q_id
stringlengths 6
6
| title
stringlengths 3
299
| selftext
stringlengths 0
4.44k
| category
stringclasses 12
values | subreddit
stringclasses 1
value | answers
dict | title_urls
sequencelengths 1
1
| selftext_urls
sequencelengths 1
1
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
5niqfz | Why do men only go bald on their heads and nowhere else? Their beards, for example. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc1hha",
"dccbwy8",
"dcbrzp4"
],
"text": [
"Testosterone gets converted to a chemical called DHT (Dihydrotestosterone). DHT is what causes hair loss, specifically in people who suffer from male pattern baldness. DHT is an Androgen (masculine hormone), so it's responsible for facial hair amongst other things. While it's present in women, it doesn't have a role to play. It has higher levels in men, and is responsible for a lot of the puberty stuff for us guys.",
"Body and facial hair is triggered at puberty by a chemical called DHT. Your body manufactures DHT from testosterone. The higher your testosterone level, the higher your DHT. DHT is actually far more androgenic than \"pure\" testosterone, and has a stronger impact on personality, sex drive, etc. The hair follicles on the top of your head are different from everywhere else. They are actually slowly killed off by DHT rather than promoted by it. The rate at which this happens depends on your genetics: some guy's heads are basically immune to DHT, while others start losing hair as early as puberty. So in order to lose your hair, you need both high testosterone levels, high conversion to DHT, and hair that is particularly susceptible to it. That's why some guys who take artificial testosterone or steroids, which boost those levels, will accelerate or cause baldness, while it has no effect on others. It is generally the hair on the very top of your head that is the most sensitive. That's why guys often go bald on top but keep a strip of hair around the back and sides of their heads. And it's also why hair transplants, which pull follicles from the back of your head, are usually not just immediately lost again.",
"No expert but believe it is linked to testosterone levels and the vulnerability of the hair follicles that are more susceptible to testosterone that reside on the head. Hair on the head is often finer and more fragile. Genetics also plays a part."
],
"score": [
6,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nirjf | Why does it seem like people are predisposed to avoid prolonged interaction with people who have depression? | Just curious because it seems that, anecdotally, people I have interacted with that have depression (myself included) all seem to lose friends/family members/significant others to it. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcbwiy5",
"dcbw8ni"
],
"text": [
"Depressed people tend not to be able to do the work required to maintain relationships. They are not \"fun to be around\" and are often consumed with their own issues rather than engaged with others. People who understand what's going on can sometimes weather the neglect and remain friends. Others accept the distance.",
"People with depression can be depressing themselves, sometimes. They tend to display a constant stream of apathy and negativity that makes it difficult to continue relationships with. Usually in the short term this isn't a problem, but if it stretches on for long periods of time, you'll start to see a combination of friends actively leaving and others who have simply learned that if they try to do something with the depressed person, that person will either say \"no\" or tend to just go through the motions with no enthusiasm. It's a little bit of a touchy subject because that makes it sound like the blame is on the depressed person, when it's really not on anyone in particular. Depressed people frequently can't help it (beyond getting treatment, which doesn't always work right away), but at the same time others won't set themselves on fire to keep someone else warm in the long term."
],
"score": [
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nitsw | How a bank becomes a bank | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcbu09i"
],
"text": [
"Pretty much the same way any other business begins: raise some money, form a company, apply for whatever licensing is required in your industry (if any), and start trying to pick up customers. In form, a bank isn't significantly different from any other kind of company except that it's subject to banking regulations."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5niv9p | What's the difference between an Uber and an unlicensed taxi? | Isn't Uber basically private cars operated as taxis without taxi license a.k.a unlicensed taxis? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcbt3er",
"dcbu5hk"
],
"text": [
"Uber is not a taxi, it is private hire. A \"taxi\" is licensed to pick up passengers who flag them down from the street or from a taxi rank, without prearrangement. Anybody else doing that is breaking the law (if doing it for payment). A \"private hire\" is just paying someone to drive you from A to B. As long as it is pre-arranged and not flagged down from the street, you don't need a licence. Obviously laws will vary from place to place",
"No. Uber is a way to organize town cars, not taxis. A taxi license gives you the right to pick up fares from the street. This is similar to how a street vendor might need a license to stand on the street corner selling you things. However if you had contacted someone to buy something and you meet on the corner to exchange the goods and money that does not make him into a street vendor. Similarly Uber is a broker of transportation services. Once you have bought a ride the driver is free to pick you up without a taxi license. This is just as legal as pirate taxis taking orders from people and showing up for their ride. Town cars have done this for a long time and are keeping it legal. The part that might not be legal depending on legislation is that in addition to the taxi license you might need a license to take fares for transport. This is the same if you are a taxi driver, town car driver, limousine driver, bus driver or Uber driver. Uber Black drivers are required to have such licenses but regular Uber Pop drivers are not and may be operating illegal."
],
"score": [
9,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nj1t3 | Why are the lanthanum and actinium series not left in with the traditional table of elements? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcbtx13",
"dcbuzd4",
"dcbv6mf"
],
"text": [
"It just makes the layout awkward. You can find versions of the table that have them inline, but they're incredibly wide, and it's a more efficient use of space to put them underneath than inline.",
"You need to ask yourself why that would be useful. It's kind of like a map of the US, they always just show Alaska and Hawaii in the lower left. You still get to find out their relevant data: their size, shape, major cities and capitals. If you wanted to know how to drive to Alaska or sail to Hawaii, you'd need to use another tool to get there... But the majority of the time the reference map has the info you need. The same is true for the periodic table.",
"Those series are the start of new electron orbitals. Columns under Helium and Beryllium (and Helium itself) are the first set of orbitals. Columns starting with Boron through Neon and the next set. Then we have a gap in the periodic table in row 2 and 3 because the next set of orbitals under Selenium to Zinc don't start until row 4. Then, there would be another gap starting at row 6 because a new category of electron orbitals start. To keep the table from being so wide, those series are dropped below."
],
"score": [
14,
8,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nj2lt | Why there is no remote finder button on TV, to track lost remote? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcbu8g6"
],
"text": [
"You would need to add a transmitter to the tv and a repeater on your remote. And costs aside you usually lose your remote quite close to the TV, even though sometimes seems to have been sucked into another dimension."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5njblf | How are some musicians (ex: Robbie Williams) able to create so many songs and albums without getting creative burnout or having songs that sound very similar? | I haven't listened to all of them, but how can one person create **11 albums** on their own? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcbwvi2"
],
"text": [
"Many prolific artists have hundreds and hundreds of songs personally written already. Understand, the vast majority of them are mediocre at best. But somewhere in there, there is a gold nugget or two. Another, and more than likely plausible reason is they have help. Lots and lots of it. There are many hundreds of people that write and sell most of the radio music you here today to the stars that perform therm. Whether it's Taupin for Elton John, or Pink for some guy, or many unknown genius songwriters that just don't have the looks, or age to be superstars. Beyoncé does not write all of the songs. Taylor Swift, nah. Lady Gaga, she did a lot of her own stuff."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5njg37 | how passwords work? what happens in the backend when you type password in gmail,facebook etc?what about phone passwords? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcbwzhg"
],
"text": [
"Well at is most basic you type in something and the computer checks that against the value stored in a database. You might enter \"gaussianpc\" as your username and \"hunter2\" as your password and the computer checks a table of usernames and passwords if the password next to the username your gave is the same as the one you typed. Of course this is an extremely stupid way to do it and nobody does it like that anymore. Instead of writing the password into its table of passwords exactly as you tryped it in the normal way is to \"hash\" it first. Instead of writing your password as it is, it is first run through an algorithm and turned into something like this: \"f3bbbd66a63d4bf1747940578ec3d0103530e21d\". The same password is always turned into the same hash, but anyone reading the table won't know what to type since it is not easily reversed. This means that even the people working at google or facebook or whatever can't easily know what your password is and for example try to use it steal data from a different account where you used the same password. Of course the system is not fool proof and many screw up when trying to build it, but generally the only place your password should be stored permanently is in your head."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5njhd1 | What are the reasons people say communism/socialism does not work with larger populations? | That's always what I hear when people talk about this. 1: "Oh it works in Sweden why won't it work in America?" 2: "Because America has 300 million people." Then that's it. I never heard a proper explanation as to why it won't work. This is not me saying I'm a communist/socialist, I just wanna understand why it doesn't work. And don't say "It does work." I want to know this side of the argument. | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc3pkz",
"dcbyk3o",
"dcbziyr",
"dcc55ip",
"dcbyv4x"
],
"text": [
"Sweden is not a socialist economy. It's a social market or social democracy. Socialism doesn't work in Sweden, since Sweden is not socialist. The underlying economy is a market. People have private property, businesses, and employment. Businesses have owners, shareholders, dividends, and profits. Transactions are for the most part undertaken privately and mostly at prices dictated by the market. Socialism or communism is when most economic decisions about the use and exchange of property are made either collectively or by the state. But Sweden, like the rest of Europe, lets most decisions be made by individuals acting in markets. On top of the market lies some socialist-like regulations (less than you'd think) and taxes (high, but comparable to Italy, France, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, etc.). In fact, for most of its history until the late 20th century, Sweden didn't even have a particularly noteworthy amount of taxes and regulations. Most of its wealth was built during a time when Sweden had slightly lower tax collections than the European average. Even today, though many on both the right and left believe to the contrary, Sweden has arguably fewer restrictions on market behavior than many places in the US. And if socialism is taken in the populist sense of \"making sure the rich don't have more rights than the poor\" Sweden is probably a worse model for socialism than the US. Their income tax rates are high, but close to being flat. The highest tax bracket in Sweden applies to people who make just one and half times the national average, while the US highest tax bracket applies to people making eight and a half times the national average. The Swedish VAT (similar to a sales tax) is much higher than US sales taxes, and VATs are regressive, meaning that they take proportionately more wealth from poorer people than richer people. Sweden collects 4.5 times more in VAT than the US collects in state sales taxes, and these taxes disadvantage the poor. Sweden has business taxes and capital gains taxes that are comparable to the US, sometimes higher, sometimes lower. Least socialist of all, Sweden has no inheritance tax or estate tax. There are rich families in Sweden that are able to pass on old family wealth without any tax, and since the business tax and capital gains tax are much lower than the income tax, the richest Swedes often pay a much smaller percentage of tax than the average working Swede. So Sweden has high taxes on everybody, not just the rich, while the US has one of the most progressive tax systems that mostly targets high-income rich people. What causes people to assume Sweden is socialist is that its tax burden is funneled to social welfare spending. But even this spending is less generous than it used to be and certainly doesn't amount to actual socialism. When you count both state and federal taxes and regulations, the US arguably has as socialist a country as Sweden, with the major exception being that Sweden has more generous welfare. The US spends most of its welfare on senior citizens, but otherwise a lot of the US budget goes to the military. Also, part of the issue is that the US enacts much of its social welfare policy through taxes. The third largest \"welfare program\" in the US is the Earned Income Tax Credit, which normally is not counted as welfare but sends tens of billions of dollars to low-income taxpayers every year. And hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tax exclusions, credits and deductions are used by taxpayers every year. If all of those taxes were collected and paid out by the US government, the US would have a far higher tax rate and far larger welfare state than Sweden. So I think the premise of your question is an issue. Sweden is not socialist. But if we're using a metric where it is, then arguably the US is even more socialist. I'll separately answer your question and ignore the premise that Sweden is socialist. I have a sense that you wanted more than just a long-winded rant on Swedish political economy.",
"Gorbachev's book \"Perestroika\" describes it pretty well. He talks about folks taking \"unearned income\" - basically not doing their jobs but still getting paid. In a smaller community, the group can expel the slug. So everyone in the smaller group has a motive to actually do their part. In the larger example of the USSR, there was no consequence to nonperformance, and no reward for good performance. So, human nature takes over and very few have the drive to work hard and perform. If you got paid the same no matter how hard you worked (or read reddit all day) where would you spend your time?",
"**TL;DR** if you scope from 1928-1970 the USSR was the fastest growing economy (% terms) in the world of that period. It failed to achieve long term sustainability due to internal corruption and lack of *creative destruction* in the economy. There are a lot of people speaking in silly over-generalisations here. First up, communism is a form of socialism, but not all socialism is communism. That's the biggest mistake many people make. It will come as a surprise to many, but the difference between the USA and Sweden is one of degree rather than fundamental ideology. Sweden offers a large social welfare safety net and the USA offers a rather weak one. It's hard to make broad conclusions that the Swedish model could *never* work in the USA based on that. However, let's look at the full throated example and compare the command and control economy of the USSR vs other emerging economies of the time. Take at look at this graph which compares GDP growth of different countries compared to the Soviet Union: URL_0 The USA isn't featured, but rest assured it was basically always growing faster than the USSR. However we are comparing apples with apples here. The USA was already a developed economy by this stage whereas the Soviet Union was still basically emerging from the relics of feudalism. You can compare it best against Japan which is included in the graph but remember that post-WW2 Japan was also functionally a one party state where several large businesses were heavily involved with government in a similar command and control fashion. You can see that shortly after WW2 the USSR actually did better than average. This was because of the mobilizing power of a command and control economy. You don't need to wait for some smart investor to accumulate capital and then build a factory, you simply order people to work and get it done. However notice how it drops off in the later decades while the growth of capitalist economies such as Japan just keep growing (for a while). (FYI that big drop at the end of the USSR's line was what really caused the soviet union to collapse. Various factors made the economy drop off a cliff. Reagan's policies certainly pushed that along a little bit but it was more due to macro factors such as the price of energy, see URL_1 ) This is because in the Soviet Union there wasn't enough *creative destruction*. In a capitalist society, if a factory is no longer economically viable, it will get shut down because of competition from newer and better factories. In a command and control economy, you are targeting quotas. So why build a new factory to make 10% more shoes when you can just try and make your old factory muddle along for a bit longer? It's largely the failure of command and control economies to innovate and adapt via creative destruction that leads to their long term inefficiency. There isn't a proper price signal to say \"shut this factory down, it's no longer efficient\". Having said all of this, note that I am contrasting a \"command and control\" economy with capitalism. This isn't the same thing as comparing a socialist ideology with capitalism. You can have examples of societies with free markets that also operate a socialist ideology, from the strong such as most of western europe as you identified in your question, to a weaker form of social welfare such as we have in the united states.",
"Socialism \"doesn't work\" to the extent that it has bad information. If socialism means no private property and no private market transactions, then there are no market prices. Decisions about how to buy, sell or use property are not made by individual people or businesses, but by the government or by the collective. Those decisions are not based on markets, but on other priorities, like justice or fairness, development, environmentalism, or a litany of other concerns. When we buy things, we think of market prices as bad. Market prices are the cost we have to pay to get the things we want, maybe even the cost stopping us from getting things we need or deserve. We like socialism in spirit because it sounds like we can suspend prices and get everything for free. But market prices are good. Market prices are information. Market prices inform buyers and sellers about how valuable something is. Buyers and sellers can use that information to plan accordingly. I'll give a good thought experiment from a country that tried to manage a mostly socialist economy. The peasants and workers of the country needed bread, which was a staple food for longer than anybody could remember. Expensive bread meant starvation and cheap bread was a sign of the good times. So the country dictated a price of bread that was very cheap, so that anybody could afford bread. This was supposed to be humanitarian and fair, to make sure nobody starved. But they set the price so low that people were buying bread and feeding it to their livestock. The price of bread was cheaper than raw grain or animal feed. Bread is more nutritious than grain or feed, so the farmers started buying lots of the very cheap bread. Soon the shelves of stores in any community serving livestock farmers ran low on bread. Nobody could buy bread legally at any price, because the farmers bought up all the extra bread. Some people who already had bread start selling it illegally on the black market, for way over the socialist price. The pricing information told the farmers that bread was not any more valuable than grain, so they should use as much as they need instead of grain. Now if we snap our fingers and the government adopts a free market system for bread, things change. So the shelves are empty, a black market started, and the livestock have lots of bread. Then the free market price suddenly skyrockets. Since the shelves are empty, this doesn't matter much, but the stores are able to get some bread from the black market, which is now legal. But this high price is a signal to bakers that bread is very valuable and they should make a lot of it. So the bakers get to work. When the first new load of bread hits the stores, there still isn't enough to go around. So who gets bread? The people willing to pay high prices get bread first. The farmers are fine going back to grain and feed for their livestock, so they stop buying bread. Some people really like bread and so they pay the high prices. The people who don't think bread is worth the price will just buy other things. Eventually the market levels out. Bread is back in the stores, but it lands at a level that's more expensive than grain and feed. So most people think bread is worth it for groceries, but not livestock. This is a good use of resources. Under socialism, all the time and value of making bread - milling the wheat, adding ingredients, making the dough, baking the dough, transporting it to stores - was wiped out by the socialist pricing. That price said all the work of the bakers was worth exactly zero over the value of the wheat when they started. Well that is a huge waste. Under the market, the value of making bread was balanced with the needs of the buyers. The price sends information - bread is too expensive to be a replacement for animal feed, so don't waste all the bread. The issue with socialism is it messes up the information in prices. When socialism changes the price of goods, or ignores prices completely, it causes people to waste resources. If you waste resources too much, you get shortages, black markets, and poverty. So far, every country that's tried full socialism has had to back off of it, including the Soviet Union, North Korea, Vietnam, China, Eastern Europe, Cuba, and so on. Even in North Korea and Cuba, elements of private market transactions have arisen in pockets of otherwise communist authoritarian countries. Market prices are information. Sometimes we don't like that information, and we think socialism will give us more pleasant information. But economies work best when they have better information.",
"I'd argue that ultimately no socialistic/communistic system can work in the long-run regardless of scale (see the Plymouth Colony as an example). One of the underlying reasons scale is used as an argument against Communism/Socialism is psychological in nature, and rather logical. Let's say there's a communist or socialist village of 100 people. The village is small, so everyone knows everyone else. That means they know what each other has and what they need pretty easily. It's a tight-knit community, and everyone can relatively easily help each other. Now, let's increase its size to 1000 people in a city. Still pretty small, but now there are groups of people that know each. It's more difficult for Bob to know about the needs of Jane on the other side of the city... but not enough to horribly effect anything. At this point, a central authority is necessary in order to be able to communicate with everyone. So now when Jane needs bread and Bob just produced some, the authority can allocate that bread over to Jane. This is when the cracks start to show, in my opinion. Expand this example more and more and you get [the Soviet famine of the 1930s]( URL_0 ) in which bread was available, but being poorly reallocated by the central authority, the USSR."
],
"score": [
12,
5,
4,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://artir.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/all19301.png",
"http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Why-Todays-Oil-Bust-Pales-In-Comparison-To-The-80s.html"
],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%9333#Reasons"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5njoae | When you are stretching really intensely, like when you wake up, why does your ability to hear diminish greatly? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc2nbz",
"dccfy50",
"dccl37u",
"dccjbzk",
"dcctuvo",
"dcckz3o"
],
"text": [
"Tensor tympani muscle. Connected to eardrum. Usually involuntarily activated to dampen sound of chewing. Cheers",
"When you temporarily lose your hearing notice if you are also clenching your jaw intensely or yawning. Either causes changes in your ear canal, mainly the eustachian tube (a pressure regulator). This causes dampening of sound to balance the changes in pressure",
"I usually just hear a fairly loud, low, rushing water type of sound when I stretch or yawn. Is that what we're talking about, or am I weird?",
"I realized that I could voluntarily do this as a young kid by yawning. I would yawn and feel it in my ears and just taught me self I could do it anytime. I would do it if I didn't want to hear something and it wasn't polite to cover my ears and I'm mind blown that it's actually a thing other people can do",
"Also, an important thing to be noted is you are probably flexing a muscle called the tensor tympani. It is a tiny muscle in your ear that holds onto the bones in your ear which conduct sound. The ear drum kind of works like a hammer beating on a drum and the tensor tympani muscle is like attaching a string to the hammer, which only allows it to hit the drum so hard. The entire purpose of this muscle is to tense up before loud sounds in order to protect the inner workings of your ear. When you stretch in the morning, this inadvertently tenses this muscle, which you can \"hear\" as a woosh, or it may just be quieting all other outside sounds. This muscle is usually under involuntary control, however some people can also do it voluntarily. Just like blinking is automatic, but you can also do it if you think about it.",
"Similarly, whenever I do several minutes of intense stretching I always get incredibly cold, like all the heat was just wrung out of my muscles and I literally shake and shiver. Anyone experience anything like this and/or have an explanation?"
],
"score": [
3094,
1648,
250,
46,
41,
10
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5njqkb | Why is it we feel very motivated towards the night and when waking up in the morning we don't have the same drive? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc8tks",
"dccbkge"
],
"text": [
"So you're in bed about to sleep and you start thinking of things you want to do tomorrow. Let's just say that one of your goals is to read that book thats been sitting on your bookshelf. You'll feel really motivated and excited to read the book TOMORROW. But think of it this way, if you're so excited, why not just flip through a couple pages right now before sleep? You most likely won't and you'll say to yourself \"Well I'm going to sleep anyways so I'll do it tomorrow.\" You feel motivated because you know you don't have to do it now.",
"As you are drifting off into dreamland you are more susceptible to fantasy. \"Yes I will loose 50# by summer.\" When you awake you have to face the reality of actually exercising and being hungry. Do your real planning in the morning and you will find your plans easier to accomplish."
