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ipcvg7
|
why are certain drugs more addicting than others?
|
I know it has to do with the chemicals interaction in our brain, but I'm curious as to the specifics on why cocaine is more addictive than methamphetamine
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4j8q3j"
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"text": [
"Ranking which drugs are more addictive is actually a bit complicated. There are a lot of different things to think about. Here are a few important ones: Reinforcement: how likely someone is to use a substance again and again Dependence: how difficult is it to quit, and how much users feel that they need the substance Tolerance: how quickly do users feel that they need more of the substance to get the same effect, and how much is needed to satisfy cravings Withdrawal: how severe are the symptoms of withdrawal of someone stops using the substance You could make a case for which drug is more addictive based on any of these factors. For example, cocaine has very high reinforcement. It causes a very strong, very fast high. This high appears quickly, but it also wears off quickly with a crash. That crash feels much worse than the high, so users will often seek out more cocaine to reach that high again. With that said, compared to other drugs of abuse, cocaine has low dependence, low tolerance and only mild withdrawal symptoms. Meth would have a lot of similar properties to cocaine, though the high lasts much longer and is typically considered to be stronger (cause more chemical release in the brain at similar doses compared to cocaine). Meth also tends to cause more dependence than cocaine. Something like heroin, for example, would also cause a very fast high and is very reinforcing. Unlike cocaine, someone who uses heroin will be much more likely to develop both physical and psychological dependence to heroin. There is often much stronger craving and much more severe withdrawal symptoms with heroin compared to cocaine, so people who use heroin will often feel the need to reuse even if only to prevent a miserable withdrawal. As you mentioned, all of these properties will be different from drug to drug based on different effects on chemicals in the brain. Certain chemicals will be more prone to causing changes in the brain that lead to the development of dependence and tolerance. Beyond this, how quickly a drug kicks in (often related to things like the size of the drug molecule, how easily it can cross the blood brain barrier, and other properties of the drug itself) and how long a drug lasts can impact things like reinforcement and withdrawal symptoms."
],
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6
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|
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[
"url"
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ipd247
|
When your phone recommends "smart replies" based off of what you typed in a message, does that mean that Google (or whatever company) is reading all your messages and mails?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"g4j76at"
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"text": [
"No, it's an algorithm (a bit like autocomplete) that remembers which words you often use in succession recommends them to you. Tinfoilhat=ON this doesn't mean that Google or whoever *doesn't* read your messages",
"Yes, and no. Think about spell check. Does that mean that someone is reading what you type? The program you are using is aware of the words you are typing, but it is not gathering information from your document beyond trying to figure out if you mean to type \"read\" or \"reed.\" Auto replies work the same way, but are contextually influenced. If you're replying to someone's \"Thanks!\" it's not hard for the program to suggest that the most likely response starting with \"y\" is going to be \"you're welcome,\" instead of \"yellow submarine.\" Some programs can learn and build a suggestive vocabulary based on your personal word usage, but no one is reading what you are typing.",
"Yes. It probably doesn't mean Google/Apple is reading your messages in realtime on a central server - rather, the messaging app has a bit of logic where it reads the last message locally, and goes \"I was told by my programmer that the most likely response is one of these three, so I will offer them up\". It's all happening locally on your phone, so it's not really a huge privacy/security issue.",
"Nowadays they can read it on device. So the algorithm can read and come up with replies locally. Doesn’t need to send back to central server. It’s becoming more common too as the phones get more and more powerful. For example, with iPhones you’ll notice when you change devices the autocorrect on new phone doesn’t remember your old patterns. It takes some time to relearn them. That’s cuz apple does autocorrect is on device only. Even if you backup/restore files from old to new phone it won’t bring across your autocorrect patterns. It will have to relearn them. Some find it nice cuz of privacy, some find it annoying that it has to take time to relearn."
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3,
3
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
ipdh8t
|
How do credit cards work when they use the phone lines vs. someone using the embossing machine? When are things submitted?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4j9cbc"
],
"text": [
"The credit card systems is using the same procedures as before but we have just automated it. So instead of humans doing the work we now have automated machines who do the same thing. A credit card terminal does the same thing as when people call the bank to verify a transaction. When you swipe the card the terminal will read the numbers of the magnetic stripe. It then calls the bank and sends over the card information and the details of the transaction. The bank may then challenge for a pin code that have to be entered by the cardholder. When the bank is confident that the transaction is legit it will confirm this with the terminal and they both log the transaction as completed. The money is then transfered after having completed lots of other verifications offline, some of which require that the banks wait for more information so it can take up to two months for the money to finally arrive. If you are using a chip and pin the process is slightly different. The chip in the card is actually a small computer and it does not hand over the card information as easily. Instead the terminal will send the transaction to the card who might then ask for the pin. It then creates a digital signature of the transaction and the terminal will go on to send the signature and the transaction to the bank for verification and logging like in the example before."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
ipdquv
|
Why is it easier for me to curl my fingers from pinky to index rather than index to pinky?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4jaasq"
],
"text": [
"after trying for a couple minutes it sorted itself out."
],
"score": [
7
],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
ipduwx
|
Is there true randomness in the universe, or is it just a matter of being too complex to predict?
|
Simplest example would be coin toss: It isn't physically random, but appears so. Does this principle applies to every single aspect of the universe, or is there any exception?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4jbjdr"
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"text": [
"To the best of our current knowledge, the universe is very fundamentally truly random at the smallest levels. This is built into the interpretation of the wavefunction of quantum theory. The theory is incomplete so perhaps sometime in the future there might be some way to extend it and reinterpret it at even deeper levels. Perhaps we will never be able to eliminate fundamental randomness."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
] |
ipdycf
|
Where do plants get their biomass from?
|
I've been wondering this for a long time. We have a hedge which is pretty big. Once a year we cut it down and remove hundreds of kilograms of branches and leaves. Every few years we put some fertilizer into the earth, but everything else is just nature doing its thing. What I've been asking myself for a long time now is where all this material is coming from. The only thing we ever do is remove it, so how do trees amass all that stuff? The earth loses nutrients, that I know. But with a tiny bit of fertilization it looks about the same as it did twenty years ago, so it doesn't come from the ground. Where does it come from?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4jbhoh",
"g4jbmhn",
"g4jbxuv",
"g4jc0yc"
],
"text": [
"Plants convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar and oxygen. The starch and cellulose they are made of is long chains of sugar molecules. They need a small amount of other stuff and that is the nutrients from the soil or stuff dissolved in the water. Some plants can use nitrogen from the air too. So it carbon dioxide from the air and the water from the ground that is used to create their biomass.",
"Plants use sunlight to bind water and carbon dioxide from the air as complex sugars. These sugars, along with trace elements from the soil make up the plants' biomass. This is why trees are so good at binding carbon dioxide: a large portion of the mass of the trunk used to be free carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.",
"If we disregard water, which is their greatest constituent, most of their mass comes from the carbon they absorb from the air.",
"Water plus energy plus carbon dioxide = sugar. So they are converting air and water into the mass, they do need nitrates and magnesium to do this, but though plants are taking up these nutrients they also give them back when they die and decay or when they are eaten and pooped."
],
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13,
6,
5,
4
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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ipe9j8
|
Why do we try to reduce the swelling to an injury?
|
Why do people try to bring down the swelling to an injury? The body is bringing white blood cells to the injured area to heal it so why do we stop it?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4jd9j9"
],
"text": [
"Swelling causes the tissue to stretch which damages the tissue as blood fills the stretched tissue. Freezing the injury keeps the swelling down which reduces the healing time by weeks. White blood cells will get to the the tissue regardless of the swelling."
],
"score": [
16
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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ipe9ta
|
What exactly makes a hand non-dominant?
|
I am right handed and have been reading about using my non-dominant hand for tasks like writing. I am obviously struggling, but I am interested in what exactly contributes to one hand's dexterity and the other's clumsiness.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4jefc0",
"g4k0xox"
],
"text": [
"The dominant hand is generally the one that gets more use with everyday tasks, so it's going to be more adept than the non-dominant because you've practiced it more.",
"Our brains are split into two halves with each side controlling one half of the body. However, to have single being, not two in one body (look up split brain) one side has to be \"in charge\". This side of the brain tends to perform better and is favored. It also typically affects the whole body. You probably have a dominant foot and eye and both are probably the right one. It's not limited to humans as well, a lot of other animals have dominant sides as well."
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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ipeaag
|
How are business people who bankrupt multiple businesses still able to open businesses?
|
How do they keep getting loans for new businesses to run into the ground? Does it lower their personal credit score?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4ji7dt",
"g4jp4nl"
],
"text": [
"Many people don't understand that the US Bankruptcy Code is actually intended to serve as a positive and encouraging tool to save a struggling business. In the world of business, taking advantage of its provisions is not an embarrassment. Many Americans seem to think it is, but it is not. A person may never file personal bankruptcy, yet be associated with corporate bankruptcy multiple times. A corporation is a separate legal entity from a person, so a corporation going bankrupt does not automatically impact the personal assets, other than the value of their investment in the company's stock, or credit score of its owners or shareholders. The most important point: A chapter 11 bankruptcy is not the end of a business. It’s a strategy for eliminating or reducing debt, using the courts you work with lenders to show that your company, while in trouble now, still has profit potential in the future. Chapter 7 bankruptcy is different. In a chapter 7 bankruptcy the company's assets are sold to pay of creditors, and the business is closed. If there are not enough assets to pay the creditors, well... tough. However after closing a business, there is no law preventing a person from incorporating and starting a new business. And as long as more of your businesses make money than fail then you can keep going.",
"It is also country dependent. Country have different practices. For exemple, in Belgium, this is quite easier. When you create a business, you must have a capital (a minimum amount invested in the business). The absolute lowest is 1€ (it's mostly symbolic at that point) and the type of business you can chose depend on your capital. Whatever you put in the capital is considered as belonging to the business. Under Belgian law, you are NOT liable for the result of your company. Even if your company falls crashing and brings thousands of people with it, you are not responsible for it. The company is. As such, the company can be disbanded, the assets sold to pay debts, but you as an individual will never have to pay off of your own pocket. Similarly, if you do things correctly, you take the loan AS THE COMPANY not as the individual making the company. So when it comes crashing down, only the money belonging to the company is lost. If you fail to pay back despite bankruptcy, the bank made a loss. The ONLY case where you can be personally liable is in the case of \"bad management.\" For the first few years of your company's life, you have to give a detailed summary of what you did and spent money on. If the court judge that you managed poorly on purpose, or took unnecessary risks because you thought yourself safe even if it failed, you can be considered liable. But as long as you play fair and try seriously to make it work without unnecessary expenses, you're good. As a result, since the loan went under the company's name not yours, you don't lose much if it fails. Only the capital."
],
"score": [
23,
4
],
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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ipef2r
|
Why do factory lights make that distinct "bum" noise when you turn them on/off?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4je706"
],
"text": [
"What you're hearing is the ballast that's regulating the current going into the lamp. Electrical ballasts use a magnetic field to manage the current going into the lamp- as the current would otherwise increase until the lamp was destroyed or a circuit breaker tripped. A side effect of this is a buzzing sound that can occur from the interaction of the magnetic field and the ballast's ferrite core. It's known as magnetostriction and can be more pronounced as the ballast ages."
],
"score": [
6
],
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
ipeo93
|
How do wildfires affect the colour of the sky to the point of complete darkness at 3:00pm?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4jfi1q"
],
"text": [
"Smoke can actually block out the light coming from the sun due to its thickness. The reason the sky changes colors is because the light coming from the sun mixes with the particles from smoke, giving it an orangey look."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
ipeq2i
|
What's the difference between a first party, second party and third party game developer/publisher?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4jfj4w",
"g4ji5zm",
"g4jge2r"
],
"text": [
"First party is the same company that manufactures the videogame console, such as Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. Second party is a company that signed a contact with the console maker to develop games for that console, such as Game Freak (Pokemon) and Bungie (Halo). Third party is any other company which develops games for that console.",
"A first party game developer is the same company that manufactures the console. For instance, Mario Odyssey or Breath of the Wild for Nintendo. A second party game developer has a contract to explicitly make titles for that console. Think of it as a console maker contracting out their first-party game development. That company still gets to brand their games, and after their contract is up can ride on that reputation. A third party game developer is one with no official ties to any specific console. They can choose to develop for a single console or make a cross-platform game.",
"The term comes from contracts in general. A contract is between two parties. Usually the first party is the one who writes the first contract proposal and the second party is the one who signs it. A third party would be anyone who might be mentioned in the contract but not actually one of the signatories. The use of terms to describe the different parties instead of mentioning them by name is because a lot of contracts are first written as a template before anyone knows who the specific party is. It is then easier to just insert a line at the begining of the contact saying who is the first and second party of the contract as then you only have to ever change the first page of the template to reflect who the parties is. Quite ofte the third party is also unknown at the time the contract is signed so this is the most common term that might appear. In video game development the contact in question is usually between the developer and the publisher. The bigger of these parties is the ones who usually have the contract template as they have to sign contracts with lots of people. So publishers is usually the first party. The second party would then be the developer and any others who are mentioned in the contract is refered to as third party."
],
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7,
3,
3
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
ipet8w
|
why is it when you open the door (to your house or to your car) bugs immediately fly in?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4jkmt1",
"g4jh5b7"
],
"text": [
"There's plenty of bugs zipping around out in the world far from your car or house, you just wouldn't take note of them since they don't impact you in a noticeable way. Only the bugs that bug you are noticed, but the countless more bugs that never go near your car or house escape detection. Put another way, there's a minuscule amount of bugs that bother you (and other people) compared to the total number of bugs out in the world. That said, they go where food is and they use different signals to detect likely food - for certain bugs, CO2 levels or other molecules shed by animals (including humans) draw them since evolution has shaped them to associate such molecules with food (or some other thing that benefits their survival). Things associated with people, cars and houses (like CO2 and other molecules) draw the bugs near. When you open a door, either random movement or a stronger signal brings the insects inside. But they're not waiting for an opportunity or trying to irk you - they're just responding to chemical or visual or other signals.",
"I would think they’re attracted to light. Especially if it is night and you have a porch light on, there’s so many, if you’re not quick they’ll fly inside."
],
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9,
3
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
ipg6xu
|
why it is much more difficult to send a satellite to the sun than it is to send it outside the solar system.
|
A friend told me that with the current engineering we cannot send a satellite to the sun (just reaching it, not survival) because we would have to nullify the velocity of earth with respect to the sun. I'm not sure I understand and not sure if that is true.
