q_id
stringlengths 6
6
| title
stringlengths 3
299
| selftext
stringlengths 0
4.44k
| category
stringclasses 12
values | subreddit
stringclasses 1
value | answers
dict | title_urls
listlengths 1
1
| selftext_urls
listlengths 1
1
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
5w2g85 | How does Planet Earth get all these insane angles and right next to animals without disturbing their natural choices? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7004y",
"de6stc4",
"de6xjbq",
"de6vozg",
"de7dbe0",
"de6w73f",
"de6xig4",
"de6z03a"
],
"text": [
"I make wildlife documentaries. This is an answer that I cut and pasted from a previous thread. I can't really say too much about long lens stuff cos I specialise on invertebrates. But for them what you do is use a mixture of sets and wild shot footage. You have certain things that you can't film in a studio and other things that you can't film in the wild. This is an example of the [former]( URL_0 ) And this the [latter]( URL_1 ) Say you want footage of the inside of a nest. You won't be able to get this in the wild without disturbing the animal. So you need to construct a specially made tank that will allow them to be calm relaxed and go about with their normal behaviour, but also allow you to light it and get good camera angles. The footage of the wasp in the tunnel in this [film illustrates]( URL_2 ) this. What I did was cut a sample tube in half, fill it with sand so it looked natural. Then stuck it to the side of an opti-White glass tank. Kept it in the dark till the wasp got used to using it, then once it had I just filmed away. Another big thing is editing. You can use careful editing to make it look like the animal is seeing something that is not actually there. For example; the scene of the harvest mouse in Planet earth two, when it is being hunted by a barn owl. The mouse was almost certainly shot in a set and the owl in the wild. The two bits of footage were edited together to make it seem like the owl was hunting the mouse. When in reality they were probably shot days if not weeks apart. Edit: I thought I would include a link to [this video]( URL_3 ) which has a sort of making of bit at the end.",
"They have cameras that can zoom several hundred feet without distorting the image. And sometimes they are literally right next to them and the animals don't care",
"If you got DVD at the end of each episode they show how they filmed some parts. It includes, helicopter(drones later) shots, hidden cameras, motion activated cameras(for snow leopards), people hiding for few days in small spaces filming through hole.",
"A couple of the shots are done in a studio mock up. If I remember correctly the scene in which the polar bear is giving birth to cubs. I'm sure there are a few more, but most of it is just waiting around for the shot considering planet earth 1 and 2 took roughly 10yrs to film each. Edit: Some examples, Not Planet Earth specifically but BBC/David Attenborough documentaries. * Tragopans - a kind of pheasant purportedly living in a Chinese forest - actually filmed in a wildlife park in Somerset for the series Wild China * clown fish shown hatching from eggs in David Attenborough’s Life series in 2009, in the ocean were in fact filmed in a tank built by Swansea University as part of a research project * a chameleon in Attenborough’s Life in Cold Blood in 2008 shown in the forest actually filmed in a studio as were leopard geckos shown mating in the desert * a stalk eyed fly, described as lying “dormant on the forest floor” in Life in 2009, was filmed not in a south east Asian rainforest but in a BBC studio Source: URL_0",
"There is an example I know of where in order to get close enough to tigers and film them hunting without disturbing their behaviour they attached a camera to the top of an elephant and rode it around filming that way. The tigers don't care about the presence of the elephants and adding a human/camera on top didn't seem to change this!",
"A lot of it is to the credit of former Alf actor Michu Meszaros' talent. He's a very small statured individual who wears these extremely realistic animal costumes and he replicates their behaviors for educational purposes. Even the larger creatures he portrays are just modeled to scale. The perspective of the camara and artificial backgrounds also contribute to the appearance of him mimicking larger or smaller creatures. It's incredible how a single man can accomplish this. If you are fortunate enough to come across the DVD with extra scenes, there's a behind the scenes portion that focuses on Michu and his performances. It's very interesting.",
"Some shots are recreated in a studio like ones inside an anthill fir example. Super awesome zoom lenses. Cameras hidden in places. Sometimes the camera guy just hangs out near then animals until they used to him/her and just ignore them.",
"In addition to zooms and telephoto lenses, the use of small unobtrusive cameras that can be planted/hidden ahead of time (like goPros) and triggered remotely. There is a great deal of planning involved too. The crew doesn't just turn up and shoot."
],
"score": [
678,
556,
168,
83,
6,
5,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://youtu.be/qX6d7fDbJp8",
"https://youtu.be/obS9hlkbRXA",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ySwuQhruBo&feature=youtu.be",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjrEKGUcWUg&t="
],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/8963053/BBC-accused-of-routine-fakery-in-wildlife-documentaries.html"
],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w2gz9 | Why do we still plug a big block into the wall to charge our phones, instead of something more flush with the USB port, since nothing has the grounding peg anymore? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de6tdgl",
"de6svjd",
"de6tju0"
],
"text": [
"The power going into your phone via usb is DC format. The power from the wall is AC format. It needs to be transformed to go into your phone. That big plug is a transformer. It never had anything to do with the need for a grounding plug. Despite it being 2017 those still take up space to function and the basic rules of electrical currents still apply.",
"I don't think I've ever had a phone charger with three prongs, assuming that's what you're referring to. Also, you can buy a charger for any phone made in the last five years to plug into USB, mostly because USB is (by name) universal, and connecting to computers has become an increasing advantage for smartphones recently.",
"That block is a step-down transformer. It takes the 120 (or 220 if you live in Europe) volt wall power - far to much energy for your tiny phone - and steps it down to about 5v for your battery to charge on. It also contains a converter to change the Alternating Current in the wall (electricity is pulled back and forth- good for transmission) to Direct Current (electricity moves in a loop - like a battery) IMO the fact that the block is so small to begin with is already pretty impressive. TL;DR that block does a thing"
],
"score": [
13,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w2hr3 | What are boards (in companies), what do they do, what use are they, and what are their powers? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de6u57q",
"de6t58i"
],
"text": [
"The C-level executives (CEO, CFO, COO, etc) of a company run it on a day-to-day basis. The board usually consists of the CEO as well as a number of people who aren't employees of the company (these are called outside directors). The outside directors get paid a lot less than the company's executives usually, but the time commitment is a lot less (a handful of meetings per year). They represent the company's shareholders and provide very high-level oversight and guidance. They can fire the CEO and generally provide input on major company decisions. The board also has some more specific functions, like determining the compensation of high-level executives, reviewing the company's SEC filings (if it's a public company), considering proposals by other companies to buy the company, and approving purchases of other companies.",
"Someone wants to make a company. He has a great idea for a product. Unfortunately, he doesn't have enough money to do it by himself. So he asks a bunch of people for money. They give it to him, and when they do so, they are buying his new company before he's even made it. The own at least part of his company; he gets to keep some of the money the company makes as his salary. Because they own the company, he is responsible to them. They have meetings where they ask him how things are going. This is the Board of Directors. If there's too many to meet all at once, they elect representatives to the board. He does his best to run the company and answer their questions; he's the CEO. He works for them, and if they're not satisfied with his performance, they can replace him. In other words, the Board is the Boss's Boss's bosses."
],
"score": [
5,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w2lsi | Why do soft drinks portion their sizes in liters or half liters while most other drinks portion in gallons or half gallons? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de6tyyy"
],
"text": [
"I've always assumed that it was because that way they only have to design one set of bottles, or cans. Since the rest of the world uses metric anyway."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w2lug | Why does watching a movie on a projector instead of a computer screen feel like a more satisfying cinematic experience? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de6vmfk"
],
"text": [
"The way that things are presented to you has a strong influence on how you feel about what is being presented. For example, companies go through extraordinary lengths to brand themselves in a certain way, have their stores look a certain way, and engage with the public in a certain way. They want you to associate their image with their products and that is not on accident. Similarly you've internalized what you perceive as an authentic cinematic experience as something that is being projected and that is why you find it implicitly more satisfying."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w2pxl | Why do our brains remember words to a song so easily, when it's much harder to remember spoken lines in scripts or poetry? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de6vxdb",
"de6xogk",
"de79ttb"
],
"text": [
"We retain information more effectively when we process it using multiple parts of the brain, instead of just one. It's actually the same reason that people who take notes during classes often remember the material without needing to look at the notes again. When you're taking notes, your brain has to use both the verbal/linguistic (words) and spatial (hand motions) centres in the process of organising the information before you can write it down effectively, which helps you form memories. The same thing happens when you're listening to song lyrics, but instead of verbal/linguistic and spatial, it's verbal/linguistic and auditory (for the musical part). Your brain has to process both aspects, so you remember it in a more organised way. Source: [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) (approaches it from the note-taking angle, but includes a basic explanation)",
"I read an article about this a while ago. Basically, when listening to music dopamine is released and this has a large effect on the rewards section of our brain. Music is a pleasure to hear and the response we receive from it is strong enough to force our memory to give it significance and retain its lyrics and melody. This is the reason that children have an easier time remembering things taught to them in song format then just spoken to them.",
"Huh!? I can't remember lyrics to save my life."
],
"score": [
43,
7,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[
"http://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/writing-and-remembering-why-we-remember-what-we-write.html"
],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w2q23 | What is A Social Construct? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de6uskr"
],
"text": [
"Something that only exists solely because a bunch of humans agree it exists. Consider the value of cash, for example. A couple of sheets of cotton and some mostly zinc coins you have in your pocket aren't of much practical use to anyone. However, because we all agree they have value, they do."
],
"score": [
17
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w2r90 | How do they get the colored tail behind the ball on tv while watching golf? | I was watching golf today and they often show a back view and while the ball is mid flight how do they get the tail to follow the ball while it is live? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de6v5hl",
"de702yo"
],
"text": [
"To quote /u/Kowzorz from [this thread from last year]( URL_0 ) > You can have a computer program look at the pixels on the screen and generate a \"true\" path by applying some vector math to the curve generated on screen. Then you can draw that curve from the perspective of the camera and overlay it on the screen. Alternately, you can just make a 2D curve overlayed on the screen where the pixels change and make the curve appear to move away (by being smaller) at a constant rate which is probably good enough for a simple visual.",
"Basically - just watch this video and it explains everything you're looking for. Especially when they talk about hockey. URL_0"
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/answers/comments/3an14h/how_do_they_track_the_golfball_during_mid_flight/"
],
[
"https://youtu.be/1Oqm6eO6deU"
]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w2tyg | given that the laws of physics place restrictions on what computer hardware can do, could you create a virtual space with different physics parameters that would enable you to build a virtual computer whose computational capacity exceeds the computer that it's running on? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de70xm4"
],
"text": [
"If you're going to simulate a virtual space where the laws of physics are different, you're already in \"simulate the motion of subatomic particles\" land. The amount of processing power required for this is immense. The world's most powerful supercomputer would probably not be able to simulate the action of me crushing a single grain of salt if it was doing it on the subatomic level. Not in real time, anyway. Doing even more complex simulations would be completely unrealistic. Emulators and virtual machines are different from what OP is describing, because they don't simulate anything. They emulate what a system does, instead of simulating how the system does it. They're more like translators, from one system's language to another's."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w2xcq | What is the Deep Web? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de6ykbe",
"de7270u",
"de77mqv"
],
"text": [
"First you need to understand how the \"regular\" Internet works. Search engines like Google use scripts called crawlers (a type of \"bot\") that visit every site they can and gather information. The information is then processed by various algorithms and indexed. The thing that made Google explode and become one of the largest tech companies in the world was that their algorithm didn't just show you the pages containing the words you used in the query, but also sorted the sites by relevance (so you're more likely to get the results you need). The deep web is sites made in such a way that crawlers either can't visit them or gather useful information. E.g. dynamically generated based on user input, password protected etc. So you can't just find the site using \"regular\" search engines, you need to use engines specific for deep web, specific Internet protocols or someway else obtain instructions on how to access the site. A common myth is that \"deep web\" means sites with illegal material, drug marketplaces, human trafficking sites, hitmen sites etc. The term for that is actually \"*dark* web\", a subset of *deep* web.",
"internet locations that aren't accessed or indexed by search engines like google. it's like an elite nightclub: you only can find it if you already know where to go, you won't ever \"stumble\" upon it.",
"I'll explain with an example. The UK government has a website for looking up car details. You type in the car's registration number (the one on the license plate/number plate) and its make, click search, and then you get a results page saying if the car tax is paid, what size the engine is, and so on. This is the page: URL_0 Now the homepage of the website is part of the 'surface web'. It's just a normal web page and general search engines like Google can find and 'index' it. But the results you can get through that page are the details of millions of vehicles in the UK. Those are part of the 'deep web', and you can see that on this website the deep web part is far *far* bigger than the surface web part. The homepage is easy enough for a person to understand but it doesn't contain instructions that Google's search engine can follow to index the results pages. Even if it did, the search engine would already need to know what make of car corresponds to each registration number in order to find the results. So that's millions of web pages, detailing millions of vehicles in the UK, that are all potentially accessible by a person but all invisible to Bing, Google, Yahoo, and so on. Deep web."
],
"score": [
17,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://vehicleenquiry.service.gov.uk"
]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w332y | Can someone explain to me how to prove Fermat's last theorem like I'm 5? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de79oik"
],
"text": [
"not at all....fermat's last theorem is literally over 100 pages long and uses a multitude of different strategies/branches of math to solve, most of which are very high level (ph.d+) but, the main chunk that is used to solve it is elliptic graph theory"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w37fj | What makes some people more photogenic than others? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de72js8",
"de6yu6g"
],
"text": [
"...the camera lens. The shorter a camera lens, the worse people often look. It amplifies bold features. A long camera lens or telephoto lens will make you look much more put-together. [Here is an example]( URL_0 ), and [here's another example]( URL_1 )",
"Their face. Some faces just look better on camera. Ive photographed models that i thought were gonna be beautfil based on their portfolios in person they were wack other models lookd watevr in the portfolio n then in person beautiful. There are just some faces that are made for caneras man"
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"http://imgur.com/a/2nna2",
"http://lens-club.ru/public/files/users/image/portretc.jpg"
],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w3d3a | When you move any furniture across the floor it makes a shrieking sound. How is that sound actually produced? | Is the furniture vibrating caused the sound? Are the pitch and timbre of the sound depends on the furniture or the floor? Does the material and shape of the furniture affects the sound? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de72o2b"
],
"text": [
"the floor and the chair legs are touching, but there is a lot of friction between them. Eventually the angle or your force overpowers that and it skips upwards because the friction won't let it slide. but then when gravity pulls it back down again it impacts, and then it happens all over again. however this happens thousands of times very very fast, very frequently so to speak, so much so that it creates a vibration, and the vibration travels through the air. You hear that series of \"skips\" that chair leg is making across the floor as a loud whiny SKREEEEEECH noise, a high frequency vibration."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w3gge | what does it mean when mathematicians "find" a big number, like Graham's number? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de70d2j",
"de70x65"
],
"text": [
"It means they have proved that a particular number has some property. For example, it's no secret that the following number exists... 6353526374303929879127012501290127402919200192601923419028340912401927492180129801297012912012912261202912061 We don't need to go hunting for it. It's right there. However, is it prime? Is it a square? Is it a solution to < some famous equation > ? Some of these questions are hard or time consuming to answer. If I were to crunch a bunch of numbers and discover that the number above is prime, I could say that I \"found\" a prime number.",
"Suppose you left your diary on a table in Starbucks and you wanted to find how many people had read it before you realised. You might not be able to know the exact number (even though there is an exact solution) but you know it can't be more than, say, 100, as you weren't gone for long and the store isn't that popular. 100 probably isn't the actual solution but it's come about from the problem. The same is true with 'finding' large numbers. For Graham's number, there was a problem in graph theory about how big a graph needed to be to have a certain property. We still don't know the exact answer, but it was proved that if the graph is at least as big as Graham's number it has the property (so Graham's number is an upper bound for the solution). It has since been shown that you can get away with using a much lower number instead, so Graham's number doesn't actually have that much use (only really in popularising mathematics). Other very large numbers come about in the same way, and usually they are quickly made redundant as mathematicians find much smaller upper bounds on the problem."
],
"score": [
9,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w3h7h | Why are Heinz ketchup bottles transparent in stores but solid red at restaurants? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de70djv",
"de70d08"
],
"text": [
"Heinz wants you to be able to see that your ketchup is getting darker and a bit dried out and think \"Maybe I should buy another bottle\". On the other hand, the restaurant buys in bulk and fills the ketchup doodads themselves, and they'd rather your ketchup look full and fresh at all times.",
"At restaurants they are usually refilled from large catering tubs. Clear bottles can stain inside over time so you avoid visible \"tide marks\"."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w3l7k | Why does our body twitch when we are about to fall asleep, thus waking us up. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de71bgm",
"de71gaj"
],
"text": [
"When you sleep your muscles going into a state of paralysis to stop you moving around too much in your sleep. Your brain is sending signals to check if your muscles are still responding",
"No one is entirely sure. Its a topic of ongoing research and there are many different ideas. A study suggested that it could be \"an archaic reflex to the brain's misinterpretation of muscle relaxation with the onset of sleep as a signal that a sleeping primate is falling out of a tree. The reflex may also have had selective value by having the sleeper readjust or review his or her sleeping position in a nest or on a branch in order to assure that a fall did not occur.\" But its still very much in the 'hypothesis' stage, and more research will be needed until we have a good answer."
],
"score": [
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w3nwp | Why is it some baking recipes have the egg whites and yolks added separately (and sometimes mixed differently) while some have the whole egg added to it at once? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de71818"
],
"text": [
"The yolk is fat. The white is protein. Chemically, these behave very differently when added to a recipe. For example, the egg white is often used to add air and leavening to a recipe because the protein can help retain air and bubbles, but any fat added with it can break the bubbles. The solution: add them separately at different stages of preparation. Experiment: To make a meringue, you whip egg white until frothy. Try it with just egg white. Next, try it with a whole egg. Edit: typo."
],
"score": [
10
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w3t59 | Why does smoking marijuana allegedly not contribute to lung cancer? | I read somewhere that smoking marijuana does not contribute to lung cancer. Why? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de724t8",
"de7dbrs",
"de72976",
"de75vlm",
"de72260",
"de7ef0b"
],
"text": [
"Well, it does. The difference is that most people smoke one or maybe two joints a day..or less. While tobacco smokers count their habit in packs of twenty.",
"The tar that's created from burning tobacco causes cancer, not *just* the additional chemicals that are added to the cigarette. A lot of people in this thread are saying that it's the additives, but the tar is the most prevalent carcinogen. That's why you could grow your own tobacco and smoke out of a clean pipe and still get cancer. No additives necessary. Also, nicotine is not an additive, like some answers are hinting. Nicotine is a natural chemical produced by tobacco plants to discourage insects and other herbivores from chewing the plant up. It is the addictive part of the cigarette and has not been proven to cause cancer. Marijuana tar has not been proven to cause cancer, but that's not saying that it doesn't. All that says it there's a lack of evidence. We will probably find out relatively soon if marijuana smoke causes cancer, but right now we just don't have the research to make a conclusion.",
"marijuana is often grown with simpler or fewer chemicals because they're grown in \"labs\" or mostly enclosed sterile-ish areas. Bugs won't be getting on them, animals won't be nibbling on them. They won't have the pesticides and shit on them that tobacco is allowed to. ...but inhaling anything burning will harm your lungs, from wood smoke, to tobacco. Vaping is probably the safest and cleanest way to enjoy marijuana.",
"Because nobody has proven that it *has*, because since it's long been an illegal substance in many countries it's been much harder to investigate the health effects of it, compared to those of tobacco. But it seems a reasonable hypothesis that deliberately inhaling smoke or holding it in your mouth, of any sort, can cause cancer. There's no scientific reason to think smoking marijuana *doesn't* cause cancer.",
"Read somewhere else from here on out. Inhaling burned plant particles, no matter the source, releases bad things that contribute to the likelihood of you getting cancer. Same with any other pollutant.",
"Pretty sure if marijuana smoke caused lung cancer, Willie Nelson and Tommy Chong would've had it 10 times over by now."
