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77gj4c | Why do we scream when we feel pain, is there a physiological reason/benefit? Is it preventable? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is an alarm reaction. When you feel a lot of pain, two things are more likely true, you need help and danger is present. Screaming alerts other tribe members of possible trouble and summons them for aid.",
"I don't know about benefits, but you can condition yourself not to scream etc. given a certain amount of pain. Grunting is different, as it can be due to the reflexive contraction of abdominal muscles, leading to audible exhalation.",
"This isn’t necessarily an answer, but myth busters did a thing on whether swearing after pain had any impact versus just yelling any other word. It did.",
"I am not 100% about this but I think I read somewhere that screaming and yelling during pain releases some kind of very mild painkillers.",
"Breathing thorough pain or pressure can help relieve some amount of pain or discomfort. That's why you should exhale on the toughest part of a lift (weightlifting), and when you get your back adjusted (chiropractic care), and when you get a new piercing (as the needle pierces you). Every fiber of your being lets go of a little bit of tension, allowing you to relax, thereby doing less tissue damage."
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77gjud | Apparently moonquakes can be caused by tides, but the moon is tidally locked to earth. What tide causes these to occur? | According to a comment post about lava tubes found on the moon (link below), there can be deep moonquakes that are cause by tides. The moon is tidally locked to earth, therefore doesn’t have perturbations due to the pull of earth’s gravity on different sides of the moon. Does the earth’s oceanic tide cause enough change in gravity to cause a sort of... gravitational resonance on the moon? Somebody help! [Post]( URL_1 ) [Comment]( URL_0 ) | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Tidal forcing from the Earth's gravity keeps the moon tidally locked with the Earth, despite variations in its orbit. This means that the Moon is not allowed to freely rotate and has not \"just happened\" to sync up its rotation with its orbit around the Earth, but rather that the Earth's gravity has constant effects on the rotation of the Moon, in other words that it is actively exerting torque on the Moon.",
"The Moon is not in perfect tidal lock with the Earth. The eccentricity of the Moon's orbit means the tidal force would get stronger and weaker as it gets closer and further from the Earth. The eccentricity of the orbit also means the Moon goes faster and slower (both measured in linear velocity and in angular velocity) in certain parts of its orbit. But the rotation of the Moon is smoothed out over the orbit. So this mis-match means the side of the Moon presented to the Earth is not absolutely fixed, but rocks back and forth over the course of a month, by about 8 degrees. Both of these changes are called [libration] ( URL_0 ) and mean the tidal forces caused by Earth in the Moon change in both direction (slightly) and in strength. Finally, the Sun induces significant tidal forces in the Moon. Since the Moon cannot be tidally locked to both the Earth and the Sun at the same time, the tidal forces caused by the Sun do migrate around the Moon as it rotates with respect to the Sun."
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77h1a6 | Why does campfire smoke smell good to start, but the next morning smells awful? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When wood is burned it releases a whole bunch of stuff into the air that make up smoke. All together it smells pretty distinctive and 'good'. Some of the stuff is heavy, some of it is light, some of it is oily, some of it isn't. The heavy, oily stuff gets absorbed into your clothes and hair. The next day a lot of those oily bits have dried up and the smell is gone, but the longer-lasting oily compounds are all alone now and their combined smell isn't quite the bouquet that you got when everything was swirling around fresh. Sulfur is a big one, ~~methane is also released~~. So next day smoke smell has more in common with farts than trees as far as your nose is concerned. *Edited because methane doesn't have an odor as u/lordofkonrad pointed out with his passive aggressive ...",
"As someone who also thinks it smells bad the next day: You probably like the light smell of smoke while sitting by the fire, but the next day your clothes smell like smoke concentrate. They aren't really the same smell. One is light and the other strong. The fibers in the cloth really hold onto that smell, while smoke by the fire dissipates in the air. I also don't like smoky scotch or smoky teas, but I love smoked meat. They are different though. People who like both, however, may not see as much difference.",
"Are you camping, and drinking, and being hungover. That is the only reason I can think of - because I have the same thought as you. Iv only ever went camping as an adult in Scotland. Which means a tent, a sleeping bag, and as much drink as you can carry. Forget the sleeping bag if it takes up too much room."
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77h5k0 | Why doesnt food caught in your teeth for days make you sick from bacteria? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It can, especially people with heart disease. Son who had heart surgery has to take penicillin before going to the dentist every time.",
"There are a lot of bacteria in the mouth that are commonly referred to as the HACEK group. Two main ones to concern yourself with are Eikenella if you get bit by a human or Cardiobacterium if you get a tooth pulled, have severely rotting teeth or become unable to fight off infection (if you are getting treated for cancer) because it can cause heart damage. But, specific to the revolving door of hundreds of types of different species of bacteria that may be ingested or stuck at any given moment..it is dependent on many variables. Three main things you would look for in that stuck foreign body would be is there one predominant bacteria beating out everything else? Are they creating toxins? Are they organisms consistently considered pathogenic?"
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77h6om | Why does water have to be boiling in order to cook pasta? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The water does not need to be boiling, but it needs to be hot enough for the starches in the pasta to absorb the water. This occurs somewhere around 82 degrees C.",
"The boiling point of water is as hot as you can make the water without it turning into steam. It's not that you want the water ti be boiling rather than not-boiling, you just want the water to be as hot as possible so the pasta cooks faster.",
"I've looked into this and I believe it comes down to two things: 1. In order to cook it quickly. 2. It would be otherwise difficult to ensure that the water is at a specific temperature. If it is boiling it is definitely at 212 Fahrenheit. This means that they can give instructions to cook the pasta for a given amount of time based on this exact temperature."
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77hec2 | Why has Africa remained poor despite it's abundant resources and huge manpower? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is an extremely complex issue, so my answers will only cover a small portion of it: 1. Infrastructure plays a huge role. Even if African countries have huge amounts of resources, they don't necessarily have the infrastructure in place to leverage those resources. Not having things like rail systems, deep water ports, and road systems limit the ability of African countries to produce products and trade them on the global market. A lack of infrastructure also limits what kind of production that can be done. 2. Imperialism (both historical and ongoing) has limited the amount of wealth that has been reinvested back to Africa. Usually increased economic activity helps build up states by creating revenue that can go to things like infrastructure, education, and other investments. Much of the wealth that's been created in Africa or by Africans has gone to enrich people and companies outside of Africa. 3. Local turmoil. From civil wars, to widespread disease, to cultural racism, there are lots of reasons why outside entities have been hesitant to invest in Africa. 4. Without getting too political, there is evidence to suggest that economic protectionism helps developing countries, but foreign money is only willing to do business in Africa if they adopt economic liberalism. Many loans given to African countries are given on the condition that the countries adopt free trade policies that may actually hurt them in the long term.",
"The proximity to Europe actually makes it LESS puzzling. Africa has had it's resources stripped by European colonizers for centuries. Any resistance to the exploitation was met with extreme violence. And the exploitation has never really ended, the exploiting powers have just gotten more subtle about it.",
"Here's something I found: URL_0 Basically, it doesn't have the infrastructure to use its resources and the governments haven't progressed much since the colonial days. Since then, War, Conflict, and Corruption have kept Africa stagnant.",
"Re huge manpower, that's not as true as it might seem. India alone has a larger population than the entire African continent."
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77hgn7 | Why does leukemia cause leukocytosis? | If in leukemia we have a stop in differentiation of the myeloid lineage, how come leukocytosis is such a frequent finding? edit: sorry this was poorly written, let me rephrase. Take acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Leukocytosis is commonly present. AML, is characterized by an increase in the number of myeloid cells in the marrow and an arrest in their maturation. Consequently, myeloid cells shouln't differentiate into leukocytes. Maybe I'm just confusing it all. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'm not sure I am understanding your question. Leukemia is essentially uncontrolled cellular reproduction - so you'd expect to find lots of the cell type that is being produced. There are many different types of leukemias affecting many (all?) of the different WBC cell lines. Please rephrase."
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77hnc2 | Why would the idea behind Chris Rocks joke that "all bullets should cost $5000 dollars" not work in reality? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Politically it would be complete a non-starter because people enjoy hunting and target practice. Furthermore, you'd just have a huge black market for bullets, just like we do for drugs, and for cigarettes in NYC.",
"Because it's very easy to manufacture projectiles. I do it in my garage with free lead (usually wheel weights from local mechanics). Then I load them in my reloading room."
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77htcx | Why are some lego packages $1,000+? Isn't it just a bunch of molded plastic? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are just a bunch of molded plastic, just like a car is just a bunch of steel and plastic and glass. And buildings are just concrete steel and glass. And rolexes are just steel and gold. There's still a lot of labor that goes into designing the kits, sourcing the plastic and then running the machines. Assembling bags of parts, creating the instructions, etc etc etc. Simple things in your life aren't necessarily simple to make and produce.",
"same reason other collectibles are as or even more expensive. people want them. and they're limited. thats it."
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77hu2f | How does super glue work? | Typing this now with super glue stuck to my fingers after fixing a broken plate. | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Superglue (cyanoacrylate) reacts with water in the air, rapidly forming chemical chains with neighboring molecules and neighboring chains forming a plastic resin."
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77i9qj | Why does paper lose its flatness after touching water then drying? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Uneven drying. When paper gets wet, it ever so slightly expands as it absorbs water. Sine the entire piece doesn't dry completely at the exact same time, some spots will contract at different rates until the paper is too dry to be pliable to the drying process, in which it 'locks' into a wavy pattern."
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77ibuh | Why aren't jobs always upfront about the pay wage and/or why is it taboo to ask what the pay is during an interview? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a negotiation tactic and a way to minimize salary expenses. If you advertise for a widget washer position that pays $10/hr, that's what you're going to end up paying someone no matter what. But instead, you can advertise the position without a salary posting and negotiate with people who come in. Some guy comes in and says he wants $11/hr, you can say $9, he'll say $10 and he'll think that he talked you into it and won. Or some other guy comes in and says \"I want $9/hr\". You say \"Okay dude, you're hired\" and you just saved yourself the $1/hr you were planning on paying someone."
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77if5x | How do artists create the “localized” versions of their songs in which they mention the local radio station by name? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> Does the artist have to sit in the studio and sing different station names or identifiers so that they can later be edited in? It is relatively easy for a label to have their artist go to a studio and sing a bunch of radio station names all in one big session."
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77ilh4 | How does energy get transferred? | This may seem like a stupid question, but I've been trying to find the answer to this for a while. All the explanations just explain that energy can be transferred from one thing to another, but not how. How does energy, which is stored in one object become released from that object and attach to another object? For example, how does me pushing a ball give it energy? I understand that I converted my stored energy into kinetic energy, but how did I do this? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, energy isn't a thing that gets litterally transferred through space. Instead, it's a property of an object. It can be converted into other forms of energy by performing work on that object. In your example, the energy stored in your muscles gets converted to kinetic and subsequently to potential energy of the ball as you push it up a hill. You \"give\" the energy to the ball by performing work on it, which just means by applying a force on it over a distance. I hope my answer is kinda helpful to you."
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77in1e | How do headphone jacks work? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Inside the jack are a pair of contact points, and on the plug itself are a pair of contact points. When you seat the plug into the jack, these points come together, allowing a circuit to form. Since the plug is more or less perfectly cylindrical, it doesn't matter which way it's facing so long as you shove it all the way in (*giggity*). From there, electrical impulses are sent from the machine, through the contact points at the jack and plug, and up to the speakers or earbuds to create sound."
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77ioyv | Why is sin of (pi minus an angle) equal to sin of that angle? | I'm just now learning trigonometry, and I don't understand how this can be. I'm watching this video: URL_0 but now I've read somewhere else that the sin of pi is zero, which confuses me even further... | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The easiest way to visualize it is probably to look at a picture like [this]( URL_1 ). (sorry, it's hard to explain using just trig without pictures). So, your normal sin(theta) would be like the triangle in quadrant1 (top right). Now go look what happens if you to to pi-theta (i'd recommend going to pi, and then go backward theta degrees). You have the triangle on the left(in quadrant 2). The sin of those 2 is the same, right? sin is opposite/hypotenuse. They have the same hypotenuse and the same height(opposite) > the sin of pi is zero It is 0. What is the length of the \"opposite\" if you let that triangle on the left go to pi? 0. edit: Here is [another]( URL_0 ) image if you prefer, with things drawn to scale. First picture is a bit ovally, sorry (i didn't draw it)"
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77irss | How can some live TV shows censor profanity words before they are even said? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"there is a lag before it is actually broadcast The lag is due to operational delay as well as intentional delay i.e, Broadcast delay. Commonly, the intentional delay is about 7 seconds that is the broadcast will automatically only be sent out after 7 s from when it is recorded this gives time to edit profanity."
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77iwfp | Why are we scared of the dark? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's probably due to evolution. Over many many years, a lot of early humans got killed by stuff in the dark. We don't see well at night, that puts us at a huge disadvantage to the predators that do see well. The humans that avoided the dark lived longer and had more kids. Over time it became instinct to avoid the dark. Eventually, this manifested itself as fear.",
"Thousands and thousands of years ago, some of our early ancestors happened to be afraid of the dark. Some of them weren't. The ones that weren't had a bit of a tendency to get eaten. Or fall from heights. Or other unfortunate things that can be harmful to your health that happen when you can't see. Not all of them, mind you. But enough of them managed to get eaten before procreating that the gene pool gradually was fed much more by pre-humans who *were* afraid of the dark."