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"g4jpwa4",
"g4kcjkg",
"g4joyh9",
"g4l52ok",
"g4jo3tx",
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"text": [
"Its easy to send something into orbit around the sun. Its hard to send something INTO the sun. This is because anything that is launched from the earth is already orbiting the sun. To send something into the sun it has to be accelerated in the opposite direction we're orbiting which is about 67000 miles per hour. That takes a lot of energy and fuel.",
"Imagine you're in a car travelling at 30mph. (Obviously you're in a kid's seat because you're 5.) You open the window and drop a ball. You might expect the ball to fall straight down. What will actually happen is that the ball will fall, but in an arc. This is because it's already going forwards at 30mph, and its momentum carries it forwards. To make it fall straight down, you'd actually need to throw it backwards at 30mph to cancel the speed of the car. Probes are the same. If you launch one from Earth, it'll want to orbit the Sun along with Earth. To make it head right for the Sun, we need to throw it 'backwards'. Now you might think we could just fire it at the Sun. But that's like throwing the ball down. It will keep going forward, but will bounce higher. Similarly, firing the probe at the Sun will still make it miss, but it'll end up in an even bigger orbit!",
"The Earth is moving at about 67,000 miles per hour. When you launch an object from Earth, it starts off with that same speed. That speed is why the planet, and any other object, stays in orbit. In order to get closer, you have to reduce the speed. To get to the sun, you have to reduce that speed to almost 0. The escape velocity from the sun at Earth's distance is 94,000 miles per hour. So to launch an object out of the solar system, you only need to change its speed by 27,000 miles per hour.",
"If you're still having trouble understanding it, this may help: [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )",
"Yes this is true. For any kind of higher orbit you need more speed and lesser orbits less speed. If you’re already going fast, you have to spend energy to slow down. URL_0",
"Pretend you’re in a moving car, and you throw a ball forward out of the car. The speed of your throw is added to the speed of the car and it moves forward until air resistance and gravity slow it. Now you throw an identical ball backward. The speed of your throw is subtracted from the speed of the car and it moves forward until air resistance and gravity slow it. The same thing happens when launching a vehicle (ball) from earth (car), except in space you can pretty much ignore resistance and gravity as we understand them on earth **and** speed moves you away from the sun while slowing down moves you toward it."
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHvR1fRTW8g"
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],
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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ipg6zt
|
- How does one company operate many companies under one name
|
How do holding companies operate multiple companies under it’s one company name and how does that work with taxes? do the companies file separately? Not really sure how this works when companies acquire other companies....
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4jnz9t"
],
"text": [
"Companies have many structural choices. You can be a big monolith like GM and use Chevrolet and Cadillac as names with no separate corporate structure. Or you can be a collective like each company has its own corporate staff and budget, connected only at the board of directors. Corporate taxes are never separated, as that's the structure that provides the company the most synergy."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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ipgqxo
|
What is the difference between microplastics and microfibers?
|
I just saw a post about jeans creating many microfibers, but I’ve only ever heard of microplastics before. What are they?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4js4f5",
"g4js5j9"
],
"text": [
"Micro in this context means just small. Microfibers are small pices of fibers as opposed to the big threads of fiber that most clothes are made from. When you use and wash clothes you regularly tear off tiny pices of fibers from the clothes. You often see this as dust or lint. Microplastic is a similar thing but instead of fibers it is plastic. When you wear plastic items you get tiny pices of plastic tearing off creating a fine dust of microplastic. These things are not mutually exclusive though. If you have clothes made of plastic fibers then as it wears down it will turn into microplasticfiber. However jeans is made of cotton fiber and will give off mostly microcottonfabric. The big controversy with microplastic is that it is very hard for bacteria and insects to break down plastic. And due to the small size of the microplastic it is invisible to the naked eye and very hard to notice. But it turns up almost everywhere we look. This is also the case for other microfibers as well but for example cotton is biodegradable and will get broken down by bacteria and dissapear after a while in nature. So the planet is not getting covered by a layer of cotton or other natural fibers.",
"Microfibers are very little plastic fibers so they are a type of microfiber, just shaped as a fiber. If your jeans are 100% cotton they won't shed plastic microfibers though. Same goes for all clothing. If they contain synthetic fibers they shed microplastic. Although clothes are well known for wearing down, do think that anything plastic is prone to the same, any wear on it is microplastic going wild. Tires for example are one of the biggest sources apparently"
],
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7,
3
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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ipgu98
|
why we're not allowed courtroom recordings or photographs and have to rely on stenographers and artists
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4jsy3w",
"g4jszzl",
"g4jt50d"
],
"text": [
"Judges, who make the decision in most cases, feel that adding video recordings and/or live coverage would turn the courtroom into a circus. When live video has happened, say in the O J Simpson case, it has led to a circus, so the judges have a point. In court, it's all about influencing the 12 people in the jury. You don't want lawyers presenting their case to the public, who might only see small bits of a large case, or juries feeling the requirement to reflect public opinion. That's just not how the jury system works.",
"It varies - different states have different laws. However, assume you're a witness in a trial, testifying about the brutal murder of your family. Or your rape. You're already a huge bundle of anxiety and nerves and an emotional mess - adding in the the knowledge that you're being recorded on video, or that a photographer is snapping pictures of you. How would that effect your testimony? Knowing that the video is public record and will be plastered on the nightly news or available forever on the internet. Most people get self-conscious about being recorded under normal circumstances.",
"Judicial proceedings have to be conducted impartially, hence why great pains are sometimes taken to isolate jury members from outside influences (sequestration in extreme cases, where jury members are put in a hotel cut off from access to the internet and media). Recordings and photographs could be used in an inflammatory manner by an impartial media outlet, which could bias the jury, and put pressure on participants who may not want their privacy exposed in front of the media. Finally, it's also a cultural thing. In most countries judicial proceedings are seen as hallowed, solemn, and deserving of reverence. The presence of media has long been considered an affront to that. In short, it's a good way to eliminate a potential source of bias or outside influence on the process, and to preserve the dignity of the judicisl process."
],
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33,
11,
5
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
iph2yj
|
why and how do oled screens burn ?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4jt5hw"
],
"text": [
"OLED pixels produce light. Over time, the heat that's produced leads to reduced brightness. The \"burn in\" effect was named way back in the phosphor CRT days, when a completely different process was in play."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
ipi3td
|
why does squinting help you see a little better when you don’t have your glasses on?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"text": [
"When someone has poor vision and sees things blurry it is because their eyes either do not bend the light enough or bend it too much. This produces a blurry image because the focal point is supposed to be on the retina but is instead ahead or behind it. When you squint you are actually doing two things. First you are causing your cornea to flex slightly which helps with the bending of light to a better focal point. Second you are creating a smaller aperture for light to pass through which creates less scattering and sharper edges. The down side to this is muscle strain (which is why we wear glasses cause you don't want to squint forever) and also a dimmer image because less light is passing through the aperture. Glasses/contacts compensate for the amount of light bending needed to make sure the focal point maintains on the retina. Btw, this is more of a lens physics question rather than biology but there's a lot of overlap there so...",
"This is actually a physics question as much as biology. It's a phenomenon called the \"pinhole effect\" where only having a small aperture for light to enter lowers the area that that light covers when hitting your retina. This gives the effect of sharpening the image, because image blurriness is a function of the area of light hitting your retina.",
"With a large lens opening, light can come from a single point on say a coke can and enter the camera in trillion different places / left / right / up /down and all in between. All those rays of light are coming from a single tiny place and striking the back of the eye in all the places possible. And you get a fuzzy image. Now shrink the size of the opening to a mere pinhole and you also shrink the available up/down/left /right space random images of that point on the can are coming into the eye's retina surface. This is the same as what happens when you use a camera lens and make the aperture smaller.",
"This is the exact same thing as the Aperture/F-stop on a 35 mm camera: Small opening, clearer focus and large if not infinite depth of field. Large opening creates difficult focus, and very narrow depth of field. It’s all about the circles of confusion, or Bokeh. Squinting makes your eyelid opening smaller than your iris opening, basically like stopping down on the camera: so the circles of light that pass through are smaller = better focus Think of it like the image on camera film or your eye retina is made up of tiny building blocks of focused-light image. The smaller the opening that the light goes through, such as tiny pupil or squinted eyes, has to make the potential area and individual building block of the image smaller, making higher resolution, like smaller pixels, or more pixels per inch: clearer image. Also like when making a pinhole camera out of a shoebox or oatmeal tube. The smaller the pinhole, the sharper the image. There’s not even any lens to focus. Changing only the opening size, changes the sharpness of the image. So again, squinting makes the opening smaller, that the light goes through to reach your eye, which makes the image sharper. [Circles of confusion]( URL_0 )",
"You are creating a smaller aperture, which improves focus (as in a camera, when you pick a smaller aperture). Try this: without glasses, look at something far away that is out of focus for you, no squinting. Now, make a tiny hole with your two thumbs and your two indices, but really a pinpoint hole. Use the point of your fingers and press hard. Look through this hole and -- magic -- whatever you see through the hole is in better focus!",
"Eye glasses are kind of like a funnel for light; they help it get to the right place for your eyes to make sense of them. Squinting doesn't replace that funnel, but it does reduce the amount of light going to the *wrong* place in your eyes, allowing the narrow slit of light that requires less funneling to be seen with fewer distracting signals.",
"It doesn't work if your eyes are beyond a certain point, it herlped abit when i was younger but now it makes no discernible difference i can't read this screen squinting or not without my glasses on but when i was younger and my eyes were better it did help a little. It's all about focus your lenses (in your eye) help focus light on your retina, if you're myopic like me the your focus range is closer than the vast majority of people and if you are hyperopic it's further away, the lenses in your glasses essentially defocus the light coming in so that when it's focused by the your eye lens it appears correct."
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipiimh
|
How come a baby comes out mixed raced when (e.g) a black and white parent/s have a child?
|
(This question could also apply to any other races too)
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4k42py"
],
"text": [
"Skin color is determined by multiple genes. So a kid can get some dark skin genes from one parent and some light skin genes from the other parent, and end up with a skin color that's inbetween the two. The same thing is true of many other traits too."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ipim03
|
How does the sky take on this bright red color when a big fire occurs?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4k6o7w"
],
"text": [
"All the smoke and particles in the air changes how the sunlight moves through the atmosphere. The sky looks blue because of how the sunlight is scattered by our mostly nitrogen atmosphere, when parts of it become full of other particles, a lot of this white / blue light isn’t able to penetrate it, and it is the longer wavelength red light that is still able to penetrate all these extra molecules. This is also why the sky turns red at sunset, when the sun is near the horizon, it is actually passing through more air to get to you than when it is directly above you, (like swimming the length of a pool instead of just jumping straight down to the bottom). This extra thickness scatters the blue light more and leaves the red light to pass on."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipitye
|
diesel cars are generally more powerful and efficient than gasoline while also having more torque. Why there aren't any diesel sport/super cars?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"g4kbdn1",
"g4k44r7",
"g4kfj9l",
"g4kcqk9",
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"text": [
"There's diesel cars in Le Mans. An example, from Wikipedia: > The Audi R10 TDI, usually abbreviated to R10, is a diesel-powered racing car from the German car manufacturer Audi. The car dominated Le Mans, winning each year from its 2006 introduction until it was replaced by the R15 in 2009. It was designed and constructed for sports car racing in the Le Mans Prototype LMP1 class of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and other similar endurance races. The car was unveiled 13 December 2005 at 12:00 CET,[3] and went on to win both its maiden race at the 2006 12 Hours of Sebring in March, and the June 2006 24 Hours of Le Mans.",
"According to this thread in askscience, it's because diesel engines are heavier than gasoline engines. A diesel engines weight to power ratio is 0.6 compared to a gasoline engine. [ URL_1 ]( URL_0 )",
"Automotive engineer here! I am actually not a powertrain guy (my specialization is chassis/suspension design), but I'll try anyways. The main reason is that the diesel combustion is slower than the gasoline one, this means that a diesel engine can't go over a certain RPM (usually around 5000). I will try to explain you why if you want to, but it's not essential. The horsepower figure is *proportional* to torque*rpm, and, despite the peak torque being usually higher than the one of a gasoline engine, an high performance gasoline engine will usually more than compensate for the lack of peak torque. Other, secondary, reasons are: diesel engines are generally considered \"unpleasant\" for sports driving because they have a very nonlinear torque/rpm curve (it's basically constant instead of proportionally rising with the rpm) and they are usually heavier than their gasoline counterparts (because the internal stresses due to diesel Combustion are higher). These last two are actually either subjective or non relevant in some fields. For example, if you have one of those (awful) high performance heavy SUVs, you may want to use a diesel because you need a torquy engine or the car won't move at low rpm and the car is heavy as fuck anyways, so you don't really care about the +/-10kg in the powertrain if that solves the low rpm problems. That's the reason why Audi has made some \"top performance\" diesel SUVs (and maybe estates too?). EDIT: everything I said is a generic rule of thumb. With the latest generations of diesel engines and gearboxes the difference has thinned a lot and sometimes the decision not to go diesel is more marketing than actual performance wise.",
"There's absolutely no way that you can make a diesel engine rev like a supercar engine does. Power comes down to torque multiplied by engine speed--sure, the diesel is generating more torque and thus more power \\*at the same revs\\*, but when the diesel runs out of puff at 4500rpm and the petrol might be going all the way to 8000, the petrol engine wins.",
"The speed of combusstion means they can't rev as high. Power is rpm \\* torque. While a diesel engine can produce more torque a petrol engine with it's faster combustion can rev much higher. More torque also means you have to mae the engine tougher to cope meaning a heavier engine that can't rev as high.",
"A diesel engine is like a strongman. Powerful, but heavy and moves slower than a sprinter. A petrol engine is like a sprinter. Not as strong as a powerlifter, but lighter and quicker. If you want to race someone on foot, you want a sprinter's body. If you want to pull a heavy cart loaded with stuff over a distance, you want a strongman's body. This is why racecars tend to use petrol and big trucks tend to use diesel."
],
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28,
27,
24,
9,
4,
3
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"text_urls": [
[],
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1rebxm/why_arent_diesel_engines_used_in_sports_cars/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1rebxm/why\\_arent\\_diesel\\_engines\\_used\\_in\\_sports\\_cars/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipixfw
|
How did scientists know the first satellite launched in orbit wouldn't just fall down or float away?
|
Title says it all
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4k4txb",
"g4k4sy5"
],
"text": [
"They did the math. At a certain distance above the Earth, your horizontal velocity will determine whether you eventually fall to the Earth, spiral away from the Earth into space, or stay in orbit.",
"Scientists had a pretty good grasp of orbital mechanics long before we were able to actually get into space. Orbits can be calculated using Newtonian physics (for the simple stuff) which has been around for 300 years. Newton actually knew about orbits and made though experiments about it ([Newton's cannonball]( URL_0 ))"
],
"score": [
8,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_cannonball"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ipj6wy
|
if our body temperature is 96-99°F, then why does an air temperature of that same number feel so unconformable?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4k5wc4"
],
"text": [
"The 96-99 is your internal body temperature. Your temperature receptors are on you skin which is significantly cooler than your internal temp."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipjm02
|
What exactly is happening that makes our eyes strained after hours of watching TV?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4k8hr8"
],
"text": [
"Watching too much TV affects our eyesight resulting in TV eye strain because we are focusing on a small, bright object in a usually dark room. The dark room causes your irises to open wider to let in more light. Yet the irises do not close as much as they should to focus on the bright TV screen.That \"pinpoint\" of light in the darkness can be causing your eye/headaches. It can also lead to viewer fatigue, where there isn't sharp pain, just a overall tiredness of the eyes."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipjn0x
|
Why can't my phone camera capture the moon, just the way i see it ?
|
Why are camera in able to capture the moon images, the way in which my eyes are seeing it?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4k8zxx",
"g4krqio"
],
"text": [
"From my understanding of it. Your phone camera is set up to have decent quality for things like 10 to 50 feet in front of you, while capturing a bit of the surrounding areas. So with the moon being so far away it always looks tiny in pictures. Unless you get one of those super fancy DSLR cameras with basically a telescope in front of the lens, its always just going to look like a little bright ball on a bunch of black",
"In short - your eyes are better than you think, your phone camera is worse, and the moon is actually really tiny. If you hold your thumb out at arm's length, it can easily cover the moon. If you compare that to other things in your surroundings, it's like trying to photograph something like a spool of thread from across your living room. Your cell phone camera couldn't do a good job of that either, because it's designed mostly for photographing people at short distances and wide location shots. The moon often \\*seems\\* bigger though because our eyes are pretty awesome! We can make out very small details in things small and far away, and deal pretty easily with the brightness of the moon compared to the dark night sky."