],
"score": [
37,
24,
18,
9,
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w3w33 | Are Data Science and Information Systems the same? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7652o"
],
"text": [
"From your title, I was going to post an immediate \"NO\" to your question. However you also mention that the syllabus for the 2 programs are basically the same. This confuses me greatly and makes me think that someone who doesn't know the field named the programs. Obviously, the course of study is what I would look at over the name, but if those are the types of things I wanted to study, I would absolutely prefer it to be named \"Data Science\". Here is my take on the meanings of each: Data Science: That's high level analytics and making sense (including predictive) of data and information that you have or gather. The courses listed certainly fit within that category. URL_0 Information Systems: That's the running of the servers and applications needed to keep the company running from a technology or computer perspective. So setting up servers and making sure each user has Office installed appropriately and connected to the network to share information. URL_1"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_science",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_system"
]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w3wr3 | What's the difference between Common Law and Civil Law? | I wasn't able to find an answer that was simple to understand, that's why I came here. So, what's the difference? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de73skk"
],
"text": [
"In Civil-Law based Systems statutes and codes are written and designed to basically cover all eventualities and possibilities (in lets say a murder case). The judges have only a very limited ability to applying law on a case to case basis. In Common-Law based systems you also have lots of statutes etc. but the most important source of law are judical cases - so the judges have a very active role in developing law. So going back to the murder case, the elements necessary to prove the crime of murder will be contained in case law instead of in statutes. To make sure that judges do not design law all on their own they abide by the rulings of higher courts (city court > State Court > High Court > Supreme Court [just as an example, not meant to represent any country]). So in Common-Law the Judge is a very active part of the law system, that not only applies law but also designs it in a way. While in Civil-Law the judge is more of a \"referee\" that ensures order is kept during a trial and that works between the two parties presenting their arguments."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w416d | How did those school sponsored events where students go door-to-door selling ice cream etc for enough points to win a prize work? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de75x4l"
],
"text": [
"I'm pretty sure the school has a sponsorship type deal with the company of the product/s and the company/companies are basically paying the school for doing their marketing for them to a degree."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w46jc | Why is running on a treadmill easier than running in the street? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de74smk"
],
"text": [
"For one, there is no air resistance when running on a treadmill. When running outside, your body has to physically push the air you move through out of the way. It may not seem like much, but try running outside with a tailwind (or conversely into a headwind) and you quickly notice the difference air can make."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w4be3 | Why doesnt stuff spill out of the stomach when your upside down? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de75nyz",
"de75tuy"
],
"text": [
"Let's start with the word \"sphincter\". When people hear that word they usually think of a very specific body part. But a sphincter is basically a ring of muscles that seals something. Your digestive system has many of them. Your stomach isn't like an open bucket. Thing of it more like a ziploc bag. Stuff goes on, then the bag is sealed while it is being processed.",
"Hey my stomach contents would spill out if I were upside down! There's an oesophageal sphincter just above our stomach that basically is a muscle that opens and closes allowing food to pass onto our tummys. Mine doesn't work lol."
],
"score": [
16,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w4c4k | If I am being asked questions by the police in a station and say "I want to see my lawyer". Do I have to have a lawyer already or am I asking to be appointed one? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7da29",
"de7el3y",
"de7chej",
"de78ezi",
"de7aaxe",
"de78br7",
"de7ncmr",
"de7nxuj",
"de7mvgv",
"de7bi05",
"de7cx7q",
"de7rgsz",
"de76swo",
"de7sqog",
"de7yx2z"
],
"text": [
"If you are not being formally charged you will get released where you can retain your own lawyer or go to the public defender's office (or equivalent). If you *are* being charged, you will get booked into jail. The phones are free to use until you get assigned a cell. You can try to find a free lawyer at this time but good luck, most require a judge's approval to become your court-appointed attorney, this phone call is usually to call family and bond companies to try and get bailed out of jail. Once you go to a cell it's usually a temporary dorm until you go before a judge. If it's a misdemeanor charge you will see a judge pretty soon, if it's a felony, it can take up to 72 hours to see one. This is the point where you can request a court-appointed attorney, signing paperwork that basically says you can't afford an attorney. After this, if you haven't been bailed out of jail yet, you will probably get moved to permanent classification; another dorm. 1 week - 1 month later (or longer) you will get mail delivered to your cell that has your court-appointed attorney's name, info, etc. If you have a felony charge and cannot bail out of jail, you will have to wait to be indicted (typically by a grand jury) to know when your pre-trial court date is. This can take anywhere from months to almost 2 years. I was in with a guy waiting to be indicted for 22 months.",
"In the US, saying \"I want my lawyer\" is equivalent to saying \"I wish to assert my right to have an attorney present\". Once you do that, the police have to stop questioning you whether you actually have a lawyer or not. At that point, they may choose to charge you with a crime, and that's when you have to worry about finding an actual lawyer.",
"The following should only be interpreted to apply in Canada (in case the various \"In Canada,\" qualifications weren't enough) In Canada, if you've been detained by Police and you invoke your right to a lawyer, the Police are obligated to \"immediately\" (which in application, generally means \"as soon as possible in the circumstances\") provide you a reasonable oppurtunity to contact counsel. Importantly, they're bound to hold off on questioning you further until you've been afforded this oppurtunity, barring exceptional exigent circumstances and investigative necessity. If you're detained at a police station, this usually means the Police will place you in a designated private phone room with a phone book (sometimes ipads/tablets these days depending on the station). In Canada, Police are also obligated to provide you with phone numbers for duty counsel, who are free on-call lawyers who provide limited immediate advice relevant to the circumstances of your arrest. Depending on what province you're in, this may be a \"1-800\" 24/7 hotline number or a list of lawyers which ought to be provided to you by police. Depending on the time of your arrest, you may be on hold for anywhere from 10 to 20 or more minutes trying to get through to duty counsel, due to wait time on a 1 800 number or non-response from listed roster numbers. If you do not wish to waive your right, its important you are diligent and patient and stay on the line/keep calling numbers. Cutting myself off before this verges into legal advice territory, if you do not understand your right to counsel, or wish to speak to a lawyer but are having difficulty getting in contact with one despite your best efforts, its important to communicate that to police in unequivocal terms. The police are not expected to read your mind, but where its clearly known to them that someone doesn't understand their rights or is having difficulty excercising those rights, they are generally bound to make further reasonable efforts to discharge their informational and implementational duties under 10(b) of the Charter. This may not make a difference in whether you're charged or not, but it can make a huge difference when you actually retain a lawyer to defend you on those charges.",
"If you're in police custody you get a phone call to arrange an attorney. If it's a busy precinct there might be a defense attorney walking around that will talk to you, briefly, but won't give you much help unless you pay. You are usually only entitled to a public defender once you've been charged with a felony and you can be detained for up to 72 hours without being charged. If you are suspected of a crime or are in custody, never, ever talk to police without an attorney present. If you have been charged with a felony, never, ever use a public defender.",
"This only matters if your in custody. Simply ask \"am I free to go?\" If the answer is yes, then leave and get an attorney. If the answer is no. Say \"I refuse to answer any questions, without a lawyer\" They should have read you the Miranda rights at this point. Which is another opportunity to say you won't answer. A lawyer will not be appointed unless you are charged, which you may ask. If so. Ask the court in relation to your case for an attorney. Source: am a police officer",
"This only applies in the US: If you say some variation of \"I'm remaining silent and want to see my lawyer\" (the remaining silent part is key), that's the signal that the cops can no longer question you without a lawyer present. If you have one already you will be allowed to contact them. If not or if you need a public defender, you will also be allowed to arrange that. If you need a public defender you have to ask for one. Pro tip: NEVER talk to cops regardless of whether you're just being questioned or are under arrest. Even if you think whatever you have to say will clear you. Cops are trained to twist anything you say into a reason to investigate you further or to use as evidence against you. Keep your mouth shut until you have a lawyer by your side.",
"Short answer: you do not have to have an already retained lawyer to use this, but you are not actually asking for an appointment either. In the US, the phrase, \"I'd like to talk to my attorney before we go any further,\" invokes your Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Police can no longer question you, and answers they elicit out of you can be excluded from evidence on the basis of a constitutional violation. BUT - you can waive your Sixth Amendment protections by volunteering information after you have requested to speak to an attorney. Once you have invoked your Sixth Amendment right, it is up to you to call an attorney. If you don't already have an attorney, you can ask for a phone book. You can also call your spouse/mom/friend etc to secure an attorney for you. If you cannot afford an attorney, you can look for a pro bono (free) attorney, but that is unlikely. Otherwise, you must wait to be before the judge to ask for an appointed attorney. If you can afford it, you may be able to bond out before that. If the police are not charging you with anything, you can always ask, \"I am under detention right now?\" if the answer is no, then you are free to leave.",
"I will speak from an Australian perspective. Here in NSW, at least for Indigenous Australians, police are required by law to call the 'Custody Notification Service', which puts you in touch with a lawyer once you are arrested, but *before* police ask to interview you. We [lawyers] ask certain questions of the police - the nature of the charges, whether the person is likely to be granted or refused police bail, and if refused police bail which court they will be attending. We then speak to the person charged and give them certain advice and answer any questions they may have at this point. Another law requires people refused bail to be brought before court as soon as possible - so on the weekend that is something called a Registrar, and during the week a Magistrate (a Judge in the lower-courts). We will have a lawyer there ready to represent them at their first court appearance. For non-indigenous Australians, the system operates largely the same. If unrepresented at their first court appearance, the Magistrate will typically ask if the person would like a lawyer, at which point they can apply for a 'grant' (representation) from Legal Aid, a publicly funded defence-lawyer service.",
"Quick tip. If you are ever being questioned by the police at the headquarters do not talk to them until talking to a lawyer. Keep your mouth shut. Police are experts at twisting your words and getting false confessions out of you by threatening you. They will say shit like. \"We can help you if you just talk to us.\" \"If you dont cooperate then things will only get worse for you.\" And, \"we just want to help get this cleared up so you can go home\". All bullshit. Never say anything. Don't let them record you. If you are getting arrested shut your mouth and don't say shit. 95% of convictions are based off of shit people say whIle they are getting arrested. They do not have to read you your miranda rights to hold what you say against. Never talk to cops unless you have a lawyer. Don't let them trick you into saying anything.",
"Don't matter, the questions stop and you are available to get either counsel. The thing is you are still jailed until that is all plays out.",
"Interview stops immediately. You are Either released if only detained or booked into jail where you can call your lawyer. If you don't have one yet, judge will appoint one for you at your arraignment hearing. Jail will let you call if you want to hire one from within the jail.",
"Just a side note - I know you always see cops on television shows try to convince a person that if lawyers become involved, they can't work any deals with you. Do not listen to this! Police officers do not have the authority to offer you a deal on a case - deals are worked out between your attorney and the district attorney's office. The DAs don't care if you wouldn't answer questions until you had a lawyer; they just want to move the case along and count plea deals as a win because there is, in fact, a guilty plea (which is how they boost their success rate so high). *DISCLAIMER: In some jurisdictions, police officers handle the prosecution of traffic violations and act in the same role as a district attorney. If they tell you won't get a deal if you use an attorney, they could be telling the truth because they have the authority to offer plea deals. However, most of them don't have the time to take every case to trial so they will throw the defense attorney an offer if it means being able to conclude the case without further effort on their part.",
"How does this change from country to country? (I'm in the UK) Edit: looks like I need to clear up, this isn't my post :P thanks guys",
"You do not need a personal solicitor. The state will appoint one for you for free. In Australia we call them legal aids and I would probably be in gaol if not for this service. Courts use a different language to what you and I use on the street. I'm not sure why, but that is the correct spelling for gaol in Australia. US spell checkers always want to change it to goal.",
"People convict themselves all the time by talking to the police. You have the right to remain silent. I maintain you have the duty to self not to talk to police. There is nothing favorable that can come of it for you. Any attorney worth his salt will tell you to remain silent. You cannot talk your way out of being charged. Let your eventual attorney start with a clean slate. This goes double if you know you are guilty of something."
],
"score": [
848,
405,
123,
96,
86,
31,
23,
20,
11,
9,
9,
7,
5,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w4dzu | Why is it that if I wake up at 1pm after 8 hours of sleep I feel refreshed and ready for the day, but if I wake up at 6am after 8 hours of sleep I feel exhausted and need more sleep? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de78cl4",
"de7rbz6",
"de782fi",
"de7rf7p",
"de7s1c2"
],
"text": [
"Sleep is controlled by two systems. The sleep-wake homeostasis system and the circadian rhythm. The sleep-wake system works by making you more sleepy the longer you have been awake and less sleepy the longer you have been asleep. In your case you spent the same amount of time asleep, so this isn't a sleep-wake homeostasis problem. It's the circadian rhythm! Which uses melatonin and cortisol to boost you while your awake and help you stay asleep. Generally, because of this 2am-4am you are the most sleepy and 2pm-4pm is the second most sleepy time. However, if you are a night owls or a morning person the circadian rhythm can be shifted by an hour or two. Also, if you are a teenager or a young adult then the circadian rhythm is also different. The peak sleep time 3am -7am and 2pm-5pm",
"No snooze, no reddit in bed, pop straight up. CHUG a medium glass of ice water. Get the coffeemaker heating. Lightly stretch for 5 minutes focusing on your breathing. By this time coffee is ready and so to is your morning sphincter spawn ( your fiber game is good, yes?). Release it into the wild. Enjoy coffee. By this point (wake up + 10 minutes or so) you should be fully ready to start your day. Have a light breakfast full of good things like fiber and protein and some sort of actual vegetable. I like yogurt granola blueberries, whatever cut veggies i have in fridge, carrots, broccoli crowns, snap peas. This is wake up + 30 or so. Brush teeth and such last and you're out the door",
"6am was probably via alarm vs 1pm waking naturally. We wake up naturally in between REM cycles but an alarm usually interrupts a cycle which makes you feel shitty. Very terse description as I'm on my mobile, sorry",
"Can I tag a question onto this ? Why do I sleep better during the day than at night, even though I set alarms to wake up during the day for a YEAR(!) ? If I sleep at night, say, 10pm-midnight, I'll sleep for 12-14h before I wake up naturally, and if I don't set a bed time, my bed time will get later and later..until I go bed around 10am-12pm. If I go bed then, I wake up at 7pm on the dot, feeling refreshed as a summer rain. I've been trying for years to \"correct\" this but I just can't. For example at the moment I'm going bed at 11pm and waking up at 2pm (with an alarm, if I don't set an alarm I wake up even later, earlier and I feel like absolute death). Why can't I sleep a normal amount of time during the night ? PS. I'll sleep 16h np if I'm left alone :(",
"we all have sleep phases. if you can't wake up early, you have delayed sleep phase. it may have evolved from certain members of society keeping a watch over everyone else at night. i used to work office day jobs and was literally dead for many years. then i scrapped it all and got a night job cleaning offices. i couldn't be happier. i don't even *need* to sleep per se, i mean, i don't dread my job and could go in if i was tired and not suffer at all."
],
"score": [
47,
16,
10,
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w4fv8 | How do we know numbers like Pi are infinite rather than just incredibly long? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7e8hj",
"de776rz",
"de81pr3",
"de7qr3b",
"de7hp6b",
"de77qyq",
"de83cfe",
"de7q04d",
"de7wbs8",
"de7jb21",
"de8281h",
"de7xaoe",
"de7lnab",
"de7qjug",
"de7uicw",
"de7dr1e"
],
"text": [
"We know because pi is an irrational number. More to the point, we know it is not a rational number. (warning, math ahead) A rational number is one that can be represented as a ratio of two integers. For any repeating or terminating decimal out there, you can do a little math to express it as a ratio. With a terminating decimal, it is pretty easy: 0.123 = 123/1000 Repeating decimals require a little algebra: n = 0.123123... 1000n = 123.123123... 1000n - n = 999n = 123 n = 123/999 = 41/333 What does this have to do with pi? It means that either a) pi can be expressed as a ratio of two integers, or b) pi cannot be represented as a terminating or repeating decimal. If we can show there is no way to express pi as a ratio, the only remaining possibility is a nonrepeating decimal. In 1761, this is exactly what Johann Heinrich Lambert did. Unfortunately, his proof, and others like it, require advanced math we'd rather not get into. Lucky for us, the proof that √2 is irrational is pretty straight forward: assume a and b exist, such that a/b = √2, and a and b have no common factors a^2 / b^2 = 2 a^2 = 2 * b^2 therefore a is even, and there exist a k such that a = 2k (2 * k)^2 = 2 * b^2 4 * k^2 = 2 * b^2 2 * k^2 = b^2 therefore b is also even However, we assumed a and b had no common factors, so they cannot both be even. This contradicts our original assumption, which proves it must be false. There are no such number a and b, which means √2 cannot be represented as a repeating decimal and must be irrational. EDIT: By popular demand **TL;DR** * rational numbers are the result of dividing one integer by another * the decimal places of a rational number either end, or repeat * you can show that pi (or e or √2) cannot be the result of dividing one integer by another * therefore, those numbers are not rational and do not end",
"It's possible to prove this. It's easier with another irrational number, the square root of 2. Let's assume that it's rational. This means it can be written as a fraction (a/b) where the integers a and b have no factors in common (other than 1). Both a and b can be huge numbers, it doesn't matter for this. sqrt(2) = a/b 2 = a^2 / b^2 2 * b^2 = a^2 So a^2 has a factor of 2 in it. The only way this can happen is if a has a factor of 2 in it, which means there is some some integer c were a = 2*c 2 * b^2 = (2*c)^2 = 4 * c^2 b^2 = 2 * c^2 So, like we did for a, this means that b has a factor of 2, so for some integer d b = 2*d Going back to the start sqrt(2) = a/b = 2c/2d = c/d Obviously we could keep repeating this. This shows that the initial assumption was wrong, and there is no way to express sqrt(2) as a fraction. The only other choice is that sqrt(2) is irrational.",
"Supposedly, the first person to prove the existence of irrational numbers (by the \"square root of 2\" proof that appears several times in this thread) was Hippasus of Metapontum. He was a Pythagorean, a group of cult-like philosophers and mathematicians who believed many crazy things (like, for example, that lentils were sacred). One of their now-obviously-wrong beliefs was that all numbers could be written as the ratio of two integers. It's said that on a sea voyage, Hippasus began doodling on papyrus or whatever the heck ancient Greeks did their mathematical scribblings on, and in doing so, inadvertently proved that the square root of two could not be rational. After sharing his discovery with his fellow Pythagoreans and shattering their worldview, they repaid him for his discovery by drowning him then and there. This is known as the first irrational murder in known history.",
"Pi is derived from dividing the distance around a circle (circumference) by the distance across the circle (diameter). If we take other shapes and do the same (divide distance around the object by distance across), we will get the following results: Each side length = 1, each shape is regular (equal angles, equal sides) Square (4 sides): distance around = 4 distance across = 1.414. 4÷1.414 = 2.82 Hexagon (6 sides) distance around = 6 distance across = 2 6÷2 = 3 Octagon (8 sides) Distance around = 8 Distance across = 2.414 8÷2.613 = 3.06 Decagon (10 sides) Distance around = 10 Distance across = 3.236 10÷3.236 = 3.09 Notice the more sides a shape has, the closer the answer is to 3.14? By the time we get to a hundred sided shape, we already have the first three digits of pi written out: 100-gon (100 sides) Distance around = 100 Distance across = 31.82 100÷31.82 = 3.14 If we had a million sided shape, its answer would be a good approximation of pi, but not as accurate as a billion sided shape, which is not as accurate as a trillion sided shape, etc, etc. Think of a circle as an infinitely sided shape, we cannot reach its infinite sides, so we cannot also reach pi, 3.415926. . .",
"Technically, pi isn't infinite. It's a finite value, it has infinite digits. Not really answering the question, it's just a pet peeve of mine.",
"In addition to pirround's proof, we need to know that \"can't be expressed as a fraction\" is equivalent to \"has an infinite, non-repeating decimal representation\". Note that 123/1000 = 0.123 123/999 = 0.123123123... Without getting into a formal proof, hopefully you can see that for any finite or repeating decimal we can represent it as a fraction in one of those ways.",
"This is not exactly a 5-year-old explanation, but hopefully someone who has seen high school trigonometry/calculus can get the gist of it. We know pi is irrational (i.e. it isn't of the form a/b where a and b are whole numbers) because it was proved by Lambert in the 18th century; there are now many proofs known. The proof is conceptually harder than the proof that sqrt(2) is irrational, so I disagree with others who have used that as their main example: the extra concept you need is that of limits. However, if you are OK with basic calculus, the ideas are not super advanced. What it comes down to is that we know how to approximate pi with rational numbers, but the nature of that approximation means that pi itself must be irrational. pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, but that definition isn't how mathematicians typically work with pi. If you want to understand the properties of a number, it's better to have some way of approaching it that is based on a formula involving whole numbers. For example, pi is the smallest positive number x such that sin(x/2)=1. This is useful because sin(x) has a nice series expansion: sin(x) = x - (x^3) /3! + (x^5) /5! - (x^7) /7! + ... What this means is if you plug in some value for x into that sum, and calculate just the first n terms, as n gets larger, you'll get a better and better approximation to sin(x). So pi/2 is a number that you can plug into this formula and get closer and closer to 1. The important thing is that we're expressing everything in terms of rational functions (everything you can get from x and whole numbers by adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing). You can also get approximations to pi itself of this form. There are other kinds of approximation as well, such as continued fraction expansions, but the concept is basically the same: you approximate the true function f(x) by a sequence of functions f1(x), f2(x), ... where each function is built out of x and whole numbers by applying basic arithmetic operations, and the way to get the next function from the previous functions is predictable and easy to describe. OK, so you know how to approximate pi by rationals, or you know it's approximated by solutions to rational equations. How does this help you show it's irrational? The basic idea is the following: if you make a sequence of rational approximations to a rational number, one of two things happens: either you hit the number you are trying to approximate exactly, or your approximations are 'bad' in the sense that if the number you want is x/y and your approximation is a_n/b_n, then |x/y - a_n/b_n| is at least 1/yb_n, or to put it another way, the sequence |b_n(x/y)-a_n| is bounded away from zero (regardless of what x/y is). So if you can show that you never hit the limit exactly, but your approximations are 'too good', then the limit has to be irrational. (Or to put it another way: if you know the limit is rational, e.g. sin(pi/2)=1, then you can't have been making rational approximations to it, so the number you put in must have been irrational.) This kind of approximation idea is often hiding in the details of the proof, but it's usually there in some form. As a final remark: this isn't a recipe for proving your favourite number is irrational; simply having some sequence of rational approximations for your number isn't enough. It requires some special insight into the number in question to find the kind of approximations that are 'too good', and in general it's very hard to tell if a number is irrational or not. For instance, we know that pi and e are irrational (transcendental, even), but we don't even know if pi + e is rational.",
"Thee simple answer is that we have an incredibly complicated proof that requires more math than any average person would posses that tell us so. I think it a good question though. If a number didn't start repeating digits til the trillionth digit how would we know? The answer is almost always complicated math.",
"All numbers have decimal expansions which are infinitely long. The thing is, real numbers are either rational or irrational. Rational numbers have decimal representations which eventually repeat; irrational numbers have decimal expansions which never repeat. For the longest time, we didn't know if pi was rational. We have known for hundreds of years now, though. There are several proofs of this fact. URL_0",
"There are many different kinds of numbers. You start with the set of natural numbers, which are 1, 2, 3, ... and so on off to infinity. Then you have the integers, which is the set of natural numbers but also with zero and the negatives of the natural numbers. Then you have the rational numbers which are all of the numbers that can be represented as fractions of integers. Then finally you have the real numbers, which are a little more formal to construct, but are basically the set of all rational numbers and also all of the numbers that we can't construct as fractions, like the square root of two, pi, and e. Then there are more exotic things like complex numbers and the quaternions, but we don't need to go that far for this discussions. All of these sets of numbers have certain properties. Showing that a number belongs to one of these sets is equivalent to showing that it has those properties. One of the important properties of the rational numbers is that rational numbers can be represented by either terminating decimals like 0.21 or infinitely repeating decimals like 0.21212121... Showing that pi has an infinite non-repeating decimal representation is therefore equivalent to showing that it is not a rational number. For some numbers this is pretty easy, the proof that the square root of two is irrational dates back to antiquity. For other numbers, like pi, the proof requires calculus and is generally more technical.",
"Think it this way: The more you zoom into the cirlce's surface, the more exact value you get for the circumeference. This leads to more decimals since pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. And the circle stays always round, no matter how close you zoom. And you can zoom in untill infinity. This is what makes pi an irrational number.",
"Math is fucking hard. Even explaining it simply makes no sense to me. I know it should because people are basically saying \"well 2 + 2 is 4 because two of something and two of something make 4 of something\" though a simple example we all get, that's incredibly insane to comprehend for me. To say that a number can be proven because a number proves it. Like, why do we really know any of its true? My brain just fucks off with math but I wish I cared enough to learn it properly",
"The ELI5 version is: In a deductive logic system (like mathematics) we can prove that something is true by assuming that it's not and proving that the assumption leads to a contradiction. So if we assume that something isn't true and that leads to a contradiction then our assumption must be wrong; therefore that something must be true. In the case of many irrational numbers, like the square root of 2, we can prove this as /u/pirround did. The proofs that pi are irrational need a little more math than I'm capable of explaining LI5.",
"Most of these answers don't address the issue of trying to measure the area of a circle. /u/theRestofBilly gives a great answer to this, but I'll add my two cents. Basically, the area of a 2D shape can only be measured by units which ultimately amount to little squares. You choose a measurement system and you measure widths and heights. For instance, a triangle with a right angle would be measured by multiplying its base by its height and then halving the number (because such a triangle would be exactly half the area of the square which would be formed by those two measurements). The problem with a \"perfect\" circle, is that you *can't* ever measure them with squares. Imagine a circle on a screen rendered at higher and higher resolutions - It might eventually *look* like a perfect circle, but in fact it's composed of thousands of tiny squares. The \"infinite\" quality of Pi is merely a reflection of its use as an attempt to measure the area of a technically unmeasurable circle. Each extra digit is a higher \"resolution\". For most situations, 3.145 is going to give you a decent estimate of the circle's area, but if you want more accuracy, you have to add on more digits - sort of like adding ten times the amount of pixels in the circle. EDIT: I made an image of this, because it's something I've been thinking about for a while. I think math is fiercely clever and all that, but I think it's important to recognize what it's *actually* doing: URL_0 - radius squared is *literally* a square, and \"pi times ( r^2 )\" is just breaking that square into smaller and smaller fractions.",
"Here's an infinite number that's really, really easy to see is infinite: ten divided by three. You do the long division thing, keep dividing the remainder by three until there's nothing left, but there's always one left. And you keep dividing that by three and you'll always get one left, and it doesn't change forever: 3 3.3 3.33 3.333 3.3333 3.33333 3.333333 ... So, it's possible to prove that there are some numbers that go on forever. It's easy to see that with a number like 10/3. It's less easy to see that with a number like Pi, but it can be proven (by better explainers than me.) What's also cool about Pi is that, unlike 3.3333333.... there's no \"loop\". The numbers keep changing.",
"Any number that terminates(that is, after some point it's just 000000000... to the end) is a rational number. Say, number 1.00000... terminates. It's 1, and then bunch of 0's. 0.1 terminates, since it's 0.1, and then bunch of 0's. But 0.333... doesn't terminate. Rational numbers are ratios of two integers. That's where the name comes from. So 5/2 is a rational number for example, since both 5 and 2 are integers(it has decimal representation of 2.5) So with this, we now do our first lemma! We now can show that all numbers that terminate are rational numbers. So, let's start. First, each number that terminates has some number of digits BETWEEN the dot('.') and the bunch of 0's(...000000...). So like 2.500000... has 5 between those two elements. We count how many digits there are between those two elements. In case of 2.5 there's 1 such element. So we use one of 10's to multiply and divide 2.5, so it's 2.5 = 25 / 10 Easy, so 2.5 is a rational number, as those are two integers whose ratio 2.5 is. 0.01 for example has 2 digits, so it's 1/100(multiply and divide 0.01 by 100). You can do this for all terminating numbers, hence, all terminating numbers are rational numbers. Now, we know that pi is not a rational number. So by extension, pi cannot be terminating. And how do we know that pi is not rational number? Uhm... This is where it gets kinda tricky, I can't really say I am particularly comfortable with any one proof. I'm not aware of any single proof that would be easy to explain in intuitive terms, it's all more or less \"You do this, this, this, and that, and now somehow you ended up with proof\". However, Ivan Niven has one short contender, URL_0 He gave two functions, where, assuming pi is a rational number, you could have F(pi) and F(0) both be integers. However, he then proved he could squeeze two positive integers in arbitrarily small space, notably in space smaller than 2. Because the smallest space you can squeeze two positive integers is 2(because 1+1 = 2), this was contradiction, and the only possibly questionable thing he did was assuming pi could be represented as a fraction of two integers. So that one assumption must be wrong."