],
"score": [
15,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5njrak | Why Stephen Hawking is the long-lived person with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), what is the difference between Him and the others with same disease? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc1szl",
"dcbz2f4",
"dcc6o1l",
"dccbewq",
"dccl6yc",
"dcch388",
"dccdnwm",
"dccyhcq",
"dccevoe"
],
"text": [
"Another part of it is that he has a slow progressing version of it. There was an article a year or 2 ago where one of his doctors said that his ALS had effectively 'burnt out' I don't know if there's any science behind that.",
"The excellent healthcare he receives is part of it: URL_0",
"Experts aren't really sure, but what happens with ALS is that the neurons that control your movements begin to weaken, and thus you gradually lose the ability to control your muscles. Typically someone with ALS succumbs to the disease when they lose the ability to breathe or swallow. In Hawking's case, he has retained the ability to breathe and drink... and with some very attentive care to make sure he doesn't get bedsores from his immobility, this is what has kept him alive. I'm sure that [retaining the ability to communicate] ( URL_1 ) helps his prognosis from a mental health standpoint, as he controls his speech computer by moving a muscle in his cheek. To me that is more fascinating than his ability to fight the onset of his ALS. If that muscle movement were to go... it would be a sad day for all of mankind, as his contributions to the world of physics are nothing short of remarkable. [More on Hawking's ALS and theories of his survival here]( URL_0 )",
"My mom and I briefly discussed Stephen Hawking with her friend whose husband had ALS. There is some speculation in the ALS community that his condition is actually mislabeled. In other words, he actually doesn't have ALS, but rather something different and undiagnosed. I'm no expert on ALS, and again, this is only speculation. It is, however, an interesting perspective coming directly from the people who've directly experienced the disease. It seems to be discussed often among members of the ALS community.",
"I am 2 yrs into als diag. His survival has been spoken at length as to cause of longevity. It would be huge if he would release treatment, diet, etc.",
"There are many different forms of ALS and many different prognoses of it. Some people have an extended life with ALS if their form isn't as fast and progressive. I had to present on this once and this disease is affected by a nucleotide repeat disorder. So, the more nucleotide repeats someone has with the disorder, the more severe version they would have. There are many other factors that contribute to ALS but the nucletide repeat is what I know. Also, our professor spoke about his friend with ALS who survived a long time. Many times persons with ALS will pass away by choking on food or something else. But, if you have a lot of around the clock support around to help you, such as family or a caretaker who helps to feed you and make sure to save you if you choke, it helps prolong the person's life. So perhaps he has a lot of support and doesn't have a severe form of ALS.",
"He likely has an atypical variant of ALS, or another disease process altogether such as spinal muscular atrophy (albeit atypical variant as well) with sparing of muscles of respiration.",
"Each person is different. Generally, an ALS diagnosis has about 1-10 life expectancy (3-5 years average) depending on the severity. Hawkings, who turned 70 last Sunday, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at the age of 21. My father was diagnosed with ALS last year. It's crazy because Stephen Hawkings will probably outlive my dad and he has had the disease for almost 50 years. I would love to know how he has lived this long with a diagnosis that should have (statistically) taken his life almost 40 years ago. What is he doing that could help my father and many others?",
"Some people now think that Lou Gehrig himself [perhaps did not have ALS]( URL_0 ). Although as I understand it, an autopsy was never performed and no CNS tissue was collected, so we'll never know for certain."
],
"score": [
171,
122,
72,
68,
67,
14,
8,
7,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6017878/Stephen-Hawking-I-would-not-be-alive-without-the-NHS.html"
],
[
"https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stephen-hawking-als/",
"http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-computer.html"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/aug/17/lou-gehrig-disease-baseball-death"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5njtmh | How do scientists figure out the distance between planets and galaxies? | I could understand it's easier to measure from the moon and back since we've been there but when I see articles stating "Scientists have found the furthest known galaxy", how in the world would they know how many light years it is and how do they calculate that? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc8j5o"
],
"text": [
"Let's say I gave you a ruler, and told you to measure the length of Manhattan. How would you go about doing that? Obviously, measuring it one foot at a time would be impractical. But you could use the ruler to measure the length of one of your steps. You count how many steps were in a city block, then just count the number of blocks between the Staten Island Ferry and the Harlem River. It wouldn't be perfectly accurate or precise...not all your steps would be the same, and not all city blocks are the same. But it would be good enough to tell you it was 10-15 miles long, and definitely not 5 or 50. We measure stellar distances the same way, with what is called the Cosmic Distance Ladder. This starts with the size of earth's orbit. This was first measured in the 18th Century by observing Venus pass in front of the sun and later confirmed with radar and spacecraft. This provides us with a precise figure for the Astronomical Unit (AU), which is the basis for the measuring the distance to the closest stars. Hold your thumb out at arm's length, and look at it, first with one eye closed, then they other. You'll notice how it seems to jump back and forth compared to the background. This is called parallax, and we could estimate the length of your arm from how much your thumb is jumping. We can do the same with a star, by observing it on January 1st, then looking at it again on July 1st. If it is close to the earth, it will jump a little, because the earth's position will have changed by 2 AU. We can use this draw a great big triangle, do some math, and come up with a good estimate for the star's distance. 61 Cygni was the first star to be measured in this way, in the early 19th Century, and found to be about 12 light years away. With modern equipment, we can use this technique to accurately measure stars within about 1000 light-years. The next rungs on the ladder are what are known as standard candles. All 100-watt light bulbs are equally bright, so if you knew you were looking at one off in the distance, you could figure out how far away it was by measuring its apparent brightness. The tricky bit is doing it with stars, as some stars are much brighter than others. There is a special kind of star known as a Cepheid variable. They change in brightness at very regular intervals, and the faster the change, the brighter they are. You can measure how fast they change (their period), and know whether you are looking at the equivalent of a 10-watt star or 200 watts. There are Cepheid variables close enough to measure using stellar parallax. Much like you used the size of your step to measure a city block, once you know the distance of one Cepheid, you know the distance of all of them. In the 1920s, Edwin Hubble (namesake of the Hubble telescope) shocked the world when he found a Cepheid in the Andromeda Nebula (now Galaxy), determining it was 2 million light years away, and showing the universe to be far larger than we previously thought. Cepheid variables and other standard candles are good out to a few million light years. Supernovae can be used as standard candles as well, at a few billion light years, but you have to be lucky enough to find a galaxy with one in progress. To go beyond this, you need to measure red-shift. Hubble also noticed the further away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving away from us. This stretches the light waves out, shifting them towards the red end of the spectrum. Elements in stars, like hydrogen, have a distinctive spectral pattern. By observing how far the pattern is shifted, we can tell how fast an object is receding from us, and that value corresponds with its distance. This allows us to measure the distance up to the limits of the known universe, about 13 billion light years away. How do we know it is accurate? Just like we went from a ruler to a step to a block to an island, we climb the cosmic distance ladder. We measure the distance from the earth to the sun directly. We use that value to get the nearest stars through parallax. Some of those stars will be standard candles, and we can use their distance to measure any galaxies we find them in. And some of those galaxies will be red-shifted, so we can use their distance to measure all other red-shifted galaxies. This is a pretty awesome illustration of how science works, one discovery building on another, one technique extending another, often spanning centuries. When a satellite in space gathers data to measure a newly discovered quasar, it is all as based on a chance encounter with Venus 250 years ago."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5njtox | Why did antisemitism continue in the USA post WWII even though the horrors of the holocaust were known? | I don't understand why Jewish people were stigmatised so much even though the USA fought against the Nazis. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcbzqkt",
"dcc0foy",
"dcbztuz",
"dcc09cc"
],
"text": [
"All because something bad happens to someone, or a group of people, it does not mean that people who previously disliked the person/group will immediately come to like them. Now, I don't have any particular dislike for Jewish people. I think the Holocaust was horrible. But if I disliked Jews, why would the Holocaust make me like them? Wouldn't it make me happy that a bunch of people who I dislike are dead? The same logic can be applied to the people in your question. Why would the death of Jews make anti-Semites suddenly like Jews?",
"It's also a good thing to understand that anti-Semitism is not a Nazi invention. It existed long before that, and is arguably at the cultural core of Christianity. Even though Jesus was a Jew, Jews - typically defined as all Judeans rather than an ethnic group - were held responsible for crucifying him. And no matter what Jesus preached, the natural tendency is to despise all Jews for the doings of their ancestors. Britain, Germany and France all saw massive pogroms against the Jews; some suggest that \"hip-hip-hooray\" stands for \"Let's go hang some Jews!\" This was overlaid with the perceived economic superiority of the Jews. In the Middle Ages they did not share the Christians' religious limitations on banking, so they got quite rich. Furthermore, the tendency of Jews to cooperate with Jews in a Mafia-esque fashion is no joke; this explains why there's so many Jews in the upper classes, politics and entertainment. Naturally, the human response here, again, is to hate Jews.",
"Lots of reasons. The USA 'saved' the Jews from concentration camps, but mostly as a side effect of liberating Europe from the Germans. The extent of the Holocaust was largely unknown in the US - under reported and widely unbelieved - until Allied soldiers actually set foot in them. More significantly, neo-Nazi groups have always denied the truth and extent of the Holocaust. And finally, anti semites don't really consider killing a bunch of Jews to be a bad thing.",
"The US didn't fight the Nazis because of the holocaust. Antisemitism in the US has been sharply declining since the Civil War. In the US conservative Christianity was the main source of antisemitism and their power went on the decline during reconstruction. Sorta thankfully the new flavor that dominates Conservative Christianity more or less worships the Jews and Israel. It would be much more rare to find an antisemite who also isn't a racist. Those people aren't what I would call dedicated antisemites. They just hate everyone that isn't just like them."
],
"score": [
6,
5,
4,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5njuag | How do weather stations know the "feels like" temperature of the windchill if thermometers only pick up the windless temperature? | In the title! | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc1286"
],
"text": [
"They use a formula! On a windless day your body & environment radiates heat that makes the air around you warmer than the average temperature. If it is windy, the heat you radiate blows away, so the temperature gradient between your body and the actual temperature is much shorter. Scientists have derived this formula: > New Wind Chill Index = > 35.74 + 0.6215*T - 35.75(V^0.16 ) + 0.4275T(V^0.16 ) > where: > V = wind speed (mph) > T = temperature (F) The math behind the constants gets college level really quickly, but is available if your google-fu is strong."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5njvsu | How are protein and other supplements refined from food? | What's the process for taking vitamins and other things like that out of food and making them into a powder or drink? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc2vvp"
],
"text": [
"The source of protein or vitamins in supplements is rarely food. In the case of protein, the most common source is [whey]( URL_0 ), which is a byproduct of making cheese. Whey is spray dried to separate the protein from fat. The protein is then flavored and processed for use as a protein supplement. The simpler vitamins like A and C can be directly synthesized in a lab. Vitamin D comes from lanolin which comes from sheep's wool, and vitamin E comes from plant oils. More complex vitamins like B12 are produced by genetically-engineered bacteria."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whey"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nk1t3 | Why is a video taken from my phone camera a couple GB but a movie which is much longer is about the same size? | I took a 9 minute video (1080p) from my phone the other day, and it turned out to about 1.38 gigs. But a downloaded movie of the same quality (1080p) is often 1.4 or 1.5 GB while retaining the same quality? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc7oye",
"dcc2n9w",
"dcc2dmr",
"dcc1wfz"
],
"text": [
"It is possible to significantly compress video, but it takes a lot of computing power, too much for your phone to do it on the fly. You could take your video, run it through a conversion and compression process for an hour or so, and wind up with something much smaller that looks pretty much the same.",
"Video compression has some characteristics which affect how it is saved: * It can aim for *more effective* compression to create small files, which takes longer at the \"create\" step, so that it can easily decompress it during the \"playback\" stage; * It can aim for *fast* compression, which cannot make files as small but it can compress at faster speeds, which is a step up from storing the huge raw data of a video file. So, when you're camera is trying to save your video while you're filming it, the camera is taking option 2: it does not have enough time to compress the video file well and still have high quality video. The camera has to save each frame at the framerate speed, because in 1/30th of a second there will be another frame to compress, so it can't waste time making higher-compressed data. The videos you download from the internet were created on server who doesn't care how long it takes to compress a file -- it starts with a lesser-compressed video format, and if it takes five hours to compress that one hour movie down to the tiniest file it can possibly get, it has plenty of time to do so. This is to optimize the file for downloading, so the tradeoff of saving bandwidth is slower compression time. Also , different codecs are optimized for those two different options; the codec your phone is using is optimized for fastness, but the video you downloaded was optimized for smallness. If you were to use a program like Handbrake and convert your phone video to a smaller-file optimized codec, it probably would run for 10x as long as the video takes to play, but it will be a much, much smaller file.",
"The short answer is because it's harder to compress than it is to decompress. Ever unboxed an inflatable bed or innertube that came in an impossibly small box? Taking it out and inflating it is easy. Deflating it and squeezing it back into the original box is harder. Video works the same way. Compressing video is done by looking for patterns in the video. Every single frame is compared to frames before and after it to look for similar elements. The resulting video file is made smaller by describing only the *differences* between frames. Decoding is relatively easy. To play a video, your computer just has to read the video format which says something like: to draw frame 757, take frame 756, but then add this rectangle from frame 755 and move it up 3 pixels, and then change these pixels to these different colors. It's very fast and straightforward to decode. Encoding a video well is hard. For every frame you have to search all over dozens of previous and subsequent frames for similarities and decide which ones are the best matches. With more effort you can compress the same video into much less space with very little loss in quality. So anyway, your phone isn't capable of compressing video very well. It can only compress a tiny bit. Later when you copy the video to your computer you can use the more powerful processor on your computer, and the benefit of more time to spare, to compress the video smaller.",
"I assume you torrented it, as a 2hr movie on iTunes is about 5GB. Either way, an Arri Alexa or a RED normally shoots at > 100GB/min for 2K 24fps. The reason is a difference in the degree of compression, which is why Blu-ray looks better than YouTube. YouTube streams 30fps 1080p at around 3Mbps, while Bluray is usually ~24-32 Mbps. Video Compression is usually done by taking neighboring pixels of similar color and making them one color, thus removing a ton of data. [Apple's movie trailers are of higher quality than YouTube's, so I made a small comparison album]( URL_0 ). Also, did you film in 60fps? Because that's about 20Mbps, which is higher than normal for 30fps, most phones record at ~17.3Mbps. Not a big difference, but if you did record at 30fps, that's good as it preserved more data than ususal. If you did record at 60fps, most phones are at ~23Mbps, so yours is below average. **TLDR:** > while retaining the same quality. It doesn't."
],
"score": [
15,
6,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://imgur.com/a/9nCFU"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nk2bk | If there have already been 2 unsuccessful NFL teams in L.A. why do Dean Spanos and Stan Kroenke think that it will work now? | Los Angeles has had the Rams and the Raiders before and both left. Now they are about to have the Los Angeles Rams and the Los Angeles Chargers. How could two owners think that a city that historically could not support one NFL team can now somehow support 2 of them? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc3ext",
"dcc21wp",
"dcc4e3p"
],
"text": [
"In modern professional sports in the US, franchises move primarily over stadium funding issues, and not over support. Their primary revenue driver is media deals anyway, ticket sales are really about the optics for the television viewer, and not about the small revenue stream they bring in. LA is the second biggest media market in the US after NYC, given that the NFL splits their TV deals into AFC and NFC packages that are currently owned by CBS and FOX respectively, having an LA team in each conference allows them to sell two Seperate TV packages with the LA market included. Once Kroenke was willing to finance his stadium on his own, the last roadblock was removed, and now LA has two franchises.",
"The team leaving the city doesn't mean they weren't successful, it just meant another city made them a better deal. In fact, teams are MORE likely to leave if they are successful because other cities are more likely to court successful teams.",
"It is a fair question. LA is the second biggest city and media market in the US, and its cultural influence is behind perhaps only NYC. By the numbers, it *should* be able to support two football teams. However, unlike other big cities, it is highly decentralized. It is less a city with suburbs, and more a bunch of cities smashed together. People in the Greater Chicago area still tend to think of themselves as living in Chicago. People in Greater LA think of themselves as living in Burbank or Thousand Oaks or San Bernadino. That makes it harder for LA to support a team. People in those cities don't have a strong sense of being from Los Angeles and aren't terribly excited at the prospect of paying taxes for a stadium. Especially when it is a 2-3 hour drive from San Bernadino to see a game."
],
"score": [
9,
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nk444 | How does the brain perceive sound while asleep? Can it learn what to listen for? | When I was younger, my dad would come upstairs to wake my brother and I up for school. Except his way wasn't always conventional... He would SLAM the door open as loud as possible and it would scare the living sh*t out of me. Sometimes the hounds were even let loose of us (two huge Great Danes). I noticed that after some time I would wake up right before he got to the door. After many more days of this, I started waking up sooner and sooner every time. There would even be times where I found myself waking up and not being able to hear his footsteps and yet somehow I heard them while sleeping. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccdxrd"
],
"text": [
"Even while you are fast asleep your ears still pick up sound and send that information to your brain. Your brain tries to work out what sounds it can safely ignore (like the sound of your own breathing/pyjamas moving against sheets) and what sounds might be coming from something dangerous (like a bear/snake/volcanic eruption). Your brain is very jumpy (that's how your ancestors stayed alive) and it wakes you up when it thinks that a noise is a threat, but lets you sleep when it thinks there's nothing to worry about. Your brain also learns which noises are fine and which noises are worth waking up for - that's why when you stay somewhere new you might struggle to sleep with all the new noises for the first couple of nights but after a while you sleep through everything. It's also why you can see babies sleeping on public transport with noise all around them, but if it's the middle of the night and someone slams a car door down the street they'll wake up. With your dad's way of waking you up your brain learned that the noise of his footsteps (or maybe another noise before that) meant you would soon be getting a huge fright, so your brain started waking you up when it heard your dad coming as a way of trying to keep you safe from a potential threat."
],
"score": [
12
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nkds8 | While being put "on hold" on the phone, why do songs played have such dreadful quality, while voices come through just fine? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcce2yc",
"dcc4xpi",
"dcciiap"
],
"text": [
"It's a combination of a number of factors, but the biggest issue is that phone lines have been \"optimized\" to favor voice sounds over other sounds, and as a result many of the upper and lower frequencies that make up the music you're listening to get cut out by the phone's filters. In other words, it doesn't sound like voice, so it gets cut. The result is that the music you hear is messed up. Combine that with systems that play low quality music files/sources to begin with and you can see how things get really bad.",
"They are compressed to hell and have the bit rate lowered so that they can be transmitted over traditional phone lines.",
"Phone lines only transmit the narrow range of frequencies that are used in human speech. Music is comprised of a much wider range of frequencies, and sounds bad when a large amount of them are removed."