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77jb19 | How do bacteria think? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is a grievous, fundamental misunderstanding of biology here. I don't know what you think thoughts are, but they are really not at all related to the immune system, performing \"actions,\" or bacteria. Let's start with a really simple chemical reaction. When you mix baking soda and vinegar, it makes the classic science fair volcano. Mixing these two chemicals causes foam to form. There are no thoughts related to this process. It just happens, like how ice melts or things fall down when you let go of them. Living things are like that too, only *way* more complicated. Lots of bacteria have genes that, when they enter a potential host, are turned on. The genes can produce molecules that do things like help the bacteria stick to your own cells to infect them, or physically form a shield around it so your immune system can't reach them. There's no thought involved.",
"They don't think in the way we do because they don't have nervous systems. They hide from our immune cells because they have evolved the ability to do that because it helps them survive. They have also evolved the ability to sense when a good time to hide is, because they survive better when they hide at a good time. Their actions seem intelligent because they help them survive and can be quite complex, but they are just evolved mechanical responses to stimuli. (Some people think the same about our actions! But that's another discussion.)"
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77jc53 | How come we wanted to eat ice cream, candy, soda... etc. all the time as a kid, but as we grow older the appeal of the stuff fades away? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As I am sitting here with eating an ice cream sandwich, some kit kats and a Pepsi. across human existence sugar was a great source of energy back when people were hunting. This is just coded into our subconscious to consume fats and sugars as it was a thing necessary for survival. Even today pieces of sugarcane are still things people will just suck on instead of coffee or energy drinks for that short burst. And that’s it really. We put that sugar in other products for that extra energy and hide it in other foods that we pretend are more sophisticated.",
"When you're young, your body is growing rapidly and needs a disproportionate amount of energy all the time. The brain understands that sugary foods/drinks are high in energy, and has evolved to crave them when hungry, especially when you're a kid."
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77jpfu | Who decides what country is allowed to do what on the moon/other planets, or is there one institution always having the final word in these decisions? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is determined by the [Outer Space Treaty]( URL_0 ), which was signed in 1967. In short, this treaty (signed by 107 countries currently) says that nobody will put nuclear weapons in orbit/space, and that nobody can claim moons/planets/etc for their own country. Space politics aren't explicitly policed by any one institution or country, but rather by mutual agreement to not be dicks in space. Funny enough it doesn't say you can't have any weapons in space, just not weapons of mass destruction. I'm sure there's guidelines on space warfare in there, but there's nothing exactly stopping a country from putting X-Wings in orbit."
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77jq48 | Our pupils dilate quickly to take in more / less light, so why does it take so long when turning out the lights in the room for my eyes to adjust? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are two special types of cells that work in your eyes for vision. These cells are called photoreceptors, and the first cells in line for creating a response that lets you perceive light. The sharp, colour vision you get is handled by cells called cones, which have three different kinds of pigments that break down when exposed to different colours or wavelengths of light. These cells work pretty well in daylight, but are really bad at working in the night, so they take help from other cells, called rods. Rods are special cells, because they have a different pigment, called rhodopsin in them. This pigment is very very sensitive to light, and immediately breaks down when exposed to light. So that means that in bright light, rods don’t work at all. It takes about half an hour to forty five minutes for the pigment to be resynthesized, which is about the same amount of time it takes for your eyes to adjust to dark light. It’s also the reason why pirates used to wear an eyepatch when boarding ships so they could easily fight below deck by switching eyes."
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77jrml | How does the Pirate Bay still exist with the same URL even though it's been shut down multiple times? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"A domain name is like a nickname. It translates to an IP address that actually identifies the web server you need to talk to. (You said \"URL,\" strictly speaking that includes stuff like the specific file on the server you want and the protocol you're using, in addition to the domain or IP address.) What domain name belongs to which IP addresses is advertised by a domain name server. And which domain name servers are authorized as the official servers for that domain is indicated by a registrar. This means that, to \"seize\" a domain name and direct it somewhere else, it's the registrar you need to control. The registrar for ` URL_1 ` is currently EasyDNS, a Canadian company. Its policy is not to take down domains unless it receives a valid court order. So far, no Canadian court has issued such an order. Other registrars have much less protective policies and may take down domains simply because a third party, like a copyright holder, asks them to. Obviously The Pirate Bay won't be paying for their services. Pursuing a court order is often not a profitable strategy for copyright holders because it takes a long time and is expensive, what The Pirate Bay does isn't necessarily illegal (depending on jurisdiction), and other registrars in other jurisdictions are probably willing to serve The Pirate Bay instead. At one time its ` URL_0 ` domain was seized, but the website was served through lots of mirrors on other domains instead, and eventually got back to ` URL_1 `. Fundamentally, trying to take control of domain names is not an effective way to combat copyright infringement via torrenting."
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77jtw4 | Why do we randomly make eye contact with people across the room? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"I think you look at a lot of people in a room, but you only make note of when they're looking at you too."
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77jval | Why does chicken taste dry when you boil it in water? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It's over cooking that makes it taste dry. This happens because the proteins contract and squeeze out the moisture. Cook chicken at too high a temperature, too fast or too long and this happens.",
"When meat tastes 'dry', it has much more to do with how much fat is still inside than how much water. Fat melts and works it's way out of meat as it cooks and contracts, and if too much leaves the meat it will have a stringy, dry taste since only protein is left. Chicken doesn't have much fat in it, and you have to cook it all the way through, so it is easy to cook it too long and cause all the fat to drip out. The fact that it is touching the water, which could wick away some of the fat and float it away from the chicken, might be part of the problem; but the bulk of the problem is probably that it's easy to overcook chicken when you cook it by boiling."
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77kcc2 | Why does rain make us feel cozy? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Let's be a bit more specific and talk about gentle rains with maybe a bit of thunder in the distance while you're inside or under shelter. There's a big number of things that contribute. First, the *soft white noise*. A gentle rain creates tons of mildly distracting pleasant white noise. This helps reduce stress. It *amplifies positive feelings of comfort, shelter and safety*. You don't get these positive feelings when you're outside doing stuff in it, you get them when they're not drenching you. So there's a bigger difference between INSIDE (where you're comfortable) and OUTSIDE (where you wouldn't be), so you notice that you're in a positive state a bit more. And this contrast can be bigger if there's thunder off in the distance somewhere. And such rains comes when it's usually comfortably humid and cool, rather than sticky and too hot. Gentle rains are tied to an emotional state of calmness too because they're *associated with a history of calm activities and \"me time\"*, relaxing and not working. The last time there was a day like this you pampered yourself a little with a good book on a comfortable couch... so you look forward to the next time. Rain *symbolizes renewal and cleanliness*. It's a positive source of growth for plants and it often produces a nice clean smell as it washes dust away. So there's a mental association with a few positives there. And for those of us who live in temperate zones, this type of pleasant rain means it's not snowing and there are leaves on the trees... and so it's what most of us consider to be *the better time of the year*.",
"Less fomo: it's socially acceptable and expected to get cozy when it rains. Guilt free cozying without missing out on the coolest party ever or other socializing because there's a good chance everyone else is just getting cozy too.",
"Way back in cavemen days, rain meant we could rest without fear of being hunted. We could sit in our caves and relax.",
"It depends on where you are. If you're at home, and it's also cold out, you turn on the heat and some lights, grab a sweater or a blanket, and bam, you're feeling cozy. Because those things make you feel warmer. If you're outside, you pull up your hoodie or get under an umbrella, maybe stand close with someone else under that umbrella, and bam, cozy! Imagine being outside in the rain, no coat, no umbrella, no somebody, no warm...no cozy!"
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77kffa | US Television Question | Hello! So I do not live in the United States but was wondering how exactly does the television work there? As far as I know, there are four major networks: NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox with the CW being the fifth largest. Hoeever, I don't really understand what are "pay networks" like HBO or Showtime. Could someone please explain this to me? Edit: thanks for the explanations everyone! I get it now | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The major networks are broadcast \"over the air\" and for free. They don't require a cable box or subscription. Other channels require a monthly subscription and a \"box\" to view. Basically we pay for commercials on 999 channels."
],
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77kgii | how do baby cot deaths happen ? Is it just an random thing or is it the cots fault | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"According to Wikipedia: > Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), also known as cot death or crib death, is the sudden unexplained death of a child less than one year of age. So it's *by definition* unexplained. In cases where it's known exactly why and how the baby died, it's called something else. Generally, the biggest risk is suffocation, and of course the design of a cot can increase or decrease the risk of suffocation. Anything that could cover the baby's mouth is potentially dangerous, so the recommendation is for cots to be bare, with no toys, loose sheets or blankets. One theory is that for babies, sometimes the reflex that makes you panic and struggle when you're suffocating does not work, so that they can end up dying simply because they're lying on their belly and turned they face down so that they can't breathe, and don't feel likey there's anything wrong.",
"While some deaths are unexplained, many are due to suffocation or strangulation. Only put babies in a crib/cot that meets current safety standards, make sure they are on their back, and out nothing else in there to reduce the risk of the baby putting their face against it and suffocating. No blankets, pillows, toys or bumper pads. Nothing with strings either because that can tangle around the neck.",
"Here’s a link which may help - Isis is the Infant Sleep Information Source based at Durham University. URL_0"
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77ki0k | how the sun "bleach" the color out of things? Why does it effect some things (like signs) and not others (like cars)? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It *does* affect cars. It just takes longer. The radiation from the sun gradually breaks down the chemicals that make “color”. The time varies depending on the particular surface/chemical being affected.",
"It's mostly just Ultraviolet light that causes colors to fade. UV radiation destroys chemical bonds in paint (well.. not just paint, there's a reason our skin contains melanin, a substance meant to block UV, which can otherwise destroy chemical bonds in DNA), causing them to fade. A more reflective surface will degrade slower since some of the radiation gets bounced back. Also, cars are coated with a clear, protective layer which I'm pretty certain has decently high UV reflection / absorption just for the purpose of protecting the underlying paint. Those coatings can get pretty damn expensive. You wouldn't want to spend too much on a simple traffic sign, likely cheaper to replace it (especially since it doesn't matter THAT much if it's a little faded.. .aesthetics aren't a big concern, readability is)"
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77kq41 | Sometimes pregnant women have the urge to eat specific foods throughout their pregnancy. Is it because they lack a certain nutrient common in that food that the fetus needs? | And to further complicate things, it can change from pregnancy to pregnancy it seems. First pregnancy my wife craved pickles every day, second pregnancy it was tijuana mama pickled sausages, this time it's pizza. She normally hates those foods, which makes it even weirder. ETA during a friends pregnancy she craved peanut butter 24/7. I've heard of some women craving ice cream. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A friend of mine craved dirt while she was pregnant. And there was good dirt and not good dirt according to her, she could tell by looking at it but couldn't explain the difference. She actually ate dirt, like went out into a field and got a cup of dirt and ate some. Her doctor told her that as long as she made sure it was clean dirt, as in no manure, fertilizer, bug spray, random chemicals or that type of thing that it would be fine to go ahead and eat some dirt.",
"The honest answer is that nobody knows exactly why such cravings happen. Pica is a condition where a person starts to crave items that are non-nutritive, like ice, dirt and so on. They may or may not have a deficiency, such as in pregnancy, but they may also lack iron, often in pregnant mothers and kids. As for why people crave certain foods in pregnancy, the possible reason is a combination of changes in the ability to smell, a whole mix of hormones and other biological changes in the way a pregnant person thinks and eats.",
"We have done research and there are many theories, but to this day we don’t fully know what causes these cravings. Theories range from it having to do with part of the brain to hormones. Pica is a whole mother problem entirely which the previous poster covered. We do however know that women from different cultures crave different things according to what is normally available. I would think this is why women in countries with more processed foods crave weird junk. Maybe it was once supposed to be useful, but has been undermined by the change in available foods?"
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77kqhq | what limits humans? | Why cant we train ourselves until we could run 100km/h? Is It just our body, our is it our mind/brain that i limiting us? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The following is purely theoretical, and I'm no kind of expert, so take it with a grain of salt: It's all about evolution; finding the best compromise between survivability and sustainability in a given environment. Developing muscle, bone density, etc. that could handle running 100km/h (or any other such extreme exertion) would require excessive amounts of energy, and it's only in modern times, and only in certain parts of the world, we'd have access to enough food to sustain such a body. So it makes sense that evolution has put a cap on our development, simply because it wouldn't be beneficial to our survival to spend valuable resources on muscle strength we don't really need to survive and can't realistically sustain. At the same time, the cap is also set by physics; the composition of our bodies can only handle so much strain before breaking, no matter how well-trained it is. If we were able to develop muscles that could push us to run 100km/h, the sheer force exerted on our bodies would likely tear muscles and tendons, break bones, rupture organs, etc. Since that wouldn't exactly be beneficial to anyone, we haven't evolved to develop that level of strength. Had gravity been lower, or had oxygen levels been higher, or had food been more abundant in history, etc., the cap could be entirely different, but we have evolved to be what we are because it is, of yet, the best compromise in our environment to maximise survivability."
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77krjp | On most microphones there is a metal grate that you sing or speak into, why does this not distort or muffle the voice? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The short answer is that the openings in the grate are wide enough to as to avoid any major impact. It *probably* does make a tiny difference, but it's an acceptable trade-off for the sake of the microphone element's protection."
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77ku1e | How does having sickle cell protect against malaria? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"We don't know exactly, but it has something do do with the fact that the Malaria parasite lives in the red blood cells for part of their development. There are different theories, but they basically come down to one of two things: * Either the red blood cells of people with sickle-cell disease are just more difficult for the parasites to live in. * Or the red blood cells are more sensitive so that the parasites damage them and the body recognizes them as defective and recycles them before the parasites can complete their development."