],
"score": [
4796,
493,
345,
136,
115,
48,
19,
15,
10,
10,
5,
5,
5,
5,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_that_π_is_irrational"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://imgur.com/sJ3sH7C"
],
[],
[
"https://projecteuclid.org/download/pdf_1/euclid.bams/1183510788"
]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w4gkn | Once meat is defrosted, why do people say that you shouldn't refreeze it again? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7jay9",
"de7kumf"
],
"text": [
"Freezing doesn't kill microbes, only suspend their reproduction. Defrosting brings the temperature of the product up to a level where microbial action starts up again. Add to this, many people defrost food on bench tops where at least parts of the food are at room temperature. Defrosting should be done in a fridge. I will refreeze meat if it has been defrosted and kept in a fridge all the time.",
"Meat is made of cells and other tissues that give it structure. Structure of meat is an important element of taste. If frozen, the water in cells and other tissues expands into ice crystals, which will damage the cells and tissues. If you thaw it again, the ice becomes water, when refrozen, the water can form ice crystals _again_ and the crystals can start piercing parts of the cells/tissue that was undamaged. Every freeze/thaw cycle damages the meat more, until all you have left is a meaty mush."
],
"score": [
7,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w4mbz | Why are credit/debit card processing fees so high? | With it being the so called digital age, and card processing becoming largely automated, why is there still a $2 (or 2%) fee to use a card to purchase something? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7g6ia"
],
"text": [
"Credit card companies are providing security of funds, both guaranteeing payment and safety from robbery, etc. they are also proving liquidity for consumers to allow them to buy more. The fees also cover rewards (1% cash back) and chargebacks/disputes where the credit card company ends up eating the cost."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w4obw | Why does sending a picture via Messenger lower its quality so drastically? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de798cf",
"de79kiw"
],
"text": [
"Here is my 2 cents: Because it gets compressed to save space and bandwidth. Same thing happens to YouTube videos. As a general rule, any file you upload or send online gets compressed depending on the server, some are better than others at this. In the YouTube video example, the difference in quality is not that noticeable because the compression algorithm used is good unlike Messenger which I would assume favors file size & bandwidth a little bit more than it should, and as a result you get crappy quality. & nbsp; EDIT: to clarify, this is done by the server and not locally on your device. When you upload the file, the server analyzes, compresses and then forwards it to your friend, so in short **the image you send is NOT the same image that you see in Messenger and it's NOT the same image that your friend receives.** Some websites and apps offer you the option of downloading the original image file, but it's not that common.",
"Messenger apps have built in compression designed to save you data because most cell phone services have some kind of data limit or cap. So when you send a picture, by default, they will compress the picture into a lower quality format that they've deemed an appropriate compromise between file size and picture quality. Many messenger apps will also give you the option to send an uncompressed version of the file although the method varies from app to app."
],
"score": [
12,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w4vau | Why can we take prescriptions stimulants daily without the harmful effects caused by illegal ones, such as meth? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7adjg"
],
"text": [
"Dosage mostly. When taking prescription stimulants you are getting a consistent dosage of a pure product. Most of the negative effects associated with recreational stimulant use come from impurities in the drug and the user's tendency to increase the dosage to chase the high of the initial use."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w4ybt | If you're a victim of a large scale crime (such as a school shooting) or terrorist attack in the USA, do you have to cover your own medical expenses or is there some sort of state fund for this kind of situation? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7c5em"
],
"text": [
"The person who committed the act would be responsible. If it is not possible to make them pay, then the expense is on you. However, on a case by case basis, the government will often create a fund to assist victims. For 9/11, a fund of $7 billion was made available, and each victims' family received on average $1.8 million."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w508h | Why do we have to be sleeping to rejuvenate and re-energize? | Why are these processes faster/more efficient when we're not awake? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7cbt0"
],
"text": [
"When you sleep your blood pressure drops as circulation slows down and your muscles are paralyzed to prevent you from acting out dreams. Since your body is requiring less energy at this time, extra oxygen can be sent to your brain. In deep sleep your body is at its least active which gives it time to repair any small muscle or tissue problems in individual cells, but your brain is at its most active as it sorts through the information of the day and drops whatever is seemingly useless. So your body is holding still long enough to repair itself and the brain gets a shot of oxygen to drop the useless information bogging it down."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w5188 | I get that the chemical makeup of water is two hydrogen atoms combined with an oxygen atom. But what I don't get is how two substances that are gases at room temperature form a substance that is liquid at room temp? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7bmv2",
"de7kbrf",
"de7kiz2"
],
"text": [
"Atoms bonding together to make compounds fundamentally changes how those atoms as a combined entity behaves as opposed to how they behave separately. It all comes down to the strength of the interactions between atoms and molecules, and how many different ways these molecules can absorb heat energy. When oxygen and hydrogen are in gaseous form, they have weak interactions between their molecules so it doesn't take much energy to break these and free the molecules, forming a gas. In contrast, water has much stronger forces between molecules. This means it needs more energy for the molecules to be free. Secondly, water has more ways it can absorb heat - so-called *degrees of freedom*. It has two bonds which can stretch and vibrate in response to heat energy, in addition to the molecule as a whole being able to vibrate more. This means it can absorb a lot of heat before turning into gas, which is why it's liquid at room temperature.",
"Water is a \"polar molecule\". If you look at a water molecule, it makes kind of an angle shape with an oxygen at the center and two hydrogens sticking off of it. The oxygen attracts more of the electrons than the hydrogens do so the oxygen end is a bit more negative and the hydrogen ends are a bit more positive. This is why we say water is polar, the molecule has two different poles. When you put a bunch of water molecules together, the positive hydrogen ends like to stick close the the negative oxygen ends of the molecules nearby. This means there is more force holding everything together and it would take more energy to separate them and have them flying off in different directions. H2 and O2 are not polar molecules, they don't have any magnetic attraction to other molecules so it takes much less energy to get them flying around instead of sticking together.",
"Water is actually a bit of a special molecule. From its size and composition, your initial assumption would be that it would be a gas at room temperature. What determines if something is a gas or a liquid or a solid depends on the strength of the bond between two molecules. Simply put; stronger bond - > more difficult to melt or boil. However, water has something going on. Between the hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom a _hydrogen bridge_ forms. These are a special type of bonds that make the water more difficult to melt/boil. To go into what a hydrogen bond is exactly is beyond ELI5, but the central idea is that it is based on electric attraction, and hydrogen atoms are slightly positive and oxygen atoms slightly negative, so they want to stay together. Interestingly but not really related, hydrogen bridges are also what keeps the two strands of DNA together."
],
"score": [
9,
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w55xp | Why are teeth naturally white? | Why are teeth naturally white/yellowish and not another color like red, green, purple, blue or black? I understand tooth decay can change the color. I mean when I child teeth grow in.... why are they that color and not another color? It's the same across all species. Edit: add yellowish. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7cslp",
"de7ewxt"
],
"text": [
"Because through the various traits of evolution (which doesn't really have a why, it just is) a substance which happens to be white turned out to be the best one for chewing food.",
"So your opponents can quickly identify when you aggressively bare your fangs at them. The brighter the fangs, the \"bigger\" they appear. Edit: Talking ^out ^^my ^^^ass. ^^^Evolved ^^^that ^^^way."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w5aqv | What exactly does a 50 percent chance of rain mean? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7e1uj",
"de7e3el"
],
"text": [
"It means that on others days in the past that had the same conditions as today, (such as temperature, air pressure, humidity, wind speed, cloud cover, etc,) it rained on about half of them, and on the other half of those days it didn't rain. So because we can only predict future events based on the past, the best we can do in cases like this is to say that it may rain, it may not. Half the time on days like this it rains, half the time it doesn't. We can't be sure.",
"A weather forecast is created by taking a tremendous amount of historical climate data recorded over a particular area, cutting up the area into squares, like a grid, and using super computers to compute the likelihood that rain will occur in each of those squares. So when there is a 50% chance of rain in an area it means that there's is a 50/50 chance of there being rain at some loation in that square. That also means that if there's a 100% chance of rain that doesn't mean that at any given point it will definitely rain, just that the forecasters think that it will definitely rain somewhere within that square."
],
"score": [
25,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w5cfg | Why are bycicle helmets designed to protect the sides and top of the head, rather than the face? | [In this clip]( URL_0 ), the helmet was useless, since his face hit the ground first. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7ek9c",
"de7gbmh",
"de7ejek",
"de7l285"
],
"text": [
"You could always wear a motorcycle helmet, but those are heavy, hot, restrict your vision somewhat and are probably overkill for most cyclists. Bicycle helmets don't protect against neck, chest or spine injuries either but we don't wear protective equipment for those. We rely on paying attention to our surroundings to limit the chance of accidents.",
"It is simply a case of safety vs convenience. Nothing is stopping you from buying a full face cycling helmet. They are available. However it is mostly downhill mountain bikers who choose the extra safety, since they have a higher risk of having an accident and their accidents are fairly serious. High speeds and nasty obstacles on and along the path. For regular cycling a normal helmet is good enough for nearly all crashes and is simply much more convenient. It is lighter, you sweat less in it and it is cheaper.",
"The helmet is really only designed to keep your skull together and from leaking in the case of a really bad accident so that emergency workers have the highest probability of saving you. Helmets are also generally totally useless after a single collision, or really any time the foam is cracked. Edit: this is also why when someone is in a bike or motorcycle accident where the head was clearly injured, you should not remove their helmet.",
"Bike helmets are meant to protect from brain injury, and thus protect the parts of the head where impact could cause such an injury. A facial impact isn't as likely to cause such an injury. Additionally, one is more able to protect their face (with hands, arms) in the case of a fall than other parts of their head. There are full face helmets (like what BMX racers wear) but there are trade-offs in terms of weight, comfort, visibility, etc."
],
"score": [
16,
13,
7,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w5fn1 | Why do blankets that have been stored for a long period smell weird? Stored in closets, boxes, etc | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7jak8",
"de7wk0x",
"de825l7",
"de8dbt9",
"de7th1l",
"de8dk7q"
],
"text": [
"If you don't wash them before storing, the bacteria and mold reproduce. If you wash them and don't rinse them enough, the left over soap rots. If you wash them and store them in boxes, they take on the smell of the boxes. Especially true if you use the same box over and over. Last but not least, organic fibers break down over time.",
"Towels and blankets smell after being stored for some time is because of the oils and skin cells that are deposited during use. Even the best laundry soap and bleach will never fully remove these things. What you are smelling is old body oils. Everything is clean but not everything can be removed. Over time your textiles will break down and deteriorate. I'm currently getting my masters degree in textile conservation.",
"Not an answer, but did you mean that thrifty odour? Like the same odour you can smell from walking in a thrift store? Cus I've been wondering the same thing",
"Laundry gets clean via the *forcing of detergent water and rinse water through the fibers repeatedly*. Eventually a build up of minerals from water accumulates in and around fibers, trapping dirt inside. This interferes with the cleaning process, especially with hard water. Towels feel scratchy as a result, so you resort to adding fabric softener. Fabric softener can accumulate in fibers too. A cup of vinegar added to rinse water will help prevent mineral build up and keep your laundry soft. You might even want to allow the vinegar to agitate and mix well into the rinse water and soak everything for 30 minutes. Don't worry, any residual vinegar smell will be gone when the laundry is dry. A vinegar rinse will help inhibit the growth of mold and mildew, which is what you smell in the thrift store. Sunlight kills microbes, so try hanging your blankets outdoors in the sunshine before storing them away. Store in a old pillow case on a ventilated shelf or buy a bedding storage bag with a zip closure. Don't pack things too tightly in your closet or in a box. Ventilation is your friend.",
"I always thought the smell of a stored blanket was its natural smell because all of the perfumes from detergent, etc wore off.",
"Wash and rinse well before storing. Add a freshly sanded block of cedar, and the will smell great."
],
"score": [
902,
158,
120,
69,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w5iqw | How come some medicines can be injected into tissue (butt, shoulder) but others need to to enter into veins? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7fx5m",
"de7t8fq"
],
"text": [
"I'm sorry for my short answer but I believe it has to do with how much of a hurry it is. Using the blood veins is a way to get it to the whole body quickly.",
"The drugs (usually)get into the tissues the same way. Injection into a vein gets the drug there faster, but injection into a muscle is quicker to inject (no need to find a vein, etc). There can be chemical and physiological reasons one route is inappropriate though. Some drugs affect blood vessels causing them to constrict or dialate, this might make IV a bad choice. Other drugs cause hystamine (a chemical signal that causes swelling among other allergy-type responses) which makes I'm a bad idea. Other drugs are irritating to tissue. Large-volume injections can't be done into muscle or you'd create an injury. In general you want to use IV to get drugs into the system fast and IM where ease of administration is most important (things like epi pens, or mass vaccinations, etc), but many factors play into it"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w5jhq | If a bullet fell on my head at maximum velocity, could it penetrate my skull? | Because bullets vary, I will take a generic pistol as an example, and with a quick Google search I got Glock G19, which has a 9mm bullet, so we will use this as reference. If this fell from far above at terminal velocity (assuming there is no air resistance and no added external force), could it penetrate my skull? If not, could it do a serious amount of damage? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7fln5",
"de7gbvr",
"de7iauw",
"de7qegy",
"de7ftxq"
],
"text": [
"No. The air resistance slows the bullet down enough for it to not be lethal when it hits the ground (or rather, a person). It would probably hurt a lot, though. You can't assume no air resistance, because without air resistance, there would be no terminal velocity.",
"[In the case of a bullet fired at a precisely vertical angle (something extremely difficult for a human being to duplicate), the bullet would tumble, lose its spin, and fall at a much slower speed due to terminal velocity and is therefore rendered less than lethal on impact. However, if a bullet is fired upward at a non-vertical angle (a far more probable possibility), it will maintain its spin and will reach a high enough speed to be lethal on impact. Because of this potentiality, firing a gun into the air is illegal in most states, and even in the states that it is legal, it is not recommended by the police. Also the MythBusters were able to identify two people who had been injured by falling bullets, one of them fatally injured.]( URL_0 )",
"\"Terminal velocity\" is caused by air resistance. Assuming no air resistance (like on the moon), the bullet will fall to the ground with a speed equal to initial speed leaving the ground (that is, muzzle velocity) and you will be quite dead.",
"People have actually tested this, and yes they can kill you. URL_0",
"I don't know if you can penetrate your skull, but it can totally kill you. People die every year for this reason. Try Googling killed by Falling bullet."