],
"score": [
9,
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nkghz | Why do NFL teams claim they cannot survive without a brand new state of the art stadium? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc58vj",
"dcc6x6o",
"dcc9kr8",
"dccbcd3",
"dcc6zgz",
"dccbt3c",
"dcch60n",
"dccdhrg",
"dccd2zh",
"dcc7lee",
"dccgwp2",
"dcceh9b"
],
"text": [
"New stadiums are good for business, so the owners want them. They try to convince taxpayers to fund the stadiums, because obviously that's better than paying for the stadiums themselves. So they try to convince taxpayers that existing stadiums are not usable.",
"Newer, nicer stadiums mean more profit for the teams. So, clearly, they want newer facilities so they can make more money. Major sports leagues intentionally have fewer franchises than there are cities that can support them. This means that the team owners will always have leverage with the city when it comes to things like this, because there is always another city they can move to.",
"Newer stadiums generate more profits for several reasons: 1. Corporate Boxes. These are bought for a whole season atexorbitant prices. These are relatively new phenomenon and 20-30 year old stadiums don't have them. 2. Sells more regular tickets because with the advent of HD TVs the quality of watching games at home has gone through the roof and no one want to go to a old stadium as opposed to a new one with huge jumbotrons and wifi. 3. New stadiums get Super Bowls and these generate huge amounts of money for the team (and city I might add). San Diego's stadiums was at least 20 years out of date. I went there last season.",
"The John Oliver segment tells it well URL_0 In short, it's nothing to do with the sport and all to do with big business trying to palm costs off onto local states. It's a pretty shitty move TBH.",
"Because the owner really wants a new stadium. Older stadiums typically don't have large amounts of luxury suites that they can charge insane amounts of money for. The 49ers for example, were able to collect 400 million from Personal Seat Licenses just for their luxury suites. Keep in mind those aren't tickets to the games, and it doesn't count the 60,000 plus regular seats in the stadium. Those Seat Licenses just allow you the right to purchase tickets going forward.",
"The luxury suites are not subject to revenue sharing. So teams want new facilities with more luxury suites.",
"I wish all teams were run like the Packers. Publicly owned and they have been in the same stadium for 60 years.",
"Because if they claim that, they can convince gullible politicians to buy something they should have to pay for themselves.",
"For a couple reasons. The first is the most practical. Sometimes stadiums either fail entirely (most recent example is the Vikings stadium from a few years ago that collapsed in snow), or the stadiums are so old that it needs upgrades that cost so much is makes it pointless to keep the existing stadium. For example, would it be smarter to buy a $4000 car and spend $16000 in upgrades/parts, or buy a new $20000 car that doesn't need any work? The more common reason, however, is money. Every new stadium gets to charge more for tickets because it's a newer stadium. Also, in the NFL, every new stadium typically gets to host a Super Bowl within a few years of opening. So not only do the owners get to earn ticket revenue from regular season games, they get to cash in on the championship game the NFL hosts each year. This also benefits hotels and other businesses in the immediate area as well.",
"Because fans will stay home to watch the game rather than spend their hard earned money going to a dump of a stadium.",
"Another reason I don't think has been posted here is that people are flocking from NFL stadiums for living room couches. In a lot of cases, the experience at home is just better than what the stadium can offer, especially now with Red Zone, Sunday Ticket and the high cost associated with attending games now. NFL teams are building new stadiums to try to bring the home experience to the stadium. They have better concession offerings, fantasy football areas so people can follow their teams, large screens to display tons of information and replays etc, all designed to make the fan experience more like it is at home.",
"I believe it was the Coliseum where the Raiders play that they had cups taped to the ceiling to catch leaks in the press box. Sure the foundation is stable and the walls will stay up and the field is playable, but it is showing age. It was first opened in 1966, which means it's been open for just over 50 years. Now if it was a simple leak in the press box they might be able to fix that and move on. But the issues are more than than, and they start adding up. The stadium was recently renovated in 1996, for $200 million. Now you're getting into the situation /u/supermclovin described > For example, would it be smarter to buy a $4000 car and spend $16000 in upgrades/parts, or buy a new $20000 car that doesn't need any work? Sure the numbers don't work out so cleanly in reality, but it explains the situation the Raiders are in."
],
"score": [
181,
49,
34,
17,
12,
7,
6,
5,
4,
3,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcwJt4bcnXs"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nkgri | Why do people with tourettes syndrome with tics of swearing shout swear words rather than random words? | I understand it's involuntary but why do they specifically use swear words? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc5b53",
"dcc5888",
"dcc83dz"
],
"text": [
"They don't. Most people with Tourette Syndrome do not have swear words as a tick. Only 10% do. Throat scraping is the most common audible tick, I believe. Other ones can include repeating other people's words or repeating your own words. And, of course, a whole host of motor ticks. Movies and shows are not actually very good at portraying most disorders. Don't get your medical information from them.",
"It is a common misconception that all swear. Often it's random noises, sometimes quite subtle.",
"They don't. It's a misconception, and quite a few people get annoyed by it. Most tics(and most people with tics don't have tourette's) are very simple. I personally have one related to blinking, one that's a very quiet throat clearing sound, and one related to raising my eyebrows but these are my experience only and not to represent anybody else. That being said they could be a huge variety of things, and some of them are more frequent and harder to do than others. It's very possible that having a tic results in some of the worse off people swearing more because it pisses them off, but its extremely rare for someone to swear as a direct result of a tic."
],
"score": [
15,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nkhla | Why is it when im exhausted and collapse on my bed my heart races wildly for a few seconds? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc8r18"
],
"text": [
"When you're standing, your heart has to do more than just pump blood to your feet; it has to pump with enough pressure to bring the blood BACK UP the legs too, and also pump blood up to the brain (both fighting gravity). The heart has a few functional things it can change, but here we'll just talk about how fast it beats, and how much blood it pumps per heartbeat. Obviously, both of those factors are working pretty hard when standing (which also makes giraffes pretty amazing animals), and when switching suddenly to lying down that gravity is instantly not forcing the heart to work as hard. Since it takes a few seconds to adjust how the heart is working, it will still be pumping a LOT of blood with suddenly almost zero resistance. In order to continue pumping correctly (until the heart adjusts), the heart has to pump faster to keep up."
],
"score": [
18
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nkhzx | Why did Prussia declare war on France in 1806? | To my understanding, Frederick William of Prussia declared war on Napoleon in 1806, roughly a year after Napoleon had won a decisive victory in Austerlitz, against the Third Coalition (mainly Austria and Russia). If Prussia wanted to eliminate France as a threat, why didn't they just join Austria and Russia the year before? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc5lad"
],
"text": [
"Prussia wanted France and Austria to stay roughly equal in power, so that Prussia could get in alliance with the weaker of the two, and play them off each other. Early in the Revolutionary period, the Prussians assumed the French were the weaker half. But when Austria got clobbered, Prussia was afraid (correctly) that it was about to get steamrolled by an unstoppable French juggernaut, and tried to stop it, with British and Russian help, before it was too late."
],
"score": [
10
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nkjtv | How do companies profit from data? | Example: So I use facebook, I give them my typical information. I also post bits about myself that facebook has legal access to. What do with this data to somehow make money from my account? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc5zat",
"dcca8gq"
],
"text": [
"They can use your data to target better ads to you, which allows them to charge companies more to place those ads. For example if there are all sorts of pictures of you skiing, ads for ski gear might be more effective to you than to Joe Random.",
"I work for a company that run ads on Facebook. Because of all the data they have, we can specify that we want to target people between X-Y age, what gender, what income, what interests, what other companies the like, etc. This allows our marketing to be much more effective and cost effective because we are not wasting money on marketing to people unlikely to become customers. For example, let's say that BMW wants to market a new vehicle. They could run general ads to a broad audience and pay a lot of money for people clicking on the ads who like cars and like BMWs, but aren't old enough to drive, can't afford one, or aren't in the market to buy a new car right now. Or they can run an ad on Facebook targeting men 35-60, with incomes over $100k who like other luxury car makers. Maybe they even see a correlation to less obvious connections, like people fitting those requirements that watch Mad Men and are foodies are twice as likely to buy a BMW. So they're willing to pay more to reach these people compared to the FB population in general since they are much more qualified leads."
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nkl3o | Why do a lot of singers sound western American when singing in English? | Like I hear a lot of British singers with British accents sound American when they sing. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc88xg",
"dccpzeu"
],
"text": [
"Mick Jagger, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Ed Sheeran, Phil Collins and George Michael all grew up in or near London and have very recognizably British accents. Once on stage, they sing like someone who grew up in New England rather than old. Yet another example is Adele, who has a lovely speaking voice, a very heavy cockney accent, yet her singing pipes do not indicate her dialect. One might argue that Adele’s speaking and singing voices were two different people if listening without visuals. Going beyond the British, we see the same thing with other non-American musicians, such as the Swedish band ABBA, and many others singing in English, yet from various places around the world. It seems like no matter where you’re from, if you’re singing in English, you’re probably singing with an American accent, unless you’re actively trying to retain your native accent, which some groups do. There are several reasons we notice accents ‘disappearing’ in song, and why those singing accents seem to default to “American”. In a nutshell, it has a lot to do with phonetics, the pace at which they sing and speak, and the air pressure from one’s vocal chords. As far as why “American” and not some other accent, it’s simply because the generic “American” accent is fairly neutral. Even American singers, if they have, for instance, a strong “New Yorker” or perhaps a “Hillbilly” accent, will also tend to lose their specific accent, gravitating more towards neutral English, unless they are actively trying not to, as many Country singers might. For the specific details, we’ll turn to linguist and author, David Crystal, from Northern Ireland. According to Crystal, a song’s melody cancels out the intonations of speech, followed by the beat of the music cancelling out the rhythm of speech. Once this takes place, singers are forced to stress syllables as they are accented in the music, which forces singers to elongate their vowels. Singers who speak with an accent, but sing it without, aren’t trying to throw their voice to be deceptive or to appeal to a different market; they are simply singing in a way that naturally comes easiest, which happens to be a more neutral way of speaking, which also just so happens to be the core of what many people consider an “American” accent. --Today I Found Out",
"The answer is the same as when this question was asked last week and probably the week before that. They don't."
],
"score": [
28,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nknwf | The math in this article about Microsoft buying Minecraft. Spending 2.5 billion and breaking even on 25 million in interest or whatever makes no sense to me. | URL_0 | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc70sr",
"dcc7e86"
],
"text": [
"If Microsoft didn't buy anything with its cash and just let it sit in something that gained interest, it would have made $25 million on that $2.5 billion (savings accounts typically are around 1% return). They're saying that the purchase of Mojang and Minecraft is worth the $2.5 billion, and that as long as it's worth that, you don't have to make the $2.5 billion back in returns. It would be like you having $500,000 in the bank and you buy a $100,000 house. The house doesn't have to gain $100,000 in value to bring you \"back\" to even. You're still worth $500,000, but $100,000 is in a house now instead of cash. The house just has to earn what that $100,000 in cash would have earned if you hadn't spent it.",
"You spend money in order to prevent yourself from having to spend as much on taxes while also becoming a larger conglomerate.If they just had that 25 billion on the bank they'd spend 2.5~ billion in taxes on that every year. Secondly , you're only thinking about Minecraft as a video game . It's an IP now, it's ingrained in our children and the society. We have toys and phone cases etc, there will probably be a movie and everytime that happens it's advertising for microsoft."
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nkra0 | Booleans in C Programming? | I don't know why but the explanation to Booleans is not sinking in, I'm finding the explanations more and more confusing everytime I read over them. Can I have a simplified explanation of this? > When using if statements, you will often wish to check multiple different conditions. You must understand the Boolean operators OR, NOT, and AND. The boolean operators function in a similar way to the comparison operators: each returns 0 if evaluates to FALSE or 1 if it evaluates to TRUE. > NOT: The NOT operator accepts one input. If that input is TRUE, it returns FALSE, and if that input is FALSE, it returns TRUE. For example, NOT (1) evaluates to 0, and NOT (0) evaluates to 1. NOT (any number but zero) evaluates to 0. In C NOT is written as !. NOT is evaluated prior to both AND and OR. > AND: This is another important command. AND returns TRUE if both inputs are TRUE (if 'this' AND 'that' are true). (1) AND (0) would evaluate to zero because one of the inputs is false (both must be TRUE for it to evaluate to TRUE). (1) AND (1) evaluates to 1. (any number but 0) AND (0) evaluates to 0. The AND operator is written & & in C. Do not be confused by thinking it checks equality between numbers: it does not. Keep in mind that the AND operator is evaluated before the OR operator. > OR: Very useful is the OR statement! If either (or both) of the two values it checks are TRUE then it returns TRUE. For example, (1) OR (0) evaluates to 1. (0) OR (0) evaluates to 0. The OR is written as || in C. Those are the pipe characters. On your keyboard, they may look like a stretched colon. On my computer the pipe shares its key with \. Keep in mind that OR will be evaluated after AND. [Source link to explanation, it's at the bottom of the sites]( URL_0 ) | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcc8yqz",
"dcc8jfx"
],
"text": [
"I've programmed in C/C++ for almost twenty years and I had trouble following that as well. To be fair to the guy, it is often hard to explain things which have become second nature. When in doubt, use parentheses! The extra characters don't make the code any slower but it'll be much easier to read. Remember that someone may have to debug into this code later (and it could be you). That said, one useful trick with AND's and OR's is that they will return early if the rest of the expression is not necessary. if (first_function() || second_function())) ... the second_function() is skipped if the first_function() returns true. You only need one of them to be true. Conversely, if (first_function() & & second_function())) ... the second_function() is skipped if the first_function() returns false. You only need one of them to be false. This can help. Otherwise, just use lots of parentheses!!",
"C does not technically have booleans. However it use an int to represent booleans where 0 is false and any other value is true. # ! a int not(int a) { if (a == 0) return 1; else return 0; } The AND operator checks if both expressions are true. # a & & b int and(int a, int b){ if (a != 0) if (b != 0) return 1; return 0; } The OR operator checks if either of the expressions are true. # a || b int or(int a, int b){ if (a != 0) return 1; if (b != 0) return 1; return 0; } There are some nuances to this. As noted in the text the not operator is valuated first, then the and and lastly or. You can control this using parenthesis. So !a || b & & c is the same as (!a) || (b & & c). In addition the expressions are not evaluated unless needed. So if you write (a & & b++) b will not be incremented unless a is true."
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nkt4n | The deactivation of Percocet | I was told that Percocet is deactivated if you crush the pill and try to snort it. That is amazing, but how do they do it? EDIT: OxyContin is the correct medication, and it turns to a gel if crushed. Does anyone know the chemistry behind that? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccirqa",
"dcc8odm"
],
"text": [
"There's too much acetaminophen in them. Acetaminophen, brand name Tylenol, doesn't dissolve in water so it will just stuff up your nose and the oxycodone won't be absorbed as well/at all. That's because there's only 5 or 10mg oxy in each percocet but there's 325mg acetaminophen as well as all the binders (inactive ingredients they add to pills to make them bigger, if they made pills like 20mg oxy out of just the oxy they'd be way too small). You can still get high from sniffing percocet because some of the oxy might get absorbed and the rest of it in the powder drips down your throat and when you swallow it, it goes into your stomach to be dissolved. Also you said they used to be able to be snorted but now they can't. That's not true because the formula for percocet has always been the same, however they changed the formula for OxyContin (brand name oxycodone) in 2010 so that if you crush it, it turns into a gel that you can't sniff. You can get around this by breaking the pill into small chunks and dissolving it in a shot glass of Coke/Pepsi and letting it sit for about 24 hours then drinking it, making the whole dose hit at once instead of having it time-released if you had just swallowed the pill.",
"What does deactivated mean? If you crush and snort Percocet, you will get the effect of it."
],
"score": [
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nkyh0 | Why are we afraid of Russia? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccgr4j",
"dcc9vp8",
"dcc9mzu",
"dccb9il",
"dccg7uu",
"dccab5a"
],
"text": [
"There are, right now, really only three power blocks capable of challenging the United States in global affairs: Russia, China, and the European Union. Others may emerge in the near or medium-term future, such as India or Brazil, but they're not quite there yet. Of the three, the European Union is likely to remain a stalwart ally in the near term, given our economic connections, cultural affinity, and generally seeing eye to eye on ideological and moral goals. China often bumps heads with the U.S., particularly in regard to regional control of the South China Sea and the Southeast Asian commercial sphere, but our interconnected economies generally means the benefits of partnership outweigh antagonism. Russia is different. Russia is not a major trading partner of the United States. Russia also does not generally respect or believe in liberal democratic governance and individual rights, which the West considers preconditions for legitimate government. Russia also has expansionary goals and wants to assert domination over former Soviet countries, in direct contravention of our European allies' desire to spread Western democracy eastward. All this is to say that Russia is not a \"sudden\" threat. They have remained a potential threat since the Cold War, only the threat was muted for about a decade or so after the fall of the Soviet Union, when their domestic political turmoil and lack of a modern market economy left them largely unable to project influence abroad. Also, note that while the U.S. and Russia have agreed to mutually reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles, we have *far* more than either of us need to be an existential threat to the other, and maintaining current arms costs money that neither country really wanted to spend. In the last half-decade or so, however, Russia has started to regain its footing, and Putin has felt emboldened to begin reassertion influence outside his borders. Russia has become more brazen about murdering dissidents abroad, and invading its neighbors (with the 2008 invasion of Georgia, and the invasion of the Ukraine in 2014). Putin's government has also been spending the years perfecting and adapting its soft-power abilities in the modern era, becoming masters at propaganda and cyberespionage. It's this reassertion of power in the 2010s that has brought Russia back to the top of the threat board, with the turning point being their launching operations, beginning last year, to target the core functioning of the United States government. This is not something powerful nations do to each other unless they are ready to enter a new phase of outright cold warfare. The U.S. and Russia, of course, have never stopped keeping tabs on each other, but to directly attempt to influence the election, to target one of the country's two major parties -- and the party of the sitting president -- with open cyberespionage, is a little like sinking the *Lusitania*. The U.S. public might not want to be the world police, but we are the leaders of the current global order, and as a whole this country generally benefits from having an open global market to purchase our goods and services. When you're on top of the world, the last thing you want is that world disrupted, so it's in our interest to maintain the status quo. Russia wants to upend it.",
"No, both the United States and Russia still have thousands of active nuclear tipped missiles in silos ready to be fired. The Cold War with the Soviet Union may be over, but a great many of the same people who were former Soviet officials are now part of the Russian government. Putin himself spent a lifetime as a KGB officer. They aren't so much of a threat again as they never actually stopped being one for any real length of time. After the collapse of the USSR the various satellite republics fell away and became their own nations. The reborn Russia went through a period of upheaval where various groups were vying for power, and now it's settled on Putin and his cabal. One of Putin's goals is to essentially retake the territory once possessed by the USSR; something those nations aren't too keen on. The US might not want to be the \"world police\" but Russia can project a fair amount of power into the same places we try to as well. They can set themselves at odds with us and make our own national interests overseas much more difficult. And there is the additional aspect that the United States has numerous formal agreements with European nations to come to their aid if attacked. NATO itself is one such pact. The Budapest Memorandum is another such agreement, which Ukraine sees as already having been violated and the United States having reneged on our deal. Basically we came up with a pact in 1994 that said Ukraine would give up their nuclear arms in exchange for the US protecting them. They gave up their nukes, Russia invaded, we didn't protect them. This is a major blow to the political standing and clout of the US and makes us seem like we won't or can't honor our agreements. That makes other nations that we have such agreements with *very* nervous.",
"Russia and the US still do not see eye-to-eye on a lot of political issues. America is also worried that Russia is corrupt enough to undertake political or military action for something that'd turn a profit. (Such as arming some group in the middle east so ultimately they can get in there for oil rights). And Russia, of course, is worried America would do the exact same. This has been the case for quite some time, it's just become a news highlight following accusations of Russian hacking during the election. Of course, America and Russia are **constantly** trying to snoop on each other's business, so even that's not new.",
"> I thought the Cold War was over and we have both disarmed? There have been significant strides, but the US and Russia still have immense numbers of nuclear weapons. > most Americans didn't want to police the world Most people (including most Americans) don't realize that someone needs to police the world if they want global trade and global shipping to continue, entirely because everyone else is too weak to do it (although quite honestly I'd be more willing to forgive Russia for being weak, given that their economy is still not doing well and they haven't been able to maintain their navy). > Why are they all of a sudden a threat again? Because they've invaded two countries that were pivoting towards NATO and the West; Georgia, and now Ukraine. In addition, the US and Russia antagonized each other more than a little bit concerning the Syrian Civil War.",
"Russia has been doing everything in its power to undermine Western Democracies. Besides their meddling in the American election, they have been launching a disinformation campaign and supporting groups that will weaken Russia's enemies and expand Russia's boundaries. They have been supporting and funding far-right eurosceptic parties in the EU (such as LePen's National Front and UKIP) to disunite Europe. Their government is explicitly behind a lot of these fake news stories that are picked up by the alt-right for propaganda purposes. They recently tried staging a coup in Montenegro to replace a pro-Western PM who was trying to join NATO with a Russian aligned nationalist. Putin's expansionism is a direct threat to the US and it's allies. As far as disarming, we have taken some steps to reducing the nuclear arsenal, but both countries still have enough nukes to destroy the world many times over. Beyond annexing Crimea, Russia has been supporting the secession of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia, and may seek to annex these provinces as well. I don't want America to police the world. I would rather it be done by international representative systems such as the UN. But I would much rather it be done by the US than by Russia. They are not suddenly a threat. It has been continuous. Only in the past few years, however, have they been making such overt power grabs and acting so recklessly as to potentially instigate a war against the west.",
"> I thought the Cold War was over and we have both disarmed? Not at all. We *reduced* arms but still have enough to end all human life. Russia could nuke the US to ash. > I know Russia annexed Crimea, but I thought most Americans didn't want to police the world? The US needs to protect overseas interests which includes security of NATO countries. Ukraine isn't part of NATO so they didn't get protection, but the US needs to take a stand against Russia going into empire building again. > Why are they all of a sudden a threat again? They have always been a threat, they are just pushing more overtly these days."