],
"score": [
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ipjpfi
|
Why do a lot of kittens, puppies and even humans come out with blue eyes that eventually change color?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4kdbhm",
"g4kdu1x"
],
"text": [
"eye color is determined by pigments in the iris. these pigments get deposited there over time similar to how your skin gets darker after being exposed to sunlight, and there's no evolutionary pressure to deposit them before birth. so blue is the base color of the iris when the pigments that make other colors aren't present yet",
"Blue eyes are a lack of melanin (the pigment in humans) in the eyes. When someone is first born their eyes may not have produced the same amount of pigment as they will as they age. So as people make more melanin it will change from blue to green to brown"
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipjysp
|
Why Does Rubbing Your Temples and Head Feel So Good, Especially After A Long Stressful Day?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4kdk5b"
],
"text": [
"Tension in the muscles of your face, jaw and neck during the day (due to stress) leads to a low level pain or discomfort that can be relieved by massaging those muscles. Probably is worse if you have a tendency to clench your teeth."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipkn6n
|
How does a bathroom vent/fan help a bad smell go away?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4keztw"
],
"text": [
"It doesn’t. The bathroom vent is not for smells, but for humidity and water vapor from the shower/bath. If all that hot steam and water vapor was allowed to just sit in the bathroom is would let mold and bacteria grow really quickly. So the vent is used to blow most that steam/water vapor outside Where it won’t cause problems. Edit: okay I’ll admit that yes the slight flow of fresh air into the bathroom made by the vent sucking air out will help make some smells go away by blowing the molecules responsible for that smell outside, but it’s negligible and that isn’t the purpose of the vent."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipkz50
|
Why do people get headache when the weather changes?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4kjm0u"
],
"text": [
"Atmospheric pressure At all times, on average, we are under about ~~7~~ 14lb per sq inch of air pressure. We don’t notice because we evolved to deal with it, and need it to survive. Weather changes can disrupt that pressure, increasing or decreasing it. That change can irritate a sensitive persons sinuses, joints, inner ear, or other systems and cause aches and pains Edit: 14psi, not 7"
],
"score": [
12
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iplbqg
|
why pores are so visible on the skin of the face, but not visible on the skin covering the rest of the body?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4kt25y"
],
"text": [
"Our faces produce more oil (aka sebum) than the rest of the skin on our bodies. Our pores increase in size as we age, our pores lose elasticity with time and production of sebum, especially once we hit puberty and hormones change. Since the rest of our skin doesn’t produce a lot of oil, those pores don’t enlarge. Lots of people have fairly visible hair follicles on their arms and legs, which are just hair pores if you think about it. There are many reasons why face pores can be larger: genetics, age, sun exposure, hormones, environment, skincare (or lack of). Some people hit the genetic lottery and have baby smooth face skin into adulthood, but most of us end up with textured faces, some acne scars, and visible pores."
],
"score": [
15
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipljbb
|
Why do we feel sleepy even after having a good night's sleep
|
I guess 6-8 hours of sleep is enough to be well rested on a normal day and maybe a little more when one is exhausted. But most of the days when I (hopefully others too) wake up, I want to sleep a little more even though I have had enough sleep for the body to recharge.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4kxce2",
"g4knrrz"
],
"text": [
"I recently saw an answer to a similar question on a different sub, would share but can't seem to find it. I'll try to summarize best I can: We get the most rest during REM sleep, and generally REM sleep occurs in cycles of approx. 90 minutes. To get the best possible quality sleep, you want to try and sleep an amount of time that is a multiple of 90 mins. Waking up in the middle of a REM cycle (ex: 8 hours) can make you feel groggy and tired",
"I get ratty if I don’t get my 8 hours a day and I’m even worse if I don’t get my 10 at night!!"
],
"score": [
9,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ipm24g
|
Why do we get physically tired when learning new things?
|
I recently started a new job, and the OJT has been intense, and I feel tired, almost to the point of passing out because I have so much to learn and remember. Shouldn't that be a different system or something?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4l25st"
],
"text": [
"your brain is the biggest energy hog in your body. intense use uses a lot of energy. low energy means you feel tired"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ipm3hb
|
What is actually happening within your computer when it freezes?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4klp2o"
],
"text": [
"Everything in a computer boils down to bits (zeroes and ones) and simple math on those bits. Things like addition and substraction, or just storing a number and then retrieving it. All the complex stuff you do with a computer, boils down to thousands or even millions of those small operations. So when a computer freezes, it's because the computer is trying to do the math and it has so much to do, it stops updating the screen while it tries to do the math faster."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipmxu9
|
Why does the sun sometimes look red during sunrise or sunset?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4kr5tv",
"g4krvb5"
],
"text": [
"When the sun is directly over head, blue light scatters more easily than red in the atmosphere, turning the sky blue. The same thing happens as the sun rises and sets, except that there's more atmosphere between the sun and you, so the blue light scatters too much, and you're left with the yellow/red light that makes up a sunset/sunrise.",
"White light is made by all colors. So if you have a red light, a green light, and a blue light you can shine them all at the same time to make white light. For reference your tv works this way. Now, if in front of your 3 lights (red + blue + green) you place a glass that blocks blue light only, then there will be less blue and instead of while your lights will look yellowish (red + green) So now scale up, the sun is emitting all colors at once, so it looks white. Then the atmosphere blocks some blue light, the more blue is blocked, the more yellow/redish the sun appears. Notice that at 12 PM, sun right above you, there is less atmosphere between you and the sun. So only some blue light is blocked from your perspective. Now notice how much more atmosphere is between you and the sun at 5PM and 7AM. More atmosphere means less blue light and a more \"red\" sun."
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipnjm6
|
what are the musical elements that make a piece sound distinctly James Bond theme-ish?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4l1bv0",
"g4l6065"
],
"text": [
"Distinctive bass line or low-note horn riff (think \"dum dum da dum\" or \"dum-da-da-dum-dum, dum-dum); bold, brassy instruments that blare to the point of distorting the note, and a crooning voice. A great example of how recognizable this formula is: [this is the theme song from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]( URL_0 ). It's *not* a James Bond theme, but is instantly recognizable as \"that type of song\".",
"A specific lick that is often referenced as a hommage in big band jazz is c# - d - d# - d (in whatever Key you're in). Also bass melodies revolving around the first three notes of a minor scale sound very bond-ish (or like surf rock)"
],
"score": [
10,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aHQnDTd1y4"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipnpls
|
if smoke has a a lot more components than air, why when in a burning building does oxygen stay near the floor?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4kv8vy"
],
"text": [
"It's mainly that the smoke is much hotter and rises to the ceiling, whereas the ambient air is cooler and stays in the lowest level of the stratification."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipnys7
|
What causes the jarring heart-drop feeling when you sense imminent danger?
|
As the title states. Example, you’re driving your car and all of the sudden someone veers out from a side street or nearly runs a stop sign into your path, and you have that momentary jolt in the center of your chest, almost like a big lump. How is this caused so immediately and what specifically is it?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4kxq3z"
],
"text": [
"Your brain is pretty good at immediately recognizing danger even if you’re not conscious of it yet. Your amygdala causes your body to go into fight or flight mode when it sees something unusual or weird, hence the quick reaction of swerving to avoid a wreck before you have really processed what is going on. Your amygdala does things like get your blood beating faster and readying your muscles for fast, strong movement, hence the heart-dropping sensation."
],
"score": [
11
],
"text_urls": [
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
iponz5
|
How exactly do solar panels work?
|
I understand that when you spin a magnet in a coil you can get an electric field, which is how turbines work. How exactly do solar panels generate electricity?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4l1hr0"
],
"text": [
"They've got very carefully-designed materials layered in such a way that photons of sunlight punt electrons from one layer to another. These electrons collect on that layer and produce a voltage."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ipoo7a
|
how psychedlic drugs can treat illnesses like depression when you should only take them while you're in a 'good' state of mind
|
It seems paradox when I read about e.g. LSD or Magic Mushrooms and it says on one side they can be used to treat mental illnesses but on the other side you have to be in a 'healthy' state of mind
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4l6c9z",
"g4l790f",
"g4l28xp",
"g4l5lvo",
"g4lurpt",
"g4ld55d",
"g4m8ptl",
"g4lzfvu",
"g4l89q6"
],
"text": [
"They help shift your perspective and let you see things from a slightly different angle, and in a different light. You can make connections about things that may have never occurred to you before. They can also send you down a dark and grueling path that you are not ready for, and may not be able to process, especially if you’re already not in a good state of mind. My wife was able to overcome 30+ years of severe depression with the use of psilocybin over the course of 2 years.",
"For me it helped reinforce the positive pathways in my brain, I once again saw the world for how beautiful it was. And that view stayed. I appreciate things a lot better. I did also see trees waving at me so swings and roundabouts",
"Mental illness is not like a virus; it’s not a case of having it or not. What they’re talking about is that some of those drugs require pathways in the brain, helping you connect paths that would not otherwise be strongly linked, based on brain activity at the time they kick in. So if you take a clinically depressed person and give them these drugs while they’re suffering a depressive episode, it could turn really ugly. But if the drug is taken while they’re feeling pretty good, it has been known to positively reinforce that state such that the depression when it comes is no longer so overwhelming.",
"Even with depression you can have good and bad days, be with bad people, in bad environments. Take it on a good day in the right setting with the right people.",
"First of all let’s draw a big fat line between depression and a bad trip. There’s not much overlap here, other than that they both have to do with negative emotions (though depression can be numbness as well). A bad trip can be bad for your mental health. A bad trip can traumatize you or make old wounds worse. Psychedelic drugs aren’t an automatic positive for your mental health. How you handle your trip is a big factor in terms of how it affects your mental health, and when it helps people with their depression that’s something that they’re doing to themselves, instead of something the drugs are doing to them. Like if you drank alcohol and it make your hands stop shaking enough for you to practice the piano, so drinking helped you figure out the piano, the skill is coming from your practice, not from the alcohol. Something like acid is doing a similar thing: it puts you in the room where you can do interesting things but you’ve still got to do the things yourself if you want them to happen. Basically psychedelics make you smarter for a while, and during that period when your brain is enhanced you can solve problems that you normally can’t solve, just because you can see more sides of it at once. If you doubt that psychedelics make you smarter, try playing some poker or chess against someone who’s on a moderate dose and see if they’ve gotten easier or harder to beat. You want a good set and setting because you want to exercise fun parts of your mind. You have parts of your mind specialized to keep you safe when people are being immoral around you, and parts of your mind specialized to deal with physical danger like predators and whatnot. Any parts of your mind you exercise will get amplified by the drugs, so if you’re having to actively defend yourself then your warlike, defensive, prey circuits will be the ones dancing in the psychedelic spotlight and your trip will be dark and scary. You get less of the smartness boost when you’re in defensive mode because stress narrows your working memory and reduces creativity. This is the reason why, if you’d like to work on your depression, it’s probably best to start with a good set and setting. You want a place where you don’t have to defend yourself, even psychologically. A trip is like surgery, and you don’t do surgery on the bus.",
"If you know what you are doing with LSD, you can take it even when you are not in the greatest state of mind. That's more advice for beginners. I would probably, personally, not advice immediately jumping down the rough road of depression recovery until you have some experience with the drug, but YMMV",
"I think psychedelics are probably being tested/prescribed for treating depression *in conjunction with regular psychotherapy*, not just by themselves. I don't think anyone's suggesting LSD is gonna just cure your depression like an antibiotic. In my experience, most other anti-depressants and other medications for depression are also usually co-prescribed with psychotherapy. In a therapeutic context, a bad trip could potentially be extremely productive. When it comes to psychedelics and mental health, the value is in what you take away from the experience, not so much in how the drugs make you feel in the moment.",
"Psychedelics like mushrooms mimic the structure of serotonin. In nature, this allows the plant carrying the mushrooms from being completely eaten as it makes the consumer feel full. In the case of depressed people, psychedelics act like serotonin, the endorphin that depressed people lack. Now, it should be a one two combo, as depression also affects your dopamine levels (dopamine is responsible for you getting work done).",
"Here’s thing about mushrooms: almost 95% of people use them incorrectly and treat them with no respect. If you look at almost any ancient culture, they used substances that shifted people into altered state of consciousness in order to have life changing visions or experiences. From peyote, mushrooms for Mexico ,blue lotus flowers in Egypt, Ayahuasca in South America, the list goes on and on. People always take mushrooms and try to “party” which usually leads them down a bad path. There was a famous ethnobotanist names Terrance McKenna who talked a lot about how people didn’t know that they were doing with these powerful ancient plants and it usually ended badly. More to your question, the biggest problem people make is that they don’t take enough. You have to be able to ingest enough psylibin so it complete takes control of you. The first step in the process of this is what’s a “purge”. That’s basically when you puke, crap, and get really really scared. Every evil image and scary thing will come at all at once, and it’s not fun. However, if you know what your doing, you will ride through that part, then have a truly deep, life altering experience afterwards. Most people take mushrooms to get messed up, then get the crap scared out of them when they realize they don’t know what they are doing and the scary stuff comes."
],
"score": [
23,
19,
12,
10,
9,
5,
5,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
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[],
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]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ipozyu
|
how do taxes work?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4l47i6"
],
"text": [
"Governments need money to function. There are two major ways they get money...they can ask for money when the government does something specific for you, like when you pay for your driver's license or a passport...those are called fees. Or they can take a share out of a transaction you have with someone else (not the government)...those are called taxes. There are \\*lots\\* of different kinds of taxes but they all come down to a charge that the government puts on money moving around in order to fund the government. Common taxes: Income tax: the government takes a portion of your paycheque. This can be a fixed % or a \"sliding scale\"...x% of your first $20,000, y% of your next $40,000, etc. Canada uses the latter system. Sales tax: the government takes a portion of the cost of things you buy. A pencil might be $1.00 and the government charges 5% tax, so you pay $1.05. The merchant gets $1, the government gets $0.05. There can be multiple versions of this at the same time...Canada is messy because you have some provinces on harmonized sales tax and some on GST (federal) + PST (provincial). In the US you frequently see simultaneous state, county, and city sales taxes (the US has no federal sales tax). Property tax: the government figures out what your property (land + house) is worth and charges a % of that per year. If you rent, your landlord pays this and it's included in your rent. Inheritance tax: when somebody dies and wills their stuff to you, the government assesses how much it's worth and charges you some %. This is basically like sales tax, only against a gift. Capital gains tax: If you buy something that lasts (house, stocks, etc.) then later sell it for more money, the government gets a % of what you gained. This is basically just income tax for a specific situation. All governments need to take in enough in taxes to pay for what they're doing, otherwise they go into debt. That may or may not be good, depends on the exact situation, but taxes are how most governments fund the vast majority of their operations. Different countries and provinces and states and territories use different mixes of taxes to achieve the $ they need but they all need income from somewhere. Beware anytime someone says \"By my state has no sales tax!\" or something like that...it just means they've got higher taxes somewhere else."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ippaq2
|
How does a magnifying glass work?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4l5st3"
],
"text": [
"Light passes through different mediums at different speeds. When it passes from one medium to another, it bends depending on the difference of a property known as the refractive index which essentially is the speed of light through that medium. A magnifying glass (or any lens for that matter) uses this by having a curved shape, causing all the light hitting from multiple angles to bend and focus on a single point. If you adjust the lens so that one point is on something interesting, it captures more of the light bouncing off that thing at various angles, redirecting it all in the same direction so that you can see it. The result is that you see everything in the small focal point in the wider area of the lens, making it appear larger."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipq5x8
|
Why do we feel a pulse around open wounds where there usually wouldn't be a pulse?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4laawy"
],
"text": [
"Your entire body feels the fluctuations of blood pressure but they're generally so small they're not noticeable. This is why pulse is typically only taken at places where it's easy to feel, and even in those locations *you* typically can't feel it unless you're looking for it. An example of this is that they can monitor your pulse through your fingertip with a clip-on thingy but you don't feel your pulse in your fingertip. When you're injured your body pushes blood to the wound to speed healing. At the same time the nerves around the wound site become more sensitive, hence the pain. Because of the added blood pressure at the wound site you're more likely to feel \"throbbing\", which is what this basically is."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipqaqv
|
How do elderly people gain money? Is retirement money and savings the same?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4lc29m",
"g4ld2bc"
],
"text": [
"Savings is a very broad term. Retirement savings is a more narrow thing, with special tax incentives to encourage retirement savings. Retired people often have income from pensions and Social Security, as well as interest from their savings.",
"A lot depends on where you live. In the US, there are three main forms of retirement income. Retirement accounts are special investment accounts that are designed for a person to contribute to while they work and are offered some tax benefit for using when they retire. A 401k or Roth IRA are examples of these. Pensions are a source for some workers that are currently retired. They are provided by a company who will pay a retired worker based upon how long they worked at a company as a benefit for having served the company. Pensions are much more rare these days, as most employers have transitioned more into contributing to investment accounts instead of providing pensions. Lastly is social security. It's a government social program in which workers pay into the program and retirees are paid from it. However, as people live longer and longer, it is projected that changes will be needed to maintain the program such as pushing the retirement age out or reducing how much it pays. Of course, you can have savings too, but any savings in large amounts is prone to lose value over time due to inflation, thus most people opt to use a retirement account instead if available."