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77kvsd | What the hell are independent & dependent clauses? Similarly, what's the grammatical use of a semicolon? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"An independent clause can stand on its own as a complete sentence; a dependent clause can't. Semicolons are used to link two independent clauses that are somehow related to one another, as I did in the previous sentence. There are some other uses too, but that's the main one.",
"Everyone else here is right about using a semicolon to connect related clauses. You also use them to divide list items in a complicated list where you use commas elsewhere. \"My personal heroes are George Washington, the first president of the United States; my uncle Jack who overcame his disability to be a famous conductor; and Harriet Tubman, the famous Underground Railroad guide and abolitionist."
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77kx2v | Why are prions considered infectious agents instead of toxins or other kind of hazardous material? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Prions are misfolded proteins that clump together in the brain and cause problems. The reason they're considered \"infectious\" is because they cause other proteins to be misfolded as well. This is something we don't fully understand, but we know that introducing a small number of prions into an otherwise healthy brain will cause more and more proteins to be malignantly misfolded. The initial prions don't replicate like a bacteria or virus, but they force other proteins to start misbehaving like they do.",
"Follow up question. Have prions been researched or used as a \"poison\"?",
"I think you're asking, more generally, about the difference between an \"infections,\" \"poisons,\" \"toxins,\" and \"corrosives.\" \"Infections\" are the result of disease-causing agents that multiply. You'll note I didn't say \"living organisms,\" though I could have. The problem is that there is no scientifically rigorous and universally accepted definition for what counts as a \"living organism\". Depending on how you define it, a virus may or may not be \"alive\". But viruses are certainly \"infectious,\" no question about that, because unlike non-infectious harmful substances, viruses interact with the body's metabolism such that they reproduce. Well, prions skate even closer to the line between \"alive\" and \"inanimate,\" and they really look more inanimate than viruses do. But they *definitely* reproduce themselves, though in a completely different way than cellular organisms or even viruses. The key is that if you start with one prion, you can end up with a bunch more. *That's* why it's called \"infectious\". But while we're on the subject, let's talk about the difference between \"toxins,\" \"poisons,\" and \"corrosives\". \"Poisons\" are harmful substances that are absorbed into your cells. This is in contrast to \"corrosives,\" which just destroy or otherwise damage cells *on contact*, without being absorbed into cells first. So, for instance, strong acids and bases are \"corrosive,\" but they're not \"poisonous,\" because they just destroy your cells on contact. But cyanide is \"poisonous,\" because it causes harm by taking the place of oxygen in your blood. And \"toxins\" are just \"poisons\" that are created by living organisms. The terms \"toxic\" and \"poisonous\" are used somewhat interchangeably, and indeed, all toxins are poisons. But a strict, technical use of the terms would distinguish between them as described above.",
"Because they spread. With a toxin, a little bit gets used up as it damages your body. If you are exposed to just a little toxin, your body can process it safely. A prion causes new prions to form, which can make more new prions. It is conceivable a single prion could become millions or even billions. That's the infectious part."
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77l413 | Why do shrimp and lobsters turn orange when they get cooked? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Because the heat starts a chemical reaction in the shell of crustaceans, changing the substance that gives them their blue-brown color and turning it into a red color. In case you want the full science-y answer, click [here]( URL_0 )"
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77lk3p | What do I do if my company is asking me to do something unsafe or immoral or else I'll lose my job or be pulled off the project? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"You file a report with the Department of Labor. That is one of the things they're specifically there for. Then you sit back and watch the sparks fly.",
"I think this is more suited for /r/legaladvice. But my guess, cover your ass in every way possible. Talk to your supervisor/ his supervisor/... about what you've been told to do and how you feel about it. If they agree with the original order, then really start covering your ass. Especially if it's illegal. Get in writing what they want you to do; make sure you have evidence of your work so if they fire you on grounds of a bad work ethic, you can contest it; if you do get fired, head to authorities; and, try to find a new job in the mean time, if they've done it once, they'll probably do it again. Do note that this is what I would probably do if I were in this case. I'm no expert, and the details probably also depend on the exact circumstances.",
"Immoral? That's one thing. Illegal? Call the law."
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77lltk | Internet Links | Why is it that if I click a link to go from one website to another, I see multiple different websites changing in the address bar, even though i'm only going to one website and my screen isn't changing multiple times? This doesn't happen all the time. I also wonder why it isn't consistent. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"HTTP requests - which are what happen when you click a link - can have a number of responses. It might be a response that’s the web page you want, or it might be one that says “no that doesn’t exist” (the dreaded 404). Or it might be a *redirect*. This tells your browser to visit a different page instead. That’s what you’re seeing happen."
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77ln0u | How do loading bars know how far they are, and why do they rarely give a very accurate time on when it will be completed? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Progressbars show how much data to move and how much remains; To calculate the time it will take to finish it uses the speed of which you move a certain amount of data and divides that by how much data theres left. If the rate you move data changes the time to finish will also change.",
"**ELI5** if you have 10 things on your todo list, and you did 5. You are half way done! except if those 5 only took you 2 min to complete, and the next 5 take an hour to complete, it'll be inaccurate. its hard to tell how long a task will take until its done.",
"Not all loading bars are about downloads. In many scenarios, they are displaying a percentage of total task count completion, regardless of the size of the task or rate of task completion. For downloads, your download rate changes often, plus what the other users mentioned as well.",
"Predicting the time disk operations will take is nigh impossible. Let's say you have an installer that's started by writing game_textures.dat, which is a 1GB file. The first 50MB got copied in 1 second, thus it's going at 50MB/s, thus the entire file will take 20 seconds. Easy. But right after that, it starts copying the 5MB long game.exe, which will take what, 1/10th of a second? Turns out that no, because that's an executable. The antivirus kicks in and spends 5 seconds on the file. Now your prediction is completely out of whack. How does the installer know there's an antivirus and how long it will take to go through the file? It really can't. And at any random time, Windows can decide it's time to download updates, or to index the disk, or do anything else which will take resources away from the installer. So really, progress bars are more useful as an indication \"something is being really done, and it will eventually end\", than as precise indicators of when something will finish. For them to work well the task has to be highly predictable. CPU bound operations where each part takes as long to process as any other, and a few niche operations like writing DVDs are very predictable, but some other things are not."
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77lu8e | if it takes deliberate effort to keep our eyelids open and relaxing closes them, why do our eyes often remain open after we die? | Not just us. Other mammals, too. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Actually, the natural state of our eyelid is the open position. A completely relaxed individual (dead) tends to revert to it's most relaxed position (assuming there are no outside forces), which means our eyelids stay open. We deliberately shut our eyelids when we blink or sleep, because it helps to keep the eyeball lubricated and clear of debris. After a person has died, the soft tissue can be manipulated into any variety of positions by outside forces. For example; the closing of a corpse's eyelids. We tend to do this not for reasons of lubrication (corpses don't need to be moist anymore), but to remove ourselves psychologically from the fact that a person is dead (the eyes are the window to the soul, and all that rot)."
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77lzch | How do radio stations know how many listeners are tuning in? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"In 2006 my household was chosen to be a Nielsen radio family (Nielsen does radio as well as TV ratings) and we kept a daily log of which stations we listened to and when.",
"There are two popular methods these days; the most common is listening diaries (usually a company will send out a survey with a few dollars as incentive to fill it out) that are sent out during ratings periods. There's also what's known as \"PPM\", or \"Portable People Meter\", which is far more accurate in determining what someone is listening to. You can read up about it on Wikipedia: URL_0"
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77m0yr | Why does every single food item have the caption "Serving suggestion" on it? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Because they have to. Otherwise, someone is going to open the box and sue them because \"That's not what it looked like on the package!\" Sadly, I'm completely serious..."
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77m48k | Why is gas invisible? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Gas is not invisible. Gasoline is a light amber color. Most gases are visible in high enough concentration. Chlorine, for example, is yellow-green.",
"Gas is NOT invisible. How eyes work is a different ELI5 but long story short, what you perceive as “visible” is whatever material that reflects enough light at the correct wavelengths for your eyes to detect. It just so happens that the gas particles are generally so spread apart that most of the light just goes right through and the marginal amount that is reflected is not enough to trigger your eyes. Earth’s atmosphere is a gas, yet if you look at the sky you will see blue. That is because there is a big enough amount of gas in front of your eyes that the reflected light adds up and up until you start seeing it."
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77m4w8 | How does SHA-1 work? | Is there anyone who could possibly explain to me how does SHA-1 hashing algorithm work ? Explain like im 5 pls. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"SHA-1 is a block cypher, meaning that it breaks up a message into chunks that are 160 bits long, and scrambles them up according to a complicated formula. Then it repeats this process block-by-block on the rest of the message. And it repeats it again over the already-hashed blocks, scrambling them a second time. And then a third time, etc etc. The scrambling formula is given by [this]( URL_0 ) diagram."
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77ma0i | how doctor can guide a catheter through your body | By example, when doing angioplasty, doctors can guide a catheter through your arm or your groin and they are able to access small artery circling the heart. I'm just wondering how can they make sure the catheter get into the right pipe. I mean, it's like trying to push a cord through a clothe, it's hard as hell. Unless they use some unknown to me tricks. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Different catheters have slightly different shapes. They usually have some form of curve at the tip, which causes the tip to point in a certain direction. They also contain markers which show up on X-ray, because plastic doesn't usually show up (typically heavy metals like platinum or gold). The catheter is also designed to be flexible when bent, but very stiff when twisted. This allows the doctor to roll the catheter between their fingers, so that the tip can be pointed in a specific direction. There are many different shapes available: straight, 45 degree angle at the tip (1-2 cm long), right angle, hairpin turn, \"shepherd's crook\" and others; and these are all available in different tip lengths/radius to suit the requirement. The property of the catheter can be affected by inserting a fine wire through the catheter, so it pops out the other end. These wires have different stiffness, different shapes of tip and different coatings which can cause them to catch on edges or follow blood vessels. Knowing where to go and where the wire/catheter is requires a detailed knowledge of anatomy. An X-ray opaque dye can also be injected via the catheter to show up the blood vessel where it is, and to see the blood vessel you want. Once you have an X-ray image showing the way you want to go, you can freeze frame it and use it as a reference. Put the wire back, move it around, until it catches and goes in the direction you want. So the typical process would go as follows: Large artery is punctured and a wide, short catheter (often called a sheath) inserted, with a rubber seal designed to stay in place, and allow smaller catheters to be inserted, without blood pouring out. A stiff guide wire is inserted, and guided using X-ray until it gets close to the destination, or until a tight turn needs to be made. A suitable shaped catheter is selected, and inserted onto the back end of the wire. The catheter is then pushed over the wire, until the tip of the catheter reaches the tip of the wire. The shape of the catheter can steer the wire in one direction or another. The wire can be retracted and advanced to change the stiffness and shape of the catheter tip, to help with positioning. The wire can then be removed, and dye injected through the catheter to see where the appropiate arteries are. The catheter and, optionally, the wire are then adjusted to try and \"catch\" one of the arteries. The wire is then pushed into the desired artery. Once it is advanced far enough up the artery that it is held in the artery by friction, the catheter can be pushed up along the wire, with the wire guiding it into the artery. The wire is then removed, and the catheter is now in place with access to the artery of interest."
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77mgrf | [NSFW] Why do human vaginas tear during birth to the point of needing surgery to repair and other mammals don’t? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"As so many things with birth, it comes back to our upright walking position and the size of our heads when we are born. Humans have a much larger brain relative to body size than other mammals, and our upright walking posture gives us narrower hips. Because a larger peg going through a smaller hole is bad news for the mother, lots of times the opening is just too small, hence the tearing. As for the reason why it happens to us and not other mammals, the difference is that humans are able to do something to correct it when it happens. A small, or indeed even a large perineal tear is viewed as a relatively easy thing to repair, so it isn't life threatening if it's tended to. By contrast, if an animal has a tear that's severe enough, it will not make it to reproduce again, and could possibly kill both mother and newborn. Since the only genes that get passed on are the ones that survive, an abnormally large headed species of another mammal simply doesn't have the same chance of survival that a human does, and will be naturally selected against."
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77mhdu | Why does the AC in entrances to shopping malls (and other big public buildings) blast hot air at people coming in? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"domzo4k",
"domzneg"
],
"text": [
"Because that isn't air conditioning. It's an entryway air curtain. It blows air straight down to create a barrier between the inside and outside air while the door is open. This helps prevent dirt, dust, fumes, and bugs from entering the building. It also helps keep the heated/cooled air inside.",
"it's a barrier/pressure seal, for the AC to separate the inside climate from the outside climate, this way they loose less heat inside the building every time they open the doors if I remember correctly, this kinds of things are used very effectively to leave the doors of casinos open 24/7 on Las Vegas but yeah, basically is a \"pressure\" seal"
],
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77mn6a | How is oxygen captured and put into oxygen tanks? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"don18mg",
"doo799t"
],
"text": [
"On a commercial scale, air is highly compressed (mechanically with pumps), then rapidly decompressed, which lowers its temperature. Same principle as what you do with coolant in a refrigerator. Except you keep doing this over and over until the component gasses are so cold they're liquid. The various gasses liquefy at different temperatures so you can draw off the one you want at a particular temperature, discard the rest or store those too.",
"Oxygen can be filtered out of the normal atmosphere based on its molecular size. It is smaller than nitrogen. If a filter will not allow nitrogen through but will allow small molecules such as oxygen through then it can be used with compressors to increase the oxygen in a supply line for patients. Not all oxygen for patients comes from tanks. The concentrators supply oxygen for home use."
