologize/ | {
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"When you deny a historical event, or endorse a false narrative, you're keeping it relevant. It is important for a country like Turkey to recognize the Armenian genocide not because it would give some great boost to Armenians, but because it actively denies its role--you cannot claim innocence while simultaneously perpetuating a falsehood. The crime is not the past genocide, but the modern lie.",
"I think it's unreasonable to ask a specific person or a group of people to apologise for what their parents' generations might have got up to. \n\nBut it's a little different if it's an establish group of people which continues to keep it's identity, like a country. Eg, a large company would be expected to pay for fraud when it gets found out, even when most of their employees no longer work there. \n\nI'm a little surprised about the Korea/Japan thing, but I think it's spot on; Japan pay for what's asked and apologise, and Korea promise never to bring it up again. In no way is this a 'valid compensation'; you can't rape someone and settle by paying them later. But it is an admission and a promise that such crimes will never be tolerated by the respective governments. "
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2qikgn | why is the death of women and children considered more tragic in bombings, etc, than men? | It seems kind of morose to me, to put the deaths of women and children head and shoulders above those of men. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qikgn/eli5_why_is_the_death_of_women_and_children/ | {
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"Because we're still dealing with the aftermath of an era less than a hundred years gone, when women were considered more fragile and helpless.\n\nChildren dying is almost always more tragic than adults, though. Regardless of gender.",
"In before patriarchy.\n\nThe main reason why is simply due to cultural feelings upon gender and age. As westerners, we are given a cultural feeling that women are less able to defend themselves more then men, who are looked upon as the protectors of households, property, and society as a whole (which is why the military draft in the US is male only).\nThe same can be said for children, who are mostly defenseless until late teenage years.",
"It's traditionally thought that women and children are less able to fend for themselves than men, and they are more helpless in the face of aggression. It's like you a full-grown, fully-healthy adult going to the playground to punch a retarded kid with polio and brittle bones in the face. Children especially are seen to be vulnerable especially, and are more often judged to be \"innocent\" regardless of the content of their thoughts for their lack of maturity precludes them from being responsible for it - even if they wish evil upon another nation. It's therefore considered more tragic for children especially to die, than men and women in war.",
"Men are perceived as strong, women and children as weak and in need of protection from men. It is traditionally considered honourable to fight the strong and unsportsmanly to fight the weak. For the same reason, it is usually considered less honourable to bomb a hospital than to bomb a stadium, even if the same number of people die.\n\nThere's the additional issue that only recently are a handful of nations finally allowing women in combat roles, after a century of them trying, exceptions like Lyudmila Pavlichenko not withstanding; historically, soldiers have been men. So when you fight men you can claim that you are fighting either actual or potential soldiers -- and fighting soldiers is honourable.\n\nAttacking children will always be considered worse than attacking adults, because it is undeniable that children are in every way more vulnerable. Equalising the situation between men and women can be done by allowing women more combat roles and no longer viewing men as strong and women as weak. Both have been goals of the feminist movement since Rosa Luxemburg, and perceptions definitely have changed over the 20th century, but it takes a long time for traditional values to transform.",
"In the case of war, I think it's that women and children are more \"civilians,\" and men can be soldiers (of course, now more women are becoming soldiers as well).\nSo like, we associate pretty much all women/children deaths with civilian death while only some men's deaths can be the \"intended target of the war\".\nCivilian death is like killing the innocent who aren't even participants of the war. Hence, civilian death is considered more tragic than soldier death."
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2bgd35 | why is hitler considered the most evil person ever when there are other leaders who have killed more people? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bgd35/eli5_why_is_hitler_considered_the_most_evil/ | {
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"Most other leaders have killed their own people. Hitler went outside the family. And he started a world war. And he wanted to eradicate a race of people from existence. And it's fairly recent. And I now feel like a douche for having to explain why Hitler was bad.",
"Most people don't know much about history. I'd say Tammerlane was the most evil. There's stuff like people not being able to kill themselves by jumping off city walls because too many corpses broke their fall and the pyramids of skulls.",
"The difference between Hitler and other genocidal tyrants is that he didn't just kill people; He BUILT A FACTORY to kill people. He had bureaucrats with clipboards coming down to make sure that people were being killed fast enough. ",
"its always worse when someone gets it on video. you hear stories of cops beating people up all the time but its not until something like rodney king happens before people actually get upset. artist renderings of caligula just dont have the same effect.",
"Idk, he seems like a swell enough guy",
"Cynical way of saying it: It's the thought that counts.\n\nPlenty of tyrants who have killed millions. But for reasons we understand. Primal reasons like wealth and power. We don't agree to what Mongols or Vikings or Stalin or Pol Pot did, but we understand that they wanted more wealth and influence.\n\nBut Hitler wanted a twisted utopia. And he started a systematic genocide for it. That is symptomatic of a sick mind that has lost it's touch with humanity.\n\nThat's why he is regarded as the most evil dictator. Because his reasons for killing millions was pure evil."
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90ivph | why does yellow seem brighter than other colors? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/90ivph/eli5_why_does_yellow_seem_brighter_than_other/ | {
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"It always doesn't. But we don't realize it. Same with orange. It has to do how we categorize colors.\n\nWhen you have green and make it darker, you have dark green.\n\nWhen you have red and make it darker, you have dark red.\n\nWhen you have blue and make it darker, you have dark blue.\n\nWhen you have purple and make it darker, you have dark purple.\n\nBut when you have yellow and make it darker, we don't consider it dark yellow. [We consider it olive green.](_URL_1_) Yellow in RGB is R: 255, G: 255, B: 0. So halving the brightness of yellow gets you dark yellow. R: 128, G 128, B: 0. It appears olive green to us. Not yellow. We don't consider olive green to be yellow, even though it technically is dark yellow.\n\nAnd when you have orange and make it darker, we don't consider it dark orange. [We consider it brown.](_URL_0_) Orange in RGB is R: 255, G: 128, B: 0. So halving the brightness of orange gets you dark orange. R: 128, G 64, B: 0. It appears brown to us. Not orange. We don't consider that brown to be orange, even though it technically is dark orange.",
"[Eyes happen to be most sensitive for green and yellow](_URL_1_)\n\nBut why?!!\n\n[That curve closely matches the light from the Sun that reaches the ground.](_URL_2_)\n\nBut why do they match?! \n\nBecause it is practical to sense the strongest light the best.\n\n[Actually our eyes have also night mode. Called scotopic vision. With WAY more sensitivity for blue.](_URL_3_)\n\nBut it only kicks in when there is very little light. \nThat is why everything seems blue when it is dark. \n\nWhy blue?\n\nThis happens because oxygen in atmosphere changes the direction of blue light, so even when sun isn't visible, some of the blue rays arrive to us, after many changes in direction.\n\nFinally, on screen yellow will look extra bright, because it is created by lighting *BOTH* red and green. [A picture of magnified LCD. Step back to see yellow emerge from green and red.](_URL_0_)\n\n\n^^^^^Original:_URL_4_",
"You have 4 basic types of light receptors in your eyes. Rods, Red Cones, Blue Cones and Green Cones. The Rods are used for night vision and edge detection, and the Cones detect the color they are named for. Different cones have different sensitivities, and the Green Cones are most sensitive, followed by Red, followed by Blue.\n\nYellow colors activate the Green and Red cones, which are the most sensitive and 2nd most sensitive cones and they add together, generates the largest signal given the same number of photons.",
"I learned about this in college years ago, and I’m drunk, so I apologize if I’m butchering it, but. Colors like red and yellow cost a lot biologically to make. So for them to be present in nature there’s a good reason, like something yelling hey I’m poisonous, buddy, better leave me alone. Or, hey there bumblebee, come hump my flower and pollinate the crap out of me. So everything evolved to recognize those colors as important. This probably led us to notice those colors more than others. The other side of it is that our eyes have (mostly) 3 cones that detect color, red, green, and blue. Each primary color has a peak absorption for our eyes, and the peaks for red and green are closer together (red+green = yellow). So basically there’s a high absorption for yellow.",
"There are some good responses so far, but I haven't seen one of the simplest: Contrast. The highest contrast color pair is yellow and black. (Followed by yellow and blue, followed by black and white, then blue and white.) You'll see this expressed in license plates, for instance: NY is black/yellow. California used to be black on yellow, then yellow on black, then yellow on blue and now blue on white. Yellow \"stands out\" against a world of mostly darker colors.\n\nI am not sure if you mean yellow seems \"brighter\" in general, but our rods and cones process visual information relatively, looking for contrast between objects (and their colors) to aid in pattern recognition, which helps process information more efficiently. I know all of this only as a layperson because my work is about processing visual information. ",
"It has to do with how we classify yellow as a color, as well! \nNot often do we see \"dark yellow\" because it just turns into a different color.\n\nSpeaking from the art perspective, if you shade yellow (that's adding black to yellow), you get a color that has more of a green hue. \nWhen you tone a yellow (that's adding the complementary color to yellow, and in this case, it's purple), you get a brown color.\nThe only real way we can mix yellow with something and keep its yellow hue is with white, but doing so will desaturate it. \nMoreso, yellow is a primary color. You cannot mix colors to make yellow.\n\nSo simply speaking, yellow is brighter than other colors because we call it something else when it ISN'T the bright yellow we know it to be.",
"As someone who works with various colours of LEDs almost every single day, yellow has got nothing on clear or red as far as leaving an imprint on your(my) field of vision.",
"Looking outside of the biological reasons, from an evolutionary standpoint I've always seen yellow associated with danger. Animals like wasps, bees, snakes, and other creatures that could harm or kill humans are often marked with yellow. This leads to a lot of animals mimicking that color to trick animals into thinking they are dangerous. I think it's fairly likely our eyes (or the animals themselves) adapted to perceiving yellow light the fastest or brightest as a survival instinct. You'll perceive yellow first out of most colors which could have been a life saving adaptation for our ancestors to avoid dangers. This is basically the ancient reason behind why warning signs and school busses are yellow. You register the color quickly and thus anything with that color gets processed first "
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f0e0hf | if i'm transferring data from one folder to another in the same ssd, how come the data transfer speed is still so much lower than advertised or tested? | As an example, my Adata XPG S8200 Pro can reach read and write speeds of up to 3500/3000 mb/s and even in testing (using CrystalDiskMark) the supposed speeds are around that range. But when I actually transfer files, even within the SSD, the actual speeds is so much slower? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f0e0hf/eli5_if_im_transferring_data_from_one_folder_to/ | {
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"one of the reasons may be that in order to transfer a file, it's necessary to locate all of its pieces on the drive, then find a new place for them on the drive - probably, not one monolithic area, but much smaller multiple areas.\n\nhowever that was much more important for old HDDs, SSDs are better in that regard.",
"Transferring data on the same SSD is not a reliable measure, for a couple of reasons. The first is that depending on how the SSD is connected (for instance if it's SATA) you can't do reading and writing at the same time, because at times it reads and at times it writes. \n\nThe second is that unless you have partitioned your SSD into multiple partitions, moving data is not really moving the data it is altering the meta data only which can involve lots of random seeks and writes to various places and would be get you closer to your drives random IO performance than sequential IO performance.",
"First of all, are you *moving* the data or *copying* the data?\n\n**Moving** the data on the same drive does not actually *move* the information on the physical drive. The OS merely changes the pointer to that data to make it appear in a different location within your filesystem. \n\nIn other words, the data will still be stored at index XYZ on the drive, but it's folder (the pointer) is now \"D:/Folder 2\" instead of \"D:/Folder 1\"\n\n**Copying** data is a much more intensive process. When you do this between 2 different drives, each drive only needs to perform a single operation (i.e. a read operation on the origin drive, and a write operation on the destination drive.) This means that each drive can devote all its available resources to that single operation.\n\nHowever, when you copy data on *the same drive*, that drive now needs to perform *two* operations - reading *and* writing. On a single SSD, the data must be read, written to a buffer, erased and rewritten in steps, all using the same controller and resources on that SSD. This can be *much* slower than if copying between two different drives.",
"If you are copying the OS is handling it and the bottleneck is the SATA connector. Data has to go up then down, cutting the bandwidth in half.\n\nIf you are moving it, your OS is dumb and not doing a local rename."
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5y8gqs | why do some people find mathematics hard no matter how hard they study? for example geometry. is there a reason behind why students struggle a lot in this subject compare to other classes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5y8gqs/eli5why_do_some_people_find_mathematics_hard_no/ | {
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"Typically the problem is students are taught wrong. This is coming from my wife who changed from math education to analytics after her clinicals and found out just how much bureaucratic bullshit dominates our education system. Most educators themselves don't like or understand math, so how can their students be expected to like or understand math? From my experience, I was simply taught rote and go through the motions, with zero comprehension as to why this was even a school subject if this was how they were going to do it.\n\nThere is something to appreciate about math, just like one appreciates the nuances of meter, rhyme, and word play - the actual words don't matter as much as the structure, and so, too, the \"structure\" is what's interesting, not the numbers, and a couple good teachers too late in my education really reshaped my opinion.",
"One of the biggest challenges in math is it is very incremental. You can probably pass a test on World War II without knowing anything about World War I, but in math, if you don't have a solid foundation, everything built on it crumbles.\n\nAnd by solid, I don't mean remembered just enough to pass a final. I mean true understanding. If you don't have a deep understanding of arithmetic, algebra is going to be very hard. Solving for x gets really hard if you can't remember that subtracting a negative is the same as adding. Similarly, you need to know algebra cold if before you can take a shot at calculus.\n\nI once had a math tech tell me that calculus was easy, it is the algebra behind calculus that was hard. And algebra is easy, it is the arithmetic behind algebra that is hard. If you are struggling with all three at once, you are going to have a bad time.",
"Basic math (I mean addition/subtraction, multiplication/division) is relatively easy and everyone understands them relatively naturally. Once you get to more advanced maths though it continually builds up on itself so once you failed to understand one more 'basic' step before you will continue to fail to understand the more 'advanced' steps.\n\nAs maths in school starts to get more difficult and less naturally understandable it takes more effort to learn and not everybody will learn it at the same pace and understand it with the same explanations but the teacher still has to try to teach everyone at the same time and the students are expected to deliver results in the same time. \n\nNow, some or many students will get annoyed with having to spent that extra effort to learn something that some people seem to just 'get' right away while they have to spend more of their time on it. As most people avoid doing things they don't enjoy or that annoy them many of those who 'only' needed a little longer will neglect to put effort into maths and fall further behind which in turn decreases their chance to easily understand the 'higher' steps of mathematics an so on. Combine this psychological cycle (getting a bad grade/needing more time to learn- > feelings of incompetency + thoughts of the extra work- > association of negative feelings with maths- > avoidance because why do stuff you're bad at anyway- > falling further behind- > repeat) with the fact that maths starts to get somewhat difficult right around the onset of puberty when interests start to wander and it is somewhat understandable that many students have problems with maths. Having a really good teacher who tries to teach a little more individually around that time might actually help a lot because it prevents that cycle of disinterest and failure from starting and in maths a good understanding of the basics goes a long way towards understanding the advanced stuff as it's mostly just derivations/expansions of the basic principles.",
"Some people are incapable of abstract thinking. They cannot imagine an animal without picturing it as a dog or a cat, they cannot imagine a triangle without picturing it as a triangle sandwich, they cannot count 4 + 4 without first picturing 4 cats and 4 cats added together. They can be very good at finding a good equivalent, for example they can think of integers as cake, fractions as pieces of cake but the analogy breaks down at pi or e or complex numbers and the person is fucked. If you can calculate 5 + 5 without converting to sheep first, you're good to go. If not consult a specialist.\n\n\nThere is a question of learning disabilities or things like visual-spatial disability. Some people cannot remember where they put things, cannot find places or imagine geometrical shapes in their mind etc. At the worst they can be incapable of finding their way back home after walking around the block. They are incapable of reading any kind of maps, even the simplest ones. If you are capable of finding your way to the store using google maps, you're good to go. If not, consult a specialist.\n\n\nMathematical concepts are not explained thoroughly until you get into university math. Ever seen \"This is beyond the scope of this book/course\"? Yeah that. Has anyone REALLY explained what addition means? What about multiplication? What about why can we go from x + 1 = 2 to x = 1? What's the reasoning? Non-mathematicians won't even know themselves, they simply believe that it works and you rarely have mathematicians teaching math until highschool or so. ALL people simply won't grasp some ideas unless they understand it because it is not intuitive to them. If something fundamental is one of those things like why can we add/subtract/multiply/divide both sides, why addition and subtraction is the same thing, negative numbers, real numbers etc. then you are fucked since you will be great until one point and bad after it. You can't build a house on a shitty foundation. You might've also been sick that day or daydreaming. Since in math everything is reasoned from more basic concepts, if you don't understand something you simply dig deeper. If there are some basic concepts you are having trouble with, consult with a tutor/khan academy or something for a refreshment (not a drink).\n\n\nMathematics is the hardest thing you will ever learn in your life. Some people simply \"get it\" because it is intuitive to them (they can make mistakes and will be fucked in the future!), while others will have to practice a lot from day one to rewire those pesky neural connections. If everything is intuitive, you won't practice until it's not intuitive and if you've made mistakes in your foundation, you are fucked from then on until you go back to the basics or it simply \"clicks\" one day. Were very good at math before but suddenly become bad at it? This is why. Study as much as you want, unless you fix the foundation you won't get far.\n\n\n\nI personally believe EVERYONE (unless you have a disability, which you don't if you can read and count eggs in your fridge and not get lost in your back yard every time you go there) is capable of mathematics up until graduate level math. The real secret is to PRACTICE by doing exercises to rewire your brain. Rewiring your brain takes time and effort but everyone can do it. The more math you do, the better you get at it. Start looking up how did a concept get invented in the first place, look at applications, look at the proof etc. Just because someone else gets it faster than you doesn't mean you are bad. Foundation is the most important.\n\nTL;DR You don't suck at math, go to khan academy or something and start with the bare basics like kindergarden level math to refresh and fill gaps you might have. Try to UNDERSTAND every concept, look at proofs and history."
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8otmoa | how did we discover colour blindness ? | That is : given that we both learned to call the colour of leaves "green" even if the colourblind perceives what I actually qualify as red. How did Dalton knew that what he called green was not what we called green ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8otmoa/eli5_how_did_we_discover_colour_blindness/ | {
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"Colorblindness itself is not necessarily that hard to \"discover.\" The colorblind person is unable to distinguish colors that a non-colorblind person can. \n\nIn your scenario, if you just look at the leaves, yeah it may not be recognizable. But the minute someone shows up with a ripe tomato it falls apart. You're seeing two colors and he's seeing one.\n\nA more interesting case might be if you leave colorblindness out of it. How do you know the red you see is the same red I see? You don't. We both see a spectrum of colors but there's no way to definitively know they are represented the same way in our brains. We can only tell if they are represented inconsistently (e.g. colorblindness.).",
"Try using the color blindness tests as an example. Those without can see the pattern those with cannot. It’s not like those with color blindness see a different pattern. ",
"\"Hey, little Dalton, put on your green shirt. No, not the red one, the green one. What is wrong with you, do we have to send you to that special school again?\"\n\nIn isolation, it might be hard to notice. In fact, there is nothing qualitatively different about being colorblind, your eyes distinguish between two basic colors while most people can see three. But it is going to be pretty obvious when other people can see things that you cannot."
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efgg4y | what is the yellow substance that sometimes appears near the corners of our eyelids when we awaken? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/efgg4y/eli5_what_is_the_yellow_substance_that_sometimes/ | {
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"Basically, it is normal mucus produced by the conjunctiva, including oil from the meibomian glands, and other debris from the front surface of the eye.\n\nBecause we do not blink during sleep, eye discharge collects in the corners of our eyes and along the eyelash line. This normal eye discharge can be hard and crusty or sticky and wet."
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3l46zs | why is melting lead considered "safe" but lead paint deadly? | I'm looking to melt some lead and make little figures. What should I know. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3l46zs/eli5_why_is_melting_lead_considered_safe_but_lead/ | {
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"Lead paint itself is not usually troublesome*, it is the removing of said paint that is the issue. If the paint chips and falls off, collecting those flecks can be troublesome but is also generally safe to do. however sanding lead paint aerates it and the inhalation of the lead dust is then a problem. \n\nmelting lead does not do this. not at the temperatures that you would be normally be working with it at. it is important to note that handling lead is also a bit dangerous, as it can get on your hands where it can be transferred to food. \n\n* If the paint is not degrading, or otherwise spreading it can usually be safely left alone. Lead paints are still being made and used, just not in common applications like houses or toys anymore**. \n\n** at least not legally in the USA. ",
"Lead doesn't get very hot before it melts, so this makes it relatively safe when you compare it to other metals. Also, hot lead is not likely to be eaten by a child or an adult; it's nasty and hurts real bad.\n\nLead in paint, on the other hand, used to be put on all kinds of things that kids could chew, like pencils. And when you sand wood that's been painted with lead paint, the dust gets in everything and kids can eat it and get sick."
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3xsg4e | why are er called "emergency" when the wait time is literally more than 3 hours? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xsg4e/eli5why_are_er_called_emergency_when_the_wait/ | {
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"Seriously time-sensitive cases are admitted immediately. However, most injuries and conditions are relatively stable; even if you break your arm, as long as you aren't doing strenuous activity you are no worse off waiting three hours for treatment (beyond the discomfort of those three hours). ",
"Because too many people go there with non-emergency medical issues, wasting the time of people who could be saving lives of people with real medical issues. ",
"I think it's mostly been said already but yes, actual emergent patients are seen immediately or as quickly as possible. Having been a medic for a LONG time and working on both the ambulance and in an ER, the majority of folks who need \"emergency\" care are usually not having an immediate life threatening emergency. In addition, many people just use the ER bc they know they will be treated and not have to pay for it and legally nothing will really happen to them. There are polices and procedures in every ER to make sure people who need to be taken care of immediately get seen quickly. People always seem to think they are dying when they come into an ER but generally speaking the majority of folks are not. ",
"Wait time is more than 3 hours when you do not have an emergency case. Actual emergencies get priority ahead of you. "
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4x6hki | why do steel only bullets create sparks? | I was at the gun range for the first time today and noticed that steel core bullets create sparks when striking the metal target, but other non-steel bullets don't.
Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4x6hki/eli5_why_do_steel_only_bullets_create_sparks/ | {
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"The sparks you saw were burning iron fragments. Iron, and some other metals, can shatter into tiny pieces which can spontaneously ignite when they come in contact with air (oxygen). This property is called [Pyrophoricity](_URL_0_). \n\nLead can also be pyrophoric under the right conditions, but since it's so soft a bullet made out of lead is unlikely to shatter into pieces small enough to spontaneously combust. \n\nPyrophoricity can also be used to create ammunition that has a secondary incendiary effect. Tungsten and (depleted) uranium are both pyrophoric and are used in anti-tank rounds, party because they are very hard and dense (denser than lead, harder than steel) and partly because the sparks they produce can cause fires inside the target, causing more damage. Rounds like that also create a huge shower of sparks when they hit, illuminating the target for a brief moment. ",
"Not an answer, but shooting steel core ammo at steel targets is really unsafe and you should never do it. Just an FYI for the future."
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1m7epr | why is a geisha costume considered racist but equally inaccurate costumes like a ninja is not? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m7epr/eli5_why_is_a_geisha_costume_considered_racist/ | {
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"My guess is how much it relates to the racial background the costume refers to, and whether it portrays that race in a positive or negative light.\n\nEssentially, you need to look at the cultural expectations for the costume. Do we consider the character foolish, stupid, or incompetent? Perhaps an individual of lower social standing?\n\nThe connection to race or ethnicity are also significant. A geisha is known as a very distinctly Asian character, and picks up associated stereotypes. A ninja, on the other hand, comes to us more from a fantasy basis than a historical one.\n\nOr, in short form: if someone wearing a costume is more likely to say silly things in a bad accent while wearing it, it's more racist."