],
"score": [
138,
62,
10,
8,
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nl4xa | why do we have eyebrows? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccbl02",
"dccb4ho",
"dccbfr5"
],
"text": [
"We adapted to be upright in the sunshine with little to no fur density which allowed us to run down prey over long distances.The open skin allowed for good sweat cooling but sweat we did and in a full run and sweating that's bad for visibility.Sweat in our eyes was reduced if we had little directional hairs over our eyes to redirect the sweat away. Those that had this particular trait would have an easier time catching prey and surviving.",
"They keep sweat from your forehead dripping in your eyes. Humans evolved to be long-distance runners and to be able to cool by sweating. This helps keep salty sweat from messing with your vision. Also, an amazing amount of dust is deflected by the presence of eyebrows.",
"The answer to pretty much every question along the lines of, \"Why does [animal] have [body part]?\" is always the same: throughout the course of evolution, said body part either: - gave our ancestors some type of an edge over competition, allowing them to either live long enough to breed or leading mates to choose them over others (new traits developing) or - did not provide a disadvantage, so members of the population that still had the trait were just as likely to survive and breed as those without it (old traits remaining) answers beyond this are generally going to be speculation. it may be good speculation based on observed functions of the body part, and many experts will make educated guesses the educated guess with eyebrows is that they kept sweat, dirt, and debris out of the eyebrow-haver's eyes, which is helpful for obvious reasons. another main function is they they aid in communication - think of the difference between > :( and < :(. so our ancestors with eyebrows were able to function better as part of a society, perhaps communicate while doing life-preserving activities, and potentially find mates."
],
"score": [
9,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nl5yi | Why radiation is so dangerous and how it sticks around for so long? | Like why is Chernobyl still so dangerous? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccc6ss"
],
"text": [
"Well, it's not across the board. It depends on what you're working with. It's also important to note you're talking about ionizing radiation, which is either alphas (helium 4), betas (electrons and positrons), gammas and X-rays (High frequency EM waves), and neutrons. The biggest mechanism for health problems is penetration into cells and causing cell death. It can also cause damage by breaking down chemical bonds, especially in your DNA leading to cancers. Different isotopes create different types of ionizing radiation that penetrate to different depths. Betas for example, are pretty easy to stop with just plastic- which is why it's important to wear safety glasses- betas cause cataracts. A common beta emitter is 18F, used in PET scans. Your skin does a pretty good job of stopping penetration, but your internal membranes? Not so much. That's why ingesting is so dangerous. When I get radiation dosimeter reports, they give results for skin dose, extremity dose, eye dose, and deep dose. Neutrons penetrate like a motherfucker, but they don't have long lasting effects. When the source is turned off (I.e. Particle accelerator beam hitting a target, the neutrons stop.) You're talking like 10 ft think concrete walls to stop them. As for lasting long? They all don't. All isotopes have different halflifes, from minutes (C11) to hours (F18 is 119 minutes) to thousands of years (C14)"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nl5zk | Why does that "insert" key that deletes your text as you type exist? | Consensus at work is that it's just annoying, and nobody could think of a way it'd be useful. Is it just a vestigial feature of some sort? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccc1o4",
"dccbhmh",
"dccbgmd"
],
"text": [
"It used to be more useful back in the day. Before computers on the market came equipped with graphics processing and spreadsheet capabilities, everything was text based and you would often have to, for example, design your own data tables and such using a combination of spaces and characters like the `|` (pipe). If, for example, you needed to edit a cell in such a table, it was in many ways easier to simply navigate to that point and overwrite the existing text in the cell rather than using backspace/delete and messing with the table formatting. Also, keep in mind that computers originally did not have a mouse for user input; that didn't come until later. So selecting and removing multi-character or multi-word sequences was a lot more difficult. In many cases it was easier to simply type over the existing text characters than it was to spend the time/effort deleting them and starting over.",
"That's the sole purpose of the insert key. To toggle between over type and insert mode. Insert mode being that characters are added without replacing existing characters",
"It's largely vestigal. It's also relatively handy when working with code instead of say a word doc, since usually your code is separated by lines and you can just overwrite and not worry about trucking over your next bit of text. It's a feature that was handier and made more sense in the pre-mouse era."
],
"score": [
9,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nl8dp | What happens if the President of the USA wants to quit because people are too mean or the job is too hard? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccby44",
"dccbx61",
"dccd5ju",
"dccnaq5",
"dccgosg",
"dccmlhv",
"dccnkd7",
"dccohv6",
"dccmerc",
"dccos9s",
"dccoqwz",
"dccr3w1",
"dccopl3",
"dccqahf"
],
"text": [
"Thanks to the 25 Amendment the President is allowed to resign at any time they feel they are not capable of fulfilling the duties of the Presidency. Yes it automatically goes to the VP. The party then chooses a new VP and has that approved by the Senate.",
"Yes. Just like Nixon. He stepped down instead of the likelihood of being impeached. Power was then transferred to Gerald Ford. In this case power would be transferred to Mike Pence.",
"The President may resign any time he wants to. He's required to submit a letter of resignation to the Secretary of State that details the official date and time that the resignation takes affect. The Vice President then assumes the office of the Presidency. He would appoint a new Vice President who after confirmation from the Senate would become the new Vice President.",
"Here's one thing to consider - if Trump quits because of scandal, it'll likely wrap up Pence as well. If any of the Russia stuff turns out to be true, that whole administration is going down in flames, and we'll have President Paul Ryan. That being said, if business entanglements cause Trump to step down, Pence will likely survive that and become president. In any event, with all the crazy shit that's happening, I can't imagine Trump will last 4 years. EDIT: I have now learned that Agnew resigned before Watergate for unrelated reasons. I did not research this and I am an awful human being. But the point remains that Pence could go down with the ship if the right rumors turn out to be true.",
"> Does it really just go to the Vice President that easy? Yes. A president can voluntarily resign at any point. The VP becomes President and a new VP is nominated. That said I don't think this will happen. Pence is insurance. See all the things people are afraid of about Trump, Pence has more of. Trump may end up being a great leader, Pence is a fucking basket case. But if you remove Trump, you get Pence. Insurance.",
"Remember that time you pissed your pants in school and ran away crying while the other students laughed at you? It's the same, except multiple countries laugh at you.",
"Yes, it is that easy. There is a line of succession for the United States Presidency. We'll focus on the top levels. President < Vice President < Speaker of the House. If the President dies or resigns then the Vice President assumes the office. At this point they have full power as the United States President. There is nothing forcing them from abiding by the former Presidents agenda, they can do a complete 180 and change everything if they wanted. This is why you will see Presidents choosing their VPs when they align closely on ideas/politics. You generally won't see a republican President with a democrat VP. Now say if the President/VP were killed at the same time. The Speaker of the House would take the office and from there nominate a new VP which Congress would have to confirm. Congress will also have to elect a new Speaker of the House.",
"I was also wondering what happens if, on inauguration day, the President Elect decided; \"Nah. Nevermind.\"",
"Another related question: what happens if an election gets zero candidates, as in no one would be willing to run for president?",
"To add on to this, does the line of succession apply while he is president-elect prior to inauguration?",
"Watch [this 4-minute video]( URL_0 ). **Note in particular** the phrase, *\"But the interest of the Nation must always come before any personal considerations.\"* It is -possible- that Mr Trump will throw in the towel at some point -- but you can bet your left nut that it won't be for the same reason.",
"First president to rage quit. Who wants in on this?",
"while we are there, what is required to impeach the US president?",
"What would happen if said president-elect was pre-impeached or quit before inauguration? Would it still go the VP? Since neither had sworn in would the rules of succession in the 25th amendment still apply?"
],
"score": [
2331,
1248,
99,
70,
36,
26,
13,
6,
6,
5,
4,
3,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEOGJJ7UKFM"
],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nla9m | What are the pros and cons to Globalism, from an (as much as possible) unbiased perspective? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcccrly"
],
"text": [
"Globalization is when various facets of society operate at a truly global level rather than locally or regionally. The following is two examples dealing with trade and culture. For trade and commerce that can mean businesses can operate globally and traditional barriers to commerce thrown up by nation-states don't apply. That means you can put your factories where its most cost effective to place and you can hire talent from the world over. A drawback might be that since corporations aren't constrained by borders then its hard for any one nation-state to enforce its laws over that corporation without that corporation having an easy way to skirt the law by just doing the same thing in some other nation-state where the activity is permitted. Or if people in country A work in a factory they can't exactly move to country B if the corporation decides to move its factory. Globalization also means that cultural barriers change and erode. That's great if you're a movie producer who normally only sees distribution in the USA but can now show the movie in Europe and China as well. But if you live in a country in Africa and see that all the kids in town don't care about older traditions and instead want to listen to American Music and watch French Cinema then you may not like that. Then again, it's easier than ever to share your cultural tradition in Africa with the world at large."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nld68 | Why is that in all pictures wee see of planets and moons we always see the crater only and never see the meteor, boulder or whatever caused the crater sitting on the collision site? | [example of a crater in Mars]( URL_0 ). I know that in theory they explode or ricochet but aren't we, statistically, supposed to find one case where the collision boulder is still sitting on the collision site? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccdcaw"
],
"text": [
"They break apart on impact and chunks of them are found scattered around the impact site. One thing to remember is that they are generally moving very, very fast when they make impact. From [Scientific American]( URL_0 ): > When geologists and astronomers first recognized that lunar and terrestrial craters were produced by impacts, they surmised that much of the impacting body might be found still buried beneath the surface of the crater floor. (Much wasted effort was expended to locate a huge, buried nickel-iron meteorite believed to rest under the famous Barringer meteor crater near Winslow, Ariz.) Much later, however, **scientists realized that at typical solar system velocities--several to tens of kilometers per second**--any impacting body must be completely vaporized when it hits. It's also worth noting that the impact site is much, much larger than the size of the meteorite that creates it. The Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona (mentioned above) is 1.6 km across while the meteorite itself was about 45 m across. [Here's a picture comparing the meteorite's size to the impact crater]( URL_1 ) and [here's a picture showing the largest fragment we've recovered]( URL_2 )."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-impact-craters-al/",
"https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-efacb40bc8cc271bdf9ec5b5b47f223c?convert_to_webp=true",
"https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-ac06ae44e7463d10f9ce07ef3a32a90f?convert_to_webp=true"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nlfcl | Why does string theory require 10 dimensions? | I subscribe to the idea that the strings vibrate causing different quarks and what not but I never really understood why 10 spacial dimensions were required. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcct7rx",
"dcch09g",
"dccjefu",
"dcd5qwk",
"dcd7s5g",
"dccurcu",
"dcd0inj",
"dccusua",
"dccmbbv",
"dcdabl1"
],
"text": [
"I am not a physicist, but I once asked a physicist to explain to me this very thing. Below is a reformulation of what he told me: What does it mean that there are more than 3 spatial dimensions, and what does it mean that they are \"curled up very small\"? Imagine you're a billiard ball, living on the surface of table where the cover is on. Above you, just barely touching you, is the bottom of the cover. Below you is the felt. You and I know your world is 3D, but you perceive it as 2D, forward/backward and left/right. You and I know that the felt is not evenly compressible, so when a billiard rolls over it in a straight line, the balls moves ever so slightly up and down. This up and down motion though, is too small for you in billiard-ball-world to observe. You don't ever think about this though, because your 2D physics completely explains all interactions between other billiard balls that you observe. Now let's take it one step further. Imagine you're a billiard ball physicist. Just as before, your 2D physics completely explains all the interactions between billiard balls you observe. Your \"bouncing-off-bumpers\" theories explain how balls change angle and slow down when they hit a bumper, and your \"just-slowing-down\" theories explain how balls are always slowing down a little bit, even when they don't hit a bumper. You can very accurately predict where a ball will go by putting these two theories together. Many of your billiard ball colleagues are unsatisfied with this situation though. Both of these theories involve billiard balls slowing down, but the theories themselves are separate. One day, a billiard ball physicist colleague comes to you with a crazy idea. This colleague says that they can unify the two theories of billiard ball movement if you imagine that a ball slowing down results from that ball losing energy to the surface that it's directing a force against. However, this unified theory requires that there is a force pressing balls _down_ against the felt. Down is not a direction that exists! The theory only works if there is a _third dimension_. You and I know your world is 3D and has the dimension up and down, but you, as a billiard ball physicist, cannot perceive this dimension. The hypothetical existence of this dimension though, allows for a theory of billiard ball physics that is simpler, more general, more elegant, and thus more appealing than the two separated theories.",
"This is a great question, but it's also really tough to answer because any in-depth explanation very quickly ascends to levels of terminology that sound like technobabble. The simplest answer is that the math requires the extra dimensions to explain the interaction of the quantum (subatomic) world with the macro (atoms, molecules and larger) world, to model them and the underlying rules they follow. This is obviously the least satisfying, because it's like a parent saying \"because I said so\". To back up a bit, it's important to redefine the term dimension. We think of dimensions as basically \"something you can measure\" - length, width, height. In physics terms, they kinda are that, but kinda not. It's easier to think of them as ways of defining a specific parameter or quality of an object. Our main three dimensions define an object's size, which is easy to make sense of. It can also be a way of defining how an object moves through space. With String Theory, you're trying to explain the movement of and interactions with subatomic particles, some of which are very strange. All of these extra dimensions are not physical ones, but are said to be 'wrapped up at the subatomic level', which I think of as meaning they can't be measured with a ruler because they don't define a given space. They're not defining a physical thing, the way length, width and height do. What they do is allow subatomic particles to behave the way they do - [tunnel through barriers they 'shouldn't' be able to]( URL_1 ), or the good ol' thing where they [act like waves and particles at the same time]( URL_0 ). Really, rather than \"allow\" we should say \"explain why\", but then \"dimensions\" is probably one of the most confusing terms they could have chosen for what was being described, because it relies on a definition of the term is that isn't the way most people think about it.\\*\\* If a subatomic particle tunnels through a barrier that it shouldn't be able to, but you recognize that there is an additional parameter that applies to both the particle and the barrier - say, they only exist 99.999999% of the time in our universe, but pop out to a higher plane of existence than the physical (for the record, this is an extreme example made to illustrate the point, not what particles necessarily do), then you can say they have a measure of 99.999999 in the 'existence' dimension (again, made up for the explanation). If you combine these two numbers, you get the one-in-a-trillion chance of a particle 'tunneling' through the barrier. It's also necessary to point out that ten dimensions is just the number that the kaluza-Klein Theory suggested (initially five, later ten). I've seen theories that extend to thirty dimensions. For the record, I don't believe that String Theory is what it purports to be. I am only a failed physicist, and the people who are working on it are *far* smarter than I am, so if there is an empirical right and wrong on the issue, you'd be better off betting on them to be right. I come to explain String Theory, not defend it. String Theory fails to simplify the discussion, though, which is what the entire search for the Grand Unified Theory is supposed to be. Ultimately, the answer to the Universe - if we can ever discover it - will never be something you can adequately ELI5. I don't think it will rely on purely mathematical constructs for its explanation, and I think it is the purest of hubris to think that we can go from discovering atoms and nuclear forces to unlocking their underlying principles in (on the scale of the universe) a fraction of a blink of an eye. *** \\*\\*Kinda like a scientific theory and a 'real world' theory - same underlying concept defining both terms, but they become very different things within their specific contexts.",
"Mathematically, it has to do with group theory, more specifically representation theory of Lie groups. These things are tough to explain to someone without a background in these things, so I'll keep this short and not super precise: Symmetries are of fundamental relevance in physics for numbers of reasons. This goes so far that you can basically define a symmetry and some other stuff and determine all the physics of the system from that. Large parts of the standard model of particle physics were found this way. Mathemetically, these symmetries are expressed in groups. Now if we want to create a new, more general theory from our old ones it needs to reproduce all the symmetries the old theory has. So mathematically we are looking for dimensions where there are relatively simple (read: small) symmetry groups that contain all the symmetries we know. It so happens that 10 is the smallest dimension where there is a [Majorana-Weyl spinor]( URL_0 ) which is a good candidate for a number of reasons. Most common string theories use this or related symmetry transformations. String theories are then sort of constructed such that they have the imposed symmetry. So you start with 10 dimensions because your symmetries are nice there, and build the string theory around it - not the other way round.",
"Yo man, I respect this subreddit, but string theory might be a little too ambitious for ELI5.",
"Very few \"like you're 5\" answers available on this topic. I'll take my best swing. forget what you know about dimensions and think of a video game being played by a kid holding a controller. The character in the video game can move in all of the spatial dimensions it exists in, like us. Forward, back, side to side, up and down. So the kid finds a menu option called \"timeline\" and presses it. Now the kid sees a panorama of events that his character has experienced throughout the game. The difference between the player and the character is that the character has to experience the whole timeline event by event, while the player can see the timeline as a single object. Now you've moved up a dimension. We've collapsed direction, position, and time into an object that you can hold in your hands and manipulate. If you were able to hold a timeline in your hands like an object, you could change it and affect it like any other object you can interact with. Being able to interact with an entire 3 dimensional timeline as if it were an object would make the kid playing the game 4 dimensional. It gets weird when you start to consider that the entire environment that the kid playing the game exists in, must also be made up of existential versions of the ideas of existence similarly to how the character's three dimensional lifespan is simply an object in a fourth dimension. It is much easier to explain a timeline as a chain of events rather than to try and tell someone that every event in their life exists as a single object in a higher dimension. This is where math comes in. Mathematics and moreover physics deal with the footprints of these intangible creatures rather than the beasts themselves. And with our current understandings in mathematics, we see footprints which actually call for up to 11 dimensions. (including m-theory, there are 7, 10, or 11 expected dimensions). So it isn't so much that we've seen these 10-dimensional beasts making the footprints, it's more that we've seen footprints that must have been made by a 10-dimensional beast.",
"The cynical answer--which is not the whole story but has some truth to it--is that 10 dimensions are simply what is required to make the math work out. This is the big knock against string theory: it's very elegant mathematically, but it's not super clear how much *physical* insight it gives.",
"One very short and unsatisfying ELI5 answer is that if the number of dimensions is anything else, then certain undesirable infinities show up in the theory. Therefore the assumption of extra dimensions is made in order to avoid these bad things from happening. (The harder ELI5 is to explain why this assumption of extra dimensions is much more reasonable than a layperson would assume.) By the way, just to clarify a point: The number of dimensions depends on certain specifics of the theory. Bosonic string theory requires 26, superstring theory requires 10, and M-theory requires 11. Superstring theory is what most people mean when they simply refer to \"string theory,\" since bosonic string theory is not realistic. However, superstring theory comes in various flavors, all of which are unified in some sense by M-theory. When we say that superstring theory has 10 dimenions, we mean 1 time dimension and 9 space dimensions, 3 of which are the ones we perceive and 6 of which are tiny, \"compactified\" spatial dimensions. Important caveat: I am not even remotely a string theorist. Edit: Maybe \"undesirable infinities\" is not the right phrase to use (though I suppose one can probably get away with calling it that). It's more like you need a particular undesirable term that shows up to be zero in order to have the required symmetry.",
"This is a really great video explaining all the dimensions, this might give you the insight 'why' a 10th dimensions exists. URL_0",
"Wait, if I remember correctly from pchem, it's 11 dimensions. I don't know why, but I'm fairly certain it's 11. Can anybody speak to or correct me of this?",
"Arguably the most important principle in theoretical physics is symmetry. The first question a theorist usually asks about a theory is \"what are the symmetries of the theory?\" Imagine holding a spherical ball in your hands. This ball has what we call rotational/spherical symmetry. Any way you rotate the ball, it will look exactly the same. Now imagine shrinking our spherically symmetric system down to a quantum mechanical size. Due to the funny nature of quantum mechanics, our system may no longer be spherically symmetric. When a system loses its symmetry upon quantization, we call the symmetry \"anomalous\". Now, string theory possesses a certain symmetry called Weyl/conformal symmetry. When we quantize our theory, we find that this Weyl symmetry is anomalous in every single dimension. EXCEPT in 10 dimensions. So basically, in order for string theory to have the symmetries that it should have, we must require a 10 dimensional universe."