],
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14,
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77nay4 | What is the difference, on a cellular level, between hypertrophy and strength training in bodybuilding? | I know the difference in rep training in hypertrophy and strength training. But how does the muscle know either to grow in size or strength, according to the number of reps? What really happens? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dontwgr"
],
"text": [
"it's not totally clear that there is in fact a difference - but what you're asking about is probably [myofibrillar vs sarcoplasmic hypertrophy]( URL_0 ). the eli5 is that it's hypothesized that: * if you tend to need a lot of energy out of your muscles (e.g. high-rep bodybuilding schemes), they will store a lot of sugar-containing fluid in them, causing them to be bigger but not necessarily stronger * if you tend to need a lot of strength from your muscles (e.g. low-rep powerlifting schemes), they will add contractile proteins which help them produce force, but not get noticeably bigger this is something of a false dichotomy, because generating muscular force requires using energy, and using muscular energy requires generating force - so any kind of strength training will result in increased contractile proteins and increased sarcoplasm in your cells."
],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_hypertrophy#Myofibrillar_vs._sarcoplasmic_hypertrophy"
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77njrm | Why do some antibiotics require a 10-day course instead of one big dose? | I've got a nasty infection and the doctor put me on three different antibiotics; one was a shot and two are pills. What's the difference between how they're administered, and why aren't all antibiotics a one-off? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"donc8d4",
"don8v59",
"don9v70"
],
"text": [
"Doctor here, if you take one big dose of an antibiotic, you are going to experience its side effects. Different medicines have different side effects, for example Ciprofloxacin may cause tendon rupture. The presence or lack thereof of side effects depends on the dose used. The antibiotic which was given to you intramuscularly (shot) was a depot antibiotic - it is released slowly over a longer period of time.",
"Because antibiotics kill off living organisms. In small amounts it will kill of bacteria, even the ones that our body needs. Larger doses will literally kill you.",
"Because it can take a longer time period for all the bacteria in your system to die. If you finish the course earlier than you are supposed to, some bacteria might remain in your system and they might develop resistance to the antibiotic. If that happens, the infection can return and a second treatment could be ineffective. Having said that, there is some new research that says that it is safe to stop with the antibiotics as soon as you don't have any symptoms ( URL_0 )"
],
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"https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2017/jul/26/rule-patients-must-finish-antibiotics-course-wrong-study-says"
]
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77nk5i | Why aren't private airplanes common? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"don8xru"
],
"text": [
"There's more to it than simply the cost of the plane itself. Obtaining a license to fly is incredibly expensive if you didn't get it through the armed forces. You have to rent space to store them at an airport. And you have to pay for maintenance and fuel which can be expensive."
],
"score": [
3
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77nt1s | If Japan is so mountainous, why does it have so few mineral resources? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"donbfqj",
"doncshv",
"dongk0e"
],
"text": [
"Mountains do not necessarily contain valuable minerals. The conditions required for valuable minerals to form are not present in every area with mountainous geography.",
"Japan's mountains are largely volcanic. By contrast, mineral resources are usually found in mountains pushed up by tectonic forces -- and not all of these, either.",
"Japan has *tons* of mineral resources! They're just not very *interesting* mineral resources. Mountains are basically just big piles of rock. If you're looking for *stone*, particularly limestone, then Japan's got you covered. Japan produces meaningful amounts of limestone to this day. But limestone is pretty cheap, and Japan is hardly the only place from which limestone can be quarried. Given just how expensive real estate is in Japan, it isn't economical to turn vast swaths of the landscape into limestone quarries. Japan used to produce quite a bit of coal as well, but those deposits have been mostly exhausted. What Japan *doesn't* have all that much of is *metal* ores. Small-scale iron and gold mining operations exist in the far north, but that's about it as far as metal mining goes. Why? Well, why are there huge gold deposits in South Africa and not in, say, Kansas? Why does China control most of the world's largest deposits of rare earth metals? Why does Saudi Arabia have the world's largest proven reserves of petroleum? Nobody really knows. It's just how things are. We can talk about the processes by which some of these deposits form, but why those processes occured in *this* place and not in *that* one appears to be more-or-less random."
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77nt77 | Can anyone simplify parity and/or error checking in data storage context? I simply can't grasp how a parity stripe in RAID 5, for example, can rebuild missing data, but isn't actually a copy of the data. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"donc7hv",
"donb59n"
],
"text": [
"2 + 5 = 7 Stripe 1 contains: 2 Stripe 2 contains: 5 Stripe 3 contains: 7 (or, the **parity** stripe) \"Oh no!! Stripe 2 went missing!!\" 2 + X = 7 Solve for X 7 - 2 = **5** Ta-da, parity Now, the striping is distributed across all drives in the RAID array, which is nice, because any drive can go down. There is no dedicated parity drive like with old RAID levels. This also distributes wear evenly across the drives. You do lose space to the parity stripe. Edit for more thoughts: So, obviously, the parity stripe and all the data stripes it pertains to will never be on the same drive. The RAID controller issues stripes round robin to all the drives, so, it literally can't happen. So, when a drive goes down (and is replaced), the RAID controller queries all the parity and data stripes on all the other drives and starts rebuilding the data on the empty drive. This is why IO performance is hampered during a drive rebuild.",
"Let's say I have three binary messages: Message 1: 1010101010101 Message 2: 0000011111111 Message 3: 1110000011111 I will define a parity stripe as the bitwise xor value of all three of these messages. Parity = 0100110110101 Now let's say message 3 is lost through a hard drive crash. 1010101010101 bitwise xor 0000011111111 bitwise xor ????????????? = 0100110110101 It is easy to figure out the missing message."
],
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77o0sk | Why smoking a cigarette makes you considerably less hungry? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"donh5dk"
],
"text": [
"Nicotine is a powerful appetite suppressant. It stimulates pathways in the brain that suppress appetite so you feel less hungry. Fun fact: Smoking was actually promoted by some doctors in the 1920s as away to lose weight."
],
"score": [
12
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77o7fk | Why does a fork or aluminum foil spark in a microwave, but the microwave's metal rack doesn't? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"donegy1"
],
"text": [
"The metal rack in the microwave was designed by the manufacturer to not absorb the frequencies used inside. The rounded corners and overlapping welds help is avoid acting as an antenna. A randomly shaped conductor is much more likely to absorb a broad range of frequencies. If it absorbs the one the microwave uses, high currents can be generated, and bad things will happen."
],
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8
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77oiqd | Why does throwing a football with a spin, or shooting a projectile through a rifled bore, make it more accurate? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"donika6",
"donhija"
],
"text": [
"Gyroscopic stability. Think about spinning a basketball on your finger, or a spinning top. If an object is spinning around one axis, it becomes much more difficult to rotate around any other axis. A bullet fired from an un-rifled musket is at the mercy of the wind. It can be knocked off course by an air current, or if it collides with a fly or something, or if it has an imperfection on it that catches the air and sends it tumbling in an odd direction. This is why bullets from smoothbore muskets were spherical balls - because it wouldn't matter much if they spun in a weird direction. If you tried to use a modern bullet without a rifled bore, the slightest turn would cause it to tumble and tear itself apart in mid-air. Not ideal. By using a rifle, though, you add spin stability - it will resist being turned by unexpected factors, and will therefore be more accurate.",
"Let's say your projectile has some irregularties in its trajectory. Whether it be from a small fault in the item, or from small issues from throwing/firing. If tje projectile isn't spinning, this problem will persist on the same side, meaning that it will have some force excerted on it, and it will go in another direction than straight ahead. But if you make the item rotate fast enough, it'll have this impurity on each side the same amount of time. So the resulting force is going to be a force along the axis of the movement, since you'll always have two opposing forces, cancelling each other out. And as a result, you'll have a more stable trajectory."
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77oor4 | What causes something to have a smell? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"donia2q",
"doni9or",
"donjj8a",
"donnzrl"
],
"text": [
"Molecules from it break off and float around in the air. Your nose picks them up, and your olfactory center \"reads\" them. Yes this means exactly what you think it means, when you smell poo.",
"We can smell things because particles are released from the substance. These particles diffuse into the air, and then we breath them in through our noses where they interact with special receptors that send signals to our brains. Our brains interpret these signals as smell sensations.",
"I love to share with people the fact that if you can smell something, it's because you are inhaling some of it. Think about that the next time you walk into a bathroom.",
"You eat dead people right? You didn't already know this?"
],
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77oqwh | How does food sober you up and lessen the effect of pharmaceutical drugs? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"doniulg",
"donmbgc"
],
"text": [
"That's a myth, food does NOT sober you up. Drinking on a full stomach can slow the absorption of alcohol, but eating food while you're drunk will NOT make you less drunk.",
"It doesn't sober you up, the simplest is that it dilutes what is in your stomach. Which can delay the onset of effects or depending on what you ate increase them or cause a bad reaction. Or if drinking coffee while drunk will give you a caffeine boost which will make you a wide awake drunk, but you will still be drunk."
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77oy2v | What does white syndrome do to bats? And does it affect other animals? | I'm a caver (beginner) and my club saw a ton of white fungus in a cave (which we did report) and I've heard of white nose syndrome but I'm not really sure what it does and if it affects other animals. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"donlrln"
],
"text": [
"It's a fungus that grows in caves. It grows on bats noses (they're warm and moist), especially during their hibernation periods. The fungus causes the bats to exhibit strange behavior, such as flying outside in the day. There's not food during these months (hence the hibernation) and they eventually end up dying by burning all the energy reserves. It's decimated lots of bat populations."
],
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77pk47 | Why does stress cause headaches? | Whenever I have a busy/stressful day, I come home with a headache. Why is that? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"donyytc"
],
"text": [
"Stress can cause tension in your body causing muscles to tighten in your neck and shoulders causing headaches also if your not drinking enough water while busy dehydration causes headaches."
],
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9
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77plcq | Why don’t we feel the earth spinning? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"donyc05",
"donpm50",
"donpmp0"
],
"text": [
"Actually, it's because of multiple things. Firstly, as others have already said, you don't feel velocity but only acceleration. Now as you might know, in a rotating frame of reference, there is a force pushing outwards like when you drive with a car around a curve, you get pushed in the opposite direction as you're driving. This also happens on earth, so there is a force pushing you towards the sky because of the rotation of earth, but this force is very weak compared to the gravitational force that pulls you down. This means that you can indirectly \"feel\" the rotation of earth simply because you are not as heavy as you'd be if earth didn't spin. The difference is very small though and since you don't have any experience of how it would feel on a non-rotating earth, it just seems normal to you and you don't feel anything special.",
"Because speed is relative, and we move at the same speed the earth does. Its the same reason you dont feel like your moving on an airplane or in a car moving at a constant speed. If the earth was to suddenly change speed then we would feel the acceleration.",
"Your body doesn't feel velocity, it feels changes in velocity (or acceleration). Our eyes can sense motion, but only if we have a frame of reference. And in that way, we *can* \"feel\" the earth spinning, in the form of watching sunsets. As a fun thing: get in your car, and go to a nice highway with stop-lights that has a higher speed limit (45 or so). Now gun it off the line of a stop light, but once you hit 45 stop accelerating to follow the law. Notice how when you were accelerating up to 45, you were being pushed back into the seat, but while you coast along at 45, you don't feel anything. The only time you'll feel it is if you're turning. But that is because turning is also acceleration: velocity is a *vector* that comprises of a speed and a direction; acceleration is a change in *either* of those things, and is the result of an outside force on the object (and we've come back to the Newton's Laws) Similar concept with the Earth; if the rotation speeds up we'll feel the hell out of it, but as long as it isn't actually changing in speed too much (there is some *very* gradual slowdown happening due to tidal effects with the moon, but that's adding 1 second to a day over the course of a century or something crazy like that)"
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77pne6 | How does changing to snow tires for season work? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"donrysl",
"donqu71",
"dont3pa"
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"text": [
"So I live in the Upper Peninsula, where snow is rampant just about 6 to 8 months of the year. I currently have a set of all season tires on my all wheel drive car, and have a set of snow tires for when the snow starts to fall. I can't speak for the people who don't have space to store the extra set of tires, however I keep mine on my balcony covered with a tarp to protect them from the non winter elements. When I need to change my tires, I head over to my local tire shop and they swap the tires, balance them and align them all for $79. I then store my all season tires where I stored my winter tires. I know some people who have the space like to have a different set of tires and rims, so that they can just take off their summer set and bolt on their winter set whenever they want to, but I don't have the money or space to do that. I hope I was able to help and would be more than glad to respond to any questions you may have!",
"30 years former Chicagoan, > I remember hearing you are only supposed to use them during certain months. You should only use dedicated snow and ice tires during the winter months. The rubber is extremely hard and doesn't have good traction or wear characteristics on normal pavement, and especially poor traction in the wet. That tread isn't there to displace and shed water, it's there for the hard edges of the pattern to dig into the snow and ice. They're a compromise, but all tires are. Their poor traction, especially in the wet, will kill you dead in the warmer months where you're going to drive more aggressively. You don't even have to be a sports car maniac, I'm just saying you think you can take that bend in the road at some speed like you always have, or likely you don't think about it at all, but it rained yesterday, and I promise you from my own experience this is the day you are wrong. > I was wondering how do those of you who live in colder climates use, store, and manage your snow tires and also regular tires? I have a stack of tires in the corner of the garage. Others might have a shed or put them under a tarp on the side of the house. For those with more disposable income or who don't care what their wheels look like, it's convenient to have an extra set of wheels so you don't have to deal with mounting and remounting all the time. > Do you own a set of each? I actually own a sports car and go through a set of summer performance tires a year. < shameless > > Do you just go to a tire shop to get them changed or do it yourself? If I had the space and money, I'd buy a wheel balancer and change them myself. Instead, I pay a tire shop to do them for me. I used to have an in at my old high school to let the boys do it for $20 until my shop teacher retired... > What about people who don't have the space to store tires or a vehicle to transport them like those it cities? All seasons. Once again a compromise. They are not as good in snow and ice as specialty tires by any means (from my experience the difference between snow and ice tires vs. anything else in those conditions is night and day), but they're not scary in the wet. But now I'm in the Pacific Northwest, and we're entering the rainy season, all chilly winter long. I can't wait to ditch the set I have now and get myself a set of rain tires. Chains are legal around here from November to March. Where I am specifically, it might snow 1\" for a total of 4 days a year and the city shuts down, because there's zero infrastructure for it, no plows, no salt, no sand. But it doesn't stick, so it's not worth it. These chains wrap the tires and have cross bars that dig in due to the weight of the car, or you can buy tires with after market knobs screwed into them (plastic, the metal ones were outlawed about 7 years ago). The reason for that is there are mountains, plus ice - and you have a recipe for death. Again, it's not a problem most of the winter, but those few days there is snow and ice, and you gotta drive, you're going to be glad you had them. Some areas you'll see road signs indicating they're mandatory, or driving on that road is illegal for you. They tear up the road, though, and road noise is a big issue out here. They also reduce traction in otherwise normal conditions, like snow and ice tires do. I like the idea of chains, because they're easy to put on or take off, but I'm not going to stick them on a sports car, I'll just wait it out.",
"To add a reply from Norway. You keep two different sets. Many keep the other set in the garage or basement. There are also \"tire hotel\" solutions where they will clean, store and change the tires for you. If you store them yourself, you can either change them yourself or bring them to the shop and they replace them for you. Remember to always tighten the screws a second time a few days later.",
"Tire rubber is designed to be stickiest at a certain temperature. Summer tires are sticky even when they get super hot. But, when the temperature gets to freezing, summer tires get hard and slippery. Snow tires stay rubbery even when it's freezing. People who have snow tires have a second set of rims with snow tires mounted for the winter. They can be cheap steel rims since they're driven in snow and salt, and winter tires are usually not low profile."