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cc0pz1 | how can the emotional numbness that comes with depression make one physically numb too? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cc0pz1/eli5_how_can_the_emotional_numbness_that_comes/ | {
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"Depression in the literal sense should suggest limited mobility. The lack of oxygenated blood flow and increased heart rate is a likely reason.",
"I’ve grown so numb over the years I can punch any hard surface and not feel a thing. I used to be in physical pain everyday and now I don’t know if it stopped or if I’m just used to it. It’s whatever really.",
"Simplified and rough explanation:\n\nYour brain is practically \"wired\" to react to certain triggers in respective ways to help you survive in one way or another (that includes positive feelings).\n\nE.g. when you are tickled, your body tries to get rid of imminent threat (for example spiders, or other tickly stuff that might be dangerous). At the same time, you also have the same reaction when a person is just tickling your with their fingers, although you know it isn't a threat and that you are not in danger. Your brain didn't \"wire\" in a way yet that lets your body realize the difference between the danger-tickle and play-tickle, because it never encountered the play-tickle before (assuming you never were tickled before). \n\nThese \"wires\" in your brain that are used to create memories or just \"knowledge\" get stronger and more efficient the more often they are used. Frequently used knowledge can be remembered faster that way - your brain kinda helps you out when it comes to reacting quickly or generally acting faster that way. Muscle memory is kinda like that. The more often you do the same movement, the easier and more \"automated\" it'll become - for example you might not know your credit card's PIN when you enter it at an ATM, but your hand seems to know the exact movement it needs to do to enter the pin.\n\nSo, to get back to the tickle scenario, your brain needs to acquire the knowledge that there are two types, or that tickling isn't generally bad. Once it learned that tickling isn't bad, it won't force your body to react to the tickling. So, when a person tickles you, you won't react anymore. BUT, a dangerous animal tickling you likely won't end up triggering the response you once had - instead of immediately trying to get it off yourself, you react the \"slow and normal way\".\n\nIt's kinda like a papercut. Get an adult who accidently cuts themself on paper, and besides a short twitch there won't be a larger reaction, because they know that a small papercut won't put them in danger as it normally heals up anyway and doesn't carry serious damages (normally). Put a young child in the same situation and they'll likely start to cry because they don't know what will happen and how severe the damage is, and they might not have experienced such pain before (practically a low pain tolerance).\n\nBut there also are other ways to lose your \"reaction\", so to say. When you don't use knowledge frequently, or at least remember it, your brain won't \"wire\" much around it, meaning that you either forget it, need to be reminded, or that you can only remember it badly/partially or differently (because your brain likes to fill in gaps even if it's wrong).\n\nSo, for example, 13 years ago you got info XY, but never made use of it or never reminded yourself that XY is there, in your memories. Your brain kinda wants to stay efficient, so it keeps useless things away by \"forgetting\" or \"putting it away\".\n\nVarious chemicals and these \"wires\" just end up controlling your body. When you are depressed (or you don't have a will to live), these chemicals are either out of balance or not produced in the first place, and the \"wires\" in your head may strengthen in wrong ways, which causes you to react differently to certain things.\n\nFor example, when you don't have a will to live your body makes you less aware of stimuli that imply that there is present danger. E.g. you are walking in a dark forest, but since your brain is used to the attitude of \"I don't want to live anyway so I don't mind dying\" it won't alert you as much to possible dangers lurking in the darkness. You'll still pick the info up that there might be something, but your body won't enter this alerted state where you become able to react more quickly.\n\nWhen you are depressed, chemicals in your brain are not doing their job correctly, which makes you act irrationally, even if it means that it puts your body in danger. Your body will still react normally when you are put in actual extreme situations though. Survival instincts usually still get the upper hand when you are in a life threatening situation or when your body tries to survive inflicted damage.\n\nDepression has a much larger twist though. If you don't feel happiness for a long time, your brain might \"forget\" the sensation. When you then experience happiness, your brain has a hard time processing that sensation, so it tries to get back to its previous state (depressed) again. That way depression can quickly become your comfortzone, even if it means you constantly are sad, angry, numb, etc.\n\nJust keep in mind that all your body is trying to do is to survive and reproduce. The way you survive and reproduce obviously changed the past hundred and thousands of years, but it's pretty much still the same at the core.\n\nAnd to remind you again, this was a very rough explanation, extremely simplified. There are thousands of more processes actually going on, and simplifying it like that leaves out much of what is actually going on. But it should gove you a rough idea of what's happening."
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79guz8 | what makes olive oil so healthy and sunflower oil unhealthy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/79guz8/eli5_what_makes_olive_oil_so_healthy_and/ | {
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"Sunflower oil isn't unhealthy at all. It's high in calories, but no more so than olive oil. \n\nThey have different uses. Olive oil is considered more healthy because it can be used to replace animal fat in savory dishes, whereas sunflower is used in frying, which is considered an unhealthy cooking method. The reality is that sunflower oil contains essential fatty acids just like olive oil does, and is actually less saturated.",
"sunflower oil contains a lot of linoleic acid, a so called omega-6 fatty acid. our current nutrition generally lacks omega-3 fatty acids while containing plenty of omega-6 fatty acids. the balance of omega-3 to omeg-6 is considered important for health, so sunflower is often called unhealthy. \n\nolive oil contains substances that supposedly have health benefits, like antioxidants."
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6lzirg | how does playing by ear work? | Someone told me to 'just play the chords'. But how does that work? When listening to a song, how are you suppose to know which chord is which? Because when I hear a song, say twinkle twinkle, I think, the second twinkle is higher than the first one, but that's about it. I couldn't possible try every variation can I until I get it right? As in, it would be a waste of time to try c and d, c and e, and so on until i figured just the right distance between the two twinkles. it seems to me some people, upon hearing a song, can play the entire thing with very few and minor mistakes.
PS, I know some music stuff as I play the piano, but I'm an amateur, so notes and keys are about as much as I know. I see notes, I play, and that's it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6lzirg/eli5_how_does_playing_by_ear_work/ | {
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"A song follows a scale(99% of the time) which is basically a set of specific notes. This eliminates already a lot of notes you aren't supposed to try. For example a C major scale doesn't use black keys on a piano.\n\nA lot of pop songs will usually have a melody that often reuse the notes of a chord, this is perhaps what your friend meant. For example if a song is on a c major chord (composed of c,e,g) then it is very common that one of the notes in the melody during this chord will be a c,e,g. \n\nThen learn which chords harmonizes with each other, the biggest example is the 4 chord song. This helps you pick up which chord to start on, and to play next. \n\n\nMusical theory will teach you every teach you how to recognize each scale, recognize what chords are supposed to come next and what notes should be played accordingly. The rest is practice, practice and practice. \n\nNow I'm sure I've missed a lot of points, but this is how I learned to play by ear. A lot of practice, but by learning your scales, chords and harmonies then your brain will subconsciously eliminate notes that are less likely to sound right.\n\nEdit: Quick spelling fixes "
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lutqx | why there is such violence and conflict in the caucasus? | I know there has been lots of conflict there for a long time, but why? Is it like a political angst, or are they a repressed minority or what? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lutqx/eli5_why_there_is_such_violence_and_conflict_in/ | {
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"First, it's a very mountainous area. Extremely mountains regions in the old world are often inhabited by strikingly different ethnic groups in close proximity. The reason is pretty obvious: if it was hard to get from one valley to the next, then cultures diverged between valleys. This effect is exhibited most obviously in the Balkans, Caucasus and Pyrenees - it's much less pronounced in very Romanized areas such as the Alps.\n\nThe second reason is that the Caucasus represent a border between Muslim and Christian areas. Religious differences compound cultural differences, and are extremely divisive.\n",
"First, it's a very mountainous area. Extremely mountains regions in the old world are often inhabited by strikingly different ethnic groups in close proximity. The reason is pretty obvious: if it was hard to get from one valley to the next, then cultures diverged between valleys. This effect is exhibited most obviously in the Balkans, Caucasus and Pyrenees - it's much less pronounced in very Romanized areas such as the Alps.\n\nThe second reason is that the Caucasus represent a border between Muslim and Christian areas. Religious differences compound cultural differences, and are extremely divisive.\n"
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x0p3u | why do stitches work for sewing up skin wounds? what is the limit? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/x0p3u/eli5_why_do_stitches_work_for_sewing_up_skin/ | {
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"Stitches just hold your skin together nice and close so your body can heal naturally. There's really no limit, but there are cuts that are more difficult to stitch, like when portions of skin are missing.\n\nAlso, they have different types of material they use to stitch. The ones that dissolve are used for inside the body, when that have to stitch muscle and deeper layers of skin. Tough thick ones that get taken out by a doctor later are used for the top most layer.",
"Stitches help close a cut that is too big or deep to heal quickly on its own. They help a cut stop bleeding, heal faster, and hopefully prevent infection. Limits are placed by the type of cut, location of the cut, and what caused the cut. There are several different types of materials used, sizes of thread used, and type of stitch used all based on body location, size of cut, and preference of the person stitching. Stitches that are inside the body break down and absorb on their own, but stitches you can see on the skin typically need to be taken out after appropriate time to heal. \n\nTL;DR they squish a cut together so your body can do its magic and heal it quickly. "
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dk06c3 | for what reason do banks not employ two-factor authentication to ensure the authenticity of transactions? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dk06c3/eli5_for_what_reason_do_banks_not_employ/ | {
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"Some banks do offer 2FA tokens. \n\nMy mother is an administrator for a small business and has one on her keyring for all work transactions. The administrator for a small business that I work for has one on her keyring for work transactions also. Both businesses are with different banks.\n\nMany banks offer 2FA via SMS or downloadable apps. My bank sends me an SMS code for payments to any payee I'm transferring to for the first time or for payments over a certain amount.\n\nI would say your bank is just behind the times or has decided that the cost and risk involved with implementing it is not worth the hassle. It could also be that their primary customer base has not expressed any desire for a 2FA setup."
]
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4voty6 | how does a ranked voting system work? | I keep hearing that it is better the USA's current system of voting but how so? And how would it help eliminate the 2 party system? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4voty6/eli5_how_does_a_ranked_voting_system_work/ | {
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"The ranked voting system has a voter rank all candidates in order of preference. If a candidate gets over 50% of the vote they win. If not, the last place candidate is eliminated and the 2nd ranked candidate is tallied from the eliminated candidates ballots. This process repeats until a candidate has 50% of the vote. ",
"It depends on the system. Some use an instant runoff, where if nobody has a majority, the candidate with the most number of first place votes is eliminated, and those ballots are reallocated according to their second places votes. The process is completed until someone has a majority.\n\nIt would help minor parties because the major parties spend a lot of time campaigning against the other party, and telling people that if they don't vote for their guy, it's like voting for the other guy.\n\nLet's take a look at this upcoming election. Trump, Clinton and Johnson will be on the ballot in every state. So, maybe you don't like Clinton, but you really, really don't like Trump. You might be motivated to vote for Johnson, but you don't want to risk Trump winning. So, you vote for Clinton. The third party gets marginalized because of this.\n\nIf you get to rank the ballots, you can safely vote for the candidate that most closely matches your views. In the above scenario, you could rank Johnson first, and Clinton second. Then, even if (well, when) Johnson comes in third, the votes aren't wasted -- they all get reallocated to the second choice.\n\nThis plan is good for third parties, but bad for the two dominant parties, because they run the risk of one of them coming in *third* when they can't scare voters into not voting for a third party.",
"There are all sorts of things that you can do with ranked voting systems. You can have an instant runoff vote, where low-ranking candidates get eliminated and their votes redistributed until someone gets a majority. You can have the multi-winner version of that, STV, which (with districts having enough representatives) can give you proportional representation *and* local representatives, which I think is *awesome*. You can have what's known as a Borda count, where candidates get given points according to the preference votes that they got, leading to more consensual result than other voting systems.\n\nOr, most excitingly in my view, with ranked voting, you can pick what's known as a Condorcet winner. A Condorcet winner is one that would win in a head to head contest against every other candidate individually. For example, in an election between Alice, Bob, Charlie and Diana, if the voters prefer Alice to Bob, and Alice to Charlie, and Alice to Diana, then Alice is the Condorcet winner. There's a number of Condorcet methods around, and the only reason that we might be interested in any but the simplest to compute is that, weirdly enough, a Condorcet winner does not always exist in an election. Who gets elected then is what distinguishes Copeland's method from Schulze from Minimax , for example.\n\nThat's a little bit of a digression, but the point is if you have a ranked voting system – basically any of them – you have a better way of translating the preferences of every voter into something that can please more of them than the plurality that voted for the guy that actually got elected.\n\nP.S. A really drastic case is that of (Belfast South in the 2015 general election in the UK)[_URL_0_]. Alasdair McDonnell was elected on less than one in four votes in his constituency. A ranked voting system would have produced a better result than that at the very least."
]
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"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/N06000003"
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8lz7xk | how is this possible or where is the math wrong? | (1/3=0.33333)
(2/3=0.66666)
(0.6666+0.3333=0.9999)
(1/3+2/3=1) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8lz7xk/eli5_how_is_this_possible_or_where_is_the_math/ | {
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"1/3 does not equal 0.33333, it equals 0.3333333333... forever.\n\nSame deal with 2/3. It equals 0.666666666666... forever.\n\nAnd 0.9999999999... forever really does equal 1.",
"1/3 is not .33333. It 's .3333*repeating to infinity*. Add that to .666666*repeating to infinity* and you get 1.\n\nThink of it the other way- if you have 1 you can divide it into infinite decimal places by dividing, then dividing again, you can divide it as many times as you want",
"Because the decimal values are actually infinite. What you have are approximations that are less than their true value. So when you add them, you get less than 1.",
"Math is right.\n\n.999999999... = 1.\n\nThis is due to a a flaw in our base 10 number system, but its not a problem because the math for .99999999... works the same way as it would for 1. ",
"You're assuming that if you convert 1/3 into a decimal, the numbers stop somewhere. They don't. 1/3 is \n\n0.3333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333 \n\nand it never ever stops, so we can't do regular arithmetic on it. \nIf however, we were to somehow start at the infinity'th digit and make it add to 10, then it would carry forward to the next digit, which would be 6+3+carry(1) which gives 10, which carries on, repeatedly. So if we assume that the infinity'th digits add up to 10, then the maths falls into place, and we get 1 as our answer. \n\nNow, how can we know that the infinity'th digits add up to 10? Because the sequence repeats forever, every digit you pick and add up, you can look to the digits to the right and see that their results were 10, and so forth. ",
"Take 1/3. It's not really 0.3333. It's 0.33333... with the dots meaning the 3s go on forever. Or, to put it another way, no matter how close you think you are with the decimal approximation, you can always do better and get a little bit closer to 1/3. But when you have an infinite stream of threes, well then that 0.33(infinite list) *is* 1/3. It's a somewhat ugly way of writing one third, but mathematically they are the same. \n\nSo it goes with 2/3 and 3/3, aka 0.99(infinite list) . The notation is ugly but it is 1 all the same. Another way of thinking about it is to try and imagine some number that would come between 0.999... and 1. What would that number be? It's digits would have to be bigger than 9 across the board. Since no such number exists, the two values must be equal.",
"The math is correct.\n\nThe step you are missing is that 0.999... and 1 are the same number.",
"It's possible because 0.99999 repeating = 1. If that's difficult to grasp think of it this way.\n\n1 - 0.9 = 0.1 \n1 - 0.99 = 0.01 \n1 - 0.999 = 0.001 \n\nThe more nines you add, the smaller the difference because 1 and the decimal gets. When there are infinite 9s the difference is infinitely small. When the difference between two numbers is infinitely small they are the same number."
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1spv82 | what exactly are stock indexes (djia, nasdaq, s & p500) and how are their values calculated? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1spv82/eli5what_exactly_are_stock_indexes_djia_nasdaq/ | {
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"Dow Jones Industrial Average is a stock market index created by Wall Street Journal editor and Dow Jones & Company co-founder Charles Dow. The industrial average was first calculated on May 26, 1896. The Industrial portion of the name is largely historical, as many of the modern 30 components have little or nothing to do with traditional heavy industry. The average is price-weighted, and to compensate for the effects of stock splits and other adjustments, it is currently a scaled average. The value of the Dow is not the actual average of the prices of its component stocks, but rather the sum of the component prices divided by a divisor, which changes whenever one of the component stocks has a stock split or stock dividend, so as to generate a consistent value for the index. Since the divisor is currently less than one, the value of the index is larger than the sum of the component prices.\n\nThe Dow Divisor is currently 0.15571590501117 as of September 27, 2013. Presently, every $1 change in price in a particular stock within the average, equates to a 6.42 (1/0.15571590501117) point movement.\n\n\nThe NASDAQ Composite is a stock market index of the common stocks and similar securities (e.g. ADRs, tracking stocks, limited partnership interests) listed on the NASDAQ stock market, meaning that it has over 3,000 components. It is highly followed in the U.S. as an indicator of the performance of stocks of technology companies and growth companies. Since both U.S. and non-U.S. companies are listed on the NASDAQ stock market, the index is not exclusively a U.S. index.\n\n\nThe S & P 500, or the Standard & Poor's 500, is a stock market index based on the market capitalizations of 500 large companies having common stock listed on the NYSE or NASDAQ. The S & P 500 index components and their weightings are determined by S & P Dow Jones Indices. It differs from other U.S. stock market indices such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite due to its diverse constituency and weighting methodology. It is a capitalization-weighted index, which means, movements in the prices of stocks with higher market capitalizations (the share price times the number of shares outstanding) have a greater impact on the value of the index than do companies with smaller market caps.\n\nTo calculate the value of the S & P 500 Index, the sum of the adjusted market capitalization of all 500 stocks is divided by a factor, usually referred to as the Divisor. For example, if the total adjusted market cap of the 500 component stocks is US$13 trillion and the Divisor is set at 8.933 billion, then the S & P 500 Index value would be 1,455.28. Although the adjusted market capitalization of the entire index can be accessed from Standard & Poor's website, the Divisor is considered to be proprietary to the firm. However, the Divisor 's value is approximately 8.9 billion"
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679w4b | why does san francisco, home to an industry known for literally inventing telecommuting, suffer from so much location-based demand when the employees could be living anywhere? | Why is it that tech workers need to be in (or close to) San Francisco to work for companies like Google, Oracle, LinkedIn, Adobe, etc. when those companies could embrace telework and hire people from anywhere in the US/world? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/679w4b/eli5_why_does_san_francisco_home_to_an_industry/ | {
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"San Francisco != Silicon Valley\n\nSan Jose is really the true hub of Silicon Valley, and is about 50 miles away from San Francisco. Most tech workers live there instead of paying for the prestige of living closer to San Francisco.\n\nThat said, not all IT jobs lend themselves to telecommuting and the ones that do rarely allow you to do it 100% of the time. All things being equal, a local employee is going to be more productive and engaged than a remote one, even if they are only in the office a few times a month.\n\nAlso, a lot of people in Silicon Valley work for smaller companies emerging companies that are still developing their business. Personal interaction is far more important to them. Also, they usually want to do business with or be acquired by the big boys, and want people on the ground who can make that happen.",
"Many of the companies here in Silicon Valley have offices in other cities, and those offices do real tech work, so your assumption that the workers have to be here is slightly incorrect, but there are a couple of strong forces at work here that conflate together to create the Bay Area tech industry.\n\nFirst, people choose to live in SF. They do this even when their jobs are 75% of the way to San Jose, and they deal with their 1+ hour commute because they love living in SF. The Bay Area is a great place to live (except, of course, for the horrendous cost of living issue). \n\nSecond, many jobs allow telecommuting, but some don't. I've always worked in embedded devices (mostly video game consoles), and often, those devices are secret and cannot leave the premises due to security. Silicon valley isn't just software jobs, it is hardware jobs, mechanical engineering jobs, aerospace, and a lot more. This doesn't mean telework is impossible (a lot of the companies you mention have a lot of telework options, and I always video conference from home for early meetings) but there are still strong forces encouraging companies to have their employees in a local space.\n\nAnd it helps the employees too. Not every job can be done from home and interviews tend to be local. So when I change jobs, being in a location full of companies looking for my skill set means I don't have to keep relocating. There are network effects here related to VC that also encourage a local system.\n\nFinally, tech companies do hire people from everywhere in the world, they just transplant them to Silicon Valley. That's why Trump's plans for H1-B visas are such a hot topic here. When you are going to hire someone, the cost of a plane ticket isn't that big of a deal. Hell, back in the dot-com days, you usually got a relocation bonus to help with rent (did I mention the cost of living problem?).",
"So your question is basically \"why do young programmers with a lot of money want to live in such an expensive city instead of anywhere else?\"\n\nHere are the reasons:\n\n1. They are realaively young.\n2. They are paid relatively well.\n3. There are plenty of other job opportunities there.\n\nThose are the major things really. Yes it's true software engineers could literally live in like Montana and work from home, but why would they want to? What's in Montana? I've never been, but probably nothing really worthwhile compared to a major city.\n\nMajor cities give you lots of entertainment. There's food everywhere. Bars everywhere. You can meet people everywhere. There's lot of people so you can really find your niche/clique. Since there's so many people all into the same high tech stuff you're into there's a lot of really \"cool\" \"new\" stuff being introduced there first before other random small places. Couple this with the fact that a lot of software engineers are in their 20s, getting paid boatloads, why would they want to live in the middle of no where when they can afford to live in a place where everything and anything is happening?"
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5sx1s1 | why do most people from latin american countries like argentina and uruguay look caucasian while their neighbors like chile and paraguay look more hispanic? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5sx1s1/eli5_why_do_most_people_from_latin_american/ | {
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"\"Hispanic\" is an ethnicity, it refers to culture. You're conflating it with race.\n\nRacially, the majority of Latin Americans are a cross between native peoples and Europeans. Some regions have more European blood in them than others.",
"Hispanic refers to the culture from Spanish or Portuguese heirloom. \nThe word you are looking for is 'native american'.\n\nArgentina and Uruguay, and some areas of Latin America haven't mixed themselves in with the locals, so it really depends on how much native and european blood each has. Argentina and Uruguay, and other south american countries had an influx of European immigration after World War 2, so they revamped their european-ness recently.\n\nMost of countries like Mexico, on the other hand, are dominantly mixed races, so it would depend on how much European lineage they have. Terms like mestizo, mulato, black, white, and other racial terms are still reflected among the people, and people breed within their own racial group. Indigenous people mix with indigenous people, and caucasian latin americans, mix with other caucasians in some countries. There is a large racial profiling and stereotyping thanks to this.\n\nMe as caucasian mexican, have trouble in the states, or Europe, as I dont look 'mexican' enough.\n"
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3kx9vr | that feeling in my teeth after drinking a few sips of coke or pepsi? | I mean obviously those drinks are terrible for your teeth, but are the results so instant that you can feel it after 3 sips?
And the feeling wears off after like ten seconds. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kx9vr/eli5_that_feeling_in_my_teeth_after_drinking_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"cv194nt"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"You mean the \"skin on your teef\" feeling?"
]
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7r96u2 | how do demolition companies knock down buildings in cities with dynamite without destroying other buildings and having all the rubble fall in one place? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7r96u2/eli5_how_do_demolition_companies_knock_down/ | {
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"They carefully calculate and simulate the position and strength of the explosives. It's placed to destroy main holding structures from the middle so that the building would collapse on itself, with outside walls falling inwards, from its own weight.\n",
"They carefully calculate and simulate the position and strength of the explosives. For a rather low building it's placed to destroy main holding structures from the middle so that the building would collapse on itself, with outside walls falling inwards, from its own weight.\n For higher, quite simple shape buildings, destroying structural wall simultaneously to make the rest fall straight down I guess ",
"When they chop down a tree, they chop out a big wedge on one side and then a smaller wedge on the other. That weakens the tree in a particular direction, so when it falls, it _should_ fall in that direction. It doesn't always work, but that's the theory.\n\nThe same idea is used when they place explosives inside a building. They also weaken some parts of the building ahead of time. They'll also do things like timing the explosives so that different bits go off in the right order.\n\nThe result is that when the explosives go off, all the walls, support pillars and so on fall in the intended directions. And provided everthing's done right, that means the building collapses inwards and turns into a neat pile of rubble more or less where it was standing.\n\nSo to demolish a building properly, the engineers need its floor plans and they need to know how strong its support walls are, and then they can work out what bits need to collapse in which directions to make the building as a whole fall where they want."