],
"score": [
5,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipqjbw
|
How come when something is wet, it's almost always cold also?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4lcyfz",
"g4lcu7k",
"g4lkuiw"
],
"text": [
"Water cools things down by absorbing the heat. Think of heat as rapid vibrations, and how squishy water is. It absorbs those vibrations, and spreads them out over a wide area. It also cools things off because if it gets too warm, it just turns into a gas, releasing the heat as it transforms itself.",
"Water has a very high thermal capacity, which means its capable of absorbing heat from something with extreme efficiency. So when you're feeling a wet object, it feels cold because all the heat was absorbed by the water, but the heat wasn't enough to make the water warm.",
"Water conducts heat well. The object's temp is the same, but the water pulls heat from your hand more efficiently. Something feeling cold is how much heat has been taken from your hand, not really the actual heat of the object. & #x200B; Same thing when it's been raining and you're wet. Clothes don't pull heat very well, water does. So wet clothes make you colder than dry clothes.."
],
"score": [
12,
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipqr1g
|
why does wasabi heat affect our noses while chili pepper heat affect our tongues?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4ljm7i"
],
"text": [
"It comes back to different chemicals that are present in these different foods. The pungent chemical present in chili peppers, capsaicin, excites our tongue and triggers similar reactions that a high temperature would cause, so we associate it very directly with \"heat.\" Other chemicals like piperine (found in many peppercorns) have similar effects, though most people find piperine to be more biting and less hot. With wasabi, as well as horseradish, mustard, and a few others, the chemical that gives it its pungency is allyl isothiocyanate, which our body reacts to a little differently and which has a stronger effect on our sinuses - as anyone who's taken too big a bite of horseradish or wasabi can tell you, they can cause a pretty major reaction. It can actually be great if you need to clear your sinuses too! Both chemicals ultimately have the same goal - the plants want to avoid certain animals eating them as much as possible - they just work in slightly different, convergent ways. The effect of these chemicals repels most mammals and insects, while birds, who aren't as affected, will happily eat chili peppers and spread their seeds. Humans, being the crazy things that we are, have decided that we enjoy these sensations in moderation, and we've found ways to incorporate them deliciously into food. And there are others as well - the piquancy of ginger and garlic, the numbing heat of szeschuan peppers, these are all different chemicals that make our food flavorful and interesting in different ways."
],
"score": [
36
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipqsdx
|
Must there be a single root on the tree of life?
|
Do we really believe all life came from a single ancestor or is it possible that there are multiple root-ancestors?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4lfcch"
],
"text": [
"Every organism that we have discovered to this point uses the same \"alphabet\" for DNA/RNA (with a few small changes in some organisms). But it's not the only \"alphabet\" that is possible, by any means. Given this fundamental similarity between all life, it's highly likely that all life discovered so far is descended from a single ancestor. That doesn't mean life only evolved once - it just means that of all the times life was created, only a single instance has descendants alive today."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
iprcg1
|
Why do a lot of arab countries have very similar flags?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4lkla3"
],
"text": [
"If you are thinking about UAE/Kuwait/Iraq/Egypt/Syria/Yemen; it’s because of the traditional colors of revolutionary Egypt, the Arab liberation movement, followed by the membership in the Arab league,and with an addition of green to symbolize Islam."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iprgz4
|
Why do artificial flavors like Apple, Cherry, Banana, etc taste exactly like real Apples, Cherries, Bananas, etc but Grape flavored anything just tastes like the color Purple instead of real Grapes.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4ljhxh",
"g4lsvjx",
"g4mffrw",
"g4ndybn",
"g4n5mwd"
],
"text": [
"They taste like Concord grapes, the purple-colored grapes that are commonly used to make grape jam and grape juice. Green and red grapes that you typically find in a supermarket are juicier and sweeter, so they're better for eating as-is, but they taste very different than Concord grapes. Also, I'd argue that artificial fruit flavors don't taste \"exactly\" like real fruits, but they are reminiscent. Artificial grape is certainly no worse in that regard.",
"Artificial cherry doesn't taste anthing like real cherries. Maraschino cherries do not taste like real cherries.",
"Poor Americans with their grape flavour, you need to have a word with your government and make blackcurrants legal to grow. Seriously, you don't know what you're missing :)",
"The products we use to mimic the flavors of nature are not necessarily from the plants themselves; even if we have done a good job creating a good product for 'apple flavor' it doesn't really mean anything in terms of development of a good grape flavor product eg. You can think of what we know as that artificial grape flavor as simply the best (business decision) known way to mimic grape flavor. You're welcome to try to make a better one, I'm sure there are people out there right now in fact whose job it is to address this very issue!",
"Artificial flavors tend to be esters of alcohols and acids. For most fruit only a particular ester dominates. Hence just using this ester mimics the taste. Basically pick a alcohol and a carboxylic acid(read as: alcohol acid) eg. 2 carbon atom alcohol (ethyl) and 2 carbon atom acid (ant acid) give you ethyl formate, which are the flavors: strawberry also: lemon, rum switch out the 2s for any number and look up the flavor for fun! Remember: common alcohol is 2nd in the list, which is why when distilling you only need to be careful with methyl(1 carbon) alcohol. long list: [ URL_1 ]( URL_0 ) The issue now becomes that fruits are much more complex hence you might notice a certain difference in taste. That's where the difference comes from. Full disclosure: there is also cyclic stuff, but screw that for now. \\[Hexagonal stuff\\]"
],
"score": [
83,
21,
6,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ester#List_of_ester_odorants",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ester#List\\_of\\_ester\\_odorants"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipri66
|
What is OCD and how does it affect people?
|
Also how could I help someone who has OCD
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4lk222",
"g4lo3yc"
],
"text": [
"I have OCD and am an evolutionary biologist. OCD is a neuropsychological disorder. To break that down: it's a condition of the nervous system where a person's nerves and brain are telling (compelling) each other to do something (a compulsion) repeatedly/obsessively, even though that something might be unnecessary or even harmful. If the person with OCD doesn't do the \"something\", their brain/nerves give them pain and/or anxiety. There are a bunch of hormones involved but I'm not going to go into that because it's really complicated, probably too complicated for an ELI5. As for how to help someone with OCD: I'm really not sure. I guess just be nice and try to avoid lashing out if they're being annoying. Meds and therapy can only help if they want them to.",
"Obsessive comportemental disorder. It forces you, by anxiety and suffering, to do specific tasks, again and again. Exemple: *you close the door* Your brain (YB): is the door closed? *you check, it is closed* YB: OK... But is it now? *anxious, you ckeck again, it is locked* YB: what if it was opened right now? *anxiety is building up as you checked if the door is closed, multiple time, until you finally break the cycle*"
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ips68v
|
. What decides an animals longevity as for as mortality? A horse, way stronger and healthier than most humans, live only to around 20 to 30 years, yet the steady rate when humans expire is around 70 to 80 years. How does this work?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4logr0"
],
"text": [
"The faster a speices cells divide, the longevity of their organ tissue, the efficiency of their kidneys and liver, and their diet and lifestyle all factor into age. Human tissue is pretty long lasting compared to most species, as cells divide DNA is slowly broken down, until cancer or organ failure or a dozen other diseases set in."
],
"score": [
19
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipsr13
|
in the US, why is health insurance usually an entirely separate product from dental and vision insurance?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4lsmm5"
],
"text": [
"Dentistry in general is completely separate from other \"general health\" for historical reasons, there have been pushes for the integration of dentistry into general doctoral practice, but they've been shot down by politics. Insurance followed it, where there's an arbitrary division. Vision is probably different because glasses/contacts are so common as to benefit from a separate system."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipsxl0
|
A lot of women used to die giving birth. Is this normal for all species?
|
Do species in the wild have similar rates of death from childbirth as humans? Because prior to modern medicine, it was pretty common. Which seems like a precarious way to survive a species.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4lti39",
"g4ltoac",
"g4lty6i",
"g4m0ggg"
],
"text": [
"Humans are a little different in that they have giant heads. And they walk upright. This combination makes for especially difficult child birth. But in exchange we get utter dominance over most other animals on earth.",
"I read somewhere once that difficult childbirth is one of the prices we pay for walking upright.",
"No not to such a degree as humans the large skull to accomadate the larger brain plus some women have narrow pelvis s making natural child birth extremely dangerous. It's still dangerous today with modern medicine albeit less so than the past.",
"Animals do die in childbirth I cannot tell you if the rates are the same or not but over my years I have seen multiple animals that died including a cow whose calf was breech, a bird who became egg bound, etc."
],
"score": [
20,
3,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ipsy1w
|
how are languages typically born?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4lu3nw",
"g4ltmtq",
"g4lzbbs"
],
"text": [
"Languages are born out of the descriptions of the physical world. To get someone's attention you make a sound, it's the easiest way. Whenever you're trying to get someone's attention about something very specific it helps if you make a specific sounds. In hunting and gathering societies during the creation of language we can assume there was a style of language for each occupation. Hunters would generally make sounds and noises that were meant to alert others of wild animals and dangers. On the gathering side of things they were challenged with having to use a more complex form of language, seeing as plants and areas have to be described to other gatherers so they know what plants are safe for consumption and where to find the gatherables. Gatherers would have had to invent words that defined: color, size, shape, formation, etc. The better you were at communicating these concepts and understanding them the better you would be at gathering.",
"Languages, like money and life itself, are examples of emergent behavior. They develop from the bottom up. They are not born or created.",
"Well Ugh and Hmph were sitting in their cave. Having just eaten a nice brontosaurus burger they were relaxing and about to fall asleep. That is when a snake crawled into the cave and over Ugh’s foot. Ugh jumped up and pointed at the snake yelling “SNKKK!”. Hmph jumped up and saw the SNkkk and crushed it with a rock. Then later after they both held it in front of them and pretending it was their penis they were cooking the SNkkk and Hmph laughs and mocks Ugh’s scream from earlier “SNKKK!” And mocks crushing it and flexes his arm muscles. And this is how the first Fraternity, I mean word was formed. And from that day on when Ugh, Hmph and their families saw a Snkkk they would point it out to others by saying “Snkkk”. Over the years the word Snkkk was transliterated to Snek and eventually to the word snake."
],
"score": [
6,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipt4r2
|
Why do placebos work and is it possible to have the opposite reaction?
|
Opposite reaction meaning the person would not feel the effect of the medicine.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4lunge",
"g4lv3b7",
"g4mfjph"
],
"text": [
"Opposite reaction like, placebos having no effect at all?",
"For the first part, no one truly knows, although the strongest theories indicate that a rush of endorphins and other feel-good hormones promote healing or, at least, free up some energy from worrying about your condition for your body to use to get better. As for “having the opposite reaction”, do you mean believing something will help and it getting worse, or the phenomenon of nocebo (believing it will make things worse and thus it does)?",
"The opposite of the placebo effect is often called the \"nocebo\" effect. The nocebo effect occurs when you believe that a medicine is ineffective or harmful when it is not. If you take that medication with that belief, the medication can be less effective or have more side effects. Like the placebo effect, it isn't something that occurs all the time. Most people who take medicine, even those who don't believe in it, are helped by the medication. The effect is only visible as a statistical trend when examining a large set of data."
],
"score": [
4,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
iptbbm
|
When I’m about to go do something, and then someone tells me to do it, why does it suddenly become the last thing I want to do?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4lwlsa",
"g4m8bo3",
"g4lwtj1",
"g4meqcu",
"g4mbdh9"
],
"text": [
"Cuz it feels like someone has \"stolen credit\" for your unphysicalized idea. And if you do *the thing*, and it goes well, you internally believe they will think that you needed them in your life to help you make good decisions.",
"The circuits in your brain that motivate you to do things because you want to accomplish something (positive achievement) are completely different from the circuits that motivate you to do things because you want to avoid punishment or other negative consequences (negative avoidance). When someone tells you to do something you were going to do anyway, the active circuits in your brain flip immediately. You go from being excited about doing something good to being worried about what will happen if you don't. Scientists recently did a study in which this was observed by Functional MRI scans. Unfortunately, I can't find the study at the moment. If someone wants to reply with a link, it would be much appreciated.",
"Because it's no longer you doing it because you wanted to do it. Instead of doing it of your own accord it feels like a command you must follow.",
"Psychology professor here. Two possible explanations for this phenomenon: 1. \"Psychological reactance\" is when we react to the perception of our freedom/free will being threatened. When someone tells us to do something, we respond by doing the opposite of what was asked or demanded of us to show them that we can do whatever we want, whenever we want. Think of parents telling you not to date a certain someone or hang out with a certain friend--you might find yourself feeling like you want to do it more. If you've heard of the pop-psych term \"reverse psychology,\" it's an attempt to exploit psychological reactance. If I want you to do X, I can tell you to NOT do X in the hopes that reactance kicks in, resulting in you doing X to show me you're an adult with free will. In the end, I got you to do X. 2. You can think of behaviors as being motivated either internally (intrinsically) or externally (e.g., money or recognition). If you are about to go do something, it's probably because you wanted to, so you were internally motivated. When someone else tells you to do it, that action has become externally motivated, making you feel like now you're only doing it because you were told to. External motivations can suck the intrinsic reward out of behaviors. Ask anyone who has volunteered as a hobby, say at a soup kitchen. They engaged in this behavior regularly because they enjoyed it and it felt good. If that hobby ever became a job where they got paid to work at the soup kitchen (now an externally motivated behavior), that person would likely enjoy it less, feel less motivated to go to work, get less fulfillment out of it, and so on. Find a kid who genuinely enjoys coloring in coloring books. Then tell her that she has to color in the coloring book every day as homework. You'll find her coloring significantly less often.",
"I feel the opposite, if it’s just something I want, it doesn’t feel valuable. If someone asks me to do something that I intend to do, it feels like confirmation that the thing is important. Curious, do you work in a traditional management structure?"