],
"score": [
1038,
550,
35,
26,
18,
13,
10,
6,
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunnelling"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinor#Terminology_in_physics"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=2JPxhTTGMDA"
],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nlnuh | Why is the number 'e' so important? | I have never worked with it until I started university this year (Mechanical Engineering) and it comes up everywhere! In Mathematical Analysis 1 we covered where it comes from, but not what it has to do with Gibbs' free energy and a million other formulas in Physics Explain like I'm a first year engineering student | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccgzx4"
],
"text": [
"Take y=2^x, the gradient along this line is always less than 2^x at the point x. Take y=3^x, the gradient along this line is always greater than 3^x at the point x. This implies there is a number between these two where the gradient of this line is always equal to that number to the power x at the point x. This line is called 'the exponential' and the value is quantified as e. At this point it is worth mentioning that logarithms can be taken with base 'e', this is called the natural logarithm or ln, or log*_e_*. Assuming you have covered basic calculus you will understand that if y=x*'n'* then dy/dx=n.x*'n-1'*. This is a very useful formula, and can be used for the basics of integration. If dy/dx=x*'n'* then y=(1/(n+1)).x*'n+1'* + c(integrating constant). This is also very useful, however you may have wondered what's the integral of x*'-1'*. By our formula it would be 1 divided by the sum of n(-1 in our case) plus one. Dividing by zero is undefined and hence we need a different tool to define this. This is where e and ln become useful. If y=lnf(x) then dy/dx=f'(x)/f(x) since x*'-1'* is the same as 1/x you can see that as 1 is the differential of x therefore the integral of x*'-1'* is ln(x). As ln is useful in integration e is useful in differentiation. From our definition of e^x=gradient of e^x which in a more meaningful form can show: y=e*'f(x)'* dy/dx=f'(x).e*'f(x)'* Compare this to: y=2*'x'* (to find the differential take log base e both sides) ln(y)=ln2*'x'* (ln2^x is the same as xln2 differentiate) 1/y dy/dx = ln2 dy/dx = y.ln2 dy/dx = 2*'x'*ln2 You see how much simpler e makes a simple equation, this is but one of it's aweosme properties. Power series of e*'x'*: e*'x'* = 1 + x + x*'2'*/2! +x*'3'*/3! +...+ x*'n'*/n! (Differentiates to itself!) It is also useful for explaining complex numbers by combining sin and cos power series to show a famous formula: e*'i*pi'* +1 = 0 or half a circle (pi radians) of the unit circle (radius 1 centre (0,0) plus one gets you back to zero. EDIT: If you see a number with 'number' around it imagine it as to the power of, I messed up the formatting and won't change it now."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nlq5f | What happens to the money taken out of our paychecks for Social Security if Social Security ends/runs out/gets defunded, especially for those who are not of retirement age yet? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccgmvu",
"dccg60y",
"dccgmd9"
],
"text": [
"Social security is a tax. The taxes of people working are used to pay benefits for the elderly. Your benefits are based on the taxes you paid, up to a maximum amount. But it is still a tax, not a savings plan. If there is not enough revenue to pay for social security benefits, either taxes would be raised, benefits cut, or debt accrued.",
"The money that gets taken out of your paycheck today for Social Security pays for today's retirees. Your Social Security payments would come from people working when you retire. Social Security is not a savings plan.",
"Social Security has a surplus fund that was built up over several years when it took in more money than it paid out. That fund is expected to run out sometime around 2035. After that, the money for Social Security will come from each year's taxes. Each year, the Social Security taxes take in about 75% of the necessary money. So when the funds run out there are two options: (1) Raise taxes or (2) accept Social Security payments dropping to 75% of what they are now."
],
"score": [
10,
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nlv9q | What is a non newtonian fluid and what makes them special? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccsu8a",
"dcchnm5"
],
"text": [
"Most of the other top level responses I see here are focusing on a certain type of non-newtonian fluid, notable shear thickening fluids like oobleck (the classic cornstarch/water mixure). However, as a general class, non-newtonian fluids are simply fluids that don't follow the Newtonian model of fluids. So: **What is a Newtonian Fluid?** Newtonian fluids have basically a linear relationship between local stress and strain in the fluid. What this means is that the fluid behaves in a more or less standard way, like water or air under more or less normal conditions. The forces from the fluid's viscosity are proportional to the stress or rate of change of the deformation of a fluid. This boils down to basically having a constant viscosity (the fluid doesn't get thicker or thinner depending on the pressure or how fast it is moving). Note that this is only a model, and like all models breaks down, specifically when fluids flow extremely fast or are under ultrahigh pressures or similar extreme situations. **How non-Newtonian fluids differ** Non-Newtonian fluids don't follow this relationship very well. For example, they can get more viscous as they deform (like oobleck), or as they deform they can get thinner (like ketchup, which is why it sticks in the bottle of the bottle and then seems to come out all at once. Other non-Newtonian fluids require a certain amount of stress before they begin to flow, like toothpastes and mustard. Non-Newtonian fluid is an umbrella term, a category, of fluids that diverge from the model that we use to describe most standard fluids.. **TL;DR: Newtonian fluids have the same viscosity no matter how fast they're flowing or how much force is being applied to them. Non-Newtonian fluids get thicker or thinner or more or less solid depending on how fast they're flowing or what forces are being applied to them.**",
"Examples: Shampoo, hair gel, toothpaste. They are fluids, and yet they retain a shape for a period of time (maybe limited, maybe indefinite) unlike water, which immediately conforms to its container (or spills out on the ground). In terms of the above examples, it is easy to see why non newtonian fluids are useful in practical situations. If shampoo was a standard liquid, it would be very difficult to glob it onto your hand then put it in your hair. People also like the mouth-feels of non newtonian substances. Consider icecream. Not a perfect non newtonian fluid, but it shares the general characteristics. From Wikipedia: (first Google result, doncha know) > A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid with properties that are different in any way from those of Newtonian fluids. Most commonly, the viscosity (the measure of a fluid's ability to resist gradual deformation by shear or tensile stresses) of non-Newtonian fluids is dependent on shear rate or shear rate history."
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nm0cl | What would you see if you where inside a perfectly spherical mirror? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccj1gn",
"dccj2xs"
],
"text": [
"Michael Stevens saves the day yet again. URL_0",
"[Vsauce covers that question in this video]( URL_0 ). Example renders can be seen around 2 minutes in."
],
"score": [
36,
9
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRP82omMX0g"
],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRP82omMX0g"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nm6m4 | How would somebody create a new programming language? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccljz2",
"dccls2p"
],
"text": [
"You would write a program in another language to make it work. The two approaches are: * compiler - reads a file of the new language and changes it to machine code * interpreter - reads the file line by line and executes each command Many modern languages, like java, perl, and python take a hybrid approach to various degrees.",
"At the lowest level, the CPU can understand machine code, which are very simple instructions. You could theoretically write this directly, but it's very tedious and difficult. Instead we have programming languages, and we have a program that will translate something written in a programming language, i.e. source code, into machine code. This is a compiler. When you have compiled source code, you'll have a binary file which you can execute. So, if you want to create a programming language, you make up a bunch of rules for how a compiler should interpret source code into machine code. Then you make a compiler using another language to get you started."
],
"score": [
12,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nma0y | Hunting Seasons | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccl7de"
],
"text": [
"With many animals in designated wildlife areas, the population needs to be controlled to prevent over population which would be very damaging to them. Less food available, overcrowding, etc. So during a time of year when the animals aren't reproducing, the state will allow a certain number of animals to be hunted, that's the \"tag\" you buy. You're paying the state for wildlife conservation and habitat protection, keeping those lands open, maintained, etc. You can only shoot (legally) what you bought a tag for and once tags are gone, that animal can't be hunted for the rest of the year. If the state decides that they population is too high, they may sell more tags, if they decide the population is too low, they may sell less tags. It's all about population control, and a lot of it has to do with human expansion into their home. We're managing the population in proportion to the land that's available to the animals, removing them when they're somewhere they shouldn't be, or adding them where we'd like them to be."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nma6n | why is it that the more I look at a word, it begins to look like its not spelled correctly? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccl5zr",
"dcd1efj"
],
"text": [
"Usually when we read a word our mind tends to jump to its meaning rather than looking at the word itself. For example you can rearrange the letters within a word as long as the first and last letters are correct and someone can still read it with reasonable accuracy. By looking at a word often enough you are no longer just looking at the meaning but rather the individual letters themselves. This causes your mind to see them as a series of letters, not the recognizable pattern that whole words are correlated with.",
"The term is \"Semantic Satiation\". URL_0 Researchers blame the repeated firing of the same neurons over and over, diminishing their effect as time passes."
],
"score": [
19,
9
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nmf49 | How do hostile takeovers on a company work? | ^ | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccox26"
],
"text": [
"Lets say you want to buy a company, but the \"owner\" doesn't want to sell to you. You say fine, screw you, I don't need your approval. Like kyrstar said, if the \"owner\" doesn't own more than 50% of the company that means you can buy up a controlling shares and force the sale. You actually don't even need to buy up a controlling amount, all you need is a controlling amount to agree with you. So say the \"owner\" owns 49% of the company, the rest of the 51% is split among different people. Technically you can come in, buy a single share, say 1%, and then get the remaining 50% to agree with you and vote your way. It's safer though to just buy up all of their shares so you own 51% and then you can just say, \"Well we're selling this company to me and that's final.\" The \"owner\" has no choice now but to sell."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nmgv4 | What happens to the money a site like Youtube would make off ads from a video later deemed illegal? | Lets say I upload pirated copy of the series finale of GoT to YT and somehow it stays up for a month or two and gets a few million views. And lets say all these viewers are considerate and click on and view the ads on that page. This would mean YT would make some good money off my illegal video. Once my video is eventually removed for copyright infringement, what does YT do with the money it made off my video? Wouldn't that money itself be illegal? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcco8ja"
],
"text": [
"Im sure google does the only thing they can do with that money and that is give it to whatever company claims and can prove it belongs to them. Any ad revenue generated for your example would go to HBO. This is probably why they have such an aggressive copyright system. I know my own videos I have with music in them are basically always automatically flagged on posting and any revenue goes to the owner. I usually get a warning saying that its being monetized on their behalf and that I can either just let that happen or prove that I have the right to use it. If google didn't actively seek and destroy things like a pirated copy of GoT, I'm sure they would be in much deeper legal troubles. As of right now everyone understands that anybody can post to youtube and the systems in place arent perfect but they also know it would be an incredibly long battle against google if they wanted to take action. In this regard, as long as google is actively trying to protect others copyrighted content there is no reason to try to battle the titan on legal ground."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nmsa2 | How can someone be lost at sea with all of the technology and satellites we have now? | I saw the post earlier about a man and his daughter who have been lost at sea for about a month finally landed in Australia. Maybe it's because I watch too many sci fi movies, but I find it hard to believe that with all the technology we have now we could not pick them up on a satellite or something. Are we not as technologically advanced with satellites as I assume we are? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccpthu",
"dccpvew",
"dccpczi",
"dccu71p"
],
"text": [
"> ...pick them up on a satellite... Satellites don't have any special abilities to \"sense\" where people are. Most satellites aren't cameras, those that *are* cameras are in use by spying agencies and they cost a trillion dollars. If those lost people were floating around the Indian Ocean spotting them with a spy satellite would be like spotting a tick on a dog from a mile away. Compounding that, the ocean is full of floating garbage. Miles and miles of it. Its not a matter of technology, but scale.",
"Oceans are huge, and most GPS technology only *accepts* information from satellites; it doesn't talk back or relay any information back to the satellites, so no one sees or hears anything. Also, did I mention that they oceans are huge?",
"Oceans are huge, that's basically the answer. A major aspect though is that acquiring temporary use of a satellite costs millions of dollars, something that's not viable for search and rescue. So, helicopters can be sent out to look, but again, the ocean is huge. If the people lost at see bought an [expensive satellite phone]( URL_0 ), they could call someone and give them their location (cell phones would still have a GPS signal).",
"Sci-fi TV/movies paint a pretty amazing picture, lol - they just dial up a satellite, cut to the shot of it spinning into position (cue low rumble), snap a couple pictures, enhance, and oh look! Facial recognition says that's our bad guy :) Most satellite imagery that you see on the news or Google Maps is captured from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and therefore has a pretty narrow field of view, 8-12 miles wide in the case of the [WorldView]( URL_2 ) satellites. The resolution is 1 pixel per 18inches at best, so detecting a face is out of the question, maybe a body, a boat is reasonable. Imagine trying to find a single flea (and that's ridiculously large as compared to a human, heck even a boat, in a 100sq-miles of ocean) on a carpet square 45ft x 45ft, taking pictures 1-inch by 1-inch, and you can only take a 1-inch wide row of pictures every 90min (on average the time of one orbit around the earth at ~380miles up). It would take you over a month to photograph the whole thing. Let's hope the flea (or the boat) didn't move. Now somebody's going to nitpick my numbers, but I fudged a lot...point being, it's just not practical to visually scan an ocean from so close, and the ones that are sitting at Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO, 22000 miles up) don't have that kind of resolution - they're meant to look for hurricanes, etc. However, [NOAA]( URL_1 ) has been operating the [Search and Rescue Satellite Aided Tracking (SARSAT) System]( URL_0 ) and it has rescued almost 4000 people since 2001, but that only works if the vessel or person is carrying an emergency transponder."
],
"score": [
6,
4,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://satellitephonestore.com/"
],
[
"http://www.sarsat.noaa.gov/",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Oceanic_and_Atmospheric_Administration",
"http://www.satimagingcorp.com/satellite-sensors/"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nn1hz | What is the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcct31n",
"dcdb2gg"
],
"text": [
"Sociopaths tend to be more level-headed and mild tempered. They have an easier time blending into crowds and socializing with people. In a way they \"mimic\" the behavior of others and are capable of passing themselves off as \"normal\". Despite this feat sociopaths are generally reclusive and introverted. They are also much more reckless and when committing crimes they tend to just \"get in, get out\" as opposed to trying to cover up their steps. They are also capable of bonding with other people and feeling some form of sympathy towards close friends and remorse when wronging them. Psychopaths are usually much more hot tempered and come off as \"weird\" in social situations, they also show no remorse or empathy and come off as cold-hearted. They are usually much more intelligent than sociopaths and tend to get good, high paying jobs ([Related]( URL_1 )). Psychopaths are much more careful and when committing crimes they take steps to cover up their tracks and plan ahead. Psychopaths often try to manipulate others to get something from them while sociopaths do not and are not interested in getting ahead. The idea however is debated and is not official, the two are simply recognized in DSM as [Antisocial personality disorder]( URL_0 ).",
"From what I understand a Psychopath is born without the ability to feel empathy, while a Sociopath learns this behavior, usually to a traumatic/series of traumatic event(s), which typically (but not necessarily always) occurs during developmental stages (toddler age, pre-pubescence, adolescence). [Here]( URL_0 ) is a pretty good place to read up on it."
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder",
"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/psychopaths-ceos-study-statistics-one-in-five-psychopathic-traits-a7251251.html"
],
[
"http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2015/02/12/differences-between-a-psychopath-vs-sociopath/"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nn48c | Why hasn't the popularity of Warby Parker lowered the price of any other glasses brand? | Usually when a low cost competitor enters the market it helps spread out the price scale. The price of glasses at my eye doctor's is still nuts. (4x Warby Parker) Why hasn't the market corrected? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccssmq",
"dccsmvn"
],
"text": [
"Because of a company called Luxottica, they essentially have a monopoly wordwide. *Sorry not savy enough to attach source",
"Because they're not large enough to reset a market of that size. Depending on the estimate you go by, there are close to 200 million people in the US who wear prescription eye-wear. It took WP four years to sell one million pairs of glasses (2010 - 2014), even if they sold one million pairs *each year* since then, that's still only three million pairs."
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nnduj | Could you ever, in theory, have such a large density of radiation particles that you could see them? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcd0ihf",
"dcd4n92"
],
"text": [
"First, I will make the assumption that you are somehow not dead due to the sheer amount of radiation passing through you. Maybe you're a ghost, idk. To understand this, we need to know what radiation is first. In the nucleus of an atom, we have neutrons and protons, held together by the Strong Nuclear Force. The number of protons tells us what element it is, and the number of neutrons determines the isotope of the element. When we say a \"radioactive isotope,\" we are really referring to an atom that has so many neutrons and protons in its nucleus that it is unstable. It's like a water drop; the bigger it gets, the more likely it is to fall or split in two. So what is radiation? Radiation consists of single neutrons flying through space without being part of an atom. Unstable isotopes will eventually \"decay\" wherein they lose some of their neutrons to reduce their size and become more stable. These neutrons careen off into space and become radiation. If a flying neutron hits another unstable atom, or even a stable one, it can split it and disrupt its nucleus. As for seeing the neutrons, that's a little more tricky. The reason we can \"see\" atoms is actually due not only to their high density, but the electrons in them. When a photon of light strikes an atom, it gives the electrons orbiting the atoms energy, and they move further from the nucleus. Eventually, the electrons move closer to the nucleus again, and lose that energy by emitting it as a photon of light. That is how light is \"reflected\" and we are able to see things. So no, we wouldn't be able to see these particles of radiation, no matter how dense. If a photon of light were to hit the flying neutron of radiation, it would give the neutron more energy in the form of kinetic energy and speed of motion. However, since the neutron isn't orbiting a nucleus and has no motive to fall down to a lower energy state, it will keep that energy and the energy won't go back to a form of light. It may be transferred to another particle, and give that particle kinetic energy, but not as photons. There is such thing as a material constructed completely of neutrons. It's called neutronium, and it's what neutron stars are made of. Basically, when a star goes supernova, the heat can get intense enough to dissolve the strong nuclear force holding the nuclei of the atoms together. Neutrons will conglomerate (because they don't repel each other like electrons and protons), and eventually their intense gravity is enough to hold them together and form a neutron star. Neutronium is so incredibly dense that if any were to be created on Earth, it would sink to the core of the planet, through anything solid. One teaspoon weighs about as much as an aircraft carrier. Scientists have actually never seen a neutron star, and we're not sure whether this is because they don't give off enough light for our telescopes to see, or because they don't interact with photons of light at all. Most likely the latter. TL;DR We can't see radiation because it is comprised of neutrons, which won't reflect photons of light, unlike the electrons orbiting atoms that allow us to see normal matter.",
"@ArmaDolphins had a long answer, but I'd like to mention the disturbing case of the film footage from Pripyat, shot after the Chernobyl disaster. URL_0 It's not exactly what you are asking about, but it is film shot where radiation levels were so high that the particles left visible evidence on the film frames. Quite creepy."
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://youtu.be/N43uHJR0WTo"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nni5y | Why can we "feel" someone's gaze on us? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccwcgs",
"dcczucq",
"dccwra9",
"dccyaq0",
"dccwe69",
"dcd3e2l",
"dcd0jxl"
],
"text": [
"[This might help you]( URL_0 ). **Explanation** We're not entirely sure, but it seems to be that humans assume people are staring at them even when only presented with partial evidence. This was tested in an experiment by the University of Sydney, which noted that when not given sufficient cues, the subject would still almost always assume they were being watched. **TL;DR** There's no accepted theory, chance?",
"We absolutely can not feel this, we can sense it though; most people today are poorly tuned at doing it. As a rancher for many years I can tell you exactly when I'm being watched and stalked, I verify it regularly with my flashlight to noobies who think I'm trying to scare them. I will light up the area and find a set of eyes looking in our direction. I do not believe it's a mind's eye thing, it must be related to my peripheral vision picking up two orbs distanced far enough apart to simulate an animal. I know this because if a deer or dog is walking parallel to me I will not \"sense\" it, I can only see one eye. I have also been walked up on from behind while working and only made aware of my stalker by audible means (extreme noise or extreme silence). I should actually do a study for this on YouTube or something because I can prove it daily. I could even use sunglasses to illustrate how removing the shape of two orbs will stop you entirely getting this sense. You can however still observe someone and tell they are stalking you. You will not get the hair raiser feeling though, that is a response for your nerve endings firing up getting ready to fight. Something I have felt every time a big cat is stalking me. Really really hate mountain lions, the chaotic silence that accompanies their arrival is difficult to describe, very fun to be stalked and reminded that we are not truly the top of the food chain when we are alone.",
"Your brain processes loads of information that you're not aware of. Indeed some theories of the mind posit that consciousness doesn't really exist and what we experience as consciousness is a post-facto reality. So it's possible the feeling is your brain tweaking into something before you are consciously aware of it. i.e. Your brain notices some eyes looking towards you before you are consciously aware of them and pulls your attention towards them. Or maybe it's confirmation bias? Maybe you frequently feel watched and sometimes when you look up you actually catch someone looking? I can't imagine how to design a scientific test for this supposed phenomenon.",
"We can't, it's just our confirmation bias kicking in, we think we can sense this and sometimes it turns out someone is watching us and we remember those instances and the other times we sense someone is watching us and nobody is and we ignore those.Thus making us believe that we can sense people watching us.",
"You can't. If they are close enough, you feel the breath they release changing the air around you. If they are far, it's just your peripheral and judgement at work.",
"For a very long time in our development, being watched was tantamount to being hunted. We are predisposed to assume we are being watched (even when we aren't) because it's inexpensive and so much safer than the alternative.",
"It is unconscious sight. It is very unintuitive but a significant amount of seeing is done completely unconsciously. There is a phenomenon called blindsight where people who lose the brain areas for visual sight can still do many things requiring vision, but deny being able to see anything. They think they can navigate and grab objects merely by chance or coincidence since the processing is done completely unconsciously. The gaze detection is merely unconscious processing of danger. I mean think about it. No one looks at their visual field and deduces consciously that they are being watched or are in danger. The danger or gaze feeling is already present in the perception. The evolutionary advantages of this type of detection should be obvious."
],
"score": [
79,
56,
39,
13,
6,
6,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_staring_effect#Gaze_detection"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nnlsu | When a meteorite strikes a planet and leaves a crater, why is there a big hole but no meteorite in it? | Where does it go? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccwcbs"
],
"text": [
"When it hits the planet, there is so much energy it literally explodes. That's why there's a crater and nothing bigger than meteorite gravel left behind. Think about tossing a snowball at a wall."