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15npil | why does my vision turn purple when i press my palms against my eyes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15npil/why_does_my_vision_turn_purple_when_i_press_my/ | {
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"Often times our eyes perceive light even though there isn't any; these phenomena are dubbed [phosphenes](_URL_0_). When you press against your eyes or rub them, you manually stimulate the optic nerve cells, causing a [pressure phosphene](_URL_0_#Mechanical_stimulation) as your brain interprets this as visual information.\n\n_URL_2_"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphene",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphene#Mechanical_stimulation",
"https://youtu.be/34NgoKfrG2k"
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3gocip | how did companies such as columbia house, that offered cd's and dvd's for pennies, stay in business for so long? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gocip/eli5_how_did_companies_such_as_columbia_house/ | {
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"So, just to be clear, based on what you describe in your post I am pretty sure you committed [mail fraud.](_URL_0_) Not a judgment, just a note that your nearly free CD's may have come with a sizable risk of imprisonment and large fines. \n\nSecond, Columbia House made its money because you only got the first record so cheaply because it was part of an agreement to buy a set number of records later at the normal price. The penny CDs were \"loss leaders\" sold at a lower than cost price to ensure gains later on. If I remember correctly, it was actually controversial for some, since many felt mislead, and were then locked into the contract to purchase more music. \n",
"Columbia house relied on idiots to not cancel their hidden subscriptions. When you filled out that form to get your however many cds for 1 penny, you unknowingly agreed to get a certain amount of random cds every month. You'd be surprised how many incredibly stupid people there are out there that A: fell for this, and was charged once before cancelling, and B: never ever realized and kept getting charged. I'm not sure what their recent business model was, even though I still manage to get emails from them in my junk mail, but I would like to give out an assumption that they couldn't succeed with MP3 sales as well as they did with their cd sales\n",
"They relied on people not reading fine print and/or sheer laziness. You got one CD for a penny, but were locked into buying one per month for a year or something at their usual stupid expensive price. On top of that they'd auto-ship a random selection (at full price of course) once a month as well if you didn't take the time to fill out the \"don't send it\" form and mail it in.\n\nWhat you did was theft and most people simply didn't do it. They'd just continue to pay for auto-shipped CDs and other expensive ones out of a combination of honesty and not knowing that they couldn't do squat to your credit since they never got social security numbers for anybody. "
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819cm5 | what is past the borders of space? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/819cm5/eli5what_is_past_the_borders_of_space/ | {
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" > I know space is expanding in all directions but whats past that?\n\nThat isn't a meaningful question. Space appears to be infinite in extent and simply becoming larger.\n\n > Also, whats between galaxies, why can't we travel between them?\n\nNothing. They are a huge distance apart and moving away from each other very rapidly.\n\n > Also, whats dark matter?\n\nDon't know. It seems to make gravity and nothing else.",
" > I know space is expanding in all directions but whats past that?\n\nWe don't know of any 'past' that. When we say space is expanding, we mean the space between any two distant objects is growing larger. However, there is no distance we are aware of at which there are no longer objects. So you have objects, in every direction, getting further apart, for infinity.\n\nIf there is an 'edge' we lack evidence about it.\n\n\n > Also, whats between galaxies, why can't we travel between them?\n\nMuch of the matter of the universe, but that's just because there's *so much* space between galaxies. Per square meter, it is extremely, extremely, super, super, duper, empty space.\n\nThe main obstacle to traveling between galaxies is not the terrain itself, it's that it is *really, really, really* far away, and way way way farther than that to get anywhere. A roadtrip of x billion years doesn't have a lot of attraction, and it's hard to pack for.\n\n > Also, whats dark matter?\n\nGood question, although so far it appears to be \"something with mass\" which does not interact strongly with anything else outside of gravity. I.e. it doesn't block light, it doesn't bump into stuff, it goes right through objects, but it has a gravitational attraction.\n",
"As far as what's beyond galaxy, one of the ideas is nothing. Literal nothing. Of course it's unobservable, so it's not really part of our universe.\n\nAs far as what's between galaxies, space. Lots and lots of space. It's not an issue of physically getting there. It's a matter of getting there in any reasonable time.\n\nDark matter is just a theoretical concept. When we model galaxies we notice that it fails. There needs to be way more stuff in the galaxies for our models of them to work. But we can't see this stuff, so we have no clue what it is.",
"1) nothing. Space is expanding into itself. There's nothing \"past\" the universe by very definition.\n\n2) there is a lot of empty space between galaxies. A lot of empty space. So much empty space that it's basically impossible to ever get through it all. It would be like trying to cross the Pacific ocean in a rowboat. There isn't any physical laws or forces preventing you from doing it, but it's still basically impossible.\n\n3) No idea. We only know that is has to exist. Otherwise our observations of galaxy rotation speed don't make sense.",
" > whats is past the border of space\n\nThe universe is theoretically infinite.\n\n > i know space is expanding in all directions but whats past that.\n\nThere is no past it, everything is just getting less densely packed, but its still infinite. Imagine if you had an infinite number line (1,2,3,4,5,6....) and you multiplied ever number in it by 2 (2,4,6,8,12.....) The number line still never ends, but everything is just further apart.\n\n > Whats between galaxies, why cant we travel between them.\n\nNothing is between galaxies. Its just vast empty void of space. We cant travel to them because they are insanely far away. The nearest galaxy is 2.5 million light years away. No matter can go faster than the speed of light, so even if we where going 99.9999999% the speed of light it would still take 2.5 million years to get there. Our current technology doesnt come anywhere near light speed, so it would take even longer.\n\n > whats dark matter\n\nWe dont actually know. We just know that objects in space do not move the way that they should. The explanation for why that is that there is undetectable matter that is responsible for the deviation."
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642kl3 | why does cutting the taxes of individual business owners create more jobs? why is personal income tied to a briskness' decision to hire? | This is NOT for political debate about the merits of tax cuts for the rich. I always hear things like "If you cut the taxes of the 1%, they will create more jobs." But aren't their individual wealth/income/taxes separate from anything they would do in a business setting? If a CEO making $10m a year gets an extra $1m "back" from reduced personal taxes, how would his business benefit? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/642kl3/eli5_why_does_cutting_the_taxes_of_individual/ | {
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"By a _very_ wide margin, most businesses are small businesses with one or two owners. These are individuals whose job IS owning/running their business, which means that their income is the profit of the business. The idea is that the less taxes and regulatory costs you lay on those businesses, the more money you free up for the business and its owner(s), who may choose to put some or all of that money back into the business by hiring more employees.\n\n",
"The plan isn't to cut taxes for individual business owners. It's to cut taxes on corporate profits. Corporate profits belong to the corporation until they are distributed to the owners, which usually only happens through dividends or when a corporation ends. The theory is that corporations can use that money to invest in more jobs, equipment, etc.. Also, people will theoretically more likely to invest in corporations, which means corporations will have even more money to expand. I won't comment on whether I think that's actually what will happen.\n\nThat's my understanding of your question at least unless there was a specific tax cut that that doesn't cover you were thinking of.",
"Imagine you own XYZ Landscaping, and corporate taxes are 35%. That means that if you make 100$ from a customer and 50$ of that went to expenses, the government will take 35% of the remaining 50 dollars, leaving you with 32.50$. If, however, you were only taxed 30% of that you would walk away with 35$. Apply this logic to all of the yards that you mow, and eventually you will have enough leftover to afford another employee that you couldn't afford with the 35% tax. Having more employees mean more lawns can be mowed, and more lawns means more money"
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19geup | how are internet providers able to stay a monopoly when the internet is supposedly open? | I understand the basics of tcp/ip, dns, and how the interconnection works. What I do not understand is how it's all tied together. Say I want to open my own ISP. Where do I basically send my customer's data to assuming I don't want to go through an established provider as a subsidiary? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19geup/how_are_internet_providers_able_to_stay_a/ | {
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"You have to go through an established provider. You actually have to go through *every* established provider, either directly or indirectly; their subscribers are part of the Internet, and your customers will expect to be able to connect to servers on all the established providers. If you don't want to be a subsidiary, you'll have to convince them somehow that you're worth dealing directly with.",
"If you want to be an internet service provider, you need to be able to get data EVERYWHERE on the internet. Running your own LAN in a city or town is easy, but eventually you need to get data to the other parts of the planet.\n\nISPs all hook up together in places called [Internet Exchange Points](_URL_0_). They're just large buildings where all the LANs meet up in a super-huge router. You'll need to pay for access to this place, *AND* get all the other companies to agree to trade data with you.\n\nHow do you get all the other companies to trade data with you? Good question. Have a lot of cash, or have enough customers on YOUR end of the pipe that the other ISPs will want to trade with you and you both agree to skip the fees since they would cancel out.\n\nIf you're not that big enough to run your own ISP and lay pipe at the exchange point, you'll need to sublet bandwidth from a large carrier that does. \n\nThis whole \"the internet is open\" is really a myth. It takes a physical network to run data from point to point, and someone needs to pay for it and keep it up. And if you're the one taking care of the physical network, you get to set the rules about what goes on inside of it. Sorry, that's life.",
"The [Telecommunications Act of 1996](_URL_0_) attempted to resolve this issue but actually ended up making the situation far worse. Effectively only a single supplier in a market is permitted to lay cable to your home (AKA last mile) and then they are supposed to allow access to that cable at wholesale rates to their competitors.\n\nThe problem is that wholesale rates can be whatever they want to charge and that's where franchise agreements come in to play. Unless you live in the eastern part of PA or some of NJ then your cable service is not provided by Comcast, its provided by a local provider with a franchise agreement. The local provider charges an exorbitant carriage fee to Comcast who in turn charge an exorbitant franchise fee back to the local provider, the two cancel each other out and Comcast are left with a much smaller fee per participant for making use of the network. Some municipalities also have monopoly service agreements with the local provider ensuring the monopoly is maintained on two fronts.\n\nVerizon/AT & T use the same strategy on their own networks but are large enough that they can negotiate the same agreements with local providers as Comcast which allows for limited competition in markets that don't have monopoly agreements and where there is a large enough market to fight the battle. Comcast wants access to their networks where they own the providers and Verizon/AT & T want access to the Comcast franchisee networks so while both sides are very resistant to letting the other in there is some give and take.\n\nThe organization most responsible for this problem is the FCC. They have the ability to grant waivers to the single provider stipulation (as they did with Google in KS, the first time they have done so in over 30 years) but they generally do not. Local infrastructure is simply not that expensive, a town of 75k people could be wired for ~$600k but currently the FCC aggressively prevents people from doing so."
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3carx5 | the over 18 age confirmation on adult websites? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3carx5/eli5_the_over_18_age_confirmation_on_adult/ | {
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"It's essentially just a way to cover their asses. It's a liability. Say little 15 year old Jimmy's mom catches him whacking off to pornhub, and decides to sue pornhub, pornhub can say \"Look, we posted the warning and he decided to click that he was 18, so he's the liar and we aren't liable.\" Also, I belive that it was a deal they worked out that they had to post that in order to opperate. I remember hearing about it a long time ago, but don't quote me on it."
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4j5y12 | why are government run banks considered "bad"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4j5y12/eli5_why_are_government_run_banks_considered_bad/ | {
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"They are not considered \"bad\" because the government runs them, they are run by the government because they have gone \"bad\" (i.e. no longer capable of covering their financial obligations towards customers that have placed money with them). Most banks speculate with the money that customers entrust them with, but they are under obligation to keep a certain amount in cash or bonds to provide for that money. When they invest badly, that coverage can drop below a minimum and they would technically be bankrupt. To protect the interests of (private) customers, the government can decide to assume the bank's responsabilities in return for (a governing share in) the bank's stock."
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2583kt | how does an army capture a city? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2583kt/eli5_how_does_an_army_capture_a_city/ | {
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"Not entirely sure but something about controlling the roads, local government and defeating whatever opposition there is.",
"You point a gun at the guy or guys that used to make the rules and you say \"I make the rules now.\" Then you make sure no one can turn around and do the same to you and your loyal followers. Then you eventually build a government that is recognized, more or less, by everyone and then you can rewrite history to say that the people loved you the whole time.",
"Just like it sounds, first an army would have to invade, then overthrow the established leaders and any resistance for the area. After that point its about controlling and defending assets such as communication, strategic entry points to the city, ports and of course the public because you dont want a civilian uprising. After that its all a matter of bringing in new resources to further the advance.",
"It depends on the military and what tactics they are using. An example would be the Scorched Earth tactic(if the city is extremely valuable or is of importance), in which all the resources of said city are taken away by the military trying to take control. Although, this tactic would probably not be used at all, since the Geneva Protocol I believe, prohibited it before the 21st century. "
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4a7yhb | how is it possible for there to be so many blonde people when it is a recessive trait? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4a7yhb/eli5_how_is_it_possible_for_there_to_be_so_many/ | {
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"To make it clearer I guess they should change \"blondes have more fun\" to \"blondes have more sex\"",
"Recessiveness means that the trait is less likely to be expressed, not less likely to be inherited. If a person has one recessive allele and one dominant allele then the recessive trait won't be expressed, but they can still pass the recessive allele on to their children. Statistically, half of that person's children will have the recessive allele.\n\nIn fact, recessive alleles even have better chances at surviving natural selection than dominant alleles. For example, lets say that suddenly there's a catastrophe which wipes out every person with the recessive trait. This means that people who have only one copy of the recessive allele won't have this trait, but will still be able to pass it on to their offspring. However, if a catastrophe wipes out every person with the dominant trait, then the dominant allele will be wiped out entirely, because every person who has it will have the trait.",
"Just a brief comment about blonds stemming from one source. There are many scientists today who believe that the fair hair and eyes are traits Europeans acquired by interbreeding with Neanderthals.\n\n_URL_0_",
"In many places blond hair is considered a desirable trait and as such gets selected through the process of arbitrary sexual selection. Traits do not have to be meaningful for a subject's survival to be selected (aka selection via natural selection), certain traits get selected simply because members of the species find them attractive.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThis doesn't only apply to humans by the way, sexual selection led to the very unique appearance of birds-of-paradise and peacock males, for instance. "
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26lsg4 | how do software developers make an executable that works on most hardware? | When I compile a program in say, C, I have to compile it specifically for my hardware. How does the executable in a program or game work for most pieces of hardware (under the same OS)? Is it just a massive collection of many different compilations? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26lsg4/eli5_how_do_software_developers_make_an/ | {
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"With a modern OS, programs seldom need to directly interface the hardware. The software talks to the OS and the OS keeps track of how to control the hardware.\n\nThe program just needs to be compiled down to instructions the CPU understands and to use the \"system calls\" for the target operating system.",
"It depends. In general their are three semi separate approaches to compiling.\n\n1) Like C, you compile directly into machine instructions that are only valid on one specific architecture.\n\n2)Like Java, you compile to an intermediary format that is not really very close to machine instructions, but it is also not really source code. It is lets say like 1/3 of the way to machine instructions. Then you have a separate program that IS specific to a single architecture take in that intermediary code and finally compile it into machine instructions.\n\n3)Like Python, you have pure scripting languge. It does not ever compile at all. You simply write it and run it. Here again you are using some sort of architecture specific intermediary. However in most scripting languages you never reach the level of machine instructions ever. Your commands are read and carried out by the intermediary alone. So your code never actually runs on the hardware. It is interpreted and run by another program.\n\nSo basically you never get rid of the architecture specific requirement you just pass it off to someone else."
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u6ox2 | eli how coal burns if it's mostly carbon, but ash is what's left after something burns, and it's mostly carbon, too. | Oh, and explain the same thing with charcoal, too. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/u6ox2/eli_how_coal_burns_if_its_mostly_carbon_but_ash/ | {
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"A lump of coal not only contains carbon, but other elements and compounds as well.\n\n\nCoal burns as it heats up and the carbon reacts with oxygen, creating fire. This creates carbon dioxide, that will float away, hence reducing the amount of coal as it burns.\n\n\nAll the visible smoke and left over ash is stuff that didn't burn, like some organic compounds and metals, like ~~magnetism~~Magnesium (thanks spellcheck), potassium, calcium, formaldehyde, ammonia, etc, etc.\n\n\nThere may be some carbon left in the ash, but it's just mostly stuff that didn't burn.\n\n\nCharcoal is made by heating up coal in a seal off box, with no oxygen, to try and remove as much water and other materials from the coal. This attempts to make a better and cleaner burning fuel.",
"Picture side by side a person and a pile of all the atoms that make up a person.\n\nOne is alive and one is not. What is the difference? They are made up of the same atoms.\n\nThe important thing here is the arrangement of the particles. In coal form, the particles have energy in the bonds of the particles. In the ash, even though most of the same material is still there, the arrangement of the particles is different. It does not have the energy.",
"A better way to phrase this might be \"ELI5 Hydrocarbon Combustion\"\n\nLife- that is, you me, bears, insects, and (most importantly) plants spend most of our time gathering carbon from the environment. We animals mostly get ours from plants, but plants get theirs straight from the air- in the form of carbon dioxide. To make those carbon atoms useful for making skin, organs, roots, leaves, and whatever else, it needs to be bonded with other elements- most of the time with just a few, and most commonly hydrogen. This bonding takes a lot of energy- it's why you gain less weight than the weight of all your food put together. When you're growing quite a bit of your energy is spent just putting those atoms together.\n\nPlants have done a lot of this carbon construction throughout the history of the world. A bunch of those plants have ended up as coal- which, even though it doesn't look like it, is still made up of all those complex carbon compounds the plants spent their whole lives building. When you add enough heat, those bonds start to break, and all the energy that went into making them is released, all at once. That's fire! Now, at the end all you're left with is the raw elements. The hydrogen bonds with oxygen in the air to form water vapor, but there's no energy left for the carbon to bond with anything, so it just sits there!\n\n(I actually did this as though you were a young child but i'm not actually sure what this reddit is for anymore. I'm an engineer working with combustion professionally but know next to nothing about biology.) ",
"When you burn things, they start with lots of hydrogens bonded to them. When you are finished, they have mostly oxygen bonded to them. That's why you need O2 to burn stuff. Carbon to hydrogen bonds are high energy, carbon to oxygen aren't as high energy. You release that energy as heat and light in combustion.",
"The stuff we burn as fuel is made out of carbon, and hydrogen. Sometimes other stuff too, but mostly these too. Now, we need oxygen to burn fuel, so thats another of the starting materials in a way. When the fuel burns, in the process of making energy, it can make carbon dioxide (what we breathe out), carbon monoxide (the stuff that people use to gas themselves in cars), and carbon, which is ash/soot, as well as water. \n\nSo, the carbon just goes from being packaged with hydrogen, to being pacaked with oxgen, or without oxygen. And the hydrogens combine with oxygen to make water. \n\nHope that helped!"
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cx2wij | how do 'grow your own crystal' kits work? | What are they made of? How long will they last? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cx2wij/eli5_how_do_grow_your_own_crystal_kits_work/ | {
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"They are just some salt, colours and instructions. Making a crystal isn't hard, polar molecules that drop out if solution tend to stick together in a rigid structure, a crystal. So you just need to dissolve a salt and then make it slowly fall out, for example by lowering the temperature.\nAs for how long they last: chrystals last basically forever, unless they get wet.",
"Depends on the kit. Lots of substances will crystallize. Crystallization happens when you saturate hot water with a substance. As the water cools, it can't hold as much of the substance as it could when it was hot, so some of the substance precipitates out of the solution. Some substances will cling together when they precipitate, forming a crystal.\n\nYou can actually do it at home with sugar or epsom salts, and food colouring. The classic way is to do it in a heat proof beaker, and you want to give the crystals something to form on, like a piece of string. You can put a pencil over the top of the beaker with a string hanging down. Then you make a saturated solution with boiling water, pour it into the beaker, and leave it to do its thing.\n\nThey'll last for a while as long as they're in a sealed container. The moisture in air will break down the crystal.",
"how the crystals grow is that when something is dissolved in water in large amounts so that it is concentrated what happens is that as the water evaporates the chemicals dont have anymore water to be dissolved in and so they turn into crystals. And it depends on what the crystals are made out of that causes them to last longer , salt or sugar crystals can break just by touching them slightly but something like clear quartz crystals are alot harder and stronger , also along with the chemical that forms the crystals the way that the crystals are formed is important too , like with heat , without any disturbance , no contamination , ect ."
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2hlvqn | why ios update is 75mb but requires 1.5gb to install? | [EDIT]
Woah. Thanks guys for al the answers! I've never thought I would learn all those things about updates. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hlvqn/eli5_why_ios_update_is_75mb_but_requires_15gb_to/ | {
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"Because that 75 MB contains 3kb of changes to make to this 1MB file, and 2kb of changes to make to this 2MB file, etc etc. when it installs, it has to load the original file, duplicate it, apply the changes, and then return the file to its original place and delete the original.\n\nSo why don't they just do this one file at a time, instead of doing them all at once? I am guessing this has to do with safety. If you do it one file at a time and the process gets interrupted, you can end up with a half-applied update and completely bricked phone. OTOH, if you store all the modified files until the last second, there is a much smaller chance of the process being interrupted at a crucial point, and he phone can more easily fall back to its previous functional state.",
"The update file contains a \"delta\" update - only the parts of the files that are actually updated.\n\nAs part of the update process, it needs to take a copy of those original files that are going to be updated and apply the \"delta\" patch. That means if only 100kb of two 300MB files needs to be changed, it would need 600mb of space for the new versions. Now the updates process has to change a lot of files, but it can't just do them one at a time because that would leave the system in an inconsistent state (i.e. one part of the OS is running 7.0 and the next 8.0), so it needs to be able to create the new versions and then install them all at the same time - thus requiring 1.5GB of space to be able to shuffle everything around.\n\n",
"Still pissed that ios8 required 8.6gb free. On a 16gb iPad, a lot of stuff got obliterated.",
"Here's the ~~metaphor~~ analogy (thanks: /u/SuccessAndSerenity) I use daily:\n\nEver built ikea furniture? Let's say it's a bookshelf. The bookshelf when built will be 1' x 2.5' x 5' tall. You only need 2.5'^2 of floorspace with 5' vertical clearance for the bookshelf.\n\nHowever, when you unbox it, lay out the parts on the floor and get to building, you need far more floor space than the bookshelf will occupy.\n\n5'^2 (x2) for the sidewalls, and the base is 2.5'^2, each shelf will also be 2.5'^2, space for the tools and fasteners and instructions, and also space for you to move around while assembling it, and space to move the parts around while you're assembling, etc.",
"The update files need to be uncompressed - The update installer needs to back up previous files incase install goes awry and it needs to revert everything back to normal. If it needs to repair OS critical operations.\n\nAlso - the extra data is only needed while its installing, since you can't carry out the steps necessary for updating an app on a full drive. After its all said and done, the update would have increased the total OS size by only a fraction of the installers size.",
"Why also if it's only 1.5GB to install do I need 4.5GB of free space to begin the installation?",
"How much space does it actually take after the installation?",
"It's like trying to nail a hammer into a wall with no space to swing the hammer. The device needs a \"workspace\" to install the OS while removing the old one.\n\nEdit: I nail hammers a lot",
"The actual update is 75 MB, but to unpack it and stuff, takes up the other space. If you plug your phone into the computer, then open iTunes, and download it from there, then it'll actually take up much less space.",
"When I tried to update it said I needed 4.5GB. Wtf",
"If you've ever dealt with compressed files (PkZip, WinRar, 7z, etc) you'll be aware that a file may only be 100MB zipped, but it's 87% compressed, so when you unpack the file, it may turn out to be 1GB large. Then, the file needs additional free space to install each individual file in the cabinet/package into the OS. Because it would cause a lot of read/writes to the internal rom to simply copy File A to Location B, then Delecte File A and move on to File B, it simply copies all the files to their proper places, and then deletes the individual files from the package, the package itself, and then cleans up any temporary files it had to create in the process. They also usually have a little bit of wiggle room added as well, just to be sure there's enough room. This is true of PC files (such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox) as it is phone files, and is generally nothing new. \nEdit: Installing most of this from iTunes on your PC/Mac will signifigantly reduce the amount of free space you need to install files (games and OS updates) because it does all the unpacking on your PC and then copies from there. ",
"Because existing files are replaced by updated files. In theory it's even possible to have the possible that the newer version is smaller than the older version.",
"My guess is it makes a full OS installation, not just changes the current files. It downloads what just the files it needs to change, but uses a duplicate of the installed OS to implement the changes. If something goes wrong, nothing has been touched on the active version. If everything goes ok, it switches to the new version. Just a guess.",
"Wait, 1.5gb? Mine's telling me to clear out 4. I'm like...that's half of my storage",
"The size of the new version of iOS is 1.5GB. The size of current one is 1.5GB minus 75MB. \n\nYou've to install the whole 1.5GB update and install it. It replaces the current files/binaries in your current version of iOS. Some of these new versions of the files are larger than the old versions... and there are some new files as well. The total size of the new files and difference between older and newer files is 75MB. \n\nHence, you've to download the whole 1.5GB package but after installing it only takes 75MB more space on your phone.\n\nIt is perfectly possible to download 1.5GB update and free up 500MB of space after install. This would be the case where the new version of the OS is 500MB leaner than the old one.\n\n\nThat said, there are ways to ship only delta versions of the update so users only download what they really need but the benefits of this outweigh the complexity of the implementation. ",
"First of all, the downloaded update file is compressed.\n\nSecond of all, it needs more space to shuffle around. Think about it like moving stuff in your closet\n\nIf your closet only has space to fit 1 more box, and you put the box in, you can't move anything in side the closet around.\n\nIf your closet has space for 2 boxes, and you put it 1, you can move other boxes into the space, and then move something else into the new empty space, and so on, until you get the specific arrangement you want.\n\nThis is the same for any update of any firmware or software - the update files (the new box you want to put in the closet) is a specific size, but it needs more space to allow it to move the files around.\n\nThey bundle this update in 1 probably because of efficiency and also to reduce the risk of double-installing (not a proper term i made this up). By that I mean changing the same file twice unnecessarily, and sometimes can cause errors and bad stuff and yea.\n\nI hope that helps",
"The real question is why have the last 4 iPhones come standard with 16gb of memory when the OS takes up almost 4. Scumbags. ",
"Imagine your car st oped working. \nAll you need is a new spark plug. \nBut you need a repair man that knows what he is doing to actually change the spark plug. \nThey sent a 75MB spark plug with a 1.5Gb repair man, who leaves/ deletes once the job is done.",
"My update required 4.5GB to update. I WISH I thought to take a screenshot to prove this but I updated before this thread was written.",
"It's bigger on the inside... -Doctor Who",
"It's like one of these puzzles.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe update adds a new piece to the puzzle, but to re-solve it you need another extra space to slide the pieces back in place.",
"Maybe someone could tell me why my phone is saying it requires 5.6 GB?!? I can't do it!"