],
"score": [
23,
11,
4,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"http://mythresults.com/episode50"
],
[],
[
"http://forensicoutreach.com/library/the-falling-bullet-myths-legends-and-terminal-velocity/"
],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w5p5j | Smoking is obviously bad. Why isn't it illegal? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7gu0j",
"de7hbwe",
"de7jhrs",
"de7j1kg"
],
"text": [
"The government's role is not to prevent people from hurting themselves so why should it be illegal?",
"It's politics. Anything can be bad for you. You can drink enough water to kill you (and it's not as much as you'd think), but water isn't illegal. Then there are substances that are illegal, but clearly less dangerous than other legal substances (like Cannabis), but that was made illegal due to politics. Tobacco growers have a lot of influence (money), and now that they're not lying to the public (they hid the information that it was dangerous and addictive), people can make their own choice. Caffeine is the most widely-used psychoactive addictive drug in the world, people joke about their caffeine addiction all the time (like how they're not functional until they have coffee). Most caffeine products are not illegal, and the public can choose if they want to be addicted to it.",
"It's a long story, but I'll try to keep it ELI5 (I have lots of background in this). Before the FDA was formed in 1906, tobacco companies successfully lobbied to have **nicotine** removed from the United States Pharmacopoeia, a big book that contained all the drugs that the future FDA would have jurisdiction over. Specifically, James Buchanan Duke (of Duke Univerisity and The British American Tobacco Company) negotiated to get nicotine declassified as a drug. Having cleared that long game hurdle for over a 100 years, tobacco companies then adopted a long game of confuse, obfuscate, delay and deny, which included forming the [Tobacco Institute]( URL_0 ) which they used to promote science that weakened the link between cigarettes and disease. The Tobacco Institute was also the way they farmed expert witnesses to defend them in lawsuits. Meantime, their industry was incredibly lucrative, so they got a lot of Congress in their pocket, who to this day will help them out from time to time. TLDR/ Tobacco companies maneuvered out of the jurisdiction of the FDA before it was formed, were long game masters at stalling public outcry and legislation, and bought Congress.",
"Mostly because prohibition has never worked on a popular substance or activity. The only way to effectively reduce a popular activity is to change people’s minds about it. Notice that the popularity of smoking tobacco is going down, mostly thanks to public service campaigns revealing how bad it is for you, combined with stricter regulations that make it harder and more expensive to get. Yet, smoking marijuana is getting more popular, even though it is illegal. Banning something doesn’t stop its usage, it just moves it underground, and creates a black market around it. Examples where prohibition did not work: Alcohol - Prohibition created a black market and wars between cartels that illegally smuggled alcohol. People continued to use alcohol even though it was illegal. Marijuana and Drugs - Prohibition created a black market and drug wars between cartels. People continue to use drugs even though it is illegal. Example where education and regulation worked: Tobacco - Smoking has gone from the popular thing to do, to the socially unacceptable thing to do, thanks to public service campaigns showing how bad for your health it is, portrayals in movies and TV showing smoking is bad, higher taxes, higher minimum age to purchase and use tobacco, education in school on why smoking is bad, etc. If we had simply banned tobacco instead, it would just be like marijuana, where it’s technically illegal but people do it anyway, just now at home and through a drug dealer. If you want to reduce smoking (or any vice for that matter), a combination of education and regulation works much better, because if you don’t change people’s attitudes about it, many people will simply ignore the law."
],
"score": [
33,
21,
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Institute"
],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w5tue | What's the reason for censoring porn? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7rshf"
],
"text": [
"I imagine that you are talking about Japanese porn? Since this is the only ones that my friend told me about that are censored. In the case of that type it has to do with the culture. It is allowed to make porn there that shows certain sex acts so everything is blurred out. This is the reason why tentacle porn was made as well as other cartoons and such. They can get around the rules with drawn images. So a friend told me....."
],
"score": [
12
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w5xm0 | Our Bodies Need both Salt and Water, so Why is Drinking Saltwater Deadly? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7irwx",
"de7ir5i",
"de7is48"
],
"text": [
"Small amounts aren't deadly at all -- as you point out, these items are good for you. The problem is simply that you can *overdose* on salt concentration. Ocean water contains far, far too much salt compared to the amount of water provided. But mix it with 10 parts fresh water and you're fine -- it's not toxic.",
"We need water and salt in the correct amounts. Salt water (like, from the ocean) is too salty. It would be like eating a whole box of salt all at once.",
"Because you don't need THAT much salt. Just like you need food but you know when to stop. In the case of salt water, your body can't tell you when to stop until it's too late."
],
"score": [
17,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w6029 | How do actors cry on command? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7jbkl",
"de7joir",
"de7j9x2"
],
"text": [
"Professionally trained actor here. So, there are several ways of doing this. There are physical ways, some people have things they can do to their body to induce tears, like pinching a nerve or the such. But most actors who need to generate tears do so through emotional memory. We think very intensely about a memory when we were sad, concentrating on that memory and bringing it to the present. If done intensely enough, it can reliably bring you to tears.",
"Personally, the only reliable method I have is tear sticks. Basically a chemical I dab under my eyes or nose and it makes my eyes water",
"There are a lot of tear-inducing methods that actors use. If you go on YouTube, there are a lot of videos on that topic. The way that I use, and personally find the easiest is induced yawning. When most people yawn, their eyes get teary, so that gave me the idea to do that to make myself cry. I can make myself yawn, but I don’t know if that’s a common ability or not, so I don’t know. But the trick is to be able to hide the yawn. Be doing the yawning on the inside of your throat, but keep your face straight. Once the tears start to form, work from there and add expression. Don’t overdo it though. When someone cries, their natural reaction is to hide it, so don’t overdo it, or else it’ll look fake."
],
"score": [
55,
8,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w673a | ; Why is Jesus on a cross the symbol for the religion and used against demons? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7l6h2"
],
"text": [
"Jesus on the cross is dying for our sins, to absolve and protect all the rest of us. He protects us from our own \"demons,\" that is, our sinful nature. Remember, being crucified didn't destroy Jesus. He was resurrected shortly thereafter. It was merely an ordeal he went through on our behalf. I think I've got this right. Perhaps a better theologian can correct me on the nuances."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w6brp | Is there a biological explanation for spacing out? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7pvlz",
"de7teq5",
"de7ph60",
"de7uiok"
],
"text": [
"Like all processes and activities controlled by the brain, paying attention requires the release of neurotransmitters onto neurons (in this case, specifically those associated with motivation and learning). A prolonged and constant stimulus (e.g. listening to a long lecture) that induces neurotransmitter release can use up all the neurotransmitter, which would cause the neural pathway to become fatigued. Therefore, the neurons involved in this activity are said to have become acclimatized - unresponsive to further stimulation. Acclimatized neurons are the reason you space out. The particular regions of the brain involved in motivation and learning about the given subject are simply out of neurotransmitter and can't process further inputs. However, these neurons can be responsive again once they reuptake the neurotransmitters. This happens automatically but occurs fastest when you preoccupy yourself in another activity, which allows a different set of neurons to be used instead of the ones that are fatigued. Some people space out less than others because the same activity might activate a different number of neurons or have a different pattern of neuronal activation from person to person. In brains where the total activation is spread out among more neurons, the fatigue takes longer to set in. So a person who loves history might actually enjoy a long, complicated, and monotonous lecture on the Civil War because it activates different parts of his brain over a larger volume of it. Whereas, in a person who is not interested in history, the lecture would stimulate (and strain) the few parts of the brain that they would use to try to understand the lecture, such as those associated with speech and memory.",
"The brain regions most strongly implicated in mind wandering are called the default mode network. This network has abnormal properties in people who have ADHD. The default mode network is the part of the brain that is most active when spacing out, when thinking of oneself, and when thinking about ones social group. The Wikipedia article has some great pictures. URL_0",
"I remember someone asking this before in the past. The answer was something along the lines that it gives our brains a moment to relax since they're constantly working.",
"Attention is mainly due to dopamine. Sometimes get too much dopamine from a particular tract of sensory neurons delivering information to your brain. So it seems dopamine is highly elevated prior to ejaculating to porn, and then comes crashing down afterwards, and by doing that we are actually killing our dopamine receptors and weak neurons in the brain and it's all because of the abnormal hit of dopamine. It also has to do with subclinical electrical changes in random parts of the brain that don't fire when they aren't in sync. It'd be like if you're on the Titanic to send a morse code message asking for help, but you have no sense of rhythm and you send a jumble of beeps. So the morse code listener is not alarmed by an SOS message, but just thinking it is noise."
],
"score": [
280,
25,
4,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network"
],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w6ddo | I use two weather apps. One of them says 85% chance of rain this afternoon, the other one says 0%. Why are same-day weather forecasts so wildly inaccurate in 2016? Shouldn't we be kind of good at this by now? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7s95g",
"de7tf98",
"de7yezp",
"de7zqz7",
"de7r9rl",
"de7s70q"
],
"text": [
"Adding to other comments on weather modelling and data, it depends on where the raw data comes from. In Australia, the government weather bureau is not used by most popular weather apps - e.g. Apple weather, Yahoo weather and Android's default weather app. They use a service called Weather Underground, which crowd-sources its raw data from a network of personal weather stations. For this reason, the most popular weather apps for this region always differ from official sources. I don't have data on which is more accurate. One may assume the official government source with their vast resources and local knowledge, but if the last 15 years of internet-powered business disruption is to go by, the crowd-sourced data may in-fact out perform the established services.",
"Did you have to enter a zipcode for each app, or does it pretend to know where you are based on your ISP? My little podunk ISP bought space off one of the big boys in another state. Some websites know I'm in southern AZ, other websites think I'm somewhere in the midwest because that is where the parent ISP is located.",
"Weather is chaotic. The calculations are extremely complex, even minute changes in starting conditions create wildly different results. A scientist called Edward Lorenz discovered this in 1972 by entering 0.506 instead of 0.56127 for one of his computational calculations predicting weather. This slight change entirely changed the results and led to his famous paper \"Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?\". Things like rolling fluid convection which is where hot air on the surface of air is replaced with cold air from the atmosphere is impossible to graph. Any attempt to do so displayed what's now known as a \"strange attractor\". This cannot be predicted, it moves randomly, never overlaps or retraces it's path. For perfect prediction the initial conditions of wind speed, air pressure, rolling fluid convection etc. needs to be recorded as accurately as possible. The issue is that the number of decimal points are close to infinity for values like this as are the number of variables. And methods of measurement aren't perfect and aren't fully encompassing resulting in the chaotic nature of attempted precision. This discovery is a big linchpin of Chaos Theory; a perspective shift of science which saw a move from determinism. It's pretty interesting, I recommend everyone to look into it. edit: Obviously in this case somebody screwed up, I was just trying to highlight why different stations have different predictions.",
"Hello there, Pilot here. There are many highly reliable weather sources available. If you are using an app on your phone which I am assuming you are, unless you know specifically where their weather reporting station is then the information may not be reliable. If you are in the US and are genuinely concerned about the weather, perhaps you ride a motorcycle or want go for a run I suggest you check out these links.. (Some require registration and some require conversion from Celsius to Fahrenheit.) URL_0 (Gives forecast, cloud coverage, current weather, cold and warm fronts and much more.) LiveATC air radio (App on iTunes, allows you to find airports near you with the most current weather conditions updated hourly- winds, temperature, weather and pressure.) These above are good and reliable weather sources. With a little bit of research into what the chart symbols and terminology mean you'll know more about the weather than the reporters on the 5 o'clock news.",
"Imagine two American football coaches. One looks at the score and how the other team has played and says, \"we should run the ball.\" The other looks at the same score and the same opposing team and says, \"throw a hail mary.\" Which one is right? Maybe neither, maybe both. There are just too many variables. Weather news stations, and I assume weather apps that do their own analysis, get the raw weather info from the same source, but predicting the future based on that information is still just educated guessing. To help, many groups have developed models of how the weather generally works in a certain area, and they mix that model and the raw data to make a forecast. But like the coaches' ideas of strategy, those models aren't universal. So they can take the same data and produce different predictions. Sometimes the models work. Sometimes they don't. A lot of the time they mostly work but are off by a bit. There are variables in meteorology that can't be predicted. So we do our best, but that also means we come up with different plays.",
"~~I would not conclude that weather prediction is faulty because two weather reporting apps differ. In reality same day and next day prediction is accurate to about 1 degree.~~ ~~There's really only one source for forecasts, and that is your national weather service. Everyone else is just relaying data from them.~~ ~~It's likely that the apps are either refreshing at different times, or they are querying your location differently. Eg one may query using your postal code, and another by your coordinates.~~ Nevermind, this is probably wrong. I did however find this blog post, which indicates that precipitation forecasts are decently accurate. URL_0"
],
"score": [
161,
24,
7,
6,
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[
"1800wxbrief.com"
],
[],
[
"http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/21/accuracy-of-three-major-weather-forecasting-services/"
]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w6fqi | Why are autonomous regions considered a separate licensing agreement when it comes to streaming licensing instead of just being apart of the same country licensing? | As example, Åland Islands and Finland, where Amazon Prime got here last year, but Åland got a way smaller selection of titles. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7pwmq"
],
"text": [
"In short, because \"autonomous\" means \"has its own rules\". An autonomous region is an area that mostly governs itself, although it has a degree of dependency on the country it's a region of. There are different degrees of autonomy, so no general rule. For example, Wales has a small degree of autonomy within the UK, but not much: its government is basically responsible for things like education, agriculture, tourism, transport and so on. Jersey, on the other hand -- one of the Channel Islands -- is almost completely independent, with the UK government only taking on responsibility for things like defence and foreign affairs. So it depends on what the region's government actually controls. If it has a very high degree of autonomy, it may be that for things like movies and shows separate licencing agreements may be necessary."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w6kfl | How do console video games improve the quality of graphics during the same generation? | For instance, how can can a game like Gears of War 2 look better than Gears of War while working with the same hardware? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7nv43"
],
"text": [
"Basically, they get more experience at writing code for that hardware and learn how to optimize it. It's like getting more practice with a set of paints. You don't get more colors to work with, but you learn how better to use the ones you do have."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w6l20 | Why is torture not an effective tool for information extraction? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7o069",
"de7nsjm",
"de7nxy5",
"de7p1o6"
],
"text": [
"The victim is not rewarded for telling the truth, because the torturer doesn't know the truth - instead the victim is rewarded for saying things that make the torturer feel vindicated. So basically it's a process of a torturer forcing someone to say what they have already decided is true. That's why it's used by terrorist police states to force confessions and implicate political enemies, but not used by professional organizations to discover actual facts.",
"Because people might just tell you what you want to hear to get you to stop. So then your making decisions based off of possibly false information.",
"Becsuse after enough pain many people might just say something to make it stop. Lot of false confirmation and accusation can occur if you just torture. Some intelligence communities have resorted instead to making deals. \"Tell me where the bombs are and I'll reduce your sentence\" or \"if you tell me what the terrorists are targeting next I'll make sure your kids get a good education\" and stuff like that. You get more flies with honey than you do vinegar so to speak.",
"'If you torture a man enough, he will tell you who started the damn Chicago fire. That don't necessarily make it fucking' so!'"
],
"score": [
14,
7,
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w6q3h | Why are your two front teeth so much more sensitive than your other teeth? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7za0m",
"de83djy",
"de80p72"
],
"text": [
"Are you sure this isn't just you? I have not experienced this, nor heard it mentioned by my dentist or other people.",
"Your two front teeth are not inherently more sensitive than any of the other teeth. The outer layer of your tooth (the enamel) is essentially an inorganic crystal that has no feeling whatsoever. Sensitivity comes from the living layers underneath it - the dentin and the pulp. Usually the enamel does a pretty good job insulating the inner layers from changes in temperature. However if the dentin layer is exposed by gum recession then you'll have an increase in sensitivity - this is the typical cold sensitivity. If you have a large cavity this also exposes the dentin layer and you might experience sensitivity to sweet foods. Whitening agents irritate the nerve endings in the dentin/pulp and make them much more sensitive to any small changes in temperature. Dramatic sensitivity to hot/cold often means that the pulp has become irritated and is not happy. There is also the possibility that for you those two teeth are just sensitive to temperature changes for no discernible reason.",
"I'm not too sure, but I think it could be due to it suffering more erosion from being in contact with acidic food more frequently compared to other teeth."
],
"score": [
10,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w6uns | Why are American kids shows are dubbed in the UK? | I had to watch Paw Patrol with my friend's little sister one day and I noticed that all of the characters spoke in a British accent. I remember Paw Patrol as being American, (Correct me if I am wrong) so why would Nick Jr. are having the need to dub the show to a British accent? I googled it and can't find an explanation. Also, are British kids shows (like Peppa Pig) dubbed in the US? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7pzif",
"de7up02",
"de7ytmr"
],
"text": [
"I would assume so kids aren't learning the American pronunciation for certain words?",
"This is simply a method of translating geographical differences in syntax and terminology. Even though America and England share a demographic of the English speaking citizens, there are still just different words for identical things. Hypothetically, if a child in the UK is watching a program that uses the word \"garbage\" it could be captioned with the word \"rubbish\" to convey the point. The prolonged exposure of different slang causes this disconnect, which renders subtitles efficient, even if the differences are small.",
"Because the kids watching them are basically just giant information sponges at this point in their lives. They'll very quickly soak up knowledge, including languages, accents and dialects. If your kid spends all day watching these shows with American audio, it's likely that they'll pick up some American pronunciation or phrasing, or (although I admit it's unlikely) adopt a slightly American accent. At least, that's the best reason I can think of. It could well be some sort of broadcasting regulation, copyright, anything."
],
"score": [
20,
17,
9
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w6ws9 | What does it means that women makes 77c on a $? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7qo71"
],
"text": [
"Be wary, OP. This issue is a lot more complex than people convey in many ways. There are many variables to take into account and nobody knows every statistic. Remember to compare responses and do your own investigating so that you can form your own reasonable opinion. Edit: wary not weary"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w702f | Why is Herpes Simplex 2 considered worse than Herpes Simplex 1, when they show effectively the same symptoms? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7sjhp",
"de7uak7"
],
"text": [
"You can get HSV-1 from sharing a drink or common things like that. You generally get HSV-2 from sexual contact. From a social perspective, getting a disease from an everyday activity is fine, but getting a disease from sexual activity is your fault for being loose.",
"It is because HSV2 is classified as a STD and HSV1 is thought by most of society as \"cold sores\". Also because the infection rate for HSV1 is so high, people think it's inescapable."