],
"score": [
193,
100,
54,
49,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iptnhj
|
How can someone be allergic to raw onions, and not cooked ones?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4m0m7c"
],
"text": [
"The allergy to raw onions mainly comes from the gas that comes out of them when cut (or chewed). When cooked, either the gas already vanished in being cutted or it vanishes from being cooked due to the heat, therefore eliminating the source of the allergy."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipu1dw
|
How do psychiatrists know if the patients aren't lying about their symptoms?
|
For example, how an psychiatrist know if his patient is lying about his symptoms to just get amphetamine or benzodiazepine for recreational purposes?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4m1slj",
"g4m2om3",
"g4m6irp"
],
"text": [
"Unless the person themselves are trained psychiatrist, then there is a good chance that they will be unable to fake the symptoms accurately enough to fool someone that is a trained psychiatrist.",
"given that a psychiatrist visit recently cost me $400, it would probably be more efficient to just find a drug dealer and tell them \"I want benzos to get wasted\".",
"They can query state databases and look for certain other red flags that someone is drug seeking, but there's not really any way to know for sure. Amphetamines and benzodiazepines are very commonly abused and diverted. That being said, if somebody just wants to get high it's generally a lot easier to buy drugs from somewhere else than to spend months waiting to get an appointment with a psychiatrist."
],
"score": [
19,
8,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ipufqg
|
Do other animals get periods like humans? Why or why not?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4m5tdm"
],
"text": [
"So fun fact...humans, primates, bats, and elephants shrews have a period. Other animals go through estrus or “heat”. In creatures that have a menstruation cycle they only become pregnant when the uterine lining is thick and ready to support an embryo. In animals that experience just estrus they go through breeding periods where they are essentially “willing and ready” to breed and the uterine lining thickens in response to a fertilized egg(s). So there for they have nothing to “shed” because their lining hasn’t thickened in anticipation. That’s the simple explanation. Beyond that if you want to know why...it gets complicated. It has to do with evolution, birthing quantities, natural responses to their environment and genetic stability. And one theory has to do with how deep an embryo must dig in to that lining to grow. Primate babies dig in deep (humans included). We require a thick lining to support and nurture and embryo without wasting the nutrients we need to survive. Other animals have embryos that sit on the “surface” and essentially rob the mother of less so they can physically afford to support a pregnancy with out preparation. Interestingly enough most scientists say that evolution screwed up a little. It takes a lot for your body to build that lining and then shed it every single month. A lot of why we do is still a bit of a mystery. If you are interested in a more scientific explanation I’d be happy to reference you to an amazing article on it."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipujye
|
If showing teeth in the rest of the animal world is considered behaviour to warn or ward off the enemy then why is it considered smiling or happiness in humans?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4mkrxr",
"g4medhf",
"g4m5gdu",
"g4mcvei",
"g4mk45z",
"g4mbcs4",
"g4nrvvy",
"g4mmkp5"
],
"text": [
"smiling isn't just your teeth showing. smiling is MOSTLY your cheeks lifting. when your cheeks lift, they do often stretch open the mouth, exposing your teeth, but that's a byproduct. the real gesture comes from the initial squint and raising of the eyebrows. by squinting your eyes, you're closing your field of view, blocking out additional information - if the brows are lowering over the eyes, this is to defend the eyes - the eyebrows tend to absorb more of the light, giving your eyes a better focus on what's ahead, but if your eyebrows are rising too, you're basically exposing yourself. it's the equivalent of a palm up, empty handed gesture to show you're not hostile. it should also be noted that communicating with facial expressions is something we were able to do long before using our hands. so now, raise your eyebrows, and bring your cheeks up, that's about as \"non-threatening as you can get. if you bare your teeth at someone with a growly unhappy mouth shape, you can bet that still reads as hostile. because the smile never had to do with the teeth, i think the lips parting in a smile is just more comfortable than the tightlipped variant, and so it's seen as much genuine.",
"In addition to what others are saying, I want to throw out that we \"hear\" smiles as well. People can reliably choose sentences that are spoken with a smile over those spoken without, without seeing the people speaking obv. There are some competing theories as to what this means, anthropologically. Since it raises the pitch of utterances (a VAST oversimplification), some hypothesize that it developed as an auditory way to sound \"small\" and, hence, non-threatening. Others think it could even be due to courtship and how it evolved (basically, a way to indicate our happiness or pleasure to a mate in places with low light). I'm on the fence because I think that the linguists tend to ignore the obvious visual component of smiling, but I still thought it was interesting and a different perspective from what we usually see with this type of question.",
"DISCLAIMER: This is Copy Pasted I will post link at end. I thought this question was interesting so I googled it. ———— I’ll borrow from my communication systems background to shed light on what’s going on. When you have a very important message to make, you’ve got to make sure it gets delivered without a chance of being corrupted. Smiling is unmistakable facial expression and as such it became associated with the most important expression people need to express: friendliness, joy, happiness etc… That expression of happiness is so disarming that it was very important to be associated with unmistakable facial expression. For us, social animals, being at peace and in cooperation is the most important signal we can make to each other. Other non social or less social animal, dedicate this visible expression to express threat or aggression. Because for them that’s the most important expression they need to make. Now think about it, why wasn’t the expression of happiness and joy mapped to an ambiguous facial expression like lifting your eyebrows ? Because it can be easily mistaken. Whereas having wide smile (ear to ear) is so much more visible and unmistakable. ——— URL_0",
"To the Nez Perce people, showing teeth is considered a sign of aggression. Different strokes for different folks! One theory is that smiling with an open mouth caught on because that's how babies smile.",
"I can't back this up with a source because I'm too lazy to look it up. BUT I went to a wolf preserve in Colorado where they let you get in the enclosure with a couple of the wolves. If one of the wolves bears its teeth and approaches you its supposedly trying to connect with you. So what you're supposed to do is bear you teeth as well and the wolf will come click its teeth on yours. Apparently wolves do this to each other. I dunno. But I talked to a lady who said she got to click her teeth with the wolves. The wolves didn't seem interested in me at all.",
"My recollection is that smiling with your teeth showing *is* considered threatening by gorillas. Maybe it's just humans.",
"Actually, showing one's teeth is a submission signal in primates. When someone smiles at me, all I see is a chimpanzee begging for its life.",
"You can smile without showing your teeth. You can be angry and show your teeth. You can be angry without showing your teeth. I don't think showing teeth is a criteria for smiling at all."
],
"score": [
222,
37,
36,
6,
5,
4,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://www.quora.com/Why-do-we-show-our-teeth-when-we-smile-I-thought-in-the-animal-kingdom-showing-your-teeth-was-a-sign-of-aggression"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipuvvn
|
How do contact lenses work?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4m80r0"
],
"text": [
"Think of your eye as a lens, like a camera lens. A lens has the ability to focus light to a point and form an image because of the shape of the lens surface. If the image is blurry it is because the shape of your lens is incorrect and doesn't focus the image in the right spot. A contact sits on top of your eyeball and becomes the new surface of your lens, giving it the correct shape to focus the image onto your retina."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipvrne
|
why do humans feel the urge to lick cuts/minor wounds.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4mfx3x",
"g4mi79t",
"g4mj4cb"
],
"text": [
"Our saliva can numb the pain and heat sensation from burns (as any water does). Why we do it for other small wounds is probably just habitual, though it might have small benefits in cleaning a wound and it's a ultimately still useful as a way to apply pressure, even if a finger would also do that.",
"Because licking a wound cleans dirt out, if it's a burn then saliva cools the area, saliva also contains a clotting enzyme which helps stop bleeding. It's also diverting sensation. It's the same as if you knock your shin, you rub it to help with the pain;your brain doesn't want to focus on pain, pain is debilitating, so it focusses on other sensation. By licking your cut (or rubbing your leg) you're stimulating other sensory neurones. Which help distract from the pan.",
"We are still just animals at the end of the day and have many associated instinctual responses. Saliva has antimicrobial properties, licking cleans the wound and clotting is promoted. There's a reason why other mammals do the same."
],
"score": [
20,
13,
8
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipvudf
|
What is inside an Etch-a-Sketch that allows it to draw when nobs are turned, but erase when it is shaken?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4me0ai"
],
"text": [
"Its a type of sand. When you move the knobs it cleans the sand off the screen. When you shake it you re-cover the clean parts of the screen and start a new drawing."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipvvzp
|
After you pour water out of glass, why do droplets remain only on some portions of it and other areas are dry?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4mfgi5"
],
"text": [
"This is why water is so unique and amazing!!!! Cohesion is water’s tendency to stick to itself. The hydrogen on one water molecule attracts the oxygen on another. *however* the oxygen molecules between different molecules (and on the same molecule) repel each other. This is why water is a hydrogen with two oxygens at a wide angle. They want to be with the hydrogen, but not reach other. Water is also sticky with anything that is hydrophilic, meaning it likes water. What you see on your glass is a similar affect to when you use rain ex on your car. The surface becomes hydrophobic, meaning it *doesn’t* like water. The water collects together, and when the surface tension becomes great enough, gravity sends it down the side of your glass. It cannot just move freely, because it is sticking to each other, and the glass doesn’t *like* your water."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipwfc9
|
what is auth left, lib left, auth right and lib right?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4mgz3l"
],
"text": [
"The idea that rather than a single dimension of political differences (left vs right), there is more of a plane or square of ideologies. Going up you have more authoritarian (strong government) and down is libertarian (personal freedoms). Then you have an economic line that goes left (collectivism or socialism) and right (individualism or capitalism) There's a subreddit called r/politicalcompassmemes that will help clarify while providing occasional lolz."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipwjz7
|
Do ants take fall damage?
|
Never seen an ant die from falling, do they take damage at all?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4mia9e",
"g4miokr"
],
"text": [
"They don’t receive fall damage because they reach terminal velocity due to science reasons. A sciencer will explain better than I have. In RPG terms, one of its passive abilities is Feather Foot, which negates damage from high places..",
"The terminal velocity (the maximum speed that an object can freefall because the force of air resistance equals the force of gravity on it so they cancel out) of an ant is very low at just 6.4 km/h so the ant doesn't get hurt."
],
"score": [
9,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ipwkoc
|
- why does your throat feel like it's tightening, closing or hurting when you cry?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4mhtvc"
],
"text": [
"when you cry your breathing becomes more irregular, and your heartbeat speeds up, so the muscles in your throat keep flexing and it feels like it’s tightening"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipwr1c
|
How Is the Universe Infinite?
|
Sorry if this is so vague, but I was thinking about space and my brain can’t comprehend how the universe is infinite. To my understanding the universe “model” is that it’s kind of oval shaped and we come back right where we started. But wouldn’t that make the universe finite because there has to be something beyond that? Maybe I’m missing something and that’s why I’m confused.
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4mktem",
"g4mjtci"
],
"text": [
"We don't know if the universe is infinite or not. We do know that it is mind bogglingly big. We don't know wether or not it is infinite because we do not know what shape it is. If it is saddle shaped then it is infinite, if it is spherical then it is finite. It is not intuitive to think of the universe being finite because that would mean there is a boundary and if there is a boundary then our intuition says there must be something on the other side. This is why it is a very difficult question to answer. Our intuition is not sufficient to understand it. The people that have the best understanding of it do so through math. To approach an understanding try to think of the universe as having two physical dimensions instead of three. If you imagine the universe to be the surface of a balloon you might see how it can be both unbounded and yet finite. A person in this two dimensional universe would only be able to conceive of a third dimension through math.",
"So, the human mind cannot comprehend infinity. The universe *is* infinite, but you don’t have the ability to understand that. We use the model to conceptualize the expansion of the universe. The universe is infinite, and it is expanding. How can you have more than infinity? We just can’t conceptualize that"
],
"score": [
15,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ipwvbw
|
Why Is The Big Bang Accepted As How The Universe Was Created?
|
Sorry about the way this is phrased but I was just thinking about space and was wondering why is the Big Bang theory accepted as how the universe was created when there had to be something “before” it. Even if there was “nothing” in the beginning of the universe, that still is “something” because can’t the idea of “nothing” exist. I sincerely apologize for the way this is written. I’m having trouble putting my thoughts down in coherent sentences.
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4mjlz5",
"g4mk8s0",
"g4mp970"
],
"text": [
"I think the strongest evidence for the Big Bang is that when they worked out details of how it would have looked, they found that it should have produced microwave 'echoes' from soon after the explosion that should still be bouncing around today, and those echoes should follow a fairly specific pattern. This is called the 'microwave background' or 'background anisotropy'. Then they built a satellite to take microwave images of the sky, and the readings that it collected were a very, very good match for what they had worked out on the blackboard. So that successful prediction went a long way to making them feel they're on track. URL_0 (Also Pope John Paul II declared the Big Bang theory to be consistent with biblical teachings, in case you find that persuasive.)",
"The big bang isn't the beginning, it's as far back as our understanding of physics allows us to go. The observable universe (as far as we can see) was the size of a grapefruit and quickly expanded. We don't really know what happened before that because the laws we came up with to describe physics don't work in those conditions.",
"1. when Edwin Hubble realized that every other galaxy is moving away from almost every other, it followed that they were closer together in the past. If you go back in time, all this matter just have been flying out from a starting point, right? 2. The smoking gun: the [cosmic microwave background]( URL_0 ). This can't be ELI5 level but hopefully it makes sense... Big Bang cosmology predicts that in the early universe, matter was so hot that protons and electrons flew around unattached, like in a plasma. In a soup of charged particles, light cant go in a straight line and the universe would be opaque. After an estimated 300,000 years, the universe became cool enough for neutral atoms to form, and light could actually travel in straight lines indefinitely. And... this first light is hitting us, on the other side of the universe, now. It's direct evidence for the Big Bang, and any other theory has to explain it and none do very well. Telescopes that take microwave images constantly pick it up as background noise. Old TV static is, quite literally, the cosmic microwave background being picked up! TL;DR there's a constant signal from space and the big bang theory predicted it before we found it and that's good support for a theory"
],
"score": [
14,
10,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background"
],
[],
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ipwvow
|
How do our ears not flood when we go underwater?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4mjtu2",
"g4nda9z",
"g4o5mk2",
"g4nerla",
"g4mo8g0"
],
"text": [
"Hi, studying audiologist here! Basically there are separate sections to our ears: the outer ear (what you can see) the middle ear which is between the ear drum and the cochlea, and the inner ear (cochlea). The ear drum is a complete wall sealing the outer and middle ear apart from each other, so unless there’s a medical issue which you would KNOW from the pain, there’s no way that water, dirt, dust etc could get through your ear drum and into your ear :)",
"The ear drum creates a seal in the ear canal. The inner ear is connected to the eyes and nasal cavity by a canal called the Eustachian tube, which is why some people can take a gulp of milk and squirt it out of there eyes or blow smoke out of their ears. Normally the inner ear is sealed and the Eustachian tube only slightly opens to stabilize air pressure and to drain fluid in the case of an ear infection or water stuck in the ear from swimming.",
"Follow-up: when you get water stuck in your \"ear\", where is it actually stuck?",
"for the same reason that, if you cap one end of a straw with your finger and dip the other end into a glass of water, there won’t be any water in the straw when you pull it out. for water to go into your ear, the air inside needs a way to get out first. unless you’ve got a medical issue, that generally doesn’t happen",
"Mine do. I wear ear plugs when I go to the pool or beach. Or I have to slam my head against my mattress when I get home."