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6qaj1t | why do cakes rise higher in the middle rather than equally across the top surface? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qaj1t/eli5_why_do_cakes_rise_higher_in_the_middle/ | {
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"You can consider it similar to not rising upwards, but inflating - the yeast in it creates air, which pushes the volume of the cake up. The sides are either held back by the edges, or have less pressure from air from surrounding cake - not sure which of the two - but the end result is the cake bulging, rather than rising equally.",
"Cakes rise due to carbon dioxide being given off by the baking soda/powder mixed into the batter. The primary reason a cake seems to rise in the middle more than the edges is surface tension between the sides of the pan and the solidifying cake. The sides of the pan hold that portion of the cake down, while the middle of the cake doesn't have this constraint.\n\n[Here's an example of this occurring when silicone \"batter\"](_URL_0_) is placed in a vacuum chamber so that any air bubbles become large and rise to the top. Notice how the sides do not rise as fast and as much as the middle of the silicone. This is due to the silicone \"sticking\" to the side of the bucket. The same applies to cake batter and the side of the pan."
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614e08 | what are the "reflections" in the road when the road is aligned with eyesight? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/614e08/eli5_what_are_the_reflections_in_the_road_when/ | {
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"Imperfections in the road cause [inferior mirages](_URL_0_). An illusion of water on the road is one of the most common examples of mirages out there. \n\nThe same phenomenon occurs when you look over the top of a hot BBQ grill, only more amplified. ",
"they are mirages, they give this wavy illusion which is a result from the temperature near the cement road being higher than the air, causing light to refract ( changing directions (or bending angles) when going through mediums"
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b92mxe | why do trucks have lower rpm but pull so much, compared to sports cars that rev higher but cant pull a big load. | Even in gasoline engines where a pick up trucks V8 rev lower than a sport cars V8 but they can pull a lot more. Would it not make more sense for pickup trucks to rev higher and have a lower gear? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b92mxe/eli5_why_do_trucks_have_lower_rpm_but_pull_so/ | {
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"Torque. It’s essentially about leverage and how those RPMs are used. Turning a big shaft slower is going to drive a large load, whereas turning a narrow shaft faster will provide more speed and acceleration at the cost of foot-pound strength.",
"Actually, if you use the right gearing you *could* use a high RPM, low torque engine to tow a lot of weight. “Theoretically”, horsepower is what matters— you need to transfer a certain amount of energy into the load in order to get it from a standstill to a certain speed. More horsepower gets that done faster. You “just” need the right gearing to match the engine output to the load...\n\nBut there are practical reasons that designers favor high torque. It prevents the engine from stalling or really struggling when first moving from a standstill. It also allows a reasonable amount of power to be produced at a wider range of engine speeds instead of requiring high RPM to get anything done. Both things make the vehicle easier to drive— even if it’s not ultimately that fast. Low-RPM torque and torque across a wide range of RPMs also prevent the need for high gear ratios or large numbers of gears, which can reduce efficiency or add cost. \n\nEngines are also *usually* more efficient at lower RPMs. This matters a lot when you’re towing a heavy load, which means you’re using a lot of power all the time. \n\nThese things might benefit a sports car as well, but there are tradeoffs. Large engines with lots of torque are heavier. And for the same engine size, a sports car might prefer maximum power at high RPM.\n\nWith all this said... a sports car with a big V8 engine and transmission to handle the power likely could tow a big trailer. The issue is whether the frame is built to take the weight, whether it will handle well with all that weight behind it, whether the brakes can stop the extra weight, whether there’s even enough weight on the tires to keep traction under hard braking... etc. \n\n"
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2pyk26 | when a country gives another country money, what actually happens to transfer the money? if it was a check, what would be the from and to fields? | Just saw another post where the U.S. is giving Pakistan $1 billion in aid/reimbursement which got me thinking what actually goes happens? I'm assuming it's not cash... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pyk26/eli5when_a_country_gives_another_country_money/ | {
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"THIS is an excellent question and I look forward to reading more informed answers. But I believe that the money is simply wired from one central bank to another central bank. (Of course, aid takes on many forms -- sometimes aid is provided in the form of physical goods, and what gets reported is the value of those goods in dollars.) \n",
"Sometimes they write checks. Here's an image of the check from the United States to Russia for the purchase of Alaska. _URL_0_"
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5alug6 | why organizations like better business bureau and yelp are shady? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5alug6/eli5_why_organizations_like_better_business/ | {
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"People tend to think BBB is a government agency because the word \"bureau\" is in it. It's a private entity and they have no real authority other than to say \"The BBB rates you [grade].\" The real problem is the only way to get an A+ rating is to pay them extra on top of membership dues. As such, businesses that don't deserve an A+ still manage to get an A+ and it makes them look better.",
"both organizations evoke the image of fair and equal play. that their rating is not biased. when in fact, you can pay for a good rating despite poor customer satisfaction. "
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aqia9d | why is the concept of white privelege in america so contentious? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aqia9d/eli5_why_is_the_concept_of_white_privelege_in/ | {
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"Perhaps it's easy to think of it in terms of \"Jew Privilege\". Jews have been regarded in many places as having a special privilege by virtue of being Jewish - a special privilege that explains why they entered financially rewarding professions at a greater rate than other populations.\n\nThis is insulting because it denies the role the individual's own efforts and behavior had in their success. It's dangerous because it describes the Jewish person as less deserving of their success and more deserving of society's retribution.\n\nOn the flip side, it's also problematic for those who make the accusation because it minimizes the impact of their own efforts/behavior while maximize the justification for them to attack others rather than engaging in productive cooperative behavior.\n\nAs such, it is an inherently divisive doctrine that hurts everyone.\n\nClaiming \"white privilege\" is absolutely no different. It's a way to divide people and foster hate amongst groups."
]
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k8vk1 | i think i might understand "hashing" from a computing/security viewpoint... but can someone critique it like i'm 5? :) | The analogy I am coming up with is like this (it's abstract and silly, but bear with me!).
The doorman of a club has a guest list of people that are to be allowed in, and when people arrive, he checks if their name is there, and either rejects them or allows them in. Just like a login page on a website.
However, the doorman can't be trusted not to phone his friends up and say "Hey, come down the club, say your name is Dave Smith, and you'll get in!". His guest list could also be stolen or secretly copied. This is like a site storing passwords in plain text. So.. the club owner comes up with the idea of hashing the guest list and giving that to the doorman.
The hashing algorythm is very simple. Letting A=1, B=2, etc, instead of having the name "Abe" on the guestlist, the doorman just has a number 8 (a+b+e). Now when the guest Abe appears at the club, the doorman hashes his name, sees 8 is allowed in, and he gets in.
Now this is very simplistic. Hash collisions (different names that hash to the same number) will be common, and maybe the doorman could even reverse engineer hashes. In the real world I'd assume there are plenty of safeguards against this - but in general, am I sort of thinking of this correctly?
Basically, if the doormans guest list was stolen - unencrypted - it would cause security problems for the club. However, if the hashed list was stolen, theoretically, it would be much harder to exploit the clubs security? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k8vk1/eli5_i_think_i_might_understand_hashing_from_a/ | {
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"That's actually a very good example. In the real world, of course, it's very difficult to 'reverse-engineer' the hashed list. \n\nAlso, in your example, Ace would have a hash of 9, while Abe would have a hash of 8. This makes it rather less secure. Let me explain:\n\nIf Abe (a legitimate guest) stole the hashed list, he could then compare his hash with the other hashes, and deduce that the number '9' corresponded to a name similar to his, i.e. 'Ace'. He could then tell his friend Peter to tell the doorman his name was Ace.\n\nA more secure hash would ensure that for a small change in the unencrypted value, there's a big change in the hash. So, if 'Abe' is 8, 'Ace' should be something like 57.",
"I am an IT consultant and I approve of this analogy. :)",
"That's actually a very good example. In the real world, of course, it's very difficult to 'reverse-engineer' the hashed list. \n\nAlso, in your example, Ace would have a hash of 9, while Abe would have a hash of 8. This makes it rather less secure. Let me explain:\n\nIf Abe (a legitimate guest) stole the hashed list, he could then compare his hash with the other hashes, and deduce that the number '9' corresponded to a name similar to his, i.e. 'Ace'. He could then tell his friend Peter to tell the doorman his name was Ace.\n\nA more secure hash would ensure that for a small change in the unencrypted value, there's a big change in the hash. So, if 'Abe' is 8, 'Ace' should be something like 57.",
"I am an IT consultant and I approve of this analogy. :)"
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5vzgb5 | if someone wipes their hard drive, how do computer forensic people know what they did? | E.g. in the Waymo v. Otto lawsuit, the guy wiped his hard drive.
So how did they figure out all the stuff he did? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vzgb5/eli5_if_someone_wipes_their_hard_drive_how_do/ | {
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"there's a few ways.\n\n1. wiping your hard drive doesn't actually wipe the contents. for example, OS's operate in a similar fashion to the dewey decimal system. the OS stores a table of pointers, that point to where the actual data resides. if you wipe this table, all the data is still there, but it can be freely overwritten at any time.\n\n2. if you actually over write the data stored. due to the propeties of magnetism and such, even if you overwrite a location, you can still guess the data that was there because of lingering magnetic fields. \n\n",
"For most operating systems, deleting files actually does not remove them from the hard drive. When you delete the file, the first character of the file name is replaced with the \"~\" character. \nThis hides the file from the directory structure. \nMuch like erasing a building on a street map does not remove the building. \nMore advanced removal involves writing a pattern of characters over the \"blank,\" area of the hard drive. \nEven this process is not a full proof method of deletion, because advanced low level recovery can read the slight differences in the layer of magnetic material of the platter (think of it as a CD but magnetic like a tape.) \nThe second method is costly and often incomplete but can recover significant amounts of data. \nThe last method is retrieving data from Off-site storage. Many programs provide cloud based storage. Occasionally people will think they have removed a file but there is a remotely stored copy. ",
"I'll assume that he successfully wiped his hard drive in a way that is not recoverable. If someone was stealing trade secrets, they'd probably know about the \"deleting is not really deleting\" that other people are talking about.\n\nOne article says he \"pulled down nearly 10 GB of trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and testing documentation\". That implies he \"pulled\" them from a server. Servers keep a log of who accesses what and when; that's not stored on the laptop. If the server shows his computer accessing all these files, and then the files aren't on the computer, you know he either deleted or transferred them. \n\nLarge companies often employ network management and monitoring software. The software I use records what hardware is on a computer. If a USB device was plugged in, like a hard drive, it would show up in that software. You can even get more detailed by copying local computer logs to a server, which would catch what happens with file operations.",
"None of these other answers seem to quite properly explain deleting data simply. \n\nBasically though, ALL computer data is fundamentally a combination of Ones and zeroes. Patters of these are programs, files, or everything else on a computer. Your PC's operating system knows this, and marks out these patterns, giving them space. The thing is, the harddrive is a big place. once it gives them space, it has to remember where that space is, or else it has to search everything to find it again. So, it creates a table, and in that table it records where the start of those patterns are, as well as what they are, and how big they are (ELI5 explanation, its not completely accurate, but close enough here). When you delete a file, all most operating systems do by default is delete its entry in the table. For an operating system, if the space is not in the table, it can be written on. As such, Deletes are significantly faster than installs. However, until that empty space is assigned to new files, the old ones will remain, and special programs can search for things that look like files and mark them as such, restoring them.\n\nExpanding on (and shamelessly using) sirbearus's example. The Operating system is like the city layout manager. The table that says where everything is, is a lot like a map, and the files are buildings. When a new guy wants to build a building, he goes to the manager. The manager gives him a plot of land, and he builds his building. Later on, the building is scheduled for destruction. To save time and money, the city manager simply removes the building from the map. As such, the building still stands, but no map leads to it. Survey crews (special programs) can still search the areas of the map marked as empty, and can easily see if buildings are there, and completely intact. To save costs, they will remain that way until the manager decided a new building is to be built in the lot, which could be a very long time after it was freed up.\n\nTo get around that, you can use special programs, which will bring in wrecking crews and actually destroy buildings. These things go to the file, and overwrite it with new data, permanently destroying at least some of it. Coincidences can mean it does not destroy all of it. The down side is, as expected, it takes a long time. Sometimes, they will run multiple times to really ensure random chance does not leave too much data intact, which means it could take a very long time.\n\nAnd, again, as other answers pointed out, Even if your manager erases the building on the map, there can still be records outside of the managers reach which prove it was there to begin with. Servers can easily record your Ip address (unique identifier that can usually point directly to your house) as well as when you arrived, what you requested, and lots of other information. So even if you completely destroyed the files, there can still be a breadcrumb trail from your house to the server you were not supposed to connect to, and it can say exactly what data you asked for."
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2a7p3h | how does the tsa seemingly create any rule they want and everyone must follow? | From what I hear, read, and experience in my own life, I feel as though most decisions regarding the check-in experience at an airport which the TSA has established don't sit well with the majority of the population. As a democratic country, why don't these policies get voted on? If people don't like the things TSA does, can we not elect officials in charge that would better align our ideals? For a government agency that gets so much controversial coverage, why haven't new laws been passed limiting its power (similar to the NSA fiasco)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a7p3h/eli5how_does_the_tsa_seemingly_create_any_rule/ | {
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"The TSA was established with the passing of the aviation and transportation security act of 2001. Congress wrote voted and passed the law for former president bush to sign into law. Every american over 18 had an opertuinty to elect members of congress they felt would best represent them. Today's polititions could limit their authority by law or funding and chose not to, if you find this unacceptable than find someone who will represent your district with intent to propose change to TSA and vote them in.",
"Quick ELI5 lesson on modern Democracy:\n\nYour car is broken. It makes a chunka-chunk sound and doesn't go fast. You have to use democracy to fix it. Here's your options:\n\n1. You can vote on exactly what part to fix; either the transmission, the engine, or the headlights. Result: A lot of people think it would be awesome to fix the headlights, because it's waaaay cheaper. You reward yourself with a new TV using the money you saved, but get kicked in the ass when the car still doesn't work.\n\n2. You can vote on which expert gets to fix the car; either Bob, Michelle, or Shifty Joe. Result: Bob gets elected and goes to work. You probably don't like the price tag, but he's doing something, and the car definitely seems to work again.\n\nAnd of course, there's also the ever popular #3: Do nothing and complain when other people fix the car for you, then bill you, because they need the car to work too.\n\n**TL;DR** - If you don't like something related to government, seriously consider actually getting involved.",
"Here's a kind of... \"simplistic\" explanation. The TSA doesn't create laws, they create regulations. Occasionally, we get to vote on a law, but we absolutely never vote on regulations. The departments of the gov't such as TSA, dept. of education, energy, the IRS, etc, they are given the authority by the people we elected to create the regulations \"in good faith\", until someone challenges the regulation (maybe on constitutional grounds?) and then it can change. The end result is that most Americans like to complain, but are too lazy to get involved, which is why the TSA is allowed to sexually assault you at the airport, and they don't get beat down.",
"Long story short, the TSA was given the authority to do so by congress.\n\nWhy is complex. There was a hope that the government could do airport security better than the airlines and that airport security was part and parcel of our national defense, and needed to be treated as if the TSA were a military branch, so wouldn't get that much oversight regarding its decisions. \n\nMy suspicion is that this will change again in the future, however the TSA/DHS have become a massive bureaucracy in their own right, and will defend the status quo where they can. ",
"All excellent answers. The concept is called \"legislative discretion\" in that all federal agencies (TSA, FDA, OSHA, etc.) have been given the ability to create regulations, by legislation, at their own discretion in keeping with their legislated mandate (usually something as general as \"to protect the public health, safety, etc.) As a citizen you are entitled to submit comments when a new regulation is proposed that the agency may \"consider\" before finalizing the regulation. \n\nSource - Regulatory Analyst"
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crz0db | how do cells in an embryo know what to turn into? like how does it know which cell turns into muscle and which cell turns into bone? where does it draw the line between the 2? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/crz0db/eli5_how_do_cells_in_an_embryo_know_what_to_turn/ | {
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"Stem cells can give rise to specialized cells. When unspecialized stem cells give rise to specialized cells, the process is called differentiation. While differentiating, the cell usually goes through several stages, becoming more specialized at each step. Scientists are just beginning to understand the signals inside and outside cells that trigger each step of the differentiation process. The internal signals are controlled by a cell's genes, which are interspersed across long strands of DNA and carry coded instructions for all cellular structures and functions. The external signals for cell differentiation include chemicals secreted by other cells, physical contact with neighboring cells, and certain molecules in the microenvironment. The interaction of signals during differentiation causes the cell's DNA to acquire epigenetic marks that restrict DNA expression in the cell and can be passed on through cell division.\n\nMany questions about stem cell differentiation remain. For example, are the internal and external signals for cell differentiation similar for all kinds of stem cells? Can specific sets of signals be identified that promote differentiation into specific cell types? Addressing these questions may lead scientists to find new ways to control stem cell differentiation in the laboratory, thereby growing cells or tissues that can be used for specific purposes such as cell-based therapies or drug screening.\n\nAdult stem cells typically generate the cell types of the tissue in which they reside. For example, a blood-forming adult stem cell in the bone marrow normally gives rise to the many types of blood cells. It is generally accepted that a blood-forming cell in the bone marrow—which is called a hematopoietic stem cell—cannot give rise to the cells of a very different tissue, such as nerve cells in the brain. Experiments over the last several years have purported to show that stem cells from one tissue may give rise to cell types of a completely different tissue. This remains an area of great debate within the research community\n\nFrom:\n\n_URL_0_",
"Dna. How specifically we don't know yet. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n > Cellular differentiation is the process where a cell changes from one cell type to another.[2][3]Usually, the cell changes to a more specialized type. Differentiation occurs numerous times during the development of a multicellular organism as it changes from a simple zygote to a complex system of tissuesand cell types. \n\nThis though reminded me of 2 quotes from one of my favorite video games of all time haha....\n\n > Remember, genes are NOT blueprints. This means you can't, for example, insert \"the genes for an elephant's trunk\" into a giraffe and get a giraffe with a trunk. There are no genes for trunks. What you CAN do with genes is chemistry, since DNA codes for chemicals. For instance, we can in theory splice the native plants' talent for nitrogen fixation into a terran plant.\n\n— **Academician Prokhor Zakharov**, *Nonlinear Genetics*\n\n > Why do you insist that the human genetic code is \"sacred\" or \"taboo\"? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter -we- are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself.\n\n— **Chairman Sheng-ji Yang**, \" *Looking God in the Eye* \"",
"Its really fascinating but the early \"decisions\" are made right at fertilization.\n\nWhen the sperm pierces the egg it sets up a concentration gradient of calcium, formed by a process called the calcium wave, in the cytoplasm.\n\nWhen the first cell divides the 2 cells are already different because the each contain different amounts of calcium.\n\nAfter that point subtle differences switch on or off different processes, which tell each area of the embryo to make different cells types until a ball is formed.\n\nThen the ball of cells starts to fold and becomes hollow, and turns in on itself, like pushing your finger in to a balloon. Cells inside do one thing, cells on the outside do something else.\n\nMore layers are formed. And where the cells are in the layers are futher specialised by the what cells around them are doing as time goes on.\n\nIn short.... It's complicated!"
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1wwr4a | why do we assume life on other planets is made up of the same chemicals as us? | why do we think life has to live within the habitable zone of a solar system, and why do we think life needs amino acids and water to exist? Is it possible for things to exist consistenting of other elements, I.e. transformers | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wwr4a/eli5why_do_we_assume_life_on_other_planets_is/ | {
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"Because we know what life that is based on the same chemicals as us looks like. We know the signs, the needs and the waste products that can be used to find life.\n\nSomething that does not match up to our understanding of \"life\" is going to be a lot harder for us to find because we have no idea what we are looking for.",
"We don't know it for a fact, but both carbon and water have unusual properties that make them particularly suitable to complex life. Carbon, better than any other element, can form huge chains that are very stable, allowing the construction of very complex molecules. Water dissolves other substances better than almost anything else known, which is useful for setting up biological reactions.",
"It's not that we think life *requires* these things it's just that when we search for life it makes things a million times easier to search for things we already know life needs. \n\nIf we were to think \"life could be anything\" how would we go about searching for something like that in the cosmos? We have to start with what we know and go from there.\n\n"
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6bbgsj | speed limits | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6bbgsj/eli5speed_limits/ | {
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"Road structure, distance between intersections, visibility, and number of lanes. These are just a few factors that go into determining the speed limit."
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2b6b1v | how people are able to use words correctly without being able to define them | I assumed it is something to do with context knowledge or something, but I was very curious over how people can intuitively know to use a word correctly without being able to actually define what the word means. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b6b1v/eli5_how_people_are_able_to_use_words_correctly/ | {
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"They have heard/read it in a certain context before and are simply regurgitating information when presented with identical context",
"Humans are *really* good at finding relationships between things. In fact, we are *too* good sometimes (e.g. thinking the face of jesus is in their potato chip, or that they have a lucky undergarment). They can simulate the use of a word from other conversations they heard it used in when it seems to have a similar meaning in the current conversation. It is the same reason we can even learn to talk in the first place: word association."
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5a0jga | why do microwaves cause such a "burning sensation" even though they are less energetic than visible light? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5a0jga/eli5_why_do_microwaves_cause_such_a_burning/ | {
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"Each photon of microwave energy has less energy than a photon of visible light. However, microwaves tend to be used in copious quantities. Radars, data links, food warmers, use microwave beams of thousands of watts. They also penetrate the skin better, so they can stimulate the nerves by warming them rather than warming the skin and waiting for conduction to relay the heat to the nerve."
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37kd0d | who came up with the standard blanket(s)/pillow(s) bed layout and how did they come up with it? | I'm so comfortable | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37kd0d/eli5_who_came_up_with_the_standard/ | {
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"Bed gives your a dry, soft surface to sleep on.\n\nPillow supports your head/neck.\n\nBlanket keeps you warm, protects you from wind, is comforting.\n\nNot sure who came up with it. Allmost definitely wasn't invented at one time by one person. Probably started as sleeping on leaves/hay. Then using furs to stay warm. Pillows probably came last."