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77ppmz | If nuclear blasts can cause cancers in people, why is radiation therapy used to treat cancers? | I might be wrong here, but radiation therapy is much less intense and is more localized so while the radiation may cause secondary cancers to form, the risk is much less? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"> might be wrong here, but radiation therapy is much less intense and is more localized Radiation therapy is *more* intense and localized. The aim is to have something non-invasive which will kill the affected cells, getting rid of the cancer without needing to cut the person open or seriously damage other nearby tissues. The vast majority of the time radiation will just kill the affected cells. Only when the changes to the DNA are slight enough that the cells can perhaps live is it possible for the changes to accumulate into what becomes a cancerous cell. If they are so great that they just blast it apart then the cells will invariably die."
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77pw2e | How do we get Vitamin D from sun? | For instance, sitting out in cold weather with just your face exposed to sunlight, Is it different from getting a tan at the beach? I mean there must be some surface area exposure related stuff but what about its requirements over the different parts of body? How long one has to sit with less body exposure compared to more considering the above situations? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"donrqgf"
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"text": [
"Your body is able to make something called cholesterol and stores it in the skin. When the cholesterol is exposed to the ultraviolet-B radiation in sun light it undergoes a chemical reaction that transforms the cholesterol into vitamin D3. The D3 undergoes a series of chemical reactions in the liver and kidneys that eventually result in the production of Vitamin D."
],
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16
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77q1ls | Why do people try to avoid giving out bank details like routing and account number on checks but give checks to people with the same info on it anyway? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"donumws"
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"text": [
"People generally are giving the check to a credible place of business. Usually they aren't taking a cellphone picture of one and texting it to the dude on Craigslist they are buying a washing machine from."
],
"score": [
8
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77qgzw | What causes the actual sound associated with tinnitus? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"donyd44",
"donye2r",
"doofx3v",
"dooaeao",
"dop2e9f",
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"text": [
"We don't know for sure. A common theory is that the brain is trying to make sense of the lack of signal (probably due to damaged hair cells) by cranking up the sensitivity, resulting in basically static noise. Imagine turning up the volume on the radio because you can't hear anything. But since there's no signal you just get louder white noise. Regardless what it is though, there is no actual sound. Tinnitus ultimately happens in the brain, not the ears. Misinterpreting signals, or neural circuits thrown out of balance",
"Nerve hairs inside the ear send signals to your brain that tell it what they hear. When there is hearing damage, some or more of these sensitive nerve hairs are broken off, and their signals go crazy instead of sensing an actual sound. The sum of all these broken hairs is the sound we experience as tinnitus.",
"I'm probably late to the party here, but tinnitus is most analogous to phantom limb pain. When there is a (near) total lack of stimulation from a nerve, your brain makes up for the loss in one way or another. Just like the usual \"prescription\" for phantom limb pain is to stay active to keep your mind from dwelling on that lack of stimulation, white or pink or grey noise generators (I know they exist, just don't know the difference) can help calm tinnitus by stimulating the hair cells in your inner ear that detect sound at specific frequencies. This is usually the best option if you do not have appreciable hearing loss that warrants the investment in a hearing aid. Most people who suffer from tinnitus, though, *do* have hearing loss as well, so hearing aids that are programmed to help stimulate your hearing nerve(s) can work wonders in reducing (although not totally eliminating) tinnitus in affected patients. Source; I am the husband of an Au.D and an engineer with interest in acoustics and hearing. We joke that I have an honorary doctorate, too.",
"I read a study last year that referred to it as\"hidden hearing loss\", they found that in cases where people were around noises above 90db for extended periods tinnitus was often a precursor to permanent hearing damage. At least for people who work in loud environments.",
"In permanent tinitus there is no sound, your brain makes it up. Some say the frequency of the sound is a frequency your ear cannot hear anymore but your brain expects it to be there. So by the lack of that frequency, your brain is confused and tries to compensate by creating this false processing sound. So if the hearing part is queried or checked by other parts it can tell them \"i'm ok, look at the stats, i got every frequency covered i suppose to have\". I got it proven by undergoing an EEG in a soundproof room staring at a white wall. The EEG registered brain activity in the hearing part of the brain. Meaning the brain was processing something that wasn't there. There is a (experimental) treatment where they electrify the part of the brain responsible for the phantom sound so it overloads and \"breaks\". The tinnitus will be gone for about 3 months until the brain recovers. Then it is time for a new treatment. I never tried that because i don't want to know what life is without tinnitus and get it back every 3 months. Other treatments suggested are anit-depressant or anti-epileptic medication. How does that help? In order for a part of your brain to give an alert to your consciousness, the signals of that brain part have to rise above a certain threshold level so it is worth mentioning (if we didn't had those thresholds, we'd be overwhelmed by signals and go crazy). Those medications make that threshold higher so weak processing signals do not get to the threshold and never revealed to your consciousness. If they can get the threshold higher than the signals of the tinnitus, they wont go through to your consciousness so you wont experience them. Extra info: that is what your body does during sleep, set the threshold higher. That is why you dont feel mosquitoes or spiders, the signals from your skin do not pass the threshold so it doesn't get passed on to your consciousness (which would wake you up)",
"I'm not an expert but saw an explanation once, and since there seems to be a lack of that explanation here I will try remember it. So the neurons in the brain get a signal from the ear and they activate and so you hear a sound. When they activate, they cause other neurons to activate, its like a domino reaction. Now they are all connected. Sometimes, especially when they're getting very strong signals, or no signals due to damaged ear, they can get in a loop of sorts, activating each other continuously, never deactivating. If there's a lot of these, activating themselves continuously that's when you hear the constant ringing. More or less."
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77qr8y | Why do images of computer screens show weird patterns when you zoom them in and out? | Example: URL_0 | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Those are pixels. Though you may also be referring to the moire pattern which appears when photographing a television or monitor from further away. Essentially they happen because the pattern of pixels on a monitor and the pattern of pixels of a camera don't match up quite right and end up making weird patterns. See: [Moire pattern]( URL_0 )",
"In a nutshell it's like trying to display a fraction when the numbers you are allowed to use are whole numbers only. How would you represent 1/2 if you can only choose 0 or 1? Some you might say are 0, and others you might say are 1. So you're losing information when you store the fractions using whole numbers. This is kind of how digital displays and digital cameras work to render pixels on a screen, or photograph them. Most displays are pixel based and there is a very tiny sequence of red, green, and blue squares which light up to form a single pixel (subpixels) and they are fixed in place. There are also pixels in the CCD or CMOS sensor of a camera, which are also fixed in place. Now in a perfect scenario, the camera distance and zoom would be such that for every pixel on the display, a pixel of the camera picks it up. This would be a 1:1 pixel ratio. But what happens if the camera has more pixels or smaller pixels, or the distance to the display is not perfect for 1:1 viewing? The pixels may not align between screen and camera and so some camera pixels will see two half pixels, possibly of different colors, and so it will show something halfway between those two pixels in color and brightness. Meanwhile other sensor pixels may pick up a single clean display pixel and show it accurately. This difference between perfectly captured pixels and partially captured pixels is what causes the noise and screen door effect as the camera moves closer or farther away. Since the pixels are arranged in rows and columns at fixed distances from each other, we see this as aliasing or bands of dark areas or noise. The reason you don't see this effect very much using film cameras is because they use little particles of light sensitive emulsion that are scattered randomly all over the film. They aren't lined up in perfect rows and columns like a digital sensor would be. So when they record the light from pixels that aren't at a perfect 1:1 ratio, the distortion gets spread evenly throughout the random placement of the film, instead of lined up in perfect rows and amplifying this pixel distortion. You can also have this problem with LCD and other pixel based monitors that have fixed pixel widths and arrangements. Say that your monitors native resolution is 1000x1000 (for ease of understanding just go with it). You play a game that has a resolution of 940x720. In order to get a 1:1 ratio, the monitor would need to display the game with black bars around the edges so that the total resolution was still 1000x1000. If you wanted to play it in full screen, it could stretch the image, but then the pixels wouldn't line up anymore. The result would be jagged aliasing lines similar to using a digital camera. Squares wouldn't be perfectly square, straight lines would look jagged and not clean. But lets say that you play the game at 500x500 resolution at full screen. The monitor can simply double the pixels and use 2 of it's pixels to render 1 of the games. The result is 500 goes into 1000 twice, and so with a 2:1 ratio, it would still be possible to have sharply defined lines and the pixels would match up evenly and the screen would look good. The same if the game rendered at 2000x2000 but the display only went to 1000x1000. The display would simply use 1 pixel to render 2 of the games pixels and it would still look clear and noise free. The smaller the pixel size on the display though, the less this becomes a problem as you would have to get closer and closer to the screen in order to notice. On a 4k monitor, you basically can't see it anymore. This is why it's always best to run a game in the native resolution of your monitor, and if that's not possible, then running it in an even ratio is the next best thing."
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77qrdy | Why do businesses tend to hire 40+ employees at part time, instead of having a small team working at full time? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because you don't have to pay for part time employees sick time, vacation time, health insurance... or anything. And you can (for the most part) fire them when you want."
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77qz1c | What in our brain causes you to randomly be in a bad mood without any reason? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Less Presynaptic serotonin availability....that means dysphoria and/or anxiety.... At the same time gaba channels close then anxiety is further increased"
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77r5ur | What makes using a centrifuge to mix substances together so effective and better than just shaking by hand for a while? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Centrifuges don't mix stuff together. In fact they do the exact opposite - they separate stuff. In a mixture, over time the heavier stuff will sink to the bottom and the lighter stuff will rise to the top. But this can take a *very* long time in normal Earth gravity, so we speed it up with a centrifuge. By spinning insanely fast, a centrifuge creates a huge g-force outwards. This causes the heavier stuff in the mixture to drift to the outer wall, and the lighter stuff to concentrate near the center. You can then extract the lighter stuff and toss the heavier stuff, or vice versa, whichever you want."
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77racm | What is the difference between tactics and strategy? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"Tactical\" is anything at the small unit level. Like taking a hill, or out-flanking a bunker. Think \"battle\" or a specific instance involving a small group, a platoon of vehicles or a small number of ships or aircraft. \"Strategic\" is longer term. Strategic thinking is planning for outcomes of multiple tactical outcomes, more units, many battles, much larger scale. _If we take this town, then my armor takes this valley, then my airborne lands here. Where do I get fuel from? Nearest deep water port is ...._ \"Tactical air support\" - getting supplies dropped to a unit in the field. An attack aircraft being called in to deliver bombs on a hill where a sniper has your unit pinned down from. \"Strategic (air/sea) lift\" - how can I get an entire armored brigade from Georgia, USA to Kuwait in under a week?"