],
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43,
41,
22,
3
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"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipwzes
|
if black is the absence of color and white is all the color how do they make black and white paint?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4mkpvx",
"g4mk86z"
],
"text": [
"We are actually talking about two concepts here. Light and Pigmentation. So with Light White light is made of every color on the visual spectrum and darkness is the absence of all light. With Pigment paints and waxes are dyed with color powders to give them the desired color. White is either made with a white material or it just happens to be what color the mixture ends up being with nothing added. The reason why we get black is the same although it can also be achieved by adding multiple colors due to them darkening eachother to that point. Basically White Light is all the colors but White Paint is usually none of them. The reason is because you have to dye paint to get colors of paint where as you need to separate light to change its color.",
"White paint has to reflect pretty much all the colored light that hits it; they normally make that with titanium oxide. When you look at white material under full-spectrum light, your eye gets hit by all the colors and registers that as white. Black paint has to be highly light-absorbent, so that no matter what light lands on it, almost none bounces off. When you look at black material under any kind of light, your eye receives basically-no-color-at-all and registers that as black. You can make black paint by combining various other colors, because for example red paint = \"reflects red, absorbs other colors\". If you mix red, green and blue paints, the mixture should end up absorbing pretty much everything. If you don't want to mix black, you can make it using carbon powder, or powdered magnetite (Fe3O4)."
],
"score": [
15,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipx34q
|
What does it mean when a fire is X% contained? And how is it measured?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4mlfxc"
],
"text": [
"It means the firefighting team has created a discrete barrier around X% of the fire's perimeter. So sometimes a fire will stop having active flames (extinguished), but if there's still flammable material surrounding the burned area, the perimeter hasn't yet been fully contained. On the other hand, there could be active flames kept within a well-defined clear border, and it would be 100% contained."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipx5zy
|
Why do horses need shoes?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4mlo93",
"g4mlij7",
"g4mluye"
],
"text": [
"Horses don't *need* shoes, per se, but we give them shoes because we ask them to walk and run and jump on surfaces that they either wouldn't normally or wouldn't foe as long as we want them to. It's like... Do people need shoes? Not really, but walking on hot tarmac while barefoot is difficult. So, if they're constantly on sandy surfaces, like a beach or racetrack, we give them a shoe that makes those surfaces easier to grip. If they're on paved roads or cement, we give them a shoe that helps with the impact and wear and tear. If they'll be on snow and ice, we might give them a shoe that helps with traction. But a wild horse is kind of like a wild rabbit or a wild dog - their daily lives keeps their hooves, teeth, and claws respectively fairly well filed and maintained. Sometimes things can go haywire - hooves might become overgrown or split - but generally the amount of walking and running they do across the variety of natural surfaces they encounter is enough to keep them in good shape.",
"Long story short, they do and don't. \"Need\" is subjective. If the animal is mainly used for light trail riding or pasture touring shoes aren't necessary. However most horses do hard trails with rocks or are on pavement alot. Think of the hoof like finger nails. They've got to be trimmed down and that happens naturally over rough terrain when the horse doesn't have anyone riding it. Add a passenger and the hoof wears too fast causing blisters and bleeding. The shoes are made of metal and thus don't wear out.",
"Horses’ hooves are essentially thick fingernails with the soft fleshy bit in the middle. In the wild, horses walk and run mostly on grassy plains, where their hooves wear down about as fast as they grow, and where the ground is relatively soft. When humans use horses though, they often have them walking over rock, asphalt and concrete and carrying burdens. This wears down the hooves quickly and can cause splitting and cracking as well. The shoe gives them a hard protective layer to walk on that won’t crack, split or wear down. Shod horses need to get their nails trimmed and their shoes replaced regularly or the hoof will become damaged by overgrowing and possibly splitting from nails hammered in when the hoof had a smaller diameter."
],
"score": [
13,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipxi88
|
How is electrical energy converted into mechanical energy?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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],
"text": [
"Electrical energy is not a \"motionless source\". Electrical charge is moving through the wires in order to create the magnetic fields that make a motor turn. There really is motion, you just can't see it. The motion of the electrical charge moving through the wires causes a magnetic field to develop. That magnetic field can then affect things around it.",
"So we're talking about an electric motor. There's a thing where if charges move inside a magnetic field, the field pushes *sideways* on the charges. (The directions are weird; search for \"magnetic force and the hand rule\" if you're interested.) The way we use this is, if you take a pair of magnets, put a loop of wire between the magnets, and then pass a current through the loop, the loop will turn. If you do some tricky stuff with a split-ring, or use alternating current, you can get the loop to spin, and now you've got a motor that can turn wheels or drive a pulley, or drive a hydraulic pump, and now you've got motion."
],
"score": [
5,
3
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"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipxpxq
|
How Alternating Current(AC) has lesser transmission losses over larger distances compared to Direct Current(DC)?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4morwu"
],
"text": [
"It's not that AC has lower transmission losses than DC, it's that high voltage has lower transmission losses than low voltage, and it's much, much easier to convert AC from low voltage to high and back again."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipxrgb
|
How come the sky is red or orange in all those photos even though you can't see actual fire?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4moqlz",
"g4mpqf3",
"g4nt99k"
],
"text": [
"The smoke particles are larger than regular air particles so they block out the high wavelength spectrum of light (yellow-blue) and allow lower wavelength light to pass through (red/orange). Edit: I mixed up frequency and wavelength. Blue/violet has lower wavelength and higher frequency (more compressed) and red/orange has lower frequency and higher wavelength (less compressed and can pass through thick smoke easier).",
"u/bsmart08 is correct. It does not reflect like the other comment, in case you were confused. URL_0 The smoke is filtering and blocking the sun light, giving it the orange and red color.",
"here's a good video talking about why the sky is red: (also a bit of space science thrown in!) Scott Manley : How The Red Skies From Fires Are Related To Blue Sunsets on Mars [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )"
],
"score": [
229,
21,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/why-is-the-sky-orange-across-the-bay-area/"
],
[
"https://youtu.be/wOIBQIpdv10"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipy24f
|
Why isn’t the quality of life always improving?
|
I don’t understand. I see issues and solutions, but it seems like everyone is “content” with where the world is. Like, world hunger is an issue to be solved, that can be solved. Why wouldn’t we solve it?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"g4ngl9u",
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"text": [
"Because people who have the means to solve world hunger aren't affected by it, and the one's affected by it don't have the means to solve it Despite how it may appear from an ethical or moral perspective (both subjective btw), people usually don't go around solving things unless it specifically affects them It's also a case of give and take. Altruism rarely exists in a pure form, and in most cases helping others entails getting something in return (for example, aid money always has at least some strings attached)",
"Selfish motives. Many people try to solve this, but there are so many places along the way that selfish motives wreck the whole process, that is very hard to overcome. Whether it is an economic issue, a logistic issue or whatever, many times this gets sidetracked.",
"The quality of life IS improving. Basically everywhere, including poorer countries. Child Mortality is a nice measurement of that because it shows how well a society can support their young, including food, medical care, housing etc. [Here's]( URL_1 )* a nice diagram showing child mortality now and ~30 years ago. It's not perfect, yes. But we're MUCH better off than most people like to believe. There has been a study where many different people had to answer 12 multiple choice questions (3 choices each) about problems in the world, like roughly how many people have access to electricity or certain levels of medical supply. Humans did worse than guessing, with 2! correct choices on average. That study is part of the book [Factfulness]( URL_0 ) which talks about how humans systematically misunderstand the world around them. This book has been recommended by Bill Gates and other smart people, it's really worth a read! *You might have to scroll down one section, the website behaving weird on my end.",
"In what kind of time frame or population boundary and with what definition of quality of life? Broadly speaking, quality of life (defined in some way?) of humanity is improving over time. It has not improved equally or equally fast and there may be areas where there are temporary declines, but it would be hard to deny that, as a whole, many measures of quality of life improved for nearly everyone in the last century. Taking a bigger time span would make this even clearer. Even in a shorter time frame, many (all?) societies have seen declines in poverty rates, malnutrition, infant mortality and increases in average lifespan. Levels of education have increased, access to medicine, clean water and power. In most underdeveloped countries today, the people generally have access to mobile phones. We shouldn't get complacent but neither should we ignore progress. Lots of serious people dedicate their careers to this and a lot of resources have gone towards this. It might seem the media would prefer to highlight the doom and gloom but the real data do indicate progress.",
"What are you basing your measure of “quality” on? Are there more starving people in the world than there used to be?",
"Logistics, politics, and wealth distribution. What kind of food are we sending, where do we send it, and who picks up the tab? What do we think of the people are sending it to? The wealthiest 10% holds, like, 85% of the world's wealth and thereby make 85% of all capital allocation decisions. What's important to the 10% might not be as important to the other 90%.",
"Quality of life is improving decade by decade. Most people now have things that we take for granted that Kings and Queens 200-300 years ago could only dream of. A screen with hundreds upon hundreds of options of entertainment to view in your home. A device in your pocket which you can open up and call all of your friends and family with no matter how many miles away they are. A card that you can swipe in any store and buy things. Transportation to anywhere in the country you would want to go. Clean water. Sewage disposal. All of that and many more are vast improvements from 200 years ago. All of that you take granted now, totally unavailable a short time ago."
],
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7,
7,
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3,
3
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factfulness:_Ten_Reasons_We%27re_Wrong_About_the_World_%E2%80%93_and_Why_Things_Are_Better_Than_You_Think",
"https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality#child-mortality-achieving-the-global-goal-for-2030-would-be-a-huge-achievement-but-we-are-currently-far-away"
],
[],
[],
[],
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ipy7vf
|
Why does licking certain parts of the body stimulate humans sexually?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4mr357"
],
"text": [
"Because humans have a lot of nerve endings in those areas that you stimulate with your tongue, which is where the feeling comes from. Women have literally millions of nerve endings in their clitoris, and so do men in the head of their penis. Same goes for the nipple, other areas that get stimulated by touch, such as thighs, hips, bum, etc, is just what people are into, so for example I love a thigh gap on a girl, so feeling that turns me on, not necessarily because I actually find physical pleasure in it, more satisfactory pleasure"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipyef6
|
Why do animals only breed during specific seasons, but human don't?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4mucfu"
],
"text": [
"Most animals breed timed so that the young emerge during times of high seasonal food availability. For example, migratory birds lay eggs as soon as possible in their usual habitat so that the young have a long warm season with ample food so they can be big enough to make the winter migration. Long before homo sapiens evolved, our primate ancestors managed to be successful enough to provide for their young even in dry or cold seasons. So the need for timed births was greatly reduced. But at the same time early primates were mastering their environment, their brains were getting bigger, forcing mothers to deliver earlier so that the baby's skull could still fit through the bipedal pelvis. Primate babies are born weak and helpless and needing to grow and learn a LOT compared to four legged animals. (Deer, horses and cows can walk and eat within an hour or so of birth) This meant that raising young primates take more time and resources. The best way early primate females had to increase their access to resources was to be sexually available all the time. Using sex as a lure, she gave males a good reason to stick around and provide food and defence. As part of this, females evolved to hide their fertile periods to some extent. So a male who wanted to sire her children had to stick around even when there were no young at the moment. Along the way, fertile periods went from seasonal to monthly."
],
"score": [
14
],
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[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipykhz
|
why airlines tickets from country to country are 20 euro when taxi from town to town is 20
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4mtxjl"
],
"text": [
"1. 20 euro is just the base price, you usually pay extra for luggage, food, chosen seating. 2. An airplane can hold tens or hundreds of people. A taxi can hold 4. 3. Supply and demand. Airlines need to move airplanes around (if they fly a plane from A to B, they'll need to return the plane from B back to A). If no one wants to fly from B to A, they sell the ticket very cheaply - it's better to have a plane full of people who bought a cheap ticket than an empty plane."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipz38e
|
How so law enforcement officials and agencies trace the identities of those who circulate child pornography/ rape/ universally objectionable content especially on WhatsApp, given its end to end encryption?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4n0z7v"
],
"text": [
"As far as I know in these cases, it's usually not a matter of breaking the encryption, it's a matter of compromising one of the endpoint devices. If you can install some spy code on the computer/phone *running* whatsapp, then the encryption doesn't matter. Sometimes law enforcement has the means, through a phone manufacturer or network provider, to get software pushed to a phone so that it can be monitored. And sometimes it can be installed by exploiting insecure software or hardware in the phone."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ipzr7i
|
Why does it take more Delta-V to shoot somebody into the Sun?
|
I saw a meme that stated that, if you're mad at someone, it take less Delta-V to launch them out of the solar system than in does to fire them into the Sun. Why is that? Wouldn't the attraction of the Sun's mass be greater and provide assistance?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4n8zgc",
"g4n7g41"
],
"text": [
"Imagine you're a superhero on the roof of a speeding truck, it's going 100 km/h. You need to jump off the truck to the ground, and in order to not hurt yourself and scrape your knee, you need to be falling *straight downwards* when you land. You can't have any horizontal momentum. This means you're gonna have to be able to launch yourself backwards off the back of the truck at 100km/h, so that your launch speed counteracts the speed of the truck and your resultant ground speed is 0km/h. In order to make something fall *into* the sun, instead of falling into orbit around it, we need to do basically the same thing, except the moving truck is the earth and it's going 30km per second.",
"Earth orbits the Sun at more than 100000 km/h. That velocity (or at least a big part of it) needs to be gone in order for an object to \"fall\" into the Sun. This assumes the object has already left Earth and Earth's orbit, which also requires changes in velocity."
],
"score": [
12,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
iq00xk
|
Why do Arabs write from right to left? This writing style seems suited best for the left hand, but the left hand is considered unclean.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4na76c",
"g4na4re"
],
"text": [
"It's an inherited characteristic from Hebrew. One possible reason for this is that when chiselling writing into stone, the engraver would hold the hammer in their strongest hand, which is usually the right, while the chisel would be held in the left. This natural lends itself to writing from right to left. Left to right became more popular later with the adoption of paper and ink, but by that stage, Hebrew and the various other languages related to it weren't going to change.",
"Because more people were right-handed than left-handed, the process of carving the rock may have started on the right and proceeded to the left. The direction in which Arabic was written may be due to the scribe's position at the time, seated on the floor, hand held at an angle holding a reed dipped in ink."