],
"score": [
8,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w71gm | would someone with high blood pressure benefit from controlled blood loss? Would blood pressure decrease enough to be worth it? | I donate blood often, and I don't see any noticeable effects from losing a pint of blood every eight weeks or so. How much does blood pressure go down after a donation, and is it worth donating just for that reason? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7z1cr"
],
"text": [
"Blood pressure is not about the static pressure of a certain amount in a container. It's about the effort needed to drive it round your blood vessels like through the pipes of a central heating system where near-blockages are bad."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w7hw9 | The american debt | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7vlgc"
],
"text": [
"the money is being used to pay for all the spendings of the everyday government in addition to tax income. we owe the money to whoever buys bonds issued by the US government. a bond is an IOU. give the US gov $100 now and in 15 years, the US gov will pay you the value with interest. 30year bonds are about 3% interest. currently most bonds are bought by US interests, companies, banks, private individuals. however China and Japan interests also hold a good chunk. as bonds mature, they're constantly being redeemed and repaid..according to the terms of the bond. the US has NEVER EVER defaulted on a single bond that's due to be paid. that's why it's a very secure investment."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w7kub | Why are some mothers unable to produce milk for their offspring? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7xcvj"
],
"text": [
"Bad luck, genetics. Duct blockage/infection. They formula fed early, and during formula time weren't also pumping their own milk. Like a cow, the boob stops producing milk if it thinks there's no demand. Going too long an interval between pumping/feeding will also cause demand to drop. I'd recommend hitting the various mom subreddits."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w7n7f | Why can butter be left out at room temperature, but not heavy cream? | If butter is made from heavy cream, then why can't heavy cream also be left out at room temperature? I know butter left out is supposed to be salted, but what about whipped cream with sugar? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de80jvo"
],
"text": [
"Heavy Cream is what is known as an emulsion. Basically tiny droplets of liquid suspended in another liquid and the two don't mix together. In the case of heavy cream, it's little droplets of fat mixed in with mostly water. When you shake or churn heavy cream with enough force, you make these little drops of fat stick together and separate from the buttermilk. Once that's done you press the fat together to squeeze out the rest of the buttermilk and what's left is butter. Now, salted butter can be left out because it is dense, relatively dehydrated, and salty which is a poor environment for bacteria. Heavy cream on the other hand is unsalted, very wet, and full of little bite sized pieces of fat for bacteria to munch on. It's a very good environment for bacteria to grow in. Plus, put the right bacteria in and you can have yogurt."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w7oh0 | Why do those spots appear when you leave a surface like glass or mirror wet without drying it? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7xla5"
],
"text": [
"When the water evaporates, it leaves behind all the impurities (like minerals), that is what you see. They say the \"harder\" the water (i.e. more impure) the more water spots you get."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w7rog | Why is it when you download something it slows down dramatically at 99% or just simply takes a longer time compared to other percents? It's annoying. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7z140"
],
"text": [
"With bittorrent, the last percent takes a long time because there's only a couple or just one block left, and it's coming over a slow connection. You can only get a block from one peer at a time, and you were likely getting it from someone with a slow connection or it wouldn't be the last one. When you're downloading through a web browser, it's likely because your browser downloads to a temporary file location, and once it has the whole file, it has to copy it to the final directory."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w7tc4 | What exactly is a housing market crash and what causes it? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de87h85"
],
"text": [
"Let's say a person wants to buy a house, but they don't have the cash up front. But, the bank has a bunch of cash, and they can buy a house. So the bank strikes a deal with the person: the bank will buy the house, and let the person live in it; in exchange, the bank has a piece of paper that says, \"This person owes me (the bank) money for the house, plus a 10% on top for providing the help\" - lets call those pieces of papers IOUs (I owe yous). Now it becomes the person's responsibility to pay for those IOUs. So over time, the person pays off those IOUs, and after a few years, the person is now a home owner, and the bank got its money back, plus 10% on top - profit! The bank does this for several years, along with the task of making sure the person is responsible enough to pay off those IOUs, and thus makes a steady stream of money. Life is great. Soon, really rich investors see how the banks are making money, and they want in on the game. And they found out that the banks really don't like writing up IOUs because it means they have had to spend the money to buy the house and all they have are these lousy IOUs sitting in on their drawers - and banks are _really_ careful of issuing out IOUs because they only want to give it to people that are responsible. So these investors approach the banks, and strikes up a deal with them: \"give us those IOUs and we will give you money for them, this way you don't have to stress about loaning money and we will take 5% on top of those IOUs, so we also profit, and this will free you up to give out more loans\". The bank says, \"meh, sure why not\" - and now the bank has some more money, finds another person that wants to buy a house and creates more IOUs. This becomes wildly successful, the banks don't have to stress as much about loaning money, and they can more than double the number of IOUs they create. Soon enough the bank is now responsible for a huge number of houses, and over time as those IOUs get paid off, they are making money out of all of them. The other banks see what's happening, they realize that if this bank keeps doing what it's doing, the first bank will be the owner of all the IOUs in the country and that means they make all the money. So now the banks and investors are in a weird race: create as many IOUs by buying up as many houses as possible and start loaning them out to responsible people. Now the construction company can't keep up with demand, all they see is all these banks are trying to buy more houses than they can make, and so they increase the cost of construction. The banks are all franticly trying to buy houses, and how the construction company can sell to the highest bidder. They simply can't keep up with demand, and construction company expands by hiring more people. The construction company is growing rapidly, but they don't have enough reserve funds to buy more construction equipment. All the banks get anxious about getting more construction done, and one bank says to the construction company, \"We have a bunch of money, you need equipment. We will buy the equipment, and you can pay us back with these _construction_ IOUs\" The construction company agrees, they use the equipment to create more houses, sell the house to the banks, make a profit and pay off the bank. Construction company makes money, banks and the investors are now assembling IOUs off of the construction company AND the home buyers. Everybody is making money and everything is awesome. Eventually the investors find out they are running out of responsible people to buy houses, and they start getting upset. No more responsible buyers mean no more IOUs. They need more IOUs! If they can't find a responsible home buyer to pay for those IOUs, they will target the next best thing: irresponsible home buyers. But these irresponsible buyers won't get normal IOUs, and instead get _sub-prime_ IOUs. The investors and banks come to a revelation: there are even more irresponsible buyers than responsible buyers, and that means a HUGE market to harvest IOUs from! They look for more construction companies to build houses, and issue more construction IOUs so houses can be built at the fastest pace as possible. (this is the housing bubble) Thing is, there is a problem with irresponsible home buyers: **they can't pay for those IOUs** By the time the banks realize what they've done, it's too late. Eventually what happens is the IOUs default, and the irresponsible home buyer gets kicked out. The banks try to find anyone - _anyone_ to buy these homes, and they can't because all the responsible people already have a home. The banks get desperate to find a buyer to recoup some money, so they lower the price. Still no buyer. They lower the price some more, still no buyer. This is the housing market crash. Now some of the construction companies can't find work, so they go bankrupt. Since they go bankrupt, they can't pay for those construction IOUs. Some of these investors that payed for the equipment now realize they have a serious problem, because not only do they have these worthless house IOUs, if all the construction companies go bankrupt, they will soon have worthless construction IOUs. If all the construction companies go bankrupt, that means you have a lot of unemployed construction workers. Unemployed construction workers don't buy stuff, this will go on and on and cascade to a recession as nobody is spending money to buy anything. The Fed notices this, and realize that if this keeps cascading and impacting other sectors, the economy will be destroyed. So in order to stop the bleeding, they inject around 40 billion dollars back to certain markets to prevent the economy from collapsing entirely."
],
"score": [
17
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w7utt | How do animals know to look humans in the eye? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7yv8l"
],
"text": [
"Animals have been evolving for a very long time to understand what eyes are, where they are, and what they're looking at. Predators don't like chasing down prey for a long time, that's wasteful and a lot less likely to be successful. They'd rather creep up very close and jump on something that has no chance of escape. So predators need to know when their prey is looking at them so they know when they're at the point of no return, when they *have* to pounce, or when to stop moving and pretend to not exist. Eye contact is how they know when their prey is just kind of looking in their direction vs looking *at them*. Prey, on the other hand, needs to know when a predator is looking *at them* instead of just looking around. A predator might just be cruising through, and bolting away would be a waste of energy, and dangerous, and might spook the predator into attacking. When predators are sneaking up on them, if they notice the predator they can try to saunter away without giving up that they see the predator, so they are also keenly interested in knowing *exactly* where the predator is looking. All of this also applies in social situations, when a dominant animal needs to know when there's a rival looking to challenge them, and vice versa, or males and females need to know when the other is giving them *the do it* look. That's actually why humans care so much about eye contact. Our close relatives, the apes, use eye contact to convey social cues, which is why you're [not supposed to make eye contact with male gorillas]( URL_0 ). So both predators and prey have evolved to pay attention to where other animals are looking. Humans are just another animal, and they pay attention to where we're looking and know that we're paying attention to where they're looking."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[
"http://art-sheep.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/bokitoviewer.jpg"
]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w7xev | Why water feels like cement after jumping from a really high height. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7z7d0"
],
"text": [
"It takes a great deal of force to compress water. When you jump into the water, mostly it's getting out of your way rather than compressing. If you're moving too fast, then the water molecules can't move fast enough to get out of your way, and they won't compress. You hit a bunch of molecules that don't move, so it might as well be a solid at the moment of impact."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w7xi9 | What happens when a homeless person dies? What does the state do in that situation? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7zbvx",
"de80hhi"
],
"text": [
"When the body is found, the authorities try to identify it and see if any relatives want to have a funeral. Assuming it was not murder, if the body is not claimed it is buried in a pauper's grave as cheaply as possible.",
"The paupers grave, or [Potter's Field]( URL_0 ) is where I'm going to end up. It's not because I'm homeless or anything like that, it's just that I'm going to outlive anyone who would be interested in claiming my corpse."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potter%27s_field"
]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w7yor | Why is it not possible to revive a human\animal? (O_O) | For example, a human\animal is out of oxygen for 3 minutes, and it dies. Then, he gets oxygen (inserted directly to his lungs), but nothing happens. I know this is a silly question, but I really wonder what happened that made it not possible to revive him. Since the person\animal has all his organs in good shape. No damage was done. But something is dead. What? Edit: Thanks everyone for being polite and for taking your time to explain this very well. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7zx43",
"de827ah",
"de83hny",
"de808gp"
],
"text": [
"Brain damage due to lack of oxygenated blood circulation will result in brain death. Once brain death occurs, even if the heart were to restart, the patient would never regain consciousness.",
"> For example, a human\\animal is out of oxygen for 3 minutes, and it dies. Then, he gets oxygen (inserted directly to his lungs), but nothing happens. I know this is a silly question, but I really wonder what happened that made it not possible to revive him. There are a lot of things that happen when you don't get oxygen for a long enough time. In the first period, your brain goes into panic mode and starts trying to ration what resources it does have left, in order to survive. Doing this will let it live a little longer, but it isn't good for the body and creates a lot of other problems. Once oxygen has been gone too long, the cells start to die and the brain stops working. You've unplugged the power supply to the brain. Without the brain, your heart stops beating (super, super simplified for explanation purposes). Without blood pumping around, even more bad things start to happen in the other tissues of the body. At a certain point, enough brain cells die that even if you plugged the brain back in and gave it oxygen, and bypassed the heart to pump the blood another way, you still can't bring dead brain cells back to life. Just like you can't walk into a cemetery and shock a corpse back to life. It may not look like damage has been done to the brain to you, but the cells have started to break down. Honestly, if you cut open their skull and look at the brain or other organs of someone who has died, you can see visible changes. So a lot of damage has been done.",
"Dont ever say its a silly question on this subreddit. We are here to explain like you're 5!",
"Damage is done, just not at the macroscopic level, cells are maintained at very specific conditions. Containing complex chemical machinery, a deviation from these conditions causes permanent failure of the reactions sustaining the cell. For example, changes in temperature, changes in concentration of some chemical, changes in pressure, changes in voltage, can all disrupt the conditions that allow the cell to survive. So it should be no surprise that if no oxygen, a vital resource, does not find its way to cells they die."
],
"score": [
13,
11,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w85dr | Why do glasses need UV protection when people who don't need glasses are fine without it? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de815s7",
"de81i0c",
"de813ab",
"de824dm"
],
"text": [
"The same reason why you wear sunscreen. UV causes irreversible damage to your eyes and if you wear glasses anyway why not protect your eyes from UV if you can do so without adversely affecting the performance of the glasses?",
"You'll go blind without UV protection in sun glasses. Your eyes think it's darker so they open up to allow in more light so you can see properly. If the glasses aren't also blocking UV light then you'll have more UV light entering your eyes than you would without glasses. This will quickly damage your retina.",
"People who don't need glasses are not fine without UV protection. If you spend a lot of time outdoors without protecting your eyes, you will have a higher likelihood of developing cataracts in later life.",
"Glass need extra UV protection because the theory of glass is to foucs the light at the back wall of the eye (where the photo receptors are), if the sunlight passes through a lens without UV protection and there will be a high intensity of UV rays which would be harmful for the eye. Furthermore, the normal eye(without glasses) also protects from UV rays, but as the lenses of the glasses concentrate the intensity of light falling on the eye. It harms the eye all in all"
],
"score": [
9,
5,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w8a3l | Where does the web material go when a spider climbs back up? | I was watching a small house spider today drop down from the ceiling on a strand of web. I touched it and it climbed back up the web. There wasn't a loop of web dangling below it. Do they just reel it back up inside like a yo-yo? Eat it? Where does the web go? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de83ifq",
"de8e4s1",
"de87afx",
"de8v7fw"
],
"text": [
"This is from some museum entry about orb weavers: That’s where the spider’s genius for recycling comes in. When the orb-weaver takes apart an old web, it actually eats the silk. The protein from the old silk is never wasted, from the spider’s digestive system, it goes to the silk glands to be made into a new web. Even if a spider misses a few meals, it can still go on spinning webs. This is thanks to the efficient recycling program that lets spiders conserve protein by eating old webs.",
"Spider dork here. Others here have mentioned they recycle the web by eating it, but not the method by which they climb up a strand without leaving any behind. They essentially climb with their forelegs and bundle it upwith their hind legs whilst holding the bundle with their fangs as they go and then hold onto it until they can eat it later.",
"The gather it as they climb and generally eat it once they're settled. If you're comfortable getting close to them you can watch it happen :]",
"I'm fascinated just thinking how people concluded that a spider \"eats\" and re-excretes the proteins from its old web it gathers. 'Cause that shit's TINY. Well, maybe a huge garden spider could be dissected under an optical microscope, but a lot of the others are tiny, even grain-of-rice bodies. So, question- if you dyed it web green, and it ate it and recycled the proteins, would it spin green web?"
],
"score": [
901,
415,
131,
9
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w8cd4 | If calories are the measure of how much energy there is in food - how can things be 0 calorie? | I mean - isn't there still energy in those 0 calorie cookies? Would you starve to death if you tried to live on those and Coke Zero? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8688c",
"de82smv",
"de84vg1"
],
"text": [
"ok, so essentially calories are the value attributed to the amount of simple and complex sugars that a material has inside of it. Wether that's carbohydrates, fats or protein calories are the estimated value of how much energy that food stores in it. Calorie free, or extremely low-calorie foods use substitute ingredients to provide something that may still have nutritional values, however provides very little in the way of caloric value. Case in point, Coke Zero. While it helps quench your thirst, and will settle/calm your stomach, it will not provide you any significant boost in energy. This is because Coke Zero is made with many inorganic and processed chemicals that will not provide your body with beneficial nutrition or chemical based energy that it needs. The chemicals pass through your body almost undisturbed until you either pee/poop them out. The only useful thing is whatever water your body can strip chemicals off of to use. Other foods, such as rice cakes, may have 1-2 calories, however still have other minerals and nutrints, such as sodium or Vitamin A, but still have no fuel to add to the mix. Its like your body is a car. Do you need brake fluid? not every day. Do you need oil? Yes, but in small amounts every 1-4 months. Do you need Gas? Yes, every 2-5 days depending on how you drive. In this instance, equate GAS to CALORIES. Oil, transmission fluid, etc... these are going to be other minerals and vitamins you NEED, but arn't actively used to make you GO. They work with the things that make you GO to make sure you keep GOING, but they arn't the fuel your body burns.",
"Yes. It has zero nutritional value. Zero calorie stuff is just a bunch of chemicals that your brain tells you is tasting good.",
"Yes, you'd starve. 0-calorie food is made of stuff you can't digest. Since you can't digest it, it comes out in basically the same form it came in, which often causes... intestinal difficulties. Due to some wiggle room in labeling laws, you can have up to 5 calories/serving and still label food as 0-calorie."
],
"score": [
4,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w8ime | Why do some female breast sizes have double letters or triple letters and others only single letters? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de85b7y",
"de86pod",
"de85kl7"
],
"text": [
"Women's clothes sizes is a bizarre, non-standardized, mess. Men's clothes are measured in cm or inches, normal scientific units. Women's clothes are \"size 8\", which is a different number of cm/inches depending on how much the item costs. The fundamental problem is trying to represent many variables in 1-2 parameters. Women are many sizes and shapes, and just saying 32D isn't nearly enough information to make a bra that fits well. Why women put up with this is for another to answer, but since women like to spend lots of time trying on clothes, it makes for lots of fun shopping time. Being efficient would turn \"fun shopping\" into \"clothes buying\". Nobody thinks that would increase sales. Spend 15 minutes following a man vs a woman in a department store, and you'll see they are completely different.",
"Bra sizes are weird and I can't give a \"why,\" but I can give some explanation. The number is the waist size. The letter is the cup. As the band size goes up, the cups get bigger. So, a 32B and a 38B will not have the same cup size even though the letters are the same. So, on to your question, the letters go AA, A, B. C, D, DD (also known as an E in the US), DDD (also known as an E in the U.K. or an F in the US), G, GG, H. There are more that are less common, but this gives you the main idea. So cup, size is confusing as I kind of mentioned before. I personally wear a 32DDD which sounds massive, but a 38D might have the same cup as a 32DDD size but with a bigger band. My \"sister size\" would be a 34DD. Since the band is up a size, the cup goes down a size as it naturally gets bigger as the band size goes up. As to why the industry did this, I'm not certain. It makes bra shopping a bitch. But as for your idea of in between sizes, I'd say that's accurate.",
"Just manufacturers making up these definitions based on measurements. All based on the measurements of what the band size, measurements across the ribs, versus the cup size, measured across the fullest part of the breast. DD=E DDD=F The Breakdown: AAA AA A B C D E/DD F/DDD G Etc"
],
"score": [
8,
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w8lmo | How do we learn non expressible words as a child? | How do we learn how to use words like 'a' and 'the' as children? It seems hard to try and explain these words outright, so how do we begin to incorporate these words into our use of a language? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de85av6"
],
"text": [
"We learn very few words by having their definitions given to us. We learn most words by example or by ostension (pointing). So our parents say, \"Look at the firetruck!\" *and* \"There is a firetruck!\"; but then they say \"Look at the water!\" but *not* \"There is a water!\"; they say \"You are a sweetheart\" but *not* \"You are the sweetheart\"; and they say, \"You are the cutest kid!\" but *not* \"You are a cutest kid!\" ...and eventually, after lots of examples, we get the hang of the very complicated ways words like these are used in our language without ever having had it spelled out."
],
"score": [
30
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w8twk | Why is the brake/accelerator in your car so much more sensitive when you're not wearing shoes? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de87nvx"
],
"text": [
"I know what you mean. Isn't it really just miscalibration of our feet?"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w9a9i | When you're learning a new language, you translate every word back to you mother tongue in your head. But when you've mastered the language, you don't need the translation anymore. How does this work? | I often watch television without subtitles with my mom, and she sometimes asks me to translate the difficult words or sentences. But since a few years I have had difficulty trying to come up with the right translations, and especially after I studied in an English speaking country. I know exactly what the words means, can describe it, and can think of synonyms, but have trouble with finding the right translation in my mother tongue. I lately realized that I don't need to translate English in my head, and was wondering if this causes the trouble with translating. So how does this work? Is your brain just translating it so fast you don't notice it? And if so, where does the trouble with translation of words and sentences in my mother tongue come from? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8cos6",
"de8aqh5",
"de8d63c"
],
"text": [
"Words are a kind of symbolic algebra. When you really learn a word it is a natural meaning. The word represents a native thought. So when you think the word \"cat\" it evokes a series of ideas. Furry. Small. Sharp. whatever... Whether you like cats or hate them the word itself evokes and invokes the the ideas and images as a primitive. So then you start to learn a second language. You learn \"gato\" is \"cat, but in spanish\". It's an indirect. It's a step away. You have to turn gato into cat. And you have to turn cat into gato. Each in terms of the direction... new to native or native to new. Eventually, with familiarity, you stop thinking \"gato is cat in spanish\" and so gato directly invokes the same things as cat. Furry. Sharp. Small. The two words are proper synonyms. Neither has primacy so both are equally available. At that point the \"is versus are\" translator is in charge. You know when to use the word \"is\" and you know when to use the word \"are\" based on context. Both have the same meaning, but one is slightly more correct than the other depending on what other words are around it. Further, in some languages there are unique verbs or tenses or whatever. In one languages it takes one word while in another it takes two. But the same thing eventually happens. So just like you can learn to use a fork as a spoon or whatever, the interchange of tools, once you can use both tools, is just a context and technique issue. So basically the difference is naturally-accessible versus takes deliberate thought. Once something is naturally accessible to your brain then it's naturally accessible to use. Language is just a tool at some levels. It's an inherent means of information at another. But the brain is incredibly plastic. So the change is a result of that plasticity.",
"I think as you get better with foreign language, you get used to their way of thinking and grammar. I think language is a skill - so when you get better at it, you do it automatically.",
"Very little is understood about the way the brain works or how it processes language. But to become fluent in a language, you have to stop translating everything in your head -- that is an extremely slow and inefficient process because you're doing twice the work. It seems that the second language becomes (hopefully) independent of the first, and your difficulty in translating is evidence of that: you're simply not translating everything into your mother tongue in order to understand it -- you're bypassing that whole mechanism. On those occasions where you do have to translate, you have to make a special effort to do that, which is why it's suddenly difficult. You're probably at the stage of fluency where you begin to experience what's called \"code switching\". Essentially, you have two modes: an English language mode and a mother tongue mode. When you're in English mode, you're thinking in English; in mother tongue mode, you're thinking in your mother tongue. You can switch from one to the other with relative ease, but thinking in both languages at the same time is virtually impossible. But if you continue living in a bilingual environment, you should eventually find it easier to translate. It takes practice and training, and doing it very quickly is a highly specialized skill -- this is why simultaneous interpreters are so expensive. Source: Native speaker of English living in Germany."
],
"score": [
35,
5,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w9b79 | How do laser pointers work | I absolutely love lasers but i just cant wrap my head around how they work. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8bzkq",
"de8hxjj"
],
"text": [
"Essentially you pump energy into a cloud of atoms to get them to emit light, then you trap it between two mirrors so it builds up in intensity before you let it out. Better explanation here: URL_0",
"Magic. I mean, not really, but frankly quantum electrodynamics makes about as much sense sometimes. It's all about the mathematics, and you can only get a vague idea from pop science descriptions. Nevertheless, here goes my best attempt. Chemistry owes its intricacy to the fact that two fermions (named after one of the physicists who explained this stuff, Fermi) cannot be in the same state at the same time. Electrons are fermions, and this property forces them into increasingly remote “shells” away from the nucleus, where in some atoms they can easily escape (making metals conductive), while in others they can be “shared” between atoms (making molecules and, in the case of carbon, the whole of biology). Photons, the constituent particles of light, are bosons (named after one of their discoverers, Bose; one of the others was Einstein, but I guess he had enough stuff named after him already), which are the exact opposite of fermions. I don't mean that they don't mind being in the same state; I mean they're practically begging for it. You're twice as likely to find two photons in the same state, three times as likely to find three in the same state, and so on. Einstein suggested using this trick to perform light amplification by stimulating the emission of radiation. LASER. (Yes, it was originally an initialism.) Basically, you get a whole load of electrons excited, so they're holding on to enough energy to want to produce a photon. We put these atoms in a reflective cavity, with one end a little bit transparent, so when one of those atoms finally releases its photon, that photon bounces around in the cavity for a while, past all those other excited atoms. Since photons really want to be in the same state, that single photon “encourages” more photons to be emitted, and as they are in the same state (or “coherent”), they will interfere constructively to make the brightest possible output wave. Furthermore, the more photons are emitted, the more encouraged the others are, until the only limiter to how much light you get it is how much energy you can feed in. Bam. Laser."