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77rigd | Why do diseases/afflictions and the extent of their effects vary greatly from region to region | How can an African man generally be fine with Malaria at least once a year, or walk around with untreated cuts without a problem. But when people from the western world come to Africa, Malaria tends to be more aggressive and almost always fatal to them, and even slight cuts have the tendency to be septic? I am West African. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Their immune systems aren't adapted to both the environment, and are overall weaker. It's a common trait within western countries with improved sanitation and healthcare. All throughout their lives, their bodies have not been exposed to the same pathogens a native of the region would. It's also why allergies, immune system overreactions, are so much more common in Western countries.",
"We adapt to our environment and the diseases in them. You inherit some resistances from your parents through DNA, others through inoculations and exposure to the disease during childhood, and still others from general health. If we move out of that environment and into a new environment that has different diseases and parasites, we may find we are less adapted to dealing with them. We may eventually develop a resistance over time, but it requires exposure to the diseases and parasites, which make us sick. It's similar to the reasons why drinking water in other countries may make you sick, but not the locals. They earned their spot in that food chain by dealing with that sickness for generations and developing immunity. Visitors did not. For malaria specifically, it has been theorized that sickle cell anemia, while itself a kind of disease, was an adaptation by some sub Saharan African peoples in order to survive malaria. The same mechanism that causes mis-shappen red blood cells, also makes it harder for malaria to infect and spread through a person body. Malaria is also spread through pests like mosquitoes and some people have body chemistries that don't attract blood sucking insects as much, or may even repel them. Other people may act like mosquito magnets, something in their sweat or breath attracts mosquitoes and they get bit more often."
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77s2ms | It's possible to make fizzy fruit by putting fresh fruit in an airtight container with a towel and dry ice. How/why does this work? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As the dry ice sublimates (turns from solid into gas), this raises the pressure inside of the air tight container. This process forces carbon into the fruit, much like a [soda maker]( URL_0 ) does with small carbon canisters that attach to the maker itself. Do you remember the Three Stooges bit where they spray water into each others faces? That's carbonated water, from a soda maker bottle."
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77slmf | Why do more serious wounds, like surgery wounds have drainage durring the healing process? | like I get that the drainage helps get rid of infections, but why specifically have it drain, it just seems so weird to me. Thanks in advance! | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is a deep wound. This is not the same as most wounds we get which are surface wounds without a push, non penetrating wounds. Of course we can imagine many accidental wounds which are penetrating, or non accidental such as being stuck with a shiv multiple times. But the majority of accidental wounds are skin punctures. There is a healing process. At first their is a very deep cut which disrupts all manner of things such as the normal drainage of fluid from an area. There is a normal drainage, very low pressure, which gets fluid away from tissue. The normal pattern is: arterial pressure, oxygenated blood coming from the heart, highest pressure, venous drainage system, blood returning to the heart, much lower pressure, lymphatic system, almost no pressure, interstitial fluid, this will drain to cells which will pump it back into the venous system, may drain from muscles and other tissues to cells which specialize in pumping. This is all disrupted by the wound. So surgeons leave a drain in place. The living cells start to organize and repair. They remove dead cell structures and start to knit together. They form adhesions and scar tissue. But this is more than a few days after surgery. Before that the drain helps. Surgeons can actually have the equivalent of an IV, it is not an IV because the flow is not into a vein, into the wound or into the dressing. A sterile flow of fluid helps keep away wound infections.",
"The drainage is dead white blood cells and dead bacteria. Having to drain a wound is more about how deep and enclosed it is. When you scrape your knee, the wound is on the surface so the drainage can easily flow out. With a deeper wound, the drainage has nowhere to go, so it builds up and causes other problems, especially since it can serve as a conduit to some of the still living bacteria."
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77tdgv | The act of recalling retired military personnel to duty | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most aren't actually retired in the sense that people think of retired. If you're an officer you're available for life, even after you put in a retirement packet. Very rare in that case but does happen. A commission is valid to the end unless you resign it. On the enlisted side there is a huge difference between retired and not on active. There's a time period call inactive ready reserve that is an contractual time they can still call you back for service. For enlisted once you are true retired they can't call you back at all."
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77tg1h | How does viagra work and What happens when a woman or an eunuch takes viagra? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"IIRC Viagra was originally developed as a treatment for pulmonary issues; it expanded blood vessels in the lungs by relaxing them, allowing for greater blood flow / oxygen transfer. The side effect is that it relaxes blood vessels *everywhere*, allowing for easier erections, among other things. Now that's what it is primarily marketed for. Edit: eunuchs and women get the vasodilation effects without the chub.",
"Viagra can be used in women with sexual dysfunction, too. Increasing blood flow throughout the body includes blood flow to the vagina, improving vaginal lubrication and sensitivity.",
"Viagra was originally designed to be a vasodilator (opens up blood vessels) for heart disease. However, they noticed an odd little side effect in men (shwing!) If someone without the male organ takes it, it simply works as a vasodilator and opens up the blood vessels like it’s original intent."
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77tjug | How would a fire behave in zero gravity? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"URL_0 It expands radially in all directions, then have problems with oxygen feed. In gravitational fire, you feed in oxygen at the bottom of the flame, with no gravity, the ignition consumes all the local oxygen and then you have problems with fuel o2 ratios."
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77tjvm | why the waves don't interfere? | first, I'm sorry for my english. try to understand what I mean. there are lots of electromagnetic waves in the air such as radio waves. here is the question, why these waves interfere each other? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They do actually. That's why a microwave oven might slow down your wifi or you migut have to press three times on your garage door keyfob if you are also using your cordless phone. A short intro: radio uses frequencies, a concept meant to split data sources apart: radio stations, gsm operators. A frequency has a bandwidth (how much it can carry), an absorbtion factor and you can tradeoff speed (up to the max bandwidth for reliability). A submarine signal (ultra low freq) can be on/off and can be heard anywhere in the world, but it can only say yes or no. A 5GHz link can be heard around your house, but carries more than 10MBps. There are many more factors at play this this, mostly that rf waves bounce, reflect, and you never know how they reach you (fi: an earlier reflection can cancel the current signal). But some applications, like GSM get their dedicated frequencies. This is good, because the frequencies most likely to cancel you out are those near to you (this is relative). There are also \"encoding\" techniques, called modulation. Usually you vary a fixed frequency by the amount of your signal: if you want to transmit a 440Hz signal on a 96MHz carrier signal, you vary the 96MHz signal in sync with the 440 one: from 96 000 000-220 to 96 000 000+220. This is called frequency modulation. This is old tech, by modern standards. Even TV broascast switched to digital, that s why you might have received a set top box, ans an old TV can no longer receive anything with just an antenna. The only globally widespread application of FM still in use is FM radio (music, news) mostly because digital replacements sucked and never caught on, while making an am receiver in case of emergencies is dead simple (coil a wire with a diode/led scrapped out of anything on a tin can). Currently, various modulation techniques are used for digital data: bits represent specififc \"notes\", the carrier is varied 100 times per second. For example, see [MFSK]( URL_1 ) or generic [spread spectrum]( URL_0 ) techniques. tl;dr: they do interfere, but modern transmit/receive techniques cancel most problems out.",
"For waves to interfere, i.e. cancel each other out or amplify each other, they have to have a very similar frequency, as in \"almost the same\". Imagine a lake. You throw two small stones in it, 5 meters apart. The small concentrical waves around each stone will interfere with those from the other and build a nice pattern on the lake. If you now take a muuuuuch bigger stone and throw it somewhere in the lake, the resulting waves will be much higher and have a much larger wavelength. They will not interfere with the smaller waves in the sense I explained above, but will simply \"carry\" the smaller waves on top. The interference patterns from the two small stones will still exist on the big wave. Since all electronics are highly regulated, everything that emits data has a distinct frequency and often times a mechanism to switch to another one, if there s a similar device around to avoid interference. Was that ELI5 enough? :)"
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77tlsq | Why is water always level? And how can anything be level since we live on a sphere? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"On a global scale water isn’t level. Water is practically level on smaller scales. Its curvature, which does exist as we do live on a sphere (as you pointed out) isn’t significant enough to matter in any manner of practical application. So technically it isn’t but it isn’t significant until you are on a pretty massive scale",
"Level relative to the surface of a sphere works like this: 1. Start at the center of the sphere. 2. Draw a ray from the center of the sphere to a point on the surface of the water. 3. Measure the distance. 4. Repeat for all points on the surface of the water. If the distance is the same each time, it's level. Water [isn't always level]( URL_1 ). Even ignoring waves, the depth of an ocean at a particular place varies due to the tides -- the moon and sun pull at the water, and that's a strong enough force to change the depth by a nontrivial degree. A useful concept here is [angle of repose]( URL_0 ). The idea is: if you pour a pile of this thing, how steep are the sides of this pile? For gravel, it's like 45°. For snow, it's more like 38°. And wet, sloppy clay is only 15°. Liquid water's angle of repose is 0°. That doesn't tell you why, though. The biggest aspect of the angle of repose is how easily particles move past each other. Boulders don't easily move past each other, so you can assemble them into a wall. Dry sand bits can move past each other a lot better, so they have a much shallower angle of repose. And water molecules can move past each other very easily, so they have a 0° angle of repose.",
"You're confusing level with flat. \"Level\" in this context means that all points on the surface have the same gravitational potential. It does not mean that the surface is flat. However the difference is so slight at human scales near the Earth's surface that we don't usually distinguish. If you're making something really big (like a runway), you definitely have to decide between flat or level. Water self levels because nature prefers the lowest energy state. If you release a drop of water in the air, it will fall to the ground. If you hold up a string with just the tip touching the ground, it will fall and pool on the ground. A mass of water has no intrinsic shape (one definition of fluid is that any mass of fluid takes the shape of its container) so the top surface will \"fall\" into the lowest energy state where no part of the surface is higher than any other.",
"On the ocean, which is a virtually flat surface, you can only see a few miles until the horizon. 1.17 times the square root of viewing height = Distance to the horizon (nautical miles). The higher up you go, the farther you can see. This is directly related to the earth's curvature.",
"The curvature of Earth is visible at surprisingly small distances. I filmed a ship for only a few minutes and it visibly 'sank' below the horizon, minute by minute. URL_0",
"To answer the first part of your question: the weight of the water increases the pressure at the bottom. Water flows from high pressure to low, so it will flow away from areas where the water is thicker, until the level is even everywhere.",
"Water is almost never level but not for the reasons you seem to be thinking. Also a lot of people in this thread seem to have some problems with the difference between flat and level. A drywall is flat but it is not level, it usually approximates vertical at right angles to level. A good pool table is (relatively) both flat and level. Mean sea level is level but is by no means flat. Mean sea level is a mathematical construct that is the average position of the sea if you remove the effects of things like wind and waves. It is a surface that represents the position of the sea surface due to the effects of gravitational potential. If you have a good sized lake with similar type of terrain and rocks around and no wind or anything to disturb the water the surface will approximate a portion of a sphere. This lake is level but curved, only slightly curved but curved none the less. Imagine a similar lake with a large mountain at one end and a flat sandy plain at the other. The mountain will add a very small extra gravitational pull in its direction and lift the water slightly at one end because the gravity effect will diminish over distance. This lake will be level but curved not only by the general gravity of the earth but by the more specific gravity of the nearby mountain. The lakes are considered to be level because at any point on their surface the water surface is a right angles to the force of gravity at that point. Generally an ocean, sea or lake is not level due to effects of wind, waves, water density etc etc but if you take a lot of measurements of the surface over a long period of time and compute an average surface it will be level. It will also be bumpy not flat.",
"Gravity makes everything level out because it pulls everything towards the center of the earth. Water isn't always level(especially not on larger scales like oceans), it just typically is so close to level that we can't see the difference.",
"The globe is a lot bigger than you are imagining it. You are seeing a tiny part of it at any given time and your eyes can not detect the curve unless you get very, very high up. Like outer-space high. So yes, water always finds it's level. And yes, that level is curved. But you have to measure such a long distance to even detect the curve you can ignore it unless you are doing something like sailing across long distances."