],
"score": [
19,
5
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iq03eh
|
How do you navigate in space?
|
There’s no north or anything, are there coordinates or you just point at a planet and go for it?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"g4ne1dq",
"g4nx7p0",
"g4ncyoz",
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"text": [
"Navigation and positioning in space (far from earth) is typically done by tracking your position as it relates to stationary or plotted objects like stars or planets URL_1 In summary, you see specific planet out a specific window, this acts as a point of reference, with a few you can triangulate, with computers doing calculations many times a second it can be very accurate. There are other methods too, including Transponder pings, GNSS sattelites, inertial sensing, dead reckoning, etc URL_0 and yes when \"aiming\" for a specific planet, you actually aim at empty space ahead of it's path, to intercept catch up to it months later on opposite side of solar system at good angle and speed",
"You have to lead your shot. Thankfully, space bodies are very predictable, so you can use math to always know where it will be. As for turning which way and how far, your own spaceship has a top/bottom/front/back/left/right. There's a special vocabulary, like prograde/retrograde, etc., but your turns and burns will be given in degrees related to where your spaceship is already pointing.",
"The US has ground stations with radar transmitters and receivers at 3 places on Earth. This is called the Deep Space Network. It sends a radio signal to the probe, the probe shifts the frequency and transmits it back. By comparing the signal, the shift, and what got back, they can use math and physics to figure out where the probe is.",
"[Here you go.]( URL_0 ). Curious Droid did a great video on exactly this.",
"Stars or Pulsars. Both are common waypoints for a civilisation trying to cross the galaxy. On the golden disc we sent on Voyager 1 [I think?] It has a pulsar map leading to Earth.",
"I out solar system you use the [Ecliptic\\_coordinate\\_system]( URL_2 ) The sun is ins the center and the zero plane is the orbit of the earth. That makes it simpler for us to use. The direction is measured relative to the stars. The relative moment of start is minuscule in our solar system, the closes might shift a fraction of a degree so you do not use the. There is north for orbits too it is an [Orbital\\_pole]( URL_1 ). You use the right-hand rule. Take the right hand and curve your finger and point up with your thumb [like this]( URL_0 ). If the finger curves like the orbit the tum point to the orbital north. For position in the solar system, you look at the angle of planets and the sun relative to the stars and you can determine location. Radio communication from earth has delays and you can get the distance to earth and the speed from the doppler shift. You do not point to a planet to go there. You make a burn so you and the planet arrive at the same time. You can compare to if you would throw a ball to someone that is running. You aim to a point in front of them so they meat there. If you aim at where they are you will miss them.",
"I’ll just address how it’s currently done, not future tech like using pulsars. The orbit of the Earth around the sun defines “north and south”. This is called the plane of the ecliptic. If you’re above that plane (aka positive direction using the right hand rule), that’s north. To fully locate yourself with three coordinates in 3D space, we also define an arbitrary star (Aries) to be the “starting point” along the rotation of the Earth’s orbit. There are two aspects to navigating space: 1) Where is my spacecraft pointing? 2) Where is my spacecraft located? The most popular method to determine pointing is a “star tracker”. Constellations of stars are (relatively) static in the sky. If your star tracker takes a picture of the Big Dipper, you know where you’re pointing with respect to the (relatively) fixed background stars. To determine where you’re located in deep space, we have what are effectively radar antennas on the Earth. These point at a distance spacecraft, broadcast a signal, and wait for an echo. The timing of the echo tells you how far away the spacecraft is, and the frequency shift tells you how fast it’s moving. After multiple echos over time, you can fully locate the spacecraft in 3 dimensions, and then tell it how to maneuver to reach a targeted planet or other location (since it knows where it’s pointing, it can fire thrusters correctly)."
],
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14,
9,
7,
5,
3,
3
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"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positioning_system",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_tracker"
],
[],
[],
[
"https://youtu.be/YAnxt1YPWbk"
],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-hand_rule#/media/File:Right-hand_grip_rule.svg",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_pole",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic_coordinate_system"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
iq09ms
|
What is human consciousness and what other species are thought to possess some form of consciousness?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4ndtgg"
],
"text": [
"Nobody knows. Some people say it's a certain kind of information which is carried or represented physically in our brains, or a certain kind of interaction between that information, and our physical environment. Some people say that consciousness resides outside our brains and indeed outside of the \"physical world\" of things that we can see and touch - like a spirit or a soul. We don't know how to test for consciousness in animals because we don't know exactly what we're looking for or how to recognize it when we see it. Heck, we don't even really know how to recognize it in other humans. We look at each other and assume that, since other humans show behaviours kind of like our own, since we can exchange ideas and share languages, there must be something going on inside other people, experiencing and interacting with the world, just like we are. But we can't really know it or prove it. It's just a leap of faith we take. Philosophers call that \"the Problem of Other Minds.\" So if we can't even really solve this problem with other humans, it's hard to imagine how we'd approach it for animals whose bodies and brains are much more different from ours."
],
"score": [
10
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iq0n9h
|
Why do two phones in the same room make weird sounds when on a live call?
|
Sometimes even if only one of the phones’ mic is on.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4nhnrr",
"g4ni5qa",
"g4nik0t"
],
"text": [
"This is called feedback and is similar to what happens if you put live microphone near a speaker connected to it. Microphone on one phone picks up a sound, then the other phone plays that sound and the first phone picks it up again and amplifies it in an continuous loop ultimately causing a high pitched noise.",
"Feedback. The same soundsource is „heard“ and „played“ at the same time. The same issue occurs when the microphone is getting too close to the speaker. It’s a feedbackloop. The sound from the speakers go into the mic and come out of the speakers and go into the mic again...",
"The weird sounds are a result of feedback. When a sound is made nearby two phones that are on speaker, phone one is producing a sound (output) and its being received by the second phones input. The second phone then reproduces the sound through its output which is then received by the first phones input. The cycles continues in a feedback loop, as each output reproduced increases the amplitude of the signal. The signal is broken when the sound either is too quiet to be picked up by an input or if any part in the loop (input, output, input, output, etc.) is broken."
],
"score": [
24,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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iq101w
|
How do doctors make predictions of how long someone will live or if they'll ever walk normally again?
|
I was rewatching an old video on YouTube and the guy was able to walk again after 10 months of practicing yoga and losing 140 lbs. If no one on earth can exactly predict when someone will die or if they'll be able to walk again, how and why do doctors come up with these predictions? URL_0
|
Mathematics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"There will always be outliers who defy expectation. However, statistically speaking, most aren't so lucky. The doctor wants to give people an understanding of their likely future so that the patient may start to make informed choices about what they want to do. To make these predictions, doctors would look at the person's injuries and compare them to other similar cases. They know that most people who sustain certain types of injures tend not to be able to walk again. While occasionally someone might be truly lucky and get mobility back, the doctor's responsibility is to inform the patient of their likely future so that they can adjust and cope accordingly. As for predicting death, it is similar. Doctors would compare the stage of the patient's terminal illness against other cases to get an early estimate. Due to all the studies that have been done on such illnesses, doctors know how long it typically takes a given terminal illness to kill someone after it reaches a certain stage. Following that, they would watch the patient to see how quickly the disease progresses for them, and possibly adjust that estimate.",
"I also wonder how much of it is how the doctor explained / what the patient heard. Example: you received a specific cancer diagnosis. Your doctor informs you that the 5 year survival rate is 10%, and probably explains more about what that means. But some people might hear 'I'm going to die in the next 5 years', which is not what is being said. So if they live to 10 years, they might say 'see, doctors know nothing', but the doctor gave accurate statistics. It's just that many people (doctors included actually) aren't great at interpreting statistics.",
"I am a doctor. Have been for 10+ years. I have maybe a handful of times given someone a prognosis of when they will die, almost always only when they are already on their deathbed. And the estimate is extremely vague, like \"within a few days or weeks\", because you cannot know. I never say \"you have 6 months to live\" or whatever specific like that, because that's just guessing, and you are much more likely to be wrong than right. I hate it when other docs do this, but fortunately most I work with do not do it either. I have seen enough prognoses go wildly wrong to know better than to make glorified guesses.",
"Doctor here. It all depends on what they’re dying from. A lot of the mortality predictions come from cancer research - from large studies you can say that median survival is 3 years, ie if we took a hundred people in your situation, half would die before 3 years, the other half would live longer. If it’s a dialysis patient, you expect about a week after they stop dialysis. In my experience patients don’t often ask as much as you’d think. Often it’s family members towards the end of life. I also use the “crystal ball” phrase. It’s common to say things like “long weeks to short months”. In the last stages of dying, it can be quite variable from long hours to weeks. Once someone stops eating and starts sleeping most of the day, you’re talking within days. Once they develop a pattern of breathing called Cheyn Stokes, it’s a day or two",
"It depends on what exactly your issue is, and how likely it is to be something that can \"fix itself.\" For example, if you break your back at the C3 Vertibrae, and it severs your spinal column, there is basically no chance you will walk again: your spinal nerves can't re-attach in the healing process, and won't, barring some SUPER rare cases where someone got lucky and either the bone was reset just right and their spinal nerves literally knitted themselves together. But this was such a rare occurrence that the person it happened to, was studied for decades, and an autopsy of the person suggested that it wasn't a complete fracture in the first place. In other issues like chronic diseases where it is a \"you have X months to live\" it is usually an estimate based on how long you have before a vital organ fails, and how long that will take before the human body fails due to the toxins that will eventually build up/do damage in the process, and whether medical treatments exist that can replace that biological function, like dialysis for Kidney failure.",
"Let's say you are feeling tired, do not have fever, but you are coughing and have sore throat. You decide to take some time off from school or work, until you feel better. What would your prediction be for when you will be back? How would you make that prediction? The answer is the same as the answer to your question: Doctors see many patients with patterns of symptoms for a set of diseases. They also observe all of these patients after treatment. They record the results, publish papers. Doctors also read studies from many other doctors and learn from their experiences. Just like you understand the symptoms of cold well and generally estimate accurately how long it takes to feel better, the doctors understand diseases they have studied. Just like how a cold sometimes lasts 3-4 weeks for some unknown reasons and your predictions can be wrong, doctors also can make bad predictions.",
"I am a surgeon. The best answer I can give you is similar to the others, but i will try to expand on it For conditions that are common, for example cancer, there are thousands and thousands of data points for patients. Age, stage and grade of tumour, comorbidities, spread to lymph nodes metastatic disease, etc. These factors often interact in complex ways, but some very smart people have created models and risk calculators to help with predictions. For cancer, most predictions are made based on median survival. This refers to the amount of time passing where half the patients are still expected to be alive. As an example (skip to the end if you're not interested) a risk calculator exists for patients with metastatic kidney cancer. It has 5 risk factors. If you have none of them, median survival in 20 months. One or two, 10 months, and 3 or more, 4 months. This information can help patients make decisions about which treatments they are interested in and how aggressively they want to fight their disease. But as I mentioned above, this is median survival, not a crystal ball that applies perfectly to you as a person. Physicians are often poor at having these conversations for a number of reasons that I would be happy to get into in a separate response if anyone is interested. I can also expand if you would like. But hopefully that serves as an introductory answer to your question.",
"I’m a surgeon. We don’t usually use terms like “you have X months to live” because that’s not possible to know specifically. These predictions depend on what the scenario is. In trauma, we compare it to other patients and their expected recovery. In cancer, there are many calculators using the patients data that talk about disease free survival, mortality, and morbidity. We use similar calculations based on NSQIP data to predict outcomes after emergency and elective procedures. But, we prefer to say, “there’s only 15% chance of survival in one month in this scenario” and then go into what that survival might look like (nursing home, feeding tubes, drains, etc).",
"Physical therapist here. I get to answer this question with patients quite often in the hospital. Of course it depends on several factors (working with PT, physiatrists, prosthetics and orthotics, etc). Some people can physically take steps with assistance after they are told they will \"never walk again\" but their walking is not always functional. It also depends on how you were walking before whatever incident. After years of practice, I have a pretty good sense of how someone will walk again after their first week with PT in the ICU.",
"I'm not sure if anyone else brought up this point but that guy put a lot of work into his recovery. Most doctors are basing their predictions like that off patients they had in the past, I'm not sure how common it is for a patient to put as much work as that guy did. changing his diet, losing 140 lbs, getting an exercise routine. He is putting in more work than a lot of healthy people",
"ER doctor here. I can't make great predictions on when someone will walk again, or how long they/ll live with a new diagnosis of cancer. But, I can pretty accurately predict how long you have left (minutes, hours, days) with one very important test called the Arterial Blood Gas. Its a blood test we obtain from the arterial blood and it gives us a data set of a few values, including blood pH, partial pressure of O2, partial pressure of CO2, and lactate level, among as few other things. I think my Respiratory Therapist friends can also attest, after you do this job for awhile and it becomes intuitive, these collection of numbers paint an overall picture on whether someone's respiratory/metabolic compensatory processes are doing well, compensating, or failing. & #x200B; The numbers mean nothing if you don't know how to calculate and interpret them. In fact, most students/residents are able to correctly calculate them, but have trouble extrapolating that to a prognosis. At this point, I can quickly glance at the numbers and have a good idea if the patient in front of me is about to die if I don't do something quick, will die no matter what I do, will make it through the night but will die in the morning, or can be stabilized, but will likely not maintain survivability over the next few weeks. & #x200B; It seems like mumbo jumbo, but over time I am surprised by how accurate my guesses are. For example, one time an old man with shortness of breath had pristine vitals. Normal blood pressure, heart rate, etc. Looked well. The Arterial Blood Gas suggested he was likely to decline. In this instance, the he and the family opted for Comfort Care (no interventions as his cancer was very progressed). I told the family that, without intervention, he was likely to rapidly decline within the hour, and he would likely pass in about 2-3 hours. Like clockwork it happened exactly like that.",
"For death, we guess. It's an educated guess, but still. Mum had cancer they said maybe 3 months. She died in 2 weeks. I've had patient's linger for days to weeks. Others go downhill very quickly and pass.",
"Doctor here: You can’t really do this, except on a handful of diagnosis, there are big studies that compare outcomes based on factors that the patients have, age, weight, etc, and in cancer we use the type of cancer as well as the stage of it (how bad has it gone). These studies tell you roughly how much people who have certain characteristics live with a diagnosis, I personally don’t like to do predictions but I’ve met oncologist who actually do them very accurately. There is a great debate on whether predicting mortality is ethical or not.",
"There's no secret, science, or trick behind it. When you do something a bunch of times, you get pretty good at predicting what'll happen. A basketball player who throws a lot of balls will get pretty good at knowing where a ball is going to land. A lawyer who handles a lot of criminal cases is going to get pretty good at knowing what sentence a specific judge is going to hand out. A doctor who treats a lot of people with a specific condition is going to get pretty good at knowing when that person's going to die. It's all just a guess, based on previous experience.",
"I'm an MD. The question is so broad because it's a very different question/anwser in different clinical settings (geriatric patient dying in the ICU from sepsis vs pediatric cancer diagnosis) , and crosses different diagnoses and pathology. Usually these types of assessments are multi-factorial but a few points: 1. \"Doctors told me I only had 2 days/weeks/months to live\" or any permutation like that is almost never said in that format. That is usually a marketing or self-promotion trope that is used to sell you on a story or product. Doctors talk more broadly. \"For stage 4 cancers the 6 month survival is usually low, honestly we could be looking that time frame or less because of x,y, or z factors\". 2. I always look for reversibility. End-organ damage is a big one for critically ill patients in particular. If tissue is dead there is no way to make it un-dead. If your kidneys fail and don't respond to treatment and you are suddenly dialysis dependent we crossed a certain threshold. If your ejection fraction of your heart is low because that heart muscle is dead (it can be low for other reasons..excluding those) then we can't expect that function to recover only managed. 3. Always consider the broader context of the patient's health. If someone's grandparent has dementia and has lost function every year for the last 5 years and now they have a diagnosis with limited reversibility... It's silly to expect them to every have a quality of life better than what their established baseline has been if there is a major insult requiring ICU care as an example. 4. For patient in the hospital that are really entering the phase of actively dying (signs of death, nothing medicine can reverse) we look at trend in vital signs, end-organ damage, failure to respond to treatment. Later signs include agonal breathing, skin mottling. By then we've usually already spoken to the family about changing or goals from treating the pathology to treating any pain and air-hunger and making the patient comfortable (i.e. we are shifting our goal in particular because there is no demonstrable reversibility). Prior to that we always give a warning shot before giving bad news and then say something like \"\\[the patient\\] will not survive this hospitalization, it's hard for doctors to predict but there isn't much time\". For certain situation it needs to be direct. It's always nested in a long sweeping summary of what has happened, why there was no improvement, and how we can move forward. 5. So a summary to that is: it's a combination of blood work, imaging, vital signs , physical exam, reversibility of problem + the context about the patient's health + what the published data shows about that particular disease stage. (Sorry not a great ELI5)",
"From my experience as a physician, I've found that predictions regarding longevity with a disease or return of function after a disability are rarely correct. We can say what other people similar to the person have experienced but it is an imperfect prediction at best. I don't speculate on this kind of thing unless the patient is insistent that I come up with a number or a \"yes or no\" answer. When I see posts about \"The dOCtER said I'll NeVeR WaLk AgAIn“ I often shake my head because I know that the doctor was probably forced to make a prediction because that's the misconception perpetuated by the dramas on TV.",
"I think the \"you have X weeks to live\" is a product of hollywood more than it is reality. No doctor I've worked with makes predictions like that. They might say something like \"the data shows that most people take X weeks to recover\" or talk about 5 year survival rates with the patient, but I've never heard them say \" you have X months to live\" because, as you note, they just don't know. They've all had patients who improve for a while, only to suddenly deteriorate and pass. On the flip side, they've all had patients who beat the odds for years, sometimes even decades. The only time I've seen them make a specific prediction, is when filling out Death with Dignity paperwork, which requires the patient to have less than 6 months(in my state at least).This is usually based on averages I assume, but honestly it could just be an (informed) guess.",
"Analysis of decades of patient data has allowed doctors to give fairly accurate predictions regarding outcomes"
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[
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[
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iq19xk
|
What is a 'Flick' when it comes to movies?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4no0ys",
"g4o6bl6"
],
"text": [
"Flick is just another word for a movie. It comes from the word \"flicker\" because of how they look on the screen (it's a not consistent brightness lighting up the movie on the big screen, it changes rapidly)",
"* For decades movies were shown on film projectors. * These devices rapidly show a series of still images imprinted onto a film strip that is run through the projector. * For each frame of this film strip, the projector grabs the frame and holds it still for just a moment. * Then a shutter blocks the light while the frame is released and the next frame is moved into place. * Then the shutter is removed and the new frame creates a projection on the screen. * This constant blocking and unblocking of the light from the projector creates a flickering light, especially in the back of the theater where the projector is."