],
"score": [
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://youtu.be/y3SBSbsdiYg"
],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w9by6 | why do we touch our chin when we think about something? 🤔 | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8beo9",
"de8iltf",
"de8g9ph",
"de8ghkh",
"de8gy10",
"de8ghdh",
"de8l8kn",
"de8i76f",
"de8ifyq",
"de8m855",
"de8huc4",
"de8n9zm"
],
"text": [
"Some old psychologists used to think it's because we inadvertently do that to protect our necks while the brain is too busy to process all the outside stimuli. Others say it's conditioning.",
"It's a lot easier to think when body is in relaxed state and the more upward blood flow goes to brain. Resting chin on head reduces supporting neck muscles using up the blood flowing upwards, hence more blood for brain; additionally by sitting down more blood is available for upper body as the lower body is not as active. So generally [the thinking man]( URL_1 ) pose is optimal for active brain. We subconsciously do this when thinking deeply, and has become an evolutionary trait. There are [other ways]( URL_0 ) to increase blood flow to brain, but that benefit maybe countered by discomfort. Edit: Minor word correction as I was not resting my chin on hand Update: Speaking from experience, not research based Update2: Queries on source? Peer reviewed research will be hard to come by given the topic (medically mundane/commercially not valuable)..but it is evident from experience that thinking capacity is diminished after heavy food or we feel light headed when getting up suddenly–both corresponding to redirection of blood supply while heart rate has not caught up. Once the heart rate has caught-up, there's more overall circulation, so mild activity works. Heavy activity, however, counters the benefit of circulation with lower blood oxygen level. Easy way for focused thinking—sit down after drinking ginkgo tea followed by a brisk walk.",
"I'm not sure if it's related, but the reason people rub their neck when they are really anxious is that the Vagus nerve runs right through there. Stimulating your Vagus nerve gives a pretty large response of the Parasympathetic nervous system which calms you (slows heart rate, slows respiratory rate, drops blood pressure, etc...).",
"I'm no expert, but we learned this from our Ethology class: URL_0 Basicially if you have 2 conflicting behaviours (so thinking about which of the 2 pizzas you are about to order) it can lead you to express a third one that is unrelated to them(Scratching head). This can be seen in a lot of other animals. Buuut there may be other reasons, like having physical stimulation increase the stimulation of your brain whilst thinking about an answer. Maybe someone else here has a cited resource on chin scratching :D",
"I think it must be a kind of \"pause\" indicator. If you are in a conversation and need some time to think before responding, you might put a hand or finger up to your mouth to signal the pause. You hold on to your chin as if to say, \"hold on, lemme think\" so the person whom you're talking to doesn't wonder why you've inexplicably gone silent and staring.",
"It's also letting people know that you don't want them to talk to you. \"I'm thinking.\" \"Well think me up a cup of coffee and a donut with some of them sprinkles on it!\"",
"I don't think it has any particular biological significance. Many cultures do it differently. I have seen people rub their forehead, gently tap their forehead, rub the hair right above forehead, rub the back of the skull, tap temples and so on.",
"In \"Seeing Through Clothes,\" a book by Anne Hollander, she talks about generations and their learned gestures. The touching of the chin is sort of a gestural convention that has been with us for a while. I can't say if there's a sort of a predisposition for the pose, but there's definitely a learned component. That's why it's so amusing to look at little kids because they learn these gestures so quickly, like the indignant downward tilting of the head and folding of the arms to show when they're upset.",
"I would go for learned behavior. We saw the classical philosophical beard stroking of wise men, and just imitate it from an early age.",
"I was pretty sure only emoji's, cartoon characters and bad actors in tv shows/movie did that. Reading the comments here seem to claim otherwise.",
"In conversation it is a social gesture. When your arm is on a desk, supporting your head can help you relax and focus on a tough problem. There is something about taking the strain off your neck muscles that helps to take the edge off of the stress.",
"When I'm thinking heavily, I often start touching my lips. So it's not just the chin. In other words, it probably has nothing to do with \"protecting the neck\". Neither does it have to do with cultural inheritance probably. There is evidence though that people with ADHD can concentrate better if they are doing something with their hands in the meanwhile, so this could be a possible factor."
],
"score": [
2140,
1199,
756,
156,
19,
6,
5,
5,
3,
3,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirshasana#Contraindications_and_cautions",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker"
],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displacement_activity"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w9bzu | What happens when a woman with rock hard abs gets pregnant? And what happens after the pregnancy? Does she have to work all that muscle back? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8cgzl",
"de8bgfd"
],
"text": [
"It's called diastasis. Our ab muscles are surrounded above and below by a white thick layer that goes around everything in your abdomen called the fascia. The abs separate in the middle, but they are still connected to the fascia.",
"I can't answer the former, but as for the latter, she wouldn't need to 'work' them back because they'll have never left unless she starved herself so badly her muscle tissue broke down to supply nutrients. Which, since she's pregnant, is not something she would, or should, do."
],
"score": [
13,
9
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w9idf | How does car hotwiring even work? | In movies and whatnot, some dude breaks into a car, fishes under the steering wheel, grabs two wires and sparks them together, and bam, car works? What're the principles behind this? Does it actually even work? (that sounded very suspicious, I'm not looking for advice on how to steal cars) I would think that the position of the key-barrel where you normally start the ignition of a car with a car-key would prevent this from occurring? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8cfqn",
"de8hpxv",
"de8fno4",
"de8nqbj",
"de8hk99",
"de8int6",
"de8st27"
],
"text": [
"When you turn the key in a car, it just turns a rotary switch. A switch is just a mechanism that connects wires. If you know the right way to connect the wires, you don't need a switch to do the job. Now, a lot of newer cars make this impossible because of various security features (like chips in keys) but on older cars, all you need to do it grab the wires & connect them in the same way the ignition switch would have.",
"Basically, what you see in the movies is fake although this used to work back in the 60s. On old cars, the ignition key just worked a switch. You had a switch for \"on\" which activated electrical circuits like the fuel pump and the spark ignition system. Then, there was a second switch which activates an electric motor which starts the engine turning. Once the engine is turning, and assuming it's OK, then as long as the engine has fuel and power to the spark system, it'll keep running. So, a thief could break into the car, look under the dash for the wires to the ignition switch, and activate the circuits by touching the wires together. You'd have to tie the main power circuit \"on\", and then you could run the starter motor by touching the start wires together. By the 70s, the car manufacturers had learned that this wasn't particularly secure, so they put a backup system. The ignition key lock wouldn't just work the switch, but it would also mechanically block the steering wheel so you couldn't actually drive it. My dad had an old toyota, and the ignition key wore out while we were on vacation hundreds of miles from home. The key just wouldn't turn enough to start the car. We called the local recovery guy, who worked out that the key would turn just enough to unlock the steering wheel, but not enough to work the switch. So, he pulled out the wires from the dash, and showed us how to hotwire it so that the engine would run. This allowed us to get home, and book it into the dealer for a proper repair at a more convenient time. By the late 90s, computers had developed enough that engine spark and fuel systems could be electronically controlled, rather than controlled by complicated mechanisms of rotating shafts, gears, cams and switches. As a computer was running the engine, it wasn't that much more complicated to add computer security. Since the late 90s, most cars have a chip in the key, which listens for a radio signal, and when it gets the signal it transmits a password. The ignition key barrel has an antenna in it, and when the engine control computer sees the start switch is active, it transmits a \"login password\" signal from the antenna to the key. The key responds, and if the computer gets the correct password, it activates the fuel and spark. If the password is wrong or missing, then the fuel and spark systems don't work. The engine will turn on the starter motor, but it won't actually start.",
"The method would not work on almost all cars made after 1970. It's always bothered me when I see them do this in movies. Most cars without modern theft protection could still be STARTED but not DRIVEN by twisting the right wires together (First, twist an ignition+ source to +12V, then touch a starter+ wire to +12v until engine is running). But you couldn't drive the car. What they never account for are the mechanical lockouts tied to the ignition switch. When you turn the key, a physical lockout releases the steering wheel lock and allows it to turn. Without physically turning the key, the steering wheel would remain locked, even with the engine running, hence making the car undrivable.",
"The funniest example I saw of this was yesterday in some movie. A guy gets into a car, reaches under the dash just to the right of the steering wheel, and brings out two wires that have been stripped back an inch and a half. That is, those wires were supposedly just sitting under there, no insulation, nothing to keep them from touching one another or the chassis of the car, causing a short and a fire. Too too silly.",
"Saab locked the gearbox in reverse on their manual cars, not sure if this is harder to break than a steering lock",
"Yes, I've seen my dad do it. The ignition switch of my wife's 1978 VW Rabbit broke and the key would no longer go in. The car was stuck at the mall. It was pretty easy, he popped the plug off the back of the ignition switch, stuck some screw drivers in, shorted them out with the bit of metal on a pen cap and the car started and we drove it home. Instead of buying a new VW ignition switch, we found a free one from something else and duct taped it to the steering column and wired it up. Car ran like that for a few more years.",
"Aside from the steering wheel lock, this used to be much easier to do because the ignition switch was in the dash and the dash had more open space underneath it. You could see the two wires that you needed immediately. Almost all of the other things that are now in the steering column were also separate switches arranged on the dashboard. Now the necessary wires are bound up in a harness that goes up into the steering column. Along with the ignition wires, you have the turn signals, wipers, headlights, airbag, parking lights, horn, and probably cruise, and radio. There are probably twenty wires to sort out now, and since you can no longer see the back of the ignition switch, you may not know what color the ones you want are. Just cutting that bundle apart without cutting wires can be five minutes work."
],
"score": [
271,
43,
29,
7,
5,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w9lb8 | What is an IP address and what role does it play in tracing online activities back to you? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8gdgu",
"de8gjhd",
"de8d1is",
"de8gfvz"
],
"text": [
"I assign ips, both public and private for a hosting company. Im also responsible for switch configuration and firewall provisioning. Postal service is the best analogy here. Your house address is how people send letters to you. Each up address can be broken down into street and house number but for this example let's just says it's your whole address. Routers/firewalls are like post offices, they may not have anyone there who knows where 12345 easy lane is, but it knows where the post office in Simple, TX is, so it sends it there. In the mean time while it passes through some of these routers/firewalls the traffic gets monitored and logged. Apartments are more like dynamic ips, it's a temporary address assigned to a large group of dwellings. This is most of us who have home internet connections. The apt complex knows who has what address, and when questioned they know who had apt 987 in June of 2008. This is why TOR network was created, and this is also the importance of VPNs.",
"Say you want to send a request to a web server, you put the website name into your browser, say URL_0 , and the browser ascends the request to the web server, except how does it get there? Computers and routers don't send data to host names, they need something that's easier for computers to understand. Every computer and router connected to the internet has a numeric address, the IP address. There's a process that converts names like URL_1 to addresses and your computer does that and sends the request to the address. Now, to get the response back your computer needs to have an address. I'm going to gloss over some details you can google if you're interested (rfc1918, nat, dhcp) but your computer gets an IP address from your ISP automatically and when you send a request to a server that request includes your address so the server knows where to send the reply. Now, your address uniquely identifies your computer on the internet, so if someone does something on the internet the server they talked to has a record of what IP address made the request. From that people know which ISP issues that address to a user and then they can ask the ISP which customer had that address.",
"An IP address is actually an address. It's a number that uniquely identifies anything that connects directly to the internet. As for tracing online activities - it becomes a little bit more hairy. Say you are at campus and connect through the same router as all the other students. Then the router is the only thing with a global IP address. Everyone else connecting through that router will identify as the same IP (it's called NAT if you want to read further) Your home connection may or may not be a fixed IP. There is a limited number of IP addresses so most ISP's use dynamic IP's. This means that your IP of today may be your neighbors tomorrow.",
"Have you ever been in a group with two people that have the same first name? Someone might say \"Hey John\" or whatever name, and both look up and wonder if you mean them or the other John. Usually this problem is solved by adding more information that only applies to one of them, like their last name, or simply calling them by their last name to begin with. Computers have this problem when they try to talk to each other too, especially now that we've connected thousands of them together on the Internet. This problem is solved by giving each computer that connects to the Internet a number that only they have, an IP address. Since the Internet got way bigger than anyone had thought of back when they chose the numbers used for IP addresses, they divided them into public and private IP addresses. The private ones can't connect to the Internet, so they don't need to be unique. Each home or business has at least one router, which is a special type of computer with both a private IP address and a public IP address, the latter being assigned to it by their Internet service provider, like Comcast or CenturyLink. Computers and game consoles and tablets and stuff use their private IP addresses to talk to the router on its private IP address, which then uses its public IP address to talk to other computers on the Internet. So people on the Internet can sometimes see the public IP address and can look up what Internet service provider it is from, and find the city and state it's in. Unless the customer posts it somewhere, only your Internet service provider knows the actual address of the house or business behind an IP address. A government or a hacker may be able to get that information from the Internet service provider, but is usually very difficult and rarely happens."
],
"score": [
34,
6,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"wee.reddit.com",
"www.reddit.com"
],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w9lsi | Why do teabags spin whenever you remove them from water? | (really not sure if this flair is correct) | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8dlbi"
],
"text": [
"Because the string is actually two strings in a spiral Form. As the teabag soaks in all the water it gets heavier which leads to the spiral unrolling."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5w9ocg | Why, if you jump, you make a jump and not a jumpING? While if you draw, you make a drawING and not a draw. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8g7ks",
"de8ef7e",
"de8dub4",
"de8hgz4"
],
"text": [
"When we have a word that finishes in *-ing*, it means that that thing is temporally unbounded: there's no real, exact, or distinct beginning and/or ending to it. \"I walked in the room, while he was talking.\" I'm not sure when he began talking (no real beginning). \"The TV is running in the background\" (not sure when it'll be turned off) A drawing is similar: when did it start? when is it over? It's not like a jump, a kiss, a punch - which all have an exact moment of beginning and ending. - \"I make a jump\" describes a temporally *bounded* event. - \"I make a drawing\" describes a temporally *unbounded* state (it went on for a while with no distinct beginning or end). Edit: fixed a word. Also, if you want to read more look up [semantic boundedness]( URL_0 .",
"One turns an action into a noun and the other turns the tangible result of an action into a noun. English likes to put \"ing\" on the noun versions of the latter (drawing, painting, etching, writing, etc). Not always though. Depends on the word. For example, you can make a print or a printing, a cast or a casting, a mold or a molding. And sometimes there's no \"ing\" option. You don't make a sculpting or a composing, for instance. As for the verbs turned directly into nouns, like \"jump\", it's rare that they ever get an \"ing\" ending. You do a dance, not a dancing, a twirl, not a twirling. Etc.",
"A drawing is a tangible physical object that you made. a jumping is not. You jumped/made the jump.",
"Nouns that end in -ing are often verbal nouns. Originally (back in Old English, ancient German, etc.) the -ing noun ending meant a completed or habitual action. Over the last thousand years, though, when it's used is more or less arbitrary. It has effectively the same meaning as -ment, -ion, and -ance (except that those three are generally applied to words derived from Romance languages rather than Germanic ones). While it's tempting to look for some logic, there isn't really a good reason we make a jump instead of a jumping, just as there isn't really a good reason for living in a building instead of a build. The difference between a paint and a painting almost makes sense, but the difference between an end and an ending is harder to explain. The arbitrary nature of the ending is obvious sometimes - at work, you go to a meeting, not a meet. Except when you go to a track meet or a swap meet, that is. A track meeting would probably be a meeting about the track meet, and a swap meeting isn't a thing at all. Why? Because that's just how we say it. tl;dr There isn't a good explanation because the English language doesn't always make sense."
],
"score": [
63,
26,
9,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundedness_(linguistics)"
],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5w9weu | how do landlords make money, how do you start? | How do you start managing properties, how do you make money and what tips do you have for starting? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8ezcc"
],
"text": [
"Depends on house price vs rental potential as to how easily you can make money. We started by simply not selling our old house when we bought a new one. We maintained two mortgages instead and rented one property. We then slowly built up enough funds for further properties until we had five total. We have since scaled back to three but our own home is now entirely debt free. I would say that house rental is not as profitable as renting a flat/apartment. Our original house rental yielded virtually no profit. Flats on the other hand are fantastic. Also easier to maintain. Biggest profit though is in appreciation of property price - so choose your location carefully."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5wa7ss | Why after a hard workout, our bodies only ache really bad the next day? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8hdua"
],
"text": [
"There are a few things you could be talking about here. There is something called DOMS or delayed onset muscle soreness that usually shows up between one and three days after a workout, especially when you do a new exercise. We don't actually know exactly what causes it. But it is thought to be related to little tears in the muscle fibers. It is caused by exercises where the muscle is lengthening, like when you lower down from a pull up. There is also tendonitis. This is caused by tendons that are mildly strained, or even just irritated. As your body rests and recovers, one of the things that happens is swelling or inflammation around damaged areas. This causes pain in the tendons, as they do not move smoothly like they usually do. Finally, there is general inflammation in the joints. What these all have in common is that they are not directly caused by injury. A muscle tear or strained tendon will hurt right away. Instead, this pain is caused by your body repairing and strengthening what you might think of as \"general wear and tear.\" This causes some inflammation, which is painful."
],
"score": [
20
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5wabyy | How did virtually every civilization independently discover bread? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8i0oj",
"de8sxm3"
],
"text": [
"Generally speaking it relies on very few ingredients that can be grown or otherwise cultivated in a wide range of climates",
"Serendipity is the art of the fortunate accident. When people discovered grains as a useful, and renewable food source, they set out on a path to the accidental discovery of both bread, and it's cousin, beer. You store the seeds and something goes wrong, they get wet and start to sprout. But, hey, wonderful things happen. The sprouted grain is now sweet and they smell kinda funny and that water has a pretty neat buzz in it! People will inevitably choose to explore this a bit further. Wild yeasts and bacteria that can act as leaveners of dough are abundantly common. If you mix flour and water together and knead it into a dough, it will almost certainly rise due to the gasses produced by fermentation. If you get lucky and come up with a batch that rises really well and you save a bit of it to work into your next batch, that batch will also rise quickly and well, and you've discovered the technology of sourdough bread. The reason they make great Sourdough in San Francisco is the early settlers there got lucky. The local wild yeasts and bacteria made great bread. The \"Active Dry\" baker's yeast goes by the scientific name [*Saccharomyces cerevisiae*]( URL_0 ) which means \"Sugar fungus from beer.\""
],
"score": [
7,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharomyces_cerevisiae"
]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5wac4l | When does a stick stop being a stick and become a branch, or a log? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8kpej",
"de8ioaw"
],
"text": [
"If you can use it as a walking stick or light saber,is a stick. If you can pick it up but not swing it, it's a branch. If you can't pick it up, but can roll it, its a log. If you cant move it at all, it's a tree in the ground silly.",
"It's a question about more than length, width, and weight. You also have to consider its *essence*: in short, it depends on its degree of stickyness."
],
"score": [
21,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5wad02 | If CRISPR changes the DNA of a cell, how does it change the DNA of an entire body? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8iqyn"
],
"text": [
"There's a few ways, but it's all about how you deliver the gRNA and the Cas9 protein and your repair DNA (these are the components required to use Cas9 to cleave a certain site in the DNA). If you modify germ cells (like egg or sperm cells), then any progeny from these cells will have the modification in all cells because these divide into all the cells of an organism. You could also use a virus to modify certain cells (not all cells) in an organism. You could also take cells out of the body, culture them and modify them in vitro and reintroduce those cells. This approach has been [attempted]( URL_0 ). Sometimes, to help treat a condition, you don't need to change the DNA in every cell. If you want to get all cells or most cells, you need to edit while the organism is at a very early stage of development."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[
"http://www.nature.com/news/crispr-gene-editing-tested-in-a-person-for-the-first-time-1.20988"
]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5wadfs | Isn't Social Security essentially a Ponzi Scheme? | People invest in it, and to pay out their returns, they are paid with capital from new investors. Isn't this a Ponzi scheme? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8kafj",
"de8igfn"
],
"text": [
"No. A ponzi scheme is supposed to give investors a guaranteed rate of return, usually a high one. Social Security doesn't make that promise, and the increase is only tied to inflation. Second, social security was supposed to set up a trust to hold/invest money put into it. Unfortunately, politicians can't think long term when they have people asking for handouts now, so they regularly raid social security. Third, a ponzi scheme only works if more and more people come into the scheme because you need additional people to pay out the return. Social Security doesn't really need that since the number of people retiring is usually less than the number of people working at a given time. It does get into trouble when the workforce decreases though.",
"No. Social Security has never been something you invest into. It has never been a savings account. It has always been a system where those currently paying the tax are supporting those currently drawing on the program."
],
"score": [
12,
9
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5wafiw | What does adrenaline do with your brain that you feel sharpend and stronger? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8mwu0",
"de8vu3r"
],
"text": [
"When your body releases adrenaline it's because your brain has sent out an alert that you need to prepare to either stay and fight or run to safety (flight). You brain prepares your body by increasing your heart rate, so that your core organs are functioning at their highest level of performance. Your brain will also increase your vision to be focused on what is straight ahead of you (tunnel vision). Also, your brain increases your respirations to increase oxygen flow to your brain and organs. It's interesting to note that when this fight or flight trigger is misfired from your brain, when there is no need to fight or flee, it is was millions experience as a panic attack. The physical symptoms you experience during a panic attack are due to the adrenaline released by your brain to prepare for fight or flight. Beta blockers have been found to assist in decreasing the amount and frequency of adrenaline in people who suffer from panic attacks. Oh and the sharper vision is to assist you in your escape. For those in the panic attack category, they report feeling as though they have tunnel vision or that things appear dreamlike or surreal. Hope that helps to answer your question.",
"Why do people that suffer panic attacks feel like they cannot breathe even though one of the functions of an adrenaline rush is to increase oxygen intake?"