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77ulwb | What is "bridge mode" on a router, and when it is useful? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It can mean different things. A home router is often a router and a modem combined, but the router part tends to be pretty crappy. Bridge mode basically disables the router part, allowing you to use the modem to connect a second device directly to the Internet. The downside is that you can only connect one device this way (usually). Hence, it is usually used to connect a second, better router. The upside is that the slow and buggy built-in router goes out of the way. Then there's also bridge in the context of WiFi, which was already explained.",
"In computer networking with the tcp/ip protocol (the one the internet uses), you have small networks linked together by routers to become a large internetwork. A single network is identified by its use of a single tcp/ip addressing “subnet”. In tcp/ip, every computer on the network has an IP address, and you can use that address to figure out which of all the connected networks that computer is on. Imagine that a subnet is like the block your home is on, and if you saw the home address of another house you’d be able to tell just by looking at the address if that house is on your block or another block. So routers are the things that connect subnets together, that take network “traffic” and forward it to the next subnet if it’s supposed to go that way. But if you change the router to “bridge” mode, that tells the router to treat both sides, both networks, as if they’re the same subnet. Effectively it makes a transparent connection between the two networks so they become one. The ip addresses on both sides have to be in the same subnet. The “bridge mode” router now forwards ALL traffic it sees on one side to the other side automatically.",
"So before this question can be answered I feel like an explanation of what a router does and what a bridge does in the context of networking is useful In networking routers and bridges were kind of designed to do the same thing. Take two separate networks and connect them together. The major difference is how that is done. With a bridge the two networks are connected together to make 1 larger network. With a router, the two networks remain unchanged, but they still gain the ability to communicate with each other. In terms of a home router, or router that is supplied by the ISP. Think about the internet as one network, and your computers and devices as another. In bridge mode, your devices are connected directly to the internet. In routed mode your devices are connected to their own network, but gain the ability to communicate with the internet. This is much more secure way to connect your devices to the internet. Like any other product, routers can vary in performance, and features, so bridged mode is useful when the modem/router combo your ISP supplies you does not meet your needs and you'd like to add your own. So you place the modem/router into bridge mode, and then connect your own router. Then it's like your router has been directly connected to the internet.",
"In bridge mode the bridge router uses it's wireless to connect to the wireless of another router. This forms a wireless link, or bridge, between the two. The network ports on the bridge router are used to connect non wireless clients to your network. Those clients can communicate with the rest of your network due to their traffic being sent over the wireless bridge. This is useful when you have a spare access point and want to use it with non wireless computers. I have an upstairs desktop that uses a bridge router for it's connection which saved me from having to buy another wireless NIC. Another benefit is if you have multiple wired computers going to the bridge router. They all share the one wireless connection which slows them down a bit but doesn't slow the whole wireless network down as much as multiple wireless clients each with their own wireless connection would. Also because wireless access points tend to have larger antennas. They can typically communicate over longer distances. Say like between a house and detached garage.",
"Bridge mode is simply a way to turn a wifi signal into a hard wired port on your network. Let's say you wanted to connect your smart TV to the internet, but there is no wifi functionality and there's only an Ethernet port. But the TV is on the opposite side of the house as the router, an on a different floor as well. You could run a cable several hundred feet, through walls and through the ceiling and connect it that way. Or you could take a 2nd router and create a wifi bridge. The 2nd router acts more like a wifi receiver, connecting to the existing network as a new wireless device rather than creating a new wifi network. The ports on the router then act as a local switch, and in some cases multiple devices can be connected. So now the internet signal travels from the modem to the wifi router, then to the bridge, along the cable and into the television. And vise versa. Bridge mode let's you create a wireless connection between wired devices. A bridge.",
"A switch is a multiport bridge. There are occasions where you don't want a router to route. You just want it to act as a switch. For example, my 2nd router is used as a 2nd wireless access point and switch. Thus, it is acting as a bridge. It doesn't route.",
"A router connects two networks together. Data that needs to be routed needs to go through a router to determine where it needs to go. You need a router when traversing differing networks (eg. your home network, to your ISP, to the internet, to Reddit's ISP, to /r/IASIP). You don't need a router when you're in your own network (technically, broadcast domain). Going from your computer connected to a switch, to another computer in that same switch does not require routing. If everything is connected to a single switch, that's one broadcast domain. If the two switches are connected to each other, that's also a single broadcast domain (excluding enterprise networking, where a single switch can do magical things, like VLANs, L3 routing within, client isolation, and more). Bridge mode makes a router act like a switch, where it stops trying to route packets across the network. Then, you can use a router in bridge mode to connect to another switch, and have it all be on the same broadcast domain. You'd use bridge mode at home in examples such as: * Reusing an old router to extend your current network, but don't want to do weird things like double NATs inside your home network. * Bypassing your required ISP router (Looking at you, VZ FiOS) so that you can use your own router without doing the above double NATs. Sight tangent: using double NAT can cause connectivity issues with services such as online multiplayer, and introduces an additional step required to disable the inherent-by-design one-way flow of data when using typical home/SOHO routers using 1:N NAT.",
"There is a \"bridge mode\" in all-in-one modem/router/wifi combo boxes that disables the router and wifi so you could use your own/better equipment if desired. If bridge mode is disabled and you put in your own router down stream (most times) you're going to have internet issues. I can get more detailed and non-eli5 if wanted.",
"A practical example I've used: I had my phone, laptop, and another device with only wired ethernet. My phone has 3G internet and can hotspot my laptop over wifi. My laptop has wifi and an ethernet port. I bridged my laptops wifi+ethernet port while on my phone's hotspot. Plug in wired device to laptop, got dhcp+internet from the phone's wifi hotspot.",
"My work phone requires a hardline internet connection (can't connect wirelessly) - bridge mode allows the bridge to connect to my wireless router (in another area of the house) so I can connect my phone to it through the bridge. It is not acting as a wireless router anymore - It does not duplicate or repeat a wireless signal to act as a separate wireless router",
"Practical use: I’m a network engineer and use a hardware firewall on the edge of my network. For work purposes, I want the “public IP” address normally assigned to my modem on my firewall instead, so I put the modem in bridge mode. It basically disables routing functionality on the modem and just passes the public IP back to the firewall instead and ONLY acts as a modem.",
"I'm a bit late but I feel like true ELI5 is still missing, so let me give it a go. Your typical home router is actually multiple devices in one - modem, firewall and router. Let's imagine, that your download is like apples delivery to apple processing factory. First there's modem, that's a worker that can unload all the apples from truck and puts them on the belt. Then there's firewall, that's a guy down the belt path, that's filtering all the bad apples out. Finally there's router, this guy takes all the apples from the belt and puts them on one of the outgoing belts. Some apples are good for cooking, so they'll go to the cooking belt, some are nice enough to be packaged and sold. The beautiful ones will end up on premium belt and will be sold in those fancy packs as a premium produce. The router decides the future destination of each apple. Now in regular mode, your router does all those things above. In bridge mode, only the modem part (unloading the apples from the truck) is done. Why would you want that? Typically it's because you'll connect better (dedicated) firewall and router down the road. (imagine it like a separate unloading facility with separate building for the other stuff) Your computer can work as router and firewall as well if you connect it directly in the bridge mode. Sometimes it makes the installation easier if you want to connect just that one computer.."
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77v9tf | How does an oven heat to 200°C, yet we don't get burnt by the air when we open it? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Air is a very poor conductor of heat. When you put your hand in a 200 C oven, it starts to heat up, but much more slowly than if you dipped your hand into a pot of 200 C oil. So long as you don't keep your hand in the over for very long, you will not get hurt.",
"I don't agree with the answers talking about conductivity and insulation. It's more about heat capacity. Temperature is not the thing that burns, heat is. In common usage those are the same thing, but in physics there's a difference. Think of heat as being the total energy in something, and temperature as being the amount of energy per molecule (those are incorrect and imprecise definitions, but this eli5). The air from the oven has a high temperature (lots of energy per molecule) but being a gas, not many molecules, so not much overall energy. That hot air comes in contact with you, but doesn't have enough energy to hurt you. The amount of a energy (heat) a substance needs to raise its temperature is called heat capacity. Air and most gases have very low heat capacities. Water (and people) has a very high heat capacity.",
"Air is a fantastic insulator and, lucky for us, transfers the oven's heat relatively slowly. If you don't linger, it doesn't have time to burn you. It is also why it takes so long to preheat. Interestingly, broiling is more dangerous because it adds radiant heat which can essentially bypass that insulation."
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77veka | What is that effect where your eye takes "snapshots" if you look in the opposite direction of where your going | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When you move your eyes, it is called a \"saccade\". This 'snapshot' happens because of what is known as \"saccadic masking\", i.e. the brain cuts out some of the information coming from your eyes, just before and while your eyes are moving. URL_0 In simple terms, when you move your eyes, your brain \"pauses the video\" for a split second, and so you see a \"frame\" with less motion in it, seemingly causing a 'freeze frame' effect. Another way to notice this effect is explained on the wikipedia page - if you look in a mirror and look back and forth, you can't see your eyes moving. Likewise, you don't see (much) motion blur when you look around quickly. Your brain hides the motion of your eyes from you, and so has to fill something in while your eyes are moving, which is where this effect comes from.",
"I know this is probably against the rules, but can someone ELI5 what OP is asking? To what phenomenon are they referring?",
"Human eyes **don't** sample; they're continuous. There are no such things as snapshots with human optic nerves. There's an interesting effect (that I think you're talking about) when you change where you're looking that is effectively a small lag built into your optical system. The brain takes information from the eyes, but to recognize an object as moving, your brain needs two measurements of the object: object A position 1 and object A position 2. This means that your brain needs more information before you perceive motion. A quick glance is not long enough to figure out motion like that. The effect is most commonly observed (and most commonly posted to ELI5) as it applies to the second hand on a clock that seems to stop for longer than a second when you first look at the clock. That's because of this same effect. tl;dr: Until the brain is sure something is moving, it won't perceive motion. To be sure, the brain needs more information than a quick glance provides."
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77vgyi | sulphur rods that crack when rolled over a stiff neck and provide immediate relief. How? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Snake oil. Pressure threshold must have been enough to crack the rod and temporarily provide relief.",
"Lol this sounds like a bunch of bullshit aka homeopathic medicine Placebo effect is powerful so it's probably nothing to do with what it is you're rubbing on your body, more to do with how much you believe it's gonna help"
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77vh1b | what exactly is happening when you get 'the spins'? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'm going to assume you're talking about alcohol-induced dizziness or vertigo. In your ears, there are these tubes called [semicircular canals]( URL_0 ). In those tubes is a kind of jelly. Gravity makes sure the jelly always settles downward, and there are nerves in the canals that sense the presense of the jelly. The brain can tell which way is down by interpreting the signals from these canals. If there's alcohol involved, it works to dilute the jelly, so it sloshes around a lot easier. If you stand up quickly, the jelly sloshes all over the place, and the brain tries to make sense of this. You perceive this confusion as a *shifting direction of gravity*. Moving your head quickly and positioning your feet against this \"new\" gravity only exacerbates the problem."
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77vi2n | On aquariums, why fish from different species won't eat each other? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In my experience working in aquarium shops, fish selection is important. Some will eat each other. Also important is keeping them fed, so hunger doesn't become too much of a factor. Even when both of these things are taken into account, small fish still get eaten by big fish sometimes. I recall a small setup that kept losing those little neon tetras. We removed all of the other fish besides an algae-eating plecostomus, and learned quickly that algae was not the only thing it liked to eat. The neons still disappeared, and I got to watch him grab one.",
"Fish in aquariums do eat each other. It takes special care to decide which species can be safely kept in the same tank, and even then they'll attack each other if they get hungry enough. Google for fish attacking each other and you'll get plenty of aquarium videos."
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77vlvc | Why when you microwave food on a plate, the food heats up but the plate stays cold? | When I put a plate of food in the microwave, the food and any parts of the plate that are in contact with the food get very hot, but any parts of the plate without food (like the edges) seem to stay very cool even immediately after taking the plate out the microwave. Why is this? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Microwave ovens work by vibrating the bonds in molecules present in food, particularly water. The molecules with these kinds of bonds are typically not present in most crockery meaning plates that you put in the microwave don't heat by any mechanism other than conduction from the food itself.",
"The microwave makes water particles \"dance\" and when they \"dance\" they heat up. Your plate does not contain water so no party over there. Get it?"
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77vmiv | How is research carried out in order to constantly develop and improve CPUs and GPUs? | What does improving these computer components involve and what methods are used to develop more efficient processing units? Edit: with a strong emphasis on the experimental aspect | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are three main ways to improve a CPU. First, you can make it faster, able to execute more instructions every second. The problem is the faster you go, the hotter and sloppier the chip gets, to the point it eventually fails. Next, you can make the components smaller. The smaller the chip architecture, the more transistors you can fit into one place, and the less power the chip needs, reducing heat. Finally, you can make the chip smarter. Find ways to do things in 4 steps instead of 5, do multiple things at once, improve caching, and in general do things more efficiently. Edit: Clarified the language on the second point.",
"It's really complex, but the very simplified basics are: 1) Figuring out how to make smaller circuits on the same size chip, i.e. cram in more circuits to the same space. (this is what was/is behind the famous Moore's Law) - this can require creating an entirely new process of etching out the circuits on the silicon wafer. 2) Figure out how to make the same number of circuits perform more calculations in the same amount of time (i.e. better circuits, not just more of them) - this is what is referred to as \"instructions per clock\" or IPC 3) Figure out how to make the circuits run faster (i.e. more GHz) without problems like overheating or random errors",
"As others have pointed out, Moore's Law/Dennard Scaling have historically made part of the progress easy. You get more/faster transistors at every generation. (That's pretty much at an end now, though.) The trick is then to figure out how best to use those benefits. With CPUs, one of the things you can almost always depend on is making the internal cache memories larger. The performance hit from going off-chip is so huge that you almost can't have too much cache memory. After that, it gets complicated. One of the things that you could look at historically for CPU improvement was to look at what was going on in previous generations of mainframe and supercomputers. Microprocessors eventually put inside of a single chip the things that those systems were doing to improve performance. Another mainstay was to simply absorb functions being done by other PC motherboard components. You didn't necessarily improve the CPU performance, but you improved the performance and cost of the motherboard as a whole, which is really the point. No matter what changes you were going to make to the CPU, one thing was constant: simulation. No matter what changes you thought might bear fruit, the key was to build a model of your new CPU and simulate the performance under a variety of workloads. Designing and manufacturing a new microprocessor is incredibly difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. You want to be reasonably sure of what you're going to end up with at the end of the day. Back in the day, we even used to build hardware emulators, since you could get much more done with them than software simulations. But that's not really done too much these days with super-complex chips like full microprocessors."
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77vn9x | How do some spiders manage to get stuck in the webs of other spiders despite being able to (seemingly) flawlessly move through their own webs? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not all strands in a spider web are sticky, and a spider moves on his own web by walking on the non-sticky strands. If the spider stepped incorrectly, they'd get stuck in their own web. If that same spider tried to walk on a different web, they'd probably step on the wrong strand and get stuck.",
"Not all strands in a spiders web are sticky. Most are but there are support threads that any insect can walk on. The spider knows where all of the non-sticky threads are, because it created the web. In another spiders web a spider can get lost and end up stuck."