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3znrqv | in the us, how come if someone sides with one party on one issue, they're likely to share many other views with that same party? do the people stay on the far ends of party lines because of the government or is the government polarized because of the people? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3znrqv/eli5_in_the_us_how_come_if_someone_sides_with_one/ | {
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"Our species is hard wired to be tribal. We don't think rationally at all, no matter how much we want to believe that we do. Aligning with a political party automatically makes a competing party the \"enemy\". We are predisposed to challenging their stance, thus reinforcing our commitment to our party. ",
"It's a good question. After all, here's a logical proposal: the Freedom Party - as American as apple pie. You're free to marry your gay lover, free to get an abortion, free from high taxes and governmental overreach, and free to own as many guns as you like. Yet, that fits policies from both sides of the spectrum. \n\nA clue to the answer may come from an interesting [study](_URL_0_): are you OK with touching the taps in a public bathroom? Would you slap your father, if he told you it was OK? If you answered yes, you're probably liberal; if not, you're probably conservative. It seems that in many ways, there are \"two kinds of people\", and in the US culture, that's led to the emergence of two political parties.\n\nOf course, the electoral college means that it's very hard for a new party to evolve; rather, the two existing parties change with the times, each offering a position that some people will agree with. There may also be an element of picking up opinions from friends, who are likely to be people you find yourself in agreement with. Take a look at your Facebook feed: that's information selected by \"folks like you\" so is likely to appeal to you. The same's true here. You know what? I like Bernie Sanders. And I'm on Reddit, because I saw it as a community aligned with the person I am and the way I feel... and by a Reddit poll, Sanders is winning by a landslide. \n\nI'd like to take this opportunity to put a shout out to a great man and (full disclosure) member of my family: Charlton Heston. He broke the mold. Yes, he was president of the NRA; but he was also one of three white guys on the first ever civil rights march in Oklahoma city, long before he was famous, when he was a struggling actor. He was spat on in the streets and called a nigger lover because he stood up for freedom for everyone. Now rewatch \"Bowling for Columbine\" bearing in mind that when he (aged, with Alzheimer's) said \"civil rights was enough trouble the first time around\", he knew what he was talking about. "
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13lhnc | what is the difference between the american scouts and english scouts? | It seems as if the boy scouts in America are hated for being a Christian racist organization (at least on reddit), but in england it didnt seem that way at all. I dont remember it being christian at all (i remember the oath to join required you to "do your duty to god and the queen", but there was never any religion after that). What are the differences between the two? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13lhnc/what_is_the_difference_between_the_american/ | {
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"Not sure about in Britain, but in the US the BSA (Boy Scouts of America) is notorious for its homophobic discriminatory policies that include no openly gay scouts or leaders. The scouts themselves aren't hated, but for many the organization itself is despicable."
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217w66 | why does plaque mostly clog coronary arteries? why doesn't it affect veins or arteries in the toes, for example? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/217w66/eli5_why_does_plaque_mostly_clog_coronary/ | {
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"It can, but minor blockages or breaks in veins, arteries, and capillaries can be compensated for by their neighbors until a new rerouting can be grown.",
"I don't think it's that coronary arteries are the most likely to get plaque, but they feed blood directly to the heart muscle so if they're damaged, parts of your heart can die. This requires surgery (a bypass), so you hear about it more often ",
"It can and it does, it's just that the effects of plaque causing narrowing or a total blockage in a coronary artery are more immediately life threatening. Peripheral vascular disease (PAV) is narrowing of the vessels of the limbs, with the legs being the most commonly effected. While it's not as well known as Coronary Artery Disease, PAV is serious and can have some pretty dire consequences. It's not uncommon to lose a toe or even a whole leg if left untreated. \nTreatment depends on a the length and position of the disease but can be either by opening the artery with a small balloon (angioplasty) or an operation which involves harvesting a vein from the leg (the same one that is used for coronary bypass) and sewing it to healthy vessel above and below the blockage.\nHope this helps. \n "
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2lillm | why with today's camera technology do we still use video cameras that are 15+ pounds, and require two hands and a shoulder to rest on? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lillm/eli5_why_with_todays_camera_technology_do_we/ | {
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"For quality and photographic properties.\n\nThe biggest limiting factor is the lens. The wider the lens, the more light it can capture; and the longer the lens, the more tightly it can focus on distant subjects. Lens size is also related to other visual properties like depth of field and the compression of space. \n\nWith still-photo cameras, you can use a longer shutter speed -- leaving the camera sensor 'open' for longer periods -- to acquire more light. This is not as possible with video cameras which require a minimum of 24, often 25-30, images to be taken each second; the effective maximum shutter speed is 1/24th of a second. So if you want to acquire more light you need to make your lens bigger.\n\nIf you want to see the problems inherent in a small lens, go and take a cellphone photo outdoors at nighttime, and see the noise and poor detail that results. Even the best cellphone cameras struggle because it's the size of the lens that limits you.\n\nThere are other factors involved as well. You need to weigh down the back end of the camera to balance for the heavy lens, so now it's even bulkier. But you actually *want* some bulk most of the time, because it helps you keep things steady when shooting 'from the hip' (just holding the camera, without tripods or camera mounts). If you have a camera that's 3 inches wide and light as a feather, every tiny movement you make will jostle it and make your video a shaky mess. If it's got decent heft to it, it's easier to hold it steady and avoid jostling it with minor movements, and if it's big enough to mount on your shoulder, even easier. \n\nThen there's storage. If you're just some guy filming occasional 720p clips of your friends skating or of your dog catching frisbees, then saving to phone storage or SD cards is great. But professionals have different needs. Uncompressed 4K footage is 44 GB per minute. So you want cameras that can film to hard drives, SxS, etc, and that means bulk. And you want batteries that can shoot high-quality footage and run those hard drives and powered mics for at least a couple of hours while in the field, which means bigger, bulkier batteries. \n\nThese are all concerns that mostly professionals have, which is why it's mostly professionals that still have these big heavy cameras. For family movies and casual stuff you do use those much smaller, lighter cameras that can be wielded with one hand.",
"You are looking at it backwards.\n\nThe question you should be asking is, \"Since people can expertly handle a 15 pound camera, why wouldn't you cram as much technology as you could into that space to make the best video possible?\"",
"It's easier to steady cameras if they're heavier.",
"The cameras themselves are rarely that heavy. As others have mentioned, it's all the other shit you need to add onto the camera that makes it so heavy-- stuff that's not really technology dependent, but form-factor dependent. You want a nice screen to see what you're shooting when it's on your shoulder, right? That's heavy. You want a nice, professional lens on there, right? That's heavy. You want big, long-lasting batteries on there, right? Heavy. How about all the cables that need to run out to the various monitors for everyone else to watch? Those are heavy too. What if you skip the cables and go with a wireless transmitter? That's adding to the weight.\n\n\nThe camera itself, at this point, is basically a computer chip and a sensor. And you can actually go out and shoot a movie with a dslr if you want to-- they weight about two pounds and are definitely capable of professional quality. But in big-budget productions, they want all the perks that come with having all those add-ons, and that just adds to the weight.\n\n(also, usually that second hand is for stabilization, not because the camera's heavy)\n\nps sometimes what you're watching isn't \"today's\" technology, but yesterday's-- like when Nolan shoots Interstellar on (gasp!) *film!* Those film cameras are heavy as hell, AND need all that extra shit I mentioned."
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373xpj | why the us, whose military spending exceeds the next top ten countries in military spending, combined, cannot take down isis. | Satellites, drones, the NSA, the best weapons and aircraft, the most money spent on civilian training, etc. And they can't take down ISIS which is taking over locations that are publicized on the news. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/373xpj/eli5_why_the_us_whose_military_spending_exceeds/ | {
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"All they need is a fleet of B52's to flattened the whole city. A couple of nukes to flatten the country, so why can't they just destroy a whole city or a country? Because of the civilians, and how the international relations will view their actions. It's easy to kill people, but hard to identify friends from foe. ",
"1. Public reticence over more troops in the Middle East\n2. Rules of Engagement / Bureaucracy that prevents a bunch of Navy SEAL/special operators from simply going in and killing some dudes.\n3. Lack of willingness of local population to fight/train due to cultural issues including different religions, tribal affiliations, low education, and jadedness over years of conflict and destabilization.\n4. Mountains\n\nA look into Middle Eastern history might show you a little more for at one point we backed Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, gave them weapons, and money. ",
"Vietnam proved that even the largest assault can be stifled if you employ guerilla warfare properly. Even with the US's immense resources, we can be broken if you know how to keep the enemy chasing you until you wear out. ISIS deploys a lot of baiting tactics and typically work in the shadows, making it easy to be baited into long, expensive battles with them similar to 'nam.",
"First of all, the American public does not want to commit hundreds of thousands of troops and the equipment that comes with them to Iraq again. We want them to handle their own shit this time.\n\nThe Iraqi army was well equipped and plenty large enough to prevent ISIS from making any significant gains in Iraq and they chose not to.\n\nSecondly, ISIS is taking over towns full of civilians. In WWII it was considered acceptable to fire bomb whole cities, but not anymore. Now that would probably be a war crime.\n\nThe Kurds are allies of the US and ISIS would like to wipe them out, so the US is giving assistance, but we don't want to commit to full scale war like before.",
"ISIS is actually good for the US, strategically.\n\nNominally, if they wanted to, the US could steamroll the whole of the Middle East. It would be prohibitively expensive in lives and treasure and would create chaos in Europe, and pretty much anywhere there were lots of Muslims, but they could do it.\n\nThe sneaky-ass factor is that it's in the US national interest to have internecine, interfaith, international conflict wherever possible in the world, and this is the policy that the US has followed since they effectively became an Empire after the Spanish-American War.\n\nThe logic goes like this: The US is effectively safe from non-nuclear existential threats unless a whole bunch of other countries decide to gang up on them. If you keep those countries bust fighting/competing with/threatening each other, they can't form such an alliance.\n\nSome examples include: China vs Japan/Taiwan/S. Korea; India vs Pakistan; Europe vs Russia; Mexico vs Mexican Drug Cartels; Venezuela vs Colombia; the UK vs EU; Iran vs Iraq, Iran vs GCC; Israel vs Arabs.\n\nThis doesn't mean that the other answers are wrong - Democracies have to justify their wars and have to finish them quickly; the Law of Unintended Consequences would inevitably kick in (what would replace ISIS?); Why waste national resources on a problem that's solving itself?\n\nIt's just another part of the answer to your question.",
"It's actually that very spending--or rather the nature of it--that hinders them. This is actually a generic problem in the US, we spend more and get less for a lot of things (like helathcare) than any other industrialized nation on Earth. NEVER confuse price with quality.\n\nSee, the US military *never actually stopped* arming and training to fight a major technological war with the Soviet Union. A big part of the reason for that is because military spending is *obscenely* profitable for a few people, and so there's no incentive to dial it back. Any attempt to do so would be hit with a manufactured political shitstorm about how you're trying to \"hinder America's ability to defend itself.\" And The Great War Machine has taken on a life of its own. It no longer even matters (if it truly ever did) whether the latest $500 billion Shiny Death Toy even *works* or not (I'm looking at YOU, F-35), the important thing is that somebody made some SWEET profits off it.\n\nAnother part of the reason is that the military bureaucracy is a big, slow lumbering dinosaur, virtually unable to recognize or admit to having made a mistake. So progress is slow.\n\nSo starting pretty much with Vietnam, and continuing on to Iraq, the military found that trying to pit the World's Most Technologically Advanced Fighting Force against guys on freaking bicycles simply doesn't work: you get your ass handed to you. And no matter how many times the military has slunk back home, ass in hands, the next day, they kept on arming and training to fight the USSR (even long after it ceased to exist). Who knows? Maybe Putin will grant their wish some day.\n\nConsider the Millennium Challenge 2002 war games.\n\nThe US military decided it wanted to stage a war game against a fictional country very much like Iran, smallish, but with some modern, mid-to-hi-level technology. Well, the guy they put in charge of the \"enemy\" troops realized in about half a second that if he relied on the tech weapons and resources he had, the US would kick his ass in about 2 minutes.\n\nSo he tossed all that out. Instead of using hi-tech radio gear (which can be intercepted and/or jammed), he sent messages via guys on motorcycles. He shut off his radars. He used small fishing boats loaded with explosives instead of capital warships. That kinda thing.\n\nAnd he mopped the floor with the Awesome US Freedom Machine. He sank dozens of capital warships, including an aircraft carrier, all resulting in the simulated deaths of some 20,000 US troops.\n\nSo the military did the only logical thing it could at that point: stopped the games, refloated the ships, called backsies on the 20,000 deaths, reset the simulation, and ordered the commander to play by \"our\" rules. When he did that--under protest--the games resulted in the \"correct\" outcome: another Glorious Victory for our side. Hurrah!\n\nNow in addition to this, the specific situation with ISIS has several other major complicating factors, but that's another long story. Bottom line, it's Dick Cheney's fault.\n"
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5q2q4z | how do voter id laws suppress votes? | I understand that the more hoops one has to go through to vote, the fewer people will want to subject themselves to go through the process. But I don't fully understand how voter ID laws suppress minorities specifically, or how they're more suppressive than requiring voters to show up in person at the booths (instead of online voting, for example).
EDIT: I'm not trying to get into a political debate here, I'm looking for the pros and cons of both sides. Please don't put answers like "Republicans are trying to suppress minority votes" as the answer, I'm trying to find out *how* this policy suppresses votes.
EDIT: Okay....Now I understand what people mean when they say RIP inbox...thank you so much for this kind of response, wish me luck, I'm gonna try and wade through all of this... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5q2q4z/eli5_how_do_voter_id_laws_suppress_votes/ | {
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"I heard someone say that minorities have very shity jobs and don't have time to go get an iD.\n\nI sound weird to me because ib my country having ID is mandatory and it's required to every paper work or even to pay with credit card (the clerk will check that your name in the card and in the ID are the same in case it's a stolen CC).",
"I can't explain the full, national issue, but I'll provide one specific example I'm familiar with. \nWhen the State of Texas first passed it's voter ID bill, it allowed most government ID's to count is legal identification for voting purposes. They allowed CDL's, NCL's, state-issued ID's, and Concealed handgun permit. They did not, however, recognized state-issued college ID's, even though they were arguably harder to get than a DL. So if you were a college student who didn't have a DL, you'd have to go to the DMV, wait in line, fork over $30, just in order to vote, even though a state ran educational institution issued you an ID. They accepted concealed gun permits, which are predominantly held by conservatives, but not college ID's, which pretty much half of the liberals in Texas hold. And the very poor, who generally don't have state issued ID's, were simply disenfranchised if they didn't go and purchase a state issue ID. It functioned as a de-facto poll tax, because you've got to buy something to vote. \n \nSo while it could be argued that the law didn't DIRECTLY prevent anyone from voting, it was a notable hassle compared to the fact that voter fraud is time and time again shown to not be an issue. Simply put, Texas' law made it hard to vote on more liberal leaning audiences, and the body that passed it made little effort to hide that fact.",
"A lot of laws that affect everyone can be used to specifically target groups that are disproportionately unlikely to be able to follow them. The more hoops that a person has to go through, the more that a lack of education or a lack of time could stop them. The lack of education thing is important because someone with some college or even just a high school diploma is far more likely to have the patience to deal with large volumes of paperwork.\n\nI have a college education, which means I only have to work one job. I have the time and attention span to jump through lots of hoops to be able to vote. Others with less education or in worse financial situations are less likely to have the time or motivation to go through the long and arduous process that registering to vote could be.\n\nAs an anecdotal example, when my wife and I (white US citizens in our mid-20's) first moved to this state (Virginia), she wound up having to take 4 trips to the DMV to be fully registered to vote, which was incredibly tedious and discouraging. If she weren't so determined to exercise her rights, she would have stopped once she got her drivers license. This wasn't even due to excessive laws in the state, it was just the DMV. If she had to work 2 jobs (more likely for minorities) or if we had family relying on us (more likely for minorities) or if she had less education (more likely for minorities) then this process could have likely stopped her early.\n\nFundamentally, it's all about the kinds of people more likely to be lost at every hurdle. A law doesn't need to directly target minorities to disproportionately hurt them. \n\nEDIT: To clear up a few things:\n\n1. I'm not talking about total suppression of some minorities. Making some part of the process slightly more difficult will not block out an entire group. But if a law is put in place that stops 1% of the rich and 5% of the poor, then it is disproportionately hurting the poor. It doesn't take much to do this, and it often doesn't take much to tip the scales.\n\n2. My wife's situation was made worse by a fuck-up at the DMV. There were no extra laws getting in her way, but the process was made much more difficult regardless. This is an anecdotal point and only serves as an example of how simple little issues can prevent less motivated people from registering. I don't believe that her situation represents the majority of people in Virginia. \n\n3. As a lot of people have brought up, I'm improperly using the term \"minorities\". The group that I'm referring to is really anyone who is not part of the social or financial elite who may be disenfranchised by laws that make voting more difficult for everyone. Most of this group is poor, and is disproportionately non-white, hence my misusing the term. Plenty of white people are affected negatively by increased difficulty in voting, and plenty of racial minorities are not affected by it.",
"To start, ID in the US isn't required for day to day life so not everyone has one. \n\nID cost money to obtain which means the poorest citizens often don't bother because they need that money for other things. \n\nID also has to be obtained at specific locations which means those who are not living near one of these locations must find a means of travel to go get an ID. Again the poor often don't have access to the transportation needed to get the ID. Even those in cities who are poor, often can't take the time or money to get an ID due to life situations. \n\nTherefore those who are poor or in rural areas without transportation to where they can get ID are unable to vote as a result. ",
"One fun detail to note is that the *types* of ID accepted are quite politicized. In a famous American example, a voter ID law was passed that considered a gun license valid but a student ID invalid. For millions of young people, their student ID *is* their photo ID, and is usually accepted as one, while gun licenses are generally not. Because university students tend to be left-wing and gun owners tend to be right-wing this had the effect of shifting the political spectrum. Every single voter ID discussion involves debate over what forms of ID should be acceptable and it's impossible to escape the fact that certain forms of ID tilt heavily towards political demographics.\n\nBut really, the motivation is usually the knowledge that large demographics *don't have* ID. And there are a lot of reasons you may not have ID, primarily poverty. There are places, especially in the US and Australia, where you must travel 100, 150+ miles to get to a place that issues ID; in a rural area that place is often not open on the weekend, which means that you need to take a day off to alternate buses for hours to get you there and back. Which means you can only book appointments for the middle of the day, and there are likely nowhere near enough mid-day appointments available to get everyone their ID by election time, even if they were all willing to pay the fees for it to get a vote, which isn't an option for a lot of poor people -- and poor people are often unable to take a day off work anyway. And you'd better hope your rural area has the public transport to get you there, which it usually doesn't. You've gotta drive, but you can't afford to drive, because you're poor.\n\nAnd a lot of poor don't actually have the requisite documents to get ID. This is way more common than you think especially for older people and especially black people born during the segregation era, who were much more likely to be delivered outside of hospitals and never issued a birth certificate. If you have zero paperwork, how do you get your ID? Go get your birth certificate, they'll want ID documents of their own. You can get around that depending on area and luck, sometimes, but usually only by knowing details relating to the existing birth certificate they're looking up. Didn't get issued one because you were born black in 50s Alabama? Go ask them to issue one for you now, it's gonna be a bureaucratic nightmare. Realistically you're screwed. I've tried to help people in this exact situation, it is incredibly frustrating, time-consuming, and often expensive. And it always costs money to get the documents.\n\nPut simply, if you make an ID a requisite of voting, you are making paid fees a requisite of voting, and stripping people who can't afford those fees of their right to vote; additionally you are stripping people of the right to vote due to circumstances outside their control that disproportionately affect certain demographics; additionally there is no real list of valid IDs that doesn't favor a specific political demographic. Every voter ID law you look up will coincidentally happen to result in opening things up to voters supporting the proper's party/viewpoints and closing things off to voters opposing them. \n\nYou might want to look up voting eligibility tests for some fun historically-relevant examples of proposals that seemed entirely reasonable on the face but were used to block certain demographics from voting, typically black people. For example, Louisiana in 1964 required that voters take a literacy test, which would be graded by an election official to determine if you were allowed to vote; people generally agreed that it was only reasonable to require that voters be literate, a basic prerequisite to being well-informed. Here are some of its questions:\n\n > Above the letter X make a small cross.\n\n > Spell backwards, forwards.\n\n > Print a word that looks the same whether it is printed backwards or forwards.\n\n > Draw five circles that one common interlocking part. (sic)\n\n > Write every other word in this first line and print every third word in same line, original type smaller and first line ended at comma, but capitalize the fifth word that you write.\n\n > Write right from the left to the right as you see it spelled here.\n\nThere were 30 questions like these; you had 20 seconds to answer each one, with a single wrong answer costing you the right to vote. The trick was that every question could be interpreted in multiple ways. Are you supposed to spell the word 'backwards' forwards, eg, write 'backwards'? Or are you supposed to spell backwards the word 'forwards', eg 'sdrawrof'? Are you suppose to write 'right' from left to right, or write right (write correctly) 'from the left to the right'? Are you supposed to write a word that would look the same in a mirror (eg 'bed') or just write any word, since it would have looked the same if you wrote the last letter first, then the second-last to the left of that, etc (eg any word at all)? Are you supposed to put a cross above the letter X in the question, or draw a new X with a cross above it? They're all valid answers, and it was totally up to the election official to grade you. The election official would grade the same answer as correct for one person, but incorrect for another. Because they didn't care about the answers, it was an excuse to reject people from the wrong demographics (where 90% of the time 'wrong demographic' meant black, civil rights groups repeatedly had black and white members answer tests completely identically and showcase their different grades, but no one really cared). And if anyone criticized the system, they were mocked because what idiot doesn't want voters to be literate?\n\n[Louisiana voting as a game show.](_URL_0_)",
"Most prominent case I can recently remember occurred in [Alabama in 2015](_URL_0_). \nThe Alabama state house decided to close over 30 DMV offices across the state for budget reasons. However, these 30 DMV offices were all from counties that had a higher percentage of minority residents. This required residents to at times drive (or ride a bus) several hours one way to a DMV location if they needed to get a new ID. \nThis did result in a federal investigation by the Department of Transportation as to why these locations were singled out when other low traffic offices were left open. Alabama ultimately redacted their closing of majority of the offices, instead leaving them open on a limited (1 or 2 days a week) basis. ",
"It's not that people don't want to vote because they don't want to identify themselves with ID cards. In the US, many people don't actually have ID cards.\n\nSo requiring ID cards to vote means people first need to bother to get one. If the only reason to go through the effort of getting an ID card is to have your 1/100.000.000ish say in who's becoming your president.. I don't know if I'd bother either.",
"Here's a simple example to explain how voter ID laws can suppress votes from 2012...\n\n > Many ID-issuing offices maintain limited business hours. For example, the office in Sauk City, Wisconsin is open only on the fifth Wednesday of any month. But only four months in 2012 — February, May, August, and October — have five Wednesdays.\n\nThis is the office for non-driving voter ID. If you want a drivers license (has a fee), you can get one at any DMV, however only select locations with obscure and select hours offered the free ID.",
"I dont understand it either as it seems to be a big deal in the US but it [doesnt seem to be an issue in Canada](_URL_0_)",
"It's also key to understand that the US has a history of voter suppression - so much so that we have a direct amendment to the bill of rights forbidding one form of it (Poll Tax) and other silly things like taking a quiz to be able to vote. \n\nThe general idea is that by allowing certain malicious individuals power to turn away voters - it will lead to more suppression. They could simply tell them that's not the right ID or say they're not registered properly and turn them away. \n\nFor example, there's a couple of counties that allow foreign language ballots due to the size of a certain demographic but even then, you hear of voters being refused these ballots that were already printed and distributed to the polling place. \n\nLastly, you will see even without voter ID laws, a lot of advocacy organizations and nonprofits have volunteers sign up to be poll monitors to report any suppression that is occurring - especially to minorities and people with limited English capabilities. ",
"The main issue with voter ID laws is that it is a solution without a problem (which makes many people suspect other motives.) There is almost no voter fraud and when it does occur its easy to discover and would need to be done on a huge level to change elections. \n\nTake one of the rust belt states that went for trump. In Wisconsin Trump won by ~23,000 votes. So it was close for elections, but think of what would have needed to happen if just 5,000 of those votes came through fraud that voter ID would have prevented. \n\nSo for voter ID laws to stop voter fraud, you would have to believe that it would be logistically possible to get dozens if not hundreds of people to conspire to commit fraud at different districts through the weeks and months leading up to the election. Basically it would comprise a huge RICO-style conspiracy in which hundreds if not thousands of co-conspirators would commit over 5,000 federal felonies together. If just one of them talked the whole conspiracy would crumble and everyone would go to jail for decades. \n\nOf course if a significant number of your populace doesn't have ID and they tend to vote for the other party, then all you have to do is require ID to prevent them from voting, ensuring your win.\n\nSo that's the big issue with voter ID laws, there isn't a problem they are solving when it comes to voter fraud, it just doesn't exist like that.",
"Voter Id's should be a national ID card, like a passport.\nBUT, free to get, at a post office, and using SS card or citizenship doc and biometrics; eye, finger, face. \n\nPost offices are everywhere and are government run.\n\nYea, i get it there would be a huge security infrastructure build behind this but the benefits would be across the board. \n\nImagine being able to vote at any polling place at anytime just using a card. You have to get up early to get to work in the city on a long commute and stay late, your polling place is across town from your home. If there is a polling place next to work you could use your card to vote there.",