],
"score": [
25
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nnlt1 | Why does water taste bitter after eating pineapples? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcd9ukr"
],
"text": [
"When the water hits your taste buds, they are stimulated a little. The problem is they have been overloaded with sugar and acid, thus they are temporarily unable to *report* sugar and acid at that moment. Therefore they report the only thing left: alkaline (bitter) taste. Add that to the fact that most water has dissolved minerals in it that make it ever-so-slightly alkaline."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nnt6f | What happens to all the stuff people leave on graves in cemeteries? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dccybir"
],
"text": [
"There are people who tend to graveyards called \"burial ground custodians\" or \"cemetery workers\". They collect these things after a period of time and throw them away as garbage."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5no2rl | when sea levels rise, do they do so by an equal amount across the globe? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcd0blk",
"dcdoy8f"
],
"text": [
"Well kind of. The moon pulls water around causing tides, so it's never really even. To answer your question though, fundamentally yes.",
"No. And it surprises most people who think that water being a liquid finds a consistent level. There are two sea levels generally speaking, the global sea level, and the local sea level. The global sea level is something of a standard, the local sea level reflects the actual difference between the height of the sea at point A and point B. What affects the height of the local sea level? A huge range of factors. Tidal differences caused by the pull of the moon, the variation in the earth's shape, the spin of the earth causing the sea level to be higher at the equator than it is at the poles and many, many more. It's entirely possible for the sea to be at a much higher level in one location than it is in another. Now when it comes to global warming and sea level rises, what effect this will have is also very dependant on what the local sea level height was originally. That means that a 2 metre rise of the sea level on the East side of the United States will not mean there is an equal 2 metre rise on the Western side."
],
"score": [
9,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5no3xz | How do air-conditioners work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcd09no"
],
"text": [
"A/C uses a gas which is compressed, the heat is extracted from it using a coil and a fan, and then is allowed to expand, and it cools considerably, then a 2nd fan blows air through that coil which absorbs heat and cools the room air. Thats why the outside unit of an A/C system blows hot air, its cooling the compressed gas."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5no5lh | Why cant we develop a legitimately healthy cigarette thats as good as a normal one? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcd0y1f"
],
"text": [
"Well, the main issue is that smoking ANYTHING is going to have its potential health risks. Even vaping, which doesn't produce actual smoke, can only really claim to be much better than the alternative. It hasn't been studied enough to know the long term effects, but anytime you're inhaling something like nicotine it's going to come with certain detriments to your health."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5no7gv | Why are rings easier to get on than they are to get off a finger? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcd5c5q",
"dcd8sv6"
],
"text": [
"2 reasons for this: 1. The fingers are generally wider near the knuckles than at the fingertips. 2. If you stroke one of your fingers with another from nail to knuckles, you will find that skin has more resistance when you're moving knuckle to fingertips than vice versa, mainly because there's more skin near the knuckles than the fingertips so it kind of bunches up and resists more than going the opposite direction. Credit to /u/super_ag for the more accurate reason.",
"Check out the shape of the knuckles in this picture: URL_0 See those knobby lobes jutting out at the bottom of the bone right above the knuckle? There's a gentle gradient leading over those lobes going from tip to hand, but just a big round edge going from hand to tip. Smooth ride going one way, bumpy ride going the other way. The skin bunching is part of the answer. When you pull your finger skin toward the hand, there isn't any extra skin to pull from your finger tips. You stretch the skin tight, so you're basically dealing with a thin layer of skin stretched tight against the bone. On the other hand (wink) you're hand has got a lot of extra skin that doesn't allow the skin to be pulled taught going the other way, instead the skin travels with the ring and bunches up under those bony lobes from the bird picture."
],
"score": [
26,
8
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"http://m.123rf.com/photo-10044544_skeleton-hand-making-offensive-gesture-3d-illustration.html?term=skeleton%20hand"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5no8jn | Why do women open their mouths when they put on eye makeup? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcd1lv8"
],
"text": [
"Men occasionally do it while shaving too. Moving the jaw out helps pull the skin on the cheeks and under the eyes tighter."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5no8ph | How do hard drives get bigger in capacity, but physically smaller in size? | And why is there a time delay between the development of hard drives as well? (I.e. why did 500gb hard drives cost so much back then, compared to how much they cost now? What has changed developmentally?) | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdasvm",
"dcd6bvn"
],
"text": [
"Technology. The smaller you can make the parts that store information, the more you can fit in one spot. For example, imagine using apples as a way to keep track of things when you're counting. Everytime you count up, you move one apple from a bucket on your left to a bucket on your right. Apples are really big, right? So maybe you switch to rice. you can fit a lot more rice in nice neat pile. Which means you can count much higher. Or if you're writing, maybe you switch from a #BIG FONT to a normal one. Because why waste so much space? Over the years, we've been getting better and better at storing stuff. It's hard to list all the changes, there's been so many. Using different materials, maybe you can make smaller bits, the thing we use to store the data. These days, they're down to 10s of nanometers. So you need to make these little pieces, consistently, and they need to work repeatedly for years. That's hard! No only that, you need to be able to read them. Technology has gotten better and better- including using things like lasers to read/change the bits. > And why is there a time delay between the development of hard drives as well? Because it takes time to develop new techniques. Over time, you have people working on finding new designs, trying new things, gaining experience on what works, and what doesn't. If i tell you to build a house, you probably wouldn't do a great job, right? Maybe you could rig a tent. But if you get training to be a carpenter (or just spend time trying new things), you'd be able to build a cabin. But you probably don't know how to build a good cabin off the top of your head. And with better harddrives, you can't just go to school- no one else has made them yet either! > why did 500gb hard drives cost so much back then, compared to how much they cost now? 2 main things: How easy they are to make, and how many are sold When a technology is brand new, it usually isn't the most efficient design. Over time, companies learn how to use materials that do the job better, or are way cheaper. The other thing is, the more you sell, the cheaper most things are. Say you need a special piece of equipment to make the drive, like a press. If you only sell 100 copies, you need to make enough money back to cover the cost of the press+labor+profit. If you sell 100000 copies, you still want labor/profit, but maybe that one press gets reused a bunch of times. A lot of the techniques/machinery are extremely specialized, and one of a kind at first. It's not uncommon for a single machine to cost millions of dollars.",
"The main differences are the configurations hard drives store data, and the actual hardware. Floppy disks, ssd's, and any sort of drive store there data with ones and zeros. However, floppy disks and cassets worked by keeping physical copies of the ones and zeros, almost like a punch card. Now, they are all stored in imcrochips, which can access trillions of ones and zeros in no time. Over the years, we have created more physically capable chips to store more data, but are still getting smaller. TL;DR, the way we have stored information on hard drives and their sizes changed dramatically when we switched from physical data to microchips."
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5no96n | What would the physical process of gene editing through such things as CRISPR look like? | Curious to how an average person could have their genes edited. What instruments would be used? How would it all go down? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcd3y4j"
],
"text": [
"Well, gene editing in a grown person is still not really a well-developed technology. Things like CRISPR are usually done on cell cultures in petri dishes. A common procedure, lipfection, mostly looks like mixing clear liquids together with using a [pipette]( URL_1 ) and [microcentrifuge tubes]( URL_0 ) and adding it to whereever your cells are, which is invariably some clear plastic thing with one or more wells. If those cells are fertilized eggs, then they can grow into people with edited genes. For a full-grown person, you would package the necessary molecules into a non-replicating virus and infect the person with it. I'm not sure what preparing the viruses would look like (probably mostly clear liquids and pipettes), but you would end up giving someone a shot or whatever to get the virus to the tissue you want to edit."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.copybook.com/media/pharmaceutical/profiles/cardiff-university/migrated/images/Microcentrifuge-Tube-1b.jpg",
"http://wheaton.com/media/catalog/category/variable-volume-single-channel-pipettes.jpg"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nou81 | Why haven't the large space rocks in the Asteroid Belt and Kuiper belt coalesced to form large planets due to their gravity? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcd75a7",
"dcd7ee1"
],
"text": [
"they're tiny. and far away. the total mass of the asteroid belt is like 5% of our moon. and they're spread out over a much MUCH bigger area. our asteroid belt is not like the asteroid field in Empire Strikes Back.",
"The Asteroid belt cannot combine due to Jupiter. Jupiter's gravity tears apart anything that gets too big. The Kuiper belt is too spaced out. But it does have a number of dwarf planets like Pluto."
],
"score": [
14,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5npdnp | Why are US troops being deployed to Poland? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdaexr"
],
"text": [
"Because Russia. Like it or not, NATO is primarily the Club of Countries the US Promises To Protect. Its ludicrously massive military is what everyone wants on their side. After Russia's adventures in the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, there are suspicions within NATO that either Poland or the Baltics might suddenly find an [oppressed Russian minority]( URL_0 ) within their borders, joined by \"vacationing\" Russian officers, and suddenly Russia's border will shift westwards. While Ukraine isn't NATO, those other states are, hence NATO (i.e. US) troops are pooling into there. Russia of course denies ties to the rebels in Eastern Ukraine and claims that it's Crimea's democratic choice, while blaming the West for the \"Nazi junta\" in Ukraine and the thoughtless Kosovo precedent allowing such democratic choices. Hence Poland has nothing to fear... for now."
],
"score": [
17
],
"text_urls": [
[
"http://imgur.com/a/ujFhp"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5npf6u | Why do some substances feel colder than others in the same temperature? | For example, a metal bar feels colder than a pillow although in the same room. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdc052",
"dcdaoyy"
],
"text": [
"What you feel as heat is not the temperature of the object, but how hot it's making *you*. This is why people can walk on hot coals - the coals are outrageously hot, but it takes them a while to transfer the heat -- so if you walk quickly, it's as if they're not hot at all. Similarly, metal left in the freezer isn't any colder than other things left in the freezer, but it transfers the cold really quickly, so *you* feel as if it's colder than everything else (because it's making you colder faster than everything else). All of this has to do with heat conductivity. Basically some things hold onto heat more than others. Things that don't hold onto heat well will feel like they're at a more extreme hotness/coldness than other objects of the same temperature, since they palm off that heat onto you (or absorb your heat) as fast as they can.",
"Because they have a different conductivity. A material with a higher conductivity will transfer heat faster and the feeling of cold or hot is you losing or absorbing heat."
],
"score": [
17,
8
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5npgby | why does splitting (sub-)atomic particles release SO much energy? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdc51e",
"dcdmoqm",
"dcdb0dk"
],
"text": [
"To keep is simple.... (maybe overly so). The atoms aren't sitting there doing nothing. They're a bit like a rubber band stretched around a package. It looks like it's just sitting there, but in reality there is all this energy just waiting to get loose. To release it you have to overcome what's called [binding energy]( URL_0 ), in the case of the rubber band that's applying enough cutting force to cut the rubber, releasing the energy and letting the rubber band fly off. In atoms that binding force is really high because the internal \"tension\" (thinking of that rubber band again) is incredibly high. Once you pump in enough energy it can sort of fly apart like the rubber band did, but its energy compared to its mass is immensely higher due to that stored internal tension. That's an overly simple explanation, but may help you visualize what's happening a bit better.",
"There are sort of two answers to this question, and they are interconnected. One is, \"what is the direct source of energy from splitting an atom?\" The other is, \"what is the ultimate source of that energy?\" For the first one, the mass at the center of an atom (the nucleus) is made up of protons and neutrons. Protons have a positive electric charge, just like the positive end of a magnet. If you've tried to put two positive ends of a magnet together you know how violently they resist, even though you are big and strong and they are just a tiny magnet. The reason the protons stay in a nucleus in the first place is because they, and the neutrons, also have the \"strong force\" which means, basically, that at very close distances protons and neutrons like to be stuck to each other. At longer distances, though, the electromagnetic force kicks in and protons don't like to be near each other. A uranium nucleus is very heavy (92 protons), and so very positively charged. It is just about at the threshold for how big you can make an atomic nucleus and have it not spontaneously fall apart (radioactive decay) relatively rapidly. If you shoot a neutron at it, it'll get added to the nucleus, and it'll also impart a little bit of momentum to it. Think of it as shooting a pea into a big lump of jello. The jello will wobble a bit. If the nucleus wobbles enough, one half can get slightly outside of the range of the strong force of the other half. If that happens then the very strong positive forces will repel each other, and it'll be like two half-uranium atoms that just happened to get uncomfortably close to one another. So they rocket apart from each other with great violence. The movement of these two rocketing \"cannonballs\" of atomic nuclei (once a single nucleus, now split) accounts for about 80% of the energy released by a fission reaction. The rest comes from radiation, including neutrons, some gamma rays, a few other things, that sort of leak out of these half-atoms. The amount of energy released from a single fission reaction is about 200 MeV. You don't have to know what an MeV is, but a chemical reaction is on the order of a few eV, so it is millions of times more powerful, per reaction, than, say, TNT might be. 200 MeV is about as much energy as it takes to visibly move a speck of dust, which isn't much from a human standpoint, but atoms are _much_ smaller than specks of dust. It's on the order of an ant being able to visibly move the Space Shuttle. If each reaction starts with neutrons, and also releases neutrons, then you can set things up in a way that means each reaction creates more reactions (a \"chain reaction\"), and if you can get that really going fast you can release a _lot_ of energy (if you release it in a relatively controlled fashion, that's a nuclear reactor; if you release as much as possible as quickly as possible, that's a nuclear bomb). So that answers the first question, where that energy _directly_ comes from: electrostatic repulsion of the fission products (the half-atoms), plus a little radiation. But wait, you say, where's E=mc^2 in this explanation? That's the _ultimate_ source of the answer. We know from physics (thermodynamics, specifically) that you can't just make energy from nothing. So we know that any release of energy is really just a conversion of energy that was already there. What's the energy that was \"already there\" for fission? This is the _binding energy_, which is to say, the energy that it took to \"bind up\" the protons and neutrons originally into a nucleus. Heavy elements were created by exploding stars (supernovae) a very long time ago. They exploded, pushed lots of protons and neutrons together, and billions of years later some of that stuff settled into planets and rocks and things and now we have heavy elements like uranium in the ground. Bound energy corresponds to a tiny bit of mass. It isn't like a particle gets converted into \"pure energy\" or anything like that. It's that a nucleus bound up with protons and neutrons weighs a tiny bit more than the protons and neutrons would if they were just hanging out on their own. When you convert them down, you re-release some of that \"binding energy.\" Again, it isn't a lightning bolt or anything like that — the energy is actually in those atoms that are repelling from one another. E=mc^2 doesn't explain really the specifics of how this energy is released; that requires more \"low level\" physics. What the equation tells you is why suddenly releasing a bunch of energy, millions of times more than you'd get from a chemical reaction, doesn't violate the conservation of mass and energy. Sorry this is long-winded. But I think for a strong, intuitive understanding of what's going on, E=mc^2 doesn't really cut it — it doesn't give you a good sense of what's actually going on in the reaction and how that translates into real energy.",
"Uranium is split into Rubidium and Caesium. It takes 1 neutron to do so and it releases 2 neutrons in the processes. If you calculate the mass of all parts you'll notice that the mass decreases across the calculation. This is released as energy which can be calculated by E=mc^2 . Per atom this is tiny but this is a chain reaction that very very very quickly results in shit loads of atoms splitting and releasing their energy."
],
"score": [
15,
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_binding_energy"
],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5npoyi | Why is 'foo' and 'bar' used so much when explaining programming? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdcmc6",
"dcdcojd",
"dce40f1",
"dcdr1ri",
"dcde9az",
"dcdh39m"
],
"text": [
"It's just an easily-recognizable convention to indicate that \"something goes here, and the name itself is not important, so you can avoid trying to determine whether the name is significant — it's not\". \"x\" would be similar in some mathematics as the stock fill-in-the-blank. Once a convention is established, changing it is confusing, so the best term to use for everyone writing new things is the existing one. Wikipedia has a [more detailed history that tries to trace out possible etymology]( URL_0 ), but any other term could have done as well.",
"It appears to have originated from the military acronym FUBAR - but no one know for sure. It was popularised as a placeholder variable by MIT during the 1960-70's. Since then it's just become a bit of a meme, in the same way that all beginner programming tutorials print \"Hello World!\".",
"And on the topic of placeholders in programming, Swedish programmers will input Räksmörgås (shrimp sandwich) to make sure a program handles our umlauts correctly.",
"Foo and Bar are the most common *metasyntactic variables* used by Anglophone programmers. I suggest you look at the Jargon File, a late-70s compilation of hacker slang: URL_1 URL_0 The entry on 'foo' traces it back to The MIT (model) Railway Club, which actually contributed a number of terms to the lexicon.",
"A lot of this responses are misinformed, probably because they don't program, but answers like /u/nounhud are good. People focusing on FUBAR are wrong. While it may share a root and phonetically they sound similar foo and bar, as seen in programming examples, is no reference to how messed up some code is such as /u/Hickorywhat is describing.",
"foo, bar, baz, qux, quux, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, thud ...if you want to keep going :)"
],
"score": [
127,
82,
20,
15,
8,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/M/metasyntactic-variable.html",
"http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/go01.html"
],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5npqxo | Why does the sensation of getting your head scratched from someone else feel better than scratching your own head? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdfx3j",
"dcdcpod",
"dcdecmm",
"dcdg01z",
"dcdgvk1",
"dcdfkcl"
],
"text": [
"Because you're a good boy, yes you are! who's a good boy?",
"The same way you can't tickle yourself. Your body knows that you're going to feel exactly that sensation at exactly that position.",
"When you get pleasurable, physical contact from other people, your body releases hormones like oxytocin and other chemicals that make you feel good. Your body doesn't react the same way when you 'scratch your own itch'",
"Well in the case of monkeys, scientists have discovered that social grooming, i.e. cleaning each other's fur for bugs etc, causes the brain of the money being groomed to release \"endorphins\" which are chemicals that make you feel relaxed and happy. As animals we're not that biologically different from monkeys, so it's possible we might have the same trait as a leftover from our ancient ancestors.",
"Massage therapist here. One reason is because of your passive experience. It's being done *for* you, also: an element of surprise. Of course the premise is that you receive it the way you like it - area wise, pressure wise, scratch/rub ratio wise, speed wise, hair pulling or not etc.",
"You're body knows and can anticipate when you are about to do it. It cannot anticipate (even if you know or see someone is going to do it) when someone else does it."
],
"score": [
268,
151,
49,
5,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5npt5w | Why do countries (like the US) not include tax in their price tags? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdda25"
],
"text": [
"All sales taxes added at the register in the USA are local & state taxes. There is no national sales tax (though the Obama administration seems to want to impose one). The taxes are different from place to place, and can even be different in various parts of the same city/county. The taxes can also change slightly through the year as new taxes are added and as taxes expire. An example would be adding a tiny amount to the existing sales tax for a set period of time to finance a road project. Merchandise is usually distributed to stores from regional centers with the prices already determined and tags attached. The stores avoid having to re-pricetag all the items by charging the tax at the cash register."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5npttd | Why does the brain tend to constantly play music on its own ? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdipzv",
"dcdihnt",
"dcdhkns",
"dcdhezo",
"dcdi2x1",
"dcdi9oi",
"dcdjcc0",
"dcdnkt1",
"dcdqspn",
"dcdl6ah",
"dcdmuq9",
"dcdovpi"
],
"text": [
"From the experience of a musician, it's always there. It never leaves. But then again, we want it there. There's no \"Maybe if I complete the song instead of turning it off in between, it will stop.\" I guess we have to always make sure it's something we like. It can be bad though, like when you are talking to people. They're telling about their petty, melodramatic life and you're zoning out thinking about that sick part you just heard, muttering the drum rudiment under your breath.",
"Just a note: if you are interested in music, the brain, the psychology and neuroscience behind their interaction, I suggest reading Oliver Sacks book Musicophilia. It's really really interesting and will probably teach you things about the interaction of the brain and music you never even thought of. Really great book and really interesting for anyone who is into music.",
"Hey, I have this too, if we are talking about really 24/7 here. Most answers you get are probably from people who think you talk about ear worms, I had that problem at least when I tried to explain it in real life. I've since been to a few neurologists, and they are all very interested as hearing music in your head truly 100% of the time seems to be very rare. I was offered to participate in some studies, but they all take at least 10 days an I can't really be bothered to disappear from life for over a week for basically nothing, as I was assured the condition is not dangerous (no tumour or anything).",
"I don't recall source but your brain will repeat songs because it's trying to figure out what comes next. Listening to the song in its entirety is said to fix this, i.e. help your brain figure out what's next. I'll find some sources if anyone's interested!",
"If you're talking about getting a song stuck in your head, I was always under the impression that is happens because neurons that just fired are prone to fire again because the physiology of the neuron. It's been a while since I heard this, but I believe it's an ion channel that separates when it fires, but when it happens the separation isn't as complete as a non-fired channel, which makes the neuron prone to refiring again. Theory is that tendency to refire can maybe explain why you get a song stuck in your head.",
"Well humming, singing and other things (like stroking your hair) are self-soothing activities. People do it all the time, and don't realize that they are humming to a song in their head to keep them calm. When you are panicked - are you singing a song? No. But doing the dishes or in the shower or sitting at your desk at work, you may start to hum or sing a song in your head to calm yourself (not calm yourself from a panicked state, but just soothe yourself).",
"Personally I do this to avoid thinking about, well, just about anything else. Allowing a song to occupy the background of the mind limits the amount of random thoughts which can trigger anxiety and panic. People who are less prone to being overly anxious seem to do this less often in my experience. The Simpsons did a pretty good example of how different types can react to being alone with their thoughts: URL_0",
"Because the brain is like an echo chamber that can be filled with silent sounds. It is not electrically/mechanically perfect, and so there are little inklings of sound even when none really exists. And then you have the individual perceiving it all, shifting minute amounts of attention to this or that within the inklings... If you're familiar with a song that's even remotely similar to how the inklings fit into your perception, it can bubble all the way up into that song's chorus or bridge. TLDR: you listen to so much pop music that even silence reminds you of songs you know",
"Your brain is addicted to stimulus. When you are bored and not receiving enough stimulus, your brain creates it. You know those zen moments of emptiness that you hear about being so difficult to reach, where you have to empty your mind and become one with the universe? Turns out, that's the majority of your day. And you spend those moments of emptiness trying to fill them with popsongs so your brain can get its fix.",
"To be quite clear, you're just talking about yourself. People also report that when they think of ideas, they do so with an \"inner voice\" which talks. This is extremely common, but in primitive cultures like hunter-gatherer societies, it just doesn't happen. Instead, in these primitive cultures, words thought of it ones head are interpreted as being from ancestors or spirits, and thought is done in other ways, like with spacial objects, and not with words. I may hypothesize that in these primitive populations we might also find less instances of people having music \"playing\" in their minds, though of course it may still be common, it's just a guess. The takeaway I think is that we hear in our heads what we have already heard, and so it mirrors that.",
"Your brain is in a constant flux. And your neurons fire back and forth. In there, the paths your electrical impulse take. It transverse a memory of a song? Or that tasty burger you ate yesterday. Even that dream you forgot 10years ago? The memories lie in a specific pattern. If you for different reasons manage to activate it. You experience it. Remember this though. Experience something from outside, is far from the memory you are left with. Its only the most parts about the experience that stood out that you will remember. Because as i said before, memories are the etching of patterns with neurons. And this etching will only be in context to how strong this experience is. And lastly, the strength of an experience isnt the same as feeling a strong feeling. Its more, the strength of the experience in contrast to normative expeirence of the same situation. So wheb you remember things from studying, you know you learnt something because you feel and know the information being etched. Its lile that expeirence just wanderd from the outside into your consciousness. You didnt get an orgasm like feeling. Just a strong relaxing feeling of a puzzle falling together. Intense? nope. strong? yes.",
"Oliver Sacks, in his books about brain injuries, mentions patients with recurrent musical loops constantly playing in their heads. Sometimes it would be music they haven't heard since childhood. One man, with a background in music, with dementia couldn't remember even how to dress himself because he would lose his train of thought. They found however that if he hummed a tune (his memory of music was unaffected) he could follow tasks even if he wasn't fully conscious of it."