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77wbj9 | What are programming design patterns? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are one of the reasons why some people drop out of CS programs in college, for one. On a slightly more serious note: a design pattern is basically a sort of recipe to solve a common problem -- only it's a partial recipe. These problems aren't anything \"big\" like \"write an application to do my taxes\", but they are small parts that occur in many different contexts. An easy example would be the `Publish/Subscribe` pattern. It describes how to be notified of a certain change or event. For instance, assume you're a chef. There's a cake in one oven, turkey in another oven, and a soufflé in a third oven. You don't want to walk around for an hour, constantly checking up on (\"observing\") each oven. No. Instead, you tell each oven to notify you when it's done cooking. While that's happening, you can go off and chop some vegetables or something. There are many ways to program something like this. But realizing that it's a common problem, and that there's a named design pattern for it, makes it easier to talk and reason about it. Kind of like two pastry chefs can talk about cake, without having to describe how to make a cake. They both have a pretty good idea of how a cake works. And because they both know about cake, they can say \"this cake was really nice\" or \"it only took 20 minutes to make\", or whatever the salient point is. It's a common misconception that you \"have\" to \"use\" design patterns, or that there is a magical list with \"all\" design patterns. The \"gang of four\" has famously published a bunch of them. But that's by no means all of them.",
"I'm familiar with C++, at least in that space, design patterns are just some common ways of grouping and creating classes that people have found useful. Rather than reinvent the wheel for certain needs that show up over and over in programming, they wrote down these design patterns that might fit what you're trying to do, and this saves you some time thinking about how to implement it. Of course, you have to have spent the time learning the design patterns ahead of time, at least good enough to recognize when it's a good idea to use one."
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77xi1b | Why are we told to turn off cars engines while fueling them? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's possible a spark from the engine could ignite gas vapors and cause an explosion. It's also possible the driver was dumb and forgot to put the vehicle in park or set the parking brake and it could roll away and crash into something."
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77xr9z | Why is watching tv easier than just picking up a book and reading it? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Maybe because when you are watching tv you are passive, you are just watching you don't need especially to focus. But when it comes the reading you are active. You have to be focus and you use your brain to imagine what you are reading. I mean you have no images so your brain needs to create them to make the history you are reading existing In summarised I would day that there is less active part of your brain when you are watching tv than when you are reading",
"It has to do with effort expended. Humans, albeit incredibly smart and adaptable, try to minimize effort expended to achieve a certain task. It's why you purchase bananas at the grocery store rather than growing them yourself. Your mind is constantly adapting to its environment and each person likes to learn different things. A TV gives you that knowledge, or entertainment, and so do books. Difference is that a TV constantly throws video, audio, ideas, references, and concepts your way and your brain adapts to manage it all. Your brain is fully occupied but is entirely passive. This is maximum engagement but minimum effort. When reading you might get the same maximum engagement but you have to try more, this more effort. This can change, but for most people it's pretty constant."
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77xz2y | How do scientists know what the global temperature was millions of years ago? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically they use a bunch of methods to estimate what the temps must have been like. They measure ocean sediment composition, ice core samples, pollen samples, tree rings, fossilized leaves etc. Ocean sediments contain different levels of oxygen and different isotopes of oxygen (for example when there is more of a heavier oxygen isotope present it generally means a warmer climate). Different layers of ice cores have different chemical compositions (including oxygen isotopes), which helps piece together what gases were in the atmospshere, and ultimately the temperatures. The pollen, tree rings, and leaves contain indicators on how the plants did (how well they survived) at certain times/years which would be due to the different climates/weather conditions, including temperature. EDIT: Wording",
"Many organisms in the ocean make their bodies out of a chemical containing oxygen(air). They get this oxygen from the water around them like how fish can breathe underwater. There are two types of oxygen atoms in the ocean (one is slightly heavier) and the ratio of these oxygen atoms in the ocean is dependant on the temperature of those oceans. Warmer oceans have more heavy oxygens than cooler ones, so animals living in warmer waters make their bodies with heavier oxygens. When those animals die their bodies rest on the sea floor and over millions of years turn to rock, still containing that oxygen. Scientists can measure the amount of heavy oxygen in those old rocks and compare it to the ratio of oxygens in our current oceans to estimate the temperature of the oceans millions of years ago. If there are more heavy oxygens in the rock than in the oceans today, the oceans used to be warmer. If there are less heavy oxygens, the oceans used to be cooler. (I'm sorry if that was confusing but it's difficult to talk about without getting into the Chemistry, feel free to ask in more detail and I'll try to clarify)"
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77xzsc | Why is a city's metropolitan population not included in its official population statistic? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The metro population is that of the entire metro area, consisting of possibly many separate cities and towns. The smaller population figure is that within the actual city limits. The metro population figure isn't in the official population because officially, those people don't all live in that city."
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77y4qs | Why are elderly people's skin leathery | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"There's two types of Aging: Intrinsic and Extrinsic. Intrinsic Aging is what occurs after your body produces less collagen due to end of puberty around ages of 18 - 25 depending on the gender. This causes the skin to become fragile and thin. Also, your sweat glands and natural oils produce less with age. Also, your elastin and GAG formation really slows during later years in life. Extrinsic Aging is caused by carcinogens and toxins from alcohol, tobacco, etc. Toxins causes cancerous cells and diminish/slows cell regeneration. Also, environmental damage i.e, exposure to pollution and sun radiation. All these factors produce 'leathering' of the skin."
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77y5u2 | If the whole world is in debt, who do we owe the money to? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"We all owe everyone else money, every country. Or China, I bet it’s china who owns all the debt.",
"Each other .... well actually banks. This is the way I was taught it, when I studied economics. Suppose I have £100 ... I might put it in a bank. The bank might then lend \"bob\" £90, from which he uses to buy a cow from \"chris.\" Chris puts that in the bank. Now \"dave\" borrows £80 from the bank, and buys a sheep from \"edward,\" who puts that in the bank. \"freddie\" borrows £70 from the bank ... etc. etc. etc. Basically, money is borrowed against money that someone else borrowed and so on."
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77yel6 | When the water level drops in a saltwater aquarium, why is in necessary to add more salt when you add more water? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not. The salt is still in the aquarium. If you add more salt to an aquarium to fill it up from simple evaporation you'll kill everything in the tank. Only add in the water to get the tank to the water level it was at before. It's better to do this a little at a time over the course of the week instead of waiting until the end of the week and adding It all at once."
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77yfkz | If whales can handle rapid decompression of kilometers of water, does that mean they could survive in a vacuum for a while? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"No because decompression issues only arise if you breathe air that has compressed nitrogen or other gases in it under pressure which expand upon resurfacing. Whales hold their breath so they do not have that issue. In a vacuum they would just die from not having oxygen."
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77yh9f | Why does shaking carbonated drinks create bubbles/foam? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"doq7ajr"
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"text": [
"Because gases really don't like being dissolved in liquids and agitation makes it easier for them to leave the liquid. So shaking the drink makes the gases leave, but they can get trapped by a layer of liquid and form bubbles."
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77yhdn | How do radar detectors work? | Title. How do they even pick up signals when an officer is sending a laser beam your way? Wouldn't it have to pick up that one beam from the gun out of the entire surface area of the car? That's basically like saying that the officer is aiming directly for your detector or it's sensor (if that's how it works). | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dopnmhu"
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"text": [
"A radar detector device has both a radar and a laser detector built into it. No different from how a smart phone often has multiple cameras, a microphone and speakers. The sensor that detects radar waves won't detect laser beams, and vice versa. A [laser speed detector]( URL_0 ) doesn't send out a pin point laser beam. It sends out an angled beam to make it easier for the officer to aim it at car and get a reflection. If that angled beam hits the laser sensor, your \"radar/laser\" detector will signal an alert."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIDAR_traffic_enforcement"
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77z0df | The term dialectic used by Marx | As in dialectically related for example! | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"So you've got Socrates' idea of how arguments work through thesis, antitheses and synthesis as /u/ameba spells out above. Basically you talk, you find common ground, and the new common ground forms the basis of your future understanding. Socrates thought you did that until you got to the \"right\" answer, then stopped. Then Hegel took it to the next step and basically said all thought, all words, and all understanding of everything, but particularly in terms of philosophical concepts, is the consequence of dialectic. We talk, we argue, we come to a shared understanding. That understanding = what we think is the correct answer at that point. Until someone else builds on it by arguing more. So there is no right answer, there's just the evolution of understanding through time. Then Marx takes it one step further with his concept of *dialectical materialism*. That basically means that if you apply the idea of the dialectic to history and to politics you realise that reality itself is what we decide it is, and so we can change it through argument. Take any assumption you make about the way the world is and Marx will say that that assumption is historical: it is correct now but it might not be correct in future because we are constantly changing our conception of reality through conversation and debate. So take the idea that \"Communism is a good idea in theory but it would never work in practice because people are selfish and money oriented\". Dialectical materialism says well that might be true now, but through argument we can slowly shift our idea of reality over time and at some future point people won't be selfish or greedy because selfishness and greedyness are products of our society and culture which can be altered by sustained debate shifting the cultural and historical norms. I'd need to see the context but I think the phrase \"dialectically related\" I think just uses the old fashioned Socratic sense of the term dialectic. So \"x is dialectically related to y\" means \"arguments about x, eventually led us to think y\"",
"It comes from Hegel's philosophy : URL_0 The basic idea is that ideas & society progresses through 3 phases: 1. You've got a popular idea (the *thesis*). 2. Eventually, the opposite of that idea will become popular (the *antithesis*) 3. Finally, people figure out a compromise between the two (the *synthesis*). Marx made some significant changes to the idea but I can't remember what they were off the top of my head.",
"Around the 19th century when Marx was around, philosophy was being turned on it's head. Since the ancient Greek philosophers discussed the Land of the Forms, and the idea that all things on earth are imperfect reflections of a perfect idea, and the subsequent inclusion of Christian moral ideas into philosophy, Europe developed what Nietzsche would call a Genealogy of Morals, a way in which previous philosophies and ideas were the foundations for the next, and how that caused growth in a particular direction but disfavored others. One of these directions was called 'metaphysicalism', like the Land of the Forms. When examining an idea philosophically, you'd examine it in isolation from everything else and from reality itself, developing a model for how the perfect version worked in isolation from surrounding flaws. Another, opposing direction, which lost popularity briefly in the middle ages but can be found both in Greece and later, was the dialectic argument. It's been restated a bunch of times, but it's based on a dialogue between two parties who disagree and who try to undermine each other's argument for what is through finding imperfections, flaws, and ultimately contradictions in what appear to be metaphysically pure ideas. Socrates was famous for forcing people to engage in these 'dialogues' with him. One of his most famous examples of this was to consider a heap of sand. In a metaphysical worldview this concept is clear, but in a dialectic, suppose a light breeze comes along and starts to lift sand grains one at a time, at what point would it cease to be a heap? In Engel's view, this speaks to the need to examine the actual numbers, rather than the metaphysical ideas, and consider how quantitative changes can effect qualitative ones. Marx never actually used the words 'dialectic materialism'; they were coined by others to describe the mode of his work. Many of our arguments in the 19th century for how societies worked were metaphysical, and to an extent you can still see that today. People think about, say, a factory worker, and they imagine a physically healthy and fit man who is raising a family on his salary, and takes the best work he can find, and we examine the capitalist investor who owns the factory and paid to build it, and how he picks the best projects, and pays those willing to work at the lowest rate, but when we start to examine those dialectically and from a materialist standpoint we start to reveal the flaws and contradictions inherent in those ideas. Our conception of the factory owner is incomplete if we don't consider this dialectic relationship to the workers at his factory, and the imperfections in that relationship and how they create the imperfections in the greater whole. The most famous example concerns private property. He argues that the collapse of private property is inevitable, on the following basis: Capitalists use property to acquire profit. Profit is an increase in the amount of property you have. That acquisition concentrates private property in the hands of the few, until most do not own property anymore. While in principle, you expect good ideas to be rewarded with value, the reality of the power relationship created by the owner/employee relationship does not allow a fair exchange, and inevitably the factory worker who augments production will not be rewarded the full value of his invention. The concept that anyone, not just the government/nobility may own land, with the rules of a capitalist free market, inevitably leads to a new nobility arising who themselves have the exclusive privilege of owning property. You can't get this from examining just the factory owner or just the laborer, but only from examining the nature of their relationship to one another, by looking for the ways in which in reality they will differ from their 'perfect' forms, and so on. Read the book if you want his full argument in detail. The dialectic approach is essentially a rejection of metaphysicalism, the idea that phenomena can be understood in isolation from one another or in a perfect, 'textbook' form. It can be applied to history, economics, sociology, everything. When examining Marx, what they mean to say when there is a dialectic relationship is that there is a common misconception that arises from a metaphysical worldview that examines concepts, ideas, movements, classes, or people in their perfect or ideal form, without considering a third party relationship (the relationship between the factory worker and the grocery store, for example), common flaw (a lack of education in the workforce to know what their options are for selling a money-saving idea and the common willingness to exploit that through disinformation and threats), or simply slow, quantitative changes (how the ability of the free market to operate in a community changes when the ability to own property is in fewer and fewer hands, and more and more people have to try to outbid each other downwards for less and less reward). TL;DR: when they say something is 'dialectically related', they really mean \"put down your beer, I'm about to blow your mind, because there's something you wouldn't normally think about that'll completely change how you see this topic.\""
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