"In many parts of the country I get why this seems far fetched. I live in a major city and everyone I know has ID. You pretty much can't get by without it. And if you don't, there are a half dozen places where you can get one that are easily accessible by bus, have information in multiple languages, and there are groups that will help you pay the fee. \n\nBut lots of places are not like that. In rural areas you may need to get 20-30 miles to get an ID and there are no buses or other means to get there. Even if they can get there, the fees can be prohibitive or they may have language issues. Unlike denser areas, there are no groups offering help with the fees nor services to help people who do not speak english. They also may have trouble proving who they are. There are lots of people in this country without birth certificates or other forms of documentation. Even if one does exist for them, that is another long distance trip to make and another fee to pay. \n\nIt's also something people have never needed before. Many people in impoverished rural communities don't have cars, bank accounts, much less the resources to fly some where. They have no other need for a government ID aside from new voting laws. Laws which they may not even know about since they also might not have internet or cable TV. \n\nWhile there are certainly plenty of poor and senior whites that are impacted by these laws, many of these areas are predominantly black or hispanic. \n\nBy the way. having to go to the polls can also be used as a form of suppression. States and counties can choose where they put them and in some cases intentionally put them far from areas with high percentages of minority voters. Or do not provide enough so that there are long lines or an inadequate number of ballots. \n",
"If people don't have the time, patience, or motivation to get ID, should they really be allowed to vote for the \"leader of the free world\"? How much effort into determining the best candidate are they likely to have made?",
"In many states, if a non-custodial parent falls behind on child support payments, they often lose their driver's license, which doesn't necessarily prevent them from getting a regular state id; but you can't use a revoked license as ID to get a state ID, birth certificate, social security card, or job.\n\nWhen you are poor, every. single. thing. is. insurmountable.",
"For many people, getting a \"proper\" ID can be difficult. Sometimes it's due to financial reasons, clerical errors and even schedule conflicts.\n\nFor example, I recently changed my name here in Colorado. It took me 3 tries and several weeks to get to the DMV during their normal hours. I had to do multiple trips because I either wasn't given all the paperwork, or I was provided with the wrong information (turns out I had to change Social Security first). It was a PITA and wound up costing me about $40. Now I have a good job, so I was able to take the time off and afford it pretty easily. But I've also worked in places where that would have been horrible and nearly impossible.\n\nBut these people shouldn't have their votes taken away because they can't afford or can't get an ID. I know it's hard to imagine not having a driver's license, but it can be quite difficult for some folks. Just getting my birth certificate, which was one of the things i needed for my original license took forever, because my father wasn't listed on my birth certificate (mother passed away) and without an ID, I couldn't prove who I was. ",
"To add to what was said here, a bigger part of the voter ID laws in the context of this election was how the VRA allowed local governments to close certain DMVs and places where people could get ID.\n\nSo, instead of having a 30 minute wait at a DMV five minutes from your house, you'd now have to drive 45 minutes and wait two hours. When you have extenuating life shit going on, that's completely prohibitive. And in certain municipalities, they literally researched how to strategically close/relocate to affect certain demographics ability to get IDs. \n",
"It's not so much the what, but rather the how.\n\nPhoto IDs do not suppress voters. Hell you need a photo ID to be able to apply for government benefits, purchase alcohol/tobacco, and drive.\n\nThese are all activities which many of the alleged victims do just fine.\n\nThe problem comes from the how. \n\nIf suppression is the goal you make the IDs available only by in-person, hand written, paper application. And only make the offices available from 11am-2pm. And make the offices as far away from the areas you are trying to suppress as possible.\n\nNow if instead you said \"All government photo IDs are valid for voting, yes that includes Drivers license, WIC, EBT, passport, etc.\" There wouldn't be as much of an issue with them, because many of the people who claim they would be unable to get a voter ID, are perfectly able to get IDs required for other things (Benefits, alcohol, tobacco, driving)\n\nLook at [India](_URL_0_). More people, lower GDP, yet their ID is not \"suppression\". Every voter has one, and is entitled to one, for free. It's not about the what, it's about the how. ",
"Australia has a system where you require ID to enroll to vote, but once enrolled ID isn't required at the booth but your name is crossed off and cross referenced with your address on the roll you previously registered with, with your ID.\n\nGiven ID is required at one stage in the voting process, it is an ID requirement voting system, nobody has accused our voting system of being racist or of suppressing votes. We could even have a requirement of ID to vote on the day and it would make no difference.\n\nPeople need ID to do a huge amount of things, buy certain products, drive, open a bank account, board a plane. To assume requiring ID is 'racist' is also assuming that certain races are more prone to not having a bank account or buying booze / cigarettes or air travel. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nID laws on voting are harmless in Australia.\n\nI will concede that, if the process was onerous, expensive and daunting to get ID then it may detract some people from voting. That however, is not relating to voting as much as it is to the State issuing ID's generally. That is where the improvement should really be.",
"I can give you a personal experience, from GA. The new I'd law here has you produce a birth certificate, a SSN card, your old id and two froms of proof of address like a bill or whatever. So you can get your id without this but with out all of the above you don't get the little star that says you can vote with it. \n\nSounds simple right? Well if your like me and your parents lost your SSN card and birth certificate and you only have your current ID it becomes a pain. So you have to go to the SSN office and get a card, which is like a day's worth of waiting in line. What do you need to get it? an ID and your birth certificate lol. Luckily I had a passport and that worked as well but had I not had that I would have been screwed calling all over to hospitals to find a copy of it. Most people don't have passports and they hit a wall here. In my state it is easier to get a passport then to vote. And no they won't take the passport to get the vote id in the first place you have to have those two things the BC and SSN card. Both made of fragile paper and as old as you are. \n\nSo if you have time, money, and/or responsible parents your probably in the clear but if you hit a roadblock it could take you weeks worth of screwing around in gov buildings to get it and some people can't afford that/have the time for it. \n\nOne good thing about GA is that once you get it your set for life here. ",
"There should be a free voter ID available that is legal ID. This not only prevents voter fraud but gives the poor a free legal ID to use. Its a win win but people will poke holes in it and insist it should be given without need to prove who you are or it is racist in some way. \n\n",
"Im kinda late to the party here. Please forgive me if this has already been addressed, but why aren't polls open longer? The 8am-5pm work day is an outdated concept. ",
"First off, there have been very, very few cases of voter fraud... certainly nowhere near the amount to justify the attention the issue receives. And the issue is being tactically used to disenfranchise certain pockets of voters through the combination of laws and additional burdens it imposes.\n\n- Minorities were more likely to not have the needed documentation to get an ID, especially in states that have made the requirements much harder... think immigrants from 3rd world countries who are now citizens, elderly born in rural areas at home, etc. who may not have an official birth certificate with stamp, seal, etc.\n\n- IDs cost money and take time to get (during limited hours). The poor move more often, have less money, and are more likely to have jobs that they get paid by the hour when they are there working, but may have to take time off work to get an ID. So there's a larger burden of time and money to keep updating IDs for the poor.\n\n- Poor/minorities, the elderly may not have easy access to transportation. Alabama closed all their DMV's in Democratic areas, forcing people to travel further to get an ID.\n\n- Wisconsin passed new voter ID laws and advertised these changes/requirements across the state -- EXCEPT IN MILWAUKEE! The biggest city in the state also happens to be the largest pocket of minority voters.",
"Mississippi checking in, \nHere in the grand state of Mississippi (you can count on us), you aren't legally required to have ID unless you are driving. Fortunately, I live in a larger town, we have a DMV open 5 days a week. Most of my students come from more rural areas and if they're lucky, they have a DMV within 50 miles of there they live, usually it's open only 1 day a week. Some are only open every third or fourth week for a day. \n Take your Local DMV, move it to at least an hour away, make the hours very few, imagine you have no car or no one to take time off on the one Wednesday that they are open and drive you to the DMV. \nThings like that actually do make a difference here. ",
"To your edit, you are committing the middle ground fallacy. \n\nThere aren't always a pro and con list that leads to a better decision, sometimes one side is just correct. ",
"Assume the following; poor people and people in rural areas have a hard time getting ID's because it's expensive. Especially if a person has had a drivers license and lost it due to alcohol convictions, traffic fines, or child support enforcement. If you're both poor and you live well past the end of the county road, it make take a long hike to the bus stop and all the cash you can scrape together just to get a non-license ID card. \n\nWhich people are poor and live in rural areas? \n\nThere's no pro or con to this. It just is. ",
"Those who believe that voting laws suppress voters believe that those voters are idiots. Somehow those [uneducated and overworked people](_URL_1_) are still able to commit massive voter fraud throughout the country. \n\nIndia has much worse poverty and education problems and [they have many more voter laws](_URL_0_) and still have large turnouts... ",
"I am from Texas, you must show your driver's license and can only vote at a specific location based upon your address. Clerical errors can be a problem, I was almost not able to vote because I didn't show up in the computer lookup for my district. Only after insisting the error be looked into was I able to get results and eventually vote (the staff were content not bothering with it and said I must not have registered). Overall, I was there nearly 30 min. It is not a system that encourages more votes, based on my experience.",
"To keep saying that it's too difficult to get ID is ridiculous. \n\nYou need one to open a bank account, or to apply for a job to fill that bank account.\n\nYou also need an ID to file for unemployment, and to apply for welfare, and Medicaid, and food stamps.\n\nYou need a photo ID to apply for Social Security\n\nAnd to buy a home, and apply for a mortgage, or to rent a home.\n\nYou need a photo ID to drive a car, you need one to buy a new car, to buy a used car, heck, you even need one to rent a car. \n\nYou need a photo ID to get on an airplane, and you need one to get married, and you need one to check into a hotel room for your honeymoon.\n\nYou need a photo ID to buy a gun, and to apply for a hunting license and a fishing license, and even to adopt a pet.\n\nYou need a photo ID to pick up a prescription, you need one to buy certain kinds of cold medicine, and you need one to donate blood. \n\nYou need a photo ID to enter a casino, and you need one to buy lottery tickets.\n\nYou need one to buy a video game that’s rated M for Mature, and you need one to see a movie rated NC-17. \n\nYou need a photo ID to buy a cell phone and apply for a coverage plan and, in perhaps the greatest irony of the entire Voter ID debate, you need a photo ID to hold a rally or protest, such as a rally or protest against requiring a photo ID to vote. ",
"In order to vote you must be an American citizen. In order to deter those who arent citizens from voting (and also to deter people from voting more than once), you must identify yourself. Minorities have and are capable of obtaining ID's. To say that they are less capable of obtaining ID's or even less likely to have them constitutes the exact slander that is so often used against those who support voter ID laws. Many states will waive the 10-20 dollar fee for a state ID (non drivers ID) if your income is below the poverty line. We are all capable of making a trip to the DMV, paying 15 bucks and having our photo taken once every 4 to 6 years. ",
"You'll get different answers if you ask college educated types that are taught that it's racist, vs regular people that just go get ID when they need it or register to vote when they want to vote. [I would definitely recommend watching this video](_URL_0_) before you give too much weight to the well worded speculation from the college educated types. This isn't the 20s. There is no reason in modern America why voters shouldn't get ID just like they do for everything else. How in the hell is it ok to require a license to drive/buy alcohol/cigarettes/marijuana, or in some states to get a permit to exercise the 2nd amendment, or to board a plane... but voting? voting... it's too much to ask that voters get ID just like the rest. Ridiculous. This is why there's so much questioning about operations to bus in voters/illegal migrant voters, and with undercover videos exposing people actually talking about having done it and planning to do it, it's not unfounded speculation. ",
"My state requires a PHOTO ID. And only very specific types. Student ID doesn't count and where are most large colleges? Urban settings where you don't need a drivers license to get around. Couple that with many universities not even issuing parking permits to freshmen and you've got a ton of students (who tend to skew left) walking around without valid voter ID and not realizing it because they have a job and 7 classes to worry about. A lot of people in urban areas are hit by this. I used to rent from a 90 year old woman who never once had a driver's license because she didn't need one. Nearly everything in a city for your average person is within walking distance. And many people don't even know that the DMV can issue a \"walker ID\". So even removing the racial implication of targeting urban demos, it's still a fairly specific effect.\n\nWhat makes the intent of these kinds of laws most obvious is when they explicitly state that a student ID (or military ID or one issued by social services) is not valid but a gun permit is. You really don't have to wonder which side that benefits. Especially in smaller college towns with disproportionate populations of students and non-driving townies. You end up with a handful of folks on the outskirts of town having valid ID and very few in the actual city limits having one. And there's tons of people saying \"well, now that you know that, go get one!\" ok. Got $65? Cuz i sure don't just laying around for a piece of plastic i'll only use once every 2 years. And i make decent money. When i was 17-22 no way in hell did i have that to spare. If i hadn't grown up in the suburbs and my parents paid my fees i probably wouldn't have had a license until i was 24.\n\nSo how are voter ID laws discriminatory? People with agendas make voter ID laws that suit their agendas. That's just how people work. Until your Voter ID is automatically sent to every single American on their 18th birthday then they are discriminatory by very definition. Everyone talking about other countries and their voter ID laws; many of those have mandatory or automatic registration. We (and by we i mean very specific people) *hope* that most people will find the whole process confusing or laborious enough to procrastinate or give up on it.\n\nJust ask yourself; if your goal is to protect the integrity of the voting process why would your entire agenda be *restrictive*? Wouldn't you want to make the process easier for lawful voting **while** you make it more difficult for unlawful voting? Why just make it harder to vote? It's pretty damn basic once you break it down.",
"Voter ID laws aren't racist no matter what anyone says. At most they are anti-poor for all the various reasons other's have listed. However because of demographics, that means more poor white people are effected by these laws than there are minorities effected by them (nearly more than all minorities combined actually) in discrete numbers, even if minorities have higher proportions that are poor. This is assuming that the poverty line is the cutoff for being considered poor in this context, which seems appropriate considering that getting an ID costs about $20 which while someone in poverty might struggle with, anyone over the poverty line could afford.\n\nThat being said, IDs in the US aren't some extra thing that's nice to have but most people don't really need. Living without an ID makes things tremendously inconvenient (regardless of income) and makes the one trip to the DMV every 5 to 30 years worth a hassle even to poor individuals. Without ID you can't open a bank account, buy booze or cigarettes, apply for a job, get welfare/food stamps/unemployment, get married, rent or buy a house, operate/buy/rent a car, fly on a plane, get a prescription, get a cell phone plan, etc. Basically any inconvenience or cost that people claim getting an ID causes is tremendously outweighed by the inconvenience and cost of trying to live without an ID. \n\nIt's also worth noting that the vast majority of (nearly all) modern democracies have had Voter ID laws for a long time and we have never once heard any complaints about them being racist, or even anti-poor people for that matter, in all those other countries. Even in countries that have similarly disproportionate poverty rates among minorities. ",
"Short and sweet: USA has one of the worst voter participation of any first world country and many developing countries. We shouldn't be adding any steps to the process, we need to make the user experience as seamless as possible.",
"I live in Canada and I actually have experience working as a deputy returning officer for a provincial election a couple years ago. \n\nWhen I was working, I required that people had at least one of three things in order for them to vote.\n\na) A voting card, the card had 5 or 6 digit numeric code on it, used for the purposes of identifying the voter. They were mailed out to addresses prior to the election based on census data and other info collected (for example, when you received an ID/Drivers license, you have to provide an address)\n\nb) If they didn't have a voter card, they had to fill a one page form so that they could be entered into the system. I would enter this information in to ensure that they didn't vote twice and wouldn't have to deal with this during the next election.\n\nc) If they had no form of ID, and no voter form, they also had to fill out a declaration stating that they are who they are, and if they lied about the information provided, they could be charged under the elections act.\n\nVoter ID really wasn't that bad. It was the people, primarily older folks who were the pain. They would have no voter card, and did wish to provide any form of ID or sign any form to vote. Eventually when they realized that we were not going to allow them to vote if they did not comply, did they produce their driver's license.\n\nIn my experience, the DMV in Nova Scotia is normally open until 7pm and getting an ID costs max $15. As well we also took birth certificates, and even registered mail as proof. You don't actually need ID to vote here, but if you do, it makes the process significantly easier.\n\nVoter turnout for that election I worked was 59% which was unchanged from the previous eleciton, in comparison, voter turnout in the last Presidential election was 55%.",
"Lets just be clear about what anyone who opposes voter ID is saying. \n\nBlack People apparently don't: \n\n-drive cars, \n\n-board planes\n\n-buy alcohol\n\n-adopt pets\n\n-get prescriptions\n\n-visit casinos\n\n-open bank accounts\n\n-purchase cigarettes\n\n-apply for jobs\n\n-rent homes\n\n-get married\n\nDemocrats not only think that blacks are mentally retarded to the point that they don't function in society but that they are some kind of societal outcast cave hermits living off the grid.\n\n That to me is far more racist than anything I have heard coming from the people who want ID requirements\n ",
"I feel like this entire issue should be simplified that way no one can complain of fraudulent votes. In order to vote, you would need an ID, plain and simple.\n\nBut make it super super simple to get one. When a citizen turns 18, send them a free ID. If they do not have a registered address, that's another issue obviously, but then they should send an official out to find the person to get them the ID.\n\nI don't want to oversimplify the issue, but voting is one of the biggest hallmarks of our society, and the nation should do everything it can to make it the easiest and most legitimate process possible.\n\nJust my 2 cents!",
"Think of it this way.. you close down all the voting stations, then you open up a bunch of drive through voting stations that 'everybody' can use. You sit back and watch as gas taxes go down and side walk funding gets cut.\n\n...or say that you allow absentee voting but only if you own the residence you are sending the ballet from \"Because rental properties are too hard to confirm and it would allow voter fraud\". So if you rent you have to go to a polling station, if you own you can just mail it in. Sit back and watch while legislation for mortgage interest tax deductions go through the roof and renters rights legislation gets ignored. \n\n\nThe Republicans noticed that people without IDs were not voting for Republicans. So Republicans have nothing to lose by making harder for those people to vote.\n\n",
"In Norway everyone above 18 (or that turn 18 in the year of the election) gets an official voter card in the mail they're registered on. This is a document we bring along to vote, but we can also use driver's licence, passport and credit card as long as it's with a picture on it. It's a decent system.",
"The ID laws are over-structured and work best for middle class suburbanites: people who don't move around a lot, and have to maintain a driver's license. \n\nSo for instance, you might have moved from Texas to Florida and registered to vote in Florida. But your Texas ID will not be accepted to vote in Florida. You must get a Florida ID to do this, and it takes quite some time and energy to get your Texas ID converted into a Florida.\n\nThe Texas ID obviously proves who you are. That is not in doubt. The extra requirement that it be a Florida ID doesn't add any new information about you.\n\nSome states don't accept the US passport to vote. Can't think of a better document to prove citizenship and name simultaneously but no, has to be a state ID, US passport not accepted. (Ohio rejects the passport, but accepts a utility bill. Now you may think that makes little sense from an identification perspective, but the utility bill is harder to get, you have to own a home or have a lease in your name to get the utility bill. It filters people quite differently in regards to voting.)\n\nOn that note, REAL ID act proof of address requirements make getting a new ID rather complicated. Again, if you live in the same place, like you own a house, it's not too hard to get the right paperwork together to prove your residence. But if you move around a lot, or are effectively homeless, etc, proving address is difficult and will prevent you from getting a REAL ID compliant ID.\n\nSome states are strict on the expiration. Driver's licenses get renewed when they expire because it's about driving. State ID cards may expire but renewing them makes less sense, as long as they are accepted as ID. But many states will reject them for voting. And poor people have little reason to pay to renew an ID card if it's still being accepted for their other errands.\n\nAnd birth certificates have gotten expensive. If you lose it, ordering a new one can cost as much as $50. That's a major disincentive to get an ID to vote even if the ID is free.\n\nWhat about those free IDs to vote? Some states, like Texas, print on them they can only be used for voting [and can't be used for identification.](_URL_0_) It's a lot of effort to get an ID card which...somehow isn't an ID card.",
"You need an ID to get a passport and travel, to go to the bank, to drive, to even get into a bar, to get any official document from the gov, to buy a house, to buy a car, but we still don't want people properly identified for voting? We care about identity protections except when it comes to voting? that makes no sense to me. Voting is a way bigger deal and still? \"oh you're john smith, sure, I'm just gonna take your word for that.\" \n\nI get the issue of minorities being less likely to have ID, I get that. My dad got his first ID at 45. But do we rather compromise an important sensitive process rather that work on helping minorities get ID?",
"Aren't those hurdles of getting the ID similar to the hurdles of voting: taking time away to go vote, transportation, etc? The way I see it, preventing fraud is more important than inconveniencing people. If a person doesn't want to go through the hoops to vote, then it's not important enough to them. Where there's a will, there's a way, right? Or are we trying to tell people they can do anything while talking out of the other side of our mouths by saying they can't because things are too convenient and it needs to be easier? Also, who's to say that if fraud isn't a problem now that if we made it super easy to get ID that it wouldn't end up being a problem? If no one has robbed my house, obviously it's not a problem for me. But, if I leave the door unlocked just so I don't have to unlock it when I get home, then it can and will become one. Obviously, getting voter ID is not as simple as locking and unlocking a door, but the principle is the same.",
" > In his wallet, Anthony Settles carries an expired Texas identification card, his Social Security card and an old student ID from the University of Houston, where he studied math and physics decades ago. What he does not have is the one thing that he needs to vote this presidential election: a current Texas photo ID.\n > \n > For Settles to get one of those, his name has to match his birth certificate — and it doesn’t. In 1964, when he was 14, his mother married and changed his last name. After Texas passed a new voter-ID law, officials told Settles he had to show them his name-change certificate from 1964 to qualify for a new identification card to vote.\n > \n > So with the help of several lawyers, Settles tried to find it, searching records in courthouses in the D.C. area, where he grew up. But they could not find it. To obtain a new document changing his name to the one he has used for 51 years, Settles has to go to court, a process that would cost him more than $250 — more than he is willing to pay.\n\n[Source.](_URL_0_)",
"You answered your question when you said more hoops. \nYou can't goto a playground and say all boys can't play with dolls. It's unfair to boys. So you make a rule that eliminates boys, but indirectly. To play with dolls you must wear a dress. You can now argue that ANYONE can wear a dress. It will impact boys more because besides wearing one, many will have to go out and get one, needing a ride, knowing how the sizes work, affording it etc. \n\nSo in this instance you ask, why is this a policy? Do the toys last longer when people wearing dresses play with them? If the only difference in the outcome is that less boys play with dolls, and that's it, you can argue that is the intent of the rule.\n\nWith voted ID laws you have to ask what outcome you're trying to change. Is there massive coter fraud? No, so what is it the law is actually affecting?... Bingo.",
"I'm in Wisconsin. I remember when Governor Walker wanted to enact a voter ID law that also closed down several DMVs throughout the state exclusively in Democratic areas. Do the math. That is the mentality behind these voter ID laws.",
"I feel like a lot of people are missing that it isn't just a matter of having the ID but if it being accepted. I'm in Texas and the rule is that it has to exactly match the name in the registry and if it doesn't then the elections judge gets to decide if it's close enough or not. So here's some examples. \n\nMarried women: My mother's driver's license has her name as Firstname Maidenname Marriedlastname because when she got married the law was that your driver's license would have your maiden name as your middle name. Her voter registry correctly shows Firstname Middlename Marriedlastname. She vote at a judge's discretion. There was a judge in Texas that had to vote provisionally because of this and that takes longer and is often not even counted. \n\nCultural traditions. Some cultures have multiple last names. If your name is Miquel Juan Chavez Remirez in the registry the clerk can turn you away if your license says Miquel Remirez or Miquel Chavez. It doesn't match. \n\nSpelling: The less common a name is the more likely it is to have a data entry error somewhere. Is Lakeshia the same as LakesCia? What about Dhora Patel and Dora Patel? Especially when the name is transcribed from a diffrent writing system. \n\nKeep in mind in all of these cases it falls to the discretion of an elections official who at least in my area is usually the member of the areas dominant political party. They can refuse to allow any of the people above a vote but choose to allow Michael John Smith to vote for Michael Adam Smith as happened to someone I know who's father took it upon himself to vote on his son's behalf. ",
"As I've been reading a lot of histories lately, I want to actually answer your question by tracing the roots of the problem back through American history. At the founding of our country there was a delicate balance established between the rights of the individual states and the right of the country as a whole. The states were responsible, for example, for handling election balloting. (See Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution). Thus, it fell to each individual state to determine who was eligible to vote.\n\nFast forward a little bit to the foundation of political parties. Despite the desires of many of the founders to not have a party system, quarrels in the early 19th Century prompted different political parties to be formed. Each had their own idea on what was important to the nation and what steps should be taken to do those things that they felt were important. Each individual party would seek any advantage they could gain over the others.\n\nAt the conclusion of the Civil War (fought initially over the issue of states rights but later slavery as well) came the question of reconstruction - how to bring back the rebellious states into the nation once more. Because slavery had been ended following the passage of the 13th Amendment, some states in the south attempted to pass laws that prohibited newly-freed slaves from being able to vote. The Republicans, who were in power at the time, knew that the newly-freed slaves would likely vote Republican (as Lincoln was a Republican and the governments of 1860 onwards were Republican) and there was concern over the denial of the right to vote. \n\nTo take care of this and some other issues which had arisen from Reconstruction, the 14th Amendment was crafted and passed. This Amendment served several purposes - it prohibited the states from creating laws which would deprive anyone of their fundamental rights (life, liberty, property), and established that ALL male (later removed) inhabitants of all states were eligible to vote. \n\nThe issue still persists to this day, however. States see the establishment of state IDs as a means of helping ensure the validity of the vote. However, it costs money in most states to obtain a state ID and there are a number of requirements... birth certificate, proof of where you live, etc. Because the right to vote is guaranteed to ALL people in a state, any law that would place a burden on the individuals falls under the 14th Amendment and would be nullified - which is what we have seen lately. If you're poor and can't afford an ID, you shouldn't be unable to vote. If you lost your documentation in a fire or never were given a birth certificate, you shouldn't be unable to vote.\n\nSo for a TL;DR - Political parties were seeking to gain advantage in any way possible to put their people into office. An amendment was added to the Constitution that made it illegal for states to pass laws that would deprive any portion of their populace of the right to vote. Laws that are passed which require a burden on anyone - money for a specific ID (or even the existence of a specific ID), documentation, etc. - run into trouble with this amendment.\n\n(Sources, for those interested... \"The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace\" by H.W. Brands, \"Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln\" by Doris Kearns Goodwin, \"The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution\" by David O. Stewart)",
"I worked for a homeless shelter for a number of years and often we had to assist in getting basic identification documents..... you may think that shouldn't be a problem but it is in fact, often, incredibly difficult. One reason for difficulty is that you need ID to get ID.... you also will need money to get copies of birth certificates, transcipts, new state ids.... etc. If you are a poor minority that $15-$20 is far more of a burden than one might think. \nBasically... many in power know that if you implement certain rules you can eliminate a large minority population from voting.\n\nedit: downvotes?"