],
"score": [
151,
105,
75,
10,
10,
7,
6,
6,
4,
4,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://youtu.be/oFM1SiXgr8A"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5npv7d | What causes prolonged drowsiness/grogginess several hours after waking up? | For the most part I get between 7-8 hours of sleep a day and about an hour after waking and moving around I am awake and good to go. However, a few times a month I will wake up and for upwards of 4 or 5 hours after waking, my eyes are heavy, mind foggy, constant yawning and needing to stretch like Im just getting out of bed. Why and how does this happen? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcddydr",
"dcdudww"
],
"text": [
"I'm pretty sure this has to do with quality of sleep not quantity. Sleeping for 8 hours but constantly waking up is no different than 5 or 6 hours of *good* sleep. It also depends on your circadian rhythm - which can change due to environmental factors/life changes and hormones. With that said I think if you're used to getting up at 11am with 8 hours of sleep, but you're forced to get up at 8am with 8 hours of sleep you may still feel groggy. This all theory though and I don't really have any supporting evidence to back it up.",
"Just to clear up some myths going around here: > The interesting thing is that the brain doesn't record events that happen when you wake up if you were only awake for less than 3 minutes. This is kind of ridiculous--your body doesn't randomly shut down whenever it wants. How much you remember during sleep entirely depends on the stage of sleep you are in. You don't remember much in N3 or REM sleep. You remember quite a bit in N1 sleep. > Not being hydrated You don't become catastrophically dehydrated overnight. Humans aren't delicate creatures who wilt overnight--we're *made* to sleep. Excessive confusion as a result of dehydration is a medical emergency. What you are describing is called sleep inertia. There are lots of possibilities: - Incomplete sleep--waking in the middle of a sleep cycle rather than at the end of a sleep cycle - Hormones--if you wake up in the middle of REM sleep, for example, you still have a lot of melatonin in your system - Depression - Alcohol use - Sleeping medications and other medications - Irregular sleep schedule--going to sleep and waking up at very different times like if you did shift work - Sleep disruptions and poor sleep quality overall - A condition or disorder like sleep apnea"
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5npwtc | Why do some people "run hot" while others "run cold?" | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdftgg",
"dcdfvhc",
"dcdfu2v"
],
"text": [
"I could not find that idiom anywhere so I gotta ask: what do you mean with run hot or cold? Something biological?",
"Hormones! Higher levels of T4 from your thyroid and cortisol from your adrenals help to regulate body temperature and cold tolerance. Everyone's pituitary regulated these slightly differently resulting in varying tolerances to cold.",
"There are a couple of proposed reasons for this, however it's not an area that has been researched extensively. [Burse]( URL_1 ) suggests that as women (on average) have lower body mass and less surface area than men, they are also less capable of maximising heat production when it is required. This may be one contributing reason for the slight gender and heat differences in your household. [Venable]( URL_2 ) also researched this, but more in relation to physical exercise. The findings in that study showed that men retain more heat in their body after exercise than women. These findings aren't shared with the intention of saying that men are always at a higher temperature, as a [woman's base body temperature]( URL_0 ) may rise during ovulation, or as a result of [declining estrogen levels]( URL_3 ). In terms of heredity, that's an even narrower field and not one that I can scientifically answer to. Edit: slight sentence error"
],
"score": [
8,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"http://www.fwhc.org/health/moon.htm",
"http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001872087912210606",
"http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1616&amp;amp;context=ijesab",
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2276126/"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nq30s | Who is Brodin and what is /r/swoleacceptance all about? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdlapg",
"dcdeypw",
"dcdg5if",
"dcdqkyb",
"dcdjwo2",
"dcdj8cj",
"dcdf0gm",
"dcdmi26",
"dce42jt"
],
"text": [
"Listen well, brother of the Path of Iron. Learn our sacred pantheon, that they may aid you on your way to greater gains. Brodin - The All-spotter, king of the gods. Guardian of all things and people swole. His altar is the sacred squat rack, and it is unholy heresy to perform bicep curls therein. Broseidon - Lord of the Brocean, and keeper of the great protein shake seas. Accept his blessings before/after your sacred worship sessions to attain greater gains. Brosiris - The god of rest days. He teaches us the wisdom of greater gains through necessary recovery periods. Heed his message well, lest you overtrain and lose your swole. Absbrodite - The goddess of beauty, and as such the lady mistress of all mirin' the sacred gains. Bropollo - The brother of Brodin, the watchful eye who spots. Bror (or Tore) - The son of Brodin, it was he who first taught the Way of Swole to mankind. It is said that his barbell, Swölnir, is so heavy none but he can lift it. Broki - The trickster god, who tries ever to lead you to the path of delusionary swole and false gains. His followers are a cult known as the Gains Goblins - they are all the people and things that would have you stop your sacred worship at the Iron Temple and tempt you away from the Path of Swole. He is also the god of crossfit and synthol. Beware, brother, lest this trickster snatch you in his claws and bear ye forth to the lands without swole. Heed these teachings, brother, and attain the best of your ability in this life that ye may be awaited in Swolhalla, where you will lift forever, mighty and huge. Wheymen.",
"From the r/swoleacceptance info block: \"Brodin does not rack weights that we cannot lift. Brodin does not rack weights that we cannot lift. Our philosophy is simple: embrace what is swole and strive to make the world a more swole place. We are often bombarded with the \"ideal,\" and the vast majority of both women and men, do not measure up, regardless of their swole. We all suffer from a lack of perfection in symmetry and strength and in comparison to those with great genetics. And we all deserve to feel good about ourselves and comfortable in our swole. We welcome bodies of all shapes, sizes, abilities, and disabilities- as long as you're swole or on the path to swole. We are about accepting yourself right now, swole.\" Do not fall for the lies and misguidances of Broki & his many agents, do not stray from the path of the great all-spotter. Brodin is the great all-spotter, who in his glory, allows us to hoist the greatest of weight and make the greatest of gains. It is a place for fellow followers of the great all-spotter, Brodin. To share our experiences of victory in his name and with the treachery we suffer at the hands of Broki and his minions. Wheyman.",
"[In all seriousness, Is this subreddit real?]( URL_0 ) The night is swole and full of protein. Wheymen.",
"It started out as a parody of the fat-acceptance movement. In /r/swoleacceptance people posted ironic stories about being oppressed in their lives because of their muscular physique ('swole' meaning muscular/ripped) in much the same way as people on fat-acceptance subs do. But it kind of evolved over time as members started making jokes about weight-lifting being a kind of religion, and eventually Lore was established, along with its own terminology. The whole thing was a joke, but it's actually quite a nice sub where people who are into weight training support each-other in a light hearted way. Brodin (based on the Norse god Odin) is the god to which we pray. He guides us on the Iron Path (weight training) towards a state of perfect Swolyness. We pray (lift) in the Iron Temple (gym). But sometimes we are tempted from the path by Broki (based on the Norse trickster god, Loki) who wants to stop us from progressing and steal our gainz (muscle growth). Sometimes we talk of being \"swole of heart\" which means that while a muscular physique is, of course, the most important thing in life - it is important to be strong on the inside too, and develop muscular feels. We end our prayers with the interjection, Wheymen (a pun on amen - many of us use whey powder to supplement our protein intake) - a call to Brodin to help protect our gains, and give us the grace to help others along the Iron Path, even though they may be weak or overweight. So if you wish to join us, Brodin commands us to help you and we will gladly offer encouragement and advice.",
"As a Swoldier emissary I will take it upon myself to speak the common tongue to aid thee. The sub as I understand started as one mentioned as a reply, in jest, at fat acceptance. However it has grown and very much become a sub about lifting for the sake of just lifting and being bigger and being with others that accept that. As you might have noticed every talks in a weird, medieval like, way and talk about a made up religion. This seems to be started as part of the joke. Now however posts range from just plain foolishness, to swole acceptance posts of old, to people really wanting to talk about issues with lifting. It's all done in this tone because it always keeps the atmosphere light and interesting. I find it far more welcoming and uplifting than r/fitness because of this. I haven't been a long time lifter but for me this sub helps me get out and lift on really rough days. If you ever need translation for our weird verbiage I can link you to a thread I had where we culminated many of our phrases. I hope this helped. May Brodin bless you with much in the gains of wisdom and knowledge this day. WHEYMEN!",
"Yea, though I farmers walk through the valley of Cross fit, I shall fear no evil; For thou art with me, Brodin, thine iron and thine gains comfort me.",
"Brodin is our Lord and savior of the Iron, the mighty all-spotter who looks upon our prayers in the iron temples and rewards the faithful with glorious gains.",
"[Swoleacceptance started as a send-up of the Tumblrina HAES community]( URL_1 ) and these classic type posts show up from time to time. [The current posts are full of body building humor]( URL_2 ) and [ a cult surrounding the mythology of Brodin and the Valkyries vs Broki and the CardioBunnies]( URL_0 ) Wheymen.",
"[Here's something that will help you understanding of Brodin, Swoley Writ, and the Iron Path.]( URL_0 )"
],
"score": [
158,
152,
83,
75,
42,
28,
11,
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/swoleacceptance/comments/4uqtyy/in_all_seriousness_is_this_subreddit_real/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/swoleacceptance/comments/1cq1cj/wheymen/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/swoleacceptance/comments/13vmc6/my_boss_had_a_talk_with_me_today_because_of_my/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/swoleacceptance/comments/2gg9jn/eating_nothing_but_raw_milk_and_oats_got_me_swole/"
],
[
"http://bookofbrodin.wikia.com/wiki/Book_of_Brodin_Wiki"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nq3fy | From a tap, why is a low-pressure stream clear, and a high-pressure stream white? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdf9vh",
"dcdgcfy",
"dcdf9z2",
"dcdf1o5"
],
"text": [
"There is an aerator on the end of the tap that only works when there is good enough water pressure. It looks like a little mesh screen and the water will just flow around it and become a constant stream again at lower water pressures",
"It depends on what's called the Reynolds Number, which can roughly tell us whether the flow of water will be laminar (clear, glass looking) or turbulent (white stream). There's a few factors involved with it, like the velocity of the liquid, the density, the diameter of the pipe, and the liquids viscosity. At a Reynolds number below approx. 2300, the water will leave the tap clear, above about 4000 it will be turbulent, and between that it's called transition flows. So when the waters velocity, or pressure, is low, it's more likely to be a clear stream, higher velocity it'll be white",
"Bubbles. Pressure causes turbulence, which causes tiny bubbles to form, which interfere with light.",
"I'm going to go out on a limb here, not sure how correct this is going to be... Low pressure streams would be clear as they are a solid stream of water, whereas high pressure streams would create cavitation (tiny air bubbles) from the water moving quicker out of the faucet. These tiny air bubbles reflect light in such a manner that the stream seems to be white rather than clear."
],
"score": [
34,
9,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nq5yo | why does looking at a bright light cause our eyes to feel pain? | I can hazard a guess why this happens when looking at the sun as it's physically impacting the nerve endings, but why do we feel the same when looking at a bulb or a torch? What is causing the pain/sensation of pain? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdnjhs",
"dcdfc8a"
],
"text": [
"Your brain does not taste, see, feel, hear,smell anything. Your brain is a blob of jelly in a cramped and dark skull. Your sensory organs (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin) convert stimuli originating from outside of your body such as light falling on your retina, pressure on your skin, odorant molecules from food being inhaled, into ELECTRICAL IMPULSES. Your brain then interprets these impulses in specific areas of your brain (each part receives input from a particular sensory organ) and your brain translates that into the perception of \"This smells like coffee\", \"this tastes like coffee\", \"This looks like coffee\", \"This cup is hot\" etc. That being said, your sensory organs can only generate a finite amount of electrical impulses in a period of time and the strength of the impulse is constant. In other words a loud noise doesn't generate a stronger voltage impulse in your brain, it just fires off an extremely high frequency of the same strength impulse very very very quickly. A strong stimulus like a BRIGHT light or a LOUD noise generates an extremely rapid burst of electrical impulses and if the sound or light is sustained for too long, the cells producing the impulses literally die. This is called \"excitotoxicity\". Meaning the output of the cell is greater than it can handle and literally overloads. Loud noises and bright lights can kill your senses physically, so your body knows this and as soon as a bright light occurs your instinct is to look away or cover your eyes to protect your eyes. You wouldn't know bright light kills the complex cells in your eyes unless you were educated, so your body just makes it simple on you and makes it PAINFUL because pain is very convincing in making you protect yourself from the thing causing it. So the bright light isn't causing the pain, your body sense the bright light will be too much to handle and the pain receptors in your eyes tell your brain to look the heck away/cover your eyes before damage occurs. If the light is TOO intense, you might suffer damage before you can even react (like in the case of shining a laser directly into your eye, or during an explosion that destroys your hearing in a burst before you can cover your ears)",
"I am by no means a biology expert. My guess is going to be that the bright light, as with any light levels, causes your iris to contract, attempting to adjust to the light level, but they can't close completely, causing muscular strain in your eye. Or maybe it's exactly the same as looking at the sun, that it damages your nerve endings."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nq8an | Why does water not always act as a lubricant? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdjuzj"
],
"text": [
"Water [has both *cohesion* -- wants to stick to itself -- and *adhesion* -- wants to stick to other things]( URL_0 ). So, water is a fluid, and wants to stick to itself as a single object, which makes it somewhat slippery. But, it also wants to stick to you, and anything else it touches, on a small scale, It's how drops stick to the wall in the shower, and you can press something light and smooth against something else smooth with just a little water in between and it will stick. So, on a large scale your tires can slip on a wet road because the water is forming a barrier between the tire and the road through cohesion, but on a small scale like rubbing skin together, the water is trying to stick and causes friction."
],
"score": [
60
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://water.usgs.gov/edu/adhesion.html"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nqce9 | Why do your hands tend to shake when you try to hold something still? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdgmgd",
"dcdk9s7"
],
"text": [
"Because you can not \"not move\". Your muscles always need to work to keep the position you need your hand to stay at. So the more you try to keep your hand steady, the harder you try to compensate for the movement you see, but are not aware of. So you are constantly overcompensating. Try an experiment - get a full cup of water and try to walk with it to the next room. First, just take it and go, do not think about the cup (just like you normally do). Then, take it back, but this time, try as hard as you can to keep the water level \"mirror-like\". Unless you're a waiter or have a lot of experience, you'll spill more if you concentrate on not spilling.",
"Your muscles are not functioning as a single unit which you lock in place. The muscle is made up of individual muscle fibers which do not contract in synchrony. There are also complicated feedback mechanisms going back between your muscles and your brain which steadies your hand causing these fibers to contract and relax etc."
],
"score": [
52,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nqixo | Why do our tongues get stuck on poles. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdk2xh"
],
"text": [
"Because your tongue is wet, and metal is extremely heat-conductive. So, the metal cools your saliva faster than your tongue can warm it up. At low enough temperatures, the saliva freezes to both the pole and tongue, so you're stuck. The only safe option for releasing the frozen saliva is to heat up the pole above freezing, usually by pouring hot water on it at the point where the tongue is stuck; just pulling will tear off the tip of the tongue where it is frozen."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nqkgn | Why are multiple blades needed for a closer shave? | Wouldn't the first blade do all of the work? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdhtm7",
"dcdmro2",
"dcdix85"
],
"text": [
"They are not... They are needed for a $7/refill head shave. Try an old fashioned single blade: URL_0",
"So like everyone else is saying, if you haven't yet try using safety blades. \"The Art of Shaving\" is a decent in-person store for you to go to talk to someone. Most of their associates will actually tell you how to get refills online once you have a decent starter kit. However they can be useful in some cases. They are decent for a 'casual' shaver. Some people have to go over the same spot several times, having 5 blades let's you do it once and be done. Add to that they are usually harder to cut yourself with and the fact that every store has them makes them popular.",
"They aren't, it's all marketing. I was using the $7/head Gillette blades and getting razor burn. When I switched to a safety razor (single blade head) I started getting a closer shave and no razor burn. The single blades cost like 50 cents and are more accurate and comfortable and I'm never going back."
],
"score": [
13,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"http://pb2000.nfshost.com/aw2k/LotImg424.jpg"
],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nqnov | 'Colon cancer','breast cancer', 'prostate cancer'... Do cancerous growths never originate in muscle tissues like arms or calves? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdkfbn",
"dcdik1b"
],
"text": [
"Cancer that originates in muscle does exist, but it's rare. They are called soft tissue sarcomas. About 3% of childhood cancer is rhabdomyosarcoma. In the US, that translates to about 350 cases per year. It's more common in children as they are rapidly growing, and it's the rapid growth of muscle makes it more common. Muscle itself is a pretty cool thing -- mostly a bunch of long fibers coated in this sheath that's a bunch of cells that have fused together into a giant single cell. That sheath is what builds new muscle when the muscles are damaged or growing. In children, this is frequently active, but in adults, it only \"switches on\" in the presence of chemical that activates the cells - and that only happens as a response to local damage. Without the signal, they simply never divide -- they can't. Cells where cell-division is deactivated don't tend to change into cancer cells -- cancer being the name we give to cells where the division process goes off the rails.",
"No. Same for heart muscle. Why is this so? It has alot to do with the pathogenesis of cancer. Cancer originates from a cell that undergoes mutation during cell division and no longer follows the regulated cycle. So it replicates itself non stop (hyperplasia) despite the body sending signals telling it to stop. But the scenario is different for muscle cells that RARELY undergoes cell division. Instead it merely enlarges (hypertrophy) to adapt to the body's increasing demand. Because of this, you never get cancer of the muscles because it doesn't divide itself to begin with."