],
"score": [
75,
12
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5wal4u | How do sperm counts work - how does one actually count sperm cells within a specimen of ejaculate? | I am assuming it's not the job of someone to sit there and count each individual sperm cell. So how does it work? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8kie0"
],
"text": [
"They take s smaller sample of the sperm sample, and examine it under a microscope, and literally count the number of live, normal sperm. Then they use the density of sperm in the sub sample to extrapolate the total sperm count."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5wan4h | Why does RCS need carrier support? | If RCS transmits over WiFi or cellular data, why is Google pushing so hard for carrier support, and why is it currently only available on carriers that support it? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8ssx6"
],
"text": [
"Because it's goes thru the carrier's network. iMessage uses Apple's servers, so the carrier is not involved. Android is a total mess in terms of everyone having the same experience, most people are not on the latest operating system and updates are depended t on your phone and carrier. By making it implemented on the carrier level, the operating system version users are on doesn't matter much. For instance, iOS 10 introduced a lot of iMessage additions, but the added features aren't appreciated on devices that aren't on iOS 10 and also those that don't have 3D Touch/the new vibration motor."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5wan5y | - Why can we feel our pulse through sensitive, or hurt areas on our body? | E.g. I just burned the roof of my mouth and can feel my heartbeat when I put my tongue to it. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8len7"
],
"text": [
"When you injure part of your body, it response by flooding the area with cells and compounds that are supposed to start the healing process. These are carried in fluid (like blood plasma), so the injured area swells up a bit with the extra fluid. This swelling makes changes to the pressure in the area (like the pulsing of your blood) easier to sense. There's also the fact that even though the effect of your pulse is actually experienced everywhere in your body, we only usually feel it in certain areas. When you injure something, you're feeling the pulse in an unusual area, so you notice it more."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5wansb | How do medications create side effects such as dry mouth? | I am currently on a muscle relaxer, cyclobenzaprine, for spasming trapezoids. I get really dry mouth after taking it. How does something that works on muscles affect the function salivatory glands? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8lhf9"
],
"text": [
"What causes skeletal muscle to contract is when a little neurotransmitter (a chemical messenger from your brain) called Acetylcholine binds to its specific receptor on skeletal muscle. However, acetylcholine is used for more than muscle contraction, it is also used for the parasympathetic nervous system as stated below. When Acetylcholine binds to parasympathetic receptors, it causes effects that allows your body to \"rest and digest\", such as salivation, digestion, urination, etc. The muscle relaxers you are taking probably block acetylcholine release higher up in the chain of command, meaning they affect more than just skeletal muscle. Some muscle relaxers can act right at the skeletal muscle and prevent the Acetylcholine from binding to the receptor on that muscle. Others are less localized (like preventing the release of Ach from your neurons) which will affect other body systems as well."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5wao2m | How has the Student Loan bubble not popped? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8l684",
"de8mdbg",
"de8v3v1",
"de8zyck",
"de8vmo8",
"de909lb",
"de8tilk",
"de8w4kj",
"de8uo0d",
"de8xq5w",
"de90gng",
"de94eqj",
"de8wjuy",
"de8vo7s",
"de8ya5s",
"de8uxek",
"de90ysy",
"de8wxxx",
"de8x7l4",
"de8z48d",
"de91mys",
"de8woy7",
"de8yygn",
"de8yv3p",
"de949xf",
"de8x6qj",
"de8vvn9",
"de8zstb",
"de94mfs",
"de8yxwd",
"de95vsq",
"de96wmu",
"de97p7u",
"de8ylnz",
"de95fmr",
"de904dn",
"de8whjo",
"de8zmzx",
"de90zkf",
"de94ug2",
"de992kz",
"de90yt2"
],
"text": [
"I feel dumb and unoriginal: URL_0 It seems because the government covers it there will not be a pop just a slow in GDP.",
"A debt bubble is a bubble because it can pop, entirely because people default on the loans. The overwhelming majority of student loans can't be defaulted on without an *immense* amount of difficulty that the average person can't do. Thus, without the ability to discharge the loans via bankruptcy, the bubble can't pop. In addition, student loan debt isn't *remotely* an issue of the same significance as the housing crisis. Student loan debt is only around the $30k mark per person for all debt holders^1 (which quite honestly isn't *that* much in comparison to the careers you open up to yourself). But that's also not a good look at the overall picture; once you exclude debt that people take on for professional degrees in Law or Medicine, or the debt taken on for scam degrees from most for-profit institutions, student loan debt falls to only around $20k per student debt holder. Furthermore, even if student loan debt *could* burst as a bubble, it's a much smaller amount of money than what was on the chopping block during the housing crisis, such that the financial institutions could probably eat the loss and survive without significant aid from the government. The horror stories you hear are a problem, but they're not remotely some all-encompassing thing. Taking on $20-30k in debt for an engineering degree isn't a problem. Taking $100k in debt for a history degree from some liberal arts college, or $150k in debt for an \"IT\" degree from a for-profit institution that is professionally worthless *is* a problem. ^1 Bear in mind that we're already excluding those who don't hold debt for their degrees.",
"It may have not popped because there may not be a bubble there at all. A bubble, by definition, happens when some good/service sees unsubstantiated and artificial increases in price, usually due to manipulation by financial markets. But the earnings premium for a college degree is higher than it has ever been before, and it continues to increase. [source]( URL_1 ). Whereas in 1980 college graduates only make 40% more than non-grads, today the number is around 85%. [source]( URL_0 ) The ROI for college is higher than the stock market, bonds, real estate, and private equity. Unlike the housing bubble, a college degree’s increase in value over the years is very real and substantiated by data. Even if there is a bubble, there are key differences between the housing crash and student loans. With a house, there’s an actual tangible asset that can reduce in market price very quickly when there’s an abrupt selling of houses. With higher education, there is nothing to be resold after it was bought. While it might be sort of similar if many people defaulted on their loans at the same time and tax payers had to bail them out, this is not what is occurring. Even if it did, people would still have their degrees (unlike defaulting on a mortgage where your house gets taken). In fact, default rates have declined since the late 80s/early 90s. [source]( URL_2 ). Most people end up paying their loans, many times over throughout their lives, and benefit greatly from having a degree. And even if they didn’t, there still is very much “consumption” value in college, in the form of intellectual growth, social experience, etc. This would be impossible to repossess as well. Don't get me wrong, there needs to be MUCH reform. I think guaranteed federal loans are bad policy. But I don't expect to see a massive financial fallout from student loans. TL; DR... Your original post assumes a bubble exists. It might not, and even if it did, there are key differences between student loans and housing.",
"The most profound experience of my undergrad degree was hearing a Marxist economist (someone who studies Marxian theory, not a crazy person) postulate that by creating the notion that one needs a degree to work, corporations have essentially indentured the middle class to a life of working really hard and sometimes in morally objectionable jobs in order to not get crushed under their own debt. With no time for anything else, these people are politically pacified. He liked it to a trip to the new world. They'll pay for the trip but you'll spend the rest of your life paying them back.",
"Mainly because student loans stick with you forever, you can't use bankruptcy to get out of them. They will always be there (unless you can convince the government to write you off, which is rare).",
"This is going to get lost in the comments but I'd also argue that the general lack of academic standards for public high schools as well as state testing has also helped build the bubble. Speaking as a teacher, there are too many high school students who are going to colleges where they are going to either academically or financially struggle at.",
"Because you cannot really default on student loans. If you do not pay them the government will garnish your wages and seize some of your investments.",
"I don't think many students are defaulting on loans. Also, banks are profiting bigly off of them so, unlike bad mortgages, money isn't being lost, it's just not being made. Also, the government does a good job subsidizing loans.",
"Because it is not a bubble. A bubble is when people start buying something, that once had intrinsic value, just for the sake of re-selling. You cant resell a education.",
"Some of the answers in here are close to correct, but then they veer wildly away from hitting the nail on the head, downplaying the problem and blaming people who get a liberal arts degree for $150k a year. Lookee here, I've taught in higher ed. for close to a decade, in the public sector. The problem is that young people (re: you, probably) can't get a fucking business degree from a state college without coming out with CLOSE TO A HUNDRED FUCKING THOUSAND DOLLARS IN DEBT. And then when they can't get a job decent enough, or a job at all, that becomes a huge fucking problem. Now, folks are right, the government has made it so that the bubble can't pop in the same way as housing loans. You can't discharge your student loan debts in bankruptcy. What you're missing is the context, the ability to understand how fucked up and dangerous and stupid that is. Let that fucking sink in for a second. You can *never, ever* get rid of this debt. Ever. The only other kind of debt that is like that is fucking child support and court debt, if I'm not mistaken. So just because the bubble can't pop in the way we're used to doesn't mean there isn't going to be fallout. Massive, society-shattering fallout. We're going to see more poverty and all the ills that come with it. It's happening all around you as we speak, but we don't often hear about it. You know why? Because a bunch of rich motherfuckers haven't lost any money over it yet. One that happens, then it'll be on the news.",
"I think a lot of comments are missing a large point in this discussion. Just because you can't default on your student loan, doesn't mean that you can pay it. What this means for a lot of people is that the loan will follow them forever, assuming that for the first several years after assuming the debt, you can't get a job that pays you enough to live on and pay your loan and you get on hardship extensions which just amortize the interest back into the loan. Then, assuming that you finally make enough money to start paying, you are looking at double the original payments and you decide to just skip out on paying it always. You might wind up getting garnished, but you'll never even pay it down, much less pay it off. This is already happening and will happen more and more as time goes by, especially considering the total dollar values of the student loan market, upwards of 1 trillion in 2013, which is around 10% of total consumer debt. Even though it won't play out like a traditional bubble, if the entire consumer debt market goes south, it won't get paid, just like most of that debt.",
"You know, if it could pop, and the lender (fed gov't) stopped giving loans to every. single. person. regardless of their major or future ability to pay it back, we might actually get some sanity in the price of college again.",
"The bubble popping for education will be 4 year colleges closing, programs being cut and tuition hikes.",
"Why are there no answers that speak about the diference between private and federal loans? Private loans are able to be included in backruptcy. Federal loans do not seem to be. URL_0",
"Because it is extremely difficult to actually default on them. You can't include them in a bankruptcy, but they will work with borrowers on repayment plans. The only person that I know to get out of paying their student loans was my brother. He did so by dying. Lol. ----He had terminal cancer, he didn't die in an effort to get out of his loans. :P",
"I know a lot of young people who went to what I would have considered (at 37yo) to be subpar colleges, because they really wanted to get a degree or certifications without taking on a lot of debt. Mostly IT related education. Those \"subpar\" colleges have gotten to be quite nice and respectful.",
"First thing to consider is that a student loan is not a market-based, collateralized debt like a house. The issue with the housing bubble circa 2000-06 is that the values were theoretically rising faster than the interest on the loans, so it made sense for many people to buy homes that either they couldn't afford or were unnecessary. Many economists observed that a housing bubble was happening; however, the financial insitutions invested heavily against this notion in 2006-8 in the form of CDOs (basically conglomerations of mortgage backed securities). Imagine a scenario where you had people believing it was rational to obtain two or three college degrees, because the person's earning potential was rising faster than the cost of tuition. This is kind of unrealistic in education, but in the real estate industry, people were buying up four or five homes at a time as investments. Also, two things make the student loan crisis not prone to a bubble scenario. One, education is a necessary good for the vast majority of people so it's value is not likelying to drop dramatically. Two, as many people have stated, the loan is not easily dischargeable like a house is during the foreclosure process. One potential fallout of the student loan crisis is that we may have future generations devaluing higher education, which may or may not be a good thing depending on whether there are adequate replacements and whether this hinders job growth. In brief, the student loan crisis will likely not result in a financial crisis comparable to 07-08 because a student loan is not collateralized, but the student loan crisis has a potential to foster a new idiocracy.",
"Extrapolative expectations and leverage. When someone buys a house or stock in a company they might do so because they think it will go up in value. Sometimes when prices are rising fast people expect prices to keep going up and will decide to buy because they think prices will go up like they have in the past. If enough people believe this, prices can rise even though nothing is actually making the house (asset) more valuable. You can make a lot more money if you use other people's money to buy houses. You do need to pay them back, but if you buy something that you think will go up in value you can always sell it, make a little money, and pay back who you borrowed from. The more you can do this the more money you can make. You could buy 2 or 3 houses or a really expensive one and earn a lot of money. Student loans are different. There is nothing valuable that you can give to someone else (at least not quickly). When people buy education there is a lot they can't be sure of, they hope that what they gain will allow them to earn enough money to pay for what they borrowed. There is no easy way to know the value of what you bought and how it works with your personality and abilities. Unlike houses or other assets, people will often blame themselves if college doesn't work out like they expected. As others have said, you can't walk away from your loans (in this case) and you can't sell your degree for a discount so people will carry the debt with them like a curse until they die or actually succeed at paying it off.",
"Cause the govt debt can't be offloaded. And the govt aid is continuing to rise to meet inflation. Take federal loans out of the mix and colleges will collapse at current prices.",
"Financial engineering is the short answer. This is pretty much what always happens with bubbles: 1) The financial sector abuses trust, and forces government intervention to prevent exploitation 2) The government fucks it up even worse than when it started, while the financial sector exploits loopholes to continue raking in their profits while the average American gets bent over the table and raped. 3) The financial sector throws its hands in the air, going \"Whoa whoa! This is not our fault; this is government meddling's fault!\" (which, sadly, is half-true) 4) The bubble expands and expands, due to governmental negligence + an unwillingness to change and adjust by the financial sector; millions of people's fiscal well-being is compromised in the interim. 5) Eventually, the government decides to step in again, thus counter-acting all efforts by the financial sector to engineer self-serving solutions that prolonged the inevitable. 6) The bubble bursts; everyone, except those who were involved and caused it to begin with, gets fucked; cue economic recession. Why hasn't it happened yet? The government still doesn't think it's a problem that it needs to intervene on. Apparently, 25% default rates aren't a problem... though it's more likely that, due to the blatant fraudulent reporting under the Obama administration (claiming a 4-7% range of default) the current administration hasn't realized what a substantial (and growing) problem it is yet. They will though, but by the time they do, the damage will have already been done. Welcome to endless, cyclical loop of America's financial sector + government incompetence.",
"What I want to know is why students kept on taking on these ridiculous loans long after it stopped making sense logically.",
"Existing student loans aren't going anywhere. But the student-loan *business* is going to be in trouble as colleges & universities keep making themselves less relevant and more expensive, pricing more and more people out of the market.",
"All credit hours shouldnt cost the same and all loans should be tied to a degree so the interest rate can be priced according to risk. It is not about what you want to do in life. It is about what the world needs you to do and how much the qualifications cost.",
"While I'm not an economist, my guess would be it has to do with government intervention. The government wants everyone to have the chance to go to college, and so offers low cost loans and grants to people who otherwise couldn't afford college. It's well meaning enough, but it now means that everyone has a degree and you now have to get one for almost any job you want to do, even if you never use your degree. Because college is now basically a necessity, and the government is helping people pay, colleges can charge whatever they damn well please. interestingly enough, they say colleges have 3-4 more administrative personell making 6 figures than they did in the 60's, for the same given number of students. Professors are feeling the crunch too, as colleges are hiring less and less full time professors, and getting more adjuncts that get paid, in some cases, less than someone with a high school diploma. In my opinion, I think the government should threaten colleges to withhold funding if certain price criteria aren't met, otherwise this bubble's going to keep growing. It's quite similar to the housing crash, where there were department of justice investigations into banks for not lending to risky borrowers, which eventually caused the financial crash",
"They are 1) backed by the federal government and 2) almost impossible to discharge in bankruptcy.",
"Because unlike most other debt, bankruptcy will not forgive you from student loans. Very few people get out of paying.",
"I mean the housing bubble had a lot of factors. Look into Mortgage Backed Securities... This was one of the key things that caused the collapse and why so many lost money.",
"Because you cannot default on student loans. Since you don't need collateral to take one out.",
"and how hasnt the housing bubble not popped? prices are back up to insanity once again.",
"Because the people at the top are still profiting profusely and paying senators to keep it going",
"Because bankruptcy doesn't clear student debt like it does other kinds of debt. It's a burst proof bubble.",
"Cant claim bankruptcy based on student loans. No way to pop the bubble if the debt is eternal.",
"There's not such thing as a student loan default. They are non-discharged in bankruptcy. The bubble is structurally enforced by the government.",
"they aren't dischargeable in bankruptcy, i think that's the only reason why it hasn't popped. If people were actually allowed to default on student loans, the whole thing would collapse.",
"People should just learn a trade. Avoid massive debt and find a job that's hiring. World needs plenty of plumbers, HVAC, and electricians. Make as much money as you can before automation completely takes over.",
"1. The government controls the loans and unlike a bank their loans are more secure. 2. They won't let you default, which is how most other bubbles pop. Bankruptcy or not you're gonna pay back that money.",
"Housing prices collapsed due to oversupply, also I imagine their debt being securitized then hedged against allowed them to penetrate more avenues of finance. Consumer credit has a default and partial forgiveness rate out the wazoo but they'll probably never collapse.",
"Remember when you needed to take a certain number of credits per semester to stay on your parents insurance? The gov't was essentially cornering us all into going into more debt with student loans. In retrospect, just paying for the insurance would have been cheaper.",
"It's really hard for non-collateralized debt bubble to burst. Once it's (student loan debt) tied to you the only way out of it personally is to die. It can't be written off last I knew and you can't include it in a bankruptcy I thought. Correct me if I am wrong",
"The shortest version possible... there were financial instruments involved in the pre-2008 housing market that accelerated the failures to an almost extreme state as defaults on the underlying loans increased. Student loans, on the other hand, have dozens of tools that are implemented to stave off disasters if defaults increase. The housing market didn't crash into a fiery heap just because prices went through the roof (though that bubble certainly helped).",
"A lot of people have individually said correct things, but most answers have been too complicated. Simply: 1) The *vast* majority loans are guaranteed by the government, so there is little unsecured debt to default. 2) You can't discharge student debt in bankruptcy. All you really need are these two mitigate any change of a bubble. Additionally, the average debt to income ratio for college graduates is stupidly low, $30k to $50k, if you want to get into the technical details.",
"First thing to consider is that a student loan is not a market-based, collateralized debt like a house. The issue with the housing bubble circa 2000-06 is that the values were theoretically rising faster than the interest on the loans, so it made sense for many people to buy homes that either they couldn't afford or were unnecessary. Many economists observed that a housing bubble was happening; however, the financial insitutions invested heavily against this notion in 2006-8 in the form of CDOs (basically conglomerations of mortgage backed securities). Imagine a scenario where you had people believing it was rational to obtain two or three college degrees, because the person's earning potential was rising faster than the cost of tuition. This is kind of unrealistic in education, but in the real estate industry, people were buying up four or five homes at a time as investments. Also, two things make the student loan crisis not prone to a bubble scenario. One, education is a necessary good for the vast majority of people so it's value is not likelying to drop dramatically. Two, as many people have stated, the loan is not easily dischargeable like a house is during the foreclosure process. One potential fallout of the student loan crisis is that we may have future generations devaluing higher education, which may or may not be a good thing depending on whether there are adequate replacements and whether this hinders job growth. In brief, the student loan crisis will likely not result in a financial crisis comparable to 07-08 because a student loan is not collateralized, but the student loan crisis has a potential to foster a new idiocracy."