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX6E2Ucv7S8"
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"https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a-photo-id-so-you-can-vote-is-easy-unless-youre-poor-black-latino-or-elderly/2016/05/23/8d5474ec-20f0-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html?utm_term=.13b305a3d9cc"
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4wv6ui | why are ibuprofen tablets bright pink in the uk? what determines the colour of different pills? | Just wondering, they're very often bright pink (rarely see white tablets) - is there a reason for this? Pink seems a strange colour given that it might make them look more like sweets to children. Is the colour pink chosen specifically, or was it randomly selected to make them stand out from other tablets? Is there specific criteria for the colour of each different pill that indicates something about it's ingredients/components? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wv6ui/eli5_why_are_ibuprofen_tablets_bright_pink_in_the/ | {
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"Pills often contain an artificial coloring ingredient to make them distinctive. They'd generally be white otherwise. Same reason they come in so many different shapes/sizes/textures and often have letters and numbering. The more we can make pills look different from one another, the less Iikely they are to get mixed up. Taking the wrong kind of pill can be lethal if you mix it with something else/take too much.",
"There's only one (less popular) brand that makes pink ibuprofen. I use them a lot and 99% of the ones I buy are always white.",
"I've never had pink or white ones. Always orange or blue if they're gel capsules. But to answer your question, I'd imagine it is more or less at random. Drug companies are probably just like 'is there another pill this shape and color?\" \"No, good. Let's go to production.\""
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cp8sr8 | if using screens before bed interferes with the bodies ability to produce melatonin and sleep normally, then would taking a melatonin pill reverse this effect? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cp8sr8/eli5_if_using_screens_before_bed_interferes_with/ | {
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"Does blue light filtering on phones actually work or does it just dim the screen?",
" > Current academic and medical consensus suggests there are no known health effects of day-to-day exposure to blue light (visible light with wavelengths 400-450 nm), and it is not regarded as a cause of eye disease, [eye strain](_URL_2_), or disruptions to [circadian rhythm](_URL_3_), as distinct from any other frequency band of [visible light](_URL_0_).^[1](_URL_1_) ^[2](_URL_5_) ^[3](_URL_4_)",
"Yes and no. \n\nMelatonin pills is mostly a last push, so if you didn't have much melatonin in the body to begin with, it wouldn't make you sleep. \nPlus. Taking a melatonin pill when you body doesn't want to sleep, or taking them regularly, can really mess with your melatonin production, so it is in no way recommended to take melatonin regularly, because of a preventable issue. \n\nSource: I take melatonin because my autism and deppresion doesn't like sleep patterns.",
"it may work, but introducing a naturally produced substance tends to increase resistance or make your body produce less because it senses you already have enough.\n\nmelatonin is also produced as a part of a complex process. it won't replace the other states and substances in the process.\n\nif meditation makes your brain produce seratonin, would taking seratonin do the same thing as meditating?",
"Surprised there isn't a good answer by now floating to the top.\n\nMelatonin affects your \"internal clock.\" That time in the evening when you start to yawn every time, at the same time (if you go to bed on schedule). It doesn't make you sleep, those are other chemicals being released at different intervals based on that clock. \n\nTaking melatonin at a drastically different time is not effective as your internal clock can't shift that fast. Instead, you start taking melatonin several days before your adjustment, usually 1 hour earlier before bedtime and keep taking it 1 hour earlier and earlier the next nights until the target bedtime.\n\nIn an extreme example, if you are flying from CA to Moscow, that's about a 12 hour difference. Say you go to bed at 9pm normally in CA, and also want to go bed at 9pm in Moscow. So you'd want to start 6 or 7 days before and take it at 8, then 7, 6 and so on and strictly stay to that schedule over the next 5 days in Moscow (from 2am, then 1am, 12am, etc). \n\nThere are plenty of online calculators/schedulers that you can fill out and print to take with you that work well. IMO, stay away from the ones that skip 2 hours a night - stick to 1 hour adjustments (I'm an old man). However, the young may be able to skip 2 hours a night.\n\nLast bits of advice: don't keep taking it past 2 or 3 days after your target nights: your body can become reliant on the doses to start the sleep cycle. And lastly, use as small dosage as possible. Even if you don't think it's working, it is. I cut up the over the counter stuff as it's way too strong according to online dosage charts and it works well.\n\nSource: I use to fly overseas a lot and have really hard times sleeping. Once I figured out this schedule, I've had no problems over many years.",
"No, it isn't a production of melatonin that is the problem when using screens. The melatonin is produced but the blue light stimulates the breakdown of melatonin as it makes your body think \"sunrise! time to get out of sleepy mode\"\nTaking a melatonin tablet will boost levels but then all benefits will be lost as your body gets the wrong stimulation form the screen.\n\nWhen melatonin is prescribed to children for sleep problems the parents are told no screens after giving the melatonin so as to not reverse the effects.",
"There are specialized photoreceptors in your eyes that are sensitive to frequencies of light that naturally occur during sunset. Those photoreceptors do not help us see, but when stimulated tell the pineal gland to release melatonin. This melatonin surge is interpreted by the brain as “time for bed” and you get sleepy. So, if you aren’t seeing the sky during sunset, taking a melatonin supplement may help you to fall asleep.\n\nHowever, the tricky part is that we get the same melatonin surge at sunrise. The same light frequencies are produced so our brain needs a way to differentiate between the two. So, our brain double checks whether or not we should be sleepy by checking out how bright the world is 15 minutes after the melatonin exposure. If it’s dark, we know it’s past sunset and it’s time to get sleepy. If it’s light, we know it’s past sunrise and we can ignore the melatonin.\n\nThis is how artificial light sources create problems. If you want to go to sleep, staring at your phone, or computer, or TV, or whatever light source will keep the melatonin from being correctly interpreted. It doesn’t make sleeping impossible, but your brain is losing one mechanism that helps to make the process go smoothly. \n\nSo, to answer the question, melatonin supplements should help fix the artificial light problem but only if you get into the dark shortly after taking it.",
"This is actually explained very well in Matt Walker's book \"Why Do We Sleep.\" The moment you wake up your body produces a chemical that makes you sleepy. It builds up more and more as the day goes on. You would fall asleep right away if it wasn't for the circadian rythem which basically tells your body to sleep for 8 hours and be awake for 16 (this is the reason why when you stay up all night you feel sort of fresh and not tired when the sun starts to come up) When you get to the end of the day when the sun is setting and your circadian rythem has come to the time where it thinks your body should be asleep is when the chemical that has been building up all day finally wins the battle. This is when melatonin starts to be produced. To answer your question directly, no. Taking melatonin, for some unknown reason, does not produce a quality sleep when compared to getting a natural 8 hours of sleep. It would take 9-10 hours of sleep to get the same amount benefits as getting a natural 8 hours. But it's mentioned in other comments and also recommended by Dr.Walker, getting a light filter or those dimmable lights can improve sleep quality. Start dimming the lights in your room and turn on a light filter on your phone/device (I use flux for my laptop) and your body will not have as much of a delay compared to seeing this sleep-delaying light.",
"This must be nice. I wish I could find something in the world that actually makes me feel awake during the day. I get the right amount of sleep, I'm tired all day; to the point of almost falling asleep at the wheel. Get enough sleep and drown myself in caffeine? I am falling asleep the second that coffee is done. Sleep for a literal week straight and feel like I have been cooped up too long? Tired the minute I start doing anything outside of my bedroom. I am fucking miserable being this tired all the time. I wish a phone screen or a light spectrum would keep me awake."
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"https://www.aop.org.uk/ot/industry/high-street/2017/05/26/boots-opticians-fined-40000-over-misleading-blue-light-advertising",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_strain",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm",
"https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD013244",
"https://ec.europa.eu/health/sites/health/files/scientific_committees/scheer/docs/scheer_o_011.pdf"
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2njqzz | lumps in your throat. why do you get them during emotional moments/suddenly dusty rooms? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2njqzz/eli5_lumps_in_your_throat_why_do_you_get_them/ | {
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"Under stress, glands in your throat such as lymph nodes or epiglottis can become swollen, diagnosed as globus pharyngeus. The exact mechanism is uncertain. "
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1cleyt | what it means to fake it until you make it and how to do just that. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cleyt/eli5_what_it_means_to_fake_it_until_you_make_it/ | {
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"Act like you have a clear understanding of all your job's roles until you are properly trained and well-learned in it and then succeed.",
"It's a mental practice where you \"fake it\", that is, try to imagine yourself as something you're not, while progressing towards really becoming that.\n\nFor example, if you start your own company, it's really small and \"incompetent\" at first, but if you make everyone believe it's bigger and better than it really is, it will help it become bigger and better, as people (you included) start believing that it's a good company.",
"Pretend to be confident at something - so for example, say you are shy around women - practice doing the things that a confident person would do even though inside you may be scared.\n\nSooner or later you will be able to perform those same actions without being scared inside.\n\nThe trick is, people don't really know you aren't confident unless you tell them somehow.",
"Advice like this is sometimes given to someone who does not act confident. They're saying to pretend to have confidence. \n\nAct like a person who is confident would act. A confident person walks with their chin up, shoulders back, looks people in the eye with a smile, and says \"Hello, how are you today?\" They're not afraid of being social with anyone, they're not worried about what other people think of them, because they're confident that they're doing the right thing, and that everything will be okay. \n\nIf an un-confident person fakes confidence for a significant amount of time, then it becomes a habit, and soon, that person becomes confident. ",
"The company where I work now hired me to be an iOS developer. When I got hired, the extent of my iOS experience was reading a few tutorials and teaching a couple of week long summer classes for teens. When I interviewed, however, I played that up a bit, and talked about my familiarity with iOS and \"a variety of other platforms\" and my experience as both a developer and teacher.\n\nI got the job, and I am awesome at it. I faked it until I made it. (It's not as catchy in the past tense.)"
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17imtm | why do oil refineries have so many lights? | Its like the have 6 million per square inch! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17imtm/eli5_why_do_oil_refineries_have_so_many_lights/ | {
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"Probably because people are working there around the clock with a lot of potentially dangerous stuff so they need to see everything very clearly.",
"I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express one time, so here goes. \nOil refineries are like your mom's soup pot on the stove. They get used to cook oil and turn it into lots of different kinds of things like car gas, airplane gas, and even boat gas. \nCooking oil takes a lot longer than when your mom cooks soup. So the people who work at the refinery have to cook the oil for much longer than just one day. They even have to keep the cooking pot nice and hot all day and all night long. \nWhen you keep a pot cooking all day and all night, sometimes you have to look at it carefully. Cooking oil with all that heat means you have to worry about the pot and all the tubes that connect to it. If they start to have problems, you have to have someone run over and fix the tubes really fast. \nIf the people have to fix any part of the tubes at night, they'll need a whole lot of light all at once. \nThe oil that gets cooked is very important and lots and lots of people don't want to worry about a fire burning up all the oil. That would be awful. So, to keep everyone from worrying about the oil refinery, they have lots of lights all over it and it helps them to keep the tubes cooking safely. \nEdit: grammar"
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2wmpnv | people say a human bite is extremely dangerous and it can result to a nasty infection. but how can that happen if we already carry the bacteria and germs in our own mouths? and how do we not transmit them through kissing as well? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wmpnv/eli5_people_say_a_human_bite_is_extremely/ | {
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"When you get bit, all those bad things get in/under the skin and can cause an infection. It's when our bad bacteria gets in places it shouldn't be that it is dangerous to us.",
"Kissing shouldn't be too big of an issue unless the bacteria is out competing the bacteria which was there to begin with. Generally, bad bacteria are unable to proliferate due to good bacteria keeping the population of the bad bacteria in check\n\nEdit: that's why it's important to be careful after taking antibiotics, infections of c.diff are more likely to occur if you've been on antibiotics",
"There's a difference between having something in your mouth and having something in your blood stream. "
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1pu9xa | why is black pepper a staple seasoning along with salt? | I can understand why salt is since saltiness occurs in most dishes and salt allows you to increase that, but why is black pepper right alongside salt always? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pu9xa/eli5_why_is_black_pepper_a_staple_seasoning_along/ | {
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"Because it is fucking tasty.",
"Salt enhances flavor while pepper compliments it. Black pepper specifically if kept correctly and ground fresh adds earthy, woody, citrus and spice without any capsaicin which is what almost all other spicy flavored ingredients are derived from. Black pepper has a alkaloid all it's own that creates a different type of heat that is unique to the berry.\nI am a Chef and own a restaurant."
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3gssvo | in swimming, how can the world record for an individual event be slower than a single leg of a relay? | Check out Jason Lezak (USA) who swam the final leg in 46.06 in 2008. _URL_0_
Looks like the world record was set by Cesar Cielo (BRA) with 46.91 in 2009. _URL_1_
Since each swimmer starts from a standstill, I don't see why they wouldn't be able to repeat the performance at an individual event. In fact, not just Jason Lezak, two of the French swimmers also were above 2009 WR time. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gssvo/eli5_in_swimming_how_can_the_world_record_for_an/ | {
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"The rules for a relay start are only that the next swimmers feet must be on the blocks when the previous swimmer touches the wall. This allows the swimmer on the blocks to get a running start as long as they get the timing right and don't leave early.",
"Competitive swimmer here. So part of that particular example was that Lezak's swim was an unreal performance spurred on by some serious trash talking by the French. \nBut in general, it has to do with the difference in the start. The individual events start how you imagine. The starter says \"take your mark\" and then after a beep they all take off. But for a relay, we begin the motion of the start before the swimmer finishing actually touches the wall, timing it such that we leave the block as close as possible to exactly when they touch without going to early and disqualifying. \n\nThis video shows the mechanics of the relay start pretty well: _URL_0_",
"My only experience with this is as a competetive swimmer in high school for four years, so bear with me.\n\nAs far as I am aware, a relay start is faster than a normal start. With a normal start, you do not start moving until you hear the buzzer telling you to begin the race. For a relay start, you begin your motion before the timing of your leg of the race starts. Because of this, you do not have the delay of having to start your momentum - you are already in motion because you were swinging your arms - at the start of your leg, thus making your time shorter.",
"The last three swimmers can anticipate when previous swimmer will touch the wall. This eliminates reaction time, and allows the swimmer to start their diving motion ahead of time."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_record_progression_100_metres_freestyle"
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2nnckd | how do unions work when it comes to large companies? how much power/influence do they really have? | Listening to a podcast from a former WWE wrestler who says he wishes the WWE has a union caused me to realize that I really don't know what they are. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nnckd/eli5_how_do_unions_work_when_it_comes_to_large/ | {
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"So a union is an organization of workers who can bargain collectively with their employer. If they feel that the employer is unfairly refusing to meet their demands, they will use a labor action to try to force their employer to negotiate with them. The most common labor action that most people think of is a strike, where all the employers refuse to work until their demands are met. But there are others, such as a slow-down, where workers keep working but they intentionally work much slower than usual; or a sick-out, where everyone all calls in sick on the same day; or work-to-rule, where workers do only the minimum their job description or contract calls for, and nothing else.\n\nAnyway, union power is dependent on a lot of things. One of the major things that determines how successful a labor action like a strike will be is the ability of the employer to use strikebreakers (replacement workers). So in some cases, workers go on strike and the company will just hire temporary replacements, and business will go on as usual. Their strike will be pretty ineffective. But if for some reason the company can't hire replacement workers, because it's illegal in that city/state/country or because no one will cross union picket lines or because the job requires specific skills that are hard to find, the strike will often be highly effective.\n\nSo yeah, it really depends on the union. Some unions try to bargain with their employer but are unable to secure their demands, while others are very successful in getting what they want from their employer. Another important thing to realize is that only 11% of US workers (and only 7% in the private sector) have a union at all. No union basically means you have no leverage or collective power to get what you want from the boss. "
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95xsdg | why do most tattoo inks usually fade into a green/teal colour overtime? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/95xsdg/eli5_why_do_most_tattoo_inks_usually_fade_into_a/ | {
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"Your immune system eventually breaks down and removes the ink particles in your skin. Kind of like how your immune system fights colds. ",
"Your body basically tries to get rid of the ink forever and over time it fades as a result. Along with things like rubbing your skin and the sun which will also speed up the rate at which it fades. ",
"Black ink is not actually pure black, but rather a very very dark blue or green. This fading phenomenon is not only known to happen to tattoos, but any kind of black ink or paint. As your body breaks down the ink in your skin, it fails to remove all of it leaving a faded version of the color behind."
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1rdguy | what is the history behind eating eggs? | 1. How has the egg evolved within the world food system over the course of history from hunter/gathers to industrialized factory farming we see today?
2. When/Where/Why did chickens become the only domestic egg producers in the world?
3. Is there a difference in nutrition quality between organic eggs and industrial produced eggs? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rdguy/eli5_what_is_the_history_behind_eating_eggs/ | {
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"I don't have all the answers but this:\n\n > When/Where/Why did chickens become the only domestic egg producers in the world?\n\nSimply isn't true. Lots of countries use other birds, for instance ducks."
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5ojmlt | how does a court transcriptionist get every single word of a court case down so fast? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ojmlt/eli5_how_does_a_court_transcriptionist_get_every/ | {
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"They have special typewriters and learn shorthand. It's called stenography. They go to school for 2 years to learn how to do this.",
"[Here](_URL_0_) is a video that does a great job explaining it. Not to take away from the other responders.",
"I was in a court room 3 hours ago, and the person there had a device that she held up to her mouth and presumably spoke into. I imagine it uses a speech to text software to record what she says. ~~I've searched Google, but cannot find a name for this device. I'll update this post if I can find it.~~\n\nEdit: It's called a [Stenomask](_URL_0_)",
"Stenos are largely becoming extinct as they are replaced with audio and audio/video recording systems. Programs like For the Record and JAVS are much cheaper to run than paying a stenographer a yearly salary.",
"Court reporter chiming in here!\n\nAs other commenters have mentioned, we are writing by syllable and sound rather than letters. We use a lot of short forms that can be whole words or phrases. \n\n\nTake the word hello, for instance. On a regular keyboard you would make 5 different key strokes (one for each letter). On a stenographic keyboard you'd break that down by syllable, which would look like HEL / LO. You go from 5 keystrokes to 2. \n\nAny other questions, feel free to ask!\n\n",
"Yay, I can answer this! I was a court reporter for three years after doing two years at a college to get a certificate for captioning and court reporting. \n\n\nThe machine that court reporters/stenographers use is called a stenotype. The keyboard of a stenotype is blank, but [this is what all the keys represent on it](_URL_0_). Multiple keys are pressed at a time, sort of like playing a chord on a piano. Honestly, the [Wikipedia article](_URL_1_) does a way better job of explaining it than I will.\n\nBefore we had computer-aided transcription (CAT) software, reporters could either transcribe that code themselves into written English or re-dictate it at a slower, averaged speed for a typist to type up for them. If a readback was asked for during testimony, the court reporter would have to go back through a ream of paper that their code was printed onto as they wrote and read back the steno code as English. This is why CAT software is great. The stenotype connects directly to your computer, and your steno is translated real time into your software, making it much faster to turn around a transcript or do a readback. The firm that I worked for could provide what we just called \"realtime\" to lawyers who wanted to be able to review the transcript as it was being written, and we could broadcast it to their laptops as the questioning was happening, which meant that we had to be incredibly accurate and do a lot of editing on the fly; although, a realtime transcript is never as accurate as a completed one.\n\nCourt reporters aren't perfect, though. Sometimes they can be asked for a read back of the testimony, and they won't have it. I only know of a few court reporters who would feel comfortable working without multiple audio back ups being recorded while they are writing, and most will listen to these again while they edit a transcript after the fact. \n\nI guess I haven't really answered the question yet. Because you press multiple keys down on a stenotype at once, you can write entire words, phrases, or sentences with one movement. A program that teaches court reporting will use a certain theory for what the best combination of keys are for certain things, but once you've been at it for a bit, your steno code definitely becomes your own since you can customize it to how you like to write. You can define a combination of strokes to come up as anything you'd like in your transcript using the CAT software, including things like paragraph breaks, formatting, stuff like that. So, say you work a lot in a court setting, you can press a certain combination of keys and it'll bring up \"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,\" which is a very common phrase in court cases, allowing you to keep up.\n\nI believe that most programs require a 225 WPM typing speed to graduate. 225 WPM is a decent speed, but when people get excited they can easily break 300 WPM, so constant practice and improvement is key to being a court reporter. If you're very fast and very accurate, you can do things like realtime, or you can move into captioning live broadcasts. Anytime you watch the news, sports, anything live with closed captioning, you're watching a stenographer at work, likely in their living room or office at home.\n\nTL;DR: One movement creates entire words, phrases, or sentences that are directly translated to a computer-aided transcription software on a computer, allowing for instant read back of the testimony. Generally court reporters must \nwrite at a minimum of 225 WPM.\n",
"To add on to this... stenography is not only how the court transcript is produced, (near instantaneous with real-time stenography, something voice recognition software alone--voice writers excepted-- CANNOT do to the level of accuracy needed) it's also how live television is captioned. \nOr if you've been at a live event and saw that there were open captions (captions the whole audience could see), that's how that's done.\nSource: am captioner"
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4ykf8k | why is it that some people have blonde hair but dark eyebrows? | Excuse me if I'm being ignorant here. Where I come from, people don't naturally have blonde hair. I'm in a LDR with a Norwegian girl and she has blonde hair, eyebrows and eyelashes, so I'm just curious. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ykf8k/eli5_why_is_it_that_some_people_have_blonde_hair/ | {
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"Sometimes (most of the time?) women who color their darker hair blonde (and there are a lot of them) do not color their eyebrows, too. If the hair is darker at the scalp that is quite possible the case.\n\nMaybe the two just are not exactly the same color because they are not exactly the same kind of hair. "
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6jd6ey | why does using a towel or other external cloth material help aid in opening or tightening caps/lids/knobs etc? | Ever since I was a wee one I've always known that when you want to open or tighten something, it was more advisable (and comfortable) to use a cloth/shirt/towel to help with that.