],
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7,
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
iq1ftl
|
How is something digitally unduplicatable?
|
Not a programmer and don't have much knowledge of code but... In the physical world though there are ways of duplicating things, i.e moulds in a factory, but most things are unique and not easily duplicatable. In the digital world, I would presume it's the opposite, most things are easily 'duplicatable' because you can just copy and paste code. How are things in the digital world made 'unduplicatble?' Is it just a case of hiding the code? Therefore it is just difficult to duplicate not impossible.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4nrhoo",
"g4ntl7n"
],
"text": [
"Basically yes. Code can easily be copied and pasted. That's why companies execute important code at their own servers (the backend) and not on the client side. And applications that run only on the computer (client), like photoshop have their code obfuscated and turned into an executable ( a binary file that only a computer can read). There are programms that try to reverse this process, but the code still won't be good to read. So you can't modify it easily and then they hide code to verify that the programm wasn't modified and has an active license, while on the other hand \"hackers\" try to bypass said functionality.",
"This is the problem with DRM and copy protection... How do you protect something against unauthorized duplication and tampering while at the same time giving it to the user in such as way that you can't control what they do with it? The answer is you can make it very difficult, but you can't make it impossible against a suitably motivated and skilled adversary. For example software can phone home via the internet to confirm the user bought it, but someone could simply edit the software to remove that check... you can check if the software has been tampered with, but that's still just more software that can be tampered with. You can issue an update that changes how copy protection works, but I can just not update and keep the old version. You can escalate this a long way, but it can't go on indefinitely."
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6
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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iq1mdn
|
Why do news broadcasters report on what politicians will say in speeches before they have said it?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4nsn8i",
"g4nx0ce",
"g4o9ufk",
"g4o93qd"
],
"text": [
"It is to the advantage of the politician to get there message to as many people as possible. Therefore, politicians often provide information about their speech to the press ahead of time. This can generate more interest in the speech (e.g., \"so-and-so is expected to say...\") as well. The more people think and talk about a politician, the more they remember them -- that's usually a good thing come election day.",
"Because everyone wins that way. - the press need content for a 24 hour media cycle and often several news programmes a day. This way they can report what will be said in the morning, the saying of it in the afternoon and some thought on it (maybe vox pops in a local town) later on. They get three hits (at least). - the politician will press release key parts of the speech and let it get out. That way they can offer exclusives to some press (to keep them sweet) and get their message repeated in more news cycles. In some speeches (budget speeches or policy announcements) early leaking can allow some feedback too. I.e. you aren't sure the public's perception about your next step on Coronavirus. Why not leak it, get comment from the opposition and public and then change it if needed. Also by leaking some parts of a speech you can control what questions are asked. So you could say something bad that you can row back on and the news cycle will be about that rather than the really bad thing you announce silently behind it. For example 'we are going to increase tax on burgers by 100% because they make you fat!' Then said politician answers questions on this all day only he news causing a small furore with burger firms. Also in the speech (but not pre-release) is a comment on increasing mass surveillance of citizens . Your politician then say 'Look you're right. I've listened and the burger tax is not the right thing.' and gets off (relatively) free from scrutiny because burgers is a better and easier story than mass surveillance.",
"Because most of the time, it's an ad. Same as actors going from late show to late show before a movie release. Advertisement.",
"How do they summarize in advance when the politician makes up everything he says.... on the spot?"
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|
[
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[
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|
iq1q8i
|
Why do we prefer our heads elevated as opposed to flat on the ground when sleeping?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4nyucc"
],
"text": [
"The neutral position (meaning the position at which the fewest muscles are contracted) is not with the back of your head in line with your back (and therefore, your spine perfectly straight). This is actually quite a difficult position to hold, check in a mirror - try to push your head back in line with your back. It hurts. The natural position is with your head slightly forward, and slightly tilted down. This employ the fewest muscles (due to the center of gravity being in the right place, and the natural curvature of the spine). When you sleep without a pillow, gravity pushes your head down so it is in line with your back, beyond the neutral position. This requires muscles to contract. A pillow counters that, and allows your head to be in a more neutral position. More muscles resting = more comfortable."
],
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3
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iq1ux2
|
Why does freezing water in an ice tray only sometimes form ice cube ‘stalagmites’?
|
[Picture]( URL_0 )
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4nvheb",
"g4nvjb4"
],
"text": [
"IT is pretty simple - ice expands as it freezes. Ice first forms around the outside of the ice cube, and over the top, locking the water inside. But as that water continues to freeze, it expands, creating a crack in the ice and forcing water through it. That ice freezes around the outside, and more water is pushed upwards through it, forming a tube. Water keeps being pushed out and freezing on the top - forming a spike. This can also happen on freezing puddles and small lakes, forming enormous spikes.",
"When water gets frozen quickly in supercooled conditions sometimes the surface becomes covered save for a small hole. Water expands when it freezes, forcing the water underneath to go through the hole and freezing into this spike shape."
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"score": [
4,
3
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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iq229z
|
Why molecules are formed?
|
Doesn't more electrons mean more repulsion?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4ny4dz",
"g4oa68z"
],
"text": [
"There's something called the octet rule, it says that for a molecule to be stable it has to have 8 electrons in its last valence shell so it has the same electronic configuration as a noble gas, so when a molecule is formed it has 8 electrons on its last energy level, that's why noble gases don't react, because they already have 8 electrons on the last valence shell.",
"So, all systems end up in states with the lowest energy. Just like rolling down a hill, everything moves towards the lowest possible energy state. In the case of atoms, there is a base amount of energy in each atom, and when you form a molecule, the total amount of energy is actually lower than just having the free atoms. Yes, the electrons repel each other, but that's not the only force at play. There is still an attractive force between the protons of one atom, and the electrons of another. At the point where those balance, you get your lowest energy, and then you have formed a molecule."
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4
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|
[
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[
"url"
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iq22p3
|
why do surgeons bother scrubbing all the way up to their elbows, but then it is covered by sleeves and gloves?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4nzwrj"
],
"text": [
"Best practice, and a bit of the old belt-and-suspenders approach - scrubbing and donning gown and gloves each help reduce contamination in the operating room, but both together help reduce the risk greatly. There is no perfect containment system - gloves and sleeves are very good at reducing transmission of pathogens, but are not perfect. Nothing is. The \"cost\" of thoroughly scrubbing up is an extra minute or two, which is very low, especially when compared to the hours and hours a typical surgical procedure can take. The benefit if it prevents even one infection over a surgeon's entire career far, far outweighs the cost of scrubbing."
],
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30
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
iq28xh
|
Why do men's and women's clothing have buttons on opposite sides? Is it simply to help distinguish which body type its been fitted for or is there some other reason?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
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"g4o0dp7",
"g4oieyu",
"g4oou3m",
"g4pj8hz",
"g4oebgo",
"g4p16cb"
],
"text": [
"As I understand it, it's due to tradition mostly. In times past a gentleman would dress himself, and a lady would have a servant assist her in dressing, so buttons were reversed in order to make it easier for the servant.",
"The majority of people are right handed. It is easier to push a button through a button hole with your dominant hand. Therefore the button on mens shirts is on the right hand side of the shirt. So why are women's buttons on the left? Well, it's a classist throw back. For the majority of European history women of lower classes made their own clothes. Because of this, the only women who bought cloths from a tailor were rich women. Because rich women had servants who assisted them in getting dressed the buttons on their cloths went on the left, thus making them fall on the right frome the perspective of the servant who is helping her get dressed. Then no one ever changed it when women stopped having servants.",
"Historically it’s the answer others have given. Today it’s just an easy way to make sure you’re not buying the wrong thing at goodwill. Or a great way to pick on your friends that did not know. [obligatory Michael Scott clip]( URL_0 )",
"My understanding was it also kept men from seeing inside the blouse between the buttons when they escorted women on the right hand side of the woman (to keep their sword arm free).",
"A lot of men's formal wear is descendent from military garb like Blucher boots and riding coats. The breasts close left over right so your sword wouldn't be caught inside when you drew it. As for why women's would be reversed, I don't know. But formal clothing has something of a small tradition around that. The reason American ties go right shoulder to left hip (instead of following the lines of the lapel breasts like everywhere else) is that the Brooks Brothers reversed theirs in \"deference\" to the UK back when they were starting.",
"I read years ago, that it's because men had their weapons holstered/sheathed on the left side, making it easier to draw it.",
"This way men and women can undress each other while facing one another. In case the woman dressing servant answer is wrong."
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
iq2agq
|
The difference between name brand and generic medicines and why, in the case of prescriptions, the vast difference in pricing.
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4o0gtg",
"g4o4bn1",
"g4nzrzo"
],
"text": [
"There's usually no difference between a name brand medicine and a generic medicine besides the price. Usually the name brand came first - a company put a lot of time and money into developing its product. And then their patents expire and other companies get the right to manufacture the same thing. Why is the name brand more expensive? Partially because the company still wants to make sure it gets its money back from its investment to study, develop and run trials on the medicine. Partially because they know people will pay a few bucks more for the \"real\" thing that comes in a nice box as opposed to the Safeway version that looks like a cheap knock-off. Why are prescription prices so high? Because the companies can charge it - the government doesn't regulate the pricing and the pharmaceutical companies don't really have a lot of competition that would encourage them to drop their prices. And then they're also trying to recuperate their money that they spent to develop and trial it.",
"Making a new kind of medicine is long, difficult and costs a lot of money. You have to have very smart scientists, who do a lot of experiments, and test new medicines for a long time to find a medicine that actually works and that is safe for everyone to use and won’t make them sicker. That is why most times only big companies create new medicines - they are so big that they have everything they need. But making a new medicine also means that they have to use all that money (hundreds of millions of dollars) and all that time long before they can make money from selling the new medicine. That is why in most countries, the governments have made a rule that if you develop a new medicine, you are the only one who is allowed to sell that medicine for a number of years, for example, 20 years. This is called a patent, and it is the reason why big companies still spend so much money and time to make a new medicine - they know that when they have a new medicine, they are the only ones who can sell it, and get all the money from the patients who need the medicine. And because the big companies used so much money when they made the new medicine, they also make the medicine very expensive. For example, the medicine itself might cost 3 dollars when it is produced in a factory - this is all the things that you can see from the medicine, like the tablet itself and the packaging it comes in. When you go buy it in a pharmacy, it won’t just cost 3 dollars, though, but 15 or even more. The difference between the 3 dollars and the 15 dollars - 12 dollars- is what the big company uses to fill up its bank account again after it spent so much money making the new medicine in the first place. After the 20 years are done, everyone else is allowed to sell the medicine, too. They start to produce what is called generics. The term generic is very important, because generic means that the medicine must be an exact copy of the original medicine that the big company produced. So now, a smaller company can also produce the same medicine. Earlier, we learnt that the cost of producing the medicine in a factory might be 3 dollars, for example. But unlike the big company, the smaller company doesn’t have to pay for all the time and money that was needed to make the new medicine in the first place. So the smaller company doesn’t have to make that much extra money when it sells the medicine in the pharmacy. That is why a generic version of the new medicine might only cost 8 dollars or even just 3.50 dollars. So, all in all: Brand and generic medicines are the exact same thing. However, branded ones were made by a company who used a huge amount of time and money to make a new medicine, so they are the only ones who are allowed to sell it at first, and they can set the price really high to fill up their bank account again. Generics don’t have to do that, which is why they are much cheaper.",
"Additives may vary, active compounds are the same. The difference in price mostly stems from arbitrary markups."
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
iq2ha0
|
Why can we tell when a sneeze is coming, and what causes that feeling?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4o3k5a",
"g4ood6c"
],
"text": [
"Inside your airway, there are millions of tiny hairs who are responsible for filtering the air you breathe in and out. However, there is also mucus which is ever present, and responsible for 'mopping up' the stuff caught by the hairs. Occasionally, this system is triggered by something it is itself unable to eject from your body. Whatever it is, they need to get it out, but it doesnt have the strength to do so. This triggers a cascade of signals which results in a sneeze. When you 'feel' a sneeze building, what you're sensing is this cascade of signals, before the trigger is pulled.",
"The second I walk outside into the sun, I sneeze. My wife made fun of me until our kids both started to do the same thing 😁. Now she's the weird one for not having that reflex."
],
"score": [
52,
4
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
iq2t1o
|
We can go way longer without food than water but enjoy eating food much more than drinking water. But if water is so important for our health, why we don't crave it enough and sometimes even end up dehydrated?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4o6bh1",
"g4r6aiy"
],
"text": [
"You do become thirsty before you start getting dehydrated. Best way to regulate your water intake is in fact to just take a sip of water whenever you feel a bit thirsty. The body is tuned to regulating its own water to avoid drinking too much or too little.",
"Common misconception between hunger and dehydration. Only you know your body. Your body might subconsciously crave it, but if you dont recognize the signs, you might mistake it for craving food. Here are two random sources to back this up: URL_0 . URL_1"
],
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7,
3
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"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://www.seattletimes.com/life/wellness/hunger-vs-thirst-are-you-eating-when-you-should-be-drinking/#:~:text=Muddying%20the%20waters%2C%20so%20to,growling%20or%20empty-feeling%20stomach",
"https://pkdcure.org/hunger-vs-thirst/"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iq31ev
|
When dust or dirt gets in our eyes and we "blink it away" where does it really go?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4o9yqu"
],
"text": [
"Think of your eye lids like windscreen wipers. The grit is pushed to a central point, then adheres to the eyelid, to be slowly moved to the corners of the eye each time you blink. From there, is leaves the eye."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iq33z8
|
why is it that when you stub your toe against something, for a second it feels like the pain is going away before it actually sets in?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g4oakja"
],
"text": [
"You have multiple types of sensory neurons that contribute to pain response, and they respond to different inputs and transmit at different rates. The initial impact triggers a rapid signal to your brain, which subsides as the other sensory neurons begin generating pain signals."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
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