],
"score": [
2266,
362,
299,
150,
147,
74,
39,
37,
30,
22,
14,
12,
9,
9,
9,
8,
8,
8,
6,
6,
5,
5,
5,
5,
4,
4,
4,
3,
3,
3,
3,
3,
3,
3,
3,
3,
3,
3,
3,
3,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/finance/comments/3y39x2/just_saw_the_big_short_what_if_someone_shorted/"
],
[],
[
"https://www.bls.gov/cps/earnings.htm#education",
"http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/job-skill-trendsthe-college-wage-premium/27091",
"https://phys.org/news/2011-09-student-loan-default.html"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.tuition.io/blog/ultimate-insiders-guide-private-student-loans/can-private-student-loans-discharged-bankruptcy/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5wart3 | Why the international tickets fares at airlines' websites are usually displayed in a currency of a city of departure and not the currency of the country of the airline? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8lva2"
],
"text": [
"They're not. They're almost always displayed in *your* local currency. If you're in the US, airlines everywhere show prices in US dollars. Meanwhile, a person in China can buy flights on American Airlines in renminbi, and a French person can buy using euros."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5waumd | Why do decks have two joker cards even though they're usually removed whenever playing a game? And why two when everything other card has four types? | every not everything🤦🏼♂️ | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de9622h",
"de8mji8",
"de8phr8",
"de8z32t",
"de9acmk",
"de91j6f",
"de99u01",
"de939g1"
],
"text": [
"Remember that cards are printed in large sheets and then cut. If you want to make just 52 cards, your closest option to making them square is 4x13. With 54 cards, you can print a 6x9 sheet which has much more manageable dimensions. Many decks these days are printed on 7x8 sheets giving you 56 cards in the pack.",
"Jokers are used as wild cards in a huge number of games. URL_0 It was originally added for Euchre. It can also be used as replacement for a card that goes missing.",
"If nothing else, if you end up losing another card you can write on the joker and boom another 5 of diamonds",
"While most of the card games we play today dont require the jokers, most of the older games included them. Games nobody really plays anymore because we made better ones, which just so happen to require equal numbers of cards in a type. Like gin rummy",
"Literally every card game my family plays uses the jokers (usually as wild cards). And most the games we play are from 60+ years ago when my grandma was a kid. Im more amazed there are people who've never used jokers in a card game.",
"When we're on it. I sometimes have 2 jokers in a deck and sometimes 3. Why?",
"alot of Asian card games use the Joker. in some games variants, it's a value-topper or used as a wild. the chinese game \"Zheng shang you\" has complex variant rules on the jokers. the b & w joker is the \"small joker\" which can be beaten by the color joker which is the \"big joker\". the values of cards start with 3 as the smallest, ending in Q K A 2 sJ bJ. 2's smallJoker bigJoker are considered both single card values as well as wilds. 2's are a limited wild. It can only clone the value of another card in a hand. Jokers are less limited wilds, it can be any single card value but does not have a suit. the opening player puts down a set of card(s): either singles, doubles (two of same value), triples (3 of same value), fours \"bomb\" (4 of same value), a set of at least 3 cards in sequential value (without matching suits), a set of at least 3 cards in sequential value (with matching suits), a set of at least 3 pairs of cards in sequential value called a \"tractor\" or \"train\" (pair 3's, pair 4's, pair 5's). subsequent players have to match the type of set while being a higher value. there are some special type-jumping allowed. matching suits sequences trump non matching sequeneces as long as they're same number of cards. (3H 4H 5H trumps Qs Kd Ac. however 3H 4H 5H does not trump Jc Qs Kd Ac) the player that puts down a hand that no one else is willing to beat wins the trick. that player starts the next trick with any card he wants. the winner of the game is the player that puts down all his cards first.",
"I like to play a variant of Spades where you have the big joker as the highest spade, then the small joker as the second highest, then the 2 of spades as the third highest and Ace of spades as fourth, then it goes in order from there. We replace the 2 of diamonds and hearts with the joker. It's called Joker, Joker, Duce, Ace."
],
"score": [
286,
257,
90,
28,
19,
5,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joker_(playing_card)"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5waxhl | Why do americans use 'cups' for cooking instead of weight? | How were cups introduced and why? What's the benefit? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8my7d",
"de8t1j6",
"de8myb0",
"de8n3wy",
"de8sjgq",
"de8qkm0"
],
"text": [
"First off; you don't measure with weight either. You measure with *mass*. Less flippantly; it's much easier to measure a volume than it is to measure a mass/weight, particularly given that one absolutely requires a scale to do it accurately. In addition, since most ingredients for foods don't experience significant changes in density at standard conditions, measuring something by volume is just as good as measuring by mass/weight; a cup of flour measured out today is going to be the same amount of material as a cup of flour measured out a year ago.",
"Cups were introduced long before scales became cheap, fast, and convenient to use. What did unamericans use back then?",
"Because cups can be measured immediately by eye and are accurate enough for cooking and baking. Weighing everything takes more time, dirties more equipment, and takes up more space on the counter for benefits so minor as to not be worth it.",
"Cups were the first real measurement that was introduced into cookery. Before that, everything was a 'pinch' or a 'handful', which isn't really very useful. Americans tend to still use cups because it doesn't matter how many people you're cooking for or how much of the ingredients you have, the number of cups still apply. A cup isn't a specific amount, it represents a ratio with every other ingredient. For example, if a cake requires one cup of water and two cups of milk, it doesn't matter how much water you put in as long as you put in twice as much milk. It makes it much more convenient than weights if you know what you're doing, as converting weights from a recipe for three people to five people can be tricky. However, weights are precise, so if you're not familiar with cooking, you know exactly how much you need to use for a given number of people rather than having to guess a bit and ending up feeding seven people with a cake made for three.",
"Because we're stupid and want to be different. If you do anything in culinary you'll use the metric system because it's much much more accurate.",
"Cups are a measure of volume. Many metric recipes call for the ingredients in mL. It is typically easier to pull out a measuring cup and scoop out the right amount than trying to weigh it."
],
"score": [
6,
4,
4,
4,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5waza7 | Why does looking at a twisted wire or metal fence cable up close make my eyes freak out? | It's almost as if I lose focus of the wire and it looks closer than it really is. Why is this? It doesn't happen when looking at a pencil or other non-twisted cable. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8v3ke"
],
"text": [
"I'm having a tough time with the ELI5, so how about an ELI12? When your eyes focus, your brain is taking the same small area from the image from each eye and using it as a place to combine them into one image. When you look at a fence like that (or many other repeating patterns), your brain isn't exactly sure which of the small areas to match up. Instead of taking the same square of fence from each eye, it takes a different square (such as the one next to it) and then merges the image. Since this is the mechanism we use to determine depth, it can really be disorienting when things \"look\" to be at a different distance than we otherwise expect. As a side note, this is how we see those 3D pictures in the crazy pattern. That pattern tricks our brain into merging the pictures from each eye in a slightly different place, causing us to see an image with depth. For more info, you can read about [parallax]( URL_1 ), [depth perception]( URL_2 ) and those neat 3D images, [autostereograms]( URL_0 )."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereogram?wprov=sfla1",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax?wprov=sfla1",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_perception?wprov=sfla1"
]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5wb1c6 | Why is coffee at a nice restaurant so amazing and coffee at home garbage? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8ospl",
"de8obeg",
"de8tlys",
"de8qc07",
"de8obj3",
"de8svoa",
"de8nycu",
"de8tk5d",
"de8vo0v",
"de8x6zv",
"de8tna9"
],
"text": [
"I literally have the exact opposite problem, and I'm not even a huge snob. Peet's Coffee + French Press = heaven. All the restaurants I go to the coffee tastes burnt, or not brewed long enough",
"As any barista will explain coffee is a delicate balance of quality beans, quality equipment and a stedy hand. Good beans means that they are fresh, roasted to the correct point in a uniform manner and ground in a quality grinder creating a uniform powder at the correct calibre for the application (the faster the extraction method, the finer the coffee more or less) Good equipment means having a good burr grinder thats mantained clean and produces a consistant grind, and a coffee machine that mantains consistant pressure and temperature during extraction. And a Stedy hand to know how to correctly tamper the coffee, how to wet it a bit before hand, how to time the extraction correctly and how to judge the extraction depending on flow and color. TL;DR making good coffee requires good equipment, skill and decent coffee beans.",
"Basically it tastes bad because you're doing it wrong. The beans you use don't matter if you're making coffee wrong. Don't use a cheap drip machine, use a French press. They're less expensive and make a better cup of coffee. Or buy an expensive coffee machine. Don't burn it. Look up the proper water temperatures and stepping times. Burning coffee (and tea) makes it bitter and gross. Don't use preground coffee, and make sure it's at the correct size. Fine grounds are for drip, coarse for the French press.",
"The trend in cafes nowadays is to base all coffees on the espresso, and to make a good espresso requires a good espresso machine. Unless you spent a lot of money on yours, you probably don't have one. Pod coffee machines won't really come close. And if you're using a filter or a cafetiere well that's a different way to make a coffee which gives a different flavour even using the same beans.",
"Use a french press. You can't go wrong with coffee made with a french press even if you were Oscar the grouch making it in a garbage can.",
"If you have a drip machine, put a bit of salt on your grounds before brewing. It kills the bitterness and prints some of the flavors to the front. There's no substitute for doing it the right way but this will accomplish similar results for a lower initial investment.",
"Its a phsycological fact that you tend to appreciate flavors alot more when you didnt have to make it. The same argument can be made with food; or buying a cake vs making one. That, and take into consideration atmosphere. At home you are bogged down by what you have to do that day, responsibilities and such. But at a restaurant all those thoughts seem to dissipate into background noise.",
"From my time in specialty coffee, it takes some experimenting with grind size/brew time/bean-water ratio before you hit that range of flavor you want. The biggest advice on making a perfect cup at home is to play to your water: Every time I move to a new city/state, the change in water alone is enough to have to change up my brewing methods. Going from well-filtered water at a shop to the higher solute content of city tap water required me to adjust my grind/temp/time accordingly to achieve similar taste profiles from the same coffee at home. An adjustable burr grinder and fresh(~ < 30 days old, imo) is almost completely necessary for great coffee.",
"May I recommend trying to cold brew your coffee? I found cold brewing to be common at coffee places and restaurants and reduces a lot of bitter flavor from coffee. This could explain the better taste. One ounce ground coffee to two cups water, let then sit in the fridge for 24 hours. This makes the cold brew concentrate. Pour concentrate into French press to filter and remove grounds (cheese cloth also works). Depending on your tastes, fill your cup 1/4 to 1/2 way with concentrate, the rest with water (and ice if you prefer cold coffee). Best way I've ever found to make non bitter coffee like you'd get at a nice place.",
"It could be in your head. A study was done with some of the top wine experts in the world. They were given a blind taste test of two bottles of wine. One was a $500/bottle famous brand and the other was a $10/bottle mass produced verity. They all said the expensive bottle was the much better tasting wine. The catch was that the expensive bottle was filled with the $10 wine. The price and reputation of the labeling made the best trained tasters of whine in the world prefer one glass of the same wine over another. Perhaps you only think there is a huge difference in your coffee and the stuff you are paying through the nose for?",
"Brewing coffee properly combined many factors. Aevum1 did a great job at explaining some of them, it's worth looking into options like french presses, or my personal favorite, the aeropress, and then studying brewing techniques online if you want to make better coffee."
],
"score": [
163,
118,
17,
13,
8,
7,
5,
5,
4,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5wb5d3 | When did supporting a US political party become like supporting a "sports team" | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8t43c",
"de8pbqu",
"de8qhmq",
"de8pnyk",
"de8tx9v",
"de8tzbf",
"de8tpqh",
"de8t66y",
"de8tkdb"
],
"text": [
"This is hilarious because I've been thinking this for years. People don't want the country to get better... They want their side to win.",
"When politicians lost the motivation to cut deals with each other. In the name of \"ending corruption\" rules were changed whereby moderates no longer sold support for their local desires to both sides. As a result, nobody can say \"yes, I made a deal with the other side but I got the money for this new bridge out of the deal\". Now everyone's an idealistic purist, on the red or blue side, just like football teams.",
"It goes up and down. When a specific issue dominates, it will divide the voters into groups depending on how they feel about that issue. The clearest example is slavery. When there isn't such an issue, voters will divide based on their choice of issue, and will often absorb opinions on other issues from those who are on their \"team\". Also, there are an increasing number of professional manipulators now and more powerful technologies for them to use, and they feel they have something to gain from attracting voters to their side.",
"I would say the sports team mentality started in the late 1820s with the birth of the second party system, the first one in which all the common people all had a party affiliation.",
"The recent divisiveness started with the rise in popularity of Rush Limbaugh in the Bill Clinton era. He successfully made the word \"liberal\" a pejorative term. At the same time, Republicans seeking revenge for the Watergate investigation went looking, no stone unturned, for some sort of \"scandal.\" The internet started to rise, giving people access to news from anywhere, instead of whatever newspaper was local. Respected news sources (network TV, major newspapers) were diluted by cable networks, including the hyper-partisan Fox News. Honestly, most of the news outlets were not liberal mouthpieces, but Limbaugh and Fox were able to convince a large chunk of the country that the major news outlets were not to be trusted. Then, TV networks, with an eye on the bottom line, restructured their \"news\" divisions and put them under the \"entertainment\" division. Especially the morning shows had far less news and far more fluff pieces. So you had groups of people able to tailor their news to what was comfortable, and reinforce their attitudes without being exposed to opposing viewpoints. Or, if they were, their news of choice was able to counter the stories. Meanwhile, the political parties, using polling data, drew lines hoping to attract groups of voters. Party bosses got their representatives and senators to toe the party line, by rewarding the \"team players\" and punishing those that voted independently. The parties played into an \"us vs. them\" mentality. Throw in the notion that the most extreme voters are the ones motivated to vote in the primaries instead of moderate people with less interest...the most extreme/divisive candidates are the ones that make it to the general election, meaning one of the two will make it to office. Then throw in PACs and Super PACs with lots of money to advertise and rally the \"issue\" voters and negative campaign ads to further divide the voters into \"winners\" and \"losers.\" And we all want to be on the winning team, right?",
"I think ever since the Twilight series America has felt obligated to choose a side and be very extreme about it.",
"Short Answer, always because that's how human's work. History likes to colorize things, just be glad we aren't openly killing one another over this shit now.",
"In the 70's backlash, with the [Culture Wars ]( URL_0 )",
"Ever since supporting your sports team became a religion, and having a religious belief dictated your political leanings. We've come full circle"
],
"score": [
25,
16,
14,
12,
8,
4,
4,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://newrepublic.com/article/121627/war-soul-america-history-culture-wars-review"
],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5wb6jp | why does America have so many standardized tests? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8tvf5"
],
"text": [
"Standardization in general is usually a result of a growing population. Basically, when you're dealing with a smaller set of people, you have a better chance of understanding the differences of each person and providing solutions to accommodate such things. As the pool of people you need to account for grows, you're less likely going to be able to provide such accommodations (usually due to budget/time constraints). Standardization attempts to resolve this by trying to account for the most general cases and providing solutions to those cases. That way we only have to make sure everybody is on relatively the same page, and then follow a predefined plan of execution. In the case of standardized testing, there are a number of factors that combined to put us in the situation we are today (for better or worse). Essentially, employers (as well as other entities such as colleges) need to know that a \"High School Graduate\" from a small school in Missouri has an equivalent school experience as someone from a large city in New York. Standardization of schooling across the country, and specifically in testing, makes this possible. The iconic example, of course, is the SAT. Although it's accuracy is up for debate, the point of the SAT is to provide a number per person which allows individuals to be compared and ranked based on their results. So if you are from Japan and I'm from New York and we're both applying to college in California, the people in charge of applications there can immediately determine which one of us is a stronger applicant, and by how much, just by comparing our SAT scores. We might not even speak the same language, but the process of standardization eliminates such factors. As a side note: standardization, and especially standardized testing, isn't just a feature of American cultures. Many countries with large populations and modern education systems use standardized testing in some form, and usually rather frequently (again, I point to college admissions as being prime examples). There has been a lot of recent controversy in relying on such tests (IQ tests, for example, are often seen as \"inaccurate\" in modern times), but there really isn't a better way of doing things at this point. Living in such large (and sometimes global) civilizations force us to have to be able to communicate with one another. Standardization is one way of doing this. But perhaps as technology advances and better insights into testing and ranking come to light, our current testing systems will be seen as inaccurate and archaic themselves. Edit: This is more of a gloss-over than than an actual answer. Someone needs to chime-in with the actual history of US standardized testing, which is pretty interesting in itself."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5wb8pw | How does vector and matrix operations differs in CPU vs GPU? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de9gi3i"
],
"text": [
"Most modern CPUs have vector units, so they do not differ from GPUs in any meaningful way. Intel's x86 family of microprocessors initially supported IEEE scalar floating point arithmetic with the x87 family of coprocessors. This architecture was integrated into the CPU starting with the 80486, providing a separate register stack of 8x64-bit (80-bit internal) registers usable only by the FPU. In 1997, Intel introduced the MMX instruction set. The MMX instruction set used the same register stack as the x87 FPU, but used the register stack for vector integer and vector logical operations. The base x86 instruction set supports only scalar integer and scalar vector operations on the CPU's general purpose registers. In 1999, Intel introduced the Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) instruction set. The SSE instruction set extended the register stack used by x87 and SSE to 128 bits and added even more vector integer and vector logical operations. In 2001, Intel introduced the SSE2 instruction set. SSE2 is intended to fully replace MMX and x87 (although x87 computes to a higher precision as it uses 80-bits rather than only 64). When AMD introduced the x86_64 microarchitecture, SSE2 was adopted as a standard component. Furthermore, the number of registers in the SSE stack was doubled from 8x 128-bit registers to 16x 128-bit registers. Subsequent instruction set extensions including SSE3, SSSE3, and SSE4.x were introduced over the years. In 2011, Intel introduced the Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) instruction set which greatly simplified vector instructions for reasons that aren't germane to this post. This instruction set expanded the vector registers from 128 bits to 256 bits. AVX extended vector integer and vector logical instructions to 256 bits. In 2013, Intel introduced the AVX2 instruction set which extends floating point instructions to 256 bits. A 512 bit version of AVX2 is available on Intel's Xeon Phi coprocessor. Intel's architecture uses the same hardware to execute scalar and vector floating point operations. That is, scalar floating point operations are performed on the vector FPU hardware. This is not true for scalar integer and scalar logical operations; there are multiple scalar integer ALUs per core in addition to vector integer ALUs and vector logical ALUs. The vector portion of Intel's CPUs is remarkably similar to that found in a GPU, with a few key differences. 1. The instructions driving the CPU's vector extensions are all proper x86 instructions and are executed on the CPU. No special setup, driver, or runtime is needed for a program to invoke them. However, the operating system does need to be aware of the instruction set to ensure that it will save the registers during context switches. 2. Memory is loaded into the vector registers in the same way that it is loaded into the general purpose registers; same for storing. 3. The CPU's vector extensions run at the CPU's clock speed and are a part of the CPU's pipeline. From an efficiency perspective, there is virtually no overhead involved in setting up vector arithmetic on Intel's CPUs. There is however overhead involved in setting up vector arithmetic on any GPU. However, GPUs have a massive number of vector units and for particularly large and parallelizable working sets the overhead will quickly be overcome by the sheer amount of throughput. For any non-parallelizable working set, the CPU will usually be the best option. For a small parallelizable working set, the CPU will usually be the best option. For a large parallelizable working set, the GPU will usually be the best option."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
|
5wba3a | How can "making the body more alkaline" be a good thing? | I've seen a few things about the idea you should make your body more alkaline (chicken is acidic etc.), it seems like bullshit, but just wondering if there is even the slightest real science behind this idea. Most foods seem to have a pH lower than 7 from what I've seen? edit: I know it should technically be flaired as chemistry, but I'm seeking more of a biological explanation. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8pzry",
"de8pu5m",
"de8q7qt",
"de8qf9q",
"de8qqsb"
],
"text": [
"Organic chemical reactions are in some cases pH dependent, pH is actually defined as the concentration of hydrogen ions in a solution, this is expressed as acid or alkaline 7 being neutral, lower then 7 is acid and higher is alkaline. now the body usualy operates at around 7.4, Slightly alkaline, and if it differs from that it could affect some body functions but it shouldnt differ too much unless you have some serious condition. As for miracle cures and treatments being pushed by womens magazines and fake doctors on TV... Ignore that bullshit and follow the advice of your GP.",
"It's not. This is quack medicine, the latest fiction being sold by people who don't understand what they're talking about, or who do understand but are being untruthful on purpose in order to sell you some nutritional thing they make money from.",
"> it seems like bullshit It is. Your body naturally regulates is pH levels, and different areas require different pH, usually withing a pretty narrow range. Trying to make your body more acidic or alkaline throws that whole delicate balance off.",
"It can't. Your body regulates your body's pH level very accurately already, and if you're slightly outside of normal values, you would quickly fall *very* ill. A bit more, and you'll die. If foods could make your body \"more alkaline\", the food would be considered highly toxic, and selling it as food would most likely land you a prison sentence.",
"Living organisms have something called Homeostasis, which means they can regulate their \"stats\". Your human body therefore possess the hability to change and adjust it's normal levels of pH according to their necessities. (example, your mouth should never be acidic, but your stomach cannot be alkalne if you want to process food, blood is almost 7, etc). Biochemically, your body creates substances called \"buffers\" which do not permit a drastical change in your pH levels (saliva, for example, allow your mouth to always be in the 6-8 pH, so, even when drinking pure lemon juice, which is pH 2, your mouth will never reach those values). So that, you cannot make your body more alkaline or acidic, your body (and all other living organisms) can regulate themselves."
],
"score": [
23,
12,
8,
4,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
5wbata | How did people make the "bootleg" NES/SNES/MD games back in the 90s? Like "Sonic" for the NES, or "Kart Fighter"? | Back in the 90s (and 80s too, probably) there were bootleg games for consoles like the NES/SNES/Megadrive(Genesis). Stuff like this: URL_0 That's a Game Grumps play of Kart Fighter, a bootleg for the NES. Some of these games are more recent, i.e. people made them post-2000 and they mainly existed to be played on emulators. I know a fair bit about how videogames are made, so those make a bit more sense to me. However, some of them existed back when those consoles were the latest thing (I remember playing them) - **but how did people make them, with the limited tools and knowledge available?** | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de9airu"
],
"text": [
"Unless development documentation had leaked to the public, pirates would have to reverse engineer their target platform. This process usually involved looking at how the game system behaved given an existing program (a legitimate game) but also could include decapsulating chips and looking at them with an electron microscope to figure out how the internal circuitry worked. After this, pirates could create their own toolkits for writing games. The lack of official documentation combined with the difficulty in completely reverse-engineering a game console is why many pirated games are rather unstable and crash-prone. Some pirate game manufacturers even went as far as to design their own expansion chips for the NES (check out iNES mapper 90 if you're interested)."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
]
| [
"url"
]
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.