Thing is, I just don't really know why. I mean, it's obviously less painful, but why? Is it just that my hands haven't had enough time to get callused enough to do it themselves? Is it like having extra skin?
Sorry if this doesn't make sense, perhaps this is more of a /r/Showerthoughts kind of question... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jd6ey/eli5_why_does_using_a_towel_or_other_external/ | {
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"It's partially a grip thing - you can squeeze harder without your hand hurting, and it's part leverage - by using a cloth you increasing the effective diameter of the lid, so can apply more torque.",
"The towel is not greasy, like your hand, so friction increases. Also, it's softer, so you can exert more force without harming your hand. "
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3yhqtt | how laser engravings on the bottom of beer mugs create bubbles. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yhqtt/eli5_how_laser_engravings_on_the_bottom_of_beer/ | {
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"The term for this is nucleated glass. It creates a much larger surface area on the bottom of the glass for bubbles to form. It gives the carbonation from the CO2 dissolving a point to collect on. It results in the beer going flat much faster than a standard glass, but releases much more of the aromas from the brew, so some people prefer the experience. For bars, it means you drink faster to avoid the beer going flat. \n\n[Nucleated Beer Glassware - YouTube](_URL_0_)"
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1x2mt1 | how does a vacuum tube work? those tiny dim bulbs that are in guitar amps and high-end audio gear. | I've always wondered how they worked. Here I am at my desk with a stereo tube buffer and all I know is that it makes my audio sound louder (impedance matching??) and warmer...different. Why and how, I've never understood.
How do they work and what exactly are they doing to the device they are installed on?
What are they used in audio equipment?
It IS a vacuum tube, right? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x2mt1/eli5_how_does_a_vacuum_tube_work_those_tiny_dim/ | {
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"The hot wire at one end (the emitter) gets hot enough to randomly spit out free electrons.\n\nthe electrode the other end (the collector) is given a voltage to attract those free electrons.\n\nThe grid in the middle can be varied in voltage to attract or repel the free electron, But because it's a mesh at lot of the free electrons won't hit it and instead continue on to the collector.\n\nSo by varying the grid voltage you can vary the current between the emitter and collector."
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ddeuuu | why is crying a natural response to physical pain as a kid, but not so much as an adult? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ddeuuu/eli5_why_is_crying_a_natural_response_to_physical/ | {
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"Emotional Control. As we age we learn how to influence our response to stimuli of all kinds, pain just being one of them. When you tell a 2 year they can’t do something they stomp their feet and pout. You tell a 32 year old the same, and their reaction is more controlled and rational (well, it should be at least). Same goes for pain - as we grow older we are able to better control our response and not cry as a result of the pain. We might wince or swear instead.",
"It's all about conditioning. Babies have no means of communicating their discomfort than crying. So they cry when in pain. Crying is a reflex from there on, and kids gradually reduce their crying as they themselves notice (along with parental guidance) that older kids don't cry so much because it's socially inappropriate. As an adult, you are much more in control of your actions and emotions, so you don't cry due to social reasons as it's odd, and because they realize that crying won't benefit them in any way (parent won't come and try to distract them from the pain or bandage a wound). But sometimes physical pain can be so severe that an adult cries, that is likely a reflex. But it wouldn't be full blown crying but rather some tearing.",
"When you are an adult you know which situations are dangerous and when you are a child yoy dont know anything about the world yet",
"Crying is communication that alerts others you need help. Adults have the experience to evaluate that they don't need help for minor injuries like bruises and scrapes, and they prioritize other ways to seek help for worse injuries when they are able. But with a bad enough injury, we all cry.",
"Perspective. Kinda like how a light is bright when you wake up in the middle of the night, but after you have gotten used to it, it doesn't seem as intense.",
"I like to remind folks that as adults we have a lifetime of experience to draw from in everything we do and everything that happens to us. When a child gets hurt, it very likely is the worst pain and the most scared they have ever been. Crying is a reaction that we have in most situations when our emotions are at their highest. (Edit: grammar)",
"Crying releases chemicals in your brain (endorphins) which make you feel better and act as a painkiller. As a child you would be more sensitive to pain (no tolerance) and have a bigger need for those feel good chemicals.",
"Because when you're a kid, and you get hurt, you think it's more serious than it really is, and you might die or something, so crying is a way to get adults to help you, but when you're an adult, you know you are not going to die from pain, and if if you did die, the number of people who would care is finite. :(",
"Crying is an evolved mechanism to call others for help when you are in need. As an adult you have learned that minor injuries can be treated on your own and so you no longer trigger the pathways that automatically call others for help. But when you have severe pain you will often still trigger those pathways and cry as you often do need help to deal with whatever is causing that pain.",
"Crying as an adult rarely gets any positive result. In between early childhood and adulthood if you went to a school anything like mine all crying got you was teased.",
"It is also shamed out of most mens repertoire’s by the time they reach late boyhood. This happens due to cultural influence (media), social influence (peers/family). Many father’s outright mock their boys for crying, belittle, devalue, feminize, and so forth. Real healthy stuff.",
"As a youngster, every pain you feel is just about the worst thing you have ever felt. \n\nAs you get older and live through pain, you realize you have been through this before and it hasn’t killed you and frankly, most people don’t care so suck it up buttercup.\n\nAlso girls are watching, so push that shit way down mate.",
"I dunno about getting older, experience has a lot to do with it.\n\nI broke separate arms in unrelated accidents in the same year. I think I was eleven or twelveish. First on rollerblades, second learning what not do to on the front pegs of a BMX. First time I cried for hours, was inconsolable and full of fear. Second time, just half a year or so later, I said \"FUCK!\" very loudly a few times then got up and walked myself to my friends house.\n\nA few of my friends and their parents were there and all of them argued at first that I hadn't broken my arm, that I would be crying on the floor if I had. They were signing a full arm cast the next day.\n\nI just remember the moment I broke that second arm thinking \"goddammit I just got that cast off now I have to wear another goddamn cast\". Knowing it would pass I was more upset at the long term consequences than the immediate pain.",
"Imagine being a kid. \n\nThe world is run by grownups. With fancy words you don’t really understand. \n\nYou have feelings and pains and joys, but you can’t communicate them. You don’t know the words yet. \n\nYou see adult communicating words and feeling and emotions, but you don’t know how to. You can’t easily tell them what makes you uncomfortable or sad or angry. You don’t have the words. Only emotions. Emotions growing more frantic by the minute because you can’t make yourself understood.\n\nSo something comes along one day that hurts. You don’t know what caused it, or why it hurt you, or if it will hurt you again. It just hurt. And someone should protect you, right? So you scream for attention. \n\nIt takes years to understand that not all things things that hurt will kill, and in the meantime, we must protect the you people.",
"Crying as a pain response is still a thing in me @27 but only when it's more than I'm expecting at a given time. Any type of painful procedure I can endure as long as I'm aware it's going to happen, but if it's a sudden large amount of pain, (like if a dentist didn't numb my tooth enough and they hit a nerve with a drill) I'll start crying for ~20 minutes. I can't stop it.",
"Children often respond by mimicking the expressions that the adults around make. \n\nIf the adults are upset for example, they become upset as well and frequently cry.\n\nI once saw a young kid maybe 4 or 5 years old fall off a bench and land on his head. He was up a second later and laughing and proceeded to climb the bench again. His parents were too shocked to respond and so the kid just didnt know to get upset and went on his merry way.\n\nHis mother then got upset and started to coo about the child,checking him for injuries. Now, he started crying.",
"How about getting kicked in the nuts as an adult?",
"It's still a natural reaction in adults, but adults (males especially) are condindioned to \"look strong\" in the eyes of society and will do their best to \"be strong\" in public.",
"Its a call for help because you are small, inexperienced, don't know how to fix it, and have no idea whether this is going to kill you not\n\nOff topic a bit but what I would be interested in is a study of how adults differ in their reaction to pain/injury who have had a very different history of things like semi significant cuts and things where its a flip of the coin if you think you should go to he hospital to get patched up",
"Crying is still the natural response to physical pain even for adults. You just haven't given them enough pain yet. Adults have higher HP than children so you have to adjust your expectation too.",
"Coming from an attachment perspective, this has a lot to do with emotion regulation. As adults, we have the ability to better regulate our behavioral responses to different stimuli, but as kids, we can't really do that as well yet. This often results in crying, which is an attachment bid to caregivers that basically says \"I need help.\" Most of us are biologically wired as adults to respond to crying by picking up or otherwise comforting the infant/child, which in turn, helps children develop their emotion regulation skills as they get older.",
"I like to compare baby vs adult emotions based on how much of it (emotions) covers of life. in other words experience\n\n* first pain for baby: this is worst of my life!\n* any pain for adult: tis but a scratch\n* baby: what is this feeling? I dont know .... shits itself\n* adult: what is this feeling? aaah burrito is coming\n\nand so on",
"Pain is your central nervous system telling your body that something is damaged. Children, who lack experience with injury, equate pain with mortal danger. This evokes more than a pain response, it evokes pure terror.\n\nAdults have developed both experience and logic to know that not all pain represents imminent death. Thus pain, even from significant injury, results in frustration (expressed via expletives) rather than fear.\n\nFurther, adults simply have experience in dealing with physical pain and injuries. While a child might be lost and afraid when in pain, an adult knows the procedure of how to handle the situation.\n\nCrying isn't a response to physical pain, it's a response to terror and despair.",
"When you are young experiencing lots of pain may literally be \"the worst pain you've felt in life\" where as when you get older and experience a grander array of pain, these instances become less common.",
"I think crying is a natural reaction to confusion, to being overwhelmed. We understand physical pain better as we age."
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38m9x5 | my mom just told me most stocks don't pay dividends. is this the case? if so why does the stock market even exist, did we all just agree to make a gambling arena where we bet on others betting on what we bet on? and if so why does how well the company does matter to stockholders? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38m9x5/eli5my_mom_just_told_me_most_stocks_dont_pay/ | {
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"Mom is right. Most stocks don't pay dividends. Some do, usually on some sort of schedule.\n\nYou buy stocks hoping they go up. Then when the price rises, you can sell for a profit. \n\nStock markets exist so investors can fund companies, and subsequently each share they buy is a percentage of the company. There are day-traders, who buy and sell constantly, but they're really not the majority of shareholders. Most shareholders are long-term investors who keep the shares as a percentage of their portfolio. \n\nShareholders want whatever stock they own to increase in value, yes. ",
"ok. \n\nLet's say you own a company. That company has $10,000 to purchase inventory, and you sell that inventory for $12,000. There are no other expenses and it's your first year of operation.\n\nSo, at the end of year 1, you have a $2,000 profit. You are able to pay a dividend to your shareholder, or not pay a dividend, whatever you choose. If you pay the dividend, and lets assume you pay the full $2,000, then in year 2 you purchase $10,000 of inventory and sell it for $12,000. Exact same profit. No growth, but the shareholders got that dividend. \n\nYou cannot grow the businesses under this strategy. The only way to do so is to retain some of the profits so that you have more money to purchase more inventory.\n\nIf you don't pay a dividend, you can purchase $12,000 in inventory (because that is how much cash you have), apply the same 20% markup and sell it for $14,400 for a profit of $2,400. \n\nYear 1 profit, $2,000. Year 2 profit, $2,400. That's a growing businesses! Keep that up that same 20% growth and you'll be making $10,000 a year in profit after 10 years. But if you keep paying all profits as dividends, you'll only ever get $2,000 a year.\n\nSo lets ask a question. How did the company get the orginal $10,000? There could be many ways, but this is a simple company so let's say that the shareholder gave the money to the company in exchange for 10 shares, so $1,000 each. \n\nBut now it's 2 years later. And the same shareholder still owns 10 shares. Except now the company has $14,400 cash in the bank, rather than just the orginal $10,000 that you gave it. So if you are going to sell those shares to someone else, you are not going to accept $1,000 each, because that would be selling a $14,400 checking account for $10,000. So you have to adjust the price of the shares to match the value of the company. Now your $1,000 shares are worth $1,440 each. \n\nWhen a company chooses not to pay dividends (assuming they are profitable and able to pay them) it's because they are reinvesting the money back into the company to grow in the future.\n\nThe investors still see a return on investment because the company is now worth more than it was in the past, and therefore the share price has gone up to match.\n\nNormally companies go in stages. When they are small, they are often not profitable so there's no dividends. Once they start to grow, you need to feed that growth or you lose it. If you pay all of your profit in dividends, you'll have none left over for new equipment or advertizing to get new customers or a new factory or a new delivery truck. You gotta spend money to grow, you need to retain those profits in order to do this. \n\nIt's only once the company stops being able to grow that you really start to pay a dividend. It's not like these companies are dying or anything, they just stop growing. Sometimes these companies can keep going forever but will never grow anymore. These companies are your cash cows, you just sit back and get that sweet dividend milk. \n\nThe real money is in investing in small companies and riding them during the growth stage. It's high risk (since most will fail) but it's a large return at the end. Cash cow companies are for people who can't handle risk, they want a sure and steady thing. They would want a dividend stock because it pays that income without selling the holding. ",
"Over 80% of the S & P500 pay dividends. And over 50% of the S & P600. On the other hand, only 1/3 of the NASDAQ index do. So, does \"most\" mean \"almost all\", or does it mean \"slightly over 50%\"? And do you count stock which is closely held and not publicly traded at all?\n\nAnyway, a company that doesn't pay dividends can start, and one that does pay dividends can stop doing so, at any time."
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2nmku9 | voyager 1 is the farthest spacecraft traveled from earth, where does it find all of that fuel and how can scientists still manage to control it? | Question number 1: I understand that the Voyager 1 is a probe and there is no gravity or air resistance in space so you can move a great distance with little force but it still need the fuel to propel itself or change direction from time to time and it has been traveling for a very long time, so where does it find all that fuel?
Question number 2: the Voyager has gone out of the solar system, which is VERY far away, how can they still manage to control it? what method did they use? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nmku9/eli5voyager_1_is_the_farthest_spacecraft_traveled/ | {
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"It has very little if any fuel left. It is simply just flying through space. You said it yourself there's no air resistance. Now that it's moving it doesn't need any fuel to keep moving. They dont change direction ever. They don't really do much control anymore. They just receive data from some of the sensors. If they do want to control it they have to issue the commands in sequence so that voyager can execute them automatically once it receives them. ",
"One thing Voyager did to minimize fuel use was make use of gravity assists. Voyager 1 used Jupiter and Saturn to boost itself and Voyager 2 used Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.",
"1) The fuel it was launched with. It hasn't performed an orbital maneuver that required fuel in years. Possibly not since it did its Titan fly by. Since there is no air resistance in space it just keeps going according to Newton's 1st law.\n\n2) As others have stated Big radio dishes.",
"It doesn't need fuel any longer, its just heading straight out of the solar system. They don't need to maneuver it ever again, just collect data.",
"Just a side note to question 1: there *is* gravity in space. Scientists even used gravity to assist in accelerating the Voyager craft out of the solar system (the gravity assist mentioned in other comments).",
"1. It only needs to maintain an orientation that keeps the high-gain antenna pointing at Earth. The probe uses tiny amounts of thrust to fix its orientation if it has turned too far. There appears to be enough propellant to keep doing this for a few more decades, outliving the radioisotopic thermoelectic generators (based on decay of radioactive material; solar panels are useless that far away) used for electric power.\n2. High-gain antennas. Those send and receive mostly in one direction, not wasting energy sending signals to nowhere, and not being as sensitive to noise coming from other directions on the receiving end. There's a mildly NSFW [xkcd](_URL_0_) demonstrating the concept. On the ground there's more flexibility such as having huge dishes to capture more of the signal, and having more power.",
"Since it seems that nobody said it, it runs on plutonium. \n\nThis should help\n_URL_0_",
"To answer your second question, I don't believe we control it whatsoever now. We can monitor it, and figure out where it is, but I don't see the benefit in making small course changes. Way out where it is, there is nothing even remotely close (none that we could possibly detect, anyway) to move it to (with a reasonable amount of fuel). \n\nLike other posters said, plutonium is giving it enough power to have its lights and vibrators run and what have you, but not enough to propel it.\n\nTo answer your first question, there is no need to *accelerate* the spacecraft, so no fuel is needed. It got all of its initial velocity from A) The rocket that carried it away from Earths atmosphere and B) The gravity assists from the outer planets. Once a probe in space has its speed, there is not much slowing it down.\n\nIt's probably losing a very small amount of velocity, but really not much at all. That sucker will continue on and on. ",
"To answer Q1, it doesn't need to change direction. Say they want to send a probe to Pluto, the scientists would have calculated the exact trajectory for the probe to move, and also using other planet's gravity to help 'slingshot' its way quicker to its destination. \n\n/u/GreendaleCC helped explain it quite well when I asked a similar question in AskScience, I'll just quote him here...\n\n*It is unlikely a probe built with current technology would take a direct route to Pluto. The distance is just so vast. NASA's New Horizons probe used a boost from Jupiter to cut 5 years off it's trip to Pluto. It will make its closest approach to Pluto in July of next year.*\n\nHe also provided a link where you can see an illustration of this. I highly recommend you check it out, as it will really help you understand how it works.\n\n[Video here.](_URL_0_) Look for the one called \"Mission Trajectory\" somewhere at the bottom. If you can't view the video, download and play it with VLC.",
"Hey, [here you can find weekly reports on Voyager status, velocity, distance, and fuel](_URL_0_)"
]
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|
2ui3o8 | what is the point of qr codes and why are they a thing on everything (but no-one ever seems to care or scan them?) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ui3o8/eli5_what_is_the_point_of_qr_codes_and_why_are/ | {
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"QR codes are super easy to put wherever you want them and it's cheaper to print that than a whole ad detailing your business. People don't scan them much because people are not so smart sometimes and can't be bothered to learn how to use QR code scanner apps. (I have seen people try to swipe their phone over the code like they are at the self checkout line in the supermarket.)",
"Due to the QR Code’s unappealing appearance, they are often placed in the corner of an ad as if to say, ” Don’t notice me and certainly don’t scan me”. The design or company logo which is the incentive to engage has nothing to do with the QR Code that offers the ability to do so. While companies are using them, it seems, QR Codes are not getting the attention they they deserve.\nThere is a great company dealing with it very nice that let you create a qr code on images , videos and animations called Visualead [QR Code generator](_URL_0_)",
"I think QR codes are great. Honestly. The only problem is, I can't be bothered to download and open a QR code scanning app. I just don't care enough to take that shortcut. If I care enough I can do the thing the QR code is going to do for me, manually, faster than I can open the app and scan the code. Even if that's not true, it feels true. \n \nI would use the shit out of QR codes of it was a built in feature of my smart phone. If I could just point my phone at a QR code without doing anything else, and it did what it needed to do I would actually use them. \n\n**edit:** missing commas, probably more still missed.",
"In Japan many people have qr codes on their business cards so that people can scan it and have all their contacts saved to their phone. They're also prominent in marketing in Japan and are actually used by people. "
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388xp7 | why local commercials always have shitty audio quality | I've lived in the same small town for almost 20 years and there have been a lot of bad local commercials for small businesses. Some have bad editing and special effects, some have pretty good editing and special effects; but ALL of them have always had shit audio. Is there a reason for this? Or do people just not realize the importance of audio clarity in commercials? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/388xp7/eli5_why_local_commercials_always_have_shitty/ | {
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"When McDonald's is paying $10 million for advertising space, spending $250K on top for line production values is loose change.\n\nA local advertiser might be paying $1000 for their commercials, and just don't have the same kind of budget. Often, local TV stations will produce a commercial as part of the package, which usually amounts to an afternoon with an a couple of interns."
]
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[]
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|
63u4la | what is offensive about the kendall jenner pepsi commercial? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63u4la/eli5_what_is_offensive_about_the_kendall_jenner/ | {
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"text": [
"Reducing the complex and nuanced issue of police tensions with protesters to an oversimplified use of the platitude \"cant we all just get along, man?\". Shitty sugary sodas won't solve widespread issues.",
"\"Police are systematically targeting, killing, or imprisoning in a forced labor system the black youth of America. We demand justice!\"\n\n\"Have a soda, you will feel better.\"\n\n\"Oh, well it's all good, man.\"\n\nThat doesn't seem maybe a little offensive?",
"Besides what other comments have said, it's opportunistic as fuck. Capitalizing on what is a huge social issue like this is in poor taste.\n\nExpect Pepsi to make some huge donation or start a foundation very soon.",
"Pepsi claims to care about social justice but in reality it is just trying to sell drinks. The ad is superficial and disingenuous, and quite obviously so. The use of a Kardashian family member does not add credibility.\n\n"
]
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3fibcn | why do credit cards expire? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fibcn/eli5_why_do_credit_cards_expire/ | {
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"text": [
"There are a few reasons:\n\n1. The expiration date is yet another dimension of security. You've got to provide number AND date AND code-on-back for full authorization. Very specifically, the Visa and MasterCard license agreement requires this of credit card issuers that do so under the Visa name and system.\n\n2. It provides (yet another) logical window where the creditor can check in on you, raise your rates, change fees, or turn you away as a customer.\n\n3. they do wear out, new technologies (as well as changes to issuer brand) get included and this provides them a mechanism to ensure that the newer \"model\" is in your hands, rather than you holding on to an old one for eons.\n",
"Plastic is cheap. Credit card fraud is expensive.\n\nEvery time you use a card, it increases the chance that someone will record the number and use it for fraudulent purposes. An expiration date is a way to mitigate that.",
"Same reason you shouldn't be using the same password for ten years: the increasing likelihood that you'll eventually punch that number into the wrong place.",
"So the company doesn't have to keep your file on record so if you shove it in your sock drawer for 20 years then all of a sudden want to buy a candy bar with it. ",
"I would suggest its related to capital efficiency. Credit card companies would have to keep reserves on hand likely pegged at a certain percent of total credit extended in case customers do not pay their bills in a timely manner or for bad debt. Since credit cards represent a potential liability, there is a max amount of credit that could be extended for a fixed reserve. If the credit card account holders are not spending money the reserve is unproductive as there is no lending. \n\nCredit card companies would want their offer of credit to expire after a fixed time period so they can extend credit to customers that may be more profitable. "
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cyqi8z | why is it that all labors work on this day, but all non-labor people get a paid day off? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cyqi8z/eli5_why_is_it_that_all_labors_work_on_this_day/ | {
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"All the government can really do is make it a Federal Holiday (which they did), which means non-critical governmnet employees will have it off as a paid holiday. They can't mandate that private companies give employees a day off. It is completely up to to the company.",
"What?\n\nWho works or doesn't work, and who gets paid vacation and doesn't (apart from federal employees) varies wildly from business to business and industry to industry and in some cases, job to job."
]
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[],
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||
de0s58 | how does my phone know if it's plugged in to a computer or a power bank? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/de0s58/eli5_how_does_my_phone_know_if_its_plugged_in_to/ | {
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"Because those cables you use to plug them in can send information either way. When you plug it into a computer, the computers first response upon recognizing there is something there is basically to ask it what it is. A power bank doesnt do this. It just starts sending power until the device in question is full or it is empty.",
"So when your computer connects to anything it asks “Hey what are you?”, and your phone says “Hey since it’s asking me a question is must be a computer”\n\nA power bank doesn’t do this. It basically just starts sending power. The phone says “Hey it just sends power instead of talking to me it must be a power bank”\n\nRelated: That’s also why on broken/3rd party power banks some iPhone’s say “This accessory is not compatible” and doesn’t charge, because the phone just sees random letters instead of anything meaningful so it rejects to charge. Most Android’s i’ve seen mostly ignore it though, that’s why you see much more power issues on iPhone’s"
]
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6klohj | if a fat man with a large gut loses a lot of weight, would his legs be super-strong in proportion to his body, because they've been lifting a huge weight every day for years? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6klohj/eli5_if_a_fat_man_with_a_large_gut_loses_a_lot_of/ | {
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"Generally not. Muscles are as strong as they need to be for the amount of work they do on a regular basis. Unless you intentionally do more work to build them up, they level off to whatever they routinely do.\n\nIn the case above, unless the guy was working out while fat, his legs would only be strong enough to carry him as much as they needed to on a consistent basis. As he loses weight, unless he continues to carry weight equal to his original body weight, his leg strength will drop off as they carry less and less weight day after day."
]
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