],
"score": [
17,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nqq08 | What safeguards are in place, in the U.S.A., to stop a rogue president from using nuclear weapons? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdjlwo",
"dcdj86o"
],
"text": [
"Here is a great article for this: URL_0 In short there are a total of 9 steps: * The president considers a nuclear strike * The president convenes a conference with military and civilian advisers in Washington, the consultation may last just 30 seconds. * The president decides to launch: Some advisers may try to change the president’s mind or resign in protest—but ultimately, the Pentagon must comply with the commander-in-chief’s order. * The senior officer in the Pentagon war room must formally authenticate that the person ordering the strike is indeed the president. * The war room prepares the launch order, a message that contains the chosen war plan, time to launch, authentication codes and codes needed to unlock the missiles before firing them. The encoded and encrypted message is only about 150 characters long, about the length of a tweet. It is broadcast to each worldwide command and directly to launch crews. * Launch message in hand, the crews open locked safes to obtain sealed-authentication system (SAS) codes prepared by the National Security Agency and distributed throughout the military’s nuclear chain of command. They compare the SAS codes in the launch order with those in their safes. * If the missiles are launched from a submarine: The captain, executive officer and two others authenticate the order. The launch message provides the combination to an on-board safe holding the “fire-control” key needed to deploy the missiles. Missiles are ready for launch about 15 minutes after receiving the order. * If the missiles are launched from land: Five launch crews in various underground centers control a squadron of 50 missiles. Each crew consists of two officers. The individual teams are spread miles apart. Each receives the orders, opens safes and compares their SAS codes to those sent by the war room. If they match, the crews enter the message’s war plan number into their launch computers to re-target missiles from their peacetime targets in the ocean to their new targets. Using additional codes in the message, the crews enter a few more keystrokes to unlock the missiles before turning launch keys retrieved from their safe. At the designated launch time, the five crews turn their keys simultaneously, sending five “votes” to the missiles. Mutiny is unlikely It takes just two “votes” to launch the missiles. So even if three two-officer ICBM crews refuse to carry out the order, it won’t stop the launch. **Missiles are launched** About five minutes may elapse from the president’s decision until intercontinental ballistic missiles blast out of their silos, and about fifteen minutes until submarine missiles shoot out of their tubes. Once fired, the missiles and their warheads cannot be called back. **TL;DR** It takes as little as five minutes to launch a nuke. No one can refuse a launch and it is virtually impossible once the decision has been made (In theory)",
"To launch the nukes the President needs the Secretary of Defense to also agree. The two of them tell the Joint Chiefs of Staff to launch who then tell the CO of the facility or sub they want a launch and then the guys with the actual keys launch the nuke. If the President is really nuts this won't get passed the Secretary of Defense. If he is also bonkers anyone down the chain can commit insubordination and stop the launch. Mind you if one Silo wont launch and everyone above them agrees they'll just call another silo."
],
"score": [
13,
12
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-nuclear-weapon-launch/"
],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nqqon | A woman in the U.S. was killed by a superbug resistant to all known antibiotics. Why can't our adaptive immune system fight off bacteria? Isn't that why the immune system is a) there and b) adaptive? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdjcpc",
"dcdq0wu",
"dcdm65v"
],
"text": [
"You immune system is doing this all the time, you're just not realizing it *precisely* because it does it so well. Not only it can eliminate bacterial, fungal and via infections, it also protects you against multicellular parasites and even kills potentially malignant cells so you don't develop cancer. Without it you'd probably drop dead in a week or so due to some random infection.",
"The thing about our current superbugs is that we unintentionally created them by how we kill them. Before the first antibiotic, infection killed millions. But using antibiotics only kills the weakest and those few that survive breed only more highly resistant bacteria. We essentially supercharged their evolution while protecting ourselves from the evolutionary pressure to adapt higher bacterial resistance ourselves. We have a lot of catching up to do or we're going to rejoin a nightmare we thought we were beyond. Bacterial infection is scary stuff without a cure! So yes, the immune system is there and adaptive but modern medicine temporarily curtailed our end of evolutionary pressure to adapt.",
"Your immune system is evolved to resist bacteria, fungi, viruses, and virtually all other invaders. It does so all the time and wins all the time. That is why you are not constantly ill on your deathbed. You only have issues when a specific bacteria/etc has evolved to be strong enough or stealthy enough to get past your immune system. That is when you get ill and when severe enough when you go to the doctor for treatment. But there are some that have also evolved to resist/get past the doctors treatments, in the same manner they have evolved to get past our immune systems. These are the superbugs you are talking about. So the reason that your immune system cannot handle them on its own is that they have already evolved to get past our immune systems by the time they are exposed to the agents that will prompt them to become super bugs."
],
"score": [
10,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nqubv | Troops in Poland. Why are they needed or why are they so happy we were there? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdkxiy"
],
"text": [
"Just NATO. They've been there forever. We've got bases all over the world. And everyone likes military bases. They bring some headaches (having a bunch of soldiers wandering around is like having a bunch of college kids wandering around: they get drunk, bored, and ornery), but they dump a *massive* amount of money into the local economy."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nqv97 | Toe curling? Why do we involuntarily curl our toes if something feels particularly good? | "Toe curling good" or "toe curling bad" are pretty common phrases, but why do we do it? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdmt07"
],
"text": [
"Muscle tension and involuntary clenching for hands/feet/anus can be caused by overstimulation. Too many stimuli are being processed by the brain and the body doesn't know how to react. Think about an infant. Overstimulation is a very real, yet overlooked problem, and the more the brain has to decipher the more a baby will kick and coo and clench the hands and toes."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nqx5o | What's the difference between "I'm stressed" and "I'm anxious"? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdlm7a",
"dcdupud"
],
"text": [
"If you're just saying it, from a layman perspective, both are subjective. They basically mean whatever you want (unless you're talking about dictionary definitions). Now if a psychiatrist or psychologist says \"You are under a lot of stress\" and \"You are suffering from anxiety\", then we're talking medical terms and in *that* case they are radically different. \"Stress\" will basically mean more or less the same as what you think - there's a lot on your mind, you're under a lot of pressure, etc. \"Anxiety\", though, is a specific condition. Or rather, several conditions. They are characterised by excessive worry to the point where it impacts your life. Stress can be a factor leading to anxiety.",
"Stress: - Response to demands placed on you - Usually a specific, discreet situation or event - Subsides when the situation is over Anxiety: - Response to worries or fears - Focuses on thoughts about something (i.e. what if...) - May not be as easy to figure out where it's coming from"
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nqxue | Is there any animal in the wild that dies of old age like humans do? | Is there any way a wild animal can just die peacefully or is it always predators or sickness? Differently phrased, is violent death a certainty for every animal there is? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdlglm",
"dcdll06",
"dcdl6qd"
],
"text": [
"It is less likely to happen, and \"old age\" in the wild is usually younger than in captivity, but there's absolutely no *rule* that says this can't happen. It is absolutely *possible* for an animal to die peacefully of old age in the wild. Note that I assumed you meant an *individual* animal, not an entire species. That said, there are apex predators (or creatures without natural enemies in their environment). And there are animals with *incredibly* strong social ties, where members of the herd will care for each other. Elephants are a prime example of this - their social structure is *incredible* and includes what appears to be altruism to levels you'd not normally associate wth animals. Elephants can often die of old age. Elephants are actually one species that lives *longer* in the wild than in captivity. Elephants didn't even have any natural predators until we showed up...",
"I just watched National Geographic last night. A gorilla, who was the leader, just laid down for a while and died. No fight, pretty peaceful.",
"\"Old age\" is not an actual cause of death. When we say people die of \"old age\" we tend to mean elderly people die from complications of chronic conditions. It's a term lay people use when they are unaware of the actual cause of death. It implies the person died \"naturally\" and not from, say, murder/suicide/infection/drug overdose/freak blimp accident. These people actually die of mundane things such as a heart attacks, stroke, etc. Quite possibly in their sleep. If the person was old, had a history of coronary artery disease, and had no signs of foul-play it's unlikely that anyone will investigate and perform an autopsy to determine the actual cause of death. EDIT: I don't think the rest of your question registered with me. Lots of animals die this way. Just think of pets. Goldfish. Cats. Dogs. Animals die of old age all the time. In the wild, something is likely to eat them if they're too old or sick to defend themselves or escape, but the point is still true."
],
"score": [
7,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nqykg | How does mutation in bacteria work and what exactly forms superbugs (antibiotic resistent)? | To my understanding the constant use of antibiotics would select the strongest bacteria (read: resistent to the antibiotic) and it would then reproduce. But people say that not going for the full treatment accelarates the mutation of bacteria, why is that? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdl3fp"
],
"text": [
"once in a while, during reproduction, an error will happen that causes the dna of the new bacteria to be different from what it should be (without going much in dept), that \"mutation\" may cause a bacteria to have the right features to counter an antibiotic. now when you use that antibiotic, you will kill pretty much every bacteria that doesn't have that mutation, so now the only bacteria that are reproducing are immune to that particular antibiotic. For your second question the answer is a little different, let's say that after 4 days of the 7 you should take an antibiotic you don't fell sick anymore, that is because you reduced significantly the bacteria population, but you didn't wipe it out properly, and you could get sick again because bacteria reproduce very fast. (sorry for the wall of text, i'm new to reddit, i hope i've been helpful)"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nqyt3 | What is a "Windows X System" in relation to operating systems? | Also are the terms remote X session and SSH related terms? What do they mean in this context? Thanks! | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdmihy"
],
"text": [
"That's X Windows System, not Windows X System. It is also known as X11 or just X. X is basically the windowing system used by UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems. It's been around since 1984. Unlike more popular (nowadays) windowing systems like Microsoft Windows and Mac OS, X is just a basic framework. It provides a basic GUI and, well, windows and a mouse cursor, but you need *other* software to do stuff like put borders on the windows, move them around, etc. This is known as a Window Manager. The advantage here is that you can customise the heck out of your GUI by using the window manager that *you* like. Another *major* difference is the client-server architecture. X runs as a server, and clients connect to it. Basically, if you run X on your machine, you have something that can display windows. To actually *get* these windows, you have to run a client (basically, a program). For example, you can run a browser like Chrome or Firefox. Rather than displaying their data directly, they connect to the X server and have the *server* display the data. The advantage here is that you can run X on your own computer *and all other applications on different computers*. If you think about the UNIX mentality, this makes a lot of sense, especially in the Olden Days when people used fairly weak terminals to display stuff, and had big powerful servers to run applications on. It *also* means that I can run any flavour of Linux I want on my desktop, and use any *other* UNIX-variant to run my applications. Now back in the olden days when we had many different flavours of UNIX running on many different platforms, that was a lot more impressive (I could use a cheap x86 desktop running Linux, and run my applications on a $100,000 SGI Origin cluster). It also meant is was *trivial* for me to display a window on *your* computer. It used to be *more* trivial when everyone was connected directly to the internet, but if we're on the same network it's still remarkably easy. This relates to SSH in that you need to connect to the remote system in order to launch your application. Again, in the Olden Days we'd use telnet or rlogin, which are immensely insecure protocols. Those have all but died out with ssh becoming ubiquitous, and is virtually exclusively used for connections between systems."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nr1ok | How does externally applied "fat burning" gels work? | For slimming pills I read that it raises metabolism rate and thus burns off more calories, sounds logical enough to me at least. But [this?]( URL_0 ) | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdlo1y",
"dcdo0i7",
"dcdmchf",
"dcdmnhp"
],
"text": [
"This is just a hunch, but they just do not work. The only way to lose fat is to consume less calories than you burn through out the day. So you can eat the same but exercise more, consume less calories and don't exercise any more/less or a combination of eating less calories and exercising more. It really is that simple. Stay clear of these \"miracle\" creams and the like.",
"The same way traditional snake oil works, and that's by slimming your *wallet*, which kind of does have an overall slimming affect to the waistline, just not what you were after.",
"\"Slimming pills\" are usually either amphetamines or closely related to amphetamines. They work by suppressing your appetite rather than by accelerating your metabolism. Slimming gels do not work at all. Fat can't be 'dissolved', it has to be expended by the body in one way or another before it will go away.",
"They don't. That particular site, I bet you'd get a tub of petroleum jelly if you ordered it, if you got anything at all. It screams \"scam.\" But that aside, no, externally applied \"fat burning\" gels don't work. There is some evidence that extreme cold applied in exactly the right ways to exactly the right areas can cause cell damage and thus a flushing of fat from those cells, but that is absolutely not something that's even remotely possible with externally-applied gels."
],
"score": [
18,
13,
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nr2hv | who discovered the act of smoking? And why is it that only a handful of plants can be smoked? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdmpbg",
"dcdnc83",
"dcdr1nd",
"dcdrs4n"
],
"text": [
"There wasn't one person who \"discovered\" it. Humans would make fire, and sometimes the plants they would put on the fire would make them feel different. Then they just eventually inhaled it as we smoke it now. Also, there aren't just a handful of plants. You can smoke any kind of plant really. But we have narrowed it down to a few that we have mass produced, therefore it only seems like a handful.",
"You can smoke anything you want. It just has to be sufficiently dried so that it burns. What you get out of smoking tobacco vs weed vs grass clippings is an entirely different story.",
"AFAIK, Native Americans were the first recorded people to smoke tobacco. Eastern tribes used an uncultivated version of tobacco, and some sources indicate after the introduction of European Settlers, the use of tobacco and opium spread from China into Southeast Asia around the 17th Century.",
"> And why is it that only a handful of plants can be smoked? It's not. If you dry it up, it will burn. Some could be dangerous, if they have toxins or other irritants that you would inhale with the smoke. But plenty of others you could smoke and inhale. That being said, you can also eat dirt if you want to. But people are likely going to stick to plants that are palatable or otherwise have some perceived benefit. Mind you, inhaling particulate material like smoke into your lungs is bad for your lung health regardless of the contents."
],
"score": [
8,
7,
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nr5ym | Why do we feel extremely weak right before throwing up? | Caught a stomach bug recently, but I managed to go about my day as usual; however, right before I puked I barely had enough strength to make it to a trash bin. Right afterwards I felt better than I had all day. What is the cause of these drastic changes? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdmlve"
],
"text": [
"Throwing up is fairly energy intensive and not something the body is terribly practiced at. Right before you throw up, your stomach and esophageal muscles start stealing circulation from other parts of the body like the legs and arms so they have enough energy to force everything out of your stomach, and this sudden drop in circulation makes you feel extremely weak. The recovery afterward is your body releasing endorphins designed to make you feel better, the idea being that 'expelling the threat' should mean the danger has passed and you can go about your day now."
],
"score": [
10
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nr7dg | How does getting a loan as a nation work? And how can they pay it back? | Is there also interest involved? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdmsjk"
],
"text": [
"1 - It's pretty simple. You create something like a US Treasury and sell it on the open market. 2 - Same way you pay off your loan, they pay the money back. 3 - Yes, interest is part of it though typically Governments can get much better interest rates than an individual."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nr7te | Why is it sometimes easy to peel a hard-boiled egg, while other times the shell sticks and fragments into bazillions of tiny pieces? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dce7hyv",
"dcdpq4r"
],
"text": [
"They're much easier to peel if you immediately cool them off, as opposed to letting them sit in the hot water after turning off the stove.",
"I know it's much easier to peel eggs if you hard boil them when they're a few weeks old. Hard boiling fresh eggs makes for difficult peeling. I'm not sure why this is, but my grandmother taught me this and she was right. Hope this helps."
],
"score": [
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nr96y | If organic life emerged on Earth from the physical state of the universe to be carbon-based, why do we assume that life elsewhere would be radically different if the rough distribution of elements throughout the universe is the same? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdnsqa"
],
"text": [
"We don't necessarily. We actually make very few assumptions about life outside of Earth, because we don't want those assumptions to bias our search. We just look at what's theoretically possible given our current understanding of chemistry and biology. We know that carbon based life can exist (example - earth) We know that silicone based life is possible, based on our understanding of chemistry and biological processes. We know that even carbon based life could be radically different then what's here on earth. Just look at all of the various branches of life that evolved here on Earth, and imagine what could evolve in biospheres very different from Earth. Given that life could exist in configurations that we haven't even imagined yet, we aren't going to rule anything out. We might focus our early efforts on looking at earth like planets, but that's just because we have to prioritize our searches somehow. It's like looking for your keys after a night of drinking. Theoretically they could be anywhere, but I'd suggest searching in obvious places like the nightstand or table (earth like planets) before looking in your neighbor's garage (gas giants or exotic worlds)."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nr9bl | Why Are Cane Fields Burned After A Harvest? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdsmwj",
"dcdoo44"
],
"text": [
"Plant ash is also an incredible, fast-acting fertilizer as it's been broken down and ready for reabsorption.",
"Sugar cane is burned to remove the outer leaves around the stalks before harvesting. when i was a pre-teen my family took a trip to Mexico and we attended a festival of lanterns. the ultimate goal was to have your lantern land (while still burning) in cane field. you would not believe the ashes raining from the dark grey sky for days after that."
],
"score": [
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nra7p | What makes eczema incurable? | Like a lot of people I've been struggling with this skin condition for awhile now. Although not as severe as what a lot of people go through, it still effects my life. Going to the doctors office, they prescribe steroid creams of different potency and tell you to change your skin care habits. When asked if it's curable they say no and it will be with you forever especially if you have asthma (which is what I have). Now my question is: What makes eczema incurable and why do those that have asthma more prone to getting this? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdod49"
],
"text": [
"Hello fellow sufferer. Excema is a genetic disorder that is very similar to asthma. The way it was explained to me is that they're very similar in effect. Asthma causes swelling and irritation in the lung tissue, while excema causes the same swelling and irritation in the epidermis (outer layers of skin). The reason that it isn't curable currently is that the problem exists in your DNA, which is copied into every single cell in your body. A therapy to cure it would require rewriting your genetic code in every cell of your body. Such research, called genetic therapy, is in its infancy, and is insanely hard to do, given all of the risks involved."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
5nreiy | When singing, what is the difference in how your "head voice" and "chest voice" are produced? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdr9gf"
],
"text": [
"This subject is controversial, as scientists who study the biology of phonetics do not use the terms \"chest voice\" or \"head voice\". There are four ways that your vocal cords can move to produce sound. These are called the four [vocal registers]( URL_1 ). **Vocal fry** is the lowest register. The vocal cords are pressed lightly together, and air bubbles through between them. This creates a sound that is described as \"gravelly\", \"popping\", \"creaky\", or \"rattling\". **Modal voice** is your normal voice (\"modal\" is a fancy word for \"normal\"). The whole flesh of the vocal cord vibrates (as seen in [this gif]( URL_2 )), allowing the greatest amount of control over things like volume and tone. **Falsetto** is when most of the vocal cords are relaxed; only the tips vibrate together (as seen in [this gif]( URL_0 )). Since there's less mass that has to vibrate back and forth, you can do it faster, and thus get higher pitch than in modal voice. But there's less control over volume and tone, so falsetto is often characterized as \"thin\" or \"breathy\". **Whistle** is the highest register. We actually don't know much about what goes on with the vocal cords here, because the throat closes up and doesn't let us look at them. Most men and some women cannot even use this register without training. The voice produced has a distinctive \"whistle-like\" or \"flute-like\" tone that is very different from the same person's voice in lower registers."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Vocal_fold_falsett_animated.gif",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocal_register",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Vocal_fold_animated.gif"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nrkgu | How are people able to trick themselves into remembering something that never happened? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdri75"
],
"text": [
"Guys, I don't know why I can't see comments on my own page. I'm getting notified that people are commenting but WTF? I Can't see them."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nrnon | What is so groundbreaking about the Amiga? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdrua0"
],
"text": [
"For its time, it has very advanced graphics capabilities. It also was one of the first PCs to multitask. It used to be that computers could only do one thing at a time. If you want to copy a file, that is all your computer would be doing until the copy was done."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nrqm6 | Why do museums prohibit taking pictures with flash on even though the artifacts are exposed to natural and other lights the whole day? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcds1t8"
],
"text": [
"[Recent studies suggest that flash isn't as harmful to art as was once believed]( URL_0 ), but the ban likely continues because it's tradition. Other than that, there are other reasons to ban flash. For one, it's a huge distraction to other visitors to constantly have flash going off in galleries. I also find that flash can reflect off artwork, causing glare problems when you look at the photo afterwards."
],
"score": [
11
],
"text_urls": [
[
"http://www.arthistorynews.com/articles/2936_Does_flash_photography_really_damage_paintings"
]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
|
5nrxba | I know that people are born with perfect pitch, but what causes certain people to have it over others? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dcdvy52",
"dcdvmbb"
],
"text": [
"Early life. Of those with the potential for perfect pitch, those that develop it do because their environments provide for it. I saw a statistic that claimed 60% of the chinese students in a study met the criteria for absolute pitch whereas 14% of americans did. So far as I know, this was less to do with dramatically different genes and more to do with the fact that their language is much more dependent on pitch (musical tone) and so those who potentially could have it, had a greater chance of it manifesting. English, of course has tone too, but in Mandarin (and vietnamese too) use pitch as part of the actual word whereas we use it for emphasis on top of words that themselves do not depend upon tone. Similarly, musical training at a young age increases the likelihood.",
"I looked it up to be sure just now (can't link because I'm on mobile) and you can't develop absolute, or perfect, pitch. However, you can develop relative pitch after years and years of study. Relative pitch is being able to tell any note in reference to another pitch. So if someone tells you to sing a note, you can, but you need to know another note first. If you develop relative pitch, you can kinda cheat and memorize one pitch, then be able to identify any others based on it. I had a professor like that. He let us all believe he had perfect pitch because his relative pitch was so good."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
} | [
"url"
] | [
"url"